SERMONS by Andrew Boyle and others.
8 June 2008 - Fourth Sunday in Pentecost - Andrew Boyle
Genesis 12. 1-9 Psalm 33. 1-12 Romans 4. 13-25 Matthew 9. 9-13, 18-26
Abram comes to us out of the mists of antiquity. A dim figure from the past looming large for Jews, Christians and Moslems alike. While the places and the country he inhabited are today a crumbled ruin the story of his obedience to God’s call still speaks to us. Abram: the father of faith; the father of faiths.
In his old age he is beckoned by God to leave all that is familiar; to leave all that gives him identity: his county, his kindred, his father’s house and to go to a place that God promises he will show him ; not that God will give him but that he will only show him. Who would go? Who would leave what is familiar and safe and secure, the fruits of one’s labours; who would leave behind everything that gives one meaning and identity and set off into apparent nothingness only to see something that might be a faint option for one’s descendants in the future.
Abram did. And it was reckoned to him as righteousness – says Paul. He is the archetype of faith. The father of reckless, irresponsible, irrational faith. Who is this character, this desert wanderer to us who live in such security and certainty; such wealth and comfort? What might his story and his journey have to say to us?
The challenges we face in life are not all that different to the challenge to Abram. The challenge to find the life of God is as close to us as it was to him and so we can say that he is to us father and pattern of how to be in the world.
The book of Joshua tells us that Abram and his father Terah had come to Haran from the country to the east of the Euphrates river; that great river, now so utterly polluted and degraded, that flows through Baghdad. They and all their family and flocks and servants had set off for Canaan but Terah’s vision had ground to a halt in Haran and he settled there and prospered and became honoured amongst his fellows. A good place to be? Prosperity. A good place to stay? Honour. Well maybe. But Terah had lost that vision which caused him to leave his home. Maybe the same vision captured Abram and drew him on; and so he left everything following the call of God.
What has this story got to say to us? Well maybe we are like Abram stuck in Haran inside the dead shell of his father’s vision. To a great extent we inhabit a church which was our ancestors’ vision; they left places which were secure and familiar to them and journeyed toward a vision of a new place. But they stopped and got stuck in Christendom, thinking that they had arrived. the church hunkered down in a place which was comfortable and secure and in which it was honoured. It prospered and grew; their children became many and their vision of the church seemed to be fulfilled. Churches full, Sunday schools overflowing, a place of honour in society where Christian values seemed to undergird how things were. But like a mirage in the heat the vision disappeared and we seem to be left with a dim and tarnished memory of what was supposed to be.
Like Abram being called from the familiarity and prosperity of Haran we in the church seem to be being called to leave and set out across unfamiliar territory to a future which God will show us. But the frightening thing about the sense that we may be being called to leave is that we might never inhabit or possess the vision. We, like Moses, may die before entering the promised land. So why leave and give up all that identifies us? We are accustomed to this place, this church, these people, this pattern of worship, these hymns, or at least some of them. Why would we want to leave?
Abram was being called by God to leave what was familiar and give birth to an idea, a possibility; that’s all! In leaving, in travelling on by stages, he became the father of faith, siring children of faith as numerous as the stars in the sky.
As you will, I hope, know some from this congregation have been taking part in a conversation amongst the Uniting churches in the City of Manningham – Templestowe, Pilgrim - Doncaster, Doncaster East – formerly known as Deep Creek and Warrandyte. The week before this last one we had our fourth dinner together where we enjoyed food and wine and conversation. There has been an acknowledgment in our gathering that it will not be business as usual for us for much longer and that we need to consider what may be a more effective and dynamic future for the Uniting Church in Manningham.
We haven’t got very far yet; we’ve talked about what we each are doing; what we would like to do; what are the constraints on what we would like to do. We have talked about our hopes and our fears for the future of our churches. We’ve made no assumptions about what the future might look like nor what we might need to do to fix it, if indeed it needs, or can be fixed. What has staggered me is the spirit in which this conversation has commenced and continued. There doesn’t seem to be any sense from any church that “of course, ours would be an obvious regional church.” Any assumptions about outcome of our conversation would immediately kill it, dead in the water. There seems to be a sense that we don’t want to do this.
All congregations in the Uniting Church are going to need to do some very hard-nosed thinking in the next few years about their futures if they want to bequeath a legacy which will see the Uniting Church continue. But this hard-nosed thinking will need to have a sense of the call of God about it. Like Abram, gathering up his family and stock and servants we will need to gather up our assets and set off for a new place. Hopefully with a sense that it is God who is guiding us.
I have just finished acting as the presbytery convenor for the committee charged with the task of finding a new minister for the Warrandyte congregation. A new minister will commence a half-time placement there in October. It is interesting coming into a congregation as an outsider and seeing what they hope for and expect when it comes to seeking a new minister. There are often contradictory wishes for what a new person will bring. Some are realistic about the future and have a sense of vision leading on from where the congregation is at that time; some hope for a minister just like the really good one we had in the past – in the hope that they can return to the Golden Age; some carry an unconscious expectation that this next one will be the one. He, and it’s usually a he they hope for, will restore our fortunes. Things will go back to the way they were in – whenever it was.
The reality is that in the past 50 years our society has changed so dramatically; the church has not coped and adjusted to this change at all well. Most churches still operate much as a village church, with many believing that we need to be located in a particular place in order that people can walk to church. But this is not the reality of the situation. Most people in urban Melbourne don’t maintain relationships in the way that we did 50 years ago. We spread our affections and our loyalties over a broad landscape. But in the church we operate as though this is not so; and that things will return to the way they were. I doubt it.
While there may be a number of local village type churches in the pattern of the church we have known the churches of the future will be quite different. I expect that they will be bigger; containing a number of diverse congregations characterised by different worship styles. There will be effective ministry teams of both lay and ordained people consisting of, Deacon, youth and family workers, pastoral care workers and administrator and Minister of the Word, where the creative whole will be much greater than the sum of the parts. The model where one minister continues to be expected to be able to perform all tasks will come to an end. As in our secular work lives we are incredibly specialised so it will be in ministry. We need to wean ourselves off the delusional expectation that the minister must be able to do all things; ordained people as much as lay people will need to do this. And lay people will need to live out the vision of the Body of Christ where each gift has its corresponding service.
Some of us are probably feeling like we have done enough, that we are too old to change and do things differently. What’s the point, I haven’t got the energy. What’s the point; we were a success back then, but it’s all a bit of a disappointment. Even in our old age, like old Abram, we may be called to set out across the desert to claim God’s promise.
Maybe in many ways we are like the haemorrhaging woman. Bleeding for years, with the life flowing out of us, we reach out in our shame and exhaustion responding to a faith glimmer of hope which is called out of us by the presence of God. So often we hope that the life of faith will not cost us too much; that God might come to us, just where we are and not challenge all that we stand for. But alas, as we heard last week, Jesus says not everyone who calls me Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. To realise a new future for our UCA will be costly; of our comfort and loyalties our treasured memories and our sacred cows.
