love in a bottle?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
FIFTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 16) 1989

 

READINGS

Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

 [Returning to this sermon after 35+ years I wonder if I ever finished writing it. Perhaps I ad libbed a different ending. My diary tells me I was busy with visitors the day I wrote it – as it happens visitors with whom I still have Facebook contact – the sermon writing squeezed between two sets. Ah well. Let it stand].

We hear it read each Sunday. The Golden Rule, the command to love God,  self, and neighbour. It rolls easily off the tongue, causing us scarcely a hiccup in out thoughts, and we respond, “Lord, have mercy on us.”

Yet the reply Jesus gave to the lawyer is pregnant with significance. The command is simply to give all our human self to the service of God. The whole person is to be dedicated to the worship and the service of God. We are not intended to divide up the aspects of our humanness. The combination of heart, soul, strength and mind is no more than an emphasis on the totality of our life, the holistic way in which our lives are called to be dedicated to God.

In the beginning God created. The hows and the whens are utterly unimportant. What is important is that this alternate source of energy withdrew from a tiny space in the universe and granted room for you and I to grow there. God creates because in the perfection of divine love there was and is a desire to share love.
Love in a bottle or love in a vacuum is an unsatisfactory, restricted love. In response however to the privilege of being breathed into existence, God seeks the return of love; that we should love God with all our being.

Love from a puppet is no love at all. God breathed us into existence impregnated with free will, we may choose to love God, we may choose to ignore God, we may choose to hate God. The love of a puppet for its master is no love. God did not create puppets.

The story, the myth, of the Fall reminds us of our failure to love God. The children of the parent reject the loving care of the parent and refuse to obey. We as individuals and we as a human race fail to obey, and so we form a world where hatred is based on misunderstandings of our neighbour, because of their colour, because of their sex, because of their sexuality, because of their creed. We fail to love God with heart, soul, strength, mind. We fail to love even our neighbour. We fail to love.

At the heart of Jewish religion is the knowledge that the command to love God in our totality, and likewise to love our fellow beings created in the image of God, is everything. The Ten Commandments, all the Law, all the Prophets, all are no more then an explanation of the command to love God. If you love God then you will not covet, or steal, or perjure, or profane those things that are sacred.

The earnest lawyer saw and knew all that.

But we do not love God with our all, and we are entrapped in a world which does not love God with its all. You and I will again and again fail in our attempts to love God. We will leave undone those things we should have done and we'll do the things that we should not do.

The reward for that failure should be the experience of eternal and unremitting separation from the perfection of God’s love.

That it is not is the miracle of Easter, the miracle of divine love.

still small voice of calm

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St AIDAN’S, ALEXANDRA

and ST JAMES’, ROXBURGH

NINETEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY

(August 9^th) 2026

 

READINGS 

 

1 Kings 19:9-18 

Psalm 85:8-13

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

 

                                   

If you were one of the remarkable people who has read or is reading the bible cover to cover, or even if you were doing that simply with Matthew’s gospel account, you will read or better still hear this story knowing that just a few minutes ago Matthew used this same motif.

In Matthew 8 he records Jesus telling a teacher of the law that foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Then he tells a would be follower that he  cannot  bury his father, but must follow in the Way of the Cross immediately. And Jesus then stepping into a boat with his disciples and heading off on the lake, where a storm arises and Jesus calms it.

That though is not the story I have just read. This is another lake, another storm, another story. Jesus is not in the boat with the disciples in this vivid scene. He arrives somewhat unorthodoxly, and for people like me who really took very little notice of bible stories in my youth, it would be one of few that are memorable. And it all seems a bit unusual, really.

In fact what do we do with the nature miracles? For me there is a delicate middle path between cynical dismissal of these miracles as silly stories in an old book and uncritical acceptance of them as verbatim records of a spectacular event on a lake late one evening long ago, on the Sea of Galilee.

Matthew, who borrows this scene from Mark, makes significant theological alterations. In the first place he uses the unusual word “compels” – Jesus compels the disciples to enter the boat and undergo this harrowing experience.  Matthew vividly describes the boat as being “tortured” by the waves, and the first hearers of Matthew’s story would not have need to be rocket scientists to see the association between the portrayal of would-be followers of Jesus in a tortured boat and themselves, as would-be followers of Jesus in a church community “tortured” by misunderstanding and hatred in the Roman community around them.

The Christians were in fact rocking the boat of the Roman Empire. But that’s not the boat on display here. The boat here is their faith community, tortured by fear, buffeted by the winds of change, endangered because Roman authorities are becoming angry. They are because these upstart followers of a new religion, an illegal religion founded by a crucified criminal, are upsetting the gods.

And Jewish neighbours weren’t terribly happy, because their uneasy relationship with Rome was threatened, because Rome didn’t care about differences between upstart Christian believers and the more orthodox Jewish community. They were, to the Romans, basically atheists. They were angering the gods with their talk of one Creator God. They. the Romans, could almost stomach the traditional religion of the Jews, but these upstairs? A pox on both their houses. So the Jews and Romans alike were unimpressed.

