December 25, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Christmas Day     Isaiah 9:2-7     Luke 2:1-20

In some ways they shouldn’t have been surprised; the people of Mary and Joseph’s generation.

Prophets down through the ages had promised that someone would come; a special someone.

Maybe because it had been so long, and the promises never seemed to be fulfilled, they had given up really expecting anything to happen.

Times were tough though;

Romans in control of Palestine;

puppet token kings on the throne:

Herod and his cronies;

people struggling with taxes and soldiers;

the kind of environment that leads to people hoping for a better life; hoping for freedom.

Like the people of Syria, the Sudan, Iraq and Palestine today.

People hope and pray for change and in the end will lay their lives on the line to bring it about.

Civilians will risk being bombed, day after day, trying to go about their daily lives; aid workers and medical teams, the now famous White Helmets carry on helping and working against all odds.

People hope and believe they can find freedom and peace.

What was a surprise for the people of Jesus’ time was the way God came to their aid.

There was no army, no political or military leader, no revolution, no overturning of governments.

Instead there was a baby.

An ordinary every day event; happens across the world every single day. Yet for mothers and fathers across the world the birth of your own child is no ordinary event; it is life changing; can be scary; can be exciting; can be traumatic; can be peaceful and beautiful.

A child born in Palestine today is born into a world of conflict just like Jesus was.

A child born in Aotearoa NZ might be born into a life of poverty and struggle or might be showered with wealth and possessions.

Both can be happy children if they are loved and cared for.

 I think every parent is surprised by the experience of childbirth, or adopting a baby.

Nothing can prepare you for the experience.

You have to live it and savour it.

Mary and Joseph were surprised.

Why were they the ones chosen?

Why this time, this day, and not another time, another couple?

Why angels and dreams and strange visitors?

But they would have also had the “normal” experiences and feelings of ordinary parents.

Will everything be alright?

will we manage?

Mary, we are told, remembered all that had been said to her and pondered these things in her heart.

She would surely have wondered and pondered a lot: what on earth does all this mean;

while she got on with the ordinary stuff of motherhood, caring for her family.

God it seems, uses the ordinary and the everyday to bring about the extraordinary and the special.

And really that should not have been a surprise either: all through the ages God had used unlikely, ordinary people:

Abraham and Sarah began the dynasty of the people of Israel very late in life:

Moses and Miryam were slaves in Egypt;

King David started out as a young shepherd boy; many of the prophets like Jeremiah were run out of town.

Mary and Joseph were nobodies.

But God chose them anyway.

So it looks like God could choose any of us for surprising tasks.

We might be parents astonished by the gifts of our children; not Xmas gifts but the gifts of love, pride in what they do and just being together.

We might be a friend to someone in real need of a friend;

we might find ourselves as a leader at school or at work when we didn’t think that was our job or our gift;

we might be welcoming family this year who have had a rough year and need our support;

we might be helping a friend face serious illness;

we might be taking on a new job in the new year which is daunting and exciting at the same time.

Any number of things we might do that are surprising to us; we look back and think; how did I manage that?

These things are not surprising to God and the fact that we stepped up and met the challenge is not surprising to God either.

For God meets us in the every day and the ordinary and somehow we keep on being surprised by that.

2000 years on we celebrate this birth and we can get stuck in the story of the birth and all its magic and we forget that the story is all about God meeting us in our lives; Immanuel, God with us.

God walks with us, journeys with us, stays with us in the bad times and the good.

There should be no surprise at all for God has promised that it will be so. Jesus showed us that is so.

God’s love is as predictable as the pop of a Christmas cracker.

It is always there.

We only have to pick it up and find a friend to share it with.

Then anything is possible.

December 24, 2016

Cate Thorn     

Christmas Eve     Isaiah 52:7-10     John 1:1-14

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

So here we are, too late for any more shopping, too late to get more food. As I thought of this a prayer from night prayer came to mind, it goes, Lord it is night, it is night after a long day, what has been done has been done, what has not been done has not been done, let it be. Perhaps we could rephrase a little, Lord it is Christmas, Christmas after a long year and lots of preparation, what has been done has been done, what we have is what we have, it is enough, let it be.

Whew! Christmas! Now we’re here, what’s it all about? I suspect you’ll get about as many different responses to that as there are people or combinations of people. Likewise how the project of Christmas is approached varies widely. There are some who prepare well in advance, who know clearly the protocol of order – Christmas shopping tied up by June (yes, I did have a friend who was that organised). And then others who specialise in the Christmas Eve dash. Some families have established traditions of food and order of festivity, who know whose hosting or whose turn it is, of who does what best, of who is in and who is out and absorb the inevitable expansion and contraction of family unit in that. Other families have traditions that specialise in avoiding anything that resembles a formal or set tradition. Still others do a bit of both and family expands to include any who might otherwise be alone. The traditions that make Christmas ‘Christmas’ as opposed to any other gathering, celebrating occasion, even as they may vary, we sort of know, don’t we? Things may fluctuate, change be negotiated but Christmas has its own particular rituals.

Increasingly, it seems to me, Christmas has acquired more trappings, a greater attention to the appearance of things. The requisite decorating of tree now has added to it the lighting of house and yard, complex liturgies of end of year Christmas do’s, of gift purchasing, of menu deciding around the ‘only at this time of year’ special food and latest fad eating. It’s less likely these days that Christmas will include religious participation, although many to enjoy the Carols in the park public events. The lead up to and Christmas itself can actually be exhausting. I sometimes wonder if we look forward to the pressure being over – as long as the day is good – as much as the day itself.

Makes you wonder really, what does Christmas mean? We know it’s the time of year with emphasis on the importance of family, of people gathering together. A time of year in which the gap between those with disposable income and those without is made apparent, a gap we seek to narrow by giving, so all can have chance to enjoy the gifts and trappings of Christmas. Close as Christmas is to the end of the year we can be drawn to reflect on the year and Christmas’s past, to remember and to give thanks for loved ones now absent or the gift of new family. As we get older the size of the event of Christmas tends to diminish, or maybe our role in the larger family affair does. Christmas can become a bit of a pared back affair and we might wonder more closely about what actually matters.

Even if that is so, even if Christmas is quieter, less frenetic, less full of gifts and abundant food, there’s still something about Christmas day that is distinct, that makes Christmas ‘Christmas’ even if the trappings are less. During those full on family time Christmas day occasions, have you ever had one of those moments – perhaps after presents are opened and food consumed – when you just feel glad it’s Christmas. Funnily enough, even though the food’s been great and the gifts appreciated there’s a moment of what you might call ‘still happiness’ just because the day is Christmas. Maybe in part its glow of Christmases past, about remembering and reconnection. Maybe it’s because the rush is over and holiday time beckons, maybe it’s that the weather’s warm and most are paused from their busy lives, which changes the feel of things.

It’s as if something arises in us. You might call it joy – joy of being alive, tinged with excitement, inkling of life’s potential, a moment of gladness for life, however fleeting the moment – it’s there.

At Christmas we tell the story that God comes to life, is alive in real time on earth. Make startling claim that we humans can bring God to life, vulnerable, needful of us and that we know how to nurture this God life for it to flourish. John’s gospel tells of the Word: God, life, through whom all things come into being, born into the world, knowable, not concealed from us. God with us, in midst of our ordinary life, part of the rhythm and pattern of life we know, of birth and death, immersed in God are we humans. That moment of ‘still happiness’ – perhaps it’s our touching this, our somehow knowing of this, we’re secure for we belong. This beautiful, complex vulnerable world is the place of God dwelling. Through intimate, complicated, vulnerable, tangled relationships in this world, life comes into being. We’re gifted life and belonging by a God who dwells intimate with us, knows what it is to be human in all its complicated messiness.

Taking the story of Christmas seriously means human life, existence is filled with light and purpose and meaning. If God really did this, if God chooses to be with us in this way, what does that do to our importance, what does that mean for our significance, what might it require of us? Let us ponder but not be overwhelmed by the implications of what this might mean or demand of us, rather let touchstones such as Christmas remind us of the simplicity, the smallness, the familiarity and the ordinary wonder of meeting God.

It is expression of our very human belonging to engage busily in outward trappings of Christmas celebration. But let them not so distract us that we forget, or pay no heed, to those fleeting moments of ‘still happiness,’ of joy, of thanks for life, our precious life and the precious life of this world which is given as gift to us.

December 18, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Fourth Sunday of Advent    

Isaiah 7:10-16     Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19     Romans 1:1-7     Matthew 1:18-25

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

I read on my twitter feed this week “there are two types of people in this world: those who top their Christmas trees with stars and those who use angels.” [1] In my family it was always a star on top of the tree. We could probably think of other categories – are you a ham or turkey family? do you listen to the Queen’s Christmas message or not? Does everyone give everyone presents or do you have a secret Santa sort of system; are presents for children in Christmas stockings wrapped or unwrapped. Do you prefer to come to church on Christmas eve or Christmas day – or both?

In the sessions we have had after church the last two Sundays led by Susan Adams and John Salmon we have learnt some history about where some of the traditions come from. And we also learnt that Christmas as a church festival was late to join the church calendar of celebrations – in the fourth and fifth centuries. And then it was a celebration much less significant than Easter. And on through church history it had its controversies with the Puritans banning Christmas Carols in England in the 16th century – in Scotland the ban wasn’t lifted until 1958! The tradition of people going door to door caroling comes from this time – if you couldn’t sing carols in churches, the people took them to the streets!

Like our personal Christmas traditions the gospel writers also had their own version of the story, and their own reasons for writing it the way they did. In our carols and crib scenes, in our visual images in our minds from story books, we have the Christmas story conflated into one story with lots of details added in which aren’t actually there. Remember the gospel writers Mark and John have no Christmas story. Matthew and Luke do, but the stories are very different, and cannot be reconciled. Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem; the birth is not actually described at all; they are visited by “wise men from the east”; they flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution; then they move to Nazareth. Luke has Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth, going to Bethlehem because of the census; Jesus is born and put to bed in an animal’s feeding manger; they are visited there by the shepherds; they go to Jerusalem to present Jesus in the Temple; they return home to Nazareth.

Both writers agree that Jesus’ parents were called Mary and Joseph; that Mary became pregnant before they were married; that Herod the Great was king; that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth. The rest Marcus Borg says are composed like overtures to a symphony[2]. The overture indicates themes that are to come.

Matthew’s overture is refreshingly simple. It is the story of Joseph more than Mary. It answers the questions Matthew’s community were asking – can we be true to our Jewish heritage and be a follower of Jesus?

Answer yes – because Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph can be traced back to King David and Abraham; yes because an angel told Joseph what was to happen in a dream – like Jacob’s dream of the ladder going to heaven; and Jacob’s son Joseph’s dreams which saved the people from famine in Egypt; and yes because the holy family had to flee Herod and his massacre of children just like Moses was saved from the same fate in Egypt.

The birth story also answers another question – how is it possible that Jesus is human and from God, all at the same time. The answer – because his birth happened in such a way as to be sure we would know that “God is with us – Emmanuel”. God here, in the flesh, not a Greek god appearing and disappearing at will, or a god personified in a cruel emperor, but a human being, born of a humble woman in a humble way. God enfleshed with us.

Matthew always quotes the Hebrew scriptures to support his writing and about this special birth he quotes Isaiah “look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel”. Isaiah wrote these words describing a specific time and place during the reign of King Ahaz of Judea – in the 730s BC when Judea was as usual under threat from her neighbours in the context of the rise of Assyria. They feared invasion, they feared a siege – think Aleppo today – people back then were massacred at will too. The people want a sign of hope and Isaiah says – look over there – that young woman who is with child – by the time the child is a toddler, before the child can choose between right and wrong, the countries you fear will be deserted. Isaiah is trying to give hope to a fearful king, in that context for that time.

Matthew picks up this saying and turns it into a sign of hope to help his people understand who Jesus is. God is now to be understood as entering and acting within our world[3]. “The divine promise is deeply hidden in God’s own being, just as the child is hidden in the mother’s womb.”[4] And the promise does not at all hinge on whether Mary was a virgin or not – the word in Hebrew and Greek means a young woman of marriageable age. The writers do not want us to focus on the “miracle” of the conception – they are pointing us to a much greater “miracle” – the fact that God came and comes to be with us.

Bishop Marianne Budde, the Bishop of Washington DC says “Jesus comes to us where we are, as we are. He is not afraid of the mess we all too often make of things. For all the beauty of our celebrations, remember that Jesus was born in harsh, dangerous circumstances. We celebrate his birth not because it all happened perfectly, but because everything wasn’t perfect. Imperfection is where God chose to come, and chooses still.”[5]

Marcus Borg talks about Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic, theologian and preacher from the 13th century: “In one of his Christmas sermons, Eckhart spoke of the virgin birth as something that happens within us. That is, the story of the virgin birth is the story of Christ being born within us through the union of the Spirit of God with our flesh. Ultimately, the story of Jesus' birth is not just about the past, but about the internal birth in us in the present.”[6]

These wonderful Christmas narratives are not given to us to float off into a fairy tale land but to bring us face to face with God, now, today. Matthew’s version calls us to recognise Christ born anew every day, enfleshed with us. So what will we do with this birth? Put an angel or a star on the Christmas tree? What other choices does the birth bring before us? As we look back on one year and forward to another what do we yearn for, what are we seeking? What things do we want to let go of; what new things might be calling us forward?

Bring those things with you to Christmas this year; wrapped up in pretty paper if you like; and allow the stories to unwrap your hopes and needs. Allow the birth to open up something new within. Like Joseph who “awoke from sleep and did as the angel commanded” (Mt 1:24) and like Mary who said “Let it be with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38); say yes to this birth: God with us, Emmanuel.

[1] Tim Schenck 15.12.16

[2] http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=16

[3] Don E Saliers Feasting on the Word Year A Vol 1 p 76

[4] ibid p 78

[5] https://mariannbudde.com/2016/12/15/audacious-hope-2016/

[6] http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=16

December 11, 2016

Cate Thorn 

Third Sunday of Advent     Isaiah 35:1–10     Matthew 11:2-11

Hearing today’s gospel I’m wondering whether there might be some credibility to the claim that Jesus was Irish. Did you notice how Jesus seems to manage to avoid answering directly any of the questions asked of him? He responds either with a question or by redirecting the question so the onus of responsibility for the answer is put onto the one who’s asking. This could suggest that Jesus had no idea of what to say, but I’m guessing we’re not much in the habit of laying that on Jesus. Or it could suggest the often truth that the person asking a question already has within them the response they need, the answer they’re seeking.

Through his disciples John asks Jesus the question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” A very Advent theme, especially given context of Isaiah both from our first reading but also as deployed by the gospel author, there is connection between past and future being made here. We look back to the prophetic promises from Isaiah, imagery of wilderness becoming place of flourishing, prophetic text of the future when such promise will be fulfilled. So, John is asking Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? And how is it that Jesus responds? Not with reassuring concrete certainty, no “Yes, you’ve got it! I’m the one, here to save the day, relax it’s all in hand.” Rather Jesus redirects the question away from himself, “Tell John what you hear and see:” the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought and blessing is on those who take no offense at Jesus. Jesus tells them to tell of what is happening. It may be these things taking place do, indeed, relate to Jesus, happen in response to him, but what that means, whether it points to Jesus as the one to come – that is left to John to interpret. Jesus’ response is direct and simple, no justifying arguments or fine rhetoric simply ‘look at the evidence, see and hear what’s taking place now,’ what is the meaning you apply to these things?

Advent – the season of looking back, remembering the promise and of looking forward, to the return of the promise – at least that’s the character of the season tradition delivers to us. So it’s interesting in today’s gospel to find Jesus pointing to transformation happening in the now. That which is to come is being revealed. It’s taking place now. Not a future date or a past event but a present happening. The past may tell us what to look for, but without experience in the now what would prompt us to tell of such promise as real into the future.

Might we hear in today’s gospel a challenge to us – what about now? When we’re asked the question, and maybe, being religiously inclined we’re asked this more often than we realise, “Is wholeness, restoration, healing, justice, life as blessing something that happens now, is it come or are we still to wait?” Are we able to redirect attention in response “see and hear what’s happening?” Or have we come to talk about the idea of restoration, justice, healing, wholeness, divine blessing rather a lot, deliberate at length on what these things mean and how they should be possible but somehow we never quite get there for all number of reasons. Somehow we’ve become a bit vague on the vision, is it even realistic or reasonable to expect that sort of thing now. They’re things we forever work toward with a little less expectation, a little less hope the harder things get. Then again are they later things or can we see and name how they’re present, can we see and hear in this way? Insist on telling the story of life, of the world as place of divine presence, take our part in seeing and hearing how these things are being made real, acting so to make them real. Transformation is happening now. If we don’t tell, share the story of the experience, the promise of divine presence past, present and future, when we respond “hear and see” what will it mean for those asking, will it have anything to do with divine presence?

John, named in today’s gospel as prophet in Jesus’ time, is link in these in between times. John, we’re told, dwelt in wilderness places, despite the discomfort of this, people came to him. Why was that? Jesus asks, what did people go to the wilderness to look at, to see? The wilderness is a frequented place in the narrative of faith, especially for disruptive prophetic characters. We could put it down to the setting from which the stories arose, yet I suspect it’s a more universal motif of the human experience. Wilderness spaces, times, experiences are woven into the fabric of our lives. We encounter the wildness of life there, the untamed, precarious, scantly resourced fragile reality of life. As we look about our world, our country, our city, our neighbourhood, we don’t need to look far to recognise the abundance of wilderness spaces surrounding us right now. We don’t need to look far to recognise they indwell us as well. In fact some days it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the wildness of things.

Despite our instinct for survival warning us against close encounter with such spaces we find them perversely attractive. When disaster strikes, a person’s crisis is unveiled, we’ve an almost voyeuristic fascination to look and the media sure helps, to see how bad it is – from safety of distance. Curious rubberneckers, we can’t help ourselves – we want to see and know what’s going on, bear witness from our safe observer position. In truth I suspect wilderness places and times attract and repel us in equal measure.

What is it, to borrow from the gospel text, what is it that we go to look at, what do we go to see? Times and places of wilderness reveal life in its honest rawness, give us chance to look at, to see, to encounter life’s magnificent beauty and precarious transience without having to experience it directly. Give us chance to witness the resilience, courage and enormous compassion of the human spirit, to recognise these are in us too. Wilderness places, times, experiences open us up, they break open the predictable, the usual, the normal, create gaps for light of new awareness to shine into our lives, give us chance to consider our lives, our priorities afresh. Make us aware of our humdrum existence, that there is alternative, or maybe remind us that humdrum is existence but not life – encountering our fragile mortality is salient reminder. Witnessing wilderness it’s almost as if something’s calling us, being called from us, a sense of sharp aliveness we’ve lost along the way, smothered over with ordinariness of life and we’re yearning for restoration. The relief of wilderness allows our preoccupied minds to settle. In the stark simplicity of such place we begin to remember the vividness of the present. Reminded now is the only time, the only moment in which to be and do, now is the only time to fulfil potential and enable transformation. Listen to the wisdom of the Sufi Rumi in his poem: What Jesus Runs Away From: found in. The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, 204. [1]

“Teaching in a new way,” the poem ends, refusing to deny divine presence, refusing to participate in that which prevents God’s flourishing transformation. Jesus says, tell John what’s happening now, transformation and restoration is taking place now. In this moment new life is breaking in, is changing the way things are. Change tends to be disruptive, painful at times, yet resisting denies the divine acting through us in time, it deadens us. Change opens fissures and cracks in our certainty for the light of new knowing to spill in, if we fist close the gaps we deny revealing the divine life breaking in for the world to flourish through us. Are we the ones who will enact the restoration of wholeness to those and those parts of us disfigured, blinded, deafened, made unclean, deadened and made poor in/ by life, to make known the blessing of divine presence or are we and our world to wait for another for it to be known?

[1]Barks, Coleman trans. The Essential Rumi (New York: HarperOne 1995), 204.

December 4, 2016

Susan Adams

Second Sunday of Advent     Isaiah 11:1-10     Matthew 3:1-12

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

So how are you feeling about it this year? Christmas I am talking about! Ready? Not ready?

Fed up with the hype and the shopping and the loaded expectations and the planning?

There are only 21 more days to the big day that it seems so much of the year hangs on whether you are a Christian or not.

It is a bit like the little boy says at the end of the Warehouse as he is climbing into bed "It feels like I've been waiting all year!"

I am always ambivalent about this time of the year.

My ambivalence seems to swirl around conflicting attitudes:

Did Christmas really belong to the Church and has it go away on us?

Does Christmas really belong in the list of secular holidays and are we trying to take it over?

Should I approach a minimalist approach to the festivities ... ?

Should I go all out and really make a celebration for family and friends: special food and decorations ... ?

Should the festivities and celebration be focussed on the 'Christ child' story?

Should they be focussed on celebrating the year past, the family and the summer holiday?

Should they be focussed on the church's liturgies and music and pageants, and out-reach dinners?

It seems many people I wonder the same things at some time or other. Some have resolved them one way and some another, and some are still experimenting. There seems to be no one way to manage Christmas.

It is a time of year that brings with it many complex feelings and emotions.

Whether we are Christian or not, Christmas figures – largely – in our annual calendar. Why is that? What is it about the Christmas season that we can't ignore? (Apart from the incessant advertising!)

Today is the second Sunday of Advent, there are two more before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and we are right in the middle of the time of preparation – in our households and liturgically.

Last year I also preached on this second Sunday and I asked the question "Preparing for what?".

That is still a question in my mind and after church this morning John and I will be opening an exploration around Christmas. The first of two sessions. We will try to look at the origins and traditions that enmesh Christmas and to prise open space for our contemporary responses. This sermon is by way of an introduction to all that. A bit of a lecture I'm afraid!

It is very difficult for us to scrape away the accretions that have attached themselves to this season in the liturgical calendar. We tend to put the 'Christ Child' as we say, centre stage, as if that is who and what the season is all about – the birth of baby Jesus, the family, the gifts. There are centuries of magnificent art and, I dare say, thousands of pieces of music and songs about this nativity – but the question remains, is this season about a baby?

Historians have shown us that there was not much interest in the nativity aspect of the season prior to late in the 3rd century CE at the earliest.( It was certainly not celebrated prior to this.) The early church, as it emerged, was concerned with shaping identity, telling a story about its origins and positioning itself as different from the surrounding religious framework that celebrated Saturnalia and the return of the sun in this mid-winter season, or the birth of the emperor, son of the god Apollo. The focus on the baby Jesus was not of concern until well into the 4th Century.

The Council of Nicea in 325 did not recognise 'Christmas'. The term had not been invented. There was some recognition however that it would be good to celebrate Jesus birthday but the date had not been settled. The first documented evidence of the Western church celebrating 'Christmas' was not until 354 CE. The Eastern Church, some time later, also agreed the church needed to celebrate Jesus' birthday – but it insisted that 6 January was the correct date to do this. That is still the case in Coptic orthodox Christianity today.

When Matthew and Luke were writing their gospels about 50 or 60 years after Jesus death, and Luke perhaps even as late as 70-80 years after his death, the 'baby' and any suggestion of 'Christmas' as we know it, was not the issue. The emphasis was all about establishing authenticity for the movement, and an identity for Jesus that could be recognised as significant; about shaping a story and images that could capture imagination and raise up a following; it was about separating this cult (for that is what it was at this time) from Roman ideas and locating it in a distinctive position in relation to the Empire of Rome and the promises, behaviours and 'divinity' of the emperor. Matthew and Luke were offering an alternative to the empire and its power; they were continuing the work of the prophets, of John the Baptist and of Jesus; they were mobilising opposition to the oppressive regime. Remember, the Temple in Jerusalem had been sacked by the time Luke sets down his gospel and the Jewish people were being brutalised and dispersed.

Matthew and Luke set about telling their stories about Jesus nativity very differently, they differ on many details and emphases, but today we can say while these stories are not historical or factual, they are filled with truths and they certainly point us toward the power of their gospel message.

Matthew's emphasis is on linking Jesus with the stories of the First Testament in order to establish his credentials and appeal to the Jewish people who were now gathering around the Jesus story with its theology – so different from the dominant Roman imperial theology. Matthew uses the First Testament device of dreams to announce key moments and issues into the story; and he was free in his reinterpreting and reassigning of the names and titles and images identified at the time with the Emperor. Titles such as son of righteousness, light of the world, saviour of the world, king and lord. And Matthew has a focus on the men in the story and on how power is used. His telling of Jesus nativity is dark and foreboding figuring death and displacement.

Luke on the other hand puts the women in the story centre stage along with others who are powerless – the shepherds. The energy and activity of the holy spirit is core for him. His a joyful telling full of light and hope for all people, Jews and gentiles alike.

Biblical scholars suggest that, for those of us reading these origin stories today, it is helpful to see these two nativity stories as overtures to their respective gospels – summaries of what will be developed. We will talk more about all of this in the sessions after church today and next week.

But, the question remains why, in the face of all we know now days of history and science does this season with its story of a baby figure so strongly in both our secular and liturgical calendar?

The best way I have of approaching that question is to understand that the stories carry both a personal and a political message. Both dimensions were important at the time of their initial telling, and both have remained powerful through the centuries since whether we are aware of these dimensions or not. The stories touch us in the place of our deepest human longing – for love, acceptance, goodwill, justice and kindness. And they challenge us in our imagination and in our desire to create a better world where everyone has enough, lions and lambs lie together, where there is equity and justice. The images of babies, and mangers, light and the gifts, trees and feasts – indeed all the traditions that have accumulated around Christmas including the excesses and disruptions are all symbols of the deep political truths and dreams of a transformed world that the initial story tellers (Matthew and Luke) were pointing us toward.

So welcome to the complexities of Christmas. I pray, that like all good sacraments, whether we are aware of it or not, we will be expressing once again our dream of heaven come on earth, and our desire to overturn all that diminishes and constrains the fullness of life.

November 27, 2016

Helen Jacobi

First Sunday of Advent     Isaiah 2:1-5     Psalm 122     Romans 13:11-14     Matthew 24:36-44

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Wake up deeper. We all know about sleeping deeply, how good it feels to have slept deeply – but what about waking up deeply. Waking up deeper. I heard the phrase “waking up deeper” in a podcast [1] I listened to last week when I was on retreat and I thought what a great description of Advent that is.

Advent is our church season, which calls us away from the Christmas hubbub in order to focus our hearts and minds on the coming of the Christ child. Many of the Advent readings and hymns have the theme of staying awake and alert.

What are we keeping awake for? And why do we need to be more deeply awake? The earliest Christians thought they needed to keep awake literally in case Jesus returned. We would interpret those passages today to mean we need to be watchful, alert, awake to the signs of Christ’s presence amongst us.

We simply need eyes to see. Mr Brian Tamaki sees earthquakes and sees sin. We see earthquakes and we see people rushing to rescue, to feed, to offer comfort. We see truck drivers working through the night to get supplies through. We see the Navy leaving their birthday party to ferry people to safety. We see volunteers picking paua up off the rocks and putting them back in the water.

Isaiah the prophet (writing 740-700 BC) is working at a time when Jerusalem is coming under siege from all sides (northern kingdom, Assyria, Damascus) and we are told “this is the word that Isaiah saw concerning Judah (southern kingdom) and Jerusalem. (2:1). Isaiah didn’t write, or say some words; he saw them – he cast a vision. He saw nations gathering in peace on the holy mountain of Jerusalem. And there swords will be made into ploughs which plough the fields; spears will prune the vines. Weapons of war will become tools of peace time. Isaiah saw that it could be possible. Isaiah was deeply awake. The people were less awake.

They could not see the possibilities for peace. And eventually Jerusalem would fall and Isaiah’s vision would become a far away longed for future – way out of reach.

Jesus in this chapter of Matthew is answering the disciples’ question: “what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (24:3) When will everything finally be put to right?

When will the visions of the prophets come to pass? When will we see what Isaiah saw?

Jesus says “about that day and hour no one knows” – don’t try and predict it in the future.

Instead be ready now, be ready always. Wake up deeper.

The Advent themes of hope, peace, joy and love call us to be awake and notice.

What signs of hope do we see, right in front of us today. (Ian training a dog to be a mobility companion dog; our newborn baby Annabelle; 5 couples married here this weekend; members of our community facing health challenges with courage;)

Cate said this week – if we can’t recognise these signs of hope which are right in front of us how will we recognise Christ when he is born at Christmas? Advent gets us ready to see Christ, face to face.

We are going to be waking up deeper and sharing what we see on social media this year.

If you are on Facebook or twitter you can share a thought or a photo for our #ActofAdvent campaign. So this week we are looking #ActofHope. Join in with us so that we can wake up deeper together.

In the last couple of weeks I have also been looking back and reflecting on signs of hope in my life and work as I am going to be marking 25 years of ordination on Wednesday, St Andrew’s Day.