May God give us grace and courage as we contemplate the future and the will to claim it and so be for our descendants mothers and fathers of faithfulness.
Andrew Boyle
1 June 2008 - Third Sunday in Pentecost - Andrew Boyle
Genesis 6. 9-22, 7. 24, 8. 14-19
Matthew 7. 21-29
I find it difficult to know what to do with the story of Noah. It’s one of the first stories many of us might have heard and remember from Sunday School; but in many ways it is one of the most complex and ambiguous stories in scripture. While drawing or building an ark and sending the animals in two by two may be very good for a craft activity, God’s desire to destroy all people and the whole earth is not such a good theme to introduce small children to. If we want to tell small children this story and introduce them to this image of God how do we then couple this with the image of a loving God that so profoundly undergirds Jesus’ image of God. How then do we approach this ancient myth?
In many ways the Noah story is one of a pair of bookends; the other bookend is the creation story at the beginning of Genesis where the earth is brought into being over seven days. They are both by the same writer. In that first chronicle of the work of God the universe, the world and all that is in it, emerges out of chaos. God brings order and design into the chaos, creating the day and night, the seas and dry land, plants and forests, animals and birds and fish and finally people; image of the creator; man, imago dei. At the completion of all these works we are told: God is very pleased, and rests on the seventh day.
But as the Noah story takes shape we find that God is anything but pleased – and the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth; it grieved him to his heart. And so the one man Noah is set apart and takes into the ark all the animals after their kind; echoing the words of the creation story, the forming of all the species of creation after their kind. And as Noah hides himself and his family within the protection of the ark chaos returns; inundating all things. The dome of the heavens which keeps back the waters at creation breaks down and the earth is subjected to the great deluge. This Noah story is really a bookend to the creation story; a collapse; a breaking down; a return to chaos.
For so many of us who have been told this story when we were young it is a story which insinuates itself into our psyches, leaving us with the sense that there is always the lurking possibility that God will again abandon the created order and permit it to return to chaos. Or that there will be a judgement, a final audit; a weighing up of the good and evil. It is a way of thinking which lies behind so much Jewish thought. So Paul in writing to the Romans conceives of creation groaning as it waits for the revealing of the children of God. And the Christian affirmation that the Christ will return again in glory conceives a universe which is finite and will be subjected to God’s intervention once again; this time in a glorious victory for the righteous Son of Man and his disciples. In today’s Gospel reading Jesus speaks of “that day” when many will say to him “Lord, Lord”. Images of judgement day and a divine balancing up echo in our ears.
Certainly my Sunday School experience was that, purposely or simply by circumstances, this story of the flood was woven into an image of a fickle divinity who could be pleased and displeased with my good and bad behaviour – and that therefore I should then behave; God like a giant sort of moral policeman. An effective means for moral control but maybe not one so well fashioned for enabling us to experience the divine in real and life shaping ways. I think the mistake of telling this story to modern children is that it is a story which is not written for little individualists but for ancient people in a collective society.
What we were certainly never told in Sunday School is that there are two stories of the flood woven together over 3 or so chapters in Genesis. Similar stories but with fairly major differences in detail. The one which we know so well and have heard today has the animals going into the ark in convenient pairs – especially handy for art and craft activities. But the other Noah story has the animals going in in sevens, along with another pair for sacrifice – or maybe for eating through the ordeal endured by Noah and his family. And there are discrepancies in where the water came from and how long it fell or surged for and for the time the waters took to recede. And very importantly there is a difference in the name for God in these two stories. In one account the name of God is YHWH; in the other it is Elohim. Each writer has their particular reason for shaping the story the way they do. And these flood stories sit amongst a veritable library of flood stories in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. It would seem that there must have been a flood, maybe even a tsunami, which inundated much of the known world at some stage. There is both archaeological evidence and documentary evidence that that there was certainly a very major flood thought the fertile crescent, Mesopotamia; modern day Iraq. Certainly this flood didn’t cover the whole earth as we know it, but certainly it covered the known earth for writers from many cultures;
What the ancient Hebrew writers do with the memory of the flood is to struggle with the question of evil in the world, as we so often do in the face of a tragic natural disaster. I haven’t been aware of it in the face of the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China but after the tsunami in 2005 there were many voices who said that it was an act of punishment from God.
This conclusion is inevitable in a sense if we insist on reading these ancient accounts as history; as stories of how it was and what God did; of how God was involved in what happened back then - however long ago it was. If we read this as God’s actual intervention in the world then the conclusion that God lashes out will always lurk for us; personally, corporately, globally.
What we do see in this Noah story is a God who is in some ways human; who displays human characteristics. A God who gets angry and exasperated; who expresses regret and sorrow; who feels compassion. This is not easy for us to conceive. Because we hope for a God who is not fickle like us; who does not exhibit our own lack of faith and the unpredictability of our own loyalties and loves. And we see a God who makes promises and enters into covenant with people.
What these earliest stories in Genesis especially struggle with are the questions about what is; what has always been; what will always be. Struggling with question of why the world is the way it is; the question of the human condition.
This bookend of the Noah story and the world gone to ruin is the opposite bookend to the vision of the very good creation. I think maybe this story in its obscure way is exploring: what might it mean to contemplate that God feels pain and sadness for the violence and suffering in the world. The writer is saying let me tell you a story about a God who made a good world and feels pain about the way it is. If we can envision a God who suffers with our suffering how might we respond? How might we then choose to live? If we read this story as history it’s more difficult to see this question lying dormant, waiting to be asked.
What we don’t hear from the Noah story unless we choose to read on either side of the account that the lectionary gives us is that Noah turns out to be not much better than his drowned fellows. Almost immediately after the story he is drunk, debauched, naked and an embarrassment to his children. Things are as they always have been for the righteous Noah already.
As a preacher I feel very deep regret that the church has not sought to bring hearers of stories such as the Noah story from a way of seeing this as an event in real time a long time ago into a way of seeing this as a story which happens in every time. Much of our bewilderment and angst as people of faith in hearing scripture is that we are trapped in a literalist mindset and cannot plunge into the text deep enough to drink the deep deep waters which speak to us of God and our own human predicament. Hence we struggle to be able to use scripture as it was intended; rather, even as adults, hear these stories as we were told to hear them when we were seven and so fail to grow into a mature faith and so be able to reflect on our own lives and our own times.
These stories are exploring ways of dealing with the ambiguity of life and the universe. Why is there evil; why do the wicked prosper; why is the earth so violent and unpredictable and destructive of human life – and surely many are struggling with this question after the events of recent weeks; will there ever be an end to the seeming futility of humanity’s existence? Might there be another place and time where there will be peace and order and universal goodwill?
