Sermon - Pentecost Sunday

Sermon, 23^rd May 2010

Pentecost Sunday

Text: John 14: 8-17

In the name of God: Creator, Pain-bearer and Spirit of Love and life.

There’s a programme at 9.30 in the evening on ABC television called Q and A – Questions and Answers. It is a programme where a panel of about four people field questions from audience members. My cynicism asks whether these questions are really always ‘off the cuff’ or pre-arranged – but that’s not the point to discuss this morning. Often the panel contains politicians, mainly from the Federal parliament. If you ever want to find out how to not answer a question but at the same time speak authoritatively for some minutes this is the programme for you!

In this morning’s Gospel reading we have a portion of the script for a Q & A programme. The opening scene is played out in the previous chapter beginning at verse 36 of chapter 13 when Simon Peter is reported to be asking Jesus where here is going and what the heck he means when he talks to them in the way he has been.

Jesus has just delivered what is most definitely a farewell speech – in terms that would raise not just questions but alarm and fear in his disciples. These are men who are portrayed as having no clue as to Jesus’ real identity or purpose. They are shown, in short, as being thick as two short planks!

Of course Jesus’ answers that the Gospel writer has given don’t help either.

In Chapter 13 verse 37 Jesus answers a straight question “Where are you going?” with an extremely vague and non committal reply. He says, “Where I am going you can’t follow me now, but you will follow me later”. What sort of an answer is that? Ambiguous to say the least!

After Jesus reply to a further question by Peter where he also foretells that Peter will publicly deny him, it’s Thomas’s turn to ask another seemingly natural question. “How can we know the way if we don’t know where you are going?”

Here Jesus responds with the well known words, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.”

So we reach the question posed by Philip and which forms today’s reading. He says, “OK Jesus, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” Come on, come clean, where is this Father you keep talking about?

The Gospel writer then has Jesus respond by telling Philip that he is looking at the Father - Yahweh – the ancient God of the Israelite peoples and who brought them out of Egypt and who is in Jesus and Jesus is in Him.

Now that’s a revelation!

Jesus then speaks of love – ‘If you love me’, he says, ‘you will keep my commandments’, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another counsellor, to be with you forever’.

Now that’s a promise!

So just who is this ‘counsellor?’ ‘The spirit of truth’, says Jesus. It’s a pretty exclusive offer as well because this spirit of truth is not available to just anyone. ‘The world’, Jesus says, ‘cannot receive’ this spirit. Why can’t world receive this spirit of truth? Well, it’s not because God is not available or because God holds back or because God denies the general population access to the spirit. Not at all, it is because the people of the world don’t see God as the disciples are now seeing God in Jesus. They can’t see God and therefore can’t know God or God’s spirit.

So the next question comes from the audience. ‘Why can’t ‘they’ see God, and just what is meant by ‘the world’ anyway?

‘The world’ refers not to the earth but to the general everyday bloke and girl in the street and the reason they can’t see God is because they don’t stop and look – it’s that simple!

In order to receive a gift you need to first be in contact with the giver. A gift is not something that we can earn – not something that comes as a result of our efforts.

This spirit is nothing less than a gift from God.

The disciples of the story in Acts were not engaged in any work that would earn them God’s love in the form of the spirit. They were sitting in a closed room wondering what the heck to do next. They were just waiting - much like Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. But unlike the play where Godot never arrives - that’s when God comes. Not when we are labouring and searching but in the quiet time when we just wait.

I have just read a little book by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, entitled Silence and Honey Cakes. It’s about the ancient ascetics of the fourth and fifth centuries who lived in the Egyptian desert where they had gone to escape from the rat race of the cities of their time. They mostly sought to find God in silence and contemplation. Most did. They sought God – took time out to wait for the spirit that Jesus had promised. Their pearls of wisdom that have come down to us indicate that their quest was not in vain.