I was 28 years old and 6 months pregnant the day I was ordained deacon in Wellington Cathedral by the late Archbishop Brian Davis. The thing I remember most about the service was worrying whether I would faint when I knelt before the bishop, as I had discovered that being pregnant, if I knelt to pray, for some reason I would faint. I didn’t faint that day.

There was a bit of tut tutting in those days – ordaining someone who was pregnant! Would the baby be ordained too? Hannah enjoys telling people she is really a deacon.

25 years of ordained service means 1300 Sundays! (not that I have taken services every single Sunday of course). I have a book where I record all my weddings, baptisms and funerals – I brought it up to date this week and there are 115 baptisms, 56 weddings, and 97 funerals.

I feel grateful for the people who have offered me the privilege of sharing their lives in their happiest and saddest moments, and lots of moments in between.

28 was pretty young to be ordained – what was the good bishop thinking! And people straight away treated me differently, listened seriously to what I said. That was the scary part.

In the ordination service the bishop prays that the candidate will be empowered by the God of grace. I am grateful for that grace, which is “gentle as a dove” and “living, burning as fire” [2] all at the same time. Seven people in our diocese had that prayer prayed over them yesterday.

The way forward for the church and for God’s mission in the world is less clear than it was 25 years ago. It amazes me really that people still attend worship, still want to belong to a church community, when the church as an institution so often fails us. Yet I guess the reason you still attend and the reason I still show up on a Sunday is because we seek together something beyond ourselves, we are seeking something bigger. We seek the presence of the Spirit in our midst and to follow the paths of the one we call Christ. Joy and sorrow happen. Grace happens. Hope happens.

In commenting on today’s gospel, Nadia Bolz Weber says we should be welcoming “the thief who comes in the night” because the thief is the Christ who comes to take away all the baggage we don’t need, and all our certainties. I am sure people in Kaikoura and Wellington will tell us that to be suddenly without one’s possessions and security in a post earthquake world is a very horrible place to be. They will also tell us that they are discovering support and resilience they never knew they had. Nadia says “we should start making Advent lists – they’d be like Christmas lists, but instead of listing things we want Santa to bring us, we would write down things we want Christ to break in and take from us. In the hopes he could pickpocket the stupid junk in our houses, or abscond with our self-loathing or resentment …maybe break in in the middle of the night and take off with our compulsive eating or our love of money.” [3]

So we turn up at church to be challenged by the words of scripture, to be nurtured by the community, to be strengthened by the sacraments, to be inspired by the music, to practice again the pattern of life lived out in the eucharist – offering, thanksgiving, breaking of bread, and sharing. Practicing again the pattern of worship – gathering, hearing, sharing peace, being fed, being sent out. We practice here in church so we can live these things in our world where we are called to wake up deeply.

25 years ago I promised this would be my life’s work. As we begin again the season of Advent, as we begin again the cycle of worship for the next year, be awake, watch for signs of hope, be acts of hope. If we do this we do not have to wait vainly for a future time when Christ will return. We find the Christ is here, ready to meet us, face to face.

[1] http://library.fora.tv/2008/03/09/Alexander_Shaia_Beyond_the_Biography_of_Jesus

[2] ANZPB p 897 (ordination service)

[3] Nadia Bolz – Weber Accidental Saints p 59 

November 20, 2016

Cate Thorn

Sunday before Advent     Jeremiah 23:1-6     Luke 23:33-43

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Today is the last Sunday of the church year, New Year’s Eve, I guess. The last Sunday of the liturgical year it’s often known as Christ the King, or the Reign of Christ Sunday. It kind of makes sense to end a year of telling the Christian faith story, of the unique influence of the man Jesus of Nazareth who lived on earth in historical time in whom divine presence was discerned, made startlingly real, to end the year saying things are changed. It makes different the way things are, it reveals a viable alternative way in how to be and order our life together in this same world. As we look around our world just now, it seems a most unlikely claim with little apparent evidence. But the story that makes this claim, the niggling, irritating, won’t ever quite go away faith story refuses to relinquish the claim that the world is indeed threaded through with divine presence. And ultimately it is beyond human capacity to unstitch that as real.

Whether it’s Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, each imply a geography of living, kingdom, sovereignty, there’s a location, and an acknowledged leadership, it’s not no-one over nowhere but someone over somewhere, it’s a concrete assertion. I suspect the notion of kingship or of reign over, even if it is Christ, sits uneasily with us. Raises spectres of patriarchy, of status and privilege acquired by birth rather than worth, misuse of power, corruption without censure. I wonder, though, how many of us have lived in a monarchy with a regent who actively rules, complete with a social stratum of support to know if it’s actually like this. I suspect most of us are accustomed to living in a democracy with its flattened class system where each adult has right of say in determining the leaders and laws of the nation.

The social system of monarchy may be outside our lived experience but I’d suggest we’re quite familiar with a top down power system. In our world, countries, rulers, people who’ve many resources do indeed exercise power over those made less by their fewer or no resources. Those with less are subject to, kept distanced, done to. It’s circumstance of birth, geography, race, religion or gender that renders them powerless. This is not new. It’s a common and kingly story of human life on earth, of systems of power and misuse of power, of injustice, abuse and careless disregard of the sanctity of life. Jesus’ crucifixion in today’s gospel is outcome of the power of such systems. Systems familiar to us and, uncomfortable as it may be to say, the way we often as not operate, it’s in us. Born into a society dominated by this paradigm we’re formed by it. Wired to survive, we strive to succeed, to have power, to gain for ourselves. Even if, for as long as we can remember we’ve resisted, spoken against, worked to unmask, to effect change, it’s hard to not ‘do our resistance’ by exact same way of operating, misusing our power to impose our alternative vision of the way things should be on those who differ.

It might be easier to simply not keep Christ the King Sunday, to avoid or dismiss its imagery, its location in our tradition. But before we discard it out of discomfort maybe there’s merit in considering why it has place. Is something being said through this, maybe being asked of us, to what system of living do we ally ourselves, what does it require of us and how do we live it out? Proposes it’s possible for us, or even more boldly, native to us to live in a way personified in the person of Jesus, as told in the stories passed down through time. As people who seek to live in honest transparency to divine presence, who value the gift that is life and seek for its flourishing, who name injustice, who refuse to participate in unjust systems, work for restoration, are willing to remain in the presence of suffering brokenness for in us is hope, a deep knowing that this is not the entire story.

Which all sounds rather ideal, does it not? Armed with such understanding, and the words of teaching attributed to Jesus that invert the established order, might it be that all we need do is apply this Christ as King, make it this Christ that Reigns and everything will be sorted! Let me think about that “the last shall be first and the first last, we’re to serve not to be served,” it’s an inversion, for sure, but it still operates within a ranked system. If we replace Christ as King, the ruler, the one in charge and claim Christ does things upside down so it’s actually different BUT don’t question the system itself, the fundamental underpinnings by which it operates then nothing really is changed. And it takes little time for Christ to become the power figure in a hierarchical system that we’re powerless in, for us to take the place given us and accept the inevitability of what will happen, without authority, mandate or right to make difference or change.

How might we disentangle ourselves? Well, I got to thinking about stories on my bus journeying this week. About stories with longevity, the ones that last, like our faith narrative stories and, funnily enough, like fairy stories and folk tales, which also include kings and queens and all number of other mythical beasties. They last, I believe, because they’re stories of life, by this I mean they are living stories. Such stories allow us to encounter real life, populated by characters we recognise, exerting influence in ways we know, even if events or characters in the story are mythically exaggerated, they inhabit the landscapes and engage in the activities of real life. Giving voice to our deeper truths, they name our fears, hopes, aspirations and dreams, let our best and maybe worst selves be revealed, unshackled from the chains of our ordinary day compromises and limitations. They allow us to stand face to face with what is, with what could be, to consider the consequence of choices without having to venture too dangerously there. Stories that’ve stood the test of time are adaptable, they relate to and resonate with real life, and their struggle is ours, mirroring the moving fluidity and flexibility of life as we grow and change. If they cease to resonate as truthful, to relate, to speak into or reflect our experience of life then I’m not sure we’d keep telling them. Might this be something of our uneasiness at having Christ the king included in our faith and liturgical narrative, has it become a story without life for it’s out of relationship with our life?

I wonder if there are questions that precede our judgement of this image. Might we first ask ourselves what we imagine our faith looks like in real life, ask ourselves what difference we imagine our faith makes to the life of the world, ask ourselves what the point is of faith bearing that we trust ourselves to? I think this influences how we create our image of Christ as king. It is after all we humans who’ve given this name to experience of the divine. It is after all a human claim of hope arising out of our divine indwelling, calling us to recognise and to be presence of divine life in the world. Does the faith that is in us call us to create edifices for God, concrete statements for God, certainties that mimic the grandness, grandeur of royal splendour, in service of a kingly God kept safe within religious walls? Or does the faith that is in us call us to risk treading trails of transformation that refuse to be converted by, become fixed certainties of power? Call us to trust that the integrity of our vulnerable imperfection is sufficient to make real the living, changing, ever revealing presence of divine life, to participate in transformation as we’re being transformed.

I want to share a model of kingship through a story of the incarnation told by 4th century Athanasius, slightly adapted and expanded by Brian McLaren.

“Once upon a time there was a good and kind king who had a great kingdom with many cities. In one distant city, some people took advantage of the freedom the king gave them and started doing evil. They profited by their evil and began to fear the king would interfere and throw them in jail. Eventually these rebels seethed with hatred for the king. They convinced the city that everyone would be better off without the king, and the city declared its independence from the kingdom.

But soon, with everyone doing whatever they wanted, disorder reigned in the city. There was violence, hatred, lying, oppression, murder, rape, slavery and fear. The king thought: What should I do? If I take my army and conquer the city by force, the people will fight against me, and I’ll have to kill so many of them, and the rest will only submit through fear or intimidation, which will make them hate me and all I stand for even more. How does that help them – to be either dead or imprisoned or secretly seething with rage? But if I leave them alone, they’ll destroy each other, and it breaks my heart to think of the pain they’re causing and experiencing.

So the king did something very surprising. He took off his robes and dressed in the rags of a homeless wanderer. Incognito, he entered the city and began living in a vacant lot near a garbage dump. He took up a trade – fixing broken pottery and furniture. Whenever people came to him, his kindness and goodness and fairness and respect were so striking that they would linger just to be in his presence. They would tell him their fears and questions, and ask his advice. He told them that the rebels had fooled them, and that the true king had a better way to live, which he exemplified and taught. One by one, then two by two and then by hundreds, people began to have confidence in him and live in his way.

Their influence spread to others, and the movement grew and grew until the whole city regretted its rebellion and wanted to return to the kingdom again. But, ashamed of their horrible mistake, they were afraid to approach the king, believing he would certainly destroy them for their rebellion. But the king-in-disguise told them the good news: he was himself the king, and he loved them. He held nothing against them, and he welcomed them back into his kingdom, having accomplished by a gentle, subtle presence what never could have been accomplished through brute force.” [1]

[1] Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, (Zondervan; Grand Rapids), 2004, 64,65.

November 13, 2016

David Williams

Ordinary 33

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

November 6, 2016

Jo Kelly-Moore   

Ordinary 32

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

October 30, 2016

Helen Jacobi    

All Saints’ Day     Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18     Psalm 149     Ephesians 1:11-23     Luke 6:20-31

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Blessed are you – simply for being here – blessed are you. We are here for many different reasons today. Some of you are here because you have a loved one who has died in the last year, and their funeral was here. Some of you are here to hear the choir sing. Choir members, you are here to sing and to see how the Requiem you sing as a concert actually works in a liturgy. Some of you are here because you are always here. Some of you are here because you have wandered in by chance. Blessed are you.

Blessed too are the people whose names we will read during the great thanksgiving prayer, or whose names you will remember as we pray. There are names on the list of people who died very recently, others long ago. Some old, some very young, some in between. For some of us the grief is so recent and so fresh we can barely breathe. For others the tears flow again, but more softly. Some of us might want to recite that poem by WH Auden [1] “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” – as we cannot imagine how the world can just carry on its normal business when our loved one is gone.

The poem finishes:

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. [2]

And yet to our frustration the world carries on – people go to work, to school, as if nothing has happened. Yet as the first raging of grief subsides or even in the midst of it – we come to give thanks for a life, and say their name, and give thanks for who they were and are. For each life, whether short or long is complete in itself. And in the midst of sadness and grief we can still be thankful.

That is partly what Jesus meant when he said “blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

Wherever you are in your grieving and loving and giving thanks, you can allow the words of the Durufle Requiem and the choir to speak for you. Don’t read the translation on your order of service (because frankly the words are not really for our time); just listen and add your own translation in; whatever it is you want to say to your loved one, to God, or to yourself. Words of thanks, words of anger, words of love, words of regret, words of joy, words of sorrow; tears and smiles; goodbyes and hullos.

Do your own translation, let the music carry your prayer and your thoughts.

But then let me warn you the words of Jesus we just heard from the gospel reading might come crashing in and not seem quite resonant with your personal prayers. Jesus is like that – gets in the way of our own plans and thoughts. I said before that in the midst of sadness and grief we can still be thankful and that is partly what Jesus meant when he said “blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” However the Beatitudes, as this list of blessing is called, are not really about us as individuals. Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep; when people hate you; these are not descriptions of individual struggles but the life of the early followers of Jesus who were hungry for God, were weeping at the state of their lives and communities, oppressed and hated by the Romans.

Jesus’ words are a commentary on their community and way of life. Then he ramps it up with the “woes” or curses – woe to the rich, the full, the laughing, those who are praised. Again not so much the individuals but to the society who ignored the needs of others and carried on in their own self satisfied way. Those who were blessed, the followers of Jesus, were the saints, and the rest, well they were the lost.

These words of Jesus are about life here and now and in every generation – life in all its complexities and paradoxes – life with all its questions and lack of answers. Who are the blessed, and who are the lost? Blessed are the hungry – those who literally are hungry and who will be fed today at the City Mission next door. Blessed are the hungry – who will be fed today from this table – we are hungry for our ritual bread and wine – which represents to us life with God, life in community. Blessed are we who hunger for God in their lives – even if we are not sure who God is or how we might meet God. Blessed are the hungry, who seek, who look, who want to know God and who want to feed the hunger of our world with love and service. At this table all are welcome and all are fed.

In the same way the mysterious words of the Requiem are sung for us all and those for whom we pray. The words weep for us and we are lifted up by their beauty. Blessed are those who weep.

Woe to us though if we think we have life figured out; woe to us if we are self satisfied and sure we know everything; woe to us if we neglect the hungry at our door. Instead we are invited to be here today – hearts and hands empty, hungry – ready to be filled with the beauty of music and the touch of God’s grace. We do want to say “stop the clocks” – stop the clocks long enough for us to be in this moment here. In this moment where nothing else matters.

Nadia Bolz Weber is a Lutheran priest from the US and she has written a book Accidental Saints – Finding God in all the wrong people and this is part of a litany she wrote for All Saints’ Day:

Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised.

Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.

Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstraction.

Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.

Blessed are they who don’t have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore.

Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.

Blessed are those who no one else notices.

Blessed are the forgotten.

Blessed are those who know there has to be more than this.

Blessed are the kids who step between the bullies and the weak.

Blessed are those who hear that they are forgiven.

Blessed are the merciful, for they totally get it. [3]

Blessed are you – simply for being here – blessed are you.

[1] https://allpoetry.com/Funeral-Blues

[2] https://allpoetry.com/Funeral-Blues

[3] Nadia Bolz Weber Accidental Saints 2015 p185-188 extracts 

October 23, 2016

Susan Adams

Ordinary 30     Luke 18:9-14

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Goodness me, what a menace to society Jesus is!

It is a good thing we did not elect him mayor of our Super City! Everything would be turned upside down. Things would be in chaos. It would seem, if the Lucan teller of this tale is to be believed, that Jesus would have us all be sinners who say sorry, rather than people struggling to do the right thing and live within the constraints of our laws and the expectations and protocols of our social system!

We are told in today's Gospel reading that the efforts of one who abides by the demands of society and the religious practices demanded of him by the fellowship he belonged to; who does his best to be an upright and responsible citizen and a leader of the Temple, are not sufficient to justify him: his efforts are inadequate to deserve our respect.

On the other hand, the despised tax collector – the collaborator with the Roman authorities, who has purchased the right to collect taxes and tolls from his fellow citizens; who according to popular perception has made life difficult for the local workers is, now that he stands at the back of the church and asks for forgiveness – to be applauded, emulated even! He went home justified. This doesn't seem quite right. And I'm really not sure if I would think it was at all right if I'd been over taxed and was struggling to make ends meet while he lived in relative luxury.

It seems a step too far for those of us who want to do the right thing and try hard to achieve it.

If we judge the Pharisee – in the way the parable invites us to – disparaging his efforts to be a socially responsible citizen, then we are behaving in the same way as those to whom the story was addressed – the ones judging others contemptuously. After all the Pharisee is only describing things as he sees it and doing the best to do the right thing.

But, if we behave like the tax collector and stand around in the back of the church beating our breast and saying how wicked we are, who benefits from that? How helpful is that to our community and the people who have been ripped off and now face financial hardship?

It's hard to figure this one out.

It would appear, on the surface, that the breast beating tax collector is the one to emulate, while the one who made a contribution to others through his leadership, tithing and prayers is not.

It seems to me too simplistic to say that those not generally valued by society, in this instance (for example) the tax collector, are the ones valued by God above others.

And even the interpretation that we are used to hearing that suggests we should be like the tax collector and own our sinfulness in a humble way does not satisfy me although it is clearly present in the story that we are loved by God, justified by God, not by anything that we might do to live righteously and earn that love simply because we are. This is one comforting message from the story but is there another? If we reflect a bit deeper is there another insight that Jesus might have been hoping we would understand, if he did ever tell this parable this way. (This might be Luke's message to the struggling Christian community he was addressing but was it Jesus message?)

It is easy for us, we have heard the story often, to 'hear' the expected reversal motif we know to look for in parables, in the example of the humble tax collector who will be justified and exalted by God and not in the puffed up Pharisee.

If we consider the big picture of Jesus' life that the Gospels present to us, the general sweep of Jesus' teaching and life, unpicked from the historical overlays written much later, we get the idea that Jesus is concerned to build a kind and generous community that cares for all the members even those it is easy to marginalise, to push aside. The examples that we have in the stories and parables that illustrate Jesus teaching are of Jesus seeking to build relationships of mutual concern, of acceptance of diversity, and of inclusion of difference; where none go hungry, are violated or disrespected.

Jesus is prepared to challenge and even overturn laws, systems and expectations to do this – whether or not those systems and expectations are religious or secular. The disciples who follow Jesus are encouraged to do what they can to bring this about. It seems to me the reversal we are looking for is tucked in here.

I want to read across the grain of this story, to read between the lines of what is being said. I want to 'read' the white space between the lines and around the edge of the page to explore what might be still hidden for us to find!

For me, today, this is not a story about personal/individual successes and failures, it is not about satisfying a judge outside of our human community who will decide if we are in or out, worthy or unworthy – righteous or justified – it's not a story with a moral twist directed at us individually. You may have noticed as I have, that all three of the characters 'Luke' uses to tell his story – the Pharisee, the Tax Collector and God (who is not directly present), highlight something unexpected: each of them is concerned with self, with personal piety and with power to vindicate actions.

As I see it today, against the background of our own contextual issues, the reversals this parable points to are

• the importance of being in right-relations with others – crossing boundaries and barriers

• the importance of doing something to change matters we know are wrong, and

• the importance of using the power we have as community.

None of these things are directly present in the text of story as we have it!

I guess I am speaking then of the 'truth hidden from the wise', the 'treasure hidden in the field' – or 'written' in the white spaces around the text.

We are being invited to put aside our concern for self-justification and to take up a concern for the well being of others; we are being invited to do what is 'right', and being asked to point to the potential for change that lies among us; we are being encouraged to stop leaving things to a God 'outside' of our lives and to own the collective power we have to press for creative life-giving decisions – tap into the God amongst us. I think these things are the kernel of the parable – these are the reversals there for us to discover!

So, with the shift in power from 'them' to 'us'

• It was good to hear the new mayor put the Living Wage back on the agenda of the Council – some of us will be keeping the pressure on about that.

• It is good to hear of renewed discussions about real possibilities for affordable housing – some of us will keep the pressure on this

• it is great to hear the United Nations call to the Government to tackle the issues of children living in poverty and all the vulnerabilities that surround that, some of us will keep the pressure on here

• Housing First is a brave and complex project that the City Mission has embraced, some of us will support this

We know these things are right, not because they will earn us stars in heaven, but because they will make for a healthier kinder community.

This is timely as the new city council settles in and we have an opportunity influence priorities.

As I see it the parable compels us to shift our concern from ourselves to others.

It is not so much that God loves us 'simply because', but that we loves others enough to desire their wellbeing.

We need something of each of the characters in the story,

• we need to know how the systems that shape and organise our communities and our lives work

• we need to build relationships so we can influence them

• taxes are required: to be paid fully, to be collected fairly and reasonable, and distributed to places of need.

Life-giving and empowering energy lies amongst us – God present with us – together we have the power to engage in the building up of the people we live amongst. Let's use it, and embrace the chaos Jesus creates.

October 16, 2016

Cate Thorn

Ordinary 29     Jeremiah 31:27-34     Luke 18:1-8

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

There’s this judge who feared neither God nor had respect for people, that’s what we’re told in the lead in to this parable tale today. Sounds like a member of one of today’s tribes, the one often declaimed by us of a generationally other tribe – the It’s All About Me Tribe. The judge isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it’s just as if he doesn’t really care, can’t be bothered with the woes of others, especially annoying females who pester. The only thing that causes him to act is to silence her annoying persistence. The only reason he grants her the justice she seeks is to make the problem she is to him go away. It is not until this moment, not until the judge grants the widow justice that he is named unjust. What is that about?

That the label unjust comes at the moment he grants justice might suggest the judge did actually know what justice looked like, even as he chose to ignore it. The context into which Jesus taught was Jewish so we might assume this judge is part of the Israelite community. The covenant community of Jeremiah where knowledge of how to live rightly and justly one with another is written on heart, embedded in the knowing of each member. This judge knows what justice looks like. The judge feared neither God nor respected people – there’s nothing to fear or need to respect people when you don’t make yourself vulnerable to relationship – justice, injustice – they’re a theoretical irrelevance when there’s no cost to your own hide. However, whether he wanted to or not the widow’s constant pleading forced the judge to relate to her, to form relationship, even if briefly, he was changed enough to act for someone else.

As you know the gospel has integrity within the context in which it’s spoken, it’s a parable of encouragement for the times to come, when Jesus will no longer be with the disciples. The parable promises that prayer works, if the disciples pray always and do not lose heart, like the pestering widow to the judge, what they pray for will be granted. I want to examine this a bit more closely.

The judge/unjust judge is likened to God, God who will grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night. Remember, the judge feared neither God nor had respect for people, a figure removed from engagement, from relationship, who judged, perhaps impartially, it would seem impassively. Might this speak of God? In Matthew when the disciples are taught they must love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them that they may be children of God, God who “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Creation comes, is coming into being through, by divine, Godly impetus and grace. Evil or good, righteous or unrighteous, these are things we are granted freedom to enact, to be or become.

How might we understand prayer and justice granted then? The widow brings before the judge her case for justice, she names that which is unjust and seeks justice be granted. We in this place and in other places name before God that which is unjust, we know what injustice looks like, we imagine, desire, pray for justice. Naming injustice, as the widow did, unmasks that it is indeed present amongst us. Naming it makes it inescapably real. Having made injustice known, who do you think will grant justice? If we who fear God and respect people know what justice is who, other than us will enact it? God? God made flesh? We who make God flesh now?

As we consider the landscape of our city, our country the people scape as well, how many of you are a little uncomfortable with the way things are? We don’t have to look far to see there’s an inequitable sharing of resources, and to see the effect this has. We don’t need OECD reports to know the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever, that NZ is right up there with the worst statistics for child poverty. We know we participate in an economic system where those who have, get more, and those who have not, get less or nothing and bear brunt of societal scorn. This is not anything new, even as it is shamefully worse than ever, it’s the way things are, we belong to a society that chooses a system that works out this way. It’s the system that prevails in the first world, of which we are a part, but is it a just system? Does it prioritise and value life and it’s flourishing, does it ensure a distribution of its sufficient resources so that each has enough for their need? If we name this system unjust, act in defiance of it, for justice to prevail, to be granted, especially if we invoke faith anywhere in the conversation will we be scorned as naive fools, not credible for even suggesting such a thing?

And yet, if we do not, if we see injustice and do nothing, if there’s no concrete consequence, no outworking in real time of that which we call faith, what is faith? Simply something to provide us with relief, assuage our conscience, justify our continued participation in the unjust systems that prevail? How will we respond to the gospel query “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Let me share with you Peter Rollins parable ‘Finding Faith’ from his book ‘The Orthodox Heretic.’ “There was once a fiery preacher who possessed a powerful but unusual gift. He found that, from an early age, when he prayed for individuals, they would supernaturally lose all of their religious convictions. They would invariably lose all of their beliefs about the prophets, the sacred Scriptures, and even God. So the preacher learned not to pray for people but instead he limited himself to preaching inspiring sermons and doing good works. However, one day while travelling across the country, the preacher found himself in a conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. The businessman was a very powerful and ruthless merchant banker, who was honored by his colleagues and respected by his adversaries. Their conversation began because the businessman, possessing a deep, abiding faith, had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. He introduced himself to the preacher and they began to talk. As they chatted together this powerful man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. He spoke of how his work did not really define who he was but was simply what he had to do.

“The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “And in my line of work I find myself in situations that challenge my Christian convictions. But I try, as much as possible, to remain true to my faith. Indeed, I attend a local church every Sunday, participate in a prayer circle, engage in some youth work and contribute to a weekly Bible study. These activities help to remind me of who I really am.’

After listening carefully to the businessman’s story, the preacher began to realize the purpose of his unseemly gift. So he turned to the businessman and said, ‘Would you allow me to pray a blessing onto your life?’

The businessman readily agreed, unaware of what would happen. Sure enough, after the preacher had muttered a simple prayer, the man opened his eyes in astonishment. ‘What a fool I have been for all these years!’ he proclaimed. ‘It is clear to me now that there is no God above, who is looking out for me, and that there are no sacred texts to guide me, and there is no Spirit to inspire and protect me.’

As they parted company the businessman, still confused by what had taken place, returned home. But now that he no longer had any religious beliefs, he began to find it increasingly difficult to continue in his line of work. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, rather than a man of God, he began to despise his work. Within months he had a breakdown, and soon afterward he gave up his line of work completely.

Feeling better about himself, he then went on to give to the poor all of the riches he had accumulated and he began to use his considerable managerial expertise to challenge the very system he once participated in, and to help those who had been oppressed by the system.

One day, many years later, he happened upon the preacher again while walking through town. He ran over, fell at the preacher’s feet, and began to weep with joy.

Eventually he looked up at the preacher and smiled, ‘thank you, my dear friend, for helping me to discover my faith.’” [1]

Will faith be found? Faith that does differently, faith that reveals/names injustice and acts so justice is granted. Systems of injustice will not cede power gracefully, there will be a cost. We are formed by these systems, they are in us. For the system to change we have to relinquish something of who we are, we have to change, we cannot remain the same and expect change. We may not know ourselves for we will not be as we have been, the world, the society familiar to us will not be the same, not be as it is.

Do we actually want this? Will faith be found?

[1] Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic: and other impossible tales (Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2015), 57-60.

October 9, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary 28     2 Kings 5:1-15     Psalm 111     2 Timothy 2:8-25     Luke 17:11-19

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Mind the gap – as they say in London on the Tube. Distance. Gaps. Distance between people, places and ideas. In our tales from scripture today there is lots of distance and separation between the people and the places. Jesus is said to be walking in the region between Samaria and Galilee. Those two regions actually border each other so does Luke mean Jesus is in the no man’s land between the two regions and peoples who hated each other? Like a no man’s land between the trenches in WW1, or on either side of the wall between Israel and Palestine now. Distance.

Then ten lepers approach – they keep their distance as required to by law (Leviticus 13). Jesus does not approach them – he simply tells them to go and show themselves to the priest – meaning they have to be certified as healed and then be allowed to re enter the community. The distance remains until they have done that.

Luke’s audience for this story would have immediately leapt in their minds to the OT story we heard from the Book of Kings. Naaman, a Syrian general also has leprosy. He, however seems to allowed to be with his family and in society. He has in his household a slave girl, from Israel, captured in battle. She would have every reason to hate her master and keep her distance, but she chooses to intervene and suggests Naaman seek healing from Elisha the prophet. This requires letters of request and safe passage the king of Aram (Syria, including present day Aleppo) to the king of Israel. The king of Israel suspects a trap and wants to stay away from this problem but Elisha intervenes and asks for Naaman to be allowed to come. Elisha also keeps his distance and does not meet Naaman but issues instructions for him to wash in the Jordan. Naaman does not want to come down off his high horse, literally, and expects a much bigger show of magic from the prophet. Convinced in the end by his servants, again a class of people distant from him, he washes and is made clean.