The rainbow of promise doesn’t appear in the Noah story we have heard today but in the other story with the animals in groups of seven. But for an ancient people without the help of all the technological power we have a tsunami or catastrophic cyclone or some other event would surely test their faith about the goodness of the created world. And so the storyteller weaves into the story the promise of the rainbow that the world will never again be destroyed. But we know that earthquakes and cyclones do happen and that sometimes life is a vale of tears. But the rainbow reminds us of the very tender heart of God who feels for his people and their pain.
Most profoundly we see this heart of God in the life of Jesus and so we give thanks for him and the grace of God that we receive through him and the hope we bear in being followers of his way.
Andrew Boyle
10 February 2008 - First Sunday in Lent - Andrew Boyle
As we embark on the 40 day Lenten journey to Easter we hear of Jesus 40 days’ testing in the wilderness. We are invited to reflect on our own discipleship in the pattern of how it is that Jesus’ obedience to the Father is worked out in this time in the desert. Immediately before Jesus entry to the desert is his baptism; and we hear the voice from heaven: This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
So far in his gospel Matthew has set up a sort of comparison between Israel and Jesus. He will be Immanuel: God with us. He is the one to be called Son of God: he will go down into Egypt, as Israel did, and return to establish the renewed Israel, living out the law with compassion. HE is to be the beloved son. But before this can be revealed to Israel he is tested in the wilderness for 40 days, as Israel was tested for 40 years, and failed.
As our pattern and guide we regularly need to return to this testing of Jesus to see what is the crux of what it means to be faithful to Jesus’ vision of God. For many of will have all sorts of ideas of what it means to be Christian and what is the true measure of our faith. Most of us will probably have had many people and occasions when some idea has been put before us or thrust in our faces about what is the true faith – often with a resort to scripture as the basis of the argument. Notice that as Jesus is tested, it is with scripture that the devil attempts to divert him from his goal. Not with drink or drugs or dancing girls but simply with the perversion of scripture.
Located early in his gospel this testing of Jesus’ mettle is foundational to what Matthew is going to tell us about this Jesus and the good news he brings.
Three things is Jesus presented with:
In going to the desert and fasting for 40 days Jesus goes to a place of utter emptiness and vulnerability. This is a place of complete depletion where one’s human resources are expended and the membrane between life and death is thin. But in truth the going to death here is the symbolic death which we must all face if we are to enter the life of the kingdom; where the death of the ego comes about and we begin to live a life which is sustained by every word which comes from the mouth of God.
This wilderness experience is not something we choose of our own free will. It’s not the sort of place we choose to go to. Maybe for us it comes about through some period of unwelcome suffering. Mark’s gospel tells us that following his baptism Jesus is thrown out in to the desert by the spirit. He doesn’t choose; he has no choice. And yet he doesn’t rail and squeal: it’s not fair; but meets the testing face to face.
Command these stones to become loaves of bread. We live in society where our bellies are full and we live in supreme comfort but are starving for the word of the Lord to feed our souls. In our efforts to feed ourselves and enjoy this comfort we contribute to creating a world which is unjust and profoundly out of step with the vision of the gospel. There is no sense that Jesus is concerned with his followers’ personal morality but with God’s vision of justice and mercy lived out in our communal relationships.
Throw yourself down, because on their hands his angels will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. In Jesus’ time, as now, there is a deep temptation for us to demand that God prove himself. SO often in our crises we can be reduced to plea-bargaining; if you just get me out of this God I’ll devote my life to you, or I’ll pray more or go to church more. Do not put the Lord your God to the test – it won’t do you any good. I suppose one of my misgivings about so-called successful churches is that they seem to be about putting God to the test: enumerating stories of healings and conversions and financial success as sign of God’s malleability to our need for pleasure. A sort of side-show God.
Fall down and worship me. In our desire to be successful, to achieve status, to be recognised we sell out to the devil. The temptation for Jesus is to be a success; to achieve status commensurate with his title Son of God, the longed for Messiah. He could achieve peace on earth, enter Jerusalem on a white charger, gain power and status and stroke the desire for respect that those around him sought. But the path of the beloved Son is to shun these things. As it is for us. The secret to finding our place is not to seek success but to follow our path, our calling, to take up our cross, as Jesus did.
Just as an aside I ask: Is Jesus talking to a real flesh-and-blood devil here, or is something else going on? Is “the devil” metaphor for all that would divert us from the life of the kingdom? Can we say that this forty day event really happened in this way? Probably not. But we can say that it always happens. The number 40 is symbolic of testing: for Moses, for Elijah, for Israel, for Jesus. We can know that it happened because the same testing can happen for us if we enter into and join in solidarity with Jesus seeking of the life of the kingdom. Whether we call the testing by the name “the devil” or something else is really neither here nor there. As we move more deeply into the spiritual life the real question is whether we will take the path into the wilderness and so meet the challenge.
Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan, writes:
we all have to start from the assumption that our path too leads into the wilderness and that we have to look exactly the same three demons in the eye: the need to be successful, the need to be righteous or religious, and the need to have power and get everything under control. Until we have stared down these three demons within us, there is no possibility of getting out of the wilderness and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Otherwise we’ll always be proclaiming our own kingdom. [When] We use the gospel for our own ends then the inner and the outer ways spilt apart. God calls us to take the path of the inner truth – and that means taking responsibility for everything that’s in us ; for what pleases us and what we’re ashamed of, for the rich person inside of us and for the poor one. Francis of Assisi calls this: Loving the leper within us.” If we learn to love the poor one within us, we’ll discover that we have room for compassion outside too, that there’s room in us for others, for those who are different from us, for the least among our brothers and sisters.
This refining of Jesus takes place to some extent against his will. For Matthew and Mark and Luke place this testing of Jesus’ integrity before his ministry can begin. As it is, in a sense, what needs to take place before any of us can begin to live with a sense that we are able to live out our true vocation. In the long wisdom of the church we are offered the discipline of Lent as a time when we can structure some wilderness time and focus on questions by which we might be refined. The making of time and space in our lives will be honoured by the spirit. Our lives are pretty much shaped and dominated by the calendar year: work and school and other commitments and holidays. But if we allow the rhythm of the church year to enter into the pattern of our living then just possibly we might be affected by its call. I am always deeply impressed by the commitment of Moslems and Jews as they enter into the disciplines of their forty day fasts. They support and encourage each other as they do with less and are attentive to the needs of others in need. We have a lot to re-learn from them.
May God give us grace and courage to face our own inner death when we are presented with it so that we can enter the life of the kingdom and so be joined into that unity which Father, Son and Holy Spirit enjoy.
