Tell the story – words and acts

This reflection was offered in two parts. The first part is in response to this passage in John 4

This story from John’s version of the gospel offers us a clear and beautiful example of the evangelical tradition in action. The woman meets Jesus – a chance encounter – and they have a conversation which has a level of depth and significance that has captivated and still delights and amazes followers of Jesus and biblical scholars alike.

This conversation effects a deep change in the woman. She came to the well to draw water, she returned to the town leaving her empty water jar behind, but full – full and overflowing – with wonder and hope. She tells people about Jesus, inviting them to come and see for themselves… he could be the messiah. He might be, maybe. What do you think? She asks.

And they come. They listen, they interact and they want to spend more time with him.

This is the heart of the evangelical stream: the practice of telling your story of transformation through your encounter with Jesus.

In the 80s I remember reading a heap of books by Christians who had grown up into a world of violence, drugs, gangs, crime, communism, and then they had been introduced to Jesus and their lives had changed. They got clean, got a regular job, got married, and then returned to their former world to share the good news of hope and love.

The story was moving and powerful, always, and the transformation was stunning. Jesus saved my life, they’d say, quite literally. If I had stayed on that path, I’d be dead by now…overdose, gang violence, suicide, alcohol poisoning…if someone hadn’t told me about God’s love, and shown me how God loves me right here, right now, I’d be dead.

It’s a long time since I was at that Billy Graham rally, and I was already a Christian when I went, so it wasn’t a conversion experience for me then. I don’t remember how he told his story, although I’m pretty sure it didn’t start with drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. But it was still his story. His personal testimony, blended with some selected scriptures to illustrate how he understood salvation to work and what we, as individuals needed to do to make sure we were in on that.

I do remember hearing a youth leader give her personal testimony at a camp one time, and it began like this: After going astray in my early years, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, I gave my life to Jesus when I was seven.

And I recall many late-night conversations over coffee with teens who had grown up in a Christian family where going to church was part of their weekly rhythm, where they couldn’t remember never knowing about Jesus, and they had this sense of lack. They didn’t have an interesting or exciting conversion story to tell. There wasn’t a before and after moment for them. There was a growing familiarity with stories from scripture, a kind of inbuilt understanding of church as a place, an organization, a community and an obligation. It’s not that their faith wasn’t real, or wasn’t theirs… they were clear about what and how they believed separate from what and how their parents believed. It’s not that their faith wasn’t personal or important to them.

It just wasn’t very dramatic. It wasn’t a conversion story.

And a testimony seems to need to have some drama, doesn’t it?

We seem to think our stories need to bring the other person into a moment of decision, a life changing decision. When you meet with friends, when you catch up with each other at morning tea, or at meeting, or a working bee…what kind of stories do you find yourself telling?  

How do our normal conversations speak of faith when we aren’t giving a testimony, or doing a bible study? How does the written word of the bible, and the Living Word of Jesus the Christ become a natural part of our everyday spoken words?

Let’s pause for prayer and reflection as we listen to the music and to the inner prompts of the Holy Spirit.

……….

The second part of the reflection is offered in response to this poem:  St Francis and the sow, by Galway Kinnell

Francis of Assisi is the saint the Renovare folks have associated with the evangelical stream. It’s taken me a while to figure out how they came to that.

Especially as Francis is credited with this saying:

Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.

There is something very appealing about this saying – if I think that sharing the good news of my faith is supposed to take the form of preaching or witnessing or bringing another person to a conversion encounter with Christ, then the idea that I might preach the gospel by my living takes some of the pressure off. 

There’s a couple of issues with it though. Firstly, there’s not a shred of evidence recording him ever saying it. And secondly, Francis was fully committed to preaching with words.

He was so committed to it he preached to the birds. His whole community of monks preached. Their vow of poverty meant that they had nothing except what people gave so they travelled the countryside preaching and praying, blessing and begging.

In the poem, we hear of how Francis was called upon to pray for the sow who had given birth to a brood of fourteen piglets, but her milk wouldn’t flow to feed them. The poet begins with the image of a flower bud, and tells us this is a universal image…in everyone and everything is the furled bud, the flower waiting to unfold all its beauty to the world. The bud is a symbol of hope hidden and held, needing encouragement, needing blessing and warmth to give it courage, so it may open.

We are all like this, says the poet, all like the furled bud who needs to be reminded, ‘you are lovely’.

And with Francis’ touch on the sow’s furrowed brow, with his blessing reminding her, she relaxed into her loveliness and all that beauty flowed out to the joy and delight of the piglets, the saint and the farmer. This is a story of preaching the gospel with and without words – and that reflects something that Francis did say:

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

Your whole life speaks. Your smile. Your hug. Your stories. Your silence. Your singing, your moving, your sharing, your listening…

And none of that will be perfect. Sometimes there will be unkind words, withheld touch, angry stories, stony silence. The issue isn’t about how good are you, but are you growing?

You may not have a conversion story to tell. You may not have done anything that sounds like mission. You may have a horror of even sounding like you are preaching or getting into a debate about faith and the meaning of life.

But have you grown in love? Are you growing in love for God, neighbour and self? Are you growing to trust yourself to God and to the world, so that you joyfully bring forth the quiet, ordinary beauty of your soul’s unfolding? Because it is from that place within you that we are confident to encourage and bless the unfolding in others.

This is how your walking becomes your preaching, and your talking and your touch becomes a blessing.