In both these stories people have barriers up – barriers of class, race, expectation; they have physical distances of geography, and distance engenderd from fear of disease and fear of the other. In Naaman’s story the people who bridge the gaps, who reach out to close the distance, are the unnamed slave girl, Elisha the prophet, and the servants. If the girl had not urged her mistress to urge Naaman to try and get to Elisha, nothing would have happened. If the servants had not urged Naaman to swallow his pride and get in the river Jordan, nothing would have happened.

In the story of Jesus and the 10 lepers the distance between the lepers and Jesus, and the lepers and the rest of the people, is maintained until the story shifts and one of the lepers returns. We have the distance between Samaria and Galilee – both physically separate – and separated by their hatred of each other. We have the lepers standing away from the community. We have Jesus sending them to the priests – healed but with no sense of interaction or even compassion really. Then the story pivots and the distance collapses. “One of them turned back. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Ah say the listeners of the story – ah say the readers – lovely. But wait, there is more “he was a Samaritan”. What – no! the barriers go up – a leper – and a Samaritan – he is the one? Where are the others Jesus asks? Is only the foreigner here (does Jesus say foreigner with a disparaging tone of voice? or a welcoming one?) Then the gap is closed, the barriers are down: “get up and go on your way; your faith has made you whole”.

All of the 10 were healed, the one who came back is made whole. One reached out with gratitude and thankfulness. he Samaritan, the foreigner was the only one to return to Jesus with gratitude. The Samaritans, the ones expected to be dishonest, or dangerous, and certainly disliked if not hated, by the people of Israel. The Samaritan returns to give thanks. To give thanks for healing, for clean skin, for freedom, for release from being an outcast. Gratitude for being able to reenter society, gratitude for a new future, new possibilities. And knowing all these things were beyond his control, but in the hands of God, he returns to give thanks. It is that sense of thankfulness which bridged the gap. Gratitude closed the gap between Samaritan and Jew, between outcast and rabbi; gratitude reached across the distance, the divide.

Distance, gaps, mind the gap. In a city like ours we walk and drive past hundreds if not thousands of strangers every day. Do you remember the scene in the old movie Crocodile Dundee when Dundee tries to shake hands with all the passersby as if he will see them all again? From outback Australia to New York; they all think he is crazy.

We live with distance every day – we cannot know all our neighbours in a city; but we also allow the pressure of life and the rush of the city, the traffic, to create distance between us. Life in apartments can be the loneliest even with other people through the wall right next to you. Hirini spoke last week of the racial divide that can be made worse by the politics of Donald Trump or Don Brash and his new group. We need leaders who break down the walls that divide us, not build them up.

On the worldwide scene the calamity that is Syria stems from multiple divisions and hatred. Our story from the book of Kings is set partly in the region of Aram which is part of modern day Syria and includes Aleppo, so much in the news. Division, hatred and distance still haunt the people. And we watching from afar feel powerless to do anything, except lament and say: God, why and how long? When we gather each week to worship we take a stand against distance and division and close the gap. We gather with strangers, people of many cultures, many social groupings, many walks of life – as Archbishop Tutu once said – with God’s rainbow people. And what do we do together? We give thanks. The central act of our worship is the eucharist. Eucharist means to give thanks – we call that part of the service “the great thanksgiving”. When the Samaritan leper returns to Jesus “he prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him” – the word for thank is eucharisteo – the same word used when Jesus gives thanks at the Last Supper over the bread and wine. When we offer our gifts of bread and wine at the eucharist we are giving thanks for the gifts of God in our lives and express our faith in God for our future.

Our act of giving thanks as Jesus did brings us close to God and close to each other. Our act of giving thanks is what makes us whole. Our act of giving thanks closes the gaps, shortens the distances, brings down the walls. It is quite radical – where else in our society in 2016 do we get to hang out with all sorts of people who we would not otherwise meet? A school maybe, a sports club or community group? Those groups tend to be more homogenous than church, especially a church like ours in the heart of the city. But before we congratulate ourselves too much and start to feel too cosy, remember what Jesus says to the leper who returns – get up and go on your way – he cannot stay and hang out with Jesus – he has to go and get on with life. And so it is with us. We gather, we give thanks, we experience community, closing the gaps and distance between us, and then we are sent out to be God’s people in the world. To find new places to give thanks and close gaps, modelling ourselves on the pattern we learn in our liturgy. Mind the gap. “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you whole.” 

October 2, 2016

Hirini Kaa

Ordinary 27

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

September 25, 2016

John MacDonald

Patronal Festival

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Tena Koutou Tena Koutau Katoa

Friends, I share with you greetings from the congregation of Aotea St. James, Methodist Mission Northern, Lifewise and the Airedale Property Trust that funds much of the mission work that Splice and Lifewise offers this City Centre.

Helen, thank you for inviting me to your place this morning, I'm pleased to take any opportunity to stand with the folk of Auckland City Centre in their hood, for their good.

Friends, I'm one of an estimated 47,000 City Centre residents. I have been hanging around these streets for almost four years as a Chaplain at Large, a role offered to the City Centre as a gift by the folk of St. James Presbyterian and the Aotea congregation of Methodist Mission Northern.

But friends, we can talk about those niceties at any time at all. What we don't do very often is to focus on the gospel passage for today, and being a Presbyterian, I would normally inflict a significant 5-point sermon on you, but Helen has told me the sound turns off after 12 minutes!

The invitation of Jesus to Matthew, the tax collector who was working from his booth, was 'follow me' and clearly he did! And there must have been one of those, 'your place or mine' moments. Would they go to the Synagogue, the Temple, the place of sacrifice, the Holy place, the Righteous place, the bosom of Abraham place, perhaps like this place? or his, Matthew’s, place, and Jesus and his mates went off to Matthew’s place, where the 'invited’, the 'called' one, Matthew', is the host, and his mates and their mates are the gig.

And so todays gospel simply and starkly, not only mentions the call of Matthew, but more importantly the decision of Jesus not to go to the house of religious thrones, the cradle of faith, but to Matthew’s house, and this is at the heart of the story, the point of the story.

Matthew is invited, called, as we say, from his tax haven, and then there's that 'your place or mine' moment, and we enter the den of 'inequality', not the sanctuary, but the place of depravity, where Jesus and his friends, new and old friends eat and drink of the lavish spoils of decadence found in tax collecting, and he is there along with others named by the religious as 'sinners'.

Outside beyond the party are the theologians, those who have a sense of monopoly on God, the Pharisees, the parishioners, the priests, the Levites, Sanhedrin, the members of the synagogue and the temp-lish kind, the folk representing the states religion and ritual, the folk for whom this gospel, was written. This is the gospel, put together very deliberately it seems, for a people who should have known better. Is that Us???!!!

What I discovered very quickly on taking up the role of Chaplain to the City Centre, was the clear decisive disconnect between what was happening in most, if not all, Sunday focused religious expressions, and what happens beyond our temples in this village of 47,000 people, the Auckland City Centre. And this wee gospel extract this morning should be contextually reflected on, this day, 25th September 2016 in Auckland City Centre.

We, the God worriers and God warriors, the theologians, the Priests and parishioners, the worried well, state religion and ritual aligned, our safe haven of Cannons, Law books, books of order and creeds, all of which support us, help hold us together in fine corsetry too difficult for most to penetrate, we are the focus of this gospel that identifies the 'names sake' of this very building on September 25th 2016.

This wee Gospel extract identifies where Jesus will be standing in our community of 47,000 people this morning.

We will see him out there, where he has meet and invited the worst of the worst to follow him. He will be found, receiving hospitality from those who have not measured up to our piety, our rationale, our ritual.

He will be with those rich and poor, for whom 'mentally ill' has been the label attached to their fore-heads.

He will be with the Board Trustee who struggles with definitions of fair-trade, fair-play, and fair-pay.

He will be out there with folk for whom 'love' has an ugly face, a demeaning face, a face not recognizable any longer.

He will be out there with the unforgiven, lost in guilt, shame, cracked and still no light coming in.

He will be out there with those who show and know no mercy.

Have you ever been out there?

He will be out there, in places of huge discomfort, offering comfort, using the only tools, gifts he has, Courage, Compassion, love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, Love, courage forgiveness mercy grace Compassion, courage, mercy, forgiveness Mercy, forgiveness, courage, grace, love.

He will be out there going to 'their place' rather than 'ours', and so let us shift, from Jesus day, to the 25th September 2016 Auckland City Centre.

And this invokes another reality in the story, that we're not always ready to grapple with!

When guests come to your place you have a sense of control as the host. That is usually reciprocated by the 'when in Rome’ rule, from another gospel narrative. However, in today’s glimpse of the gospel way of living, we go to the house that is despised, how would you feel? the home that symbolises all that is corrupt and sinful' how do you feel? We go to the place where the 'ground of our being' is ultimately disturbed, how do we feel? We wonder why this is happening? But this is what Jesus does in this story!

And so in your mind's eye now, in the footsteps of Jesus, so to speak, venture beyond this place, to that place, like Matthew’s place.

And all you have to offer is the way of life, the gifts of life, that you have crafted out in your journey, take them into the context of a dramatically disconnected dysfunctional community. You're now in a community where isolation is a hallmark, where suicide is a very regular occurrence, where people can freeze to death on the street at night, where there is no local school for our children, where silos of diversity thrive cultivating a vacuum in social infrastructure in which despair and dispeace will probably ignite in some tragic way sooner than later. Where people walk the streets with head phones, ear plugs, so that all sound is blocked out and you can only hear what you choose to hear. Where smiling is a questionable act of friendliness, where loneliness is disguised under some 'must have fashion’ created in a sweat shop in another place. Where kindness must have alteria motives, where you expect to be frightened. That's where today’s gospel takes us to, in Auckland City Centre.

Soon after arriving in the City Centre I discovered a great monument down in Emily Place. It is a monument celebrating the life and work of a city centre Chaplain and Missioner. The story of this man, chiselled in polished marble, a great story of dedicated mission.

A beautifully crafted, chiselled story from our city history.

But just a line or two from the bottom of the chiselled story, at some point, someone, noticed a spelling mistake. And then at some point, the missing letter of the misspelt word has been chiselled in, and chiselled above the line! Many times I have thought about that missing, offending, rogue letter, not where it is expected to be, and how maybe, that missing letter, represents the gospel focus on the ‘lost’.

Nothing about the word or the sentence on that marble dedication makes sense until the missing letter has its place, and its rightful place, above the line? Jesus of Matthews story was out there with the rogues, those offending the realm, the missing and out of place, those deemed to be sinners by the religious who were watching Jesus at work. Those who should have known better were garnishing Jesus with scorn, at his behaviour, his determination to challenge the religious court and all its years of crafted self-righteousness.

Friends, there are three, out there, beyond these walls activities/projects that your Missioner, Priests, Chaplains and Deacons are working on in response to today's gospel. And this is your invitation not to be part of the scornful religious camp but at the party with the disciples with gifts of love, compassion, grace and forgivingness.

• 'Housing First' is a partnership project being led by Lifewise and your City Mission. Moira Lawler and Chris Farrelly are focused on re-crafting an internationally recognised model that addresses homelessness, for our Auckland City Centre residents. This is not a model that creates, develops and nurtures a homeless community on the streets of the city centre, but rather 'starts' by offering, providing a permanent home for homeless. And in their 'own' home, residents will be nurtured with love and dignity as is appropriate. This project will bring into stark focus what it means to be a neighbour, the gospel coming home to roost, as we engage with the city's most vulnerable residents.

• In the next few days we will be voting for Local Body representation. The number of City Centre residents on governing City Centre Boards is less than satisfactory, but that will continue as long as the City Centre is perceived only as a CBD, a place where the City State, commerce, and education are perceived to be the drivers and focus of community life.

Unless there is a concern to develop the 'soul' of the City Centre, the City State will continue to ignore residents and it will be an ego centric playground for planners, policy writers and politicians who have no connection with the realities of residential living in our part of this growing city.

Social infrastructure will continue to be ignored. Isolation and disconnection will thrive, and the health of the most intensely populated village in Aotearoa New Zealand will degenerate even further.

• And related to that, the retention, acquisition and development of public spaces to be enjoyed by all, but most particularly for the 47,000 residents today, and for the 1000's of new residents who will go into apartments currently being built. This issue has to be a priority if we really are concerned for the health and well-being of all residents in the City Centre.

Friends, translate the Gospel for today as you wish, remember the invitation to Matthew included the decisive moment for Jesus, where he declared to the world, that the party was at Matthew’s house, and that's where he belonged, loving, forgiving, hugging, weeping, caring, showing grace and mercy, forgiving, compassion, courage, loving forgiving was his way to life.

Amen.

September 11, 2016

Cate Thorn     

Ordinary 24     Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28       Luke 15:1-10

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

As some of you may know I’ve been out of the church circuit for about a year or so. In that time I discovered, perhaps not surprisingly, that the biblical text is not heard much outside the church context. It’s not much referred to, much less sought out as a reference, a source for gaining knowledge, a resource for negotiating the tangles of life – it’s got nothing on Google. As a person who’d stood at the front like this and proclaimed from it, proposed that it does contain wisdom, deep knowing, an overarching record through time of journey and struggle of people. One we can identify with, find inspiration, hope that indeed within it is good news that relates to REAL life. That the biblical text is largely absent from the life of the majority of the population gives me pause for thought, not just about the bible but about the religious enterprise, is it more substantial that the air we blow into it – is it more than just a human enterprise?

When preaching into a Christian context the biblical text is, more often than not, the beginning point. For one who aligns themselves with the Judeo-Christian lineage, scripture might be understood as a narrative, telling in myth and metaphor, history, poetry, prose, in letter and in law, of the experience of being human. The way humans have chosen in and through time to be, live, orient themselves in relation to one another, to creation and of course to God – for inherent to scripture is that creation is indwelt by God through whom all that is comes into being, without whom there is no life.

Assuming we assent to scripture as having unique influence, perhaps even authority for us, we might see it tracing or telling a sort of overarching story. As we allow it speak to us – to disturb, dismay or delight us – perhaps we find it echoes our experience of life. We join a through time story of human life in the world, in all its wonder and woe. It’s a curious narrative, one that’s out there, over against us, yet also close by, in here – in our hearts and beings.

Encountering the biblical text within church context again, returning from that outside place is a curious experience. It’s easy enough to speak inside the doors of things of faith, of bible and God. But if we say this scripture expresses more than just religious themes. If we think it says something about human potentiality – in all its glory and brokenness – that precedes and eludes the bounds of our Judeo-Christian communities and assert that the divine threads through all of life, indwells and imbues creation, without whom creation doesn’t come into being – then how is the knowing of this communicated, how is it heard, how does it sound in a world where the text is not known?

Do we need to know of God, consciously, I mean, do we need to know the story to be known by God? Does scripture, this strange tale of human/divine encounter apply to those outside the insider community? Now, perhaps this is irrelevant – it’s an insider text, only for those who are chosen, inaccessible to those not chosen. The problem I have is that I happen to believe in an inclusive God who desires relationship, who intended creation into being, who meant it, you and I to happen.

Scripture comes into being through the communities who inhabit it. For it to have integrity in meaning requires understanding and translation. Tempting as it may be to devolve such responsibility to academia we are not so absolved. John’s gospel opens with words familiar to us, read at David Braddock’s funeral this week, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of the world.” As followers of the Word made flesh we, albeit often stumblingly follow in the steps of Christ. We, in our time are to make the word flesh, bring into being the light of divine life in the world, translate the story of divine presence in ways that people may comprehend.

As we read, hear, inwardly digest today’s gospel I wonder how we might apply such idea – translate this into life, if you like. Today we might call this a gospel of foolishness and irresponsibility that makes no reasonable sense. Putting the whole flock at risk to look for one recalcitrant beastie, turning the house upside down for one coin them likely splurging more than you found on the party afterward, ridiculous. I have strong childhood memory of the image of Jesus bearing a lamb on his shoulders. It directs me to hear this story to be about Jesus finding and rescuing, seeking and finding, about a woman searching, cleaning and finding and then of celebration and joy. I know it’s always been there but for some reason this time I noticed more the cause for celebration “over one sinner who repents.” It’s not all about the shepherd or the housekeeper looking and finding, it’s also about being willing to be found and participate in relationship.

Many years ago I was at Lynn Mall, with my daughters, 3 and under a year. Despite what I thought was my close attention, in a moment my eldest daughter completely disappeared. I searched everywhere I’d been, went to every exit there was – and there are a surprising number when you’ve lost a littlie!! Panic stricken, with heart in mouth I eventually made my way to the Management office to confess I was one of those terrible mothers who mislaid their children and to ask for help. They were lovely, made contact with the security people in the Mall, after what seemed forever a tall, burly security man appeared bearing my blond haired, blue eyed missing daughter. Looking a little puzzled she declared, “Hi Mummy, this man told me I was lost.” She’d no idea she was lost, not until she was found, she’d been having a lovely time playing in the toyshop. Who decides what lost is and if you don’t know you are lost what is it to be found?

And there’s the rub, the foolishness of faith that proposes we’re intrinsically connected with the source of our creation. Creation was intended, we were intended into being before we knew anything of it even as we can have a knowing of this. It’s kind of hard to prove intellectually, made no more credible when further proposed that creation’s an expression of divine love, of a God who desires relationship with us. A God who, as in today’s gospel, seeks and searches, who desires relationship with each unique creation, already beloved, made whole in God. Yet it’s not a relationship forced upon us against our will. It is something always of our choosing.

Dr. Abraham Heschel, a Jewish academic theologian and author whose work I enjoy, even as it puzzles and unmasks me at times, writes, “More grave than Adam’s eating the forbidden fruit was his hiding from God after he had eaten it. “Where art thou? Where is man?” is the first question that occurs in the Bible. … It is man who hides, he suggests, who flees, who has an alibi. God is less rare than we think.” “Man was the first to hide from God … and is still hiding. The will of God is to be here …; but when the doors of this world are slammed on Him ... He withdraws, leaving man to himself. God did not depart by His own volition; He was expelled, God is in exile. … It is not God who is obscure. It is man who conceals Him. … He is waiting to be disclosed, to be admitted to our lives. Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. … Life is a hiding place for God. We are never asunder from Him who is in need of us." [1]

To align yourself within a religious lineage such as Christianity is a choice. The stories of the community of people gathered through time tell of divine encounter. Of a God who gifts us life and freedom to use that gift. Freedom even to exile God from our life, it is hard to imagine. In and through this life God seeks us, calls us, desires to meet and be met by us. That we are here in this place suggests that we, each in our own way, to greater or lesser degree, have opened our eyes and ears and hearts to God – are willing for God to be alive in us. How, other than through the lives of ordinary people like us, can the light of the life of the world be known? How, other than through willing and genuine encounter with the other, with each person we meet can the Word be made flesh, be translated into the world? It matters how we are and what we do. It is, of course, in us to conceal ourselves from God who sees us as we are but today we choose not to. We cannot make those who’ve exiled God do otherwise, God grants them such freedom. Their doing so diminishes the richness of God expressed in the world. It is a loss for us all yet the boldness of faith would claim, it cannot eliminate God whose hiding place is life.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone: a Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), p153, 154. 

September 4, 2016

Linda Murphy

Ocean Sunday     Ordinary 23     Luke 5:1-11

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

It is spring and the weather is warmer, spring flowers are in bloom and our days are longer. On Friday we celebrated a ‘World Day of Prayer for Creation’, this is the beginning of the Season of Creation that continues to the 4th of October St Francis Day when we celebrate with our Blessing of the Animals Service.

Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches thorough the world are coming together to celebrate this time to encourage us to look at care of creation, and today is Ocean Sunday. We are surrounded by oceans and the sea is an integral part of our life whether we go fishing, sailing or just taking walks along our beautiful shoreline. Collecting kaimoana from the sea is a traditional part of life for us and it is threatened by lack of care and stewardship.

Bishop Desmond Tutu states that we face a human rights challenge with Climate change and the results of climate change are climate refugees to add to the overwhelming numbers of refugees resulting from political unrest. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby talked recently of inaction regarding climate change being potentially fatal to humanity. These are strong and frightening words.

Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans which contain 97.5% of the water on the planet. It is estimated that the oceans formed between 4.6 and 3.8 billion years ago. Life began in the oceans because of the nutrients that were washed into the oceans and provided the content for primitive unicellular bacteria to develop, so one could say that the oceans are the primordial archetype of God as all life emerged from the oceans.

It is probably this archetypical power that explains why the sea holds such a fascination and sense of deep threat to us all. For us we awoke on Friday morning to a tsunami alert after an earthquake on the East Coast of the North Island, this sense of threat became very real, although fortunately short-lived. As Joseph Conrad has it, “The Sea has never been friendly to humanity. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”

Today’s Season of Creation Gospel locates Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, although Luke refers to it as the lake of Gennesaret. At a literal level this is an account of the call of some Galilean fisherman to follow Jesus. However this is a story of faith, courage and transformation.

In 1st century Palestine fishing at night was normal as there was no means to keep fish fresh, it was then sold in the morning and eaten that day. Fishing at night must have been difficult and dangerous. Simon had been fishing that night and had not caught anything when Jesus says “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch”. Simon Peter must have thought Jesus was a bit crazy and after all he wasn’t a fisherman what would he know. However he did obey Jesus and caught so much fish that another boat had to help with this harvest.

Today if Simon Peter was to put his net down his catch would be significantly compromised. Overfishing has resulted in smaller and fewer fish. The nets would be heavy, not from aquatic life but from a disgusting array of rubbish, poisons, and toxic waste. Human waste chokes and poisons marine life in ways that cause immense suffering that most of us never see, nor want to face. We have a lot whale stranding’s here in New Zealand all too frequently. Scientists suggest that this could be a result of the rubbish that these mammals are ingesting.

Jesus’ teaching on the lake of Gennesaret is not just a metaphor for how the Kingdom of God will manifest itself. That teachable moment has important significance for this particular time of ecological destruction, because it shows us that the very illustration that Jesus uses – the basic, natural and life-giving phenomenon of fish thriving in a healthy aquatic ecosystem, that very process is under threat of annihilation.

In July a seven day consultation, “Encountering God in the Storm” was held in Suva, Fiji instigated by Archbishop Winston Halapua, Bishop of Polynesia. Archbishop Winston invited Anglican leaders to consider the implications of climate change for the church’s mission, in a place where they can ‘put their feet in the ocean’ and see the immediate effects of rising ocean levels. In our church mission statement the fifth mark of mission is: “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.”

Some 676 of Fiji’s villages are at risk of flooding because of rising sea levels. Several communities have already been forced to relocate. This year alone the nation of Fiji has contended with Cyclone Winston and numerous earthquakes making the people of Fiji among the most vulnerable to climate change.

This consultation looked at not only economic impact of climate change but also the social impact of increasing climate change pressures has on families. The impact of climate change is holistic; everyone and everything in our ecosystem is affected. Archbishop Philip reflected at the end of the consultation that the challenges are enormous but some creative responses are inspiring.

During the week I read of an innovative idea to save marine life destruction. A company in the UK is making the holders for canned drinks out of waste product from brewing beer. Instead of those plastic holders polluting the oceans and killing precious marine life. These holders break down and offer nourishment to marine life. We need significantly more sustainable innovations like this to make an impact to this global disaster facing our planet.

Just as Jesus’ teaching ministry in first century Palestine was meant to shake people up and get them thinking about things in a new way so that they could hear the Gospel clearly. We hear so many examples of what humanity is doing to desecrate the Earth, it is important for us especially as Christians to remember that God shows up in the last place you would think to look. To proclaim the Good News about what God is doing to restore the oceans, seas, rivers and streams especially as they connect to the human and other than human lives around and within them. A day of prayer is a start, supporting sustainable change, writing to political parties concerning environmental issues and being stewards of our own land are essential if we are to leave this planet in a condition that it will sustain life for our future generations.

The fishermen in today’s Gospel stepped into the unknown when they followed Jesus that day on the shores lake Gennesaret and became fishermen of people spread the Word of God. They faced the unknown, fear, hardship and exclusion nevertheless they listened and learned from the words of Jesus and we are still listening to the Good News. We need to continue to move from the comfortable shallow water into the deeper water to achieve change no matter what might happen. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

I would like to conclude with the words of Koreti Tiumalu, “We cannot build a Pacific Climate Movement without engaging our faith communities. Faith is pivotal to our people, and like the ocean, it connects us. In the face of the climate crisis, we need prayer to carry our people and faith to build resilience.”

August 28, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary 22     Proverbs 25:6-7     Psalm 112     Hebrews 13:1-2, 8,15-16     Luke 14:1, 7-14

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Our neighbours at the City Mission serve dinner every night of the week. What is served depends on the donations of the day. Sometimes there is plenty, sometimes there is not. Last Tuesday evening the food served was a bit special. Rather than coming in and lining up at the counter for a portion, the City Mission regulars were welcomed to tables laid with white table cloths where they were served a 4 course meal. They were served by some rather famous waiters – TV stars, rugby players, politicians; they ate food cooked by some top class chefs. By all accounts it was a special night. Those who served were humbled by the experience. They were all well used to being served at fancy dinners. This time it was their turn to serve.

In Jesus’ time sharing of meals were important ways of socialising – they were very structured affairs, whether a family meal or a gathering of friends or business associates. Jesus is invited one day to the house of the leader of the Pharisees, for a Sabbath meal. This is not a family tea, this is a highly structured and ritualised meal in the house of the wealthy.

The meal would have been served by slaves and servants, and Jesus notes how the guests take the places of honour.

There was at any of these meals a hierarchy of seating – the top table was reserved for the top guests, and each table was ranked. Now there wasn’t a seating plan or name cards – it was much more subtle than that. An invitation would have been sent and it would include the guest list. So you could figure out ahead of time where your place was on the list. First century Palestine was a very stratified society and so everyone knew their place. Then on the day of the banquet a messenger would come with a reminder invitation. [1]

If you were of a humble disposition you would sit lowish in the pecking order but if you were ambitious you would probably risk pushing up the ranks a bit and see if you could get away with it. The risk was that your host would come and embarrass you and say – excuse me but please give up your seat for this guest. The trouble was that the best table had the best food and wine and the lower table had the cheap stuff, with lots of bread and not much else. [2]

Jesus seems at first to be simply commenting on the social etiquette and reminding people of their manners – he quotes Proverbs (25:6-7) – it is better to be asked “friend, come up higher” than to be embarrassed. But then he goes that bit further and says don’t invite your friends to dinner, because they will repay you – indeed all invitations, gifts, were very definitely expected to be repaid by something of similar value – but instead invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. All groups of people who were considered unclean in Jewish law and so very unsuitable meal companions.[3]

I am sure the Pharisee, the host, a religious leader, was thrilled by Jesus’ advice. I wonder what place he gave Jesus at the table?

Meals and banquets are often the subject of Jesus’ teaching – sometimes the banquet is the heavenly banquet of the future, sometimes the way the kingdom of God will be, sometimes Jesus is simply enjoying a good meal with friends.

Jesus wasn’t really interested in people’s table manners, he was instead challenging the social order of the day and offering a new model for living: friend come higher up, come and join us at our table.

Dr Rosemary Dewerse said in a recent blog:

“Spaciousness is something I believe Jesus invites us into. As we follow him we are caught up into the big dreams of God, visions that have room enough for everyone, for every living thing in creation. Following Jesus we have the opportunity to see things from God’s-eye-view, a perspective of reconciliation and boundless hope. And we can live, even amongst the crap and tears and struggle, expectant of kairos, of the inbreaking of the Spirit who goes before us. [4]

Jesus is doing much more here than reminding us of good table manners; Jesus is challenging us to think about space and hospitality – in our lives personally; as communities; and on a global level too.

Global conversations are dominated at the moment by the American elections – by the Trump mantras about building walls and excluding people of Moslem faith. And while I am sure all of us sitting here today reject those kind of politics I worry about the public discourse, the public conversations that become normalized. I remember last year when we hosted a dialogue about housing speakers who shocked us with stories of racism and abuse from our own communities.

Jenni Broom reminded us last week to watch our language when talking about refugees – using words like “waves” and “hordes” of refugees demean the people of whom we speak. And now in France Moslem women are being harassed for swimming in modest swimwear. Some municipalities are trying to outlaw the “burkini” (swimwear designed for Moslem women). This is the height of absurdity and yet exclusion becomes the norm and not the abnormal.

In our city of Auckland as we become incredibly rich with cultural diversity we have to work at welcoming all to the table. Racism or prejudice creep very easily into our private and public discourse. As we come to make our choices in the council elections soon listen carefully to candidates and who they wish to welcome to the table, and who they might exclude.

