SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth
OAMARU
FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
(July 2nd) 2022
2 Kings 5: 3-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6: 1-16
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20-38
In his telling of the Jesus story Luke
has a distinct pivot-point, which we have now passed, when Jesus stets his face
resolutely towards Jerusalem, towards all that deep down he knows must await
him there. His followers, still completely in a fog, turn and walk with him.
Probably most, like Judas, expect that the overthrow of the corrupt Roman
Empire is about to begin.
Jesus’ ministry is, in large part, one of forming his disciples, those who will take all that he is out into the world. Their vision, like ours, is imperfect. Is he a revolutionary? Certainly at this stage his revolutionary programme, if that is what it is, seems a little vague.
For he has spoken of suffering and dying. That in itself is not an unusual expectation for revolutionaries, though it would probably be preferable if their leader did not dwell on it quite so much. He has carried out acts of healing, quite remarkable ones, but tends to demand that his beneficiaries shut up. He’s fed hungry people, too, which is not a bad thing for a revolutionary leader to do, but seems not to have worried when the crowds instead of eating and joining the movement, have had their fill, and then sauntered away. Strange, this.
Unsettling.
But at least he’s still talking about justice. The Romans – and the corrupt religious leadership in bed with them – they’ll be toppled. Won’t they? I mean isn’t that what justice is all about? And the peace once the overlords are conquered, that'll be alright, as long as they’re kept in their place.
Odd, though.
We have the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight. Sometimes the teachings of Jesus have been horrendously misapplied, to benefit the rich and powerful, the haves rather than the have-nots. But in recent decades that false power, those shibboleths have begun to crumble and we are being forced back to find not the revolutionary Jesus, in any political or much less military sense, but the one who is the embodiment of love, compassion, hope, above all, resurrection hope.
Love, compassion, hope (and more) but not from corridors of power. Not a theocracy whence Christians force their will on others. Just small, Jesus-like ways of touching those around us with love. Perhaps, and sometimes only perhaps, a little more scheduled then practising random acts of kindness, but that’s not a bad effort, either. Then slowly joining the dots of those random acts until they become habit.
By acting in small ways of love and neighbourliness in our society, the place God has called us to be, we can rumour love, can Rumer care in contrast to our often careless world. A book a couple of decades back spoke of being a “contrast society of Jesus.” That book title has picked up extra gravitas in the two decades since Alan Walker published it, because more and more we are being called to contrast not only with a care-less society, but a care-less society of followers of an ersatz or false Jesus. Constantly the media, of whom I am no enemy, remind us of the bigotry of those who claim the name of Jesus and falsely cry “Lord, Lord” as they peddle hatred and the disempowerment of women and the most vulnerable in society. Their Jesus is not mine, is not the Jesus of the gospels. They need our prayers.
We must do better, so help us God. In our passage from Luke we find the bemused followers of Jesus, genuine seekers after truth, sent out. The Greek, Dr Townsley reminded us in our Gospel Conversation for this week, is closer to “cast out” then merely “sent out.” It is as if God-in-Jesus has flung us into the world to discover how to serve God, how to experience God, and as it happens how to experience and advertise the joy that comes from knowing and being known by the God of Jesus Christ.
As part of that casting out we may be sent away from our comfort zones and challenged – but helped by the Spirit of God – to find God in new zones, unforeseen futures. That is happening to us anyway. Do not remember the former things, said Isaiah. Old certainties crumble and pass away. My litany of trials (those temptations or trials of the Lord’s Prayer) can be named once more: rising tides, stretched economies, mutating pandemics, and the most serious military conflict since two world wars – these are trials gnerated by humanity and through which he will always lead us.
These do not have the final word. However much it feels that way these trials are not the full stop at the end of human history. Our comfort zones are crumbling, old certainties are pushed aside (as Alex Prud’Homme put it). We are being as it were cast out with the seventy followers of Jesus. Yet we will be empowered to touch lives with Christ-light and Christ-love even as we stumble, along the paths that as yet seem hard to navigate. But we are not the navigators, and we will return to Jesus like the disciples with joy even if as yet we do not know what that return looks like.
On the way we are not alone. Our koinonia, our fellowship is one of our greatest gifts and should be one of our greatest advertisements. Not the rhetoric of hatred pedalled by too many in the name of Jesus – or perhaps we should say in the name of a false Jesus – but a rhetoric of love, of welcome, of embrace and fellowship “You obey the rule of Christ,” says Paul to the Galatians, “when you offer a helping hand.” We called into our simple lives simply to offer that hand of help to those God calls across our path. We are called to live simply so others may simply live. We are called to live, and by our living called to proclaim peace, justice, and hope, even in the darkest times. That is the unsettling journey that Jesus leads us on.
In undertaking that journey together and together with Christ we proclaim Christ’s reign until he comes again.
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