The practices of faith – like dwelling in scripture, praying in words and in silence, resting in God’s presence – return us again and again to receive this blessing, this touch, this encouragement and reminder from Jesus so that as we walk, talk, listen and touch we also bless, encourage and remind.

And life flowers in us and around us when we do this.

Let’s pray.

True bible stories

For this sermon, we listened to these texts as framework for the ongoing exploration of the Evangelical Stream of the Christian tradition: Genesis 22:1-3,7-12; Jeremiah 17:5-10

I was sent a copy of someone else’s sermon the other day, which set out what that minister believed and didn’t believe about stories in the bible. From what I can gather, what was said, and how it was said had caused a bit of consternation, provoked some unhappy reactions.

I’m not going to comment on any of that content, except to say that I understand that faith is a journey. I know that what I believe is subject to change and so is how I believe. This is true for all of us. That change can take me into greater depths of peace, love and joy, or it can take me into greater depths of fear, guilt and shame. This is also true for all of us.

So as we dip our toes a bit further into the Evangelical stream of the Christian tradition, we are going to look a bit more closely at our approach to the three aspects of the word centred faith – the living word: Jesus, the written word: the scriptures, and the spoken word: the stories we tell. This week we’ll focus on the written word: the scriptures.

But before that, a story.

I clicked on a link in the New York Times daily digest the other day, which showed how young stand up comedian, Taylor Tomlinson, worked on developing the story she used to close her live show.

The article had some short clips of various live shows Taylor did as she tried out different elements of the story, which was about how her best friend from primary school called Taylor to announce her engagement. The basis of the story is cute but kind of bare – so Taylor progressively adds in the names of her friend and her friend’s fiancé, plus some seemingly random personal details.

She notices that she gets better responses from the audience when she mimes some parts of the conversation – holding her phone to her shoulder, for example, and when she pauses at appropriate moments with some exaggerated facial expressions.

She adds in some extra elements of the conversation, making fun of herself with them. At one gig, she includes an F-bomb in the punchline, which gets good laughs, but then she takes it out and instead adds extra emphasis to a word. And she ends with a flourish that is verbal and physical and altogether sassy.

The end result is positively delightful. AND it probably bears very little resemblance to the actual flow of original conversation.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this.

There are stories in our scriptures which definitely didn’t happen, and it isn’t a sign of great faith to state that you believe they did. Nor is it a heresy to say that they didn’t happen.

I think we can probably all agree with the scholars who say  that Jonah is not a story that actually happened. Similarly Esther and Job. These stories all have elements that are clearly exaggerations, and fantastical happenings, and stock characters. These elements are clues to us that the story is meant to be read as fiction.

But I am not saying these stories aren’t true. I am saying they didn’t actually happen.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Stories can be True Fiction. Jesus’ parables are a good example of fictional stories that communicate powerfully some of the most profoundly true and beautiful things about who God is.

The father who runs down the road to embrace the returning, wayward son, and who leaves the party to reassure the dutiful son. The searcher after lost things, the rejoicer over found things. It’s true even though it never really happened. It is no one’s story and it is all of our stories.

This story that Taylor is telling is, I think, akin to many of the stories we find in the scriptures. She is telling a story that did happen, but now she’s telling it with style.

Similarly, there are lots of stories in the scriptures whose core events did actually happen, and the writers of the story had some fun telling it with flair. There are literary elements included like some exaggeration and symbolism.

In the gospel accounts we can see there are editorial comments or careful framing of a story – Matthew has the sermon on the mount, which echoes Moses and the ten commandments. Luke has the sermon on the plain, making a very different statement about servant leadership, breaking down of barriers, openness and radical liberation.

These aren’t tricks aimed at deceiving us or testing our capacity to believe. They are there for the same reason Taylor’s flourishes of story telling are there – to draw us in, to entertain and engage us and to communicate more effectively and memorably what actually matters.

What actually matters is not how many Hebrews were freed from slavery in Egypt or how many years they wandered in the wilderness. It was a big group. A long time. What matters is that God freed them, God liberated them, God called them and went with them. God’s presence in the story, God’s action, God’s provision, God’s faithfulness, God’s tender mercy… what matters in these stories is that they reliably tell us something about who God is. Usually, that’s a little something. Not too much, because we have limited capacity to grasp the fullness of God’s Isness.

There are one or two stories I would absolutely not put in the True and told with extra flair category. The story of Jesus actual physical death and actual bodily resurrection are not added flair. The whole of the writings of the New Testament constantly refer to and are built on the conviction that Jesus died and was raised from the dead – both of those a bodily reality. These are big clues to us that we are not meant to read these details as nothing more than literary flourishes.

The Evangelical stream of our faith is about our stories – written, living and spoken. So, this week, I invite you to dip in to a bible story. I’ve picked one for you, printed it out and everything. Take a copy, and later on today read it over and notice what it tells you about who God is. Maybe return to it a few times, see if you notice anything new.

And come back next week, for the next instalment of the Evangelical Stream.

Introducing the six streams of the Christian tradition

This sermon was preached on February 25th, and included some time for conversation – the prompt is at the end of the reflection. The texts we heard were:  Isa 55:1-11; Ps 119:105; Jn 1:1-5

Today we’re starting a four week series which is part of a six month series exploring six streams or traditions in the history of Christian faith.

