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Easter 2
3/4/2016

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

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Many of you will probably, at some stage of your Christian walk, come across the so-called “four spiritual laws” – or perhaps have even promulgated them. These “laws” seek to give an account of the why and wherefore of Christian belief by giving an account of human sinfulness and God’s response to this condition. They are often printed on small pamphlets, and run something like this

1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. (John 3:16, John 10:10)
2. The human being is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, we cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives. (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23)
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for our sin. Through him we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives. (Romans 5:8, I Corinthians 15:3-6, John 14:6)
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as saviour and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives. (John 1:12, Ephesians 2:8,9, John 3:18, Revelation 3:20)

This expresses something of what perhaps most Christians would consider to be the essentials of the gospel of salvation, linking divine grace to human sinfulness. But, at the same time, it is rather a bland set of principles. Or, perhaps more to the point, it reads like a set of principles – mere principles. There is not much in this listing of the “laws” that engages me; it’s all about “God”, “Jesus” and human beings in general.

But when we look to the preaching of the disciples, we discover a much less abstract dealing with the matter. Our text from Acts today revolves around a very short sermon preached by the apostles, consisting of only two lines, each of which is critical:

“The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree”, and

“God has exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins”

Consider the first line of their sermon: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree”. The first thing to note is not the reference to the resurrection. For the moment, the important point is in the second clause: “whom you killed by hanging him on a tree” – “whom you killed.” The preaching of the resurrection of Jesus is directed at those who are responsible for his persecution and execution. This is not simply information about what God might have done – it implicates those who hear it: the one whom God has raised is the one you have killed. This makes the resurrection highly significant for those who have killed Jesus. To sharpen it one further step, the apostles’ preaching declares to Jesus’ executioners, “In the resurrection God has judged as false your judgement of Jesus”.

We need to keep in mind this “you” is not us but the religious authorities to whom Peter and the other apostles are speaking. This matters because it puts an entirely different spin on the meaning of the resurrection. It’s not here some uplifting message from the other side that we might have life after death. In fact, “Jesus is risen” is not good news for the religious authorities, but actually bad news: you did not know what you were doing; your best judgement has been judged and found to be horribly wrong. “Jesus is risen” is not of itself a declaration of the forgiveness of sins, but gives rise to the naming and identifying of human sin. The next line following on from what we heard this morning goes on to say: “When the council heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.” They understood what is being implied here: that Israel has crucified God’s Christ. The preaching of the resurrection is not here information but accusation.

If indeed Jesus has been raised, and such a divine judgement has been delivered, the question then becomes, what will God do about the crucifixion? What will he do with the risen Jesus?

This brings us to the second part of the apostles’ short sermon: “God has exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” We needn’t get too caught up with such questions as whether Jesus was first raised and then exalted to God’s right hand, or whether God actually has a right hand, or whatever. The important point is that Jesus is given this “status” in order to be able to give repentance and forgiveness.

Notice again how this is different from some of our more familiar salvation talk, such as “Jesus died for our sins”. In the preaching of the apostles we hear not that Jesus died “for” our sin but on account of our sin (here, the sin of “Israel”), and that he is exalted in order that repentance might occur and sin be forgiven. The most important thing in understanding what this means is that the second half of the apostles’ sermon not be separated from the first. The raising of Jesus is the demonstration of his innocence. That Jesus is then exalted as judge, in order to bring forgiveness, is to say that the innocent victim returns to his persecutors. “This Jesus, whom you crucified, has been raised and made your judge, that you might repent and be forgiven”

This word is spoken not to us – for in fact we weren’t there – but to those who were in fact involved. (We’ll get back to us in a moment!). The word of forgiveness is spoken by the victim to his oppressors; the religious authorities’ salvation is to be found in recognising Jesus as their victim, and receiving forgiveness from him.

As such, the forgiveness with which the apostles are here concerned is not a “spiritual” forgiveness of a general human sinfulness but a very concrete and specific forgiveness arising out of a very concrete and specific failure. We might be declaring a truth if we announce that human beings are sinners; but this not very interesting. We may be declaring a truth if we announce that Jesus is risen; but this also, is not a very interesting truth. We might be declaring a truth if we announce that God forgives sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus; but even this is not going to get us very far by itself. The preaching of the apostles is about the specific failure of specific people, and so a specific possibility of forgiveness: you have done this, but forgiveness for that is offered.  Salvation is intrinsic to – inextricably wrapped up with – the specifics of our failures. It is only resurrection illumination which reveal those specifics.

As an aside: This is why the confession of sin in our liturgy usually appears after the preaching of the word. We must hear what we guilty of before we can confess a real failure. This opportunity is greatly reduced if the confession is only the second thing which takes place in the liturgy, as the standard order of service usually has it.

The apostles’ preaching of the resurrection invites us to discover not a general theory of atonement but the very concrete and specific claim that our hope is to be found in our victims. This is the scandalous suggestion which enrages the religious council before which the apostles stand and preach. Good Methodists know this already in another form: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s blood – me, who caused his pain, me, who him to death pursued?” We are saved by Jesus only if we have pursued him to death: our salvation is intrinsic to our sin.

Now, of course, only one small part of one generation, in one place, has had the dubious honour of pursing Jesus to death. What then of us who watch those events from this great distance? The dynamic of forgiveness does not change, nor the scandal of it all. “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to me” (cf. Matthew 25.40, 45). We must conclude that Jesus really meant this(!), if the preaching of the apostles about the meaning of the resurrection and exaltation is true.

Generalised talk about human sinfulness – such we see in something like the four spiritual laws – smudges too much what is at stake by lifting it out of real events and actions. And so generalised talk of the offer of forgiveness has very little to do with actual forgiveness, which brings with it real conviction of sin. The church’s faith in the risen Jesus is not about another world, another time, another place and neither is it about no particular time or place. The risen Jesus as the source of forgiveness for those who judged and crucified him is a question mark over our own particular judgements and the impact they have on others. The possibility of forgiveness begins with our recognising that there are real, tangible, inter-personal, political, economic things to be forgiven. This requires being confronted with those who’ve suffered through these things, at the hands of those of us who have benefitted from them. There is no reconciliation without truth-telling: First and Second peoples, Arabs and Jews, culpable churches and their child-victims, violent men and their families, Synods and congregations, and so on.

But at the same time it is, in fact, impossible to unravel the mess of fractured human relationships, because we are all variously victims and oppressors. And so, at one level, all the gospel can call us to, is honesty about our predicament. As it does this, however, the gospel also points beyond our ability to see a resolution of our brokenness – pointing to the capacity of God to live in the world, to make it his own, and to present his own life in the world back to us as our own.

This last point is the good news. While we must make our best efforts to redress our wrongs, our success will only be limited. But if what harm we do to Jesus’ brothers and sisters is indeed done to him (recalling again Matthew 25), then, ultimately, he will be in a position to grant the forgiveness which they – or we as their victims – cannot. The word of grace is that our sins against others are forgiven by the one who forgives their sins against us, for his life, and so his ability to forgive and set right, will become ours.

It is only when we hand it all over to the God who reigns over death and decay to heal it that we will begin to see both who we are and what an extraordinary thing God will yet make of us.

In this Easter season, may our eyes be opened both to our great need, and to the gift of God’s healing work. Amen.

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Easter Day
27/3/2016

1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Psalm 118
Luke 24:1-12

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The past was once a living place, but it is now the place of the dead. The dead do linger for while in our present – in our hearts and memories – but our hearts and memories will themselves one day die. Our present will one day be the oblivion – the forgotten-ness – of the past.