Christmas Eve 2007 - Andrew Boyle
One of the things that’s a bit confusing abut Christmas is the sort of Christmas bouillabaisse that we get served up as the nativity story. Everything gets pitched in together into a steaming yuletide pot – Mary and Joseph, the baby Jesus, shepherds, angels, wise men, inn-keeper, the archangel Gabriel, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, the murderous Herod; even Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny, and Ronald Macdonald if we’re lucky. So many ingredients that any distinctive taste is completely lost. It sort of reflects our contemporary obsession with choice; we must have as much choice as possible; and when we are so overwhelmed by the choices that we can’t choose we then seem to choose to have absolutely everything.
So it’s good to hear just one version of the birth story of Jesus on its own and ponder it and what the writer is trying to say. Each of the gospel writers are trying to say something about Jesus in their own way; and they choose to tell their story in their particular way for their particular reason. It’s good to separate out the bits , turn them over a bit and wonder about them.
In Matthew’s birth story Joseph and Mary actually live in Bethlehem; there is no journey on the back of the donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem – they’re there already; there is no census to bring them there, no inn, no stable. There are no shepherds, no angels; no archangel Gabriel announcing the birth to Mary. These are the elements of Luke’s story. In Matthew there is simply the discovery that Mary is pregnant and Joseph’s dream to let him know that the child is the child of God. The magi come later and the flight to Egypt and the slaughter of the innocents.
In many ways Matthew is very spare. For Matthew the announcement of the birth and the birth itself carry with it a deep foreboding – all along, from the very beginning, the life of this child is under threat. The threat from the jealous King Herod is obvious to us but the first and greater threat is to the life of the mother Mary. Joseph’s response to the news that Mary is pregnant seems harmless enough: she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. Yes we might say: seems like a gentlemanly sort of thing to do. A reasonable sort of chap this Joseph.
What Joseph was unwilling to expose Mary to was probably death by public stoning. Now maybe Joseph was a just and gentle man and found abhorrent the idea that his betrothed would be stoned to death. But the Law of Leviticus actually required that an unmarried woman who was found to be pregnant should be killed by stoning. Quite probably all the town would have looked to Joseph to do the right thing by the religious law which required the purging of a woman in Mary’s predicament from the midst of them. But something else was going on here.
This man and this woman would have known each other for some time; their parents would have arranged their marriage a long time in the past; they were more than likely related in some way. Their marriage would have cemented social, family and economic ties and made sure that the honour and position of their families was maintained. But a young bride, pregnant out of wedlock would have brought all this undone. The groom was entitled to revenge; the groom’s family was entitled to revenge; the town would be entitled to their outrage.
But not so with this young woman and this mysterious child she carries. Already he is making his presence felt. Cutting through oppressive religious rules. Already the grace we see extended to the outcasts of Israel in Jesus’ ministry is at work. Already we see the unconditional love of God’s spirit at work.
At our December elders’ meeting we were talking about the confusion around Christmas; the mix up of images and messages. Was Christmas about being good or was it about a God of unconditional love bursting in on the scene?
During our discussion I recalled an occurrence from my childhood each year as Christmas approached. My uncle was our grocer – this was in the days when grocers delivered the goods. Every Thursday evening my Uncle would deliver our groceries. He would drop these off on his way home from work. Usually we were sitting down at the dinner table. He would come through the door, box of groceries on his shoulder, with his big corpulent belly preceding him.
Now, so we were told, our Uncle Arthur was a friend of Father Christmas and as Christmas approached he would check up on how we were behaving. Had we been good enough to receive presents? Diligently he noted down the behaviour that our parents related to him in his little black book; and, so we believed, he reported this to Father Christmas.
Now we were a church family; uncle Arthur was the superintendent of the Sunday school; and it was all a bit of a game. One of those make-believe sort of games where you’re really not quite sure if this is for real or not, but there’s a sort of frission created by the game.
So here we were playing this game about whether we were good enough to receive presents based upon our behaviour – good children get gifts, bad children do not; so toe the line.
Now the trouble with this mix-up was that it was all tied up with Christmas and this baby in the manger. Now this might have been alright if the baby in the manger and the prophet he grew to be was on about coercing people to be good. Good in the sort of ways parents often coerce children to be, so that they don’t make too much trouble or blemish the family’s reputation. But Jesus chose a family arrangement which seemed to be designed to create the maximum amount of trouble and strife and public embarrassment. This family set-up chosen by God was the last place to be chosen by a God intent on making us respectable and coercing us to toe the line.
The great tragedy for the church is that it has from time to time got the Good News really mixed up. We have preached a message that God’s love depends on whether we are good enough. We have turned God into a rather miserable Father Christmas sort of figure. Concerned about our respectability, our moral goodness, concerned abut whether we toed the line, concerned about which side of the tracks we were born on. Let me tell you that nothing could be further from the truth of the Gospel. The good news is that God was born into our midst totally on the wrong side of the tracks.
As the people for whom Matthew wrote his gospel heard this first report about what the angel asked Joseph to do their ears would have pricked up. Because this was not how they understood God to be. They understood that women, pregnant and out of wedlock were to be stoned to death. They knew that this was so, that God was like this, because there were his laws in the Book of the Law – the Book of Leviticus. If the God of this Jesus person was not like this then what was this God like?
The immense religious and social and cultural implications of this were cataclysmic; earth shattering. If God breaks through what we believe is the religious law - then what? Where do we stand if we are no longer under judgment of the religious law, or our cultural mores; how do we stand before God?
For many of us we still haven’t broken through the barrier that the Good News in Jesus Christ intends us to break through. We rely on an understanding of our acceptability before God and each other based upon our goodness; our obedience; our social conformity. This is not good news. This is the death which living under the law the apostle Paul so often speaks of. A living death of toeing the line rather than living in the freedom in which God made us.
This birth story challeges the way in which we can approach scripture: it says to us that we can’t just take any piece of scripture willy-nilly and say that because it’s in the Bible then it must be right; must be adhered to. The church proclaims that in Jesus we find God fully present. So that through him and the way he proclaims we find access to the mind and heart and will of God. He then becomes the lens through which we see God. The Word made flesh.
It challenges us when some parts of the church still want to say that women are of a second class when it comes to do with matters to do with God. It challenges us when we want to condemn women pregnant and out of marriage; or people who find themselves to be homosexual. The birth of this child out of wedlock challenges our fundamentalisms about God. From the very first the way in which Matthew begins to tell us the story of Jesus is that he sets the scene by letting his hearers know that this child is going to turn things on their head. So, watch this space, he says, in effect to his readers.
In the carol, O come all ye faithful, we sing the words:
Child for us sinners, poor and in the cradle
fain we embrace thee with love and awe,
who would not love thee, loving us so dearly.
We can be tempted to think that this is a cutesy baby we might be hoping to embrace. Not so. By his vulnerability he confronts us with our attachment to law rather than grace; our attachment to bondage over freedom. It is the challenge to us right throughout our lives to always seek the freedom of this God who enters the world through the most undesirable of circumstances.