The six streams were given names by a group founded by spiritual leader Richard Foster – Evangelical, Holiness, Social Justice, Charismatic, Contemplative and Incarnational. Each stream was identified from the fruit of various movements through history, and from the focus associated by those in that movement. It’s ok if none of that means anything much to you, because we’ll be dipping our toes in each stream and I’m hoping that you’ll find there’s some familiar and some new things in each one as we go.

We are going to begin with the Evangelical stream. The Evangelical stream reflects an aspect of Christian faith practices that are word centred. They are word centred around the three ways that we encounter the story of God’s presence and action in the world – Jesus the Christ who is the living word, the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament as the written word, and the stories of faithful followers of Christ as the spoken words.

“Evangelical” is a term which has some baggage, and so today we’ll explore what the stream is really about, and talk a bit about what this word means to each of us.

Firstly, let’s just unpack that word a bit.

In Greek, euangelion means good news. Angelion means messenger, bringer of news (angels), and eu means good – like euthanasia, euphoria. In Christian history, however, evangelical has become associated with a particular approach to Biblical interpretation, which includes a particular view of God, humans, the world, heaven and hell.

It would be more accurate to call this evangelicalism. The history of evangelicalism is fascinating – we can talk about that more later if you’re interested.

The important thing for us to notice this week is that there are three ways we encounter the story here. We heard just now those very familiar opening lines from John’s gospel. In the beginning was the word. I’m going to be nerdy here and talk about Greek for a moment, but please don’t switch off – this is important. Our bible is translated, and translation is a tricky art. The word used in Greek for the word in John’s opening sentences is LOGOS.

This word does not mean word – not in the sense of letters strung together to make words in a sentence. The Greek word for that kind of word is lexis.

LOGOS means something more like ground, speech and expectation. In the beginning was the ground of all being, in the beginning was the breath of God, in the beginning was hopeful presence of the holy in and through all things. John is equating Jesus with this ground of being, breath of God and infused holiness. Not with the bible. Not with the Hebrew scriptures or the writings of the New Testament. It’s important for us, because as part of the reformed tradition, we tend to add an extra element to the Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Holy Bible.

Or we tend to think Jesus and the Spirit is present to us in the Bible, rather than, or more than, in any other way. So the word centred life is not a life centred around the bible any more or any less than the other streams. All of the streams hold scripture as a foundational , guiding element. But Christ is the centre of the focus.

You might be puzzling over that – which is great!

The evangelical stream invites us to pay attention to the three ways that we encounter the story of God’s presence and action in the world:

• Jesus the Christ who is the living word,
• the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament as the written word,
• and the stories of faithful followers of Christ as the spoken words.

And it put special emphasis on the spoken word – the ways that we tell the story, bring the good news of God’s action and presence in the world.

You may be feeling pretty uncomfortable about that – which is fine, too. Honestly, I’m with you there. Talking about God can be awkward. So, let’s dive in to some conversation time.

AND

Sabbath rest and raw potatoes

This sermon was preached in two parts on February 11th. This is the first text : Isaiah 58:9b-14

It might not make sense at first, but I’d like to start with an illustration. I have brought some visual aids with me this week. I have a raw potato, a bowl of porridge and a piece of cake. I once heard a very wise and experienced teacher of contemplative practice say that Jesus approached life like one of these. Can you tell me which one, and why?

It’s the cake.

When you are baking a cake, how do you test for doneness? You poke a cocktail stick or skewer into it and if it’s done then nothing sticks to it. If it still needs more time, then crumbs and batter cling to the stick.

Now, if we tried that same kind of test on the potato or the porridge, we’d get a whole lot of resistance from the one, and a whole lot of goop from the other.

Jesus is like a perfectly baked cake. He was one who moved through life without resisting anything – not even death. And he moved through life without clinging to anything – not even life itself. Before he even sets his face for Jerusalem, he tells the disciples what will come. He accepts it, goes out to meet it and receives it. He forgives the ones who act out their fear and anger on him.

He doesn’t resign himself to the cross as if he is powerless to change anything – because he is not powerless. If he chose differently, he could offer the kind of firm resistance a potato only dreams about. Neither does he submit to torture out of despair of ever changing anything. He doesn’t give up in frustration. Those are the ways of porridge.

Instead he surrenders to the will and wisdom of God – a surrender he has been practicing for his whole life in his silent prayer in those deserted places.

And this is what Isaiah is getting at.

Put aside the ways of the potato and the porridge, the clinging and the resisting. Aside from anything else, the effort it takes is exhausting, and you take that same effort into your sabbath. If our rest is just so we can keep going, or if we pause so we can stew over what happened this week – pointing the finger and offloading onto someone else- then it follows that we’ll end up parched, dissatisfied, weak, even ruined.

This isn’t a threat…it’s just a description of the destination that these roads head towards.

The sabbath rest is meant to be a time of delight, a time of release and nurturing inner quiet and calm, meeting with the One who is love, who loves you beyond your wildest imagining. This is what sabbath is for. For peace and serenity – for the peace of being and not doing. For the serenity of knowing that this peace is always there with you if you will surrender into God’s arms and be held in the quiet.

I love the images that Isaiah gives for what flows forth from that surrendered place: the light of noonday in the gloom of our darkness; the lush, watered garden; the deep, unfailing spring; the restoring of places to live; the repairing of ruptures; there is simultaneously a promise of being grounded in a firm foundation and being lifted up and fed.