The Jews had reached an uneasy truce with Rome, largely by compromising their standards. The new mob were hot-blooded, dismissive of the Roman gods, dismissive even of the Caesar if and when he dared to usurp the place of the Creator.

Was there a storm on the Sea of Galilee? There were probably many, and probably many occasions on which the mana of Jesus was such that the disciples trusted his judgement. Perhaps there were miraculous interventions, too – certainly this scene had to be consistent with the belief that Christians had that in Jesus they had discovered one who command the storms of life, including the storms of nature, commands storms to abate. One who could bring calm into the deepest chaos of his followers’ existence.   

It is no accident that in those thoughts Matthew was echoing the Genesis story of Creation. The Spirit breathes order into the chaos of an untamed cosmos. Indeed, one of the advantages the ancients had over we post-enlightenment travellers is that they knew the immediacy of chaos, just beneath the surface of human experience.

For decades we have tried to silence that awareness, but in the horrors of two world wars, of genocide, and of a cold war last century it was never really far away. And in the resurgent fears of nuclear chaos, the unparalleled awareness of ecological collapse, and the dramatic collapse of the American experiment, the American empire before, our very eyes we are vividly reminded that chaos’s grip is not too far away.

And that is the point Matthew – and Jesus before him, is making. The storms are not the final word. The voice of God is not in the dramatic and destructive and demonic, but in the silence, the still point, the calm. Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire” as we shall sing shortly, “o still voice of calm.”

Our duty is to be still enough, to practice the stillness of God enough, to hear the voice that is greater than the chaos, to know the peace that is always there around us. In liturgy especially we have that opportunity … A practice that is useless for any purpose except to focus on the unseen God. That and to turn our hearts for a few momenta to that God.

To know peace, and strengthened by that knowledge, to continue the journey across the lakes of life.    

 

lambs amongst wolves

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
FOURTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 9^TH) 1989

 

READINGS

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30
Galatians 6:[1-6] 7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

 

 

If I were to parcel Jesus up and to prepare him for popular market as one parcels up everyday products, seeking to make him palatable, I would have to spend a great deal of time cutting away the bitter pill that surrounds his message to his people. 

One often hears of the impact he had on those who heard him speak, yet it could be considered remarkable that he found twelve disciples at all, let alone the seventy-two that he sent out to proclaim the gospel to the world.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

It is scarcely a job description that would bring hordes knocking to the door of the Christian enterprise.

Even Paul, who was later to respond to the Christian responsibility of proclaiming Christ to the world, sees little of glamour or self-betterment in the task. Rather he sees his responsibility to be one of emptying himself, of exposing himself to the dangers of the Cross, of risking and eventually paying with his life for the gospel of Christ.

I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body.

Again and again we are reminded of the risky business of proclaiming Christ to the world. A Muslim convert who converts to Christianity in Islamic Society is likely to be rejected or murdered by his or her family. A Christian who proclaims in South Africa that the implications of the gospel for the world are a call to racial equality, and the dismantling of the evils of apartheid is likely to be murdered, gaoled, or at best beaten for the simplicity of such a message. A Christian in this country who speaks out boldly about the inequalities that produce some who rank amongst the world’s richest people and others who belong to one of the world’s poorest races, or who seeks to alter the structure that perpetuates such an evil, is likely to be alienated and castigated by her – or his – neighbours,

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

There is little in such a command that brings a sense of security.

Those of you who read the magazine Good Weekend will be able to tell me what is the world’s fastest growing (para)church. I have to describe the Mormons as a parachurch: theirs is not the gospel of orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, their growth throughout the world is phenomenal, and it leaves those of us who adhere to orthodox Christianity, and especially in its Anglican form, cringing with deserved shame.

Yet for all their theological absurdities, it has to be said that the Mormons are the fastest growing “church” in the world precisely because they have captured one aspect that dwells close to the core of our gospel passage today. They have caught the command of Jesus to go out into the community to proclaim that which they hold dear.

The question is: what do we hold dear? I would have to suggest that our Mormon friends are not only proclaiming a highly corrupt form of the gospel, but also they are offering little that presents hope to, for example, the people of the black townships of South Africa, or the homeless youth of our own community.

I believe deeply that we as Anglican Christians have far more to proclaim. We have a gospel to proclaim that not only offers hope to “hung up Mr or Ms Normal” but also, if we put our lives where our mouths are, to the children of Ethiopia and Somalia, to our own children, and to the children of the streets.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

But it is not a gospel that we can proclaim from our lounge rooms. It is not a gospel that we can proclaim merely through the mouths of our clergy or our professional evangelists. It is not a gospel we can proclaim merely by attending church – though we must do that – or merely belonging to clubs and lodges and teams. It is a gospel we must proclaim by going out into our community, if necessary by knocking on doors, by touching the lives of the unpleasant and unwashed, and by making ourselves vulnerable in the cause of the Cross.

The Mormons, by encouraging 50% of their males to commit two years of their lives to proclaiming their quite illogical and contorted version of good news, have grown 650% in the 45 years since World War 2. In the same time Anglican Christianity in the western world has reduced by between 10% and 15%.