And this is the good news; that whoever we are, whatever our station, whatever we have done; wherever we have failed; whatever we think or have been told is unacceptable about us, the grace of God is for us. The vulnerability displayed by God in choosing this place and this family and their circumstances to enter the world is sign of what sort of God this is; the sort of saviour we are dealing with.
One who cuts through our measures of success and respectability and, as always, stakes his claim for the poor and the marginalised, the outcast, and who, in his very being says: I am good news for you!
May the spirit of grace which has come into the world in Christ Jesus give you joy and peace as you contemplate this good news and how this might be made flesh in your life.
Glory be to the father …
Christmas Day 2007 - Andrew Boyle
I wonder if you managed to say no, maybe once during Advent. I find it incredibly difficult to say no in the lead up to Christmas. Everybody in some form or other wants a bit of me. IS this way it is for you? Party invitations; school and work and social group break-ups - usually involving a fair amount of overeating and drinking too much; demands to get that job finished by Christmas; an urge to get that much wanted or needed thing by the 25th. It’s hard work! And combined with the anxiety that many of us experience around the juggling of family politics and pecking orders over the celebration of Christmas it’s just not a very peaceful time. The lead up to Christmas is like a sort of mini-apocalypse; where everything must be toted up and completed before the big day. No wonder many of us are exhausted by the time we reach the 25th.
In the past the season of Advent, the four Sunday’s before Christmas Day, were a period of introspection and waiting, like Lent. That’s why the colour for Advent is purple as it is for Lent. A time when people made do with less while they reflected on what it meant to anticipate the coming of God into the world in the Christ-child. Nothing could be further from the truth now. As a person who is endeavouring to seek God in my living everything seems to mitigate against this happening. How could I get off the bandwagon I wonder? Because I actually want to. And wanting to and feeling impotent to actually effect any change in my life makes me wonder if I have any power over my existence at all.
And it’s raised a wider question for me: how do we all, or a large number of us, get off the band-wagon if we want to? It feels like the merry-go-round is getting faster and faster each year. Or maybe I’m just getting older and more miserable.
We have just lived through a year where, possibly like no time ever before, humanity has come to know that we must get off the merry-go-round, or at least slow it down seriously, before we spin out of control. The issue of global-warming is the pressing ethical issue facing the whole of humanity. Ulike any issue ever before it is confronting every one of us on the globe. Substantially, it has to do with the way we, in the so called developed world, have come to live. Our over consumption of material goods, our use of energy, our use of food and the way we transport ourselves around our cities and around the globe is hurtling us toward the brink. And I’ve got to say that Christmas is tied up with all of this because it has become a bit like the annual event which celebrates our ability to splurge to excess. Christmas has become an expression of our power to be extravagantly wasteful. All, it seems, in the name of this baby.
I find it difficult to feel positive about Christmas because in some perverted way it has become symbolic of everything that is leading us toward oblivion rather than leading us into meaning and a deeper sense of God.
The utter banality of so much of what we do at Christmas has been revealed in figures in the last few weeks about how many unwanted or useless gifts are bought at Christmas. Apparently Australians spend $950 million on unwanted and useless Christmas gifts each year. To put it into perspective this is enough to employ 19,000 people at $50,000 per year. This amount of money would go a long way to fixing a lot of things.
Our priorities are seriously out of kilter. Now maybe you hoped to come here this morning for a bit of unapologetic warm and fuzzy about the baby Jesus. I’ve got say though I am finding it difficult to know how to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child in the midst of all of this. It feels like our existence is under threat and because of that it feels like it just can’t be business as usual.
I got to wonder about how people in churches celebrated Christmas in the past when their existence was under threat; usually I suppose this was when nations were at war. The threat in war is usually much easier to identify; the enemy to rally together against; a focus for prayers and hopes. The trouble in this urgent crisis we are facing is that we are the enemy. We only have ourselves to accuse. It’s our own way of living which is needing to be challenged and reformed. It is going to require some tough thinking, some tough decisions together, and the mobilisation of corporate and political will. Something we are not accustomed to doing any longer.
Our economic and political systems have isolated us from each other and pitted us in a conflict over getting ahead; at least maintaining parity with the Jones. As communities we need to begin to reconnect with a sense of the common good foremost in our minds and wills; the good of the earth; the good of each other; the good of all the citizens of the earth.
Al Gore in his acceptance speech upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize said last week: “In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free. Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between me and we, creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.
We must, he says, abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action.”
Will this global crisis unite us or divide us? Will our leaders get beyond the prevarication and point scoring of Bali and its successors? And what does all of this have to do with the baby Jesus and what it means to be a people of faith?
What this child calls us to is a living which goes beyond self –interest. He calls us to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul; and your neighbour as yourself. It is a living which calls us to love our selves first in the light of being children of God. And our loving ourselves in this knowledge calls us beyond any human measure of our worth to the divine measure of our worth and the promise that God in Jesus desires to make his home with us. In this knowledge and self-understanding we are called to love our neighbour. And our love of neighbour becomes an act of the whole person: an act of heart and mind and soul. Jesus calls us beyond economic self-interest, or security concerns and beyond our national interest, or the interest of this generation and its welfare only. This global crisis calls us to the deepest ethical response that we can make. It requires profound cooperation and goodwill and forbearance; nothing less will see us succeed.
It is beholden on all people of faith to plumb the depths of their faith-traditions to find those resources which will enable us to make this change; and to make it with peace and goodwill. For us as Christians there are the resources for us to do this. But we need to move away from our sense of privilege; move away from our sense that our level of consumption is somehow our right; that we and our children need to live the way we do in order to achieve our potential and enjoy the fruits of our success. Because our self-obsession is destroying the earth. We need to be deeply conscious of the ways in which we live impacts on others in the world and on the earth itself.
Here the vulnerability of God in the Christ-child – poor and in the manger – challenges us to be attentive; the vulnerability of God in Christ on the cross challenges us to be attentive, to how God has been willing to place himself in our hands. We have not treated him well. And our ill-treatment confronts us with our sin and calls us to live differently. He does not, he will not force us into compliance but invites us to respond to him; walk in his way and find life. The earth, God’s good creation, will not retaliate in the way in which we do to each other. It quietly receives our blows as Christ received his accusers blows. We need to learn to live differently.
We need to live in a way which is as a joyful response to a new born child - with a sense of wonder and privilege for the gift of a child. Not a thing to own; not a person to make in our own image but one in the image of the eternal God. In the same way we need to live in relationship to the earth; in joyful response to the giftedness of creation and its reflection of God.
May God give us the will and the wit to do this.
Easter 4 29 April 2007
Acts of the Apostles 9. 36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7. 9-17
John 10. 22-30
I want to invite you to imagine.
