God, amidst dry bones and viruses?

SERMON PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM

TO A COMPUTER AND AN INTERNET

LENT 5 (March 29^th) 2020

READINGS:

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

These are strange times. Apocalyptic even … not in the sense that “the end is nigh”, but in the sense that has been the sense of every apocalypse, that “an end is here,” that so much that we took for granted is no longer, and that, nevertheless, as a people of God we seek to find divine footprints to navigate our way through. So I share these thoughts as a sermon, as I always have on my sermon blog, not necessarily knowing who you are or where, how you are, even, but hoping and praying that there may be here a case of  le mot juste or even un mot approximatif for you on this day in this changing world.

Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of lifeless desiccation has inspired artists and poets through hundreds of centuries. The vision can – and should – be writ large, speaking to society’s desiccations. The vision can – and should – be writ small, speaking to the desiccations of our own lives. Can we be agents of new life?

For three years at least we have seen the world reeling as it encounters the Orwellian US leadership that calls truth lies and lies truth – perfect truth no less. There is a sense in which we have received what we deserve. Western society, in particular but not exclusively, has deified greed, deified capital, pushed golden towers to the sky and mocked ancient fables about a tower of Babel that an invisible god destroyed in an ancient tale. Trump’s careless focus on reopening economic markets against epidemiological advice demonstrates the degree to which Mammon can usurp the place of good sense, let alone the place of God. The Western world has the leader it deserves, and may yet pay more dearly even than it is today.

There remain of course many who celebrate Donald Trump as a chosen servant of God. Perhaps they are right – but not in the way they think they are. They are right, because we have what we deserve: disregard for planet earth, disregard for the wretched of the earth, admiration for corporate greed, adoration of the dollar as the measure of meaning,  sclerosis of compassion towards those who fall by the wayside. We, not as individuals (though we all participate in corporate sin), but we as western humanity have received what we sought. We have a valley and the bones therein are desiccated.

Of course many of us know this story. God comes a long, puffs a bit of gas into the bones, and all is well again. It’s a cosy story of hope. Except if we read it with an eye on its happy ending then we read it as cheats. We have not recognized how dry these bones are. We pay lip service to the greatness of the God but also to the deadness of death. In these apocalyptic times we are reminded that death is a vast and cruel pronouncement on the vulnerability of humankind. Tales especially from Spain of the many elderly who are dying inaccessible to their loved ones, many only be foreshadowment of the harsh road ahead.

Christians have too often wallowed in a sense – indeed variations of a sense, that we are an entitled people. The various forms of Christianity have their own demons. Anglican Christianity, at its worst, has relied on status and privilege to inoculate itself against reality. Pentecostal Christianity has emphasized the spectacular and sensational, and focused on individual happy times with God. Many forms of Christianity have confused civic, human kingdoms with the Reign of God: “I vow to thee, my country.” We all have our shibboleths, false gods that replicate as if they too were viruses, blinding us to the simple demands of the gospel. Love God with heart, mind, strength. Love generously, recklessly, expansively. Judge not, that you be not …

History has had many apocalypses. This may not be the last, and certainly is not the first. Wars, plagues, natural disasters; they are brutal in their lack of discrimination. They have inspired greatness, and we are seeing it again today: medical and first response coal face workers, trying to bring hope to the dying, and healing to those not dying. The likes of Dr Fauci in the USA, trying to breathe sanity into Trump’s Orwellian world. The likes of our own Prime Minister, striving to bring both discipline and comfort in the surrealistic chaos of our every day. The anonymous sparkers of light: fetching groceries for the housebound, creating music across interwebs, checking on the well-being of friends and strangers. The image of God in humanity is not dead. The stirring breath that revivified Ezekiel’s dry valley still stirs. The onus is on us is to aid and abet that stirring: how can we be bearers of Christlight, as Richard Gillard expresses it in his Servant Song, how can we hold our hand out in the nighttime of human fear?

The answer for those of us who name Jesus as Lord begins and ends with prayer. Not prayer that we and ours should be saved from this apocalypse, though we might be, but, as Jesus put it, that we may have strength to withstand the time of trial. Jesus does not operate as a magician, airily waving away the harsh realities that surround us. Simon Magus, in Acts 8, reminds us that attitudes that exploit human vulnerability by offering false hope are utterly evil, utterly anti-Christ. Far too many are committed in the name of the God of the Cross. One US pastor who airily claimed that coronavirus was a Democrat lie designed to bring down God’s chosen servant Trump has paid with his life. In his arrogance he may have spread the virus that killed him to many other vulnerable human beings. Such is not the Way of the Cross.

To play games with the gospel in this way is to use the Lord’s name in vain. The God of Jesus Christ challenges us, and by God’s Spirit assists us, to cooperate with common sense, to cooperate with agencies that offer hope and healing, to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world around us.

Amidst the shock we are seeing – and as this pandemic hits the camps of the world’s most vulnerable it will, if I can put it this way, exhibit even more exponential horror than it has already – we are seeing good news, seeing remarkable acts of hope and compassion. We as bearers of the Good News of Jesus Christ are challenged to be amongst the perpetrators of hope as best we can with the gifts God gives. Beginning and ending in prayer we are called to offer ourselves and our gifts in any way that shines Christlight. Above all we are called to pray, like the psalmist, engaging in that strangest of all Christian (and other faith) disciplines. We are called to make our lives available as the answer to our prayers, though our prayer will often be all that we have. We are called to surrender the false gods and shibboleths that have often been the trademark of Christian existence.