So…are you more potato or porridge?

And if you are thinking that Jesus is special, has a fully human fully divine advantage over us, please think again.

Jesus is the Way. We follow him, we learn from him, we practice resting, delighting and being with him – and by grace, little by little, we become like him…able to move through life without clinging and without resisting. Able to perceive the wisdom needed in each moment. Able to see the light, sense the inner flow that leads us to acts of peace, nurture, restoration and repair.

Let’s pause with this for a moment, and allow the music to draw us into a deeper place.

Slow me down – you can listen here.

The second reading is Mark 9:2-9

Like every piece of spiritual wisdom, the path of peace and serenity is simple and also very hard. I do not underestimate how challenging it is to let go of resisting and clinging. Those habits were formed in childhood and we are so deeply immersed in the grooves that we can’t see anything beyond them. We don’t really know any other way of meeting life except resist or cling.

We basically have two ways out of that rut, and we need them both to happen.

We need to be jolted out by some outside force or event, and if we want to stay on a new path, we need to exert ourselves to rise over the hump and create new pathways. You can be jolted by going on a retreat, you can sign up for a life changing experience or choose a career path that will land you in challenging and confronting situations. Or, you can love so deeply your heart breaks open, you can have an accident that leaves you paralysed, you can lose a child, a parent, a friend.

The jolt alone is not enough though. We also need a discipline of awareness and attention where we exert ourselves in finding the practices that work in our own lives to train us to let go of our potato and porridge reactions and instead to be present with God’s love and light, to receive love and light, grace and joy.

It’s weird, I know, but we need to learn how to be, and to practice being in God’s presence, because this is the only way for us to be led into real rest.

I find it very comforting to notice that Jesus gave the disciples many shocks. This story is one of those moments where the disciples are rocked out of their ruts. And Peter, bless him, shows us what we do when that happens. He feels a sense of utter bewilderment… and maybe a desire to cling to something. And then he proposes making a shrine. It’s like he shows us how hard it is to be there, just soaking it in, just letting the light shine on him and not trying to somehow make it a bit more normal, manageable and accessible – a bit less jolting.

We each have a million ways of distracting ourselves from just being with the Divine, even of the discomfort of being with the Divine. Some of those ways are coming to church, reading the bible and praying – honestly, we can very comfortably hide out in those all the time telling ourselves we are actively seeking God. We resist for loads of totally good reasons, all of which will very effectively keep us from the love we want.

So, beginning this lent and going on through the next six months or so, I’m going to invite you to come on a deepening journey with me. We’ll go deeper into peace, we’ll explore areas of the Christian tradition you may not be so familiar with, and we’ll do it in the company of saints like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and Benedict of Nursia.

We’ll do it with some great spiritual teachers like Catherine of Sienna, Thomas Kelly, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen.

And together we’ll practice being present with God, learning to let go of our resistance and our clinging.

Let’s pray.

The mother-in-law’s story

This sermon was preached on February 4th, and is a reflection on these scripture passages: Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39, which you can find here.

I got halfway through writing my reflection on the text this week and I realised, actually, that’s not where I need to start. I need to start with a catch up. I’ve been away and things have been going on here without me… and, as you may have noticed in the newsletter, the parish council hasn’t met since November, which means that it’s been two months since I have had a chance to touch base with the elders and to share what is going on with me, what I’m planning for this year, what I sense the Spirit is saying to me. And while that two month gap is what normally happens, this year, it has felt bad, probably because last year brought significant loss and extra tension, and perhaps also because we began this year in a different way – with our shared services with Mount Wellington Community Church.

Plus, I’ve spent the last two Sundays with the good folks at St Paul’s in Napier as part of the free holiday accommodation on offer, which was a sweet deal, especially given how warmly they responded, and it also gave me a fresh perspective on my ministry here. So I recognise the need to re-establish a connection with you all, and I also have some important things to share about where my journey has led me over the past month.

I ended the year feeling flat and empty.

It wasn’t just that the year had been a hard one for me in terms of personal loss and grief, it was also that I was feeling at a loss.

The issues we face as a congregation and the issues the church faces as an institution, as an organisation in our society, in our country and around the world are so overwhelming that I don’t know where to start. I couldn’t see how to move out of keeping things going/getting more people into church mode into offering a way to journey together into a shared life that is healing, loving and full of grace.

I’m not even sure I can communicate effectively what I mean, how I imagine the difference between those two modes – I don’t know that I can describe what it is that I’m leaning towards and yearning to be part of – I don’t know that there are words for it yet that will make sense. In facing this reality, I felt despair. How can I inspire you to join me in a new thing if I can’t describe it for you? How can I motivate you to commit to something vague and entirely lacking in concrete goals without clear measures of success?

Why would you trust me and the changes I propose? I may just end up leading us to an early dissolution of the congregation.

I ended the year metaphorically on the kitchen floor, at a loss. There were tears. Lots of them. And there was also faith.

I know that God is present in the mess and the confusion because over and over this is where I finally let myself be found by God. When I reach the end of myself and my great ideas, and my hopeful planning and my latest resource…that’s when I throw myself on God’s mercy and let myself receive grace.

So I let myself begin the year with some fluffy fiction and the company of some good friends. And then I was offered a book called The Well Gardened Mind, and as I read it, I felt something resonating deep within, as if a bag of seed ideas for us at St Peter’s had just landed in my hand, and God was grinning at me. I followed that up with some long, reflective walks, I sat in quiet prayer, and I spent time talking with other ministers and listening to other’s sermons.