And coming back to our neighbourhood – this place. The City Mission not only serves dinner every day but also lunch if and when there is food donated for lunch. Some members of our community have suggested that we might take on a Sunday lunch once a month. As we leave our worship here on a Sunday to go to a café, or home to a warm lunch, people begin to queue next door. What if once a month we organized ourselves to prepare lunch so it could be served to our neighbours? Some of us can cook; others can donate the ingredients; others can assist the Mission staff to serve and clean up. We haven’t worked out all the logistics yet but we are working on it. So think about whether you might like to be on a team.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says: “do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” The writer is referring to the time when Sarah and Abraham hosted 3 strangers to lunch (Genesis 18) – they told them they would have a child – Sarah laughed and said – don’t be silly I am too old. But the angels were right. You never know what happens when you offer hospitality.

We gather around a table every week. A table with no name places, no hierarchy, where all are welcome, all are given places of honour. What do we learn at this table? What are we sent out to do? Who might we welcome and say – friend, move up higher, take my place, let me serve you.

[1] p289 New Interpreter’s Bible vol 9

[2] p286 New IB

[3] p287 New IB

[4] http://tekareongawai.org/talanoa/2016/8/23/big-hearted-people

August 14, 2016

Susan Adams

Ordinary 20     Isaiah 5:1-7     Luke12:49-56

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“I don't know how to preach this stuff,

I don't know how to preach this stuff.”

“I don't know how to preach this stuff”, I found myself saying despairingly through clenched teeth after reading the lessons set for today.

“I don't know how to preach this stuff” were the words coming out of my mouth as my eyes filled with tears. “Why me again?”

Why can't the gospel be what is says – good news?

How come I draw the dark and troublesome passages?

Surely the world is a tough enough place for us humans to live in, what with war and violence, upheaval and deprivation, extremes of wealth and poverty, and climate extremes bringing floods and drought – searing heat and freezing cold.

It seems to be spiralling out of control on many fronts at the moment.

Surely we could do with words of comfort and hope right now?

And I sat crying – at the mess our world seems to be in; at the uncomfortable Bible readings set for today that I was trying to face up to; and with my mentor’s admonishment to 'preach the gospel' and not to skip the bits that I don't like, ringing in my ears. I was a bit of a sorry mess!

Then Jesus words in John 14:25 came to mind “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Where is that peace you promise? How can I find it?

And what began to take shape seemed so counter-intuitive, so upside down, that I couldn't think any more and put away my books.

I am still searching for that peace that Jesus promised his followers: ‘the peace that passes all understanding’ that the church blesses us with week by week. But from the murk of my distress emerged the clear sense that this peace will not be an absence of unrest, nor an absence of stress, nor a quiet and calm restfulness with no disagreements or unreasonable expectations or rivalry – it won't even in a sort of polite tolerant tension. Rather, it seems to me, it will be peace that comes from a deep down knowing that I have done my best to be faithful to the baptismal call that has pursued me all my life. That call which invites each of us to be a servant of God – a 'servant of justice' as Isaiah says.

To be a 'servant' such as this leads directly to the peace we long for but which is only to be found in the counter-intuitive demands of the gospel.

But, I must say quickly, in case you hear a self-righteous settling into interior satisfaction, or self-righteous individual certainty about what is 'right', that God's ways of justice and peacemaking to which we are called to commit ourselves to as 'servants' may well require upheaval of the very things we feel most secure about and look to for our greatest support. We only have to read the stories in the gospels about the dislocation, confusions and misunderstandings, of the disciples and the others who sought to follow Jesus to get a picture of the discomfort and upheaval that could occur.

Remember: My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives. (we should anticipate is will be different from our expectation!)

And, of course, there is the troubling verse in today's gospel to further shake our expectations: “I came to bring fire to the earth …. Do you think I came to bring peace to the earth? No I tell you, but rather division.”

Luke's Jesus doesn't just head to the seat of political and religious power to turn things upside down and make change – we are used to hearing about that, about the journey to Jerusalem and the confrontation with political leaders and temple leaders.

Luke's Jesus confronts the very heart of the community, the core structure, the place of safety and security – he confronts the family!

No more could families and family loyalty and the maintenance of harmony be an excuse for not seeing what needs to be done to bring justice; no more could the excuse of 'my family needs and wellbeing' be used to avoid getting involved.

Family is being dethroned from its right to make unconditional claims on us.

Even here, in the family, the challenge to change our ways is being made. It seems every place is to be unsettled by the demands for love and justice-making that will bring life, peace and hope to people both in our family and beyond our own familial circle. It seems all the certainties – family, tradition, culture, religion and political power – are to be turned upside down.

The writer of today's Gospel, Luke as he is known, (writing late in the first century or, perhaps, in the first decade of the second century as some contemporary scholars think), lets us know that the world of that time was not all calm and tension free – it was not a place of unity of belief and practice – no matter what we would like to think! It was a difficult place: Christians were persecuted by non-Christians, and they argued between the amongst themselves. We are still arguing about our differences today as we are only to painfully aware – and it may always be that way.

• But, it isn't peace that is at stake: the absence of argumentation, the absence of difference that we expect when we talk about peace.

• Rather it is life and love and hope that is at stake.

• It is Jesus' vision for a new and different way of relationships between humans and the earth and all the creatures of the earth that is at stake...

And we are warned: even family, even church, even national pride can't get in the way of this...

So how's the weather?

Isn't that what we talk about when all else seems too hard?

Luke is very clever here, at the end of this story he is telling – he drops his hearers right into one of their safe places, a conversation about weather!

Oh yes we all know how to read the weather... we all know how to talk about the weather!

Now we have to learn to read life and health and community wellbeing just as accurately, and talk about it just as much!

The peace we seek is to be found in knowing we are aligned with the call to be a servant of God's justice; knowing we are followers of Jesus' way, the way that leads toward life and hope and love even when it seems to turn everything we know on its head.

Not only must we learn to recognise the signs of the times, we are encouraged to do what is ‘right’ where ever we can, in whatever situation we find ourselves – and we will all be in different situations.

And what is it that is 'right' we ask quickly; how will we recognise what is 'right'?

The great commandment to ‘love one another and to love our neighbour as ourselves’ is the clue.

It is this commandment that underscores Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God come on earth and motivated the struggle toward this vision that Jesus engaged in right up to his death.

And, it is in the face of this command to love one another that Luke’s Jesus says today, somewhat sadly, “I come to bring fire to the earth. How I wish it was already kindled”

The fire Jesus wants to kindle in this image is most probably the fire that heats the earth-oven found in the midst of every village that cooks the bread. That bread we are called to share without privilege or favour among all the people…

August 7, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary 19     Genesis 15:1-6     Psalm 33:12-22     Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16     Luke 12:32-40

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews gives us the best definition of faith you will find in the Bible. It trips nicely off the tongue like a line of poetry. But what does it mean? Well that’s another question.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The word translated here as “assurance” is hypostasis in the Greek and really means something more solid than an “assurance”. It is not like “I assure you the cheque is in the mail”. It means a foundation, or something that is standing under you.

Makes me think of the upright poles in a wharenui – the pou tokomanawa in the centre or the amo panels at the front – often there are carvings of the ancestors and one will be holding up the next one on his or her shoulders and so on as they reach for Ranginui, the sky and heavens above.

So a foundation, or something or someone who is standing under you and holding you up.

Amy Peeler says “If upostasis is something basic, something solid, something firm, then it provides a place to stand from which one can hope.” [1] A place to stand from which we can hope. A place to stand from which we can reach.

Where is your place to stand? It might be a place you love, your home, or somewhere you grew up, somewhere special, your turangawaewae. It might not be a physical place, your place to stand might be with a person or a group of people, your grandmother, your family, a beloved partner, children. Your place to stand might be in your thinking, music, art, or creative work, or day to day, every day work. Your place to stand might be in your spiritual life, your prayer, your sense of the other, your sense of God, your sense of self. And it will probably be a combination of those things and others. Faith, then is about finding this place to stand, and then from this place, hoping and reaching. And what are we reaching and hoping for? In part we are reaching and hoping for “things not seen”; we cannot see God, we cannot see the future. And yet we are told faith is the conviction of things not seen, like evidence in a court room, which is usually pretty tangible. These things not seen will become evident, obvious. Confused?

Joan Chittister says that as we reach and hope, as we act in faith, we destroy the idol that is ourselves. “It is only the deep down belief that we are not the be-all and end-all of the universe that can save us from ourselves. It is the awareness of being part of something vast and intelligent and well-intentioned that gives purpose to life, that leads us to seek beyond the horizons of our smallness to the hope that tomorrow, we can all be better.” [2]

So by looking and seeking beyond ourselves we can begin to see or know the unseen.

By being true to ourselves, knowing on what we stand, we can begin to see or know the unseen.

The example the writer of the letter to the Hebrews gives is that of Abraham and Sarah who felt called to leave their home and travel to a strange land with the promise that their descendants would be like the stars, when they at that stage had no children.

Jesus tells his disciples to be dressed and ready for action, lamps lit, like the servants waiting for their master to return. Live ready and open to what might come; expect God to show up in your life.

We come here this morning hoping to meet with God (as well as each other) and we have tangible signs of God’s love in bread, wine, music, words. God though does not reside in church.

In her book “Grounded” Diana Butler Bass tells a story about going to church on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in Alexandria. A guest preacher reflects on the anniversary and then begins to talk about the 4,000 people who had died in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result. Diana is confused – 4000? there were tens of thousands, surely – then she realises he is only talking about the Americans who were killed. She writes:

“I gasped audibly. …. Hoping not to make a scene, I slipped out of the pew and left the building. I sat down on the stairs outside, trying to let my sorrow and fury subside.

As I attempted to compose myself, I noticed many people walking around the neighbourhood, far more than usual … they were all heading toward King St … Without a second thought, I followed the crowd.

… it was Art Walk, a yearly festival. Painters, sculptors, weavers … musicians … As I stood on a corner and looked out on the scene, all my senses were alive, coaxed to full attentiveness by vibrant colors, bright chimes in the wind, the cool sound of a saxophone …. children were laughing …. neighbors greeted one another … The energy, the creativity – how wonderful it was! …

My cell phone buzzed. A text message appeared on the screen from my husband. ‘Are you coming back to church?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I texted in reply.

It seemed so obvious right then, but I have no idea why I had never noticed it before. For years, the church kept me safe inside a building. All the while the Spirit was out here on the streets.” [3]

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. Faith is within us, around us. We find faith when we find a place to stand, supported by others, and begin to hope. This church is a place that can help us do that – after all we claim here at St Matthew’s to be a spirited place where people stand, connect and seek common ground. [4]

But this church or any church is not what faith is about in the end. Faith is about your life and the way you live it in God’s world, lamp lit, ready for action.

[1] Amy Peeler http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2943

[2] p11 Uncommon Gratitude Joan Chittister Rowan Williams

[3] Diana Butler Bass Grounded Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution 2015 HarperOne p 235-6

[4] St Matthew’s vision statement

July 31, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary 18     Ecclesiastes 1:2,12-14; 2:18-25     Psalm 49:1-12     Colossians 3:1-11     Luke 12:13-21

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” – no, not a quote describing an American Political Convention – but the writer of Ecclesiastes who says – what is the point of working hard, of seeking wisdom; we end up with nothing. Some very honest words from this writer. The Book of Ecclesiastes is a collection of sayings and musings from an unknown author in maybe 200BC. The author talks back and forwards about the challenges of life, and his most famous passage is “for everything there is a season – a time to be born, a time to die…”. In this piece when he uses the word translated as “vanity”, it does not mean being vain – as in – don’t I look gorgeous today – it means how insubstantial things are, how they are made of nothing – like all my efforts were in vain. I think we can be surprised sometimes by how honest biblical writers can be. This is not “everything will be alright because God loves you”; this is “life sucks – I seem to get nowhere”. He also says “Eat, drink, and be merry”, because we have worked for it and who knows what those who come after us might do with what we leave them, better to enjoy it now! God has given us these good things to enjoy and so we shall. “Eat, drink and be merry” – also not a phrase we expect to read in the Bible. Both Ecclesiastes (9:17) and Isaiah (22:13) use it and it pops up again in our gospel reading.

Jesus is preaching we are told to a crowd of thousands and a bright soul pipes up – wanting Jesus to solve a family dispute. Rabbis such as Jesus were often called upon to sit as judges in community or family cases. In this case, in Mosaic law the eldest son of a family got double what the rest of the sons got. (And of course the girls didn’t get anything). So probably this man wants a half share, equal with his older brother. Or the land was left to all the sons together but was not split up – so they worked it together. [1] And so this son wants the land sold and the profits shared. (Think the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) asking his father for his inheritance before the father dies). Jesus is known for changing the rules and breaking them so the younger brother is hopeful he will be on his side.

Jesus declines to be drawn in and instead gives a very strong rebuke in the form of a parable. A rich landowner has a bumper crop – not a lot to do with his skill probably, more to do with the weather and the skill of his workers on the land. But plenty of farmers in Jesus’ audience would have been pleased to have his problem – what to do with this crop? And note the landowner says “I” and “me” all the time – what shall I do with my crops; I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones to store my grain. While our rich man can quote Ecclesiastes (eat, drink and be merry) he has clearly forgotten Isaiah 5:8 where the prophet describes the unrighteous. “Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!” Those who only look after themselves to the exclusion of others will end up alone.

In Biblical times people lived very much in community, the concept of individual ownership was not as we have it today – and even if a landowner owned a farm the decisions made about the farm were made in community, thinking of the workers and all those whose lives depended on it. Otherwise Isaiah says you will be left alone.

Which is indeed what happens to the man in the parable – he is happy, his barns are built, he can relax. …Except God says – this very night your life is being demanded of you – the same phrase you would use for a loan being recalled from the bank – your life is being demanded of you – and what use then is all your stuff? Now I would love to hear some sermons from the US today on this passage – it would be very easy to pivot to equating Donald Trump with the man in the parable – building bigger barns and keeping it all for himself. We could do that too – and so escape having to look to ourselves. For those of us who have the privilege of enjoying our “stuff”, our clothes, our furniture, our books, our cars – these are challenging words, for you and me. What is our attitude? Are we hoarding like the farmer in the parable? Or can we sit lightly to what we own? Jesus says instead of storing up treasures for yourselves be rich toward God. “Rich toward God” – what does that mean?

Think for a moment of the readings from the last few Sundays and we will find that we have been given some clues about being rich towards God. 3 Sundays ago the reading was the Good Samaritan – compassion and care for our neighbour, especially our neighbour who is very different from us. Two Sundays ago – the story of Mary and Martha – Martha you are distracted by many things (many possessions?)– Mary has chosen to listen – listening; Last Sunday Jesus taught his disciples to pray and to trust in God in prayer. Luke has lined up all these passages to give us some clues when we get to this challenging parable. (It doesn’t get any easier next week we will be told to sell all our possessions.) So being rich towards God involves: compassion and care for neighbour; listening to God and each other; prayer; not being ruled by our possessions. These are the things that store up for us “treasure in heaven”, or bring us close to God.

If the landowner had thought about these things he might not have built bigger barns but instead found ways to share his crop with his neighbours; listened to the prophets; prayed about his actions (instead of having a dialogue with himself – I will say to my soul); and not finished life wedded to his possessions.

That is how we might read this parable at a personal level; what happens if we broaden our scope and take it to a community level which is certainly how Jesus’ listeners would have heard it. As we worry about homelessness in our community, and the need for more houses, how do we look at the Unitary Plan and the need for denser housing. Do we say “Not in my backyard”? or do we embrace the changes knowing more people will have access to housing? Yesterday’s Herald newspaper had headlines yet again about housing – but about houses increasing in price dramatically as they are onsold time after time instead of being rented to families who need them. We need more controls to make sure houses do not sit empty. As we see growing poverty in our country do we pay a living wage from our businesses or do we say that is fine for others but not for me. Then at a global level do we reject the call for more refugees to find a new home? Do we reject those immigrants who long to come and share our beautiful country. Do we say no our land is for us alone? So now the parable becomes about a society or culture and our collective attitude to wealth, and land, and justice. Jesus’ time was no less political than ours. The rights of landowners and peasant workers, rights of inheritance, paying taxes, who had much and who had nothing – were all very hot political issues.

What treasured possessions in your life might get in the way of storing up treasure with God? What as a culture or a nation gets in the way of us being hospitable and compassionate to our neighbours who need us? So two hard choices today: We can despair with the writer of Ecclesiastes – and say it is all vanity – what is the point of worrying about anything; or we can be challenged by Jesus – what are the riches of your life? what really matters? what motivates you? How best can we share what we have.

[1] Kenneth Bailey Through Peasant Eyes p58

July 24, 2016

Chris Farrelly

Social Services Sunday

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

July 17, 2016

Hirini Kaa

Ordinary 16

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July 10, 2016

Susan Adams

Ordinary 15     Amos 7:7-17     Luke 10:25-37

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John, my sister Elizabeth and I were stranded in Limoux – the French village where Helen and Stephen stayed – there was a strike in Paris and the trains we not running and we could not get back to Carcassonne where we were staying. The temperature was 40 degrees celsius and we were hot and tired after a day out. A group of us had been dropped by a bus at the train-station: English speakers and a couple of French locals. Eventually we discovered that there would be no further transport available that day. The French people wandered off, the English couple were not interested in working on a solution with us – that left three young men from Pakistan. The men came to us offering to work with us on finding a solution. But first they needed to find a place to pray as it was an appointed prayer time for Muslims. They found a place for their ablutions and to kneel, and despite loud disparaging comments from the other English speakers they knelt to pray. Then one of them rushed away leaving us on the grass wondering what next. Just as we were getting really anxious he returned saying he had a possible solution. The English couple said they had ‘options’, and wandered off leaving us behind. So we trekked off slowly after the three young men who were fast walkers (we would need to hurry we were told) and they kept up a fast pace. One kept coming back to see how John and I were doing and offering encouragement as we hurried after them as fast as we could down alleys and over bridges – twisting this way and that going where, we didn't know. Eventually we caught up and were told a school bus would come and return us to our village. It arrived eventually, and two of our Pakistani rescue team and the three of us were duly taken back to Carcassonne. The men left us after a few selfies and headed away to find another mode of transport to take them to their final destination. We were grateful to them and aware we would have been in a pickle without them.

I have wondered since if we would have been so willing to follow a group of unknown backpacking Muslim men if we were stranded and lost in a New York subway without the local language!

The gospel today put me in mind of this story.

It is so difficult for us to reinvest the over familiar story of the Good Samaritan with the horror that the Jews, to whom it was first directed, must have felt on hearing it! Perhaps imagining a member of Isis helping a New York Republican might just do it! Kindness from a bitter enemy! Could you face it? Could I? Or would generations of the social conditioning that shaped and ordered our behaviour and expectations sweep in and make us too afraid to receive their compassion?

In the book I picked up from George Armstrong the other week, Applied Spirituality, by Swami Agnivesh, there is this phrase “Religions are meant to be, nurseries of culture and hospitality, rather than fortresses of hostility” (p4). It seems to me it is challenge that sits powerfully alongside the parable of the Good Samaritan, powerfully confronting us as Christians today in our certainty and self-righteousness born of generations of Christian teaching, religious self-confidence, and cultural imperialism.

Amos, a first testament prophet speaking about 700 BC, is similarly addressing generational self-confidence and inherited ‘common-sense’ shaped by generations of storytelling. Amos is opening an ethical conversation about the social, religious, economic structures and cultural practices of Israel during the prosperous times of King Jeroboam. He speaks, as all good prophets seem to do, on behalf of God and brings to his hearers an image of God measuring the degree to which the people have bent away from ‘God's-way’ by holding up a plumb-line. God’s measure it would seem, has little to do with the established law or common practice, or ‘common-sense’ (the ‘right’ way to do things) as determined by generations of truths passed down and the prevailing dominant authorities version of the way things need to be. King Jeroboam and his officials, both religious and administrative, are under scrutiny by God as are the people who follow unquestioningly in the prosperous times of that kingdom.

Ethics, it seems to me can be understood as the big framework, the big picture of what is in the best interests of the people, the right and just way of ordering behaviour and decisions (social and economic) that will be life-giving for all the people and not only for a selected or privileged group. Amos is drawing this ethical concern to the attention of the people of Israel; to the religious authorities; and to the King – who, after all, has a responsibility to order matters so that all the people are protected and have the means of a good livelihood. Amos cautions each of these aspects of the kingdom‘s administration with the message that God is not happy; that God will not pass over the people of Israel this time. He proclaims God has noticed what is going on and that tilting away from God’s way: forgetting the covenant expectations, is just not acceptable. There will be no escape from God’s expectations or punishment.

The priest and the King tried to banish Amos, to turn a deaf ear to him but they were warned that would not answer. Different frameworks were expected by God: systems and priorities that would measure up to responsible care for all the people, for economic justice, care for the land and care for those who are in need. An ethical framework that would attend to these dimensions of life was expected from the king and all in responsible leadership!

The expectation that an ethos of care, of hospitality to stranger and to those who are different – the ‘other’ – is buried not too subtly in Jesus’ parable. Hostility toward the ‘other’, self-protection and the enactment of ‘common’ morês so as to be seen to be doing what is ‘right’ is out. Instead of simply accepting there is ‘no other way’ than that of popular promotion, and that enmity and hostility to ‘foreigner’ (those who are different) is in the national interest, and that those who are economically dispensable need no special attention, is simply not acceptable by God who is holding up the plumb-line, the measure. Instead, the requirement (in order to measure up) is for hospitality and compassionate kindness, and for an equitable distribution of wealth, even at the risk of our own good-name and reputation.

I think we have to drop off the rhetorical device Luke uses to present the parable, that is the quizzing lawyer, and simply hear Jesus speak the parable that turns upside down ‘common-sense’ as he knew it and what was considered right and acceptable behaviour in his day, if we want to sense the power in the story. The parable describes the situation of enmity, the rivalry and hatred between Jews and Samaritans that everyone knew, it was commonplace and people behaved accordingly, and that would be how it would continue to be on into the future generation by generation for as long as these two peoples kept telling the ‘truth’ that way.

Jesus is telling it differently – he is inviting a new story, hospitality not hostility.

Today, our context also has ‘others’ to whom we are hostile. It is easy for us with our inherited ways of seeing and doing to reject those who are different – different economically, educationally, socially, politically and religiously. We readily leave them by the wayside, sleeping in doorways, drowning in seas far from home, shut away and shut out. without clean water or the means to grow food crops. They are not us, not our concern. Amos the prophet challenges this, Jesus the prophet and wisdom teacher challenges this.

We are invited to tell our stories differently, to begin the shaping of a different ‘common-sense’ about the priorities for our time, about whom we should be in relationship with, whom we should be concern for.

We are being invited to consider the economic structures and priorities we support and to question how the wealth resources of the earth could be shared more equitably.

Amos’ prophecy in a time of prosperity, and Jesus’ parable in a time of hardship for Jews, invite us to think again about ethics, about what is right, about our attitude to others and about the stretch we are prepared for when we speak of hospitality, of justice and of love of neighbour.

July 3, 2106

Waiora Port

St Thomas, Apostle

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Dr Waiora Port spoke on the history of St Thomas Church in Freemans Bay and the significant role of the church in her life and faith journey, and its role in the early days of Selwyn Village and the City Mission.

June 26, 2016

Susan Adams

Ordinary 13     Galatians 5:1, 13-25     Luke 9:51-62

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It’s easy to lash out when things don’t seem to be going your way and you fear you are losing control of the world as you know it – and like it! We see a lot of that around the world today, the Orlando shootings and the Brexit dilemma being a recent example. We see plenty of it in our own city – if in more insidious ways that often emerge as racism or sexism or homophobia or an expression that ‘blames the victim’. When our world as we know it starts to change; when we are faced with ideas and behaviours that are new to us, when our sense of control seems to be slipping, it is not uncommon hear ourselves (or others) say things like “that is shocking; it’s unbelievable; it’s just not possible, or right, or ever going to happen if I can help it.”

This was brought home to me vividly a week or so back when John and I went to the theatre to see ‘That Bloody Woman’. The play was about the work of Kate Shepherd and the movement for women’s suffrage – which succeeded eventually in 1893, making New Zealand the first country in the world to give women the vote. Their friends and families; churches; politicians and business people, were shocked at what the women were up to: mobilising crowds, getting petitions signed, riding around on bikes in divided skirts, speaking out at public gatherings, forming friendships across gender lines and taking charge of their own lives and futures.

Shocking stuff! Some who didn't approve of the changes lashed out with violence, some with hurtful speech.

The punk-rock context in which ‘That Bloody Woman’ was set took me by surprise. I was shocked. I wondered what I had struck in the loud discordant music and verbal obscenities! Many of us in the audience were impacted in a visceral way experiencing in our own bodies just how shocking, 116 years ago, the very thought of women speaking and organising in public was; how very shocking and unseemly it was for women to be demanding recognition for their capacity to think, and decide what was in their own and in society's best interest – perhaps even contrary to men’s ideas of what was ‘good for women’. And, how shocking for the church to realise that these ‘strident feminists’ (a term I have born myself) had emerged out of the church itself – St Albans Methodist Church Christchurch.

Having seen this production and been shocked to my very core (not being familiar with punk-rock as a musical genre), I came to today’s Gospel able to recognise shock tactics when I saw them.

What unpleasant people Luke's Jesus and his disciples must have seemed to those who heard this story. First there is the suggestion of violence by the disciples who wanted to burn up the Samaritans because they didn’t want to receive Jesus the foreigner. Then Jesus challenges unkindly the sincerity of someone who wanted to join his group, and then, he appears to reject a couple of people who wanted to follow him but had one or obligations to see to first: taking care of funeral arrangements for a father and saying goodbye to family. Perfectly reasonable and culturally appropriate things it would seem. Jesus should have been more understanding. The story suggests Jesus was rude, and his behaviour shocking – no way to grow a movement! But what lies beneath these aphorisms and their superficial shock.

As always it is important to remember this is not a recounting of an historical event, it is a story in the Jesus- mode to make a point, to indicate a deep truth. It is probably written in late in the first century – revised even up to 120 CE – according to contemporary mainstream biblical scholars. The story is at a pivotal point in Luke's narration of the journey from Galilee, through Samaritan territory, to Jerusalem: from the countryside to the seat of religious and political power. This gospel perhaps more than any other Gospel [i] takes account of the hardships of life for the majority in Jesus own time and in the subsequent decades. [Times were not easy when Luke’s gospel was gathered together 5% of the population was wealthy (very wealthy) 5% lived well (tax collectors and retainers of the wealthy; 70% lived in varying degrees of poverty with 10-15% criminals and brigands living as best they could[ii]]

So what is at the heart of this account of Jesus and his disciples shocking behaviour on the way to Jerusalem to confront the political and religious power-holders? What does this collection of unpleasant ‘aphorisms’ have to say to us?

·       The violence proposed by John and James as a response to the Samaritans apparent inhospitality was rejected by Jesus as a solution – no surprise.

·       But then there is the warning to the one who wanted to follow that he might end up homeless so beware – this is no picnic!

·       And, the apparent suggestion that even cultural protocols that everyone knew – even Jesus – should not be observed: things like burying a father and saying goodbye to family. This is clearly intended to shock!

·       And there is the all or nothing straight furrow with no looking back – undeviating commitment.

It would appear Jesus is intending shock would be followers, with his talk of homelessness and the overturning of core value and practises: he is attacking the priorities that hold in the social order of his day in place.

As recipients of generations of family ‘wisdom’ and patterning and established obligations it shocks us too to imagine that ‘our family, our way of doing things and our priorities’ may not be as important as we thought and may need a rethink! Are we prepared to give up old habits that go nowhere beyond reinforcing the status quo and move to more life changing ways? (this is the leaving the dead to bury the dead bit – leave behind those who have no heart for change).

It would appear all that we hold dear might need to be changed if we intend to become part of the entourage that, along with Jesus, makes its way, metaphorically, to Jerusalem – makes it way to the seat of political and religious power.

·       That is if we intend to enact the priorities of nonviolence;

·       respect for difference;

·       the re-incorporation of those we have marginalised by our economic priorities;

·       to walk the path of justice making love.

These things are demanded of us, time and time again, in the good news Jesus proclaimed.

For the most part we do intend to enact these behaviours and priorities in what we say and do. But as Church it is often easier to talk about them than to do them.

As I contemplate this I am aware that we, the church, we good people of faith and commitment, leap all to readily to aligning ourselves with Jesus, thinking we are the ones who like him need to do a bit of ‘shocking’, a bit of confronting.

But the shock wave that heralds change to the priorities we have set currently for our economy, and for our social organisation is upon us. All we know of love and respect and kindness and a fair-go is in upheaval. We urgently need to look to each other for courage to make up our minds how we want to respond. It is not easy or straightforward. Following Jesus is a risky business we might lose our economic security or social status.

Beneath these stories, in which Jesus is seen apparently behaving so badly, is a challenge that comes to us through the centuries: a challenge to racial preferment, a challenge to the boundaries of nations, a challenge to the priorities and certainties of cultural, family and even national values and protocols, a challenge to the use of violence to defend what we believe is ours or our due.