With that happy introduction, we signal that a little realism about death is important, if talk about resurrection is going to be worth the effort, even – or especially – on Easter Day!

In our gospel reading this morning, it is to the past – the place of the dead – that the women go to find what remains of Jesus, having started on his own way into oblivion. But when they arrive at the tomb, they are greeted by a couple of angels. We can forget that they’re angels, and simply focus on what is said: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, he has risen.” The women go into the past to meet Jesus where they thought they left him. But they find that he’s no longer there, but is already moving out ahead of them.

Of course, we are invited to take this assertion at face value. It may in fact be that Jesus is still there, in the past, but having managed to linger even to today – much longer than any of us ever will – but still on his way to fading into forgotten-ness. We can’t really know that is, or is not the case. What we can do is ask what is implied by the proclamation that he is, in fact, no longer dead.

This requires that we push our realism about death a little further. The dead, are dead, are dead. This is more easily said than thought. We continue to want to ascribe to the dead attributes of the living. And so we are tempted to imagine that they are in the next room, or standing quietly next to us, and still not much different from us, other than being on “another plane”.

But the dead are not subjects – doing or wanting as we do. They are objects (if anything), eventually to be submerged under time’s tide. And so, for example, the dead do not prefer to be alive. They don’t “prefer” anything; this is what dead means. Death – the last and most powerful of enemies, renders its victims wholly powerless to change their situation, or even to want to. Jesus, too.

Whatever resurrection is, it is “un-” this. But what does it mean for resurrection talk if the dead have no interest in being alive (or being dead, for that matter), and yet might then be raised? Perhaps surprisingly, it means that nothing is gained for anyone who is raised from the dead, at least as far as they are concerned. This is because the dead are not aware of lacking anything; they are dead and do not desire to live.

Perhaps this is why the risen Jesus never seems to smile. His resurrection is no reward, not even a release. He was dead, and so he didn’t want or need anything. He was dead, and then he wasn’t.  There might have been a lot of smiling going on in the resurrection scenes, but it is not necessary that Jesus himself smile, for the resurrection to do its work. Being not-dead is what now what Jesus now does, not how he feels.

And this is why when Christians, from St Paul onwards, have thought about resurrection, they have thought about creation out of nothing (cf. Romans 4.17). A thing created out of nothing does not say, “I so hated being nothing; being something is so much better!” Only God can tell the difference between its now being “there” and its not having been there. The resurrection, then, is a kind of shift in God’s own experience as significant as the shift which is the very creation of the world.

Yet, there is a difference between resurrection and being created out of nothing. You do not remember what was not but now is: it simply starts and makes its first impression upon us. But what was, and then was not, and now again is remembered as being the same thing. And so the kind of creation which is resurrection of Jesus was is a restoration: a being­‑restored to. The risen Jesus need not smile because he did not lose himself; the disciples lost him. It was the disciples” mouths filled with laughter, their tongues loosed by joy (Psalm 126 – sung last night).

This kind of resurrection, then, is always about, or oriented toward, someone other than the person who has died. This “someone other” is the one who remembers, who still holds in mind those lost to death, keeping oblivion – forgotten-ness – at bay. This is the one who mourns, who regrets, who longs. Any one of us can do this remembering work for a while, until we ourselves are the ones to be remembered, and those we remembered move a step closer to being wholly forgotten.

But it is God in whose memory nothing is lost. It is this that the resurrection signifies: that God wills not to forget, not to allow anything to fade into oblivion. God wills that what was not, and then was, will not then be fade into forgotten-ness; and what God wills, is.

If there is a resurrection like the one said to have happened to Jesus – such that Jesus is no longer among the dead, merely remembered – then we have now not merely remembering but the possibility of remembrance: the being present again of the reality of what was lost, a kind of re‑creation.

As we gather week after week, we participate in just such a remembrance – the very breaking of the bread and blessing of the cup, “doing this” as Jesus commanded for the “remembrance” of him.

This we do as a community of those present, with those who have gone before and those yet to come. Jesus is remembranced – risen – among us as we join around the table which binds us together, as we are made to remember each other.

To gather around this table is to be invited to look at who stands there with us, and to smile. We smile here, not because they might have smiled at us or because it’s a positive-attitude thing to do. We smile here because we have seen them again, or perhaps even for the first time: who was lost, is found; who was dead, is alive; who was forgotten is remembered. This is the smile of the disciples on Easter Day.

Then, finally comes Jesus’ own smile – not that he was dead and is now alive, but the smile which is itself a life restored: the smile which comes when I know that I have been missed, because I can see it on the beaming faces of the people who loved me.

On Easter Day God smiled, remembering Jesus, remembering us. Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Smile.

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Good Friday
25/3/2016

Isaiah 52:13-53:6
Psalm 22
John 19:1-16

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Walter White is a chemist, a very, very good chemist – a could-have-won-a-noble-prize chemist. Walter is the central character in the TV series “Breaking Bad”, which wound up a few years ago. “Breaking Bad” is a phrase from America’s south, having to do with raising hell, or bucking authority.

What makes Walter interesting for our purposes today is that he is diagnosed with a serious cancer. It’s America, and medical treatment is prohibitively expensive. And so Walter begins to make methamphetamines – the drug “ice” – to meet his medical costs. Being a very, very good chemist, Walter makes very, very good ice, which makes him both valuable and dangerous, and the five seasons of the series track the effect of that value and the extent and impact of the danger he comes to present.

Perhaps predictably, the whole story is an unfolding tragedy. Walter can’t tell anybody he is an ice cook – other than those he is producing it for. Lies, deception, misdirection and misinformation are his day to day routine. A lot of people die including, in the end, people Walter loves and cares for, and not a little of Walter himself dies along the way.

While there is no particular moral judgement of Walter expressed in the telling of the story, it is an implied moral tale; it could only end in tears, and it does. And so the series can be seen as a study in the almost necessary escalation of deceit and violence, once one begins down the slippery slope of a life of crime.

But my interest today is not in Walter’s story as a moral tale. You don’t need a preacher to tell you that it is a bad thing to profit from the misery which a drug like ice wreaks in the community. If that isn’t already obvious, we have politicians and police commissioners to make it clear enough.

In fact, for the most part, you don’t need a preacher to tell you very much at all about morals. What we like to imagine are “Christian values” are, in our society at least, generally the values held by the political party of one’s personal choice, the particular colour of which is the colour of the filter through which we read the Scriptures and church tradition and determine how we – but especially how others – should act.

So what can a preacher say helpfully about Walter and his tragedy, which might not be heard many other places?

The moral evaluation of Walter’s action is that he is “scum” – something which even people close to him come to say. He chose to do this and he ought not to have so chosen. This is what we might call an “external” judgement. It is relatively clear about what is good and what is not, and Walter’s choices were not. We generally “get” this. Such evaluations are straightforward and we are familiar enough with them, whether we’re judging others or, sometimes, even ourselves.

From Walter’s point of view, however, this is not how it looks. What is most interesting – morally – about Walter’s story is not what he does but how he accounts to himself for what he does. Although he does many bad things, one of the refrains which we continue to hear is, “It had to be done”. Yes, it is dreadful, but it had to be done. When Walter says this, you get the strong impression that he declares it as much to himself as he does to any associate for whom he feels he needs to justify what has happened. He himself needs to be assured that it “had to be done”.

Why?

Because the expression, “It had to be done,” absolves what, on the surface, looks like a moral failure. If something “has” to be done, there is no option. And when there is no option, we are freed from moral accountability. Whether an opposition drug baron, or a little boy who stumbles across their operation, or a partner who has been loved but now becomes a dangerous liability, the choice for death “had to” be made.