The other reading set for today is from Paul’s letter to the churches at Rome. This writing predates the gospel by many years but the language is similar. Paul reiterates that spirituality (which infers a state of peace and wholeness in one’s life) is not something that we generate ourselves.

Paul speaks of receiving the spirit rather than congratulating them on having achieved spirituality. He also infers that this is not something that is born in us; rather it is something that comes from outside our own selves. It is not, if you like some sort of inherited personality trait.

There two other things that need to be said.

First, we mustn’t get the idea that once having received the gift of God’s spirit we need do nothing more – it doesn’t mean that we can now sit under a tree and contemplate our navel – far from it. The old adage ‘Use it or lose it’ springs to mind.

God’s spirit is the sort of Gift you can’t just unwrap, admire, and thinking it’s far too delicate and valuable to be used, carefully store it away in a bottom drawer in case something dreadful happens to it. The trouble is that, having done that, you tend to forget it’s there and your family will find it when they empty out your house after the funeral.

No, the gift is given so that we might pass it on to others. It now becomes our gift to give – to our loved ones, our family and friends, also our community. Here the concept of the neighbour comes into play.

Anthony the Great, one of the desert ascetics, said, “Our life and death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.” There’s food for thought - and a mighty challenge! We win our brother (or sister) through the gift of God’s spirit.

The other thing that needs to be said is that having received the spirit of God we don’t magically become immune from the troubles and trials of the natural human life – far from it! To quote Professor Mary Shore again, the spirit of God is …”a gift that does not exempt believers [ from trials and difficulties] but plunges them right back into the world's sufferings and pains, [but] empowered and confident in the future God is bringing about.”

Another thing - did you hear what Jesus said in verse 14? ‘If you ask anything in my name, I will do it’. There lies a potential study on prayer.

Andrew H. Wakefield in "What Happens When We Pray," (2007) suggests that the parent/child relationship offers an analogy for what Jesus is promising here. He writes:

If we extend the analogy just a little, we may be able to think of these promises as the same sort of hyperbole that parents use when they tell a child, "I would do anything for you!" The child may say, "Really? Then I want a tattoo; I want a pet elephant; I want a Ferrari!" The child has missed the point. The hyperbole shows the parent's infinite love for the child, a love that will seek the good of the child even above the parent's own good.... The hyperbole is a way of expressing the intimate relationship between loving parent and child—and that relationship is not simply about giving and receiving.

So how do we react when prayer apparently goes unanswered? Has the spirit of God that we have been promised and experienced as the disciples at Pentecost did, left – and, as in Don McLean’s song ‘taken the last train for the coast’?

Do we blame ourselves in that we don’t know how to pray properly? There’s no one way to pray – but a multitude of ways – don’t limit God. The promise made here is not a matter of ‘you can have anything you want’.

Remember the terminology used here – it’s the parent / child relationship we see. Carry that on and Jesus is giving an assurance that God will not desert us in our hour of need – we will not be thrown out into the snow to fend for ourselves.

He is saying that no matter what happens to us, no matter what tragedy strikes, no matter how low and desolate we feel, Jesus, in the spirit of God will be with us and we will know God’s everlasting love and presence – closer than our very breath. That’s a solemn and serious promise and that’s what Pentecost can mean to us today.

The Lord be with you.

Easter 7

Sermon, 16^th May 2010

Easter 7

Text: John 17: 20 – 26.

In the name of God – Creator, Pain-bearer and Spirit of Life and Love.

I sometimes wonder what the author of John’s Gospel would think if he heard some of the interpretations of his writings as presented in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. I imagine he would be amazed to think that his writing was still being read, studied and discussed some nineteen hundred years after his time.

It’s fair, I think, to adopt a something of a midrashic interpretation of these writings.

Midrash is a Jewish method of interpretation which conveys many layers inherent in a text. So we can believe, if we wish, that Jesus actually spoke these words and their meaning is plain. I for one find that an impossible ask. There is no doubt that these are not the actual words of Jesus as ostensibly recorded here. Preservation of speech and text was not as easy as it is today. We take for granted audio and video recording whereby a person’s speech can be recorded and stored to be replayed at some time in the future. The video camera even preserves the nuances of expression that aid immensely in interpreting the speaker’s meaning and intent. In John’s day no such devices existed and it was only through the skills of the oral traditions that particular sayings were preserved.