You are at the Shrine of Remembrance. Standing in one of the colonnades. It’s the afternoon before ANZAC Day. The school children who are bussed in every year on this day are gone. It’s quiet now except for the sound of the city in retreat. People starting to make their way home in preparation for a quiet day; maybe not a day actively taking part in ANZAC Day, but at least spending a quiet day; a sort of day of respect. It’s that moment in the year when we remember. The shrine in St Kilda Rd focal point of our state’s remembering; each little local monument as site of our local remembering, bearing the names of those sons and daughters who gave much for our national security. You’re there in the colonnade and it’s hard not to remember; lest we forget.
It was on an afternoon a bit like the afternoon before ANZAC Day that our reading from the gospel of John comes to us. Jesus is in the colonnade at the side of the temple just before the feast of The Dedication. And the Jews, John tells us, gathered around Jesus and ask him. How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly?
You see the feast of the Dedication is the feast remembering the dedication of the rebuilt temple. Two hundred years before Israel had been overrun and occupied by the Greeks; and their leader had set up in the temple an altar to the Greek god Zeus over the altar, centrepiece of Jewish worship. It was the place at the heart of Israel’s national and religious identity. The occupying Greeks had defiled the temple. Blasphemy of blasphemies struck at the heart of Israel; an altar to another God; whose graven image defiled the holy of holies. The feast of the Dedication remembered the victory of the Maccabees routing the Greeks; remembered the cleansing of the temple; its rededication to the worship of the one true God. The Temple of Jesus’ time was like a giant gold encrusted shoe box laying on it side on the crest of Mt Zion; built by Herod the great it was symbol that God was on the side of the people of Israel. Focal point of the life of the whole country its reflected light would have blinded the traveller at first sight of the city. A bit like the shrine glimpsed down St Kilda Rd; apex of the city. Focal point of identity.
Jesus: If you are the Messiah tell us plainly? Here we are, occupied by the Romans. Will you liberate us like our forefathers the Maccabees? Will you restore our national dignity? Here we are: it is the feast of the Dedication. Remember. Are you the one who is to come; or should we look for another?
I don’t often feel uncomfortable in a public place but you know I cringe when a man clanking a tin collecting for Legacy comes near me; or there’s a forlorn old digger with a tray of poppies in a cold draughty spot raising money for the welfare of returned men and women. National heroes. Privatised and out-sourced repatriation. I cringe because I feel like I’ve given enough. A dad whose life was scarred forever by his war experience. A man who was not quite as he should have been. What he should have been like I’ll never know; he probably didn’t know himself.
I cringe because the old man with the tray of poppies in the draughty spot feels like these days he’s being wheeled out on ANZAC Day to prop up our national ego, our Aussie spirit, and then put back behind closed doors for yet another year for him to bear in silence the scars which will not heal. And I feel mad as hell. Because politicians still seek to prop up their own image by sacrificing sons and daughters and truth and real priorities. Sacrifice to the God national identity; to the war we are told is necessary for our safety.
I’m mad because our young men and women were sent away; many did not come back; still more came back visibly scarred and maybe more brutally invisibly scarred and expected to blend back into the crowd, maintaining their silence; except maybe for the one day of the year. But they still have to fight; fight for their dignity; fight for just compensation and recognition of the debilitating injuries, physical and mental and spiritual, that they carry.
Jesus responds to his questionaries: I have told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.
Jesus stands against our nationalisms that would see God dragged into our conflicts. Jesus hangs there on the cross and confronts the lies and injustices to our own people and the peoples of others countries justified by the notion that God is somehow on our side. Jesus’ questioners want him to be the Messiah, mounted on the charger, focussing sentiment against the Romans; but he will not be their pawn. The works which I do in the Father’s name testify to me. As Jesus says as he stands before Pilate: if my kingdom were from this world my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.
We are in the midst of hearing a series of readings from the Revelation to John, that ultimate work of apocalyptic imagery that scripture gives us; that goldmine for religious fantasy-makers. Waves of language confront our senses washing over the hearer and stunning us. Images of people washed white in the blood; colliding ideas of the sacrificed lamb on the throne being both sovereign and shepherd. The revelation of John was written at a time when Christians were undergoing extreme persecution in what is modern day Turkey. Because they would not utter the words Caesar is Lord, but rather proclaimed that Jesus is Lord, they were fair game for persecution, for torture and execution. They would not get themselves involved in the violence of the state but refused, on pain of death, to ascribe lordship to Caesar but instead ascribed blessing, glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honour, power and might to the God of Jesus Christ alone. The works which I do in the Father’s name testify to me.
Stanley Hauerwas, an American theologian, tells a story in one LTQ episodes about an article he wrote entitled: Why Gays are Morally Superior to Christians. He argued that this was so because gays as a group had managed to get themselves banned from the American military. He questioned why Christians, so-called disciples of the Prince of Peace, had not managed to likewise get themselves banned from the military. He asked what sort of problems would it create if Christians were less accommodating about our faith. What would it do to military morale if Christian soldiers gathered before battle to pray for their enemies; if soldiers in the ranks questioned the ethics of the sort of things which have heard have happened in Iraq; if they refused to be involved in torture. Very difficult to run a war with people like this in the ranks. God used to be an Englishman but I think he’s an American now. But I’m not sure what Jesus would say about that. Well maybe we can be sure; it’s just that we often don’t want to hear with clarity what it is he calls us to; understandably, because it is costly. No question about that.
The vision to John reminds us of the cost. Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
The spilt blood of the lamb, of God’s self, confronts us with the world’s penchant for violence, for making victims, for taking our best and fairest and sacrificing them to our bloodlust. Maybe we pride ourselves on not being violent personally but what do we say about yet another war waged in far off places in our name which by the weakest of arguments is any of our business? As one Turk asked an Australian tourist at Gallipoli this week: why did your soldiers come here? Are we willing to hear and bear the stories and suffering which soldiers carry to their graves and so share some of the moral cost and responsibility of war? What do we say when a proper repentant remembrance of ANZAC Day instead becomes a vehicle for a nationalistic jingoism disconnected from the very real human suffering that war brings.
The image of the crucified God hanging on the cross, the sacrifice of the one we know as the Lamb of God, confronts us with our own human capacity for violence; personally or at arms length. Confronts us with the question: will we continue to be part of the violence which will even kill one who is so full of the love and wisdom of God as this one? The resurrected Jesus returns to the disciples and he says: look, let’s continue this project of bringing God’s kingdom in heaven here on earth; do you want to be part of it?
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.’
Andrew Boyle
Tina Lyndon - Sunday 22nd April
Transformed by Jesus
Several weeks ago Jan Higgins told me an amazing story.
One night her son and daughter-in-law were driving along the mountain highway, from Yarra Glen to their property in Toolangi, and suddenly this huge black thing came running down the road, straight towards their car. Luckily they managed to swerve in time and not hit it. They pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car and got out. It turned out to be a huge black dog, some kind of greyhound cross. They thought he’d got out, so they put him in the car and took him up a side road and left him there, so he had less chance of running into another car. Then they drove home.