God is at work here and I’m looking forward to talking with the parish council about planting seeds in this coming year. I still don’t have words to fully describe what I’m leaning towards, but as I reflected on the scripture, it seemed like the gospel passage has some of the movement, the flow, the shape of it.

To start with we have Jesus going from the synagogue to the house of Peter’s mother-in-law, where he lifts up the sick woman, healing her, and in response she begins to serve others.

I’ve heard some responses to this story that are dismayed that a woman who was seriously unwell moments before, upon being healed immediately sets to with making sure the menfolk don’t go without their supper. I have some sympathy with that concern since I see how it can look like the story reinforces the idea that women have a fixed and lesser role and worth than men, and that Jesus is ok with this.

But that reduces her experience of Jesus’ healing touch to something transactional – as if Jesus’ motivation for lifting her up were just so that she’d get better and get back to work. But Jesus doesn’t treat others as problems to solve or fix. He sees wholeness and his touch is restorative.

Jesus’ touch is healing of the illness, yes, but Jesus is interested in the person – the whole person. Healing of physical symptoms is the most obvious sign to us, but it seems that for one who is open to trust and receive, there is more.

We have stories that tell of this… like the friends who make a hole in the roof to lower their paralysed loved one into Jesus’ presence. Jesus first tells him that he is forgiven and then he speaks to his physical healing.

We have the story of the woman who hid in the crowd and reached out to touch Jesus’ cloak for her body to be healed, but he would not move on, he would not let her go, until he spoke with her and called her ‘daughter’, restoring her connection to community and belonging.

We have the story of the ten lepers who were healed – nine of them content with the cure of a restored body, one who knew their healing had also happened at a deeper level.

So this woman, Peter’s mother in law, is lifted up by Jesus, just as Jesus is lifted up on the cross and from the tomb with the life of the Resurrection. She is touched by the vibrant energy of his love and in response to God’s action, she moves to serve – she ministers to him – out of gratitude, out of love, faith, and joy.

Jesus continues to heal into the evening. In the early morning he gets up and takes himself away into the quiet for stillness and solitude before he continues on his mission of loving, healing service.

There is a pattern here that we see in the other gospel accounts too. There is a flow from a restful solitude in nature, connecting with God in prayer into compassionate ministry and service to the world, connecting with God in people. There is a flow of joyful gratitude in the service. There is a flow of healing and enriching relationship. There is a flow of grace in all directions.

This is what I’m leaning towards and yearning to find a way to participate in – this rhythm of restful prayer, of loving presence, of deep and rich relationships and joyful service. I’m drawn to this pace, this flow, this vision.

So I am listening for the voice of the Spirit, I’m trusting God will show up, and that like the tenth leper, we will be open to receive and be guided to respond to what God is doing among us.

Purposeful and Intentional – A New Year reflection

This sermon was preached on January 7th, and is a reflection on the following texts: Gen 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11. You can find those here.

We are at the beginning of a new calendar year, and for many this is a time to review the year that’s past and setting intentions for the year ahead. This transitional time offers us a space to pause and reflect. Perhaps to celebrate some wins and to consider what we might learn from mistakes and failures. Perhaps to adjust expectations or to re-evaluate our priorities in the light of our most recent experience. And all of those are good ways to attend to the new year, whenever you choose to begin it.

But in preparation for this Sunday, my bible reading over the past week or so has included a passage from Matthew’s gospel where the Pharisees are quizzing John the Baptist about his credentials. Who are you? They ask him.

Are you the Messiah? they want to know. He tells them plainly – I am not. I’m the one preparing the way for him.

As I reflected on this reading, I noticed John’s clarity of his purpose and his intention. And I felt drawn to it.

I wonder if you have a sense of your purpose for the year ahead?

Do you have a sense of your intention? If you reviewed the year that has past, would that speak of your purpose or intention for your life?

I wonder this in part because we have stated that as a community of faith, our mission – our purpose and intention – is to grow in love by grace.

Have you grown in love? What story might you tell about that? Have you found or deepened practices that have nurtured and supported your faith? How have you experienced and shown grace in the past year and what stories can you share?

This is not just a mind game or a navel gazing exercise – this is an essential, very practical part of listening to the voice of the Spirit guiding you – guiding us – on the journey of life and faith. Otherwise, we drift through our days on auto pilot, and the days become weeks and months and years, and then you die.

So the turning year gives us one place to pause and take stock so we can be purposeful and intentional about the year ahead, and make some conscious choices about how we want to show up, and what we want that to look like.

John had obviously decided what his sense of vocation meant for his wardrobe, dietary and lifestyle choices. These reflected his purpose and intention – his calling and commitment in light of his understandings of society, culture, politics and economics. These also reflected habits that formed him for his particular mission and ministry – a ministry that included baptising Jesus the Christ.

In today’s reading, we see two significant things happen at Jesus’ baptism.

Firstly, as he is coming up out of the water, the heavens are torn apart, and the Spirit descends on Jesus. This signifies a momentous opening, like the veil in the temple’s holy of holies being torn in two at Jesus’ death.

Divisions that seemed set in stone are being torn down. God, ineffable creator, source of all that is, takes on human form and limitation. Heaven and earth are joined. The sacred and the common are united, holiness does not want, need or mean separation.