It seems to me it is us, you and me, that need to have our complacency rattled, to become shocked to our very core at what our society has come to. We need to be on the receiving end of the shocking utterances of Jesus that come to us through the voices of the hundreds sleeping rough on our streets, the thousands of children and their families that of live in poverty, those with vulnerable mental health states – abandoned or incarcerated. It is you and me that will have to respond to Jesus’ challenge as to where our priorities lie and how much risk we are prepared to take.

It seems a visceral shock at the dire situation of our planet and the desperate circumstance of so many of our human brothers and sisters is what we need to pray for – because such a shock just might galvanise us into action.

Here in St Matthews we say we have chosen the Way of Jesus, God help us as we find the courage to open our hearts and our eyes to that Way here in our city.

[i] Borg Marcus. Evolution of the Word. P428

[ii] Greta Vosper. in the National Post May 2008

June 19, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Auckland Rainbow Community Church Memorial Service for Orlando         

Romans 8:31-39     Matthew 5:1-12

One week on from this massacre the world is still in shock I think. The people of Orlando certainly are only just beginning to try and understand what happened to them. With the benefit of social media we are able to follow people’s thoughts and reactions and that can be overwhelming at times.

On the one hand it brings us close to others across the world, which is a good thing; on the other hand it can mean these events can feel too close and be very upsetting to us; which is not so good; and so we gather tonight for our own support as a community and to reach out from that base of support to those in Orlando.

Some of the conversation across the world and in the US has been – was this an attack specifically on the LGBT community? – some commentators have been criticized for downplaying this aspect of the events – for whatever reason.

We stand tonight and recognize that yes, it was an attack on a gay bar and on the gay community. And to gloss over this is to continue to deny the reality of homophobia in our societies.

There has been a particular conversation about this in the church media in the US. Bloggers and preachers have been saying – do not say you are praying for the victims in Orlando if the week before you were preaching against marriage equality or not allowing gay people in the leadership of your church.

Rachel Held Evans, an American writer said this week:

“Just understand why some LGBT folks don’t fall all over themselves with gratitude when a Christian leader who has consistently demeaned and ostracized them suddenly calls for empathy. There was a body count before Sunday. It’s far easier to weep over a shocking massacre committed by a person claiming another faith than to weep over the millions of small cruelties committed by those in your own community. We can do better. Let’s start today.”[1]

And a priest from Scotland, Kelvin Holdsworth said: “Religion is not a special category. Faith based homophobia shouldn’t be off limits to those fighting for a more equal world. If anti-gay views can be tackled in healthcare, the police and even the armed forces, who have made tremendous progress, then it must be tackled in pew, pulpit and mosque as well.

Religious people wanting to pray today, comment today and make things better on this day when America’s worst multiple shooting has explicitly targeted those who are gay need to face up to some uncomfortable truths about where anti-gay views are most nourished. Those trying to represent the love of God in the world need to remember that in order to be in any way helpful today they need to be explicit about welcoming gay people and working for gay rights. It isn’t enough to weep with those who suffered violence in Orlando this weekend without a commitment to tackle the roots of that violence tomorrow.”[2]

We echo those comments here tonight and to our churches, and say we need to work faster and harder on getting rid of our ridiculous prejudices and rules that exclude.

The ARCC has worshipped in this place for decades and has been a haven for those excluded from their own churches. We honour you tonight.

We need to look no further than the Bible readings we are about to hear for encouragement in our quest for inclusion and equality. Our readings both name the reality of suffering and persecution, which was all too familiar to the first Christians; and they name the presence of God within that suffering; and they name the hope which is ours.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”[3] – meaning God is with those who suffer in the name of truth and love; and “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God”[4]; nothing.

We celebrate that love tonight – love of God – love between people – love shared in families, in couples of all descriptions. As the hashtag goes #loveisloveislove.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/rachelheldevans.page/posts/10153956026774442

[2] http://thurible.net/2016/06/13/not-enough-prayfororlando-people-faith-must-fight-homophobia/

[3] Matthew 5:10

[4] Romans 8:39

June 19, 2016

Wilf Holt

Ordinary 12     1 Kings 19:1-15a     Luke 8:26-39

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June 5, 2016

Linda Murphy

Ordinary 10     Luke 7:11-17

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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O God, my strength and my redeemer.

We are in green the liturgical colour for Ordinary Time. Green is for life, growth and renewal. Today is World Environment Day a day to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action.

Our gospel today is unique to Luke. Jesus restores to life a widow’s son. The reality of a widow’s life in the first century world was threatening at worst, miserable most of the time. A concern for assisting widows throughout the Bible stems from their dire need.

Jesus’ act of compassion in restoring the widow’s son to life would have been perceived as unrighteous behaviour. For a male Jew, the body of the dead was considered unclean, and Jesus would have been forbidden to touch it. His response to the distraught unprotected widow would have been equally suspect. The Life of Brian comes to mind, “He is not the Messiah he is just a naughty boy”. Jesus was here to challenge the status quo.

This act of compassion demonstrates two things about the nature of God. First, Jesus served as a justice-making witness to the provision of God that is available to all. Jesus demonstrates once again God’s regard for those at the margins of society. It is easy for us to forget the risks Jesus took to demonstrate the kingdom of God on earth. This compassion extended to the mother who lived, not to the son who had died. Jesus was compassionate toward her for her sake. He transformed her mourning to joy, her desolation to hope. Jesus also was willing to risk rebuke for exercising God’s special mercy for the least among society.

On Wednesday a powhiri was held here at St Matthews to welcome the City Mission’s new City Missioner Chris Farrelly. Wilf’s speech made it very clear that Chris required compassion for the job or he would be returned to the North. For all of us working at the Mission compassion and empathy are essential qualities that we use and need to assist the desperate people who walk through our doors. We have given out more than twelve thousand food parcels in the last ten months more than we have ever issued and double the number since I joined the Mission. We are seeing new faces every day and the issue of homelessness is constantly in our media. The Mission’s work whether it is a food parcel or finding a home for a homeless person is one of giving hope and with that hope transformation.

When the crowd saw the young man get up and walk they were filled with fear. Fear is an easy emotional state. It’s one of our basic, human default modes. It’s reactive, somewhere deep in the most reptilian parts of our brain; we can tap into fear in milli-seconds. That is not a bad thing when you are in a genuinely dangerous situation. But fear is a dangerous thing when it becomes our default mode. Fear is not an uncommon response in the face of resurrection. That’s especially true when we can’t explain it or understand it. Sometimes we are so scared of new life or new opportunities, whether it’s in ourselves or in others, that we try to squash it as surely as some would silence Jesus.

I would like now to share a story of fear I had a child. When was eight I was given an atlas by a much loved Uncle and I found Switzerland in this atlas and that was where I was going to live, however over time I had forgotten why I needed to live in Switzerland. As an adult I have had no wish to visit Switzerland although we have spent time close by in France and Italy. Many years later I asked my mother why I was so fixated on Switzerland. “You came home from school and had seen a film on raising sea levels and found Switzerland was very high above sea level.” That was in 1959, fifty seven years ago and we were aware or some were and we are still not in any agreement how to manage our environment in a compassionate way. We now know for certain that our sea levels are rising. Many of our pacific islands and atolls are slowly or not so slowly returning to the sea.

Environmental scientists have been telling us for decades that our behaviour and awareness matter. We know that there are changes in climate. We never had an autumn this year we have had summer for six months and now winter has arrived with a vengeance. We know that the seas are rising. But do we realize the impact that these phenomena have on those who live with the greatest vulnerability?

To quote Paul Quintos of the Philippines, an environmentalist, “The poorest people in the poorest countries who contributed least to climate change are also the first and foremost affected by it. While world leaders are haggling over emission reductions and who will pay for the mitigation and adaptation, millions of the world’s poorest populations are daily suffering the consequences of climate change- extreme weather events that destroy crops, livestock and homes, more frequent and prolonged droughts and floods, loss of freshwater supply, increase in pathogens, destruction of marine and coastal resources, ancestral land, food and water insecurity, energy insecurity, and so on.”

The world’s environment is in dire need as the widow was with the death of her son. Perhaps this is the challenge of Ordinary Time: through grace to meet and heal the broken world in precisely the same gesture as we glorify God, to be fully alive in the world God has created and we have damaged, to even in our brokenness we can all take part in healing our world. If we all recycle, clean up the rubbish from our waterways, insulate our homes, walk to the shop instead of driving the car and the list goes on. We have options to holt the destruction of our planet and while the world’s leaders fight over what and how things are done we as individuals can take a part. If each of us change one thing at a time, who knows we may heal our world. The alternative fills me with fear not for myself but for our future generations.

The ministry of Jesus and ours are about addressing real human need and it is about compassion. Such compassion and caring in action has few short cuts to success if any. In the midst of the complexity of human need is hope and the possibility of renewal and life. It is built on the foundation that all people are of value and none is to be dismissed or despised. Our world still needs that kind of good news and our challenge is to become it and help others become it.

Amen.

May 29, 2016

Eseta Mateiviti-Tulavu

Te Pouhere Sunday

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you my rock and redeemer. Amen.

Ni sa bula vinaka, Malo e lelei, Talofa lava, Namaste, Ki orana.

I grew up in a small Solomoni settlement in the outskirts of the Suva City. My father was a boxer and gold and bronze medallist who represented Fiji in the South Pacific Games and Commonwealth Games as a Bantam weight boxer. He was a supervisor in the Chrome and plaiting industry within the Carpenters industrial group. He was a first generation Solomon Islander to be born in Fiji, his father left the Solomon Islands at the age of 16 after he was recruited to go and work in Fiji. In the early 1980’s dad gave his life to the Lord and became a lay reader and was sent to St Johns the Baptist to study a certificate in theology, after 3 years of study he was ordained as deacon and became a curate at the Holy Trinity Cathedral under the Dean, The Venerable Michael Bent who lives in New Plymouth. After 3 years he was ordained priest and was posted to St Lukes and after 3 years he was later posted to Labasa which is on located north of Suva. It was here in Labasa that my father taught me to set up an altar, soak the purificators, to make sure that the Sunday sheets and rosters are given to those rostered to read and lead worship. This is something he taught me so that I could help him as he had to preside and celebrate in St Andrews at 8.00am, St Thomas 10 am and then to Wailevu at 12pm and then other times at Church of the Holy Cross, Dreketi at 1pm. For a year this was the usual practice, little did I know that this responsibility and partnership with dad was for life and I had no idea during that time that this where it would end up. I had committed myself to working alongside dad and had become to accept that helping him is not only going to make the work light for him but it was my responsibility as the eldest of the family and the only girl.

Today is Te Pouhere Sunday. “pou” is a post and “here” means to tie. The imagery is that of an anchor. A place where we could anchor our “waka”, “waqa” or boat. This anchor helps us to develop 1. a partnership 2. a covenant between us and God to do Christ’s ministry in the world. So what is Te Pouhere? Te Pouhere is a Sunday put aside to celebrate the constitution (post) of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. The 1992 constitution of the Church is a provision for three equal partners. Today in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia we celebrate an identity of working alongside each other, praying with and for each other and listening to one another.

Who are the 3 equal partners?

The 3 equal partners are Tikanga Maori, Tikanga Pakeha and Tikanga Pasifika. Tikanga means ‘the right way of doing things in one’s own culture’. So Tikanga Pakeha have their own right way of getting things done, through the Pakeha culture and this is the same with Tikanga Maori and Pasifika.

The Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia is one church in which each Tikanga is an equal partner in the decision-making process of the General Synod and where each can exercise mission and ministry to God’s people within the culture of each partner. There are some things we do together like General Synod, and other committees which are done Across Tikanga like – Liturgical Commission, Toru Youth Commission, Women’s Studies, Archives Committee are just a few that I can name and some of which I have been part of as a representative of Tikanga Pasifika but then there are many things we do separately.

So Te Pouhere is about 1. partnership. What does the term partnership mean? Partnership is about mission, relationship, acceptance, involvement, commitment, trust, respect, identity, love, forgiveness, understanding, responsibilities, sharing.

What does partnership involve?

• Partnership involves people, individual persons, group of people,

• There must be acceptance before the relationship can develop. With acceptance comes trust. As Cathy Ross (missiologist) states; - “We trust each other with the “keys” if you like; we respect their cultural way of being and doing

• Learning to give up control and sharing the responsibility

• Readiness to accept responsibilities/ readiness to pay the price and serving the purpose

Partnership is about being engaged and having a relationship with each other. It is also knowing that sometimes there will be strengths and weaknesses revealed but it is within the most vulnerable times that partners need to have some form of acceptance, need to be involved, have some sense of responsibility, intentional listening and forgiveness.

The highlight of today’s gospel – John 15:16 “You did not choose me but I chose you…and then he emphasises this with ..I appointed you to go. It was not we who chose God but God who in his grace approached us with a call and an offer made out of his love. Out of this passage you and I can compile a list of things for which we are chosen and to which we are called;

• We are chosen for joy – however hard the Christian way is, there is always joy in doing the right thing. We are redeemed sinners and within us is joy. How can any of us fail to be happy when we walk the ways of Jesus?

• We are chosen for love – we are sent out to love one another. Sometimes we feel that we are sent out to compete with one another or to quarrel with one another. Sometimes we say to people that they should love one another when we ourselves do not demonstrate that. Jesus is saying this to us because he showed this to us by dying on the cross for us. Pauls 2nd letter to the Corinthians today speaks of “And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.

• Jesus called us to be his friends. He tells his disciples “I do not call you servants or slaves any more; he calls them friends. This is a wonderful offer, where we are no longer a distant stranger but a close friend.

Te Pouhere is secondly about a covenant, a covenant is either a verb or a noun, it is what you define it to be. A verb meaning – contract, treaty, bond, an agreement, it is a noun meaning – pledge, promise, vow…these are words we use in this day and age but a covenant is more, for me it is sacred. Sacred in a sense that there is more to it than just a contract or any of the other words I have already used. Sacred because it is between you as an individual and God. The constitution between the 3 Tikanga partners is a covenant that they have pledged to each other and to God, this makes them equal partners. But sometimes human nature kicks in and there is a scent of dissatisfaction and disrespect, but with sacred partnership there is always forgiveness, acceptance and restoration.

Today’s gospel says;

• We are partners, slaves could never be partners. But as Jesus says “you are not my slaves; you are my partners. I have told you everything about what I am trying to do and why I am trying to do it, I have told you everything which God told me. In here Jesus is sharing his mind to us and has opened his heart to us. The choice is ours, can we accept or refuse our partnership with Christ in the work of mission, in the work of leading the world to God.

• Jesus chose us as ambassadors. “I have chosen you he said, ‘to send you out’. He did not choose us to live a life retired from the world but to be his eyes, his ears and his mouth in the world. Jesus chose us to come to him, to know him fully and then to the world to make him known. That must be the daily pattern and rhythm of our lives

Te Pouhere is about us, our identity as a 3 Tikanga Church. Our identity is about love, partnership and the covenant we have made between ourselves as the 3 Tikanga Church and our God. It also about a calling to a commitment about mission within our own Tikanga, our own whanau or family.

In reality our commitment to the partnership that we share as a 3 Tikanga Church was already there well before we became a 3 Tikanga Church. Historically, when God sent Bishop Selwyn into the Solomon Islands the mustard seed that grew there was scattered into Fiji through our Solomoni ancestors because when the Anglican Church started it not only began with the planters but it lived on in the lives of the Solomoni settlements. From the time the Diocese of Polynesia was established as a missionary Diocese to one that is now an equal partner. There have been bishops, priests and people who have served and have helped the Diocese of Polynesia to what it is now.

What does the readings and Te Pouhere Sunday mean for us today?

• That we are all called

• We are all equal even though distinctly different from the other

• We are called to be partners for the mission of God

• We are called to be ambassadors

• We are called to be friends

There are times we need to be responsible for the other, there are times when we need to just listen intently with an open heart and mind. Our mission is to live up to the calling that God has for us. 

May 15, 2016

Helen Jacobi

The Day of Pentecost     Acts 2:1-21     Psalm 104     Romans 8:14-17     John 14:8-17

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“Amazed and astonished, they asked ‘how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?’” (Acts 2:7-8). I have always loved languages, learning the sounds and patterns, and learning about a culture through its language. A couple of years ago we took some Mandarin Chinese classes and discovered how challenging and amazing Chinese is as a language! I am determined to try some more though!

On the day of Pentecost we are told the people of Jerusalem and the people from “every nation” who lived there understood the message of the disciples. Jerusalem was a multicultural city like Auckland, and so Pentecost is a miracle of communication and understanding. Like walking down Queen St and understanding all the languages you can hear!

I spent most of the past week at our church’s General Synod (the governance body of our Anglican Church of Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia). I was an observer so was not part of all the discussions but listened to the public sessions. Many of the words and language people used are like code; words that mean one thing in one person’s mouth and something else in another’s. The Synod spent a lot of the week discussing the proposal to allow for the blessing of same gender relationships.

Words used a lot were marriage and blessing – what is the difference between the two; unity – who is in and who is out; manaakitanga – the Maori understanding of hospitality; inclusive/ exclusive; and then those very Anglican words – formularies, canons, constitution, tikanga. But depending on who used them they meant different things. Take unity – unity could mean staying together so conservative parishes won’t leave the church; or unity could mean moving forward on same gender blessings so liberal parishes don’t leave the church. And manaakitanga could mean welcoming all; or it could mean giving conservatives time to do more work and catch up. The words were used in a way that people talked past each other and so the resulting status quo remains. We continue not to allow blessings or marriages for same gender couples. More work is to be done we are told. Another 2 years.

I have used some strong words in the media this week. I said

In my 24 years as a priest I have always been proud of my church. Today I hang my head in shame. We have chosen rules over love, and doctrine over gospel. We have imperilled the mission of the church. There were strong voices for change from many parts of the church but not enough. At St Matthew-in-the-City we will continue to welcome our LGBTI community and assure them of their place in our church and in the heart of God. We will not abandon them and will continue to work for justice. To them today we express our deep sorrow and seek their forgiveness.

My words were not appreciated by many at General Synod but I have had lots of messages by email and phone and on social media from NZ and overseas expressing support for us in our ministry at St Matthew’s.

Amongst all the comments on Facebook and twitter there are those who are choosing now to leave their churches; they have waited long enough. And I understand why they would make that choice. I have thought about leaving too. Of handing in my licence and walking away, because I can no longer work for an organization that discriminates in the way that it does.

But to leave would be to allow the “conservatives” to have control of the wider church, a church I have loved and served all my life. The church does not belong to them. The church belongs to us all and to God’s Spirit. We are the body of Christ, not the body of this doctrine, or that doctrine.

And so I will not leave, I will stay, and stand with those who wait. On Thursday morning after the vote in the Synod on the motion that stalled progress, I walked out and stood looking at the beautiful Napier harbour, and wiped away my tears. Two clergy friends, both gay, both with partners, came out at the morning tea break and joked that maybe after all they would be retired by the time they saw progress. And then graciously talked about what the next steps would be, how we would bring about change. I was in awe of their spirit of generosity. One said “well we are used to being on the outside with our noses pressed up against the shop window.” So I will not leave, I will stay, and work, and be part of the change.

What about us here at St Matthew’s? What about our community, our sisters and brothers with whom we share our faith journey? What about the Rainbow Community Church who worship here every evening at 7.30pm? On this day of Pentecost we reach out to each other and speak each other’s language; we know that unity means living together with diversity; we know that manaakitanga means welcoming all; and that marriage should be the aspiration of any couple who choose it.

At this time of challenge and disappointment we need to stand together in solidarity and deepen our sense of community, and deepen our sense of who we are as an expression of the body of Christ.

So it is just as well that over the next few months every 3 or 4 weeks we are going to be hearing more from each other. Parishioners are going to be “telling our stories”. Parishioners are going to take the sermon time and use it to share something of their life story and something of how their faith is interwoven in their life. They are going to model for us all how we might reflect in a similar way. Too often the clergy are held up as the “experts” on living a life of faith, but we are all experts. The stories will give voice to our diversity and round out our knowledge of who we are. Our prospective speakers are all feeling a little apprehensive about sharing something of their faith (and apologies to our video audiences, these probably won’t be videoed) but I know they all have stories worth telling. And on some of the Sundays we will have an after church discussion where you can also share a little of your own story or reflections. In this way we will pick up the work of Pentecost – following the words of the prophet Joel “I will pour our my Spirit and your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams; even upon my slaves, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit” (Acts 2:17-18).

The Rev Winnie Varghese is a priest at Trinity, Wall St, New York and she has this to say about Pentecost: “The Spirit is our inspiration to discern what it means to follow (Jesus) in this time. Pentecost is the cue that we are supposed to look to more than simply the text, or our tradition or heritage… Pentecost is the opportunity to perceive freedom and human dignity in new ways for our time … because the Spirit is among us” [1]

And so we will get on with that work in these Sundays that follow; we will discern the Spirit at work in our lives and we will find strength in our stories; we will claim our place in our church as proud children of God [2].

[1] https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/node/11605

[2] Romans 8:16

May 8, 2016

Susan Adams

Easter 7     Acts 16:16-34     John17:20-26

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

There are a lot of Grumpy people in this story! As Luke tells the story, the beginning of which we heard last week, Paul and Silas' visit to Philippi in Macedonia didn't get off to a very good start. Paul has an argument with Barnabas and John in Athens at the outset about who should travel with him. Paul might have been a bit grumpy following that, but, after the baptism of Lydia and her household in Philippi that we heard about last week, he could have thought things were improving. While the story of the woman Lydia seems nothing but success, today's story about another woman has all sorts of aspects that suggest things are not all that great – not going as well as they might have hoped. Their argumentative start has caught up with them!

The woman in today's story is a slave, we never learn her name.

Whereas Lydia was a business woman dealing in the most valued purple-cloth, this slave-woman was making 'something-out-of-nothing' for her owners by fortune-telling. She had obviously heard Paul and Silas speaking previously in the place of prayer where they had met Lydia, and she had heard something in what they said that convinced her that they could offer a way of healing and freedom – 'salvation' is the word in the text. She keeps calling this out and Paul becomes fed up with her (was it the use of a and not the that annoyed him). Whatever, he turns into a grumpy-man demanding she stop shouting out!

Enter Grumpy Man One.

• The second grump presents itself in the persons of the owners, angry that their source of income has been removed;

• then the third when the crowd turns and starts attacking Paul and Silas for threatening their economic and political security; then

• the fourth – the magistrates; and then

• the fifth – the jailer afraid that they would escape his custody when – with poetic license the writer says 'the earth shook and the chains fell off'!

So much grumpiness all because some insignificant slave-girl was exposed in her role in the money-making scheme of her owners. She had heard a message of hope and freedom that Paul and Silas were, seemingly, not even directing to her!

I can't help thinking there is quite a bit of uncomfortable exposing going on in this account of Luke's! Not least of which is the intentions of Paul and Silas at the time – they seem to be selective regarding who the message of hope was directed at. I can't help wondering how often we too (Church and congregation) proclaim healing, hope, love and freedom but direct our message selectively. (Witness the machinations of General Synod beginning this week over the marriage of people of the same gender).

So in our account we have multiple uncomfortable exposures of:

• the 'good news' message bearers,

• the insignificant worker who knows the inside story,

• the business owners who want something for nothing,

• the general public who see their way of life threatened if change happens and

• those charged with enacting the law on behalf of the government.

• and the ones who want to separate themselves from implication in whatever the outcome

• and the ones who want to be on the 'wining side'.

It is easy at this point to slip into analogy and explore where we locate ourselves in the story – and this could be a sobering exercise if we are honest and own up to the probability that we have enacted all the roles at one time or another or we could explore the metaphoric implications of 'chains falling off'. But, I want to shift gear a bit because this is the last week of the Easter Season when we focus on 'new life possibilities' for those who are prepared to proclaim the 'Risen Christ' in the face of death and destruction, and to struggle with the implications of that proclamation. Instead of pursuing the text further, this morning I want to invite you to take a big breath and step with me into that community of the Risen Christ. Remember the jailer and his family were baptised into it, becoming members before offering generous table hospitality to former prisoners and political trouble makers and thus risking his livelihood and perhaps even his life at the hand of his Roman employers. It is not a feel good community he has joined and he seems to know the risk.

In the shift I have just invited you to make, we have moved from being individual believers to being part of the Community of Christ: members of Christ's Body is how Paul often speaks of it. This is the community that the writer of John's gospel is focussing on in the prayer that puts into the mouth of Jesus – and probably composed with full awareness of impending danger for the Jewish-Christian community. The Roman powers had claimed Jerusalem and the surrounding territories, including Macedonia as the Act text makes clear. In this prayer Jesus prays for his disciples, and for 'all those who will believe in times to come through the word of the disciples' – that is us! The characteristics of this community of Christ are love and unity: being in right-relations with each other and with God for the sake of the world.

The relationship between the members of the Christ-community and with God is founded on love. Not love for the sake of being in love, not that nice warm confident feeling when someone special says I love you and gives you a cuddle, rather the tough love that desires right action for justice and leads to the same sort of generous hospitality Lydia offered and the jailer is reported as offering.

Rather it is love that will risk exposure and challenge and even marginalisation when it points to the places where people behave in an unloving and ungenerous way. It is love that, in its turn, is prepared to get grumpy enough to expose unjust situations where people are disrespected and discounted, to speak out when people want something for nothing and avoid their responsibilities by seeking tax havens; it is the love that will encourage people to limit possessions and profits so the earth can live and breathe and heal itself; it is love that will work to ensure people get a fair return for their labour even at the expense of their own increase in wealth; it is love that will share table hospitality with people from other cultures and other faiths when it is uncertain and a bit afraid.

This is what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ – the Christic-Community – a community at one with each other, with Jesus and with God – each 'dwelling in the other' as today's gospel puts it. This is the people challenged by John's Jesus to be one with him so that the world might come to know that there is a way that leads out of despair and pain and into to healing, to wholeness and to love.

I want to suggest that it is a community prepared to turn the tables on who gets to be grumpy and to get grumpy itself, very grumpy, on behalf of others: I want to invite you to dare to get grumpy enough to make your own exposures of those who are not living with generous and abundant love; not living justly.

May 1, 2016

Peter Lineham

Easter 6     Acts16:9-15     John 5:1-19

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

A Pool for the needy

Scholars often puzzle about John’s Gospel and its relationship to history, and the identity of this pool where Jesus found the disabled or paralysed or lame man has been debated. The few phrases of description are unclear with textual variants, but the most probably explanation is a site in Jerusalem just north of the temple which once had a pool some 50 metres by 100 metres and it seems to have had colonnades across the four corners and crossing across the pool and dividing it in half. This seems to explain the five arches or colonnades. The lower pool may have been used for washing the sheep used for sacrifice, given its proximity to the temple. But as to why so many sick people gathered at the pool? On the site one hundred years later a pool in this spot was dedicated to the Roman gods Asclepius the Greek god of medicine and Serapis an Egyptian fertility god. So traditions of healing were linked with this place, but from Jesus time we are reliant on an extra verse (the missing verse 4) which a scribe obviously added, trying to explain that they were waiting for an angel to stir up the water. This may be confirmed by a reference in the Qumran Copper Scroll to Beit Eshdatain refers to “the house of spontaneous shaking”. Jerusalem was a religious centre, and needy Jewish people hung around in search of hope. In the ancient world wounded, sick, handicapped people must have been everywhere in sight and the average span of life for people like that was short. When Jesus comes to that pool that day he saw a whole world of need. If we in the church had our eyes open we could see the same.

A Grumpy Man

I am not sure I like the man at the centre of the story. He is not exactly the glowing example of faith that the best of those healed in the gospels manifest. Soured, perhaps by the discouragement of 38 years of waiting by the pool, and by constantly being pushed aside by the less disabled in the rush to get into the healing waters, Jesus asks perceptively if he really want to be made well. He would not be the first beggar who preferred a benefit and begging over the uncertainties of being healed. The man does not show any great interest in his healer – indeed he doesn’t even know or enquire after his name. And in order to save his own skin, as soon as he knows the name of Jesus he promptly betrays the name to the Jewish authorities. The scholars have variously called him “ungrateful”, “crotchety”, “a grouchy old man”.

He probably exactly mirrors what some people have said about the paper that my colleague Mark Henrickson and I have written in response to the General Synod document “A Way Forward”. They feel we should be more sensitive to the massive issue that this business of receiving gay people as equals has become in every church and in the Anglican Church in particular. They feel we should show a bit of gratitude for the clever device in this document which will bless our marriages in dioceses which are supportive, and which by this clever means will enable ordained gay people to gain recognition of their ministry as gays. And what do we do but complain it is not enough; complain that we don’t want these clumsy deals. You might want to comment that the man wasn’t able to get himself into the water by himself.