John wrote about the turn of the first century CE – some sixty or seventy years after Jesus’ crucifixion – at least one - maybe two generations later.

First then, the practical application of the Gospel in its own time – its “sitz im leben”.

This Gospel addresses specific circumstances that were being faced by a Christian community. The writer is urging his church to beware of internal factions and also seeks to strengthen their resolution in the face of hostility and persecution.

Barnabas Lindars, an Oxford theologian, writes," ...it is now widely accepted that the discourses are concerned with the actual issues of the church and synagogue debate at the time when the Gospel was written." The community of John was particularly strong in its criticism of Orthodox Judaism of its time. It would not have been many years since the followers of “The Way” of Jesus – the Christian sect – had been acrimoniously expelled from the synagogues.

It is only in the Gospel of John that we see these long speeches of Jesus where he speaks about himself in such divine terms. The discourses found in this Gospel are considered by many reliable scholars to have originated in sermons that are predominantly the evangelist's own composition but which may be loosely based on a saying or act of Jesus derived from the oral and synoptic Gospel tradition.

Many contemporary scholars regard the Gospel of John as more theological and certainly less historical than the Synoptics. John's picture of Jesus is very different from that which emerges in the Synoptic Gospels. In John Jesus is the pinnacle – he is very definitely presented as God incarnate and is to be greatly venerated.

So we can immediately see threads of varying layers in the text this morning.

We see how the writer is exhorting his community to stick together in the face of persecution by both The Orthodox Jews and the Romans. “Unity is strength”, he is saying. So Jesus, truly Yahweh’s Son in human form, is speaking to his disciples on the very evening of the final night of his arrest and death. He is offering words of hope and strength. He is telling them all that will befall him in the next few days.

Then, in a long prayer, he asks God to bless them and give them strength in their coming adversity. He is strengthening their understanding of him as God’s son and prays that the ancient God of Israel, his father, will uphold them and cause them to remember all he has told them about himself. He peaks in such intimate terms with Yahweh, reminiscent of the patriarchs of the Old Testament but in MUCH more intimacy. Here is a son speaking with a loving father not a servant bowing before an omnipotent God.

Across the centuries this story has gathered around it all sorts of connotations tailored for the particular time. Using the Midrashic principle we can adapt it as a lesson for our own community. There would be few communities where there is not dissent bubbling away either covertly under covers or overtly in obvious destructive acrimony between members. This phenomenon is not restricted to Christian churches of course but it is within a Christian context that I would address it.

For any community to flourish and succeed in its task there needs to be unity. Bring dissent and disunity and the community suffers and is weakened. Disunity can originate in many places and in many people. It can be deliberately broadly destructive or arise from personal and even unthinking selfishness.

There is an old Nigerian proverb that says: “The pebbles are the strength of the wall”.

So that traditional wisdom is saying that each individual is vital if unity is to be maintained. What is the purpose of this unity? The Gospel writer’s purpose was clear. In Verse 23 he explains that ‘they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’- that is, as a son! The deepest illustration of human love – parent for child!

What a wonderful thing this sense of family is? The illustration infers a deep bond that says, “Together we can overcome all adversity”.

Another proverb; this time from Ghana – “It is because one antelope will blow the dust from the other's eye that two antelopes walk together”. What a lovely insight. It’s not what we can get out of a relationship or our community – it’s what we can do to help our friend and neighbour – even if it is just ‘blowing the dust from the other’s eye.’

Professor Mary Shore , Luther Seminary St. Paul, Minnesota points out that this morning’s text is lifted from a PRAYER not an exhortation or instruction. So, she says, “Jesus is not offering instructions to the disciples or to the church they will lead. This means, for instance, that as important as evangelism is, when Jesus tells his Father that he is asking "not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word" (verse 20) he is not exhorting the church to participate in evangelism.