The “had to be done” in Walter’s particular story refers to the need for self-preservation. Walter’s first “cook” of the drugs takes place in order to be able to pay the enormous medical costs for the treatment of his cancer. And he has nothing to leave his family but his funeral costs. This first cook leads quickly to the first few murders – or, perhaps, only they are only “killings”, without the moral loading of “murder”, as they are also matters of self-preservation.

But the crucial thing is not what is done, or even the particular – perhaps good – outcome which is sought. The crucial thing is the appeal which links these two things. That link is necessity.

It is necessary that it happen in this way. Our hands are tied. I wish it could have been different. If I had not, then… And so there I had no option. I could not have done otherwise.

We have a law, and according to that law it is necessary that Jesus die. Our hands are tied. It is necessary, Pilate, that you do this, else you prove yourself to be an enemy of the Emperor. Your hands are tied.

We might lament the sheer tragedy of Good Friday. But in the passion narratives people are not just doing bad things, or even just being badly mistaken about what needs to be done, with Jesus, like every other unfortunate victim, being collateral damage along the way. Just like Walter’s choices, the call for crucifixion makes sense – a kind of sense. It is the same kind of sense we appeal to when it is necessary to do or say something other than what might normally be expected of us. People are not unfaithful to spouses because they simply want more sex or even just companionship; they make their wife or husband the reason they are unfaithful. If things were better at home, this wouldn’t have happened; I “need” to do this. Nations do not lock up refugees in faraway places because they are inherently mean-spirited or immoral. It is “necessary” to do this else the flood gates will open (or, in the more humanitarian but also more disingenuous version: there’ll be more deaths at sea). I do not betray myself by breaking a commitment to a diet or to study or to faith; I make a case as to why it is necessary to do so, and then I give up. I do not blow up fellow citizens because I am bad; they are wrong, and so deserve it: it is, in this sense, a rational thing to do.

And so it turns out that, as shocking as the effects of sin might be, sin itself is rather a mundane thing. Its ordinariness is in that it finds justification. It fits in, seeks precisely not to be the wrong thing – perhaps only to have been once hidden as an option, but now discovered, to our relief. Sin hides in necessity.

Necessity not only ties our hands; it predetermines things. It reduces our being in the world to a kind of moral science analogous to the if-then of physical science: under these conditions, this will happen. The precise science which makes possible Walter’s perfection of the production of ice is reflected in a moral science by which death is not only dealt out, but is justified as necessary. Just as aluminium needs to be added to mercury chloride to produce a mercury aluminium amalgam which makes possible a reductive amination (or something like that!) – just as you have to do that as a step towards producing a pure methamphetamine, so too anyone who threatens my family must be eliminated. “We have a law, and according to that law, he must die”.

What might a preacher say about Walter White and his decisions, which mere morality might not think to say?

Perhaps this: that moral, social, political necessity stands as a marker of potential sin on the scale of the crucifixion of Jesus. Some things, of course, might well be necessary, but perhaps not as many moral, or social, or political things as we might imagine.

And this ought to make us wary of any apparently moral judgement which is presented as necessary. From a confessional point of view – the kind of thing about which preacher ought to be able say something helpful – the issue is not so much the decision we make, but our justification of it: our desire to know, and for you to know and finally, of course, for God to know, that we have acted rightly, as it was necessary to act. Knowing this, we are safe; such knowledge is a moral and theological fortress. “We have a law…”

What does the opposite look like? It takes a life time to learn, and so to explain, that. But we might glean a clue from our poet this morning:

And God held in his hand
A small globe…
The son looked…
As through water, he saw…
…On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it…

… The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

“Let me go there.”

There is nothing necessary here. There is no necessity in Jesus coming as he did – at least, nothing necessary except the desire to love in the Son himself. It was not “necessary” that Jesus die, at least not so far as God was concerned; it was only necessary for those who had a law.

Non-necessity in human relations looks like the work of Jesus – coming, living, dying. It is freedom, gift, grace, and all of this in the midst of laws which bind, take, predetermine.

In this, non-necessity – the path to the cross – looks suspiciously like resurrection, for what can the dead demand? Death is the end of law; the dead have no “if” from which to lever a “then”. But perhaps more of that on Sunday.

Today, Good Friday, it is enough to declare that Bad is Broken – that particular bad which masquerades as good because we’ve found a “good” argument for it, the bad which is defence against the other, the “had to be done” which protects me but kills you.

This is God’s gift; this is why this bad Friday is Good.

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Palm Sunday
20/3/2016

Isaiah 50:4-0a
Psalm 118
John 12:1-19

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I would venture a guess from the “maturity” (age!) of most who make up our congregation here that it’s not a great proportion of you who are fans of the TV program “The Simpsons”!

On one level it’s simply a cartoon show, in which the characters do the silly types of things done in cartoons. But on another level, its humour is often a very sophisticated interaction with other elements of our culture. What might look on the surface like a joke or a funny situation in its own right will often be a reference to some other movie or historical event which has captured our imagination over the last few decades.

So, for example, in one episode there’s a scene in which the brat-child Bart incurs his father Homer’s wrath, and a chase ensues. Homer is rather a “big-boned” fellow, and so as he chases Bart down the stairs he’s portrayed as a great rolling boulder threatening to crush the fleeing boy. The chase continues on the lower level of the house, as the boy darts into the garage. The garage door onto the street – and to freedom – is open, but Homer actives the automatic garage door closer. Bart just manages to slide under the door before it shuts, but loses his hat in the process. At the very last moment his hand appears again under the door to snatch the hat back, leaving his father locked in the garage, and Bart to put the hat back on his head and complete his escape.

It’s funny enough to watch as it is, but in fact it’s a rip-off from one of the best-known opening scenes of a movie in the last 40 years, in which the adventurer Indiana Jones does just the same thing, fleeing a rolling boulder in a cave after setting off an ancient booby trap – closing trap doors and lost hat and all!

Now, the point is simply this: in order to understand fully the joke in a scene like the one from “the Simpsons”, you have to have seen the movie Raiders of the lost Ark. You’ll get something from the show even if you haven’t, but you’ll miss the whole joke.

This transfer of meaning is the kind of thing which is happening when we come to a text like the one we’ve heard from John’s gospel this morning. While, on the surface it’s obvious what is happening, there are other things happening in the background which we don’t see because we’re not 1^st century Jews. In a sense, we haven’t seen the other “movies” which the gospel writer refers to when he tells us these particular stories. And so, even if we feel drawn to the stories, we’re not going to get the full point even if we find the “surface” reading entertaining or instructive.

We see Mary anoint Jesus’ feet with perfume and wipe his feet off with her hair in a scene which is almost erotic. We hear the good economic sense of Judas about the “wastage” of the very expensive oil. We see Jesus on the donkey – perhaps interpreting that on the one hand as being a bit comic (as donkeys are!), perhaps interpreting it on the other hand in terms of peaceful intent (because it is not a war horse). We hear of the plot against Jesus, and perhaps interpret that in terms of political intrigue and jealousy. That is, we tend to impose on the story what we think it’s about, because it’s a story from a different place and time and we’ve only gotten half the joke.

So, for example, we will miss that in both the anointing of Jesus and the entry to Jerusalem on the donkey there is a claim being made that Jesus is the king of Israel. It’s not said explicitly, but key words and images would have reminded the original participants of ideas surrounding Israel’s kingship, just as Bart Simpson snatching his hat from under the closing garage door might remind us of Indiana Jones.

