Pointing to Jesus - Giving way to God

The 3rd and 4th Sundays in Advent

Year B

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Luke 1:26-38

The fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve.  And like December birthdays it so easily gets lost in the mix, and so I’d like to combine the two Sundays, the 3^rd Sunday of Advent last week and the 4^th upcoming.   In particular I’d like you to hold the two principal characters of the Gospels (from John and Luke, respectively) from these two Sundays in your mind:  St John the Baptist and Mary, the mother of our Lord - significant characters – both of them remembered, preached about, enshrined in stained glass in churches around the world, but whose significance is not so much based on what they do as on what they allow.  Their bodies and their beings are not so much hammers and javelins as they are doors and passageways.  I probably need to explain.

Many of you wonder how much significance you have in the world around you.  It’s clear you have some ambition at work.  It’s clear from the contribution you would like to make to your church or the associations you belong to.  You want to say your bit.  It’s even evident from your family life.  Ask your children whether mum or dad still wants to hold some of the reins. 

It’s a thing – personal power.  You know it and the people around you know it.  Alfred Adler parted company with Sigmund Freud over Freud’s belief that sex was as much a fulcrum for the motivation of human beings.  Adler looked at it differently – no, he said, it is the quest for significance which motivates us.

Some of you have been beaten down in that.  You have the look of loss about you – what Adler meant when he coined the phrase “the inferiority complex”.  Some of you project an air of humility but behind all that you have a plan.   Other folks can hear the wheels turning.

Who are you then?  You might be on the younger end of life:  The sort of person who is battling in your salad days for a place on the ladder at work, for recognition among your social circle, for a listening ear in your family who haven’t cottoned on to the fact that you’re your own person now.  You’re somebody who would like to nail that funding, write that great Canadian novel, throw off the watching eye of the matriarchs and patriarchs – create your own footprint. 

Or flip it around:  Perhaps your bus pass is not far down the road:  You worry that you will be superseded by people who are younger and stronger than you and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  The children are grown, your spouse is already answering questions with that Mmmm yes tone of voice indicating that he or she has not fully listened to you.   You may simply be trying simply to hold on to the gains you have made.

If someone were to say to you – younger or older - that the key to life is learning to step aside and that great power is involved in giving way in the days of your strength you might find that a hard argument to accept – quite counterintuitive, really.

The record of John is this:  that when he was questioned by the envoys of the Scribes and Pharisees about himself, at what must have seemed like the height of his career, with his preaching attracting not only people from the suburbs of Jerusalem out to his desert pulpit but residents of Jerusalem itself in considerable numbers – when he was questioned sharply about who he was he declared openly and clearly that he was not the expected Messiah.  Asked further whether he was some heavenly adjutant like Isaiah or Elijah returned from the dead he answered plainly:  I am not the Christ, nor am I Isaiah or Elijah.  I am just a voice and the one I announce is somebody other than me.  This success I take off and lay to the side.  I announce another.  Jump ahead a couple of chapters and he puts it even more succinctly:

"He must increase and I must decrease."

Mary hears the news from the angel Gabriel that her youth is being asked of God as a gift.  On the cusp of her adult life, God asks her for what must be the substance of her near future.  She will be overshadowed by the Most High  She must risk the marriage which is about to begin – her status in her community – the stability of the ordinary family life she had every right to and for which her community, her upbringing and even her own piety had prepared for her.  Her imagined future happiness, says the angel, must now include a sword which will pierce her soul also. 

Biblical writers - describing conversations between God and a human agent be it Moses, or a prophet or such like – often leave out the silences.  God proposes and the human responds.  What gets missed in the narrative is that moment of silence which we must read in to the text – that necessary interlude, brief or not – where both Yes and No are possible answers.  Mary’s response to the angel, when it occurs, is her considered promise to be useful in the birth of something wonderful which is beyond herself. 

"I am the handmaid of the Lord.  
Be it unto me according to his word."

You were obliged in school to run at least one relay race.  You ran your portion of the track and then handed on the baton.  You’ve doubtless walked around graveyards filled with people who had their day.  It’s no mystery that we eventually give way in our generation.   If you are the sixth president of your Kiwanis club it is no Greek tragedy that there will be a seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth president.    Giving way is the most normal thing in the world in the long run and unless you are Chaucer or King Tut the memory of you will cease in all the land.

As you approach the end of the civic year and think about the new one looming up perhaps you feel a certain dis-ease.  Of what are you resolved as the new year begins?  What did you accomplish in the last?  Do you resolve to be more of a hammer this year?  Would you chuck your javelin a little further along the track this year, conquer a little more territory, build up your walls a little stronger – dominate the resources around you a little more effectively, do that thing, write those words, settle that challenge?