Likewise, as commendable as ecumenical partnerships are, when Jesus asks that those who believe and those who do not yet believe "may be one" (verse 21), he is not exhorting involvement in ecumenical dialogue.

Jesus is not exhorting the church here. He is not instructing. He is not preaching, teaching, or rallying the troops.

Jesus is praying.”

The question is raised, “How do you feel when someone prays out loud for you?

Comforted, vulnerable, grateful, honoured, humbled, awkward but appreciative, like someone really cares? It can make us feel uncomfortable to be the focus of another’s attention – even in love.

Perhaps that is why we have so often on the past made this passage into a list of orders or instructions. We wish to avoid the intimacy of prayer.

Professor Shore adds, “If Jesus were exhorting his disciples, and by extension us, we could strive to meet his expectations then. If he were exhorting us, we would have a mission - namely, not to disappoint him. Instead, we overhear a prayer on our behalf and are not called to action in that moment as much as wonder that the Father and the Son spend time discussing the likes of us and our little community of faith.”

When someone prays for us in our hour of need it is because they love us. When God, the very Spirit of love, is part of that and responds by bringing deep peace and joy into our lives, regardless of our circumstances, we are truly blessed.

THE LORD BE WITH YOU.

Good Friday Sermon

GOOD FRIDAY

2^nd April 2010

Reading: The Passion Gospel

Gospel of St John - Chapters 18 & 19

In the name of God: Creator, Pain bearer and Spirit of Life and Love.

In July 2008 Meredith and I travelled to the beautiful little town of Assisi in Umbria, Italy. We travelled up from Rome by train and then taxi to the top of the hill where the ancient town is set. We stayed there for a week and walked the narrow mediaeval streets and visited the basilica and the tomb of St Francis.

It was a wonderful experience which I will never forget.

Inevitably within the basilica is a shop (even the Queen has one at Buckingham Palace!). Within the shop was a mighty array of souvenirs, ranging from the exquisite and expensive to the downright tawdry – mass produced cheap tourist kitsch.

Prominent amongst this range was the San Damiano cross in a variety of sizes and materials – from the tiny pocket size version probably made in Taiwan and costing a few cents to the large expensive model suitable for the wall or church. I have made a copy of this crucifix and offer it to you for a little Easter reflection. There is a large one in Adelaide featured at the Catholic Church on St Bernard’s Road, Newton.

This morning it is most appropriate that I reflect on the cross and crucifixion. The cross has become the universally recognised symbol of Christianity. There are many styles of cross that people of varied cultures use as a focal point of reflection and worship. They range from the Protestant bare and simple cross, often mounted on the front wall of the church, to the most ornate and artistically contrived bearing the figure of Jesus – sometimes in grotesque agony as would befit a human body subjected to such barbarous treatment - sometimes as something approaching a God figure who is impervious to the physical agony and is reaching out to the peoples of the world in love and power.

The Romans are conservatively estimated to have crucified around one hundred thousand people from the time of the Maccabean revolts in the second century B.C.E. up until Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire in 337 out of veneration for Jesus Christ, its most famous victim.

A cruel prelude to crucifixion was scourging, which would cause the condemned to lose a large amount of blood, and approach a state of shock. The convict then usually had to carry the horizontal beam, but not necessarily the whole cross to the place of execution.

Crucifixion was typically carried out by specialized teams, consisting of a commanding centurion and four soldiers. When it was done in an established place of execution, the vertical beam could even be permanently embedded in the ground. The condemned was usually stripped naked — all the New Testament gospels describe soldiers gambling for the robes of Jesus. (Matthew 27:35, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:34, John 19:23-25)

The 'nails' were tapered iron spikes approximately 5 to 7 inches long, with a square shaft ³⁄₈ inch across.

