cousins in faith-loneliness

 

SERMON PREACHED at St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT (19^th December) 2021

 

Readings:

 

Micah 5:2-5a

For the psalm: Luke 1:47-55

Hebrews 10:5-10

Luke 1: 39-45

 

One of the privileges of hosting the Gospel conversations is the access it gives me to a vast range of insights and perspectives. As I entered – several days back now as it happens – into the process of breaking open this scene of Elizabeth and Mary I was amused that we were a panel of three blokes and our own Karen, left to hold her own in a passage that is deeply “gynocentric,” so deeply imbursed with feminine understanding that, if we accept that Dr Luke the author was a bloke, then nevertheless we can surmise that Mrs Dr Luke was standing very close by his shoulder as he composed the Jesus story. As I looked at my randomly chosen confreres, academic Drs John Franklin from Mosgiel, and Gerry Morris from Wisconsin, I breathed a sigh of relief that we had conscripted our own Karen from Kurow, doctor from the school of womanhood and life. For this listener at least it was from Karen that the gems of memorable insight flowed. Praise God for giving us in Luke a champion of women’s perspectives. Praise God for the women in our churches, pews and pulpits, who bring insight into the experiences of Christ-bearer Mary and her cousin – Christ-Aunty if you like – Elizabeth. And if that sounds paternalistic, God forgive our patriarchal church for suppressing those perspectives for so much of its history. For it has.

So it is through a woman’s eyes and ears that the understanding of the kindred spirit relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is brought to us – it’s unsurprising, too, that it was Anne who reminded me of this perspective as I thought about the passage. Neither Mary nor Elizabeth would be heard, I suspect, in their ambivalence about the child within them, the complexity of the shall we say unusual conceptions, about the pregnancy still stretching out ahead of them, about the birth and the and the months and years and decades that lay ahead of their unborn children. Mary sought out her cousin because the older woman would understand – in ways that even Joseph could not – the ambiguities of motherhood. They need each other, and as they turn to each other they matter remind us of the importance of community, of mutual trust and understanding.  “No man is an island,” John Donne reminded us some centuries before inclusive language. No man, no woman, no child is an island, and I don’t think it’s too long a bow for us to draw that we are reminded in this passage of the need for community and mutual outreach that should and can be one of the most powerful essentials of belonging to the body of Christ. Are you okay? Luke shorthands the scene, but we can be certain that the question was at the very heart of the conversation between these two expectant cousin-mothers, the one so young, the other not.

Luke wants us to see the human, but wants us, too, to register the spiritual hand in this scene. Those women who have borne children will know, as men can only by proxy, the mysteries of a human life within, the kicks and wriggles and even hiccups, and the signs of recognition as a growing baby identifies her or his mother’s or sibling’s or father’s voice. In a post-enlightenment world we would do well to recall, too, that there are forms of knowledge that are beyond science: the communication, sometimes, between twins, the second sight that is the experience of many non-Europeanized peoples, the awareness of ancestors that once I would have dismissed as unsophisticated lunacy until I learned to listen to the stories of Australian Indigenous and New Zealand Māori.  (Perhaps I should have learned to recognize the etymological relationship between the words “sophistry” and “sophistication.” All that glitters is not gold). And so Elizabeth feels the child leap in her womb, as a recognition beyond mere science triggers a response of love and admiration between the unborn agents of God

Somewhere out on the unimportant edges of the powerful Roman Empire, surely one of the most powerful in history, two unborn infants recognize the presence of God. Two human beings who will be born and grow up radiating God from the depths of their being, two unborn infants recognize the presence of the Divine in one another. Two mothers notice, ponder and wonder, and remain deeply obedient to the voices of God and God’s messengers. Despite their utter powerlessness these two children on the unimportant outer edge of the Empire will go on to challenge the corruption of exploitative and compassionless leadership, religious and secular alike (for there was no distinction). Both will die in the process. For both – but especially the younger cousin, born in Bethlehem, the story will not end, and death-transforming new life will emerge from a borrowed tomb.

But for now we will leave the latter dimensions of the Christ story, and stay with the mystery of two women birthing the plans of God. Let us stay with the mystery that, as Kendrick didn’t quite put it, hands that once flung stars and quarks and solar systems and black holes into space paused in time and in the womb of the most blessed of women. Let us give thanks that we in all our individual and collective frailty and vulnerability still experience the presence of that Christ child, and through him draw near to God.

loving care and judgement

 

SERMON PREACHED at St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU

and St Alban’s, Kurow

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT (12^th December) 2021

 

Readings:

 

Zephaniah 3:14-20

For the psalm: Isaiah 12:2-6

Philippians 4: 4-7

Luke 3: 7-18

 

It always seems to me one of the less helpful ingredients of our faith-routines when, at a time at which we are called to speak of the expectation of coming joy, we turn to a reading in which John the Baptist is firstly forecasting the first coming, the Incarnation of Jesus, and thens spitting chips of hellfire and damnation.