Take stock, won't you, of what has the greatest value.  The angels gathering around the birth, unlike Gabriel, have no names.  The names we attribute to the Wise Men are mere legend.  Nobody knows who the shepherds were.  They gathered to witness the arrival of what they could not give themselves, what no end of human ability will ever supply and what you, at your best, will never be.  Resolve at least, this Christmas, to place your trust in what you do not have yourself – to point, as John did to what shows itself to be stronger, better and more beautiful than you.   Allow yourself, as Mary did, to be a channel for something you can never own yourself.  Allow wonder to replace confidence.  Truth and beauty are given to us from elswhere.  Unwrap then, with this newfound attitude of wonder, the gift 

Which has been prepared for you.  
And for the people you love.  
And for people you have never even met.

Showing up for good news or bad

The Second Sunday of Advent

Year B

Mark 1:1-8

Mark’s Gospel says that that John “appears” in the wilderness.  What an odd verb in English.  It’s like he pops up out of the sand. 

In any case - he’s there, anyway, ahead of the action, like a “roadie” setting up the microphones before the concert.  Or somebody laying the table for a meal before the guests arrive.  

Mark is the earliest Gospel - the Gospel which Luke and Matthew had in their hands when they wrote their own and, as an introduction to Jesus and his public ministry, it is awfully abrupt.   Where are the shepherds?   Where’s King Herod or the hasty flight to Egypt?    No, just a man - in the desert - setting the stage.  John doesn’t even get the first word in after the title phrase - that job is given to the prophet Isaiah.

²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

In fact it’s a mix of Isaiah’s “voice in the wilderness” with something which Malachi said about a “messenger” or maybe even something taken from the Book of Exodus about an “angel” leading the way.  If you follow these source readings back, you will find the recurring theme of things not being allowed to continue as they were.  In the Book of Exodus, God says the Terror and Pestilence will precede his leading angel.  Isaiah has the revolutionary idea that the mountains will tumble, and valleys be lifted up.  Malachi promises not only the cleanliness following the liberal use of a “fullers soap” but the purity which only a refiner’s hot fire will be able to deliver.  The process of change is not going to be easy.  The world will be scrubbed, burnt and turned on its backside.  John says more or less the same thing in his preaching:  

"The axe is laid to the root of the tree."

A day of reckoning is at hand.

When the registered letter was delivered to you by the postie, she had a smile on her face.   You passed the time of day over the fence but you knew (and she knew) that good news never arrives by registered mail.  

A little man from the Prefecture showed up with a measuring tape to check that your doors were the regulation height. 

The inspector from Weights and Measures had a measure of volume to see if you were selling full litres of gasoline for the announced price.  

Someone demanded to see your underwear drawer.  

"We’ll need a character reference from your last love interest", said the person with the clipboard.   

"A performance evaluation has been scheduled for you at work next week.  We thought you should know."  

You get my drift.  It’s that sort of day.  You remember that it was late afternoon when you got the news. The sun was shining.  You can even remember what you were wearing when word came to you.

Not everyone is broken hearted, mind.  Someone, somewhere, is rejoicing.  Remember that John’s words to the Pharisees:

“You brood of vipers!”

is only one end of the spectrum of readings this Sunday.  The earlier reading is from Isaiah 40:

“Comfort ye, my people!”

Like the folks who’ve been bumping their heads on your low doors, like the customers at your gas station who’ve suspected for years that you’ve been giving short measure but you’re the only gas station in the village.  Your spouse has complained bitterly that your ties and your jack-knife don’t belong with your underwear.   And that last love interest of yours?  She thinks you’re a jerk and wouldn't mind at all if the day finally came when you were called for it. 

What about that performance evaluation, anyway?  Maybe it’s just the ticket.  Your co-workers think you get away with blue murder.  They know how bad it is for morale on the floor.  Bad news for you is good news for them.   

But why is it not good news for you too?  

It would be – there are people who love you who believe it could be -  if you’d agree to let the knife carve away what is rotten and hurtful, wasteful and frivolous.  If you’d look beyond your own interests

It is a terribly difficult thing to do but we shouldn’t be dramatic.   People do it all the time.   Choices become clear when light increases and they also become possible. 

You could always run away, 

you could hide, 

or resist 

or pretend 

or just not show up

and so avoid being laid bare by this amalgam of good news and bad but people are, in the main, pretty courageous.   They both tolerate, and sometimes even dig up from within, honest reappraisals of themselves.  Like I said – people do it all the time.

I jotted these words down earlier in the week.  Maybe I get them wrong.  John is not performing the opening act for some process of self-improvement for moderns.  That would be twisting this reading out of its context and I don’t want to do that.  He is, in fact, announcing a dramatic turn in history where God approaches his people and where an unexpected cast of characters open themselves to that approach.  They show up - in droves.  The usual suspects and the unusual.  They permit themselves to be laid bare.  They express acts of repentance and demonstrate their faith.  They are not only witnesses but they become participants as Creation is reformed restated and reinstated in its beauty.

Who will be in attendance?  

Who will show up?  

Who is not allowed to come? 