When a person was chosen as king in Israel, he was anointed with oil. And the word “anointed” in Hebrew and Greek is translated by the English words “Messiah” and “Christ”. The story would suggest that Jesus is the anointed one, the Christ, the king. An ancient prophecy speaks of a coming king of Israel entering the city on a donkey (cf. Zechariah 9.9). Jesus on a donkey makes a reference back to that tradition. These stories are telling us much more about what Jesus said and did; they are also inviting us to see a particular meaning for the events. The Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is neither erotic nor a basis for debating the economics of poverty but a kind of coronation. Jesus on a donkey is neither comic nor merely humble but the crowned Jesus entering his capital, the donkey being his crown.

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Now, perhaps this is all very “interesting”, but just that brings us to one other problem in terms of our understanding what is happening in these events, and what difference they might make to us. It’s usually the case that if someone has to explain a joke to you, it ceases to be funny. You might admit, “Oh, I get it! Yes, yes, very clever” – or something like that. But an explained joke won’t really grip us. What makes Bart Simpson grabbing his hat really funny is that you’ve already enjoyed the Indianna Jones movies.

And this is the case also with readings like this mornings. I can tell you what it all means, what the references are – in a sense explain the joke – and your response will almost have to be – “Oh, OK. That ‘s interesting!” So for example, I can say to you that these readings are really about Jesus as king, as in fact is much of John’s gospel

But for us today the purpose of kings and queens is to give the editors of woman’s magazines plenty of faces to stick on the covers of their weekly editions. We might still be fascinated with the idea of royalty and the wealth and status which comes with it, but we scarcely imagine that we need kings or queens. Adding the title “king” to the name Jesus doesn’t do anything for us, for we know of no real need for kings. For the Jews of Jesus’ time the presence of a true king of Israel was tantamount to the very presence of God himself. But that makes no sense to us.

And this dynamic leads to a strange conclusion. To feel what the stories from our readings this morning might say to us today, we have to forget about anointings and donkeys and kings and ask: what would upset us in the same kind of way that Jesus upset those who plotted to destroy him?

If we understand him rightly, Jesus will bring this kind of challenge to us today. It won’t be in terms of kingship, because kings don’t mean anything much to us these days. Rather, Jesus will challenge us at the point where we think we are strongest, just as he challenged God’s people then on the things they were most secure about. Jesus anointed at Bethany, Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, is Jesus presented to us as an invitation: whatever in your life stands in the place where a king might once have stood, let that thing be subject to a deep scrutiny.

It’s impossible in the time we have to give a full account of precisely where that challenge might be, not least because it there is often something very personal about it. But it has communal dimensions as well, and we can make the point more concrete in relation to the meeting which is follow our service today, at which we’ll discuss the question of our mission and building resources.

It is easy, and very tempting, to pluck imperatives from a text like the one today, in order to make arguments about how to vest the mission of the church. On the one hand, there is profligate Jesus, for whom expending a year’s wages in a single act of devotion is justifiable. No few church spires have been justified on the basis of this text. On the other hand, there is humble Jesus who needs only a donkey to be seen to be king. Not a little righteousness has been claimed by those who have sought to live a “simple” Christianity.

But it is the same Jesus whose kingship is demonstrated in these two wildly different actions – the anointing and the donkey ride. This is to say, there is no help in these texts for our decision-making, if we are only reading into them a preference for the one over the other. If there is something here which will help us, it is deeper than the first things we see as we look to Jesus; there is another “joke” going on which is not the perfume or the donkey, not the buildings or the mission, but which can justify them both.

This deeper reality is given in the gospel itself, in the summation of the purpose of Jesus’ ministry in his prayer for the community which is soon to be left “without” him (John 17). Jesus leaves the disciples not with the requirement to do as he has done, but to be as he has been: at one with each other, at one with God, neither of which is possible without the other.

The future of the church – our congregation, the Uniting Church, the church catholic – is in nothing external to the life of the church itself as the Body of Christ. To refer to the demands of worship on the one hand, or service on the other, is to externalise what really matters by playing them off against each other, by playing ourselves off against each other as we prefer the one or the other. Our concern is not the sign which is devotion, nor the sign which is humility and service, but the thing signified: the meeting of God and humanity in Jesus himself.

This is the meaning of our existence, the thing to which all that we do as church is to testify. To sing, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” is not to prescribe how he comes, but only to rejoice that he does, bringing the meeting of God and humanity. It is this coming and gift, and nothing else, which makes us what we are created to be.

This does not tell us what to decide, only what the decision will point to: God’s coming to us in Christ, that we might come to God. What we do must seek to be such a coming to God as we come to each other.

If we can do this, then whatever concrete form it takes will be worthy of a Hosanna, for – in that – God will have come to us.

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Lent 5
13/3/2016

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
John 12:1-8

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Last week I employed a preacher’s trick which involves tossing in a remark which seems unlikely to be true but probably is, and yet there hasn’t been enough time to make the case for it. In that particular instance, it was a throw-away comment on what the waiting father says about his prodigal but returned son. The father remarked of the son, “He was dead; now he is alive”. I remarked that this is a metaphorical use of death, but “most death is metaphorical.” A couple of people, it turns out, were actually listening, and asked what that could mean.

So, this morning: an attempt to justify the seemingly unjustifiable, the very work of God.

The story of the anointing of Jesus by Mary must be one of the most disorienting stories of the New Testament. The story confuses us because we easily identify with Judas, and so stand against Jesus. Yet we do this on account of the very things we’ve heard from Jesus about love, self-sacrifice and “being there” for the needy. And so we find ourselves at a point of crisis, a point of decision: what do we owe to the poor, and what to Jesus?

One way of addressing the apparently undecidable “Jesus or the poor” is to turn what we do for the poor into what we do for Jesus: “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to me” (Matthew 25). This is an important part of Christian theology and ethics, but it doesn’t seem to be what is said to us through the story we’ve heard this morning. In fact, Jesus seems to delineate starkly between himself and the poor as beneficiaries here: you always have them; you do not always have me. There is an “either/or” to be dealt with here.

But more is at stake than the apparent moral dilemma – to give to the poor, or to give to God. The fact that it feels like a moral conflict should signal a warning. This is because morality is concerned with the question of justification, and moral resolutions present us with the attractive possibility1 of self-justification. If we can resolve how it is that Jesus can justify this particular extravagance we have guidance for determining the limits of our own acts of devotion and acts of mercy. Our questions about Mary’s action and Jesus’ response are an attempt to understand whether we can or must do the same. As such, we demonstrate that we are concerned with our own action, represented by Mary’s actions. This reading is enabled by our anxiety before God and those around us. We are pushed to seek the secret of making the right decision, of knowing it to be right.

But we will not find such a deeper secret, for the action of Mary is not like this. There is no anxiety here; or perhaps only Judas or, in another version for the story (Luke 10.38-42), Martha, is anxious. In fact, we know very little of Mary’s motivations although we imagine that she is the one with whom we are to identify in the story. Certainly she displays no moral anxiety. Yet, whatever is going on for her, it is only as Jesus himself interprets the anointing that what she does becomes unexpectedly justified: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

With this comes a shift from the moral dilemma which contrasts what the poor need and what Jesus needs, to a contrast between what the poor do not have, and what the disciples will soon not have. And with this we strike the scandal of the text itself, and not the one which usually bothers us: here Jesus declares that “You do not always have me” is more important than the other “not haves” in the world. Or, more concretely: the death of Jesus is more important than other deaths.

