February 16, 2014

John Bluck

Epiphany 6     Matthew 5:21-37

Since January 28 there have been two kinds of Aucklanders. Those who have met Lorde and those who haven’t.

“Met” of course is a very elastic word. There are those who went to school with her at Takapuna Grammar, those who don’t know her but have met Vic and Sonja, her parents. Those who have heard her songs, seen her videos, watched the Grammies, followed her on Twitter and Facebook, or simply tint their nails black.

It’s hard to know which Lorde you’re talking about, but every one wants to meet her, and millions  claim they have. Lorde is someone they already feel they know, even though they don’t know much about Ellie Yelich O’Connor, the 17 year old from the North Shore. 

Can anything good come out of the North Shore. Yes, but it depends who you’re talking about? 

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Yes, but the same conditions apply. 

Lorde, Lorde, this is getting complicated.

It’s made complicated by the organisations that want to organise how we know people by telling us how to see them.

The New Zealand Herald has a huge interest in how we meet Ellie aka Lorde, almost bigger than in how we meet Len Brown, which must be a bit of a relief for our beleaguered mayor. He’s never had a headline that greets him as Lorde Almighty.

But Ellie has, and after a few more of those, it’s going to be very hard to find out who Ellie really is, or to give her the time to find out herself. I hope she’s following what’s happened to Justin Bieber, who is running out of time and space for self discovery without relying on the ready made answers from the media and his managers.

Managers are the inevitable price of fame, it seems, and it’s always been so.

 Jesus had a manager. It’s called the church, and very early on in his story, it took on the job of shaping his image and how he should be seen. His followers were the first minders and image makers. The disciples tried to control the crowds and manage the interviews. The gospel writers connected his story with earlier Jewish stories to make sure he was properly understood, and the church took on the role of writing some guidelines which soon became rules about what to call Jesus and what metaphors were appropriate to use. Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Yes. Neither simply human or simply divine.

The end result of that defining is found in the catechism, the updated version is in the NZ Prayer Book. Who is Jesus?  He’s the promised Saviour, God with us. Uniquely conceived by God’s power and born as  human…lived lovingly and obediently..died unjustly.. raised from death..now lives and reigns in glory.

No mention of the Virgin Birth, bodily resurrection, transubstantiation, atonement by penal substitution. The metaphors change, doctrines shift, never quite erased but moved out of focus and forgotten until we sing about them in old hymns and say to ourselves, goodness gracious did we ever really believe that?

St Matthews has long prided itself on being a bit of a shape shifter when it comes to interpreting Jesus. Recently this community has been interested in Progressive Christianity originating like many other good things in the United States, with theologians like Borg and Brown and Spong, rather than from the UK where the Sea of Faith originated.

Progressivism ( if there is such a word) focuses on ethics rather than doctrine or even mysticism. It believes the way we behave is the fullest expression of what we believe. It sees the ethics of Jesus, lived out and taught, as the front window into what is sacred. Justice is the first metaphor of God, rather than beauty or mystery or power or perfection. A focus on ethics is considered a more modern, reasonable, accessible way into religion, in fact older traditional expressions are seen as unethical.

Forty years ago when I first belonged to St Matthews, nobody talked about progressive Christianity, but we did talk a lot and did a lot about being inclusive and hospitable and taking the risk of doing things differently. Ask the first so called solo parents who danced in these aisles on a Wednesday night. As the first gay Christian community that gathered here for Bible study. That style hasn’t changed. That’s why many of us came here in the first place. But what you call yourselves will change as you enter this new chapter in your life under the leadership of a new vicar.

 This is the last time I’ll be preaching  here, my five month interim attachment is nearly over, and I wish you well on your shape shifting journey. But before I go, I’d like to reflect on today’s gospel with you, because it signals some warnings about putting all your eggs into one basket, under one theological label. Not that I think this community will ever be able to agree on one basket, given the kind of omelette you are. 

This passage from Matthew is the supreme expression of the ethics of Jesus. The chapter begins with the sermon on the mount, all that easy stuff about blessing the poor and the persecuted, the sad and the sorrowful and giving them the inside running. The chapter ends with the outrageous advice of giving your coat to someone who sues you for the shirt off your back, and turning your cheek to invite another slap from your aggressor. Then in the middle is the bit we’re stuck with this morning.

Don’t commit murder, of course, but just as bad is nursing your anger against someone, not even a sneer is allowed. And what’s more, you don’t only have to drop your grievance, you have to make peace with with those who have grievances against you, however unfounded or unfair they might be. ( Try preaching that text in the little village I live in, where resentments are shaped by generations of memory, where people don’t speak to each other for reasons inherited from parents.)

 And if you think the act of adultery is wrong, the very thought of lust is just as bad.

If your eye offends, tear it out, if your hand strays, chop it off.

The ethical teaching of Jesus.  A more reasonable, accessible way into the heart of God? I don’t think so. The ethics of Jesus are as rigorous, demanding, outrageously hard as any old doctrine.

And just as open to abuse. I think that’s what Martin Scorcese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street is about. It tells the real life story of financial fraudster Jordan  Belfort in all its horrific and morally repugnant detail. Critics have accused the film of over playing the sex and drugs abuse, but those excesses are metaphors for the deeper abuse of money and greed and corruption that undergirds the capitalist market driven system that fraudsters like Belfort abused and helped to trigger a global financial crisis. Scorcese’s film suggests there are people who enjoy that corruption and live by disabling our moral instinct and making us collaborators with this evil. Being ethical as Jesus calls us to be, is simply too hard, too uncomfortable for most of us. Justice  please, but not just yet , and not too much.

The gospel writers knew that. Already they start to add qualifications and loopholes. Matthew’s  advice about divorce for example, adds an exemption for unchastity that isn’t in the earlier versions in Mark or Luke.

If we think we’re going to find an easier road to God by focusing on ethics first we’re bound for trouble. And that wasn’t the motivation of those who promoted this path. 

There is no easy road, whether we begin with how we behave or what ritual we follow or what we believe, or this brand of faith or that. In the prayer of Great Thanksgiving we say Jesus is “the way we need to follow and the truth we need to know”.

But how to find that?

The most telling question in the New Testament is the question asked by the Greek tourists.  I use an old translation, because its formality carries the weight of what they ask for:  “ Sir, we would see Jesus?”

How can we meet him, so we can really know him?

It’s the same question Lorde’s fans are asking, and the Herald is eager to answer for them and for her.

 It’s the question the church has been eager to answer for 2000 years.

 It’s the question we need to ask and answer for ourselves, and we need to ensure that St Matthews remains as a good place for the question to be heard and explored boldly.

Let’s do that confidently.

Because finally, if Jesus really is a window on God, a pathway that leads us into the heart of God, the source of life and love, then we don’t have to answer that question ourselves. Our calling is to ask and keep asking, to let go our anger and our grievances, and make room for a God who comes to us before we come to God, who meets us just as and where we are, who comes to us ready or not.

If we keep asking boldly, persistently, without getting in the way with our own baggage, God does respond in ways beyond anything we can ever imagine or desire or deserve.