Subsequent chapters of Mark’s Gospel have Jesus preaching and telling parables.  In village squares, on hillsides, in private homes - to individuals - to groups.  He’s fishing.  

For you?  

For more deserving people than you?  

He’s casting his net into the lake.  He’s chucking out his lure into the sea.  He’s throwing out the option to come out and be present and be part of God’s Kingdom.  And nobody – no matter how compromised – is excluded from the invitation. 

You could be there.  

At long last, it could be good news for you.  If you are hungry enough to be part of that movement in human history, you will be there.  In spite of yourself and in spite of your experience the last time you tried.   You could be so struck by the prospect of life that all your excuses for being a no-show could wither away.

When the scrubbing is done and when the fire has done its work in you, you won’t be missing much.   You will have gained everything.

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 9 – Year A

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

I’m quite taken by the family’s blessing of Rebekah from the Genesis reading – the reading which Sheryl read to us this morning.

“May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads”

A young person stands at the threshold of a life which is rich and open.  There’s something appealing here – I would like my life to be that rich and that open.  I regret the parts of it which may over time have become stunted or locked up.  Lucky Rebekah.  She was young and she must have been in the right place at the right time.

There’s a moment in the first reading when Rebekah slips down the side of her camel, veils herself and prepares to meet the man she will spend her life with.  In our story, this is the happy result.  Go back a bit though.  It follows from an earlier moment after the servant explained how God had led him to Rebekah at the well when her family turns to the young woman and asks – so what do you think?  Will you go with this man?  I refer to these as “moments” by the way because they are powerful little self-contained units which communicate their contents well.  I can imagine the film scene.  I can imagine the painting which some Flemish artist might have painted.  If Caireen were up here telling you the story she would no doubt tell it with all the different voices – including the camel’s voice.

When we gather again in greater numbers at the beginning of September, someone will ask you at coffee time:  So how was your holiday with your family?  

 It had its moments – might be the reply. 

Ah, you say, let me pour myself a coffee and you can tell me about it

We are not expecting to hear about a holiday that had its minutes, are we?  We don’t care that it lasted exactly one or two or three weeks, we are expecting to hear about a holiday which had its moments – we are more concerned about its contents – either good or bad – eventful – joyful – painful. 

We use the word moment and the word minute quite interchangeably.  Take a minute to think before you answer we say to people who are about to take an exam or testify in a court case.  We could have said take a moment to think because we never meant that they should count to sixty.    The first use of the word had nothing to do with time at all – it described a unit of force.  Archimedes used the term to describe the action of levers of various lengths upon their fulcrums.  We might use the word “torque” in its place.  That alternate current meaning of the word moment should have something to do with forces of various kinds – the force necessary to overcome inertia, electrical energy or somesuch.   And even if you’re not an engineer we still use the word Momentum and the adjective Momentous which give us some sense of the difference between a minute and a moment.

And because I’m old and boring I’m going to further illustrate by relating to you a minute of my childhood.

I am ten years old and walking to school.  I walk down the path from our house and turn right on Transit Road.  I carry on to the first stop sign where I intend to turn left.  If I’m walking at my normal rate it takes me just more than a minute to reach that stop sign.    

Let me tell you about a moment from my childhood.

I am ten years old and going to school in Victoria B.C. from my house which is 200 yards from the Pacific Ocean.   I walk out the front door and down the path to the street into fog as thick as pea soup.  The foghorn on Trial Island – just off shore - is sounding its deep two-note blast.  Somebody on our street is burning oak leaves and the air is rich with the smell.  It’s also low tide and mingled in with the smell of the burning leaves is the smell of the seaweed rotting on the beach. The short trip to the first stop sign takes a little longer than a minute because I keep stopping to listen to the sounds and smell the air.  That’s a moment.   You could write a poem about it, it has a shape, it has substance.  Three unrelated worlds weave together into a fabric.  The burning leaves and the smelly beach have nothing to do with the fog or with each other, the foghorn has nothing to do with a small boy’s trip to school but the reason small boys are so often late for school and don’t get the gold star on the chart is that they stop to look at stuff along the way – at the way worlds which are them and worlds which are not them weave together at their intersection into a moment.

Being small one tends to be hit by moments – they happen to you – small people and adults who retain their sense of wonder even in their riper years – are struck by their moments.  They have little authorship over them.  They are lucky to have them. 

Let’s nail this down.  Are you one of those who would like to be fruitful and are not – to be myriads and are not – who would love to rediscover the openness, the beauty and the complexity of life and are not there today.   Doesn’t it seem a little bit cruel simply to say you should stand around until you are struck by something.    That’s no gift.  It would be a bit like saying that on behalf of the Anglican tradition we sincerely hope your lucky number comes up. 

I am compelled tell you another story.