In Jesus, and through his life, God demonstrates again and again that our divisions are meaningless, and that is because God’s desire is to be together with us. This is the good news. The sacred is intertwined in the mundane and unfolding in everyday happenings.

The second significant thing that happens is the voice Jesus hears promising God’s love and blessing. You are mine, says God, my beloved…no matter what.

Love and blessing are given freely, before Jesus begins his ministry.

Love and blessing are given because Jesus, the man, needs to hear this, same as you and I need to hear it. Love and blessing are given freely because divine parental love tears down separations and declares that nothing can come between us. Whatever depths we sink to, whatever trouble we cause or experience, whatever loss we suffer, God’s love will go deeper, broader, and more tenderly to reach us.

And so, we come back to our review of our practice of faith, our habits of prayer and worship and service, since these are some of the ways that we signal to God our desire to be reached.

All of our habits form us, one way or another, and good habits form us by keeping us aware that in our everyday, utter ordinariness, we are in God’s presence.

Our routines of prayer and worship can help us as good habits, and they can also become empty rituals when routine become rote. You might think that freshness and change would help to keep that awareness of God’s presence alive for us.

If I can just bring something new in my sermon each week. If the band can just bring new songs, or new energy, or if there’s more creative ways to pray, more opportunities for us to respond to God – then we’ll be assured of lively worship, inspiring prayers, insightful preaching, meaningful services …

But God must be found in the mundane and the ordinary, not just in the highs of delight and transcendence, because otherwise it will seem that God is missing in most of your life. Our practices must help us discover that God can be found in the everyday, the familiar and the boring.

So we pause at the year’s end and new beginning, perhaps to review how much we’ve been going through the motions.

Perhaps to review what we have put in to our relationship with God. Because the life of faith, the whole relationship with God is a two way relationship.

I know you have heard this before, so I wonder what that means for you? What does it look like for you? What best brings you into an awareness that you are in God’s presence, and what helps you to stay in that awareness?

One of the things we are often told as a way to stay in God’s presence is to pray – to pray by talking to God as if you were talking to a good friend.

So that doesn’t mean bringing a bunch of news headlines to God and telling God what needs to happen. It doesn’t mean asking God why this or that has or hasn’t happened or even listing things you are thankful for or appreciative of.

When you talk to a good friend, you say what is happening for you, what you are anxious about, what you are longing for, what you are confused or angry about, what has brought you joy. You share your highs and lows. And your good friend listens, and makes encouraging noises to you and watches your face as you talk, and holds you if you need to cry. This is the two way relationship which God is offering you. Jesus, your friend who will listen, nod, smile, and who you can trust to hold you.

So if your pause and review leads you to recognise you’d like to be more purposeful and intentional about your relationship with God;

If you’d like to have more stories of love and grace to tell at the end of the year, perhaps you could make this the year of talking to God, of listening to the Spirit’s whisper and of trusting Jesus to hold you.

Advent disruptions

The readings for this reflection are:

Isaiah 61.1-2
The spirit of the Holy One is upon me,
            because God has anointed me;
God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
            to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
            and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the time of God’s favour.

and

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ,
Christ enters my foot, and is infinitely me.
 
I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ …
 
Do my words seem blasphemous? –Then
open your heart to Christ
 
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love …
we wake up inside Christ’s body
 
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy, as Christ,
and Christ makes us, utterly, real,
 
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Christ transformed
 
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in Christ’s light.
Christ awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

– Symeon The New Theologian, as quoted in The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell

We have lit three candles on the advent wreath now.

One for hope. One for peace. One for joy. Our final candle next week is the candle for love.

These are the gifts of advent – or rather, this is the time of year when we bring these gifts to the forefront of our attention and hear the invitation to receive them.

The reading from Isaiah that accompanies the candle for joy is the good news for the poor, Jesus’ mission statement that he begins his ministry with. As much as we might want charming, comforting Christmas sermons in Advent, this a season of preparation and cleaning up. Advent presents us with an invitation to be unsettled.

New life and growth require some labour to bring them to birth…  God is preparing a new “way” and it requires that we let go of the old one to make space for the new. Advent invites us to allow Jesus to be something else to us, to come in a new way in us, and to initiate a new world through us. 

Meister Eckhart, a Dominican monk in 1400s wrote this:

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture? 

What good indeed? But it’s easier said that done.

I heard a story once of a family walking along the beach after a storm. The sand was covered with all kinds of flotsam and jetsam brought in by the tide. The children, let’s call them Anna and Alex, were running up and down the beach collecting bits of shells that are beautiful even in their brokenness, and exclaiming over each new treasure that they found.

Fresh offerings arrived with each wave, and then they all notice, bobbing out in the water is a bright blue starfish. Alex got this look on his face, the kind of look that says ‘that’s my starfish’ and he ran into the water to get it, but before he got there, he turned and ran back. Then he looked back out at the starfish, and ran even further towards it…before he turned and ran back again.

The rest of the family were very confused by this behaviour. ‘What are you doing? Go get it!’ they said, and so Alex ran out again, and got really close before he stopped again….and frustration and distress were evident in every line of his face…

What’s the matter? His dad asked.

‘I can’t do it!’ Alex cried.

Why not?

And Alex said, ‘because my hands are full of shells.’

For many of us, the greatest treasure is right there in front of you, but you can’t pick it up because of what you are already holding. The gift is set before you and you can’t receive it because of what you are holding on to.

