“HOPE DURING TEETH-GNASHING TIMES”

It was this final part of the reading that didn’t go down too well. It concluded Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Talents with the words,

“Cast this worthless servant into the outer darkness. There, men will weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matt 25:30 RSV)

Charming! These are the bits of the Gospel we don’t particularly like. We prefer the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” we used to sing about in Sunday School.

Outer darkness, weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth is generally well kept off the pulpit agenda unless the preacher for the day has got up out of the wrong side of the bed.

Yet, while this passage was being read in churches all round the world, there have been worthless servants being cast into outer darkness and there have been men (and women and children) weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. In the world backdrop to this passage, Prime Ministers of southern European nations have been summarily dismissed from political office. Most of Europe still is in daily anguish over this humungous debt hanging overhead like a thundercloud threatening to burst into the recession we may still have to have.

I don’t know how many have joined the dots between this Gospel reading and the European debt. Definitely, those who ought to have known better have wasted their talents, living and spending beyond their means and avoiding paying tax. Now the vultures are coming home to roost and almost everyone is going to hurt. Worse still, waste and irresponsibility are by no means confined to the shores north of the Mediterranean. There but for the grace of the banks go us.

What is worse is that while wealth floats upward, poverty plummets downward. We do not yet know how to discipline the rich without the poor suffering more, neither do we yet know how to raise the poor without the rich benefiting further.

From deep within this dilemma, the jacaranda trees remind us with their cascading purple blossoms that we are once more entering the season of Advent where the purple is also displayed in worship. Like Lent, Advent bids us pause and reflect even within the most hectic time of the year. Even the shooting agapanthus keeps reminding us with its own purple that THE time is coming.

God, we need hope! We can’t rely on the market! That’s up and down like a Manly ferry crossing the Heads, also sending us pale. But hope cannot come without personal and corporate responsibility. Only when we avail ourselves to bring hope to others can we appreciate hope for ourselves.

It is interesting to read that the Parable of the Talents is immediately followed by the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats where we are accepted or rejected by the grace we extend “to the least of these”. Grace, hope, peace, trust and love dry up within us if we do not also pass it on. What Jesus does for us, we pass on even “to the least of these”, even to those who have failed the test of the parables of the bridesmaids and the talents.

These acts of grace, I believe, would have saved a lot of anguish in Europe. Just as motor parts grind when the oil is not applied, neither can any economy survive without the practice of grace.

We receive God’s gift of His beloved Son, born like us, and we pass it on.

This Advent we will hear Christmas Bowl stories of humble people who have been walking in the darkness of poverty, still looking for a great light, the good news of great joy of Jesus Christ expressing himself to them through our gifts that have first come to us in him.

May God empty himself again this time to you with his full expression of hope that this dysfunctional world still needs.

Four Predictables

1 Everything costs.

2 Everything and everyone falls short.

3 Only bastards rule.

4 We all depend upon the unpredictable grace of the strong.

"On New and Risky Paths"

I’ve been co-opted to go to Synod 2011, held this year in Newcastle. My most recent Road Directory that included Newcastle was printed in 1990, so that would account for my getting hopelessly lost last time I drove up there. Besides, the spine was falling apart on this venerable, well-thumbed, stained Directory so it has finally sunk into my slow brain that a new one might be a good idea.

Journeying into unknown territory requires travelling on new and risky paths and that is the theme for the Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia this year. The cover of the Agenda shows a stick man walking on a road leading to mountains where it climbs and twists. Down from the mountains, the road divides into two, one heading into thick bush while the other disappears into a labyrinth city of dark mazes.

Should the traveller find his way through either the bush or the city, he will find himself at crossroads. One road sends him off to a dead end, another over a cliff (aaaagh!), while on the remaining road he will encounter spikes in the middle of the path. Surviving that, he will have to cross a stream (glug!) before the road winds on into open space.

Our Synod has some new and risky paths to travel. There are too many Presbyteries each trying with shrinking resources to replicate managing increasing needs. As in other Synods interstate, some will have to come together to share the road. Our Boards of Education and of Mission have also had to merge resulting in the pain of some loss of resources including the ELM centre. We will have to work smarter because we will have to work with less. As one minister used to say, “We can’t keep robbing St Peter’s to pay St Paul’s.”

Not that these challenges ahead of us are anything new. Our readings from the Hebrew Scriptures tell the story in the Book of Exodus of God’s people travelling on new and risky paths. The route from slavery in Egypt to the promised land of Israel was every bit as contorted as that depicted on the cover page of the Synod agenda. God’s people grumbled and wanted to turn back. They rejected leadership and broke all the laws but God saw them through sea crossings and wilderness, nourishing them all the while until the survivors arrived at their promised destination.

The Gospels reflect this Exodus journeys with the first disciples of Jesus wending their way with him on new and risky paths, with Jesus himself taking the greatest risk of all.

Coming to mind are words from our Uniting Church creed –

“We are a pilgrim people,

always on the way to a promised goal;

on the way Christ feeds us with word and sacraments,

and we have the gift of the Spirit

in order that we may not lose the way.”