There is a bit of family tradition handed down, from somebody on my mother’s side, that when my great grandfather was studying for the Presbyterian ministry at Queen’s College in Kingston Ontario at the end of the 19^th Century, one of the College’s previous graduates wrote back to his friends that the work he was doing in China (on the eve of the Boxer Rebellion) was proving impossible without a wife and could somebody please help him out.  The story has it that a small group paid a visit to the missionary and deaconess’ training home in Toronto and enquired of the young women enrolled there whether any amongst them felt the vocation to marry a missionary in the field. 

I cannot imagine the story without a bit of embarrassed silence.  There must, surely, have been a bit of a pause - an awkward moment.   

As it happened, the query was met with agreement by one young woman in Toronto.  Yes, she felt so inclined.  Letters presumably were exchanged and the young woman packed her trunks and sailed to China at the beginning of a hazardous decade for foreigners (and especially missionaries) living in that country.  One man’s history weaves into the history of one woman – not as an accident or a happy exception or blind luck - but as the fruit of risks taken by the one who asks and the one who answers.

In our first reading this Sunday, Abraham’s servant is given the task of finding a wife for Isaac from amongst his kinsfolk in Mesopotamia.  The servant prays to God for direction, establishes the criteria by which he will know God is so directing him and is subsequently led to the young woman Rebekah who is drawing water at the local well.  Later, when the servant has spoken with her family, they turn to the girl. 

“Will you go with this man?” they ask.   “I will” she says. 

The young woman’s agreement leads to the family’s blessing

“May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.” 

The faith of Abraham’s bonded servant intersects with a young woman’s freedom to say “yes” or “no” and the story culminates in blessing.   Our story weaves together those things which simply are or which “must be” (either by God’s command or by Abraham’s will) with what “could or could not be” due to family politics and individual choice.  Energy – you see - goes into the equation from two sides.  

The question is asked.  The answer is “yes”.  The door to a world opens. 

I hope you’ll give some thought to where you are right now.  Maybe I’m preaching to the choir but you may have some sadness at the thought that you will never see an open door in front of you, or a new horizon, or be better and bigger than you are now.  Is any of this remotely important to you?  Does it hit a nerve with anyone?  Are you disappointed that you may never see the moment when you slip down the side of your camel into blessing or get from where you are now to that fruitful and hopeful place? 

Our key story this morning concerns much more than lucky cards or lucky stars.  Her moment is as much about the word “yes” issuing from Rebekah’s lips as it was about Abraham’s servant having discerned that she was the one.   Our engagement allows and even creates moments.  The weaving together of worlds happens because we want it and because we do it.  By our affirmation, by way of our curiosity and because of our willingness - by the word “yes” which we utter.  Few of us stand on ground so sloped in the right downward direction that entry and discovery are something that we merely fall into by the power of gravity or the weight of events.  Nor are our decisions ever so distilled in pure forms, apart from the ordinary particularity of our lives and families, that the choice is merely obvious. 

Secret gardens, hidden doors, the way in and the way out of labyrinths, pearls of great price discovered amongst lesser gems, all the treasures ever found in fields by nameless characters in Jesus’ parables, and - yes - the very thing which you – men and women, boys and girls - want or need - these are to be found by seekers.  

Will you go with this man?  Will you engage with this community?  There is something you can do.  You’ll do it if you want it enough.  It requires engagement and risk - undertaking tasks which extend beyond your pay-grade and beyond the bounds of what is proven to be safe. For that matter, even beyond the bounds of what is generally considered polite conversation. 

Resting

Safe to say that for the time being this blog is "resting" and will be reenergised in the near future.  Regular postings continue on the Prospect blog which is linked to our parish website

see you again soon when i get a new idea

A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

A Liberal Application of Ashes III

The language used by the celebrant at an Ash Wednesday service for the “imposition of ashes” is nothing if not sharp:

Remember (your name here) that you are dust.

To dust you shall return.

Don't blurt out something like this to the stranger in the aisles of a grocery store. You might find yourself answering questions like:

Why did you say such an aggressive and unsettling thing to a stranger?

What gave you the right to intrude on somebody else's sense of well-being?

Tonight you are volunteers. And the words in question are part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy and not a personal blurt on my part. But are they even news? Who needs to be reminded that life is short and human nature is flawed? Isn't it the comic book caricature of the clergyman that he's the old guy up at the front of the church who looks at people in good health and enjoying their lives rather a lot, so that he can shake his finger at them and say – “it won’t last, you know!” 

He tells the beautiful that they will soon be old and ugly.
He tells the strong that they will weaken and fade.
He tells those proud of the recent past that their achievements are really just so much dry grass.

Why would anyone want to be such a professional wet blanket? No let this old clergyman at the front of the church rejoice with you about what everything which is good and lively and on the ascendant in your daily life.