Next morning the dog was waiting outside the back door. He’d followed them home. Jan’s son tried to find the dog’s owner and advertised widely. But no one claimed him and they quickly discovered why. He had a dreadful bark which was very annoying and loud. So loud, the neighbours on their farms far away up the road could hear him. And he was silly and had absolutely no training. He was a bit of a dud dog. But they kept him and named him Rex and loved him.
Most of you know Jan’s son trains pure breed husky’s for sleigh races. Ecunumba, who make dog food, sponsor the dogs and they have to win to keep the sponsorship. One day Jan’s son took Rex and a Husky to the state forest and hooked them up to this scooter and off they went. Rex discovered he loved pulling the scooter and racing. He turned out to be very fast, so fast Jan’s son trained him. Next winter he joined all the husky’s for sleigh races, and he won and kept on winning. Now he is a champion racer and the meal ticket for the other Husky’s at home. Now he is called Rex the wonder dog. But he still has his silly moments, like bathing in the fish pond and almost emptying it. Luckily the fish survived. Jan wonders what he’ll get up to next.
But this is a story about a dog. What about people?
Today we hear the stories of Peter, Paul and Ananias.
First of all there’s Peter.
He impulsive and fearful and denied Jesus three times and deserted him. Any of the disciples around him may have thought he was a bit of dud.
After Jesus dies and then is resurrected and appears before the disciples, Peter’s returned to Galilee and Lake Tiberius. He’s gone fishing, back to his old profession. He thinks it’s all over. And the other disciples join him.
We hear they fish all night and catch nothing and try again in the morning and someone calls out from the shore of the lake and advises them where to fish and they catch fish, lots of them. That’s when John recognises the man standing on the shore, is Jesus. He calls out: It is the Lord!
Sure enough Peter doesn’t wait for the boat to get there. He leaps into the water and swims to shore. And when Jesus asks for some of the fish they caught, to cook for breakfast, Peter grabs hold of the net and pulls it out of the water onto the beach. He sounds very excited and enthusiastic. He must have been a very strong man because he pulled in a net full of large fish, 153 of them.
What if you were one of the disciples and thought Jesus was dead and there he was – standing on the shores of the lake – in front of you, giving instructions on where to fish and you catch a large amount of fish in your net and then realise its him. Jesus!
We must meet Jesus in the same way as the disciples did. Maybe not face to face in the flesh, but face to face when we encounter him in the gospel, with excitement and wonder and enthusiasm.
Now after breakfast Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him and each time Peter says he loves him, Jesus explains what he is called to do. The third time Jesus asks, Peter feels hurt. We know Peter denied Jesus three times. Perhaps Peter examines his heart each time that Jesus asks these questions and there is a moment of conversion. Then Jesus says: Follow me. I’m sure those words would have sunk deep into Peters heart and soul.
As you know, Peter became a courageous leader in the Church, one of its founder’s, who led thousands to Christ.
You also heard today’s story about Saul who is knocked off his horse into the dust.
And while he is lying there he hears a voice:
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
Notice how Saul asks: Who are you, Lord?
He knows who it is. Saul was a devout Jew who loved God.
But it’s Jesus who appears to Saul and says:
I am Jesus who you are persecuting. Now get up and go into city and you will be told what you must do.
But when Saul gets up, he’s blind. For three days he’s blind and he doesn’t eat anything. We don’t know what happened to Saul during those three days.
Perhaps it was a tomb experience, with resurrection at the end of that time. Perhaps that tells us a little about what conversion is about.
It’s a bit like being knocked off a horse.
Some profound shock happens to us, which confronts us and allows God to break into our lives.
That shock could be an illness, a death in the family, a spiritual encounter of some kind when were praying, or we may be helping someone else who is experiencing hardship or illness, or were made redundant or face a life passage such as beginning university, giving birth to our first child or retirement or going into a retirement village.
This shock may or may not be overwhelming, but lets say it’s like Saul’s was.
What if it temporarily blinds us and we can’t live our lives as we usually do. What if we had to depend on others to care for us for a little while or we needed time to adjust or time out. Like Saul did.
The men travelling with Saul had to lead him into Damascus and care for him for three days in the house of Judas on Straight Street.
After that Saul was prayed for and healed and filled with the Holy Spirit an something like scales fell off his eyes and he could see.
Perhaps at the end of a period of deep conversion people need prayer, to be able to be healed and shown where to go next in their lives.
Then Saul was baptised. After he was baptised he ate for the first time in three days. He rested and nurtured himself and was cared for by others and after he regained his strength, he was ready to journey on in a different way…..
It seems conversion is hard work.
Now while resting and regaining his strength, Saul spends time with the disciples.
Then Saul begins to preach in the synagogues of Damascus that:
Jesus in the Son of God.
Saul has been transformed.
From breathing out murderous threats against the Lords disciples and seeking them out and arresting them and taking them to Jerusalem and putting them in prison, mostly likely to meet a violent death.
From speaking to the High Priest in Jerusalem and asking for letters to the Synagogues in Damascus that allowed him to arrest any disciples that belonged to the Way, who were following Jesus.
Now,here he is preaching in those synagogues, that Jesus is the son of God. Surely he won’t be arresting himself, now that he is a disciple of Jesus and belongs to the Way.
Who would have thought Saul would end up being one of the most important founders of the Church whose letters would be published in the bible and would found our faith in Jesus.
Finally we have the story of Ananias?
The Lord speaks to him in a vision.
He asks him to go to Saul who is praying and in a vision has seen that a man named Ananias will come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.
Ananias responds in a way that’s a little like Moses responded to Gods call.
He argues with Jesus.
He asks: How can I go to help a man like Saul?
He’s afraid because he’s heard all about Saul in reports from others who say he’s violent and persecutes and arrests Christians and throws them into prison and they die.
To go and pray for him he has to call on the name of the Lord. If he does this he will reveal to Saul he is Christian. And Saul is arresting everyone who calls on the name of Jesus
But the Lord says Go! The Lord explains to Ananias about Saul’s call and is convinced of his own. He had faith in the ability of God to transform people.
So with great courage Ananias obeys the Lord. He goes to Saul and calls him Brother. He says that Jesus who appeared to you on the road has sent me, so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps Ananias is a little like some of us.
We feel drawn to wanting to do something, to help someone, to respond to God, to the gospel. But we have to come to some understanding of what we are going to do first, before acting. We need a little time to work out why we want to do something and how we are going to do it.
What if one of us felt moved to help a person who seemed to be a bit like that dud dog I told you about? If given a little encouragement, helped a little, cared for a bit, given an opportunity to try something new, like the dog was given to pull that sleigh, they blossom and are transformed.
