SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH,
WHANGAREI
TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST
(19th AUGUST) 2007
Readings:
Isaiah 5.1-7
Hebrews 11.29 – 12.2
Luke
12.49-56
Often in our Christian communities we become a
people of the Good Times. An awful lot of contemporary Christian worship is
about the good time God, and the wonderful times we have in relationship with
that God. And, to be fair, the word ‘gospel’ does mean – at surface
level, good news.
In fact the word “gospel” has more complex overtones
than that, and it was never intended to mean something about warm fuzzies and
glowing good times. The Christians stole the word from the Roman
Empire, where it was mainly used for the routine of announcing the
birth of a new heir to the Empire. It was a solemn announcement, and nothing in
it suggested that everything would be rosy for the citizens of the empire from
that moment. It was about celebration, but not about fairy floss. The Christian
community chose wisely: the gospel of Jesus that we share is not about fairy
floss but about a challenging commitment whose benefits reach far beyond our
sight.
So when we turn to Isaiah, in the Hebrew tradition,
we find far from warm fuzzies. The prickly prophet, like all the Hebrew
prophets, approaches his people with discomforting and unsettling challenges,
blasting those who are willing to hear out of cosy comfort zones. Just as they were
very happy being the people of God, keeping their God cosily in their back
pockets, Isaiah tears their complacency apart: I will ruin my field. It will
not be trimmed or hoed, and weeds and thorns will grow there. This is far
from the stuff of fairy floss, though it may be that it is precisely what God
has been saying to the cosy and complacent Christian community in the last
decade. I will ruin my field. It will not be trimmed or hoed, and weeds and
thorns will grow there. And this is gospel how?
It is gospel, as we read first through the Hebrew
Scriptures, because the same God who punishes is also the God who heals. God
punishes but does not desert The People of God. When Isaiah proclaimed the
words of God he took his audience out of their comfort zone: God … looked
for justice, but there was only killing. God hoped for right living, but there
were only cries of pain. As we of the post-Christian West look at our
history of exploitation we might just sense that these are words on target for
us, too. The nations from which the West gained its wealth have not been hugely
recompensed over the years. Even the fertile soils of God’s earth, of
Papatuanuku, if you like, have not been greatly rewarded for their offerings.
Which is not to
lay a guilt trip on you that I don’t lay on myself. But perhaps as we watch the
patterns of global warming and weather extremes we are hearing again Isaiah’s
word to God’s people: I will ruin my field. It will not be trimmed or hoed, and weeds and thorns will grow there. The Spirit, the great Enemy
of Apathy of John Bell’s wonderful hymn, is whispering stern
warnings to us.
Yet in this we are called still to be a people of
faith – faith, as we said last week, which is the knee-jerk or automatic
response to the encounter with Jesus in scriptures, prayer, fellowship and
worship. Faith is the fourth dimension (or is it fifth?) that looks beyond the
here and now. ‘Faith,’ said Paul, ‘is the assurance of things hoped for.’
Following in Paul’s tradition the author of Hebrews put it another way: by
faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the
mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the
sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies
to flight. Faith is the dimension that lifted the perspective of our Jewish
and Christian ancestors beyond the here and now, beyond present difficulties,
to another realm.
For the Christian believer that realm, though just
beyond our sight, beckons back to us. In the eucharistic feast of our faith, as Jesus gave
it to us, the future dimension is always present together with the past. The past
saving acts of God are present in the communion – Creation, salvation in the
Passovers of Exodus and Cross – but so too are the future dimensions: the
future coming of Jesus, the parousia, and the new heavens and the new earth of
the Book of Revelation.
These future dimensions become an entelechy, an
energy from God’s future that draws us on and in: ‘God gives us a future’,
writes Liz Smith in the hymn many of us sang at Onerahi last Thursday, ‘daring
us to go, into dreams and dangers on a path unknown.’ Liz is right, but we
remember that God is just ahead of us as we are led into that future, keeping
our footfalls warm even when it seems otherwise, as sometimes it will.
Therefore, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of
our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross.
TLBWY
No comments:
Post a Comment