And, frankly, like most pastors I can conjure up in my mind the faces of people who I know to be currently struggling with the deathward stance their lives have taken. They are ill and their bodies will not get better. A treasured relationship has died and will never be restored. They were sidelined in their employment or vocation. They are caught up by their own deep moral flaw or are the victims of that same flaw in somebody else. The bloom is off their rose. They’ve been around the block. They've seen too much. What more could their parish priest possibly add as he advances upon them this evening at the beginning of an Ash Wednesday service with a black and dripping thumb:

V. Remember, Roger, that you are dust. To dust you shall return.

R. Thank you, Father, I knew that.

We might hypothesize somebody who is "not in the know" about the fragility of life or the limits of their own natural goodness. They are in the darlings of everybody at work, they are regulars at the gym, they have perfect children with good teeth and an immaculate house – but in order for them to be that ignorant about life they would also have to be people who didn’t read or who had no vicarious experience of other people’s grief and contingency. I’m not sure that such people - devoid of questions, doubts or depth – even exist. If they did, then I suppose that a liberal application of ashes accompanied by aggressive words reminding them of the shortness and uncertainty of human life meant to assault their self-reliance would be perfectly in order. We might be doing them a favor although, frankly, I’m not sure you'd find them here at an evening Ash Wednesday service or our service at noon today at the office unless it were completely out of habit or unless they’d walked into the wrong doorway by mistake and were too embarrassed to get up and leave.

So why are we here? And what is this sharp language and this small plate of ashes about? What are we beating ourselves up about? It’s precisely this, I believe: If the language is sharp it is not meant to say that your lives or your activities are bad or without value. In fact, it’s a message that heads in quite the opposite direction: the sharp language underscores the tremendous value to be found in our lives, our pursuits and our allegiances by reminding us of the frame within which these events take place and that we must honour the time we have been given.

The American poet Carl Sandburg wrote a poem called Limited in his 1916 collection entitled Chicago Poems. It goes like this:

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.​
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches 
   holding a thousand people.​
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the  
   diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)​
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: “Omaha.”


What is a limitation if not the edge of something. Quite neutral really - it defines where the thing stops and something else begins. Or where the thing stops and mere space begins.

Think of it this way: You are at the bottom of Puy de Dome and you have your easel set up and your paints out on the tray. You are painting a picture of the Puy de Dome with all the paragliders swirling around its top and the funicular train heading up the slope and the communications tower on the top. There’s a lot you might dream about painting but you do not have the liberty of including everything to the infinite right or left, to the utter east or west. You’re not painting Issoire or Vichy.

Your canvas has an edge.  When the painting is finished it will have a frame and the frame defines what the subject is and ensures that it is not some other thing. Let your mind drift to Issoire or Vichy or Le Puy-en-Velay. Today, in this time and place you are painting Puy-de-Dome.

Without its frame life is, at best, undefined. If you come to one of our soup suppers down at 42 you will be dished out a bowl of soup. You will be dished out a certain amount depending on the ratio of soup to hungry humans. Look into the bottom of your bowl.  There is your meat and veg. . That is your portion. And your portion, generous or slender, is not infinite.

These ashes are not the church's attack on youth, beauty, strength, innocence, the pride in one’s achievements or healthy egos. They remind us pointedly that our time on earth is finite and the beautiful things of life and the noble things and the worthy things must be chased down and worked towards.

Or think of it this way: It is my experience that people, in the wake of a funeral, or a great and troubling event, feel disturbed. Beyond feelings of sympathy or empathy for the family of the deceased and beyond even the immediate loss of somebody loved and valued, they are disturbed about what this means for them. There is a nagging recognition of life's ticking clock. The question posed by the death of a friend or by a disasterous event are these:

Have the requisite colours been added to my painting - here in this 30th year of my life or the 40th or even the 58th? What about my broken relationships which have never been mended and which are unmended for want of a conversation or a letter? What about my youthful vow to “straighten up and fly right?” - to be courageous and self-giving? What about the midlife promise to recover that early vow?

Having thrown our handful of earth into the grave after the funeral we brush the dust from our hand as we walk back to the car and hope that the unsettled feeling passes and that life returns to normal. We wipe the smudge off our forehead with a soapy washcloth at the end of the Ash Wednesday service and with it perhaps the healthful but troubling question will disappears.

Which would be a shame, really, because that's exactly the question that this service wants to pose. It’s not an accusation that we are shallow and stupid people of whom little good can be said.

We are the living.
We are the mostly healthy.
And we have years left to us.

To become aware that we must make the most of our days, to seek out love and to take risks, to discover the enduring value of relationships and commitments would be the gift of a lifetime.


*the "III" in this indicates that this is the third iteration of a sermon which I have been slowly cobbling together over the years.  This is the third version.  By the time I retire it'll be a corker.












Posted with Blogsy

Searching and sweeping until the thing is found.

The 17th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 19 - Year C

Luke 15:1-10

At the outset of this week’s Gospel reading, the scribes and the Pharisees expressed unhappiness about all the "low-life" to be found among the followers of Jesus:

“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them”.