As a historian, I am well aware that slow progress is usually more effective than revolution. I can understand that the members of General Synod feel the weight of maintaining the unity of the church and the necessity of compromise to achieve anything. But I recall that many years ago when the campaign for homosexual law reform was under way it was initially led by fine fair minded individuals in the Homosexual Law Reform Association. Then came the age of liberation, and Gay and Lesbian voices demanded to be heard and demanded to do it in their own tones. And in essence that is our complaint about the Motion 30 and “Way Forward” that it says to GLBT people, “shut up, and we can do it for you”. Like the grumpy lame man, we would like to stomp on the ground and say, listen! But I guess we also need help.

Jesus and the Needy Person

I am struck by the difference between Jesus’ attitude to the man and that of the Jewish authorities. The Jewish authorities have a place where the paralytics can go and who knows they might get healed there. They never go there themselves, and they keep the maimed people out of the temple. Jesus in contrast goes to the place and finds one person at a time, because his touch is always personal. Jesus’s goal is for each individual to find fullness of life and purpose. So he finds his way there and reaches out to help the most helpless case. He didn’t choose a particularly promising case, for 38 years of exclusion has left a residue of bitterness. Jesus is very gentle. He starts with the man’s obvious need but asks before he helps. He doesn’t ask him to believe, just to stand up. Later Jesus tracks him down, finds him on the man’s first visit to the temple precinct. Jesus explains who he is, and then tells the man in rather uncomfortable language not to sin any more.

Some Christians think that this is a just how the church should treat gays. Yes, be friendly to them, but remind them that they are sinners, and not make concessions to them. They have misread this story. Jesus does not start with forgiving the man. He heals him. He starts with physical healing; he starts at the point of practical need and does not ask the man to believe. The church needs to hear this. Gays have been stuck for generation with labels and pink triangles, criminalised or forced into concealing their identity. Just as Jesus begins with the man’s perceived need, so there is a great difference between those who set out to convert gays and the people who have really made a difference to the gay community, those who like the City Mission established Herne Bay House, those who like St Matthew’s provided a home for gay Christians, those who have advocated full human rights equality for people regardless of their sexuality. With the advent of marriage equality, they have given full respect to gay relationships and have offered marry those who want to take public vows. You are not likely to get far with the GLBT community unless you are willing to go this far.

This does not mean that GLBT people should be placed on a pedestal or idealised. Like the lame man and like all of us, gay people are sinners. Gay people should be fully welcome in the church but the goal should be that they find forgiveness and a life consisting of more than the shallow life of sexual encounters and triviality. But gay people will not come to you. You will need to meet them at the Pool of Bethesda and offer your support. Like Paul in the reading from Acts, you will have to find the place where the searchers are to be found, and like Paul, you may have to accept that an undesirable person – in Paul’s case a woman, perhaps in your case a transgendered person is the person who is most open to hearing the good news from you. This is a missional priority.

The Jews and the Problem of Mats

Jesus healed on the Sabbath, but unlike later in his ministry this fact goes unnoticed. No, the problem is the lame man’s mat. The mat – the rough portable bed – is central to the story. Jesus doubtless told the man to take up his mat because it was his only possession. He would be sleeping somewhere else that night. But surely Jesus knew that it was Shabbat and the 39th of the Shabbat regulations was explicit that you were not allowed to carry a load during Shabbat. So this provoked the religious authorities. It was a direct flaunting of the canons of the Jewish religion. The healed man was the one who faced the wrath of the religious authorities. No excuse of why he was carrying the mat was sufficient. The rule said no mats. The only way the man could save his skin – or his mat – was blame someone else.

It strikes me that we have a mat problem all over again. As our paper argues, gay marriage is a huge step forward for the GLBT community. It says to gay people that they are no second class citizens, that their relationships are good for them and for the community, bringing stability and structure to society – which is a key part of the reason why marriage has been recognised by every society and by the state and by religion as a good thing, in all its varied forms. Taking up this mat – this sleeping mat, this marriage bed, this recognition – has been a huge step forward, analogous, we say in our paper, to the abolition of slavery. We well recognise that it is not the way marriage is described in the bible or in any ancient society, but it is such a step forward. But the mat which is the precious possession in the eyes of the man is ultimately offensive in the eyes of so many of the religious authorities, precisely because they can’t find it in the Bible.

This surely is the tragedy of the present situation. Those who called for change in the church’s rules sought a generous step to welcome GLBT people and to offer an apology for their exclusion. But as folks here discovered when they took the church to the Human Rights Commission, the church now has failed the common perception of justice in the eyes of the community. Anxious to preserve its unity, it has tried in different parts of the Anglican world to find a clever way to preserve the traditional doctrine on marriage by drafting new rules which say one thing and offer a kernel of hope at the same time. It is a clever ploy, and it is very well meant. But what a tragic statement about the church that this is all it can do, too little and too late! The warm welcome to gay relationships by the wider community means that we are proving our social irrelevance while we continue to ban mats.

The Jesus Way

The man in the story in fact narked on Jesus, eager to blame him, in order to save his skin. I guess there will always be some who want the ceremonies and structures of religious communities. For myself, I prefer the prophetic voice of Jesus, who longs for this man to find more than healing, more than social acceptance. He wants the man to find a deep and transformative spiritual life, where he can meet the living, loving, accepting and forgiving God. In the parallel story of the man born blind four chapters later in John’s gospel, the blind man washes in the pool of Siloam, sees Jesus, and sees the blindness of those who criticise the Lord.

I dare to believe that Jesus still offers this hope to the needy world. He says to GLBT people as he says to all, come here, come as you are, come and find a place at the table. But he goes on to say more, he says, come and find life, come and find deep forgiveness for the stained and damaged parts of your life, come and find life in God. But I pray that we will not be so preoccupied by mats that we miss him as he walks by.

April 24, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Easter 5     Anzac Day     Revelation 21:1-6     John 13:31-35

The year is 2154, on the planet Pandora the Na’vi people are under attack from the humans (in one of my favourite films Avatar). Jake our hero – part human, more and more Na’vi, goes to the Tree of Souls, a hauntingly beautiful place; he joins the strands of his hair to the tendrils of the tree and haltingly prays to Eywa, the god of the Na’vi people.

JAKE

I’ve never done this in my life.

He squats at the base of the tree.

JAKE

And I’m probably just talking to a tree right now. But if you’re there – I need to give you a heads up.

He looks up into the tree. The hanging tendrils undulate softly. It’s easy to imagine a presence.

JAKE

More Sky People are gonna come. They’re gonna come like a rain that never ends –

Neytiri approaches silently behind him, listening.

JAKE

– until they’ve covered the world. Unless we stop them. Look, you chose me for somethin’. And I’ll stand and fight, you know I will. But I could use a little help here.

Jake senses Neytiri and turns.

NEYTIRI

Our Great Mother does not take sides. She protects only the balance of life. [1]

In war all people pray for protection and help; for strength to face the horrors unfolding. People pray for forgiveness for the tragedy and the violence. And God does not take sides, God is the god of all humanity, suffering with us in our folly and in the wasteland of war.

As we come again to Anzac Day tomorrow amongst the stories told of Gallipoli are the stories from today of Turk and Allied soldiers standing together in mourning, and remembering the loss and the bravery on both sides. They see in each other the same humanity, the same goodness, the same hope; those things seemed lost in the battles but they have been found again. And their prayer now is that no one again will have to fight as they did.

And yet battles and wars rage across our globe. Not just the high profile ones in Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine/Israel but also Sudan and Yemen and Nigeria. And our soldiers serve as peacekeepers and community builders. And many civilians serve as teachers and doctors and nurses and missionaries to build hope in war torn countries. And they pray for peace and for strength and that no one will have to fight again. And we fight the new war against terrorism which Helen Clark says can only be stopped through education and development and peacebuilding in local communities.

Our reading from the Book of Revelation is a vision the writer had of people from all corners of the earth standing before the throne of God. They have been though great suffering we are told but God promises protection from hunger and thirst and sorrow. God does not promise victory, for God does not take sides, but God does promise an end to sorrow. God does not take sides in a war but having said that, God is always on the side of the oppressed and the victim and the just. So in that sense God does take sides, for good and for justice. In Avatar the animals and creatures of Pandora rise up and help the Na’vi and Neytiri declares that Eywa has indeed heard their prayers.

For us in 2016 can we imagine the world in 2154, the year of the film, could those in Gallipoli in 1915 imagine our world – not at all probably; and yet we want the same things, peace and justice and prosperity and a future for our children. The army and airforce and Navy personnel and civilians we remember on Anzac Day gave their lives so we could have a world of peace. Every time a part of our world collapses into war we dishonour their memory; every time we pray only for our own needs and not those we think of as our enemies we dishonour their memory.

And so we honour their memory in building peace in our lives, in our homes, our schools, our nation and across our globe. We cannot fix the tragedy of war in far flung nations but we can endeavour to live lives of peace in the way we raise our children, the way we nurture our families and communities. We are all capable of violence, all capable of hate and destruction. We are all capable of bullying and lashing out. And so we start again today, and this Anzac Day with ourselves, our attitudes, our prayers. We pray for peace and pray for strength to be people of peace.

Jesus says in the gospel today “love one another”. Seems a bit simple really. Surely there is plenty of love in the world, people have always loved and yet people have always gone to war. If it were that simple it would have worked already.

Why does Jesus say “I give you a new commandment”? A new commandment that you love one another. What is new about love? He does elaborate – “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” In the same way as I have loved you – what way is that? The setting for these words is the Last Supper. Jesus has just washed his disciples feet and Judas has left to betray him. A pretty highly charged night. They are not just relaxing after a day’s fishing. Tension is in the air. Betrayal is in the air. Love one another – wash each others’ feet – serve one another – forgive one another – forgive even your enemies. Ah there is the rub – love your enemies – this is the way Jesus has loved and this is the way to avoid wars. Simple words, very hard, extremely hard to do. But there are examples across the world in many of the conflicts of people reaching out to each other and stopping the madness of war with love. Usually just not early enough in the conflict. But we keep trying, we keep hoping and loving and building peace.

We learn, or we can learn also from our history. Around Anzac Day we are pretty drenched in stories from Gallipoli and as the 100th anniversary of WW1 rolls on we hear many stories told. We seem to be struggling though to tell the stories from our own land of Aotearoa. There has been discussion on the press lately about the NZ (land) wars and how and when that history can be taught in our schools and whether we need a day to commemorate them. The stories of the battles of the 1800s in our land are not well told. Battles of Kororāreka, Puketutu, Ruapekapeka, Waireka, Meremere, are not as well known to us as Quinn’s Post and Chunuk Bair. To build peace today we also need to know those stories. My generation did not learn them at school and neither did my children; it is time we all learnt and knew more. I know more about the battle of Gettysburg in the US Civil War than I know about Parihaka; because I have visited the amazing museum and site.

As we go through the Anzac Day rituals tomorrow we give thanks that the only “side” God takes is the side of the victim and the oppressed; and remember that there is so much that we can do to build peace in our hearts and in our homes and in our nation.

[1] http://www.foxscreenings.com/media/pdf/JamesCameronAVATAR.pdf

April 17, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Easter 4     Acts 9: 36-43     Psalm 23     Revelation 7:9-17     John 10:22-30

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

In the liberal/ progressive church tradition to which we belong I don’t think we often read from the book of Revelation. Its end times, apocalyptic imagery and talk of angels and thrones is not really to our taste. Written for communities who followed in the tradition of the gospel of John and the letters of John, it speaks in images which are strange to our ears. It is written though to real communities of people, about real situations, but in a style which makes it seem very disconnected from our reality.

When the multitudes cry out “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev 7:10) we hear imagery which speaks of a far away God, in a heaven “up there” somewhere that we don’t really believe in. But if we listen again to the words and think of early 2nd century Christians and Jews being persecuted by the Romans we can hear them differently. The Saviour for the Romans was the Emperor, the person on the throne was the Emperor. Christians were killed for refusing to call the emperor Lord. They called Jesus, Lord. So “salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne” is not about God in some far away heaven, but God on the throne of the lives of those early Christians, God whom they worshiped, not the Emperor.

This was very radical and political talk and often cost them their lives. They are comforted by the writer of the book of Revelation – there will come a time when “they will hunger no more, thirst no more, and the Lamb (that is Jesus) will guide them to the springs of the water of life, and will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Rev 7:16-17). In an interesting overlaying of imagery the Lamb is also going to be the shepherd! In the same way Jesus was the shepherd in John’s gospel, calling the sheep who know his voice to follow him. And echoing the 23rd psalm “the Lord is my shepherd, who leads me beside still waters and restores my soul”. The Christians of the book of Revelation are being asked to put their faith and lives on the line and call Jesus Lord, not the Emperor; and so build a new community, a new way of living.

It only took 200 more years or so for the church to stop being opposed to Rome and to become aligned to Rome. When the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 the rules of the game changed. It was on Constantine’s watch that the Council of Nicea was called to thrash out the creeds when stating a belief in Jesus as Lord, as opposed to the Emperor as Lord, became a safe thing to do. What exactly was meant by that was hotly disputed and people still fought and died for their brand of the faith but they were no longer persecuted by the Emperor for being Christian. The age of Christendom had begun.

1700 years later the age of Christendom (where society and church went hand in hand) is over. Yet here we are still, seeking God, seeking the shepherd who calls our name.

At the 8am service this morning we baptised Mahau. We used our baptismal pool so he could be baptised by full immersion. What a very strange and counter cultural thing. At 8am on a Sunday morning to gather and get into very cold water, to physically enact the call of Jesus to die to our old selves and to be born anew.

Emperor Constantine was not baptised until he was dying so worried was he about not being able to live up to the obligations of the baptised. The rising up out of the water enacts for us the resurrection, the renewal of life, the beginning of a new commitment. In the baptism service everyone is asked to affirm their faith and we say “Blessed be God, Jesus is Lord”, echoing the words claimed 2000 years ago by Christians who were brave enough to make this claim.

There are still Christians around the world for whom making this claim is a choice between life and death, or life with no risk and a risk filled life. For us the choice of attending church or acknowledging a life of faith is more likely to be met with bemusement, maybe some ridicule or lack of respect; but not danger. Yet it is still I think a brave choice. It was certainly pretty brave to get into that cold water at 8am this morning and say yes I believe.

This morning we are commissioning our Vestry – our leaders for the year – elected at our recent AGM. They have bravely stepped up to the task of leading us as a community of faith, of casting our vision and helping us accomplish it. They have oversight of all aspects of our parish life, including the buildings and the finances. And so hand in hand with their commissioning comes our Generous Spirit campaign – their request to you, to make a financial commitment to our life together. They cannot lead us without resourcing.

We cannot progress as a community without some income and an increase on our current income. There is no point electing a team to lead us and then tying their hands behind their backs because they have nothing to work with.

Giving to our church community though, is about more than paying our bills and giving us the tools to work with. It is also part of our commitment as people of faith. It is about taking Caesar off the throne and putting Jesus there – or if the throne imagery doesn’t really work for us anymore – it is about letting go of some of our money (which our lives tend to revolve around), letting go of the need to hold on tightly to what we have and sharing it with others, and offering it back to God. Letting go, offering. Spending our hard earned dollars on our church community is a brave, counter cultural thing to do. We could happily spend it on other things. Some of us can afford more, some less. That is ok, however small or big our commitment, it is making the commitment that is important. The Vestry need you to fill in these forms so they can plan; you need to fill in a form so you make that commitment. Mahau stepped into the cold water this morning and came out baptised and a member of the body of Christ. The Christians of the 7 churches of Asia that “John” wrote to in the book of Revelation proclaimed Jesus as Lord and not Rome.

We invite you this morning to take away a Generous Spirit brochure and think and pray about your commitment. What will it be? And I invite you to support our Vestry members as they lead us forward. “Amen! Blessing and glory and thanksgiving and honour be to our God forever! Amen.” (Rev 7:12)

April 10, 2016

 John Salmon

Easter 3     The Mouth of the Dragon, p108     John 21:1-8, 14

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Introduction

It is still the Easter Season. We still say, “Christ is Risen!” And we still answer, “Christ is Risen Indeed!” But what is it we’re saying?

After morning tea this morning, we’ll have an opportunity to explore all this further as Susan and I lead a time of information and discussion – this is a lead-in to that conversation – a bit of a teaching sermon. As we reflect on what this Easter story might means for us, I suggest it’s best to start with Paul – not with a rolled away stone...

• Shaping the Christ Myth

Susan has been speaking quite a bit lately about the “Christ myth”, the important ‘big story’ that defines us as Christians, the story we keep on telling and enacting through our Sunday liturgies.

For Paul – who began shaping this Christ myth – the image of ‘Resurrection’ is an important component. Like much of what Paul does, he borrows this image from the idea held by some parts of the Jewish community that the whole People of God will be resurrected ‘on the last day’.

That’s an affirmation of hope for a people who often experienced conflict, defeat, landlessness, and economic hardship, while still believing they were God’s chosen people.

Paul picks up the image to provide hope for the young communities who looked back to Jesus and his teaching for their identity. They, too, experienced hardship and persecution. Paul is aiming to provide a big strong story that will hold the communities together, give them purpose, and provide hope for their futures. So the Christ myth Paul outlines has at its heart the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ – as one ‘representative’ figure for the whole people – providing a vision for everyone.

But it’s important to note that Paul, writing 20 years or so before the earliest Gospel writers, doesn’t mention the empty tomb. He speaks of ‘appearances’, of the kind we would probably speak of today as ‘experiences’ – including his own ‘conversion’ experience. He’s not interested in – and presumably knew nothing about – stories of Jesus in bodily form coming out of the tomb. For him it is Christ who is risen, not Jesus. “Christ is Risen” is at the heart of Paul’s powerful myth, portraying significant truth for those early communities that eventually become “Christian” – and providing truth and hope and power for us still today.

• A Continuing Story

However, the subsequent metaphor-laden stories of the various Gospel writers have ended up in centre stage. The image of the empty tomb is certainly a powerful image of life rather than death – but it is just that: an image, a symbol, designed to portray Paul’s resurrection insight in readily-understood story form, against Paul’s philosophical or theological language. Still, however, the myth remains, and we’ve heard it again in various ways this last Easter – including in today’s hymns. Much of what we sing comes from the church’s deep tradition, and uses words and images we wouldn’t readily use today. I suggest it’s useful to glance at the date of the hymns before you start singing – it’s puts their words into perspective. It pays also, I think, to underline that the Gospel stories – all the New Testament stories, in fact – are contributers to the grand myth and its truths: they are not history.

And here is where trouble lies for many of us today.

The trouble began to be stirred up especially around 200-300 years ago, in Western Europe, in the period we call the Enlightenment. This is the time when scientific thinking developed, leading on to technology and new explanations of our past, and to the overall kind of world view many contemporary people hold. Core to this view is that truth requires evidence to support it – if there’s no evidence and no way of getting evidence, if it’s not based on substantiated facts, it cannot be truth. Because myths – the kinds of stories that most communities have used over time to explain their origins and purpose and key values – because myths are not based on evidence, they cannot be true in terms of Today’s common world view. That’s why today the word ‘myth’ has come to mean something that is not true!

What I suggest is important for Christians today, is that we work hard to re-claim the truth-power of myth. Let’s not be shy about that. Let’s identify the deep significance of a strong, relevant myth like our Christ myth, and the deep truth this myth carries for us still. Let’s be clear as we do that that our stories about Jesus and our proclamation of Christ are not history, they cannot be regarded as factual, but they are definitely truthful.

• We are the Resurrected Body of Christ

So, then, how does ‘resurrection’ work for us?

Paul himself identifies this, saying that Christ is alive and active within the communities that carry the Christian name. We are the Resurrected Body of Christ. That’s what it means to speak of the church as “The Body of Christ”. So the challenge for us – individually and as a community – is to live out the priorities and values that display Christness. These priorities and values have their roots in the sayings of Jesus the Wisdom teacher and liberative prophet, and in the subsequent insights of Paul and other writers.

To appreciate the sayings clearly we often have to scrape the influence of later interpreters off our eyeballs – Augustine and Thomas Aquinas with their Greek philosophical influences, Church leaders who ‘spiritualised’ Jesus’ sayings to avoid shifting systems of power, Enlightenment writers with their emphasis on facts – all, of course, shaped by the ideas and priorities of their various contexts.

Now the focus is our context. We appropriately understand, speak about, and act out resurrection life in our own way for our own time. Let’s not be perseverated on the empty tomb, but let’s acknowledge and enact the truth of the Risen Christ, here.

Conclusion

We are the resurrected Body of Christ. That great story of life and hope, of compassion and peace, takes life amongst us.

This is where our focus lies – in our community life, not in some distant past or future or space.

This is the context in which Christ is risen – in our own lives, not in the lives or stories of others.

This is the city, the nation, the world, in which resurrection needs to take place – in the time and place we live in here and now, with our issues, our concerns, fears.

Let’s put our thoughts and our energies into shaping Christ-life in our communities of church and society: for we are the Resurrected Body of Christ...

April 3, 2016

Susan Adams

Low Sunday     Acts 5:27-32     John 20: 19-31

Have you caught up with the talk about a guaranteed minimum income [i] ?

The idea has been around for a while but never gained much traction.

Now-days it seems to be on the agenda for thinking about with more possibility. Finland and the Netherlands have moved to the stage of experimenting with the idea., and Switzerland will do so in a month or two. It goes something like this

Everyone from a predetermined age, perhaps even birth, gets a financial distribution from the government – of say $200 a week. This can be spent or accumulated for later costs such as education. Other ‘benefits’ are removed or simplified – or changed in character – and the tax system is overhauled to accommodate the costs.

Clearly there are many details to work out if the idea is to gain traction and equally clearly it is counterintuitive in the current economic climate of individualised ‘reward for effort and risk’.

Those open to the exploration seem to be willing to do so acknowledging we face an unknown (perhaps unimaginable) change to the nature of work and employment in the not too distance future – some of which we are beginning to experience already with increasing technology, short-term contracting, limited hours, a shift in energy resources and the like. Those who are reluctant to consider the idea or are even hostile to it, seem unwilling to admit such changes are possible and seem to hold that the current framework for distributing wealth is working well enough.

As followers of Jesus, that is as a community seeking to understand the implications of the truth about the risen Christ, it behoves us to struggle still with how to be community, how to care for all those who are community with us as well as those who are impacted by the attitudes we hold and the way we choose to live. Nothing is clear cut for us today, life is increasingly precarious for many and it is full of conundrums that we have to live with as best we can. In this we are no different from the earliest of Christian communities. These communities also struggled with how to handle the matter of income and property, how speak truth in the face of opposition from the power holders, how to manage differences of opinion amongst themselves.

In those first decades after the disturbing events around the ignominious death of Jesus as a criminal, on one of the hundreds of crosses the Roman authorities used to rid themselves of undesirables in the interests of order and control, the followers of the prophet Jesus continued to talk about him: his influence on them, the vision that he had talked about for a life liberated from Roman colonial power, and loving one another.

There were little groups popping up all over the place in the hundred or so years after Jesus death, Gentiles and Jews, who were still talking about him and the way of life he had encouraged. There had been some amazing changes in the most unlikely of people immediately after Jesus death – Thomas for one, and Saul who was now called Paul for another. Paul had been a persecutor of the followers of Jesus, and was now claiming special insight into the meaning of Jesus' teaching, special knowledge about the significance of the crucifixion, and offering special instructions for the groups left wondering and struggling to put into practice what they thought the ‘Jesus Way’ was – and the of course instruction for the curious inquirers. Paul was writing letters and speaking to everyone who would give him 5 minutes about how to turn all that had happened around the crucifixion and confusing aftermath into something that would give these small communities of faith strength and a place of difference from the Roman powers that were increasingly making life difficult for them. the Luke-Acts material is written after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem and well into the migration of Jews and Christians to other parts of the world in search of more hospitable places of establish themselves. It offers us 'observations' as it were into those first communities and the work of Paul. The Luke-Acts story was, we are told by scholars today, put together in the early years of the second century 110 to 120CE. So not an eyewitness account despite how it reads! [ii]

How will our story read I wonder? We know from the record that has been passed on to us that there was much opposition to the vision the Christian community had for their life together. Paul and others had been imprisoned before this for speaking and preaching what was considered by the authorities to be a subversive message. It seems the Christian community had decided in the face of a direct ban on their message to say that they 'must obey God rather than any human authority'. They were desperately trying to hold on to the idea and experience of a mutually caring community even selling land and possessions and holding all things in common for the wellbeing of everyone. They were, we are told, expecting Christ to come again very soon so wanted to be ready for the general resurrection of all Christian people and not found wanting in their efforts to hold to 'the way'. And core to this 'way' was ensuring everyone was taken into account. It seems this 'way' they were living and the vision they were proclaiming, was attractive because we are also told, 'the number of disciples increased greatly'. And this was in direct disobedience to the Jerusalem authorities that continued to persecute them and ordered them to stop teaching in Jesus name.

How will our story read, I wonder? Will it read that in contrast to the prevailing wisdom of the importance of individual wellbeing, the communities calling themselves Christian dared to proclaim a view that sharing the wealth of the earth amongst all the people and justly recompensing people for labour so that all had enough to live with dignity was the way to be in community with one another; that being in just relationship with others was critical and should be strived for even when it seemed contrary to what was considered 'common sense'? Will our story include our willingness to provide a Living Wage as a basic necessity, perhaps even include our willingness to explore a guaranteed minimum income for all people whether they have work as we know it or not.

In these next few weeks of the Easter Season we will be exploring who we are as people who call ourselves Christian and how we live the truth of the resurrection: the hope for life. In other words it is important for us consider how we behave as the Body of Christ, alive now in 2016, and how we bring to life in our midst justice, hope and love despite the common practice of prioritising some and marginalising others.

[i] Hickey, Bernard. NZ Herald ,p27, Sunday 27 March 2016.

[ii] Borg, Marcus. Evolution of the Word. New York: HarperOne, 2012. 

March 27, 2016

Helen Jacobi                                               

Easter Day     Isaiah 65:17-25     Luke 24:1-12

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Archbishop Winston Halapua, the bishop of Polynesia sent some photos after cyclone Winston (not named after him!) devastated Fiji. They show a family under the floor of a house, where they huddled for 4 hours where the cyclone passed. The foundations look pretty sturdy – thick tree trunks and solid floorboards to shelter under. But then we are told when this family emerged after the storm, the house above was completely gone. The house where 2 years earlier Bishop Winston had celebrated Easter with the village of Maniava – another photo of a smiling group of children, many dressed in white for Easter. They celebrated Easter in this house, which for a remote Fijian village was very well built and substantial. [1]

This village is remote, you won’t find it on google maps. It was built some 20 years ago by its people who are descendants of Solomon Islanders, who have no right to own land in Fiji. [2] And so they built a village in a remote area where no one minded, planted their crops, built their houses. In order for their children to go to school they have built a dormitory at the nearest school which is 2 hours walk away. Each Monday morning the children leave with the parents rostered for that week and return on Friday. That school and dormitory were also destroyed in the cyclone.

Bishop Winston says that space where the people huddled under the floorboards is like the tomb where Jesus was laid. When they came out to find everything gone, they began the task of caring for each other and working out where to start the rebuild. Help came eventually, Archbishop Winston visited to see what they needed – which was everything – and the help continues. That is the Easter part of the story: new life from nothing, hope when there should be none, a story to be told.

When Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James go to the tomb, early on the Sunday they are distressed to find the tomb empty and then terrified by some men in dazzling clothes – are they visions? angels? whoever they are, they ask “why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why even look here? Why look in a tomb for someone who is alive?

They are confused of course but they go and tell the eleven (the 12 disciples minus Judas) and the men dismiss this as an idle tale of women. Women who are upset so easily they are acting hysterically. Visions of angels indeed!

Peter, though, just to make sure goes to the tomb and then Luke says “he went home”.

What does he go home to do? Have breakfast, lunch? He has no idea what to do with this news.

Maybe that is a more typical male reaction – we will wait till we know what is going on here before we start to spread idle rumours. The women do not wait, they tell what they know, even if they don’t understand it, they proclaim it, they live it.

On Good Friday I spoke about the silence of Jesus. The silence of Jesus before Pilate – how we imagine him because of all the paintings – Pilate asking questions, the accusers accusing, the crowd shouting. But after he leaves Pilate’s house he begins to talk. He talks to the women who are weeping, to the criminals crucified with him, he prays. Jesus breaks the silence and speaks the truth of his and others’ suffering and speaks hope into their pain.

On Easter morning it is the turn of the women to break their silence and speak the truth about what they have seen and experienced. In Luke’s version they do not see Jesus – he appears first to the followers walking the road to Emmaus. But they share what they know, and it turns out not to be an idle tale.

If we waited to be sure about our faith, if we waited to have physical proof that would satisfy Richard Dawkins, we would not be here today.

There would be no Easter and no church. We don’t get to see Jesus, we have the tale of the women and others to inform our faith.

At times in our lives we might be perplexed as the women were, at other times we might be terrified, and then at others disbelieving with Peter, or convinced like Thomas was eventually. There is lots of room in the resurrection stories for a variety of feelings and reactions. We don’t all have to think or believe the same thing.

