Broken Moments: Come on in ...

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU

and St Alban’s, Kurow

THIRD SUNDAY of EASTER (May 1^st) 2022

a sign in a narthex (church entrance)
that did not win the heart of the gatekeepers of a church

READINGS:

Acts 9: 36-43

Psalm 23

Revelation 7: 9-17

John 10: 22-30

In the Jewish Calendar the Festival of Dedication, Festival of Lights, or Hanukkah, is one of the great festivals of faith. In the Book of Maccabees we are told various stories of the rededication of the First Temple, and by amalgamation of a couple of them we find the events that were the reason for the festival that Jesus was attending in Jerusalem. The Jewish people looked back with joy on the reestablishment of their Temple after its desecration by the oppressing Seleucid forces. We might imagine and hope that one day the people of Ukraine will rejoice in events celebrating the overthrow of Russian invaders, celebrating the restoration of sites pulverised and bestialised by marauders.

Jesus the observant Jew joined his people as they celebrated the eight day feast of a light - nine lights - that miraculously burned for eight days despite their oil running out. The feast as it happens is one still celebrated even by many non-observant Jews, a kind of national party time of great joy.

We’re possibly looking a bit too far here if we notice that this festival that Jesus attended was a festival of lights, and that John is adamant that Jesus himself is the inextinguishable light who comes into the world. Nothing would be too much to believe of John’s creative handling of the Jesus story so we should not discount the possibility. But something else is going on here, something important.

In the scene we have the Jews – unfortunate shorthand in many ways in John’s gospel but we’ll stick with it – the opponents of Jesus come with yet another cynical trap, rather more subtle than some. Obsequiously they ask Jesus to tell them who is – they are of course not in the least interested in who he is, but are determined to demonstrate that he is a fraud precisely because he does not fit their ideas of who he should be or of how God should reveal the self, the being of God. The enemies of Jesus have decided which box God belongs in, and nothing will shake them.

Surely we don’t do this? Yet I have been in a church in which a person was nearly turned away because of their race – fortunately she was too feisty to retreat. I have watched countless times as church spokespeople pronounce in subtle ways or blatant who is worthy to attend: abandon hope all ye whose sexuality differs to mine, whose literacy differs to mine, whose clothing differs to mine.

Even the great atheist poet R. A. K. Mason was more willing to find Jesus in a tramp’s clothes, “his body doubled under the pack that sprawls untidily on his back,” more willing to welcome Jesus than are than such gate-keepers of Christianity have too often been.

The opponents of Jesus were to some extent more subtle than this. As Bishop Kelvin put it in our Gospel Conversations, “what theories and proposition shall we fit God into?” As one who can be a bit academicky I know only too well how dangerous that heresy can be. If you do not hold to my propositions of who and where God or God’s people should be and how they should behave, then may you be anathematized – cast out – to darkness and the gnashing of teeth! Pronouncements from an Anglican diocese across the Tasman that effectively anathematize children working to understand their sexuality, a precarious enough journey without pompous church pronouncements – are one such example of pharisaic sin.

For Jesus the proof of the pudding of love, of faith, of integrity, is action. John we might recall describes Jesus as “word” in the first place, with the implication that Jesus is the creative word of God, in which word and action are utterly superimposed, united. Let there be light and there is light. In the beginning was God who is word, and light and life and love and you and I came into being.

Is this rational? No. It will never be rational. The opponents of Jesus come looking for a logical, tidy, packageable Jesus-Messiah and they don’t get it. They mustn’t get it. If Jesus is to be saviour and God and vulnerable and crucified, he will not be one size fits all, nor one size fits me. He will wriggle out of my restrictions, hang out with the people I don’t want him to hang out with. Hang out with them and redeem them. How annoying is that? Even when they don't wear designer labels.

And so be it. Because at my best I might recognize that he hangs out with me and with you too, and sometimes me and you are not the easiest people to love, redeem, offer inextinguishable light to, either.

So I guess it wasn’t an accident that John tells us of a moment when Jesus turns up at a feast of inextinguishable light, was it?

TLBWY