Listen to what Jesus says at the end of the reading:   

“I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels

of God over one sinner who repents.”

If all we had were these two ends – the opening and the conclusion – we might conclude that some sinners work hard at this whole business of repentance and can overcome the stigma of their past behavior with a rigourous and athletic turnaround.  These “deserving sinners” get cheered on by angels in heaven as they cross the finish line and join the righteous on the other side. 

In fact, the intervening two mini-parables (the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin) are no testament whatsoever to the ability of the lost sheep to climb out of a deep chasm and work its way out of the heather and return to the sheepfold or of a coin to hoist its own shiny edge up between the floorboards and catch the woman’s attention in order to get itself found. 

God, says Jesus, is a shepherd.   He will go to great lengths to find the one who is well and truly lost. 

God, says Jesus, is a poor widow.  She will sweep the lengths of her house repeatedly until she finds the thing she has set out to find. 

The nature of the Good News that Jesus preaches is not that there now exists a novel way for men and women to work their way along the narrow path into the favor of heaven.  The Good News is that God is at work looking for his children, energetically and relentlessly.  The redeemed sinner is the handiwork of God and the fruits of God’s labour.

We need to agree to be found.  

We need to rejoice with the angels when others are found as well.

The neighbour: Proximity or Affinity?

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 10  

Year C

Luke 10:25-37

Jesus asks a lawyer to summarize the Law and the man obliges: We are to love God and we are to love our neighbour, he says.

Jesus commends the lawyer for having come up with the right answer.  The man then asks Jesus: “So who is my neighbour?”

Our lawyer is not merely being difficult.  This matters rather a lot.  Luke tells us the story of their exchange in the Greek language and the word used for neighbour (plesios) merely describes “One who is near”.  In a similar fashion, when St Jerome translated the Bible into Latin from Greek the word he chose to use here in this passage was proximus (“the one beside me”).  Luther’s German New Testament uses the word nächster (as in “the nearest").   Our inclination, however, is to love those who are attached to us by blood, affection, background or common purpose.  We will go out of our way to find some biblical warrant for it.  So when the Greek Old Testament uses the word neighbour (plesios) to translate a Hebrew word, the word is most often a Hebrew word (re’a) best translated as “compatriot”.  That’s better.   Instead of referring to whoever happens to be standing next to me or living in the house next door the earlier word seems to refer to “One with whom one has something to do”

You shall not take vengeance or bear any 
grudge against  the sons of your own people 
but you shall love your neighbour (re’a) 
as yourself.

                                                                           Leviticus 19:18 

     

We might conclude that the Greek language here is the odd man out and ill equipped to express the natural loyalty I feel towards those who are like me - towards the sons and daughters of my own people.  This might have been the case except that Jesus then proceeds to tell a story which indicates that natural loyalty itself is the problem he wants to address.

A Jewish man was set upon by thieves. Those with a natural kinship to him gave him a wide berth and left him lying wounded in the road while an ethnic enemy – the Samaritan for whom the parable is named – dressed the man’s wounds and paid for his lodging.  Who then, asks Jesus, was neighbour to this man?

I don’t need to tell anybody reading this that the events dominating our news media for the past few weeks in Britain, America and around the world are all wrapped up with the very question which the lawyer poses to Jesus:  Who is my neighbour?  Who am I connected to?  Who can live in the place where I live?  To whom do I owe love, protection and the assurance of their wellbeing.  While I would not presume to oversimplify questions of migration, national identity or religious pluralism as they apply to the countries of our birth, I can’t help pointing out that Jesus goes out of his way to say that this natural inclination towards those who are most like us is wholly insufficient. 

True neighbourliness will extend to the stranger too.

A man in his right mind.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7)

Year C

Luke 8:26-39

We’ve all seen the advertisements - for diet or beauty products, exercises or fitness machines - which present the reader with two photographs, generally marked “before” and “after”.  In a similar “before and after” story in Luke’s Gospel, a young man sits calmly at the feet of Jesus, “clothed and in his right mind”.  At the beginning of the story, the man was raving, naked and self-isolating.  I did a reflection on this passage yesterday morning at a meeting of the local protestant clergy here in Clermont-Ferrand.   I think I prefer the French translations in the TOB and the Louis Segond (making reference to "reason" and "good sense") to the English translation we’re going to read on Sunday.

...habillé, et revenu à la raison (TOB)

...vêtu, et dans son bon sens (LS)

I mean what is, after all, your right mind?   In what way “right”?  

Is the young man’s mental map now what it ought to be, or what the village thinks it should be or even what Jesus has told him it should be?  What is clear is that the young man was formerly unable to be a part of village life.  He caused chaos when he was there and had even been physically restrained.  If he escaped those chains or was allowed to flee, he would wander in the wilderness with beasts as his only companions.  This is no longer the case.  We are now presented with the “after” photograph.  The crisis is over.  The Greek word used by the evangelist for this young man’s latest state speaks of a restored capacity for discernment and most importantly judgement.  In the second photograph he can now choose where before he was a victim of forces he could not control: Reason and good sense have returned.