And this brings us to something which John’s gospel does not say, but which it might have said. Those familiar with his gospel know that John’s Jesus is full of “life”. The gospel begins with, “In him was life…” (1.4). Just prior to this morning’s episode, Jesus has declared, “I am the resurrection and the life” (11.25). Prior to that, “I have come that they might have life, in all its fullness” (10.10). A little later in the gospel we hear, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (14.6). Life is presented in this gospel as being at the heart of what Jesus is or effects.

And yet in the anointing at Bethany we have something else which Jesus comprehends or envelopes: even death. If the gospel declares, “You imagine you know life”, but then invites, “Look at Jesus”, so also it says: “You imagine you know death, but look at Jesus”.

This is the true scandal of this text: not wilful extravagance that sees a year’s wages lost in a matter of moments and which we might or might not be able to justify, but that the death (“burial”) of Jesus warrants such extravagance. What justifies Mary’s prodigal act is that it points to the death of Jesus. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it is that this testimony takes precedence over our actions and concerns for the world.

And this brings us to death, “mostly a metaphor”.

It is perhaps too much for the gospel to declare “Jesus is the death” in the same way that it declares he is “the life” but it can still be affirmed. For us to make any sense of Jesus’ justification of Mary’s prodigal anointing, we have to affirm it. In speaking like this, as we also do when we speak of Jesus as “the life” or “the bread of heaven” or “the light of the world” or “the truth,” we move into the realm of metaphor. We “with-carry” (meta-phor) meaning from one place to another. Knowing a little about life, or bread, or light, we apply these things to Jesus in order to invest him with meaning.

But – and it is a crucial But – in order for the gospel to make sense, the investment of meaning really runs the other way. It is now not that Jesus shares in generic “life”, but that living things share in Jesus’ life. It is not that Jesus as “bread” is a menu item among others, but that all we consume participates in him. It is not that he also illuminates, but that all illumination draws its light from him. What we call light, life, bread, truth are carried-with, carried-over, metaphored to us from the meeting of human being and God in the person of Jesus.

And this is no less the case for what we call death. To see ourselves as hidden with Christ in God is to hold ourselves – in life and in death – to be comprehended.

Jesus’ death matters not because he is going to die; everyone dies. It matters because he – even the Son – is going to die in the particular way that he does. That “particular way” is not its terrible method – crucifixion – but all that crucifixion itself symbolises. For the cross is not only the rejection of Jesus by God’s people, but an invitation to God to reject him as well. All that he has said about light and life and truth is declared to be darkness, death and lies. All that he was, then, was declared to be deathly even as he lived, and so Jesus declares that Mary has kept her precious perfume for his burial, and yet and it is poured out while he yet lives.

Death as metaphor is all that rejects Jesus as the way, the truth, the life. It is not so much the death which is the cessation of our hearts’ beating as it is the death which is separation and desolation, arrogance and hubris, fear and loathing, self-delusion and ignorance.

Jesus’ life marks these things too, if in contrast nevertheless comprehensively. Jesus’ death gathers all these things up. We do not need to subscribe to a theory of sacrifice to value the cross; its purpose, known only in God’s Yes to Jesus in the resurrection, is to reveal what death is, and that in Christ even it is overcome.

Growing in grace is the process of the life and death and life of Christ being metaphored – carried over – into our lives and deaths. Our baptism and our being fed on the fruit of the crossed tree seal this to us.

Our praise and service testify to it. By the grace of God, whatever we choose to do with the little, or the abundance, which is given to us, may it finally be found to be faithful testimony to the gift God gives us in his Son. Amen.

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Lent 4
6/3/2016

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

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Listen once more to the words of the younger son has when he finally hits rock bottom:

‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’

The prodigal son seeks to relate to his father in what we might call an “economy of exchange”. The economy of exchange is the way in which most of our relationships to each other are constructed – particularly those relationships outside of our immediate family circle. In an economy of exchange we advance by our capacity to trade – whether this is the exchange of goods or services or favours, or the exchange of money for those goods and services. My status or freedom within such an economy has to do with what I have to offer to others. If I have little to exchange, I am impoverished, my opportunities are limited; perhaps I cannot travel, or own my own home, or even be confident that I’ll have food on my table tomorrow…

This way of relating to each other and advancing ourselves is very familiar to us – perhaps even “obvious”. But also apparently obvious is the idea that this is the way that it has to be. Notice how quickly children become aware of the magic powers of money! They learn quickly that they can exchange this in order to get that. As a child we tend to miss that we are given the money which we trade for the toy or for lollies; we say thankyou but the exchange value of the coin looms far larger than the fact of the gift.

The economy of exchange quickly becomes for us a central part of how we relate to each other. In our story this morning, the younger son determines that, although he can no longer claim to be worthy of the freely-given love of his father, he can exchange his service for food and shelter. Of course, we know how the story unfolds: the father does not even wait for the contract to be proposed before he receives his son back with open arms, and we’re well accustomed to speak here the father’s “forgiveness” of his son.

It’s very easy for us to psychologise what happens between the father and the son, such that we think about forgiveness as simply being a matter of a change of heart. But forgiveness – at least in its deepest Christian sense – is not simply about psychology, not simply about our minds. It’s also about ontology – that is, it’s about our very being, about our death and life. This is because Christian faith is not simply about being forgiven or forgiving; it’s about resurrection from the dead.

And, in fact, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is a parable of death and resurrection. In listening to the story, we usually miss the death which takes place. When the younger son says to his father “Give me my share of the inheritance”, he is basically declaring, “I wish you were dead”. And, at least culturally, the father is dead to the son, for the boy has received his inheritance – the fruits of his father’s death. And, indicating that this dynamic also operates culturally the other way around, the father declares twice at the end of the story, “he was dead but now is alive”. This is a metaphorical use of death, to be sure, but most death is metaphorical.

But notice the type of exchange which brings this new reality about. The son dares approach his father only as a potential servant, seeking to exchange his labour for food and shelter. The father, of course, does not have to accept his offer of service. In fact, the dead cannot trade; in the economy of exchange, the Prodigal has nothing. He lives again only because the father does not desire an exchange, but instead makes the free gift of welcome.

This brings us to the possibility of a different way of relating to each other – one which qualifies our necessary trades and exchanges with an economy of the gift. One does not really exchange a gift – it doesn’t really have a tradable value. And so true gift-giving is in fact a very difficult thing to do for we who are so accustomed to trade. Whenever you have received a gift from someone – especially at Christmas – and have felt embarrassed because you don’t have one for the person who gave the gift to you, you have in fact not received a gift but a trade surplus. If receiving a “gift” requires giving a gift, then you are really trading or exchanging. In the same way, if you’ve ever given a “gift” and expected a gift or a favour in return, again a gift has not really been given, only an expected exchange has taken place.

A gift is unwarranted, undeserved and presented without expectation of return. This very rarely happens; it is very hard to give or to receive a gift as a gift. The prodigal son does not expect the gift – he comes to trade.

And we ought not to forget that there’s another brother in the story. He appears also as a trader. He objects that his younger brother has not deserved their father’s favour, while he has deserved it and yet not received it. The two brothers behave very differently but in fact think very much alike about how they must relate to their father: the older brother imagines that he is like a servant who has worked very hard and deserves his reward, and the younger brother seeks to become such a servant.

But the father operates differently: not exchange and reward but sheer gift is the way by which he relates to his children. The younger son cannot earn his father’s favour, for the son is effectively dead to him. The older son imagines that he has earned his father’s favour when in fact all that is the father’s was already his as gift, and not to be earned at all.