For as we genuinely join others in throwing our lives back in the service of goodness, and as Christians, in the service of the Good News that transcends evil and suffering, we may yet be the revivified bones of Ezekiel’s stark valley.

May God be with us and through us, Emmanuel, in this valley of dry bones.

I was a snot of a kid ... but

SERMON PREACHED AT ALL SAINTS’ GLADSTONE

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (1^st March) 2020

READINGS:

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4: 1-11

I don’t want to dwell heavily on this day on the interrelationships between sin, torah, death, those myriad deep concepts that underscore the readings. Most of us are familiar with the concepts – Paul would argue and does elsewhere that all humanity is basically saturated with the concepts of wrong and right that dwell at the heart of human sin. While some forms of psychology, and some forms of theology, too, want to dismiss the language of sin, most of us get the concept that we humans are not as good as we ought to be, that the human race is deeply flawed, that planet earth and its inhabitants, humans and other species are living an increasingly precarious and damaged existence. We only have to turn on our various forms of news feed, or lean in the bar in a pub, and very soon we will hear the latest examples of flawed human behaviour and its impact on human neighbours and indeed all animate and even inanimate ingredients of the earth.

So let’s put that safely away in the parking space. I’m not going to spill my guts over my flaws, or make public confession – though acknowledging and addressing them in an appropriate sphere is an important part of growing into a deeper humanity and, as servants of Christ, a greater likeness of him in whose footstep we plant our stumbled shuffles.

My sins aren’t particularly spectacular anyway. The times I have succumbed to temptation, sinning in weakness, ignorance or my own deliberate fault, these are all a bit passé, really, and it’s possible you have a  few of your own. Let me instead tell a couple of stories from a little bit long ago – examples of temptation, perhaps – with which we might relate, and in which we might find the footsteps of our Lord.

So, yes, a long time ago. These are both stories from my experience, but I don’t think for a moment I’m the hero in the narrative. Far from it. But let’s see how we go.

Some of you may know Whanganui, and know that one finger of the town spreads a little way up the Whanganui River – my awa! – to an almost disconnected suburb called Aramoho. In the winter it can be a damp, foggy place, in the summer a rather mosquito-blighted place, but not without some beauty. There is still, about forty years later, a motor camp / Holiday Park in Aramoho, and that’s where our simple tale takes place.

I might add that as a boarder at an elite private school I was always mortally embarrassed that my mother, by the time of this story a widow and sole parent, stayed in such a place. All my friends had parents who stayed in flash motels or the grand hotels (one indeed called the Grand Hotel)  that were the backbone of accommodation in a town that spent a lot of time accommodating the families of young males with over-developed senses of entitlement. I was mortified. Mortified, too, that my solo mother was a widow, was driving a Vauxhall Viva, and staying in a … well, if asked where she was staying I would cough something about “friends out of town” and change the subject.

I was a snot of a kid. I was also a rabid atheist. And one night as my mother backed the Viva out of the car park she collected one of the power outlets, on a pole, that were the electrical feeds for parked caravans. Minimal damage if any, to the car – which I wished to hell anyway as I hated it for being embarrassing – but the power stand was decidedly ex. Decidedly horizontal. And the night was dark and damp, for it was winter, and no one was around.

And said mother wrestled out loud with her conscience. No one was there, no one had seen it, all was quiet.  She was, I knew, a pious Christian. That was embarrassing, too. And slowly conscience won. Ugh. She took herself off to the motor camp office, confessed her embarrassing sin, and returned, grinning. The proprietor had run the place for years, lost power plug poles to errant drivers weekly, and had never before had someone ’fess up.

For a moment I wasn’t embarrassed. For a moment I was proud. I was of course a horrible son so I didn’t tell her that, but I was. Only for a moment of course, before I slumped back into a stormy teenage stupor. But it was a moment and I have never forgotten it.

Years later I was at a student party in a Palmerston North flat. My motorbike was parked in at the time I had to slip out. I glared at the snazzy looking Ford Escort that was in my way – then realised that I had just enough room to squeeze the bike between the house and the car. Or would have done, if I had had a drink or many. The bike leaned to far, I lost control, fought it, regained it, but heard the clutch lever scrape the side of the car. The night was dark, the party was raging, no-one had seen.

And so I wrestled, by then incidentally a convert to Christianity, with my conscience. No one knew. The owner would see the scratch in the dark, wouldn’t know how it happened. I moved the bike the rest of the way down the drive, went to start it, and paused. Could I really go without ’fessing up? Slowly I decided, and slunk back to find the owner. I ’fessed up. He came out with a torch but never found a scratch. As it happened the time the expedition took was long enough for me to realize I shouldn’t be riding anyway, and I stayed the night.

In both cases a tiny microcosmic form of Temptation was battled. By – and I would argue at least in my case only by the grace of God – conscience won, and wrongs were righted, situations resolved. Neither would make the news of the world. But each represented our everyday battle. Lead us not into temptation.

I haven’t always lived up to those lessons. But pray God you and I are slowly being moulded to the place where the voice of truth and justice is far louder in each of our souls than the place of deceit or injustice. May God strengthen us through the Spirit of the Christ who resisted temptation to be bearers of integrity in our every wrestle.