In his ‘Antiquities’ the Jewish historian Josephus reports that the Romans crucified many people by the walls of Jerusalem during the siege of 70 C.E. The idea was to terrorize the population and force surrender. The number reached 500 a day at one point until there was no suitable wood left in the area. We of this Australian westernised society of the 21^st century find it almost impossible to imagine such a scene of butchery and mayhem. Josephus mentions the crucifixion of Jesus.

Most scholars agree the passage is authentic. He writes:

‘Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us [the Jewish leaders], had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.’

Little did Josephus imagine the turn that history would take so that today, some 1900 years later, the name of Jesus is still almost universally revered.

There is some conflict of opinion here. I am intrigued that Josephus records that Jesus’ disciples did not forsake him. Whereas in the earliest Gospel to be written, that of Mark, he writes in Ch14:50, “[at Jesus’ arrest]... All of them deserted him and fled”. If we accept for a moment the Gospel writer’s version, we see that when the ‘chips were down’ and Jesus and his little band of followers were facing imminent danger, danger whereby their very lives were in jeopardy, they fled.

Where to? Like the ancient story of Jonah, as far away as their feet could carry them – possibly back to Galilee. It is postulated that Jesus died alone, abandoned by his friends and followers.

This is the day when we, so far removed in time and culture from all this, can stop and reflect on these horrible events at Jerusalem. In our own time death is sanitized – the facts are often ‘brushed under the carpet’. Death now is usually a gentle affair, in hospital and made easier by the use of painkilling drugs – a far cry from those barbarous days of the Roman Empire.

But people are still executed in some less enlightened countries – fortunately the human race seems to have progressed at least to the extent that the shocking barbarity of crucifixion no longer exists. In my opinion execution has no place in a civilized society, certainly one that claims to be based on Christianity. It is really based on an ethic of revenge, an ethic that Jesus completely refuted.

Where do we stand amongst our friends and community? Have we, like the disciples, fled in fear from the embarrassment of associating with this Jesus of Nazareth?

Since ordination I have to admit to finding it a little confrontational to go out in public wearing my clerical collar. I am announcing to all and sundry that I am a priest of the Christian Church and a follower of the Nazarene. But I am proud to wear that ‘uniform’ and have found that everyone with whom I have come in contact respect it. I realize that may not always be so but will face that when and if it arises.

Good Friday sets before us a mighty challenge.

Forget the often maudlin manner in which this day is portrayed. The butchery and violence of the first century Roman Empire are in our face.

Jesus rose above that violence with a message of profound love and forgiveness – even to those who drove in the nails.

Where does that leave us today? The very least we can do is to live our lives in open acknowledgement of Christ’s sacrifice. That means living in love both for our loveable neighbour and also all those unlovable people in the community.

Contemplate the San Damiano cross, its intricacies and the direction made to St Francis – “Go out and rebuild the church”.

That’s the simple message of Good Friday.

Not the violence but the love!

THE LORD BE WITH YOU

The San Damiano Cross

St. Francis of Assisi was praying before the San Damiano Cross, pictured here, when he received his calling from God; he had a vision in which the Crucified Jesus called out to him and said “Francis, rebuild my Church.” He began fixing up all the churches in the area – but that was not what God had been telling him to do. Francis eventually realised what was required and set about building up the church rather than just the buildings.

Christ on this cross is not lifeless. Rather he is strong and regal, looking upon us with love. His hands are not tight from being nailed to the cross but rather stretched out as if he is praying for us and blessing us.

This crucifix speaks of life rather than death. Above his head is a picture of the ascension where Christ is surrounded by a host of angels and God’s hand is blessing him. Below the outstretched arms are some of the people who the Gospels tell us were at the cross. Mary, Jesus’ mother and St John stand together. On the right is Mary Magdalene, another disciple and the centurion. The little boy behind him is the centurion’s son who, in the Gospel story, was healed by Jesus. A multitude of images and metaphors are hidden in this ancient crucifix. It is worthwhile reflecting upon it in prayer.