SERMON
PREACHED at St LUKE’S, MOSGIEL
ORDINARY
SUNDAY 7 (24th February) 2019
READINGS:
Genesis 45: 3-11, 15
Psalm 37: 1-11, 39-40
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38
In letters written to the Corinthian
Christians, Paul drew one line more prominent than any other in the sand. No
resurrection: no gospel. As some will have heard, some years ago, when I was
Dean of Waiapu, I sat aghast as a clerical colleague drew, fortunately for a
tiny mid-week congregation, an eloquent case for dismissing any belief in
resurrection in the narrative of the Christian community.
He began with a satirical attack on the
doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, mocked their (now somewhat modified)
teachings regarding the salvation of 144,000 faithful, then moved on to
maintain that any idea that those we love or we ourselves could believe in any
doctrine of afterlife is nonsense. Sadly, I was so deeply winded, spiritually speaking,
that I sat in flabbergasted silence. Thoughts of Paul’s fierce defence of the
doctrine of resurrection reverberating in my speechless mind.
I am reminded of that moment today, not only
because our Corinthians passage is one in which Paul turns to the centrality of
the death and resurrection of Jesus, but because Jesus himself is dwelling on
images of largesse, of the responsibility of his followers to offer more than
mere equivalence to the actions and thoughts of those amongst whom God calls us
to dwell. Jesus calls us, as bearers of his name, as disciples, to surpass the
expected, to go beyond the merely normal.
In these sayings Jesus is focussing on the
pragmatisms of succour (coats) and of restorative (as against retributive)
justice (slaps). Elsewhere Jesus demands extra miles, and reminds us to give
fish, not stones, bread, not scorpions, to the hungry.
In a confused world where truth is called
fake news and old certainties have crumbled it is not the task of Christian
preachers to dismantle the central tenets of our faith. Perhaps as he wrote to
the recalcitrant and faith-corrupted Corinthians Paul had in mind the Jesus-sayings
about generosity and largesse, applying them to the hope at the heart of
Christian doctrine. Fish, or stone? Hope, or despair? Paul warned those who
deny the resurrection that they are more to be pitied than all people. Deny the
central doctrine of faith and we betray the very core of Christ-following, and offer
the world only hopelessness and darkness for hope and light, exclusion for
embrace. Do we offer bread, or a scorpion to God’s world?
So I want us for a moment to be outside the
church we (mainly) love, outside the institution in which we live looking in.
What entices, what impels, what forbids?
Perhaps let’s look at it a different way. It
is a bitterly cold Otago night. We have been cast for whatever reason from the
warmth of our home and fireplace – perhaps our car is broken down as we drive
from Invercargill to Picton. We glance through glass doors at a lively group
gathered in an unfamiliar room, laughing, talking around a table, sharing a
drink and fine food. Between us and the door – a notice on which assures us we
are welcome – there is vast impenetrable chasm. It could be anything. A
salivating rottweiler, a racial divide, a dress code. All are welcome, except
those who do not fit. With heavy hearts we turn away and trudge into the night.
As we watched momentarily from outside we
could hear what was being said inside. A figure, well-dressed, was speaking,
enthusing vigorously about the love that is shared between those gathered in
the room. Aren’t we good? “They will know we are Christians by our love,” he
sang for a moment or two. Aren’t we a welcoming people? See how we love each
other! The rottweiler growled, menacingly, as we turned and sadly walked into
the winter’s night.
In his best-known book What’s So Amazing About Grace, the Christ-bearing writer Philip
Yancey tells a tale about a prostitute. Asked why she has not sought help in
her predicament by attending a Christian gathering, a church, she responds
exclaiming that she feels bad enough about herself without entering a place
where she will be made to feel worse. All are welcome here, so many Christian
churches proclaim, except those not clean enough, literate enough, white
enough, heterosexual enough, sober enough to enter. “Do not judge, and you will
not be judged,” says Jesus. “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.”
And we don’t. Not in so many words.
And yet I wonder. I once knew a fine and
dignified church in a place far from here. A young Māori woman walked in – she
lived nearby and had often wondered what went on there. “Have you come to the right place?” a gentleman
asked. Was it that she was Māori?
Tattooed? Unfamiliar, other in some
other way? What if she had come with a wife? In the same place during the
week a man came looking for shelter from the weather. He’d had a drink or two,
sure, but all he wanted was a place to rest awhile. He was moved along,
unwelcome. “Give, and it will be given to you.” An eccentric woman with a bird
on a shoulder was barred from communion. So too was a woman with a dog. You’re
welcome, but only if you clone those of us cosily here already.
We tend to forget how foreign and even
hostile a place we have become in a post Christendom society. As we approach Lent, we might ask some deep
questions of ourselves. If there has been a work of the Holy Spirit – and I
believe there has in recent years – it is that many of our false beliefs about
ourselves have been exploded. Those who dress like us, believe like us, read
what we read, all those are welcome here. But most of society doesn’t. Many of
our behaviours have either been exposed as mere façades, or have been drowned out
by our messages of intolerance: why would I go to church, says the prostitute
at the opening scene of What’s So Amazing
About Grace?
As a corporate body we have forgotten our brokenness. We have often
rejoiced in our salvation, but forgotten our need for it at the beginnng. “I’ve
been redeemed,” we sing and chant happily, emphasizing our singularity and our satisfaction.
But our need for God’s touch? We’ve forgotten or never known it, parceled God
into our lives as a habit or a convenience or a panacea or an insurance policy
in case there’s a judgement and a hell. We have forgotten that the one who
reaches across the abyss of the universe to edify our lives was the broken one,
the hated one, the one who despite belonging in the place of the man of heaven,
despite being the man of heaven, becomes for us the man of dust, real dust,
real brokenness, and there touches our lives. Paul is saying something like
that when he reminds the recalcitrant, self-satisfied Corinthians, “flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit
the imperishable.” God in Christ gets pretty dusty to meet and penetrate our
dusty lives, and we forget that at great peril.
The Church community is by God’s Spirit being
forced to reassess itself. Are we a place of welcome, a whare oranga in which all may feel the love-touch of resurrection
hope? Let us in the week to come ask ourselves how we look from outside, ask
the Spirit of God to remind us where we have created barriers, ask the Spirit
of God to dismantle those barriers that assure the seekers and the broken and
the not good enough neighbours that they are not welcome. For this table
fellowship we share is not the Feast of Hope for the Good Enough, but the feast
of those who know they are not good enough, yet even so are touched by the
warmth and the love of the risen Lord
TLBWY