We are the both the younger son, and the older. Gift-giving without thought of a return is not much in our nature. The tragic result of this is that the possibility of a different type of world will always seem beyond our reach. Relating to each other on the basis of mere exchange is the source of exacerbation of so many of the problems which ail us as individuals and as a society. If you’ve got it, then you can have it; if not, then bad luck. If you’re nasty to me, I’ll be nasty to you. I’ll only be nice to you if you’re nice to me. If you blow up my family, I’ll blow up your family.

When the church speaks of forgiveness it speaks of a “givingness” which is quite beyond a mere change of mind or heart. It is in fact a new way of being, a way of being which breaks the normal cycle of exchange with the possibilities of a gift. And so we use the symbol of resurrection, because this is also quite beyond our experience. To be forgiven – to receive a true gift – this is the same as to have life out of being dead, for the dead can do nothing for themselves and will only live again if one living calls them forth.

If we’re honest, this type of talk ought to offend us all a little – believers and unbelievers alike, younger prodigal sons and older hard-working sons alike. But the offence has nothing to do with whether or not our science can account for the resurrection of Jesus; this is quite secondary. The unbelievable thing is that God should care about the dead – about those who have nothing to trade. While the older brother has always been cast as the “baddie” in the story, he is in fact the one who knows best the scandal of what Jesus says here. If you do find yourself one day raised to new life, it will have nothing to do with whether or not you deserved it. It will simply be a matter of God freely willing that you live again as his child, that having been lost you have been found, that having died now you live.

By contrast, we generally imagine that if we were to relate to God it would be on the basis of how well we did in our lives and so what we deserved from God. Believer or non-believer alike, we tend to think the whole God thing is about “being good”.

But imagine: the free gift of life, whether deserved or not – being made again the son or daughter of a loving parent to whom we have been dead and lost. It ought to offend us as well lift us up, for not only would we be forgiven the debts we owe (which is good for us!), but those who we think owe us would also be forgiven.

And imagine what the world might be like if we began to live now as that loving parent lives, living lives which do not calculate for a just balance in exchange but which actually seek to tip the scales in favour of someone else, that sins, trespasses, mistakes, debts might be forgiven and we might all have the possibility of starting afresh…

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Lent 3
28/2/2016

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63
Luke 13:1-9

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“Soul” is a word which doesn’t quite fit in our modern world. It is familiar enough in the church, even if even here we might struggle to give an adequate definition of what we mean by the word. Beyond the church we might speak happily of “soul music”, or occasionally of the number of “souls” lost in the sinking of a ship or the crash of a plane but, for the most part, it is a somewhat homeless word in a culture which wants to be past its former religious heritage but can’t quite shake the language.

In our psalm this morning it is the poet’s “soul” which thirsts, by which the poet (said to be David) implies that he himself – the “him” which is at his heart – experiences an emptiness like what being thirsty and faint with hunger is for the body.

David slakes that thirst by “gazing on God in the sanctuary” (v.2). The notion is probably of David entering the Tabernacle – the “tent” which was God’s specified dwelling prior to the building of the Temple by Solomon. In fact the translation is not easy here, and it could be either that he has looked upon God, or he will be looking on God. This makes it a bit harder to work out what is happening and in what order, particularly given that he is said to be in the wilderness when the prayer is written.

Yet, whatever precisely David means here, his experience is different what from ours can be. In the first place, the sanctity of the Tabernacle or the Temple is different from that of what we might consider our holy places – perhaps our churches. There was a singularity about the Tabernacle and the Temple which doesn’t apply to churches (the Muslim sense for Mecca would be closer to the Israelite’s sense for the Temple). The Tabernacle and the Temple stood for the presence of God in a unique way, such that an approach to the Temple necessarily gave a sense of being “closer” to God, not least because it was “the” place at which to encounter God.

But, in the second place, we here must read a text like this as Christians, for whom the idea and location of the “holy place” of God has undergone a radical and irreversible change. With respect to the Temple, this is most clearly put in John’s gospel. In the first two chapters of John there are two explicit statements that Jesus now becomes the Temple. The first is in John’s great prologue. There we read: “the Word become flesh, and dwelt among us”. A more literal translation would be “the Word became flesh, and pitched his tent among us”. This “tent-pitching” resonates with the Old Testament experience of the God who travels with his people, dwelling in a tent (Tabernacle) as they do. The second reference to Jesus as the Temple occurs in John’s version of the clearing of the Temple in which Jesus challenges the religious leaders to “tear down this Temple”, saying that he would build it up again in three days. John interprets this for us: the “temple” to which Jesus referred was his own body, his own person.

This cannot mean, however, that whereas the David or the Jews had the Tabernacle or the Temple, we now have Jesus. Jesus does not simply take over the role of the Temple. If this were the case, then those who had no use for the Temple would have no use for Jesus, either. It is precisely this kind of thinking which has seen faith marginalised in the minds of believers and unbelievers alike: the understanding that temples and messiahs have to do with religious concerns and such concerns, not being shared by all, thereby do not finally matter. It is this kind of thinking which allows David’s Tabernacle or a Christian’s Jesus simply to be a “crutch” in hard times, a place to which we run to escape the “real” world.

This is not, however, the faith of the church. If there is a holy place where God might be seen, it must necessarily be a place which is also our place – the place of all of us, the world as we experience it in common. The holy place is not just a place outside of us we can visit if we need to. It will be deeply rooted in what we are, what we need and what we suffer if it is to be our place, our home. David’s thirsty soul is a homeless soul – literally, perhaps, in the sense that he is being chased around the Judean wilderness – but also metaphorically, in that it seeks again to orient itself towards “home”: God in God’s sanctuary, God’s home.

The question is, Where is God’s home? For Christian reflection the home of God, and God’s own experience of homelessness, are central to the story of Jesus. Jesus, at what appears to be his highest and what appears to be his lowest, is God’s “sanctuary” – God’s sanctifying of the world as God’s home both as it embraces him and as it rejects him.

For our purposes in thinking through the psalm it is perhaps in the negative – in the rejecting of Jesus – that the idea of the sanctification in Jesus’ work is most important. Here what seems to be godlessness in its extreme – the crucifixion of a condemned man – is given as the assurance of God’s presence in whatever circumstances we might find ourselves. To look upon God in this sanctuary – the cross – becomes the affirmation that God is never far from where we are, wherever that may be. For God’s holy place is with us.

This may not seem much comfort; perhaps we would prefer that God’s presence were proven in God’s power to shift us from a literal thirst and hunger to satisfaction of those needs. For David, this doesn’t happen: he is still running from Saul or Absalom in the wilderness. Yet, he is moved to a series of affirmations:

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips…
… for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me (vv.5-8).

This sense of being upheld does not spring from being freed from the suffering and persecution afflicting him, but from a freedom from fear. This is a subtle shift, but an immensely important one.

Human life is filled with difficulties, disappointments and pain. The difference which David’s affirmation of faith makes is not that these things now magically go away, but that they might be faced without fear. Illness, death, poverty, persecution do not go away; but neither are they to be feared as ultimately oppressive. They are among the kinds of things which “happen” in the world. What is then to “happen” in response to these threats is the revelation of the children of God (Romans 8.19). Faithfulness is the manifestation of a different sense of who we are: the rising up of the resistance of the soul, the heart, to everything which denies us our patrimony, our inheritance, as God’s children. This inheritance is our sense of being gathering under God’s wings, just as Jesus longed to do for God’s people in last week’s gospel reading. Whatever is happening to us, this identity is not threatened and cannot be taken away, for in Christ we are “upheld”, kept close.

There will still be suffering and hardship and grief. There will still be difficult decisions and hard roads to tread. But there need be no fear. Only this one – whom David addresses and whom we might too – only this one is to be “feared”, and there is nothing to fear with him.