At the end of our story this Sunday Jesus convinces the man that his mission is to enjoy his restoration to the life of his village and to testify to what God has done for him.  This dockside exchange of words gives us an indication of what a recovered mind might look like:  The two of them "have words" there by the boat.  Jesus has restored and not replaced this young man’s mind.  It is the negative forces which Jesus overpowers and not the man himself.  Let’s keep in mind that Jesus interacts with the minds of the people he speaks to in his parables and pronouncements.  Jesus is involved in a persuasive process with people who have the power of choice - who can say yes or no.  The parables are directed to people who normally make the right decisions about their own best interests and are able to discern truth from among other options.  While they may not be the sort of people rich enough to keep pearls or even to liquidate real estate holdings to purchase an additional field, they nonetheless have sold and bought goods and can appreciate the right mindedness of an individual who would trade several modest pearls for a pearl of great price and who would sell ordinary plots of land to purchase one which contained a treasure. 

Reason and good sense allows you to to change your mind in a conversation with Jesus -  to discover and affirm new and better ways of thinking about God, the world and yourself. 

The unfolding story of God in small spaces.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Year C

1 Kings 17:8-24

Luke 7:11-17                   

Two sons are clutched from death and restored to their mothers.  In much of the Christian world these readings will be heard on Sunday by contemporary mothers sitting in church pews who would cut off their right arms in order to see their sons thrive, prevail, succeed, recover or even to continue to live.   We owe these contemporary women a debt of thought:  In no way is it assured that the good things in our Sunday readings which took place for those boys and their mothers will happen to them, who have muttered endless prayers to God and Jesus about their sons.  

They are good boys who don’t deserve the things which have landed on them from outside.   Nor should their sons be defined by (or blamed for) every impulse welling up within them and causing them and others grief.  These women know the habits and all the warm human smells of their boys.  They have picked up cast-off garments and even clutched them for a moment – counting themselves lucky to be in contact with an aimless bit of the lad which he has thrown aside.  Some administrative marvel out there will have done the maths and pointed out the unfairness of Elijah landing in the house of one poor widow with an ailing son in a land filled with sickness and deprivation (cf. Luke 4:25-26?).   What about any hypothetical funeral procession held earlier in the day in Capernaum – a procession which Jesus and his disciples did not happen to encounter?  What about that mother?

At coffee time the preacher sees the woman coming over to speak - her lips already pursing with the anticipatory “Wh” of the word “Why” or perhaps more correctly “Why not….”

What makes the preacher’s knees weak at this point as the distance between them narrows?  Who has been let down, and by whom?  Is an apology in order?  On whose behalf would one apologize?  On God’s behalf?  In the sermon which has just been preached the unfolding story of God touched down twice in small spaces in Israel.  A rivulet nourishes the modest patch of land which it waters.  The voice is heard as far as a voice might carry through the air.  Elijah will lodge in the small northern hut where he’s been commanded by God to take refuge.  The itinerary of the Son of man will connect with a limited number of folk in the villages of the Galilee.  If you must apologize, then do so on your own behalf who are part of a body which is worldwide and universal and which, in many places, still has the ear of legislators.  Do so on behalf of the church which has lost touch with the Acts of the Apostles and with the Great Commission and will not take current account of the miracles and acts of love of her saints over the centuries. 

We will not unravel the mystery of innocent suffering in a few words.  Nor, however, can we excuse our default position which would seem to be that there exists a great Wheel of Fortune which crushes as it will unless Jesus or Elijah declares a holiday by his very presence. 

There’s nothing we can do.  

The coin will land head or tails.

The market will have its way.

It has always been thus.   

We do not accept that the baton has been handed to us to work for the healing of small spaces.   The evangelical logic of Jesus and Elijah taking the unfolding story of God into small spaces is that it is the desire of God to heal and to restore, to forgive and to build up and that the Church as Christ's body will do the same.  Would that same logic not propel men and women to take their place in the ongoing work of health care (including mental health care), of education, in the forming of just societies and the reform of criminal justice - ultimately in the relief and restoration of sons and daughters who are at risk?

And, while I'm on the subject, have we even been to this woman's house?

The faith of an expat: Jesus and the Centurion

The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Year C

Luke 7:1-10

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, 

and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, 

"I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith."