The gifts of hope, peace, joy, love are set before us. In order to receive, you have to accept, you have to open, you have to surrender.

I wonder which of the advent themes is drawing you in this year? Which one is your life calling out for?

Our craft activity this morning gives you an opportunity to reflect and respond both here and in the week to come.

And as you consider the gift and play with the craft, consider too what wider action is stirring in you as your response to the invitation to receive this advent gift?

As you make your ornament, share what is drawing you and how you plan to respond.

Comfort and Preparations

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

Isaiah 40:1-11

‘Comfort!’ Says God through the prophet Isaiah. ‘There there. It’s ok…I’ve got you.’

These words were originally spoken to the people who had been conquered and taken into exile. To the people who had been driven out of their homes, stripped of all they owned, had all their titles, status, honour taken from them and made into slaves and refugees. These words were spoken to the people who wrote and sang the psalm about weeping  by the rivers of Babylon, because of how hard it is to be told to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.

Comfort, says God. It’s ok. I’ve got you. I know it has been hard, the last seventy years or so. You have suffered. And now, it is time to prepare a way through the wilderness, a smooth and straight path that you will travel back home without struggle, without stumbling.

The good news for the people is that God is near, and that God is kind. Like a shepherd he will tend you and care for you and he will lead you home.

Home is a very evocative word, isn’t it? At its best, home is safe and comfortable. It’s a place where you can relax, be yourself and be accepted for yourself. Home is a place where you are welcome. A place where you belong.

Roy says in his story how angry and lost he was, and how hard it was to come back from exile. Loneliness does that to a person. It can make nearness feel scary.

How do you respond when you hear that God is near, I wonder? Or when someone comes near to you with care and concern? It can be hard to receive this nearness. But advent tells us, gently and joyfully, that God is with us. And, amazingly, God’s glory is revealed when we also come near to each other. When we are with each other, alongside each other, showing each other the same tender care that we are receiving from God. It is nearness – God’s nearness – that brings us a sense of peace.

We lit the candle for peace this morning, and peace is desperately needed in our world. We feel it now, especially, with the daily news of wars and threats of war – but human beings are not naturally inclined towards peace. This is a stretch for us. Left to our own devices, we are restless, anxious, competitive, and envious.

On Christmas morning, the glad tidings of the angels is that a new king is born, and that this is a sign of what God is up to – bringing a peaceable kingdom of love, joy and hope within our reach. This is the restoration of all things, this is the way God brings us home, welcomes us in, assures us we belong. It’s not just for some of us. It’s for all of creation. It’s here, and it’s still to come in all its fullness. But, we cannot reach it alone.We cannot bring it among us. We cannot make it happen inside us.

We need help. We need God to help us, and we need to help each other. We also need to hear the words of comfort…it’s ok. I’ve got you. And we need to practice saying those words to one another – to every other that God brings your way.

We pray the peaceable kingdom in – we receive it – and then we speak it. Let’s pause together in prayer, and listen for what the Spirit is saying to you and to the church.

Porter’s gate – Benedictus.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Mark 1:1-8

This reading is about preparation, about making ready. Earlier this week I met a couple of friends for dinner at the St Heliers Bistro. The service was quite awful, and after we’d eaten our mains, our waiter cleared most of the table and then never came back. Did we want dessert or coffee? Too bad!

Once it was clear we weren’t getting anything else, I invited the others back to my place for tea. When we walked in the door I realised that although my house wasn’t horribly untidy, it wasn’t as tidy as it would have been if I’d known folks would be coming over later.

I was not prepared.

Later in the week, we hosted another set of friends, these ones I did prepare for, not only did I make sure we had a clean and tidy space to sit together, we had candles, nibbles, and a variety of beverages. I had also given my guests some soul food, offered for reflection and prayer before we met so that our conversation was rich, flowing with laughter and some tearful moments, too, as sadness was also part of the stories we told that night.

On the first occasion, my lack of preparation definitely affected how I was able to be present. And my careful preparations later in the week gave me a sense of comfort and ease so that I could show up not just with others, but also for them. The first work of preparation is cleaning up, and that’s as true about your lounge as it is about your life. Cleaning up is part of the intentional work of advent and of lent. It is the stance and the practice of these seasons.

John the Baptist calls us to clean up not as an end in itself, but as preparation for what comes next…which is growth.

So, if your most important relationships are the lounge of your life, what have you left lying around that you need to clean up? Perhaps a habit of holding grudges. Perhaps a habit of interrupting. Perhaps a habit of holding back. Perhaps a habit of exploding. What are the ways you negatively impact other people by what you say or do? What are the ways you hurt others by what you fail to say, refuse to do?

This Christmas, you are called to prepare for the Prince of the peaceable kingdom to be at home with you, so that you can be comforted by God’s nearness.

And so, begin by cleaning up.

The value of dependence

The story reflection that follows is based on the gospel reading for Sunday, Matthew 22:34-40, which you can find here.

There’s a story I heard once, of Margaret, an older woman who lived alone. Well, not entirely alone. She had a dog called Isla.

Isla was a well mannered, gentle dog with big, warm brown eyes and velvety soft ears.