“You brood of vipers,” John cheerfully addresses his audience: “who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” He seems to dispense with the social niceties of “Hello, how are you, welcome to my desert.” I’m not sure that he’s read the book on making visitors feel welcome in church.

For good measure he reminds his berated audience that the winnowing fork of the judge is at this very moment poised to strike them – us – down and we are presumably to be cast into unquenchable fire. Luke does remind us that the Baptist specialised in bringing Good News to the people – it’s just that good news seems well disguised in this reading.

Most of us, I suspect, sat down with less than cheerful memories of the passage that we’d just heard. Most of us are aware that we haven’t done an awful lot of sharing of our coats. Some of us may have heard academic David Tombs reminding us in the Gospel Conversations of the story of the South American Socialist leader addressing adoring, applauding crowds … if you have two houses (or seven for that matter, or however many the leader of the opposition has) surrender them to the poor. The crowd cheers wildly. If you have two cars (or can afford a black Mercedes to drive you around the block as the Leader of the opposition did) – give one up. The crowd cheers wildly, as crowds do when they hear popular demands that really don’t apply to them. If you have two coats … give one up. The crowd stood in sulky silence. The rich young man walked away, remember.

Socialism is easy when I am the one who gains, but less so when I am the one called to make sacrifice. I have often if not always been guilty of a socialism of jealousy, keen to see the wealthy surrender their assets, but less keen to make sacrifices of my own. Yeah, get rid of your houses, Mr Luxton [newly elected Leader of the Opposition in New Zealand], I am inclined to say, or your cars, or whatever, but I am less keen to get rid of the surpluses in my life. I secretly would prefer it if he slipped a house or two or a car or two my way. Maybe I too should be fleeing the wrath that the Baptiser announced?

Few of us in the so-called First World / Global North escape the wrath that John the Baptist spoke of, when we compare our wealth and opulence with the horrors of existence in Syria or Sudan. That doesn’t altogether sound to me like good news, news to elicit great joy. But … but …

But we might just leave John there, for a moment, ranting in his desert. The other readings do seem to speak of joy. Great joy. Rejoicing. Much nicer. “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.” I used to sing that happily in the Christian Fellowship of my first flushes of faith. “Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice.”

John – he was such a party pooper. Though his cousin, our babe of Bethlehem, wasn’t always a bundle of joy, either: if your hand causes you to sin, chop it off. Your eye? Pluck it out. Go sell all you have, give to the poor, then come follow me. Gosh - those cousins. Though at least Jesus turned some water into wine.

When I give the last rites – far less common these days than in the early days of my ministry – I say something that’s not in the book. I commend the person I’m sitting with, anointing, praying for, into “the loving care and judgement of God.” I don’t have time then or now into the whole theological kit and caboodle of explaining that all we need to see and know of that loving care and judgement is revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus. I leave it unsaid.

But time and again I find Jesus offering not an airy-fairy wave of the hand to those he encounters – the “usses” he encounters – who have shall we say fallen short of the glory of God. He doesn’t conspiratorially say to the sinner, “never mind, buddy, it doesn’t matter.” No. It’s something more like, “Mate, you got it wrong. But let’s see if we can set things right, okay, and find a way forward.”

The gospel writers leave us the hint that this is what we need to do, too. We are a brood of vipers, but yeah, the footprints of Jesus are still warm, and he will pick us up, help us to love, make us a tad better person, if we let him. The wrath of Jesus is ameliorative, not punitive – restorative, not destructive. Though it sometimes hurts a little. In fact I think the current throes of nature, in all their destructiveness, might be a kind of restoration writ large, though the equations seem wrong, and so far it seems only to have made the plight of the poor peoples more wretched and the rest of us just a little inconvenienced. I don’t understand that. I know my innter viper, deserving wrath.

But I think we may be beginning to see ourselves for who we are. This too may be a judgement of God, as our complacencies fall apart. Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come? Those nations who are hoarding vaccines at the expense of the poor nations may yet feel the terrible wrath of nature which is of God: is that what the Omicron variant is warning us? Those who have dived down rabbit holes of self-indulgence may yet hear John the Baptist’s wrath writ large. Have they protected the vulnerable? History suggests we won’t listen. One day we might just have to. We’re past the eleventh hour, now, well past.

Perhaps I digress. And perhaps I don’t. When I give the last rites, I pray for the loving judgement of God. The joy of our readings is no superficial party time. Jesus beckons us through the darkness of our world and our own lives, summons us with perhaps tear-filled love, but summons us, nevertheless. Yes, we as individuals and we as the human race have got it badly wrong. Yet Jesus beckons us still. Come my friend … you may need a touch of reconciliation, may need to look into the eyes of those whose forgiveness you need, but I will stand with you. I will guide you through the sorrows and the dark, and together we will stand on the side where we can at last rejoice in the Lord always.