 

The Galilee wasn’t physically occupied by the Romans until A.D. 44.  It wasn’t until Herod Antipas fell from grace with the Romans and got himself exiled with his wife to Lyon just down the road from us in Clermont-Ferrand, that the Roman army finally set up camp north of the border.  At the time of our story, then, there was no Roman army in the Galilee.  They were in the south – in Judea.  So what was a Roman centurion doing in Capernaum?  Well Herod, as a Roman client ruler, yearned for a Roman style soldiery of his own and no doubt needed a Roman centurion to help him achieve that.  The centurion in our story was, plausibly, on loan from the Roman army as a military advisor.  This suggests not only that he was far from home.   He was also outside of his familiar patterns and environment - only tangentially still working for the Company.  A man, well-suited for a particular life, had shelved it and found (almost accidentally) amongst God’s historic people, the Jews – in their community structures, their worship, their Sabbath and their ethics and above all in their ancient story of God encountering his people - something which appealed to him and which he wanted to be part of. 

Who are you when you are not at home?  Are you half the man or woman you would be in your habitual surroundings?  Does travelling light far from home mean for you your essential toolbox is elsewhere - at home - under lock and key?  This centurion’s disassociation from his well-worn paths, on the other hand, had given him a measure of holy freedom.  You can still see the lower floor of the synagogue he built for the Jews of Capernaum.  It’s underneath the ruins of the somewhat grander sixth-century synagogue, made of white marble, which took its place.    It was made of the same sort of black basalt as our cathedral here in Clermont is built from or, for that matter, our own little chapel in Royat.

And what has our centurion learned in these new surroundings and among these new associates?  According to Jesus, anyway, this man's understanding is substantial.  His words of faith are fresh and matter-of-fact.  When Jesus receives his request to have his beloved servant healed and offers to come to the centurion’s house the man replies that there is no need:  All Jesus needs to do is say the word and it will be done.  

"I’m a man under authority", he says.  I know how these things take place.  The Lieutenant-Colonel speaks to the Adjutant who then speaks to the junior officers who then speak to me and the other NCO’s.  We speak to the men.  If we encounter resistance, it’s not for nothing that the symbol of my centurion’s office is a stout stick of vine wood which can be applied to a soldier’s back.  The job gets done. 

Here, says Jesus, do we find a man of faith such as may not even be found in most of Israel.  As evidence that he has understood he has come up with an analogy from his own world which tells me he has understood.  Here is a man who would understand that God loves the birds of the air and the flowers of the field and will give them the good things that they require because it's in the Standing Orders.  Here is one who, when told not to worry, will not worry, because matters must be in hand.  He has understood.  

The half dozen dislocations which occur in our own lives are not given the credit they are due. We might see them as a step down from the ordered trajectory we should expect in a perfect world.   In fact, each one is an opportunity -  to provoke our faith and to claim a space wherein we offer our unique gift to the world around us.

How much can you bear?

Trinity Sunday

Year C 

John 16:12-15

“I still have many things to say to you,

but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he

will guide you into all the truth.....”

The three leaf clover, the Fleur-de-Lys and the other visual representations of the Trinity of God are traditionally used to show the faithful who (or more usually, what) the Holy Trinity is.  In practice the diagrams and patterns declare something unmoving and eternal.  Jesus' words, in the small snippet of his farewell discourse chosen for this Sunday’s Gospel reading, tell quite a different story and describe what the Father, Son and Holy Spirit actually do.  Jesus says there is a wellspring of love and information in the Trinity of God. 

The Father has given all to the Son 

The Spirit takes what belongs to the Son 

and declares it to us on the world’s behalf.       

    

We might be forgiven for believing that the Spirit merely reinforces what is already in the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels.  Is the Holy Spirit a sort of active, living index which points the Church back to what she already knows but has perhaps forgotten or failed to apply?   Does the Holy Spirit have a Bible in its hand?  That was what I was always led to believe, anyway. 

Maybe we should expect to hear timeless truths in Church.  We have a Communion Service based on very old antecedents.   The Mass is the Mass is the Mass.  It warms our hearts to hear the Bible read sometimes in traditional translation.  We refer to our hymns sometimes as the Old One Hundredth, we even sing about being asking to be told “…the old, old story” but Jesus promises his disciples here that the Holy Spirit will shepherd them into novel territory.  Frankly, I can see little in the passage to indicate that the content of what the Spirit will proclaim will limit itself slavishly to what is already there in the parables, the controversies, the public discourses of Jesus or the private teaching between the Master and his disciples.  The disciples had heard all of that and had profited from the private teaching during his ministry and in the days between Easter and Pentecost to clear up what they had not yet understood.  In our reading this Sunday at the end of a longer passage Jesus says explicitly that he has other things to tell them which, at that moment, they could not bear to hear.  “The Spirit of truth…will guide you”

We should at least be curious about what he meant.

There is enough material in the Acts of the Apostles to give us a hint of how the Jerusalem Church, Peter and the other Apostles along with the newcomers Paul and Barnabas and a small army of deacon/evangelists sent to the Samaritan and Greek cities were privileged to express in new and changing times and places not only what the Gospel said but what it meant as well.   In so doing they disagreed which each other – sometimes quite vociferously.  Following the Spirit of God into truths which a previous generation or even our younger self could not possibly bear courts a certain degree of risk. 

It sails very close to the wind.