I did an interview with Radio Live earlier in the week on the meaning of Easter and the reporter was most frustrated that he couldn’t pin me down to his scenario of what he thought Christianity was supposed to be about. (Although I probably had an easier time than the parishioner whose hairdresser this week asked him if Easter had anything to do with religion!)

The questions of the angels are still relevant to us, whatever we think: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why do you look for life where there is none? Why do you expect happiness to come from the amount of money you earn? Why do you expect the worst of people and not the best?

Why does twitter go crazy when there is bad news and not for good news. Why do you hang on to old tired ideas or ideals rather than seeking a new vision in your workplaces or your families?

The people of the village of Maniava had no choice when they emerged from their tomb. There was nothing to hang onto from their past, they had to start again. Bishop Winston is very grateful for all the gifts that have been sent to help the church there (and we can still donate) but in his message he also says

there is an issue here that lies beneath what has happened.

It’s not an issue that we can afford to go into, right now.

But it’s there, nonetheless, and I firmly believe it’s the reason why this cyclone was so destructive.

And that’s the issue of climate change.

What I’m saying to Australia and New Zealand is that it’s good that you help us so generously.

You know it.

But we also desperately need to address climate change.

We need to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

Will you help us in that way, too? [3]

The question – why do you look for the living among the dead – also applies to us as a whole community and world. Why do we seek to find life in our carbon and oil use? Why do we not see that our consumption is destroying our brothers and sisters just up the road in Fiji, and other Pacific Islands. Every time Bishop Winston speaks at a church gathering, a Synod, a public gathering of any kind; he talks about climate change.

The people of Maniava claim life in all its wholeness, they are not afraid to begin again, to build from the ground up. But how many times will this happen? This Easter they like us will hear the words from Isaiah “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit; they shall not labour in vain” (Is 65:21,23). I am sure they will hear these words as words of wonderful hope. They depend on us though and the peoples of the world to make them a reality.

On Easter Day we are called to step out of the tombs of our lives, the things that hold us back from new life as individuals and as a world community. Claim life, claim joy, claim hope. It is not an idle tale, it is a tale which brings us life.

[1] http://anglicantaonga.org.nz/News/Common-Life/Floorboards

[2] http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/03/an-ordeal-of-the-most-grievous-kind-fiji-cyclone-update.aspx

[3] http://www.anglicantaonga.org.nz/News/Common-Life/Floorboards

March 13, 2016

Helen Jacobi                                    

Lent 5     Isaiah 43:16-21     Psalm 126     Philippians 3:4-14     John 12:1-8

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Mary took a pound of costly perfume, made of pure nard –

It would have been in a jar or a flask of some kind. Nard or spike nard was from a plant grown in the Himalayas and was used for its strong perfume in the ancient world. In the Song of Songs we hear from a love poem describing a bride:

Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates

with choice fruits,

with henna and nard,

nard and saffron,

calamus and cinnamon,

with every kind of incense tree,

with myrrh and aloes

and all the finest spices. [1]

As Mary removed the lid the aroma would have filled the room; people would have recognised the perfume. What was she about to do?

As usual Martha had prepared the meal while Mary was floating about, listening to the discussions of the men. Lazarus her brother was there this time; last time Jesus visited the house at Bethany Lazarus had died; or so they thought.

John tells us it is 6 days before the Passover. Religious politics crackling in the air. The Passover when the people of Israel remember how they were freed from Egypt and the angel of death passed over their houses and let them live.

The Passover was a celebration of freedom; but they celebrated now in a city full of Roman soldiers, and Pilate and his troops were on their way to be sure the Jews didn’t get out of hand. The Jewish leaders, collaborators some of them, and the rest, only very quiet opponents of the Romans, were all gathering.

Mary and Martha’s house was in Bethany, only a day’s walk from Jerusalem, down the valley and up the other side. Bethany looks over Jerusalem, from there you could watch the walking pilgrims, beginning to stream into the city.

In the midst of all this, Mary opens up her jar of perfume. So what is she doing? They want to sit down for dinner.

She approaches Jesus – will she anoint him as king? The kings were always anointed with oil on their heads. This kind of perfume exactly. Will she anoint him king and call for the people to rise up? [2]

This story, or a similar one is also recounted in Mark and Matthew, but located at the house of Simon the leper, and an unnamed woman pours the perfume on Jesus’ head. [3] The biblical scholars debate whether there were two different events, or whether the accounts are based in the same event, with some of the details changed in the telling.

Here Mary could have anointed Jesus’ head. But she kneels at his feet, and massages the perfume, the oil, into his feet. There is a sharp intake of breath from all around. What is she doing?

She takes her time, massaging his feet. And then worse, she lets down her hair; her hair which must be pinned up and covered at all times; she lets it loose and wipes his feet with her hair, and I think her tears. Embarrassed, no one knows where to look! Maybe they are thinking of other verses from the Song of Songs:

While the king was at his table,

    my perfume spread its fragrance.

My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh

    resting between my breasts.

My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms

    from the vineyards of En Gedi. [4]

Jesus encourages the women who follow him to take their place with the men but this is too much. This is personal, intimate, and shocking!

Judas is the first to speak, to break the awkward silence – why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor? Then we wouldn’t have to witness this unseemly act. Then we wouldn’t be being embarrassed like this – sell the perfume and give the money to the poor – that is what we are all about isn’t it? Says poor Judas who is on his way to collect his 30 pieces of sliver for betraying Jesus. He still doesn’t want to criticise Jesus for allowing this woman to approach him like this – so let’s criticise her for her wasteful spending.

But Jesus knows. Jesus knows what Mary is doing. As Barbara Brown Taylor points out “the only man who got his feet anointed was a dead man.” [5] Leave her alone, she is preparing me for my burial.

Another sharp intake of breath. What? Jesus, in reply to Judas, quotes the book of Deuteronomy:

Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.’ [6]

You can always assist those in need but today Mary is helping me; preparing me; doing something she will not be able to do later: touch me, massage me, anoint me. Yes it is extravagant, excessive – like God’s love, like my love.

BBT: “This bottle will not be held back to be kept and admired. This precious substance will not be saved. It will be opened, offered and used, at great price. It will be raised up and poured out for the life of the world, emptied to the last drop.” [7]

The gospel writer John layers this story with images which point us to death and resurrection, anointing and burial; we are supposed to get all the connections to the Passover, the politics; to Lazarus; but there is still the personal moment of realisation that their friend and teacher will not always be there. And as usual it is one of the women who intuitively knows that.

It is Mary who fulfils Jesus’ commandment to love and to serve ahead of when he gives the commandment which is at the Last Supper, when Jesus follows Mary’s example in washing the feet of his disciples. It is Mary, who having seen her brother raised from the dead, understands that Jesus too must pass that way.

In Mark and Matthew’s versions of this account they conclude with Jesus saying of the unnamed woman “truly I tell you wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” [8] Mary is a prophet this day echoing the prophets who have gone before I am about to do a new thing says the Lord, I will give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, so that my people might declare my praise. [9]

A new thing, a sad thing, a beautiful thing.

A generous outpouring, of lifegiving love.

And the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.

[1] Song of Songs 4:13-14

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor “The Prophet Mary” http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary

[3] Mt 26; Mk 14

[4] Song of Songs 1:12-14

[5] Barbara Brown Taylor “The Prophet Mary” http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary

[6] Deuteronomy 15:11

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor “The Prophet Mary” http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary

[8] Mt 26:13; Mk 14:9

[9] Isaiah 43:19-21

March 6, 2016

Susan Adams

Lent 4     Carter Heyward "Saving Jesus from those who are right" p.190     Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

We approach the Good Friday solemn assemblies remembering the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus (although we might have scarcely noticed it this year with all the goings on here at St Matthews). Then move on to Easter Day and the rekindling of life and hope.

I want to consider briefly some of the early reflections on the Good Friday events, embedded within the traditions of the Christian faith, and pointing toward the aftermath flowing through centuries of church debates and councils, and gathering accretions of meaning and significance beyond the initial execution of the poor itinerant peasant called Jesus that began it all. Jesus was best known in his own day, it would seem, as a wisdom-prophet, who challenged both Roman and Jewish priorities. It was likely that he was remembered by the earliest communities as a martyr, one who died at the hands of the powerful for the cause of righteousness.

We have Paul to thank for the church tradition we are most familiar with: Jesus dying for our sins. Interestingly we note Paul was not an eye witness, and his earliest work was written more than 20 years after the crucifixion and 15 years before the earliest of the Gospels.

For those of you able to stay after church this morning we are going to be talk a lot more about all of this. What I have to say now is the backdrop! I want to talk a little about some of the established views of the event and its meaning, as a lead in to the discussion. Some of these views, or theories, you will recognise and feel ok about and some you might feel alienated by.

These views of the cross are usually referred to as 'theories of the atonement'. There is a number of images that get used in relation to the theories. The term 'atonement' comes from the Jewish festival Yom Kippur: the Day of Atonement. On this occasion a lamb was sacrificed and its blood spread over the altar symbolising the covering over of the people's sins. Many aspects of Christian atonement use images from this festival especially the 'blood of the lamb'.

It seems to me that most of the key theories we are familiar with are gathered together in the popular hymn 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'. We have all sung it many times – let's sing a couple of verses now and you will see what I mean.

There is a green hill far away

Without the city walls

Where our dear Lord was crucified

Who died to save us all. (v1)

He died that we might be forgiven

He died to make us good

That we might go at last to heaven

Saved by his precious blood. (v3)

This hymn is a mix of First Testament Jewish sacrifice images including the ritual loading of the 'scapegoat' with the sins of the people and then driving it outside the city walls; the sacrificial death of a spotless lamb, and the use of the blood to 'cover over' the sins of the people. It also mixes in Paul's transposition of these images onto the person of Jesus as the only one good enough to be the sacrifice for the sins of the people. And, in another verse there is the more legalistic 'ransom' notion introduced by Paul: that only Jesus could pay God the 'price' of our sin (or the Devil depending on your view) thus setting us free from them. Remember, Paul is addressing his own context amongst the gentiles with their experience of slavery and how slaves could obtain freedom.

All of this activity is directed at God who is outside our sphere. It concerns what we can do for God in the hope that God might fix things in us, and in our world, so we might be good enough to go to heaven when we die.

But what about if we turn that on its head?

• What if we notice what God is doing already – freely giving us gifts of life and love.

• And what about if we notice that while we might not be perfect, we are good enough! – that we have the capacity for love, for compassion, and we have the capacity to see and know what we can do with what we have to make this wonderful world a better place.

• And what about if we notice God, already at work within and amongst us, present in our world.

If we take this upside down view then it is us and not God who need to do things to sort out what is wrong. What it is that any of us needs to be doing will depend on our location within the structures of our society, our social location, it is not the same for each of us. Think for a minute about the parable of the son we heard this morning: the young man termed a 'wastrel' who returned home after years away. The main characters in the story: that younger son, his father and his elder brother, are each given the opportunity to address aspects of their own behaviour in 'real time', as it were, not for some virtual time to come. The prodigal came home, not because he 'saw' the need for repentance – he just wanted a good feed – the father was able to welcome him, unconditionally, with open arms and a celebratory feast; and the elder brother was invited to set aside jealousy, fear and resentment and be reconciled with him. And there are the party goers!

Our different lives will present us with different choices and opportunities: those with power need to be doing different things from those without power; those with wealth different things from those without wealth; men different things from women, black different things from white... None of the things we need to be doing are for the afterlife, none of them are about earning a place in heaven, rather they are about what we can do for each other now with the gifts we already have to make life kinder, more generous, and healthier. Nowhere in the gospels is all this effort to achieve 'salvation' (for that is what all this focus on 'fixing things' is all about), directed to sorting out the afterlife, securing the place we will inhabit after we die. Rather it is all directed toward our neighbours and friends, making this world a healthier kinder place now.

I once wrote a master's thesis in which I (as a woman) suggested that in a climate of violence such as in the world today presented to us daily, through our various media, we cannot afford to have as our central motif a violent image: we cannot afford the cross, symbol of torture and power. We cannot afford such an image, nor such a death as it points toward: we cannot afford an atoning death as necessary for freedom and fullness of life.

It distresses me, still, that the cross, and all it represents in its marvellous simplicity and clarity, is the paradigmatic image of the Christian community that proclaims peace, love, freedom and hope for those who are vulnerable or mistreated in our world: it is the conundrum I live with while sharing in the Body of Christ.

I hold on to the excitement of the father in the parable. That ever hopeful Dad not prepared to stand on his patriarchal dignity! Rather behaving more like a mother with his anxious watching and waiting, his embracing and kissing, his dressing and adorning, his feeding. And of course the invitation to his children to be reconciled. It is with the experience of such a welcome 'home' that we can find freedom and health and courage to share the work of salvation.

This sermon is influenced by Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?

David Galston, Embracing the Human Jesus.

Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus from those who are right.

February 28, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Lent 3     2 Chronicles 5:11-14     Luke 13:18-21

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

The novel The Chimes [1] by NZer Anna Smaill tells the story of a world governed and controlled through music. Each day music and song is played from the Carillon – at Matins in the morning and Vespers in the evening. In hearing this music the people lose the ability to have any memory and relearn the story of their lives each day through the music. It is a gripping novel which speaks of the power of both music and a common story to hold our lives together. In the novel’s case the music is used for control but the people are eventually freed by others who use their music skill to tell a different story and set the people free.

I don’t know if the novelist Anna Smaill has any background in church and faith but the language of the novel suggest so – as matins and vespers are played and the tale that is told through the music “onestory” has echoes of the way we read the Bible as the story of our faith. And the liberators proclaim a new story – like the people of Israel liberated from slavery – or the early followers of Jesus proclaiming the story of his resurrection.

In our worship we do the same thing. We tell our story and the story of those who have gone before in word, action and song. In our music we sing ancient texts, words written well before the time of Jesus – the psalms, the hosanna, the songs of Miryam and Moses; then we sing words written about or to Jesus – the kyrie – Lord have mercy; the Lord’s prayer; hymns from every century, hymns of praise, laments, songs which help us reflect, others which drive us to action. Each generation tries to sing their story, their faith.

Our reading from the Second Book of Chronicles mentions the music makers (we don’t often read from Chronicles – in fact once – Lent 4B and not this passage!). 2 Chronicles is written somewhere between 400 and 200 BC covering a swathe of history. This passage is about the building of the first temple way back in the time of Solomon (968BC). It describes “levitical singers”. They were an order of priests who assisted in the Temple and amongst them were singers – these ones we are told come in to sing along with the trumpeters and “house was filled with a cloud”. The cloud was seen as a sign of the presence of God; like Moses going up the mountain into the cloud to speak with God or the cloud descending on Jesus at the Transfiguration. Here in the temple we are told “the glory of the Lord filled the house of God”.

Music and song has always been part of worship back to these most ancient of times. Singing together as a community brings us together, binds us. And listening to the music of those blessed with the gift of song and the ability to play, transports us to a place where we might meet God.

Like the ancients in the temple where they saw a cloud descend we are able to feel another dimension of our experience of God. Our musicians share their gift with us every week. Michael Bell has shared his gifts of playing and composition and generally talented musicianship with us every week for 14 years. What a gift that has been. What a blessing.

When Michael composes and plays and improvises we do not only hear fine technical playing. He can play anything, anytime – but when he plays we hear more than just the notes on the page. We hear Michael’s own story and Michael’s own faith. When a preacher preaches they lay their faith bare before their listeners; when Michael plays he lays his faith bare before us. And I think that is why he inspires us and leads us to heaven so often with his music.

When I scanned through the gospels to find a suitable reading for today I couldn’t go past the two short parables from Luke. What is the kingdom of God like? Like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a plant way bigger than it should so that birds can shelter in it. What is the kingdom of God like? Like yeast that a woman takes and mixes with flour so the flour can become bread. The kingdom of God, the way of God, the community of life and faith is something tiny and insignificant, almost invisible; yet when planted or used, it becomes something else and becomes useful and nourishing.

So a note of music on a page or a few notes of music, and in Michael’s case not notes on a page but in his head! These notes become something else – they become praise of God, they become an invitation to pray, they become an invitation to the table, they become a sense of the presence of God, they become a heartfelt cry to be heard, a lament, a song of joy, a quiet meditation.

A mustard seed becomes a tree, yeast becomes bread, notes on a page become sublime music. And the music leads us to places outside of our heads and into our hearts – into our hearts where love can be found and so where God can be found.

Michael you have given this church and its people 14 years of music translated into faith and faith translated into music. You have played for us in times of sorrow and in times of joy. You have played for countless funerals and weddings. For ordinary Sundays and the great festivals. You have composed and improvised and created. You have played Bach for us (and a few other composers!) You have given of your talent and we are so grateful.

Your compositions will stay with us, and we will continue to enjoy them. Like the yeast mixed in with flour they are part of us now. We know God will bless you on this next stage of your musical journey and that you will continue to bless others with your music.

And we continue with our calling to be a community of faith in this place. We will sing and say together the mysteries of our faith; and every now and then that cloud of wonder and God’s presence will descend upon us and we will be grateful.

[1] Sceptre 2015 

February 21, 2016

Jeremy Younger

Lent 2

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Every month I get an experience of abundance.

Every month I get a vision of heaven and come face to face with the communion of saints.

I mean, of course, when my copy of Vanity Fair arrives with its smooth and shiny adverts for BMWs and perfume, jeans and dreams – with the mass of sexy, languorous young men and women – offering a taste, a smell, of abundance and possibility.

Sometimes, as I greedily thumb through my copy, my better self, always eager to get a word in edgeways and spoil things, whispers over my shoulders that surely I’m above all these things, surely I’ve put all these things behind me. But unfortunately my better self, as often as not, talks only humbug and anyway doesn’t know me very well.

The glossy magazine, I believe, provides much thought for the preacher who finds it just as difficult as the copy writer to tell the truth, especially in the face of the desire for abundance.

For yes, here in Vanity Fair is abundance,

where a certain fragrance can make a man, a woman, of you,

where strange things happen to you on a white horse after you use a certain sort of bubble bath!

where everything is transient – this year’s model –

where everything is new – the latest – and everything can change you.

And maybe the people who go out on a Monday to make their advert-induced purchases are the realists. They at least can count the cost before they begin and can see what they are getting.

Perhaps the people in the Porsche with the new clothes and the expensive smells are the truly humble people, for they accept the world’s valuation of themselves – they know they are nothing without this abundance of things that the world values.

They don’t want the permanent, the secure, the eternal; such considerations cut no ice.

After all who wants last year’s car or suit.

Impermanence is the whole point of it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to defend the values of Vanity Fair, but neither can I dismiss them or feel superior to them.

For the thing that’s wrong with the magazine is precisely what’s wrong with religion!

Look again at the glossy adverts.

They offer an abundant world of meaning, purpose and fulfilment, a world for us to enter and make our own. It promises to assuage our dissatisfaction with ourselves.

We will get a lover if we wear this fragrance.

Advertisers aren’t really competing with each other, rather they are conspiring together to make one single proposal: transform yourself, enrich your lives, be envied and above all find abundant happiness!

They offer us a transformed future, by purchasing this or that we will be transformed into the desired object, and we’ll be able to love ourselves – dissatisfaction will have gone.

They also offer us a transformed past; the past is used to give value to the proposal.

The BMW standing languidly outside the ancient mansion, the model photographed against a backdrop redolent of summer holidays in bygone days.

Our future happiness is always parasitic on the past – a dead embalmed, glamorised past which has been plundered and degraded to enrich our meanness of spirit.

In the glossy magazine only the past and the future have value – the present is merely a place of dissatisfaction.

Religion of course is offered to us in just the same way: so often it is presented in such as way that we feel dissatisfied and unhappy about our present state. We are not part of the elect, we are sinners, we are worthless, we are unsaved. The present is what we need to be absolved from.

But like the adverts, worry not!

Here is an offer – here is the possibility of a self transformed if we buy.

Buy now friends – and we will find peace of mind, serenity, wisdom, – one day – in the future!

Then, like the saints etched into the windows at the back of this church, we will be complete, fulfilled, able to live with ourselves and love ourselves.

That’s the future hope of religion, just like the adverts.

And just like the adverts the past is used to give value to it all.

All that great tradition that sets religion against a backdrop that’s ancient, traditional, and zipped up in a black leather bible.

There is an implicit contract here just as there is with the adverts.

If we clutch our bibles very tight with its stories of the past for the sake of security.

If we embrace the tradition of dogma and creed for the sake of wisdom.

then lucky us, we may be dissatisfied with ourselves now, we may be worthless now, but the future holds untold abundant glories, unmistakable joy and deep peace!

But thank God this is all heresy!

Thank God there are no bargains to be struck with God!

God makes covenant with us, God’s people, on God’s own terms.

Unlike the glossy magazine advert, unlike the over-easily peddled, Mickey-mouse religion of the TV evangelists and Alpha programmes, you cannot count the cost before you begin.

If we are to press the claims of Christianity – to commend it to the world – and we must for we are commissioned to do so – how can we avoid the religion of the advertiser where Christianity is traded as a range of spiritual benefits like so many heavenly motor cars of perfume bottles? If we are to avoid this trap what words can we find?

The difficulty is this: it is easy to talk about religion and in my way I can be as slick as the next person – as slick as the copywriters of the adverts.

But if I have to talk about the life of faith then I’m traduced to incoherence.

Religion is talked about everywhere – on television – on radio – in the papers – endlessly, confidently and eloquently and all this wash of religion that flows over us degrades Christianity, diminishes the Gospel and betrays faith.

Words distort and eloquent words distort eloquently.

Faith, hope and love then become commodities in the hand of the copywriter of religion.

There is a sense in which even to talk about the holy is to risk profaning it. As Isaac Williams said with Tractarian reserve: ‘Those who most value sacred things, will in general say the least about them.’

So the religion which is purveyed publicly – as I am purveying it now I suppose – is like the glossy magazine – a world of fantasy putting a falsifying veil over the reality, or the many realities, of faith.

That life of faith – our life, as people trying to be faithful – is as much a struggle to escape from the enchantment of this sort of false religion as it is to awaken from the dream of the advertisers. The work of Christ is to free us from both of these fantasies.

Faith is always about leaving things behind –

casting off from secure shores –

parting from particular friends.

It’s about banishment and bereavement,

It’s about glancing back with regret,

It’s about saying ‘this isn’t what I expected – this isn’t what I bargained for’.

It is a journey where I’m always beginning and have no destination.

It’s a pilgrimage without a shrine.

I believe notions in spirituality of progress in prayer, maturing in wisdom are part of the fantasy of religion, the dream not the reality. You do not approach God by degrees. You do not draw near to the transcendent by getting the code right. You cannot build towers to heaven.

When Christ bids us bear our cross there is nothing to commend it as a policy. When we have celebrated Good Friday and stood at the foot of the cross and made our way home, there is absolutely no reason to expect Easter Sunday – there is no guarantee – new life and old life look very much the same.

Faith is not about self-fulfilment, satisfaction or maturity. These things belong elsewhere. As people of faith we are not in the business of becoming human, but rather in coming to terms, in every moment, with not being God – putting away all hubris – coming to terms with not having a map, dying to the self that would be God.

“So therefore whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

The cost of this cannot be measured. There is no implicit contract to be made here. My dream self – my wordy religious self – cannot do it.

I do not know anyway what the all is that I have to renounce.

I do not possess myself in order to renounce myself.

I cannot count the cost wisely. I am all too affluent for the utter poverty of God – altogether too grand for the humility of God.

It is perhaps in this moment – and only in this moment – free from the religious salesman’s assurance about the future – that God can set us free – can speak of acceptance and love.

Perhaps in this present moment God reaches through the cracks to touch us, speaks through the unplanned silences of our chattering so we can hear.

This is perhaps where faith rather than religion is born, where God can hold us and caress us in this moment, not in the past or the future. Perhaps this now is all there is.

This then is where we are caught – fleetingly and mysteriously – no past, no future, no possessing, no buying or selling, no contracts or bargains, just love – lived out of God’s love NOW.

Here and now we are given God’s poverty and humility which are the gifts we cannot desire, cannot accept, cannot possess, but simply cannot evade.
 

Amen.

February 14, 2016

Susan Adams

Lent 1     Deuteronomy 26:1-11     Luke 4:1-13

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"Today's programme is brought to you by the number 40" – as Sesame St characters used to say when my children were little!

The readings for today are connected by the number 40: 40 years wandering around in the wilderness after Moses, and, for Jesus, 40 days in the desert facing up to his future.

Both readings invite us into a period of remembering – facing our past, and then they invite us to face our future.

The week preceding Ash Wednesday is known in many parts of the world as 'Carnevale' (translated as goodbye to meat) It was, in the past, the occasion for party going, for eating the last of the meat and for remembering good times and fun in the midst of scarcity and dark – it was a celebration of life in the face of possible death – It was the period at the end of the winter months when food was getting scarce. We symbolically used up the 'last' of our eggs to make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Lent, as a season in the liturgical calendar of the church, began about 300 CE, after the Council of Nicaea. It was a time of self discipline, of giving things up and being aware of the frailty of human life. It made a virtue of necessity at the end of winter when food was scarce.

When thinking about the 40 years, and especially the 40 days, it helps to remember that fasting is a mechanism for inducing focus – for inducing visions, and sharpening memories – it was not about self-denial for the sake of doing without!

We begin Lent hearing the invitation to remember who we are – 'wandering Arameans' – in other words hearing an invitation to remember that our ancestors were once in need of hospitality and welcome in a strange land. For those of us who are of European descent, our forbears in this country were provided that hospitality by people very different from themselves: the Maori people of this land provided welcome hospitality in the first instance. Perhaps this points us toward an attitude of hospitality to refugee and migrant people arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand in our own time; perhaps we are being encouraged to open our hearts even though we might be fearful our culture and even our way of speaking, will change in ways we can't imagine or hope to be in control.

We also hear in the readings for this 1st Sunday in Lent, provocation to be thankful, to embrace an attitude of gratitude. It is good to bring into focus aspects of our lives that induce a sense of gratitude in us: it is good to bring into focus our vision of how the great the world could be with its diversity of peoples, abundant food and resources, even its capacity to regulate our excesses; it is good to take time to be aware of how we, each of us, can live so that our vision can shape the future.

At the same time we can recall stuff that we are not proud of. These times act a caution, reminding us of how easy it is to be seduced by promises of things to come, by dreams of self-aggrandisement and over abundance; by hope in something different from what we have. It is all too easy to fall into a feeling of dissatisfaction with our lot, this can be an unfortunate by-product of unrealistic self-centred hope: of the popular 'I deserve it' mind-set... (school adv. 'The world is his!')

The hope of our faith is bigger than that. It is about our world restored to a place of love, sufficiency and wellbeing.

We tell the story of Jesus' struggle with evil while all alone in the wilderness. (We can link our own struggles with this). For the early followers of Jesus, those for whom the gospel stories were written, the story of his struggle and vanquishing of evil would have been vindication he was who the voice of God, heard at his baptism, said he was "...my son in whom i am well pleased." Powerful stuff. Jesus had to work hard to hold on to the vision of community and human worth in that place of temptations and taunting. We do too.

But, most importantly, the invitation and challenge to us of both these important readings is to recall that we are community and as community we are invited to be glad we have each other with all our different approaches to life, our different skills and different insights, and to remember we are people of God: we are the resurrected body of Christ of which we talk more at Easter. It is important to take up the invitation to remember the vision that has inspired us, the big story that shapes us. It is important to remember that how we choose to live today will impact on how our children and grandchildren will be able to live in years to come – for we will join their legion of ancestors. This is a time for retelling the big story of who we are, a time to retell the myth that shapes how we have chosen to live and which empowers us.

Today we are going on a picnic, to a beautiful place with plenty of food to share. It might not be a traditional way to begin Lent, but it is nevertheless appropriate to begin with an opportunity to remember who we are; to knit our body together in community; to remember with gratitude that this land, this people, this faith we share overflows with good things. It is good to remember and be grateful.

I invite you in the 40 days of Lent, to remember who you are with honesty: the best and the worst. I encourage you to be aware that the best calls forth gratitude and a generosity of heart and mind in response; and the worst ? ... well that is an opportunity to change, knowing that in God, the very breath of life, all things are made new.

February 7, 2016

Hirini Kaa

Ordinary 5 / Waitangi Day

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January 31, 2016

Allanah Church

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple     Luke 2:22-40

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The Gospel reading begins with a bursting of newness on the scene. The infant Jesus is brought to the Temple by Mary and Joseph for circumcision and naming. Jesus begins life in a devout, law-keeping Jewish family. We are told that in this temple scene there is the merging of two rituals, purification after childbirth and presentation of a first born son, which was required in the Torah.

But this is also becoming a story about suffering. The prophet Simeon has been waiting for God to comfort Israel and the prophet Anna is in touch with the people who are waiting for the restoration Israel. They are both living in a world of patient hope where suffering has become a way of life.