The two of them lived on an ordinary street in an ordinary neighbourhood. When I say ordinary, I mean it wasn’t fancy. We might call it mixed. Margaret had lived there a long time, and she had seen her neighbours come and go. She had seen coming and going in her own life too, and the pain of that had left its marks. On the whole, Margaret was content with her life. She had Isla, she had her interests, she had a few friends she kept in contact with, and some family – but they were not close by, so she only saw them infrequently.

And so, her life flowed on in a quiet way. Everyday Margaret and Isla went for a walk– morning and afternoon, and sometimes evenings too, if it was nice out. Margaret wasn’t unfriendly, but she was quite self-contained.

Happily, Isla was a gentle dog and she was a friendly dog, and there were several people they met regularly on their daily walks who looked forward to seeing Isla, stroking her soft ears while they talked with Margaret of the day and the latest news.

Such was Margaret’s life and she was not unhappy with it.

Until she started to notice a blurry patch in her vision. It began small, but slowly grew. She went for tests and found that there wasn’t much that could be done for the condition. So, although it was hard, she learned to adapt. She did not want to move into a home. She could still manage most things but despite her best efforts, she started to have trouble with two important things.

Firstly, she found she simply could not read her post – and the few friends she was in contact with were letter writers. They wrote actual letters. So that was a problem. She found ways to write to them still, but finding a way to read their letters was…beyond her. The second thing was that she had trouble opening the tins of dog food. I forget exactly how come her vision loss meant that she struggled with this, but it did. And she loved her dog.

It happened that one evening, Margaret got so frustrated when the tin of dog food bested her that she cried hot tears of shame and anger with herself. Isla was confused. And hungry. And Margaret was at a loss. She wanted so much to manage by herself, it was a source of quiet pride for her how she was still able to live independently, and now her whole life was falling apart because of a stupid tin of dog food.

As she sat on the kitchen floor feeding Isla cheese, she had a sudden idea. It was an unusual idea, for sure, but once it had arrived in her head, she couldn’t shake it off.

So she got up, put on her coat and picked up Isla’s lead, and the two of them headed out the front door. Isla wasn’t expecting another walk just yet, and she was keen, but also surprised when Margaret got to their front gate and turned left instead of right. She went two doors down and then – stranger still – opened the gate of number 23 and went to knock on the door.

There was banging and shouting coming from inside, as a child came to answer.

‘Hello Isla! Hello Mrs. Margaret!’ said the boy in some surprise. When she heard his voice, Margaret was relieved. She didn’t know how she would have explained her presence there if anyone else had answered the door.

‘Hello Sammy’, Margaret said.

Sammy was one of Isla’s admirers. He was a quiet 12 year old, and they usually met on their morning walk past the school bus stop. Sammy stooped to stroke Isla and asked Margaret if everything was alright. No, Margaret told him. I can’t open her tin of food, and I was hoping you might come and help me? Sammy didn’t realise what a huge deal it was for Margaret to admit that she needed help, so he didn’t make a big deal of it either. Sure, he told her, and off they went back to Margaret’s house.

So began a beautiful arrangement. Sammy came over every day to help feed Isla. He started to read Margaret’s post to her, when she asked him if he wouldn’t mind. He liked spending time with Isla, particularly, but after a while he also started to feel more comfortable with Margaret. He began to tell her bits and pieces of his life…his real father who was no longer around but had come and gone with bursts of violence and anger…he confided his fears and his difficulty sleeping. He learned to trust himself to another person as Margaret listened and accepted him, as she cared for him and about him. And when Sammy grew up, because of his relationship with Isla and Margaret, he was inspired to come up with an idea about a different style of elder care, one where animals and children are part of the lives of the retirement village residents. Many lives were touched by the relationships of these two people – a connection that grew from dependence, from vulnerability and need.

When I was talking with my supervisor this week, I told her about the AGM. She knows all about St Peter’s, because I’ve been seeing her every month for a few years now. So when she asked me what my feeling was about where we stand now, as I wrote my report I said, ‘vulnerable’. Our rosters are half full at best. I do not say this with judgement. You are all doing your best, doing what you can. But this is the reality. We are few, and we are fewer. This makes us vulnerable.

And then she asked me – ‘what does it mean to you, to be vulnerable?’

And I paused. Because here’s what I know – being vulnerable means you have got in touch with courage. It means you have tapped into a deep, soul level of strength because being vulnerable means being authentic and genuine and real. It takes courage to ask for help, to admit that you cannot manage by yourself.  We have been led to believe that we shouldn’t need help – that we can manage by ourselves. Of course, that’s utter nonsense.

But, still. It takes a strength of character to allow another to do for you and not to feel resentful or abased. But when we say, ‘our church is vulnerable’ we don’t think – oh, that’s good! We think ‘that’s dangerous. That’s threatening’.

So I wonder, can we accept our reality – embrace our weakness – and turn our vulnerability into strength? Can we tap into courage and reach out for help? Perhaps we are not yet at a sitting on the kitchen floor crying hot tears of loss and longing stage. I think we are near. I know I am.

When Margaret finally admitted defeat, an idea came to her. A possibility that wasn’t there before suddenly danced into her darkness. It did not come with any guarantees, but from her courage and the relationship which developed because of her need, so much grew out of that one seed of an idea.

There is no shortcut to the idea and the blooming that follows. We cannot skip the kitchen floor moment. But if, as we believe, the pattern of life, death and new life is woven into creation, then we do not need to fear the kitchen floor.

Jesus is already there waiting for us, a bag of seed ideas in his wounded hands.

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