Let us, then, cling to him whose right hand upholds us.

Let us seek shelter in the wings of the one for whom no experience in the world is strange or foreign or overwhelming, not even death itself: the one who remains as “Father” to his children, at home with us wherever we may be, whatever we may be subject to, whatever we fear.

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Lent 2
21/2/2016

1 Chronicles 11:1-9
Psalm 27
Hebrews 12:14-19, 22-24
Luke 13:31-35

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Chris Mostert

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Theme   ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’                                                                                                (Luke 13:34)

[A] Introduction

In biblical imagery the cock and the hen symbolise very different things. It was a cock that crowed three times, marking Peter’s threefold denial that he knew Jesus. In today’s reading from Luke Jesus speaks about himself with the simile of a hen gathering her brood under her wings. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.’

The readings today focus on Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as Zion or the city of God. David captured the city of Jebus (of the Jebusites) and made it his fortress. The Epistle directs our attention to the heavenly Jerusalem, Mt Zion, the city of the living God (Heb 12:22). This is an eschatological reality, essentially some­thing future, which has – in a strange interplay of tenses – already touched the present. Today, however, prompted by Jesus’ words over Jerusalem, our focus will be on Jerusa­lem past and present.

[B] The Dominus flevit chapel

There is a poignant reminder of Jesus’ words in a little chapel on the Mount of Olives, called the Dominus flevit chapel: in the place where ‘the Lord wept’ (cf Lk 19:41). From there you get a great view of the Old City of Jerusalem, including the great Mosque of the Dome which stands on the site of the great Temple, destroyed in the year 70 AD. The little chapel was built in the 1950s but from the 5^th century there had been a monastery on the site. Inside the chapel there is a mosaic of a hen, with a halo around its head. Its wings are spread out, and underneath them there are five or six little chicks.

Ever since the 9th chapter of Luke’s Gospel Jesus has been on the way to Jerusalem. It’s the turning-point of the book, for the decisive things will happen in Jerusalem, the place that would make or break a prophet. He doesn’t actually get to Jerusalem till late in the 19th chapter, when he is welcomed as a king, though riding on a colt. But now, at the end of ch 13, Jesus speaks with pathos about Jerusalem and its people. His words are a kind of lament: words of sorrow or grief. ‘If only you had recognised the things that make for peace.’ Jerusalem is the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers. Jeru­salem is the city where his own mission must take him and where the people’s verdict will be given. There’s no avoiding it!

[C] Jerusalem – the lamented city

Jerusalem is the city that stands for Judaism. For around 3,000 years Jerusalem has been a holy city for Jews. David’s son, Solomon, built the first great temple there. Jerusalem and Judaism go together, by divine fiat, as religious Jews see it.

The public relations material that promotes Jerusalem doesn’t tell you that it is a city that symbolises the competing aspirations – religious and political – of Jews and Arabs, and that neither side will countenance forfeiting these in any future political settlement.

There have always been Jews in Jerusalem, even after the Romans put an end to Israel as a political entity in 135 AD. For 18 centuries Jews lived mostly in diaspora – until 1948, when the state of Israel was restored. In no time it found itself at war with its Arab neighbours, who have been none too friendly in the decades since. · Why would the Jews surrender Jerusalem again?

There have also been Arabs in Jerusalem for most of that time, the people of Palestine, who lived under the so-called ‘protection’ of successive world empires. It was the Arabs who had to ‘make room’ for the new state in 1948. A mass exodus and refugee camps for thousands of Palestinians later, Jerusalem remains a holy city for Muslims too (though it has to be remembered that not all Arabs are Muslim: there are also Christian Arabs.) The temple mount is the sanctuary from which Mohammed is believed to have made the Night Journey to the throne of God. · Why would the Arabs give up Jerusalem?

For Christians Jerusalem is also a city of special signifi­cance. It includes many places associated with the life (and death) of Jesus. Pilgrims have always gone to Jerusalem. Christians have continued to live in Jerusalem, though now only in very small numbers. The Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, when Christian rulers gained (and then lost) control of Jerusalem, were not the end of Western attempts to gain political control over Jerusalem. It’s not without reason that Muslims reject the West for its expansionism and its injustice. Christianity is still seen as religion of the West. And Jerusalem is the point of meeting – and of division – of the three great monotheistic religions.

[D] The peace of Jerusalem

The author of Psalm 122 urges people to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’. ‘Peace be within your walls and security within your towers.’ But Jerusalem is not the city of peace it longs to be. It hasn’t known much peace, and the leadership of both the Jewish and Arab people don’t inspire much confidence that it will soon become a city of peace.

Yitzhak Rabin, not long before he was assassinated (in 1995), looked for a city ‘where the Jewish priestly bles­sing mingles with the call of the Muslim muezzins and the bells of Christian churches’. He looked for ‘tolerance between religions, love between peoples, and understanding between the nations’. But it remains true, as Jesus said long ago, that Jerusalem does not know what makes for its peace.

It is not the fault of Jerusalem alone! There are many whose sense of one injustice after another or whose fear of terrorism or spiral of violence makes them resolutely hostile and closed to the possibility of peaceful co-existence. And if the complex political forces of the region were not difficult enough, the rhetoric of the militant wing of Islam and of some prominent people in the West further creates a climate that makes co-existence and shared responsibility for Jerusalem a very distant prospect indeed. Meanwhile, the Psalms – shared by Christians and Jews – bid them ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem’.

[E] Jesus’ compassion over Jerusalem

The writers of the Gospels know, as they tell the story, what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem. The welcome he received when he came to the city turned to hostility, resulting in his death. Why did he go to Jerusalem or stay there once he got there? He tells those who come to warn him about Herod’s plan to kill him that he’ll go in his own good time! He’s busy; he has many things to do. He is healing people. He is ‘casting out demons’, that is, doing battle with the powers that destroy and dehumanise life, that break down health and wellbeing and commu­nion with a loving God.

Jesus is among them, enacting the love and mercy of God. He restores people to their community; he brings personal wholeness and reconciliation; he brings light to people’s darkness. He embodies for people the solidarity of God with all who are weak and vulnerable. He longs to protect them, as a hen gathers her chicks and shelters them under her wings.

This is a very tender image. Nature provides many examples of the protective care of a mother for her young. It’s striking that Jesus should express his love for people, indivi­dually and collectively, in an image such as this. He does not love people – the poor, the suffering, the exploited – in the abstract, impersonally, in general. He feels for them, longs for their wellbeing, their safety, in a personal way. That is how he thinks of them, feels for them, relates to them. It is no different today! Jesus does not speak to us, address us, as a figure from 2,000 years back but as one who is present and active among us now.

Of course, Jesus is not only gentle and tender. He is also strong: in his opposition to evil and exploitation and self-centredness. The image of a ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, as an old bed-time prayer has it, is at best one-sided and an worst a serious distortion. But love and compassion can be the basis of both tenderness and fearless strength.

But, as we see especially in Lent, the period leading up to the Passion, Jesus is a realist! He does not live in a fantasy-world. He knows that Jerusalem will bring a show-down. He will be tempted to stay away or escape from the opposition and the pain. But will it be worse for him than it is for Jerusalem? Eventually, it too will suffer; it will lose its identity and its power. Its temple will be destroyed, as he predicted. Most serious of all, it will not be the city of peace that it longs to be! If only it had known what makes for its peace. If only it knew so now!

[F] Conclusion

In this season of Lent the church throughout the world follows – actually, accompanies – Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. He will come to its people ‘in the name of the Lord’, as at first they perceive. But they will forget who he is, what he says to them and what he does among them. The last word will be one of condemnation: ‘Crucify him!’