In the end, although the message we as Anglican Christians have may not be palatable, may not be one of unconditional comfort, it will be one that has more to say to the victims of injustice, of loneliness, of “industrial disease,” than that offered by the Mormons. But we have only two choices. To commit ourselves to the radical task of visibly proclaiming the gospel or to see our churches closes down within our lifetime.

The choice is ours.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

And the word we are sent out to proclaim is the word of peace. It is a radical word, the setting right of the hearer’s relationship with God, with self, with neighbour. It is a word that seeks to reorient the injustices of society. It is a word that demands a costly response on the part of the hearer.

The peace of God which passes all understanding.

It is not always a popular word, for it demands setting aside human power games. But it is a word we are called to pronounce. Shalom. To that end we must reach out into the community.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

The Lord be with you.

birds have nests

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
ELEVENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 2) 1989

 

READINGS

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

 

In every ministry, every new ministry, there are inevitable changes of direction, inevitable new ideas. Some will represent improvements; some will be regressive. One of the subtle changes some people have noted in the period since Easter is that when using First Order Communion I often omit inclusion of the so-called “Comfortable Words.”

I have many reasons for doing so, but at least one of them is that in contemporary Anglican Christianity we spend a little too much time reflecting on the comfort brought to us in the sacrificial life of Christ, and too little time reflecting on the discomfort – to us and to Christ – of the Way of the Cross into which we are called.

It is traditional during Lent, and to a lesser extent Advent, to slow down and take stock of something of that cost. But I sense even that is insufficient, and  that much more stock must be taken at all times of the cost of our faith. A comfortable faith is dangerous – and yes, I know only too well that the word “comfortable” has shifted in meaning greatly in the past century.

Jesus was walking along the road and apparently invited a man to follow him. He had already made clear to another traveller something of the cost of faith.

Foxes have holes and birds have nests
      but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

It is an enigmatic saying, and a metaphorical one. Its meaning is elusive but not literal, for we know clearly from the gospel records that the Son frequently slept and ate in the homes of friends or followers.

In the context in which Luke places the saying it is particularly poignant, for Jesus has just been rejected by a Samaritan village. In the context of his whole life it is powerful, for this in adult form is the babe for whose birth there was no room at an inn, and following whose death there is only a borrowed tomb. The Son of Man dwells amongst human beings and his very vocation is to be misunderstood and rejected.

We have seen already Christ’s utter identification with the poor. We have seen that this does not mean for him a rejection of the company of the rich, but simply that for the one who “came to his own people and they did not accept him” was utterly poor, and in that utter poverty revealed the nature of God. He now simply reaffirms that message as a challenge to the traveller who sought to follow him.

But to a second would-be follower Jesus offers stern stuff.

Another to whom he said, “follow me,” replied,
“Let me go and bury my father first.”
But he answered, “leave the dead to bury their dead.”

It is a command that contradicts even the most sacred values of Jewish custom. Commentators on the passage often emphasise the fact that the person’s father was almost certainly not yet dead, but approaching the point of death. In either case Jesus’ answer is utterly unacceptable.

Burial of the dead was a religious duty that took precedence over all others, Including even study of the Law. Priests, who were not normally allowed to touch dead bodies, could do so in the case of relatives … the burial of a father was a religious duty of the utmost significance.
                                                   (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, Exeter: Paternoster, 1978, 411)

 

Jesus, in other words, is spitting in the face of all that his people, all that his culture held dear. He is offering not comfort but utter rejection, utter misunderstanding, utter scorn.

Your duty is to go and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.

Nothing else, even all that is humanly decent, all that has become the mores of a decent society, nothing can take priority over the claim the Christ places on the lives of his followers.

We have seen also, in the readings from the book of Kings, the Old Testament response to this context. Elijah allows Elisha the decency of farewelling those he loves before his pilgrimage  begins. For Jesus the Way of the Cross must exclude even that.

In truth I tell you, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke Sleep well then, is to disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved.

                                                                                                (Matt. 5:18)

 

In that sense there is little offer of comfort in the gospel of Christ. There is little of security, little that provides for us barricades against a world that many of us sense is changing too fast.

Those who naïvely proclaim biblical support, for example, for their belief in the orthodox family unit have read only selective portions of the gospel. Christ flies in the face of all that his hearers held dear, scandalised rather than comforted all who upheld rigorously the standards of Old Testament legalism.

For even that, says Christ, even the family, even at the burial rites of those we love, even the possession of basic needs must be surrendered to the service of the gospel. It is small wonder that Saint Paul describes his cross as a scandal to the Jews and a stumbling block to the Greeks. The commitment to Christ surpasses all else.

All this is consistent with a crazy upside down gospel that pronounces that it is the poor who are the icon of God’s nature, and which proclaims the love of God for humanity by hanging God naked on a cross.

Is there, then, comfort in the cross? In Christ? I fear not, if our expectation of comfort is for this side of the grave. But surely Good Friday is only half the story, and the real comfort lies in that icy Easter morning as we stand stunned at the empty tomb and proclaim with all Christians, “Christ is risen: death where is your sting?”

The Lord be with you.