It’s a bit like a coach of a football, soccer, basketball or cricket team. They see the potential in one of the players, who seems to be a bit of a dud. But they train and encourage them, care about them, inspire them, confront them, until they believe in themselves and respond and blossom and become a player with the team and win on behalf of that team.
Jesus transformed Peter, Paul, Ananias and he calls each one of us by name and as we follow him, we are transformed.
Andrew Boyle Palm Sunday 1st April, 2007
Isaiah 50. 4-9a
Philippians 2. 5-11
Luke 19. 28-40
It’s appropriate that Palm Sunday coincides with April Fools’ Day because what Jesus does as he enters Jerusalem is something of an April Fool’s joke; a bit of street-theatre designed to gather the crowds and make an entirely unexpected point. A king being lauded and welcomed into Jerusalem but riding on a donkey; that strange animal with really little appeal about it; which struggles to exude any cuteness; stubborn, good as a beast of burden but without any apparent nobility. The transport of choice for clowns.
Yet the symbolism in this entry to Jerusalem for Luke and the other gospel writers is of the utmost gravity. This anointed one of God, Israel’s longed-for Messiah, makes his way through the city gates to conquer the hearts and minds of the people of the City of David; in fact for tens of thousands of Jews. Because up to 100,000 people often gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover; and as thousands of additional Roman troops are deployed in the city in case of rebellion this itinerant preacher stages an anti-victory parade, making his way down into the valley from the Mount of Olives and up the other side to the city gate. The Pharisees are appalled and insist that he stop and order his disciples to be silent.
But as he and his disciples return to Jerusalem, as they have come maybe many times before for Passover, to retell and hear that story of liberation from slavery in Egypt, surely hopes are high that once again a liberation like the exodus from Egypt will be realised; this time from the occupying Roman army. The air is surely charged with hope and anticipation.
And Jesus coming to Jerusalem for Passover echoes that coming to Jerusalem for Passover which he made as a child with his parents when he disappears for three days; spending it in conversation and debate with the religious teachers, when all were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And the cries of his followers as he processes into the city echo the cries of the angels announcing the birth of the Christ child to the bewildered shepherds: Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!’
Everything is coming together in this moment.
I wonder what was going through Jesus mind as he made this entry into Jerusalem; because he has been telling his disciples that their will be a confrontation here between himself and the authorities and that he will be killed; he enters this place willingly, knowingly. But he accepts the crowds adulation; at the same time seeming to know they it will probably be like later in the week. In reality the disciples still don’t know what he is on about, as the events of the week display.
In some ways Jesus seems to taunt the crowds by engaging in this piece of street theatre; egging the crowd on in their hope that he will be the king to liberate and return things to former peace and prosperity. Maybe he could have mustered enough support; mobilising the anger and exasperation with the Romans; but this is not his calling; this would not be to fulfil what he has been teaching. What he has been doing and saying leads him elsewhere. His path must be another path; one of submission which confronts the principalities and powers, not by their means of bringing peace, but in a way whereby he is crushed, and seemingly destroyed.
Palm Sunday is a strange festival in the church year; we know what is to come in the days following; we know that although there will be crucifixion in a few days, there will also be resurrection. Maybe the knowledge of what lies ahead makes it difficult for us to enter into the paradox of this day. Longed for king coming riding on a donkey; hoped-for liberator proclaiming I am king, just not the one you are looking for.
It is the same so often for us; that we hope Jesus will be a saviour of our own imagining and making; to fulfil our dreams; to fight our battles; to defeat our demons, and save us from the cost of actually carrying our own cross. It is the challenge for us on this day of the church’s year. Where do we want to go from this moment; are we willing to go from here to the horror of Good Friday, or do we want to go straight to the brilliance of Easter Day, overlooking the agony which is to come. We could say that this entry into Jerusalem is about the kingship of Jesus which is to come, after Easter Day; certainly it is. But it is also a moment full of paradox; because it is a moment which leads to Jesus’ death. And it must; lead to death, otherwise the whole thing is meaningless.
It is the same for our lives if we are take the true path to life; that we must take the path to our Calvary if we are to find life. That there can’t be some easy bypassing of the agony and dying to the false self, the false king. The path to spiritual maturity, to spiritual wholeness is one which is costly but is the only one which ultimately leads to life. It’s a path which usually means that we have to press on in spite of those around us. Some will imagine, like the crowds that we are on about something entirely different and some will try and prevent us from doing what we know we need to do. The path to life is usually to a death of some part of ourselves in order that we gain life. And it is, too, a path which leads us into conflict with those ways of being which are life denying and lead to a living death.
Our willingness to enter into the events of this week is somehow a sign of our willingness to enter into an observance by which we will come to know what in ourselves must go to the cross. To follow Jesus in full knowledge of who he is and what he calls us to is costly; but it is a path which ultimately leads through death to life. I hope in taking it you might find the resurrection life in him.
Andrew Boyle LENT 5 March 25, 2007
Isaiah 43. 16-21
Philippians 3. 4b-14
John 12. 1-8
I don’t know how you find the writings of the apostle Paul; he’s a complicated character who expresses himself strongly and it’s not always easy to get a grip on what he’s saying. And he’s had a bad press over the last few decades; what with those passages about women remaining silent in church and his seeming support for slavery; he seems pretty un-PC in our present cultural climate. My impression of church and my childhood was there was a lot of emphasis on Paul from the pulpit but he has gone out of favour and there has been a much greater tendency to preach from the Gospels first and foremost with some tentative forays into the writings of Paul only occasionally.
One of the differences between Paul’s letters, which comprise such a large slab of the New testament, and the Gospels is that the gospels were written as narratives of the life of Jesus; not history but creative theological interpretation of the traditions about Jesus which the gospel writers had inherited, in some cases, up to seven decades after Jesus death. I writing in the way in which they did the Gospel writers sought to tell in story form what they saw as the significance of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection. They were trying to make some points about Jesus life for their audience; who exactly their audience was scholars are not really sure but we can assume that it was a broad audience; more than just the churches of which they a part.
But the nature of Paul’s’ letters are an entirely different matter. Maybe in writing the gospels their writers had in mind an audience beyond the early church of which they were a part. But this wasn’t Paul’s purpose when he wrote his letters. He was simply writing to one group of people; maybe in some cases no more than a couple of dozen people and he wouldn’t have intended for these letters to be read beyond the church to which they were written. So what we do with Paul in reading him is quite strange; we overhear, we spy on the correspondence between this apostle and the particular church which he helped form; in today’s case the church at Philippi.
And each letter is written in response to a particular situation; so Paul is not trying to make a complete doctrinal statement to his readers but is talking about Christ and what it mean to be his follower in response to their particular predicament. Technically his theology is what is called contingent; that is, it depends on the situation to which he is writing.
SO what we have done with Paul is a little strange; firstly, we read snippets, often silently to ourselves, from letters which were meant to be heard read aloud from beginning to end within a the context of a community that’s facing a particular issue.