The Gospel writer Luke wants his listeners to know that this infant Jesus is new hope is being revealed. Israel’s history is being lifted out of its suffering, but not only is this new hope for Israel alone but a light for all nations.

Simeon’s first response to the presentation of the infant Jesus is not to speak, but to take the baby in his arms. In receiving Jesus , Simeon is receiving the consolation of Israel. The exclamation of Simeon, is captured in this beautiful hymn we call the Nunc Dimittis, which we have used in evening prayer liturgies from the 4th Century onward. Simeon expresses his readiness to die because in seeing the Christ Child, Simeon perceives that he has seen God’s salvation.

Simeon’s song echoes the trust, hope and hope of the prophetic passages from Isaiah. At the end of the Book of Isaiah is a vision of a new creation that will deeply restore justice and bring comfort and consolation. God will enact something new.

Luke’s story now gathers his listeners into an alternative imagination. There has been suffering and a yearning and now there is radical amazement. Mary and Joseph are amazed. Something new is happening here and they too have to learn who Jesus is. Jesus is pictured here as the today of fulfilment of consolation and comfort for the suffering ones. Jesus comes now as the one who shares a vision of an alternate world in which those on the margins are now at the heart of his ministry, compassionate care to the outsider and a challenge to the dominant culture of his day. It is Jesus’s sustained concern for the suffering ones that connects Jesus ministry to those of the prophets of Israel, in particular to Elisha and Elijah.

There is a longing and a yearning that we hold in our hearts too. The dominant culture of our day cannot any longer be credibly sustained. We ask: can peace come on earth? Can justice prevail? What alternative hope can be imagined for our world as it is now? Has it all gone too far?

Today’s Gospel narrative gives voice to new possibilities both then and now. There is a clear, direct and important connection between the summons of the prophetic in the ancient texts and the contemporary practice of ministry now.

The prophetic voice still needs to call into question the ethos of those who hold the dominant power in our day. We can view this text in relation to Jesus as our new and living way. The one who challenged the dominant powers of his day because he took the suffering of the people seriously; the one who offered an alternate vision of a community whose core concern was justice-making compassion .

How do these ancient texts still speak to the shaping of who we are today… the shaping of our identity and development as a community of faith. We live with the ongoing tension of the Gospel narrative and the dominant narrative of our culture. We see the way parts of our world are becoming more and more dismantled, there are systemic forces at work, there is abuse of power, violence. We can feel overwhelmed, defeated, powerless, experience compassion fatigue and a failure of nerve.

Can these ancient texts shape our frame of reference today. Can they still energize us in our own context. Do they now seem irrelevant, ineffectual, hopelessly idealistic, a waste of time and energy? Indeed all of it could be nothing but a pious illusion if we did not have the accounts of how the alternate vision of Jesus radically reoriented the lives of his followers and others who encountered him, right through to this day.

The dominant culture has little future to offer. It has failed to provide comfort and consolation for the suffering ones, it has failed to provide well being, and sustenance for the many. People do not get helpless by themselves but are rendered helpless by unjust systems. Brueggemannn in his text “Prophetic Imagination” writes, “there is a remarkable depth of numbness in the dominant culture. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain and suffering. Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted, and therefore newness could come.” Newness comes from having the capacity to express pain, to give it voice, to have it heard and attended to. Only then does hope come.

The prophets imagined creating a new way where there seemed to be no new way. Jesus imagined a new alternative even where there seemed to be no hope. Imagination is the capacity to image a world beyond what we take as the established given. An ability to hold loosely what the world assumes and to walk into alternative contours of reality, which we have only in hint and trace. There is a sense of something more and something other.

In an excerpt from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, William Blake writes:

“The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, they would be misunderstood and so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answered. I saw no God nor heard any…as I was then persuaded and remain confirmed; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for the consequences but wrote.”

The Gospel story for today invites us to use our prophetic imagination, call upon our honest indignation, open our arms like Simeon with a receptivity to working towards ever new possibilities, in the midst of suffering and struggle, acknowledge our own vulnerabilities, our ambiguities, our own numbness.

Now, as always, it is the time to summon our deeply-rooted theological call to continue to be prophetic, to nurture and strengthen our commitment to the alternate vision of Jesus, to critique what it means to be a community of faith. To dare to acknowledge that Jesus is the revelation of hope here in our context.

Sources of reference:

Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News according to Luke

Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Luke

Carroll, John T. Luke-A commentary

Linafelt, Tod and Beal, Timothy K. (editors) God in the Fray

Brueggemann, Walter. Deep Memory, exuberant hope

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination

January 24, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Epiphany 3     Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10     Psalm 19     1 Corinthians 12:12-31a     Luke 4:14-40 (extended reading)

72 years ago today deaconess Li Tim Oi was ordained a priest in Zhaoqing in China by Bishop Ronald Hall, Bishop of Hong Kong. He ordained her for work in Macao where the congregation was cut off due to war time restrictions. He was aware he was doing something groundbreaking – ordaining a woman as a priest for the first time – and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, after the fact! Despite many protests from England Bishop Hall refused to take away Li Tim Oi’s licence and she continued to work as a priest until the Cultural Revolution. Many years later in retirement she would resume her priestly duties and eventually moved to Canada where she died in 1992.

About the day of her ordination Li Tim Oi wrote

“God had brought me through many dangers to this place, it strengthened my belief that it was his will that I become a priest. Here was I, a simple girl wishing to devote my life to his service. The wider issues of the ordination of women were far from my mind as I entered the little church.” [1]

Years later after all the more formal debates and processes women would be ordained priest in Honk Kong, USA, Canada and New Zealand. The first woman was ordained because her people needed and wanted the sacraments. Quite straightforward really.

Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, writes about the church as it was emerging in his time. He gives the Corinthians an image – the image of the body. We have used that phrase “the body of Christ” so many times we don’t hear the impact of what Paul was saying. The church in Corinth were following normal Greek and Roman custom and operating on class and hierarchy lines. Everyone in their place. The rich first, then the poor. Men first, then the women. Free first, then the slaves.

The body was an image used in writing at the time – but it was used to reinforce the hierarchy. [2]

Paul instead “uses the figure of the body to advance a rationale for diversity and interdependence.” [3]

If the foot would say ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. (12:15) The eye cannot say to the hand ‘I have no need of you’ (12:21).

So slave and free, Jew and Greek, all belonged. And not only did all belong but no one had the right to ask another to leave because they were a hand and not a foot.

The institution of the church for 2 millennia has done its best to not follow Paul’s guidance. Every century in every culture people have been excluded from the body because of culture, race, gender, disability, belief, sexual orientation, education, poverty. Think of segregated churches – black and white – in the USA; think of parish churches charging pew rents in England; think of the Inquisition and the Crusades; think of people who are divorced being excluded from communion. Think of gay and lesbian people being denied the sacrament of marriage.

Every age has its time of shame and we look back and we think – how could that possibly have happened? 2016 has started with such a time of shame for our church. The Primates of the Anglican Communion; our leaders, our archbishops, have met in England and deliberated and decided that those who offer the sacrament of marriage to all couples equally (the Episcopal Church in the US) will be excluded from some of the life of the Communion.

As they read this passage from Paul today – which they will be – I wonder what they are thinking and preaching? Hazarding a guess – I think they will be holding their recent meeting up as an example of Paul’s teaching. They have all been saying all week how marvelous it is that they all stayed at the meeting; stayed in the same room; didn’t walk out (except that is for the Archbishop of Uganda). How they listened and prayed and heard each other’s pain. Well that probably is quite an achievement but at the end of the day they still decided that because the Episcopal Church was a hand and not a foot – they had to be asked to step back from Communion activities. But Paul says The eye cannot say to the hand ‘I have no need of you’ (12:21).

Like the ordination of Li Tim Oi 62 years ago, the Episcopal Church has responded to the needs of its people. Bishop Hall saw his people needed communion. In the US the faithful have asked for the sacrament of marriage and they have received it. Canada is likely to follow – they got away with no exclusions this time because their processes are not yet complete. They like us are awaiting a General Synod. Will we follow? will we offer the sacraments to people who want them? Well, that remains to be seen. For our NZ church we have a working group who have been deliberating for the last year and they have not reported yet; I am sure when they do they will have similar reports of how marvelous it was that they all stayed in the room.

Shift now with me for a moment from Paul and the Corinthians to Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus is home, he goes to worship with the folks, as you do when you are home, and they asked him to do the reading. Nice. He reads from Isaiah, chapter 61. A passage familiar to the congregation, believed to announce the coming of the Messiah. All good so far.

But Jesus stops in the middle of the passage, sits down, and says this scripture has been fulfilled today in your hearing. And the people are amazed and then angry. What is he talking about? and why did he miss out the next bit from Isaiah 61 – the part about how the Gentiles (non Jews) will be the servants of the Israelites when they reclaim their homeland. (Isaiah 61:10) [4]

Jesus here is doing some editing and commentary on scripture. And then he responds to the congregation’s anger by telling two more stories from scripture – how Elijah, the great prophet helped a Gentile widow, and how Elisha, the next prophet healed a Gentile general. Now they are really mad – because he is telling them that Gentiles are loved by God too – and he is saying that he is the one who is the Messiah and who is going to bring them close to God. In their eyes very wrong on both counts – so they go to throw him over the cliff – the punishment for blasphemy. Mysteriously he just walks away.

But they would exclude Jesus from their congregation because he was telling them all are included, all are loved by God. All parts of the body are needed – Jew and Gentile – hands and feet. So much for the homecoming of Mary and Joseph’s boy who made good as a preacher.

Following the example of Jesus and of Paul we will continue to call for the full inclusion of everyone in our church and equal access to the sacraments for everyone. We are left though with a challenging question – do we want to be in the same church, the same worldwide communion, with those who would exclude our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Do we want to be in communion with the Archbishop of Uganda who walked out of the meeting early and who has pretty extreme homophobic views. [5] Do we not want to say to him – your views make you a hand – and we are feet – so we have no need of you.

The church of Uganda is more than its archbishop. And there are thousands of gay and lesbian Ugandan Anglicans who need our support and solidarity. If we walk away we abandon them. But we say loud and clear we will not accept views that encourage homophobia and in the case of Uganda even violence and imprisonment.

And closer to home this week we have been forced to trespass some of the people who have been sleeping in our porches and abusing passersby, being violent and damaging the building. They had never wanted to come to a church service – but if they did they would not now be able to do that. We have excluded them. That is a reality for us this week as we hear the words of Paul and Jesus.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, women or men, gay or straight, Maori or Pakeha, Chinese or Ugandan, with a disability or non-disabled, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:12-13).

[1] Much Beloved Daughter Florence Tim Oi Li 1985 Darton, Longman and Todd p 45

[2] p278 Lee C Barrett in Feasting on the Word Year C Vol 1

[3] ibid p 280

[4] as explained by Kenneth Bailey Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes chapter 12

[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/04/stanley-ntagali-anti-gay-law_n_5648648.html

January 17, 2016

Susan Adams

Epiphany 2     Isaiah 62;1-7     John 2 1-12

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

It is deeply ironic that today, the Gospel reading challenges us with an embarrassing situation at the very outset of Jesus' ministry – at a wedding. We, of the Anglican Church, are challenged in our own time in history with our own embarrassing situation – also in relation to weddings! It seems that once more there was a choice to be made between enabling the embarrassment to grow through inaction or doing something albeit reluctantly. This time the decision appears to have erred on the side of the status quo and tradition – perhaps the Primates lacked the urging of a justice focussed woman like Mary to empower them as she did Jesus in the face of his reluctance to act at the wedding in Cana. In the story John tells, of when Jesus was challenged by his Mother to do something about the embarrassing situation his family faced by having insufficient wine to appropriately celebrate the joy of a wedding, he used the resources to hand. Those resources were, according to John, 6 large jars of water set aside for the traditional Jewish purification ritual. Jesus, we are told in the story, turns them into the best wine, much more than sufficient for joyous celebration: Jesus chose action over inaction, love over ritual, joy over embarrassment.

It would seem the Primates, the leaders of our Anglican church, have chosen tradition over joy, and a spurious veneer of unity over justice-making love: They have opted at this time to uphold ' the tradition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, in faithful life-long union' and not to accept the loving commitments of people of the same sex. (If there are any of you who would like to talk about this outcome of the Primates meeting in Lambeth this past week I will be available at morning tea time.)

I want to reflect a little more on embarrassing situations and their implications for us and for our ministries and for our witness as a church...

Most of us have been to a wedding and to a wedding 'breakfast' – great time of celebration and an opportunity to catch up with family and friends.

But have you ever thought of complaining to the host because they have failed to provide you with enough wine or food?

Probably not! you might just have whispered to your neighbour! You would probably not have wanted to embarrass your host.

The wedding in Cana, the location of today's Gospel story, is much like most weddings we are familiar with – perhaps the exception being that the marriage was probably arranged by the families – but apart from that, there would be an abundance of relatives present, some friends, and the best wine and food that the host could afford. And then, as today, everyone would be on their best behaviour and trying hard not to offend truculent cousins or provoke uncles who had imbibed a little too much. In other words trying to avoid embarrassing situations, and trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves on account of embarrassing behaviour.

But how dreadfully embarrassing for the host if what they had provided, most likely the best they could, was insufficient for the guests - not enough to go round.

We can empathise with that feeling of embarrassment. I do, in respect of the current situation the Primates decision has brought us to ... What we can now provide is insufficient to celebrate the joy of love for a significant number of people. It is embarrassing for us here at St Matthews, as it was for the family in Cana, – for them it was shameful, disrespectful to their guests, a significant 'loss of face'. It would have been something to be talked about for years: "Remember that dreadful wedding when 'Dāvid' didn't provide enough wine... it was truly awful, everyone was whispering, the bride and groom were mortified ..." For us ... I wonder what people will be saying as we proclaim the love of God – but only for some and not others, and as we appear to prioritise our political games over the wellbeing of the earth.

It is perhaps, surprising that it is a wedding with an embarrassing situation that John uses to launch Jesus into his public ministry.

For John there are no shepherds on hillsides or angels or virgin birth, or journeys, no 'stories' from the childhood of Jesus. Instead, in the Prologue to his Gospel ('In the beginning was the logos, the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'), John displays his capacity for holding together both a Greek and a Jewish perspective in a way that might not have been readily understood by his hearers any more than it is readily understood by us today. But, like us, all who heard the verses of the prologue, Greeks or Jew, would be in no doubt it meant something important. A biblical scholar noted many years ago that "[John] has his feet firmly planted in two worlds: that of the Old Testament and of Hellenistic philosophy... At every important point he has not only two thoughts instead of one, but two sets of allusions in mind." [i]

Having established his belief in the prologue that the Christ, identified in Jesus, is now 'knowable' in this world, John moves straight to the adult Jesus and then this, the wedding situation.

We could readily jump in to examining the allusions as many have done before us and focus on the bridegroom or the householder, the significance of six jars, or the turning of the water set aside for the purification rites into an over abundance of the best vintage wine thus drawing out the wonder of God's provision. And this is very tempting in the light of the recent turn of events! But I want to focus on the embarrassing nature of the situation. I want do this because in every instance of the 'seven signs' that this Gospel writer presents us with, Jesus is located in a context we can recognise and with a dilemma we can readily identify! The dilemma at the wedding is the first, and Jesus seems to be a bit grumpy judging by the way he spoke to his mother! According the story it would seem that, the by now, middle aged Mary is trying to save her kinsfolk from the embarrassment of not providing enough wine to celebrate the fullness of joy that this situation requires (all Jews would get this OT link), she want Jesus to do something about it.

Jesus on the other hand, tries to distance himself and asks "Woman, what's it to do with me?" (He doesn't seem to want to interfere and is a bit curt with his Mother). Mary doesn't try to argue or convince him, she simply tells the steward to do as he says! And, according to the story teller they end up with an overabundance of good wine, between 470 and 700 litres!

So what are we to make of it all? What is this sign, the first of John's signs, all about. John seems to want his hearers to come to awareness that signs of God are present in everyday situations – even a somewhat raucous wedding party, he seems to want us to be aware that Jesus ministry activity points to that – God in the midst of life – and that to be about God's work of love and justice we have to do something.

So, we have the embarrassment of insufficient being provided, a Jewish mother giving her adult son a bit of a push to do something about it, and a reluctant man saying 'it's got nothing to do with me' and trying to avoid doing anything!

By now I think you will be able to guess where I am going with this!

It seems to me we are in the middle of an embarrassing situation: prioritising moralistic judgements over love, over starving children, over climate change and the health of our fragile planet earth, over lack of safety and dry housing. It seems traditions that judge and limit love have priority in our institutions over facing up to fear and violence, religious bigotry, unsafe hospitals, exploitation of workers .... and the list goes on. It is truly reprehensible that the people of our world have to cope with all this – we should be greatly embarrassed about it. But ask yourself, how many times you have echoed the words of Jesus in this story and asked "What has this to do with me?" We can all wonder that, and, most likely, we all ask ourselves what we can do that will make any difference – the situation seems beyond us. And we are probably wondering what we can do about the decision of the Primates. Perhaps we need a mother like Mary who says "Go on, do something, you can avoid shame falling on this generation."

It seems to me that, like Jesus, we have spent time getting ready, resourcing ourselves, and we know full well we should be embarrassed by what is going on. But, we need the push that says

'You, yes you can do something to bring a change to all this!'

• Perhaps it is the vision of a world of abundance that we need to proclaim;

• perhaps it is learning to allow confidence not fear to influence our decision making;

• perhaps it is to insist that sharing not hoarding shapes our social values;

• perhaps it is simply learning to respect those who are different from ourselves, not stereotyping our neighbours, or limiting love.

While we might not be able to change water into wine so to speak, we can change fear into love, anger into actions for positive change, power-over into peace, and hoarding into sharing.

We can do these things immediately in our personal attitudes, we can testify to them in our conversations, we can demand them in our engagement in public forums and political decisions.

Indeed, we need to be about God's work of ensuring the abundance of the earth is shared, we need to be about the work of Christ in loving and respecting others, we need to be about the work of the spirit of life bringing hope in a better and less embarrassing future;

we need to be witnessing to the God of life in our living.

[i] R. P. Casey, Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1958): 270.

January 10, 2016

Linda Murphy 

Baptism of Jesus     Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

For many of us today is the end of our holiday time and we return to work tomorrow. I have had a wonderful holiday we stayed at home and I just enjoyed being in the moment. I enjoyed the sun shine and loved the rain at New Year. Our water tank was rather low! We have a full tank which is wonderful at this time of year. For many our El Nino summer has not been great especially for those camping. Nevertheless most farmers are happy and our harvest should be plentiful.

While I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution I had made a decision to spend more time being rather than rushing which can be a challenge when you work at the City Mission. As I write this sermon watching the rain gently water the garden I realise how easy it is to be still and to listen to God in our midst. However for most of us during our working day this is a challenge.

Today we are celebrating the Baptism of Jesus according to Luke, and Luke’s version is similar to the other Gospels with the exception that we are not entirely sure that John the Baptist is present. The verses omitted from our Gospel state that Herod had arrested John. Jesus is with many others who have come to the Jordan River to be baptised as a token of repentance to hasten the coming of the Kingdom that God would establish to displace the tyrannical rulers of the time. John was offering baptism to both the elite and the common people hence words of burning the chaff. According to the late Marcus Borg, John the Baptist’s movement was anti-temple replacing the temple’s mediation of the forgiveness of sins with the mediation of forgiveness through baptism. Hence Herod was not very keen to have John around challenging his comfortable world.

In 28CE huge crowds had flocked from Judea, Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside to listen to the fiery preaching of John the Baptist beside the River Jordan. In Israel, ritual immersion had long signified not only a moral purification but also a social commitment to justice. The sectarians at Qumran performed frequent ablutions both as a rite of purification and as a political commitment “to observe justice to men” and “to hate the unjust and fight the battle of the righteous ones”. These are words of the historian Josephus from the 1st Century.

For most of us in the Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions we are baptized as babies so few of us will remember our own baptisms. I certainly don’t as I was three months old however I know it was Labour weekend 1951 and I was baptised at All Saints Ponsonby where my parents had been married. For many who bring their babies to us to be baptised here at St Matthew’s they are non-church goers who feel that a baptism or christening is a necessary ritual.

Why do we baptise our babies if we are not part of a church community?

Since being ordinated I have baptised four babies. Three of these baptisms were preceded with discussion with the parents as to what this sacrament meant and I was very happy to proceed with the service. However the fourth one was not as successful as the parents were not interested in having a conversation about the meaning of this sacrament. For them it was a service to have at St Matthew’s where they had been married and they felt part of, but attending church services and being part of this community was not part of their vision.

We as a clergy team have had numerous discussions about how we manage this and we have shared lots of ideas. I have had many conversations with friends as to why their grandchildren are being baptised when the parents don’t attend church and I receive looks of astonishment that I should even ask such a question. It is just a celebration families have. The family christening gown is brought out of storage, photos are taking and family and friends celebrate the arrival of this lovely new baby.

Jesus’ baptism marked the beginning of his ministry. He was immersed in the Jordan and a dove appeared signifying the Holy Spirit and a voice came out of the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit would be crucial to this early movement; it was not a separate divine being of course, but a term used by Jews to denote the presence and power of God in human life.

In the Book of Acts, 3,000 were baptised in one day on Pentecost and there are many other baptisms listed. Always with water, with the words “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” and we continue to do this in our baptismal liturgy today. In the early church the Catechumens (those to be baptised), were instructed over many weeks and were baptised at the Easter Vigil service. This was an act of commitment to the church and church community that has slipped way in our present secular world.

As we begin this New Year we face many issues such as child poverty and the associated health issues in New Zealand. We have a housing shortage in Auckland especially, that means many families are being separated, children don’t attend school and the cost of rent is placing many families in penury. Foodbanks are expanding in Auckland for these needy families many of them employed in more than one job just to keep a roof over their families.

 Worldwide we have refugees needing food and shelter in such enormous numbers that the world seems unable to find a solution to their plight. Terrorism is active all over the world causing fear, discrimination and destruction. It is a year since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and this city experienced further terrorist attacks during this last year. The debate continues over global warming and while the powers talk we experience horrific storms, flooding and drought, with no solution in sight.

The Primates of the Anglican Communion meet in Canterbury over the coming weeks to discuss the many differences of interpretation of our faith. Let’s us hope that these primates remember their baptismal vows and remember why Jesus challenged the establishment of his time and their injustice and inhumane practices.

This may be the time for all of us to remember our baptismal vows and why Jesus was baptised. Why Jesus commenced a ministry that was so enormously challenging, changing his world order for justice to be available to everyone regardless of race, gender, social status or sexual orientation.

 As Bishop John Spong wrote reflecting on baptism, “Baptism introduces us to a Christian life that frees us to live fully, empowers us to love wastefully and gives us the courage to be all that we were meant to be.”

Amen.

January 3, 2016

Susan Adams

The Epiphany     Isaiah 60:1-6     Matthew 2:1-12

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Last week I was watching the Christmas episode of 'Call the Midwife'.

Did any of you see it? If you did you might remember the old nun who left the convent to make her way to her childhood home hoping to die there. As the episode unfolded she made some comment about Christmas being a time when it was right to 'go home', or to 'be at home'. After all, in the Bible story about the events that have become known as 'Christmas', Joseph takes his pregnant wife to his home in Bethlehem where their child is born in the warmth of a stable – probably the ground floor of the family home midst his extended family. There is something that feels good about being midst family at Christmas, especially if there are children. Something good about being 'at home', with the eldest and the youngest all together if at all possible.

On Christmas Day here at St Matthews we spoke of the delight we have in babies – the gift they are to their parents. We spoke too of the incipient gifts babies have within their infant selves, gifts that only become manifest as they grow toward adulthood and, if they are fortunate, have loving parents and grandparents and other role models to help them develop their gifts and see possibilities for their adult lives.

Jesus was just such a baby: loved, cherished, raised with care to follow his father Joseph's footsteps into the carpenter's shop. But all that comes later in the story of Jesus.

Today we are focussed on the legend of the wise men – who are variously magi, kings, or astrologers – who stopped in their travels to see the infant Jesus. No mention is made by Matthew of how many men there were, but according to familiar carols, we usually think there were three because there were three gifts mentioned: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Biblical scholars tell us there is no historicity to the story but that doesn't matter – there are truths to be found within it, history or not!

We might well wonder why 'Matthew' wrote this story in his telling of the gospel. What is this curious interlude - that is only reported in 'Matthew's' gospel – between the birth of Jesus that we celebrated with such delight last week, and the story of the massacre of the children ordered by the powerful and paranoid King Herod that ends this chapter. And, from which Joseph and his little family had to escape quickly.

It is almost impossible today, to hear the story of the visit to the baby by the 'wise travellers', with their warning to Mary and Joseph to escape, to leave home with their child if the baby was to have any chance of a life, without, on the one hand, thinking about the refugee families that are leaving Syria in their thousands seeking safety and a life for their children and, on the other hand, thinking about the 250,000 children in our own land who live below the poverty line with little security or hope of a fulfilled life.

Both of these groups are impacted by the priorities and fears of people in powerful positions whether those people are kings, as in Jesus' situation, or dictators, prime ministers or government ministers, heads of big businesses or of academies they have power to impact lives. Whenever the wellbeing of children and their future fails to register on the planning radar when goals and priorities are determined then we should be afraid. Indeed there is a darkness over the world; a 'thick darkness over the people' to quote Isaiah. Today we might say there is a darkness in the hearts and minds of those who could offer hope and life to the vulnerable.

I love the imagery of light that abounds in the readings today; the contrast between the 'thick darkness' Isaiah speaks of, and the star and light that draws the wise travellers. There is a curious juxtaposition between the darkness of the fear that King Herod responds too with an order to kill all the male children, those boys who could grow to be potential challengers to his political aspirations, and the wise travellers from the East, from Iran perhaps, who see the light of the future in a newborn baby in a stable and stop by to see what they can learn from this child.

There have been many sermons preached reflecting on the particular gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – but I like to think these were the most generous items the men had in their saddle-bags to give to the family. So they left gold, with Mary and Joseph to help fund their way out of Bethlehem – to bribe the soldiers perhaps, and the medicinal myrrh and frankincense to use as required – perhaps to keep at bay the postnatal dangers Mary must have been worried about after giving birth in a stable!

The writer of the gospel, who scholars tell us was not Matthew, writing about AD 70, 40 years after Jesus death and after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, is locating Jesus within the major strands of Jewish history in order to convince his Jewish hearers that Jesus truly is their messiah: their anointed one, the one whose 'way', whose teaching, will lead to a greater peace than they have yet found. This story of the visit of wise men from the East, is part of his not so gentle persuasion to take note, to come out of the darkness of fear and see the light. Not that anything will be miraculously changed, the temple will still have been destroyed, bereaved parents will still be bereaved, poor will still be poor, women will still be of lesser importance but, with the confidence of a new and hopeful vision, the courage of knowing things can different and that they can be part of making it different, these horrors can be named and spoken of and, actions can be taken to change the situation.

It seems to me important to go back to the story in the Bethlehem stable at this point, to connect our contemporary journey to the one that Joseph and Mary were catapulted into by Herod's fear that his power was under threat. Our future, the future of our children and the future of our planet, is compromised by the fear of today's power holders. They fear that the ways of global financial control and political organisation, they are expert in manipulating, will change – that they will lose power. But change it must and their fear must be overcome by the determination of those who have seen the light of a different way.

Isaiah invites us to 'arise and shine for our light has come ... [to] lift up our eyes and look around ... you shall see and be radiant...' (Is 60:1-6). Indeed we must lift our eyes, to shine a light into the places of fear and darkness, to look into the light and speak out what we see and to open our hearts and demand compassion.

The story of the adult Jesus is about actions such as these; this is the 'way' that the writer of Matthew' gospel is inviting his hearers into.

This – to use church language – is the 'glory of God':

people who are wise and brave enough to speak out what they see and to proclaim an alternative vision of love and peace that holds hope for the children of the world.

But where did it begin for the homeless refugee Jesus? Today we know the importance of 'home': knowing the geographic location and culture of the place we were born. But more than this, 'home' is a knowing, deep within ourselves, the security and confidence that people who love us and care about us, gives to us. The unconditional love of parents and others who nurture us, and the encouragement and hopefulness that knowing we have a future, provides us with a sense of being 'at home' wherever we are. Being 'at home' provides us with a sense of shared responsibility for the care and wellbeing of self and of others .

All Children need these things, all adults need to know these things too so they can speak out when our world goes awry.

We might ask ourselves:

• What the gifts are we ourselves are prepared to offer to enable the children of our nation to know they are 'home'; to grow with love into a hope-filled future?

• What gifts will we have the courage to ask our world leaders to offer so homeless children can sleep securely and grow into a peace-filled future.

• What are the gifts we hold within ourselves that we need to bring into the light and nurture so 'our hearts will thrill and rejoice?'