In his name Christians have made war, and still justify war, the real motivation being only thinly disguised! But he is proclaimed as the one who brings peace between Jew and Gentile, between one party, one nation, and the other. He goes to Jerusalem in peace; he longs for peace for its children ­and for the inhabitants of all cities, no less now than then. He longs for peace for Jerusalem, for the whole region, for the whole world.

May God grant us to share this longing; and to pray, and strive and advocate for the peace of Jeru­salem; for peace between Jews, Christians and Muslims everywhere.

Thanks be to God, for giving us, in Christ, the way of peace.

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Lent 1
14/2/2016

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91
Luke 4:1-13

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Lent has about it a strong sense of a beginning. Of course, the year has already started – both the calendar year and the church year; we’ve had Christmas, so Jesus has well and truly arrived, and already done a few things. But with there is something particularly tangible and “real” about the movement from Lent to Easter: something which causes us to sit up and watch and so seems to render all the rest to commentary or “and also”.

The beginning with which we begin Lent each year is the story of the temptation, or testing, of Jesus. In Mark’s telling of the Jesus, this is the pretty much the first thing Jesus actively undertakes; Luke takes a little longer to get to this story.

Temptation has become for us today largely a moral concept – often in some connection to sex, or tax declarations, or chocolate, or opening one’s mouth when it ought to be kept shut. It’s also something often mocked: “Let yourself be tempted” is the substance of no small amount of advertising of things we would normally consider too sweet, expensive or otherwise overly self-indulgent.

These are not the kinds of things which appear in our text this morning. There’s nothing particularly immoral in what is put to Jesus, even if we are to understand that there is something wrong in the devil’s proposals.

These three temptations are often interpreted as ways in which Jesus might consider fulfilling his call: bread for the hungry, political rule, religious miracle. This is a neat little triplet, and it is suggestive as a checklist for any budding messiah as to the things he or she should avoid, but it doesn’t really reflect much the details of the text.

The bread Jesus is invited to conjure up is presumably for him and not for the masses, as we hear (not surprisingly) “he was famished”. More important than the possibility of impressing people by feeding them is the preface to the temptation, “If you are the Son of God…” What is being tested is not what Jesus might do, but who he is and what that implies. A similar preface precedes the last temptation: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the highest point of the Temple…

What is at stake is not so much how Jesus will minister – although this is part of it. It is more a matter of who he understands himself to be and how this “being” is connected to God.

It is also often noted that Jesus counters each of these proposals with quotations from Scripture, which just as often leads to the conclusion: know your Bible! This is good advice, but it is not the point of the story. The impression we are to get from this exchange is not that Jesus knows his Scripture better than the devil and that we should too. It is, rather, that Jesus knows God: the character of this God, how God relates to his human creatures, what a truly human life looks like. When you know this, it is not so much that you “know Scripture”; rather, you are in a position to be able to write it.

This is, effectively, what Jesus does in his ministry: he testifies to the kingdom, or reign, of God. This he does not merely in the words he speaks; more deeply, he embodies this reign. For God’s claim on Jesus – and also on us – is not that we live within some sort of divine space, but that we relate to God in the right kind of way.

Jesus refuses the bread because this is a time with God, without bread.

Jesus refuses to worship the devil because no created thing is worthy of worship.

Jesus refuses the Temple trick because he does not grant the devil’s “if” – “if” you are the Son of God.

The temptation here is to justify himself, to prove to himself that he is who God has declared him to be. The devil’s “If you are the Son” follows on immediately after the declaration at his baptism: “You are my Son”. In each instance it is Jesus’ own identity as in-relation-to-God which is called into question, and in each instance he refuses to deny that identity.

What this means in “practical” terms is that there is nothing which Jesus does which can be said to be “necessary”. Hunger does not necessarily override all other things; the price tag on influence is not “all costs”. The temptations put to him imply a necessity, an “if, then” relation: if you are this, then you ought to do that.

The “ought” is the catch. When we are tempted, we know very well the “ought not”. This is the weight of years or decades of conditioning being brought to bear: you ought not to look at him, her that way; ought not to eat this or drink so much of that; ought not to lie or steal or curse. But we very rarely simply break the rules; we justify the breaking by making it an “ought”: I deserve this, I need it. I am this lonely/depressed/rich/bored, therefore I can justify my actions by referring to that loneliness/ depression/wealth/boredom.

In this way we live by bread alone, we worship not so much the devil as the end without reference to the means, we test and prove to ourselves that there is no God.

Yet in these things, Jesus is free. He is free to take bread or not, to worship the devil or not. There is no “if” about his identity: he feels himself to be “held” by God. Who he is and what he does flows from God’s address to him: you are my son. This is enough.

For us, it is no different when we feel that we might being tempted to move beyond grace. The thing about grace is that it is not necessary: it is freedom itself, given without reference to what is deserved. It is when we feel that we are moved to justify this or that action that we begin to hear the devil’s voice – in the way that Jesus does in this story: if you are/need/have, then…

The gospel proposes, gifts us with, something else: for all that you think you need, seek first the reign of God, and whatever else matters will be added to you.

Or, perhaps more concretely: listen for God’s name for you: son, daughter. It is here that everything begins, and from here is everything be dealt with as it should be.

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Ash Wednesday
10/2/2016

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-20

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“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

That is, when it comes to the place in your life where the things of God meets the things of the world, let that meeting be before God but unseen by the world.

Yet there is a strange tension between what Jesus says here and what has already been said. “…Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5.7)

On the one hand there is the call to an intentional public shining of a light before others.

On the other, there is Jesus’ warning here and in the sections of the text which follow: do not exercise your charity towards the needy in a public way; do not pray in an ostentatious way; do not draw attention to your meeting of your religious obligations (fasting, in particular).

This is to say, then, that there is both a public and a non-public nature to being a disciple of this Jesus. But the critical – and surprising – thing is this: these are not two different things, as if sometimes we are being public and sometimes we are being private. The public appearance and the private hiddenness both occur in the same words and actions. The light shines for all to see when I withdraw to pray, when I am quiet about my charitable giving, when I cover up the fact that I am fasting.

To understand why this fairly subtle point is important, simply note how often we say to ourselves in the church today, “we prefer to show forth our faith by our actions rather than our words”. How does this sit with Jesus’ saying about not doing our good works in order to be seen? As we strive to show forth our faith by our actions rather than our words, do we not strive to be seen to be good?

Jesus pushes us past our actions, past even our intentions, to our motivations.

Christians are subject to an extraordinary moral temptation. This is not simply that we are tempted to do the wrong thing. Rather, we easily choose the right thing for the wrong reasons. The desire to be seen to be good is important for us not only that others might value us or our God more highly, but important also that we might value ourselves more highly. Jesus calls this letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

The problem is not doing the good thing. The problem is that we are conscious of this as a good work, having judged ourselves and our works as good. We are aware that it will be seen as a good thing by those who are looking on. To be known to be “good” – do we not desire this?

Of course, we must strive to do the good. It is assumed in our reading this evening that we will be giving out of our own resources to those in need. The question is simply the spirit in which this will be done.

Let the goodness of what we do be something which is hidden as such to us. In this way, even if no one else does, we at least can give glory to God for the good that we do, allowing our lives and our works to be hidden in the life and work of Christ. Just so does God shine forth as the author of all good works, and we will find freedom from anxiety about our own goodness.

“Do not judge others” – this is little more than modern political correctness.

“Do not judge yourselves” – this is the demand and the freedom of the gospel.

For the possibility of life beyond mere the goodness of our words and actions, thanks be to God. Amen.