We do not necessarily want to go down new and risky paths, but that is the way of discipleship, and best of all Jesus leads the way.

The UK Riots

Like others, I noticed the sheer absence of responsible leadership.

I guess all one could do at the time was to pray for rain.

It reminded me of the Cronulla and Redfern riots in NSW writ large - both also happened in the summer.

There is something about non-achieving &/or bored young people and hot weather which acts like a human bush fire, lit when the opportune spark is produced.

One thing I did notice as well was the similarly spontaneous response, reminiscent of the London Blitz in the 1940s, of citizens of all kinds, with brooms and mops coming out at first light to clean up the mess.

Maybe the church was there in ordinary persons some of whom may occupy Sunday pews.

That is where the leadership has emerged, and that was the good news of the week.

The Good Word

The season for Parables has come round again. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus comes out with pithy images followed by sometimes short but involved stories. Many arguments still abound about what they all mean. Even 2000 years on, Jesus still keeps us guessing. There never comes a time when we can say that we have him all tied up. Even today, he is far ahead of us, waving for us to lift our stumbling feet to follow.

I think I have mentioned before about the way these parables come in sets and layers. Jesus begins with snapshots of the Kingdom of Heaven – mustard seeds, buried treasure, pearls, and dragnets. Later, stories develop. Towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel we read of talents, wise and stupid bridesmaids, and the sorting out of sheep and goats.

Taken together the message is plain. True fulfillment is found by encountering and accepting God’s new Kingdom in the way Jesus has revealed. To turn one’s nose up at it leaves one stewing in one’s own juice.

We may find this sense of judgment harsh. We want an inclusive world where no one gets left out but we cannot escape life’s hard realities that behaviour does become unacceptable when it damages other lives. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, damage can be caused by neglect as well as by offensive action.

It is impossible to get to first base with Jesus until the penny drops that the Kingdom of Heaven could only be launched into the world once Jesus had sacrificed himself for it to happen. Far too many become fixed with the idea that for the “right” thing to happen, others must suffer. The Kingdom of Heaven was not to be ruled over by a monomaniacal control freak who would terrorise those within range. Jesus stood this evil notion on its head. The Kingdom of Heaven would be ruled over by one who endured torture rather than inflict it.

Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that even with this self-sacrifice, there is no guarantee that everyone can be saved from stewing in their own juice, and too often the innocent are tragic victims of another’s evil acts. Jesus does not have his head in the clouds. He often comes out with hard realities and that choices have to be made. The good news is that these choices can be made, and the vicious spiral downwards can be halted once a change in direction occurs.

Coupled with the Matthew readings are those from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In my first years of conscious discipleship, I was guided by J B Phillips’ modern version of the Epistles which expressed Paul’s writings in English plain enough for a callow teenager to appreciate. My paperback has long disintegrated complete with my passionate underlinings of words, sentences and passages, and I must say that the Epistle to the Romans received the most attention.

For instance, Romans chapter 8 gave me much reassurance during my teenage mood swings constantly reminding me that nothing, no, nothing, could separate me from the love of God expressed in Christ Jesus. Romans chapter 12 presented me with the Disciple’s Charter for living and slowly channelled me into values and behaviour better fitting a dinkum disciple for life. I am sure this Epistle has been the most influential (for good) within the whole of human history. Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth are just a few who had their lives re-routed, not to mention the common variety of disciples who quietly become salt of the earth.

Parables and an Epistle written nearly 2000 years ago are still influencing countless numbers of people to re-think their priorities. When we wake in the morning to the radio news of yet more violent slayings and other traumatic events, the good news has not yet done being spread. Let’s be part of the good news.

Parable of the Weeds

SERMON CNR 1060

PENTECOST 5a Mosman 17 July 2011, 9.30am

Gen 28:1-19a; Ps 139:1-12, 23f; Matt 13:24-30, 36-43

“PARABLE OF THE WEEDS”

Matt 13:24-30, 36-43

1 BACK TO THE GARDEN

1.1 From the Parable of the Seeds

This is our 2^nd week into the gardening season.

Last Sunday, we would have heard Matthew’s account of the Parable of the Sower, or more accurately the Parable of the Seeds.

After all it was about what happened to the seeds.

That was Matthew’s introduction to the feast of parables of the Kingdom of Heaven which today follows last week.

These parable will crop up again until the final parable of the Sheep and the Goats towards the end of chapter 25.

1.2 Why I am not a gardener

Many of us will have heard these parables often enough to have worked out how similar this Parable of the Weeds is to that final parable.

It’s the same problem.

How do you tell the weeds apart from the wheat?

The adults in my home life decided when I was a boy that I should get stuck into gardening.

In those days, little boys had to start off, not by planting, that was the grown-up’s privilege, but by weed-pulling.

I tried my hand at some weeds but they were tough and hard for little boys to pull out.

There were other green things nearby that were much easier to pull out so I started pulling them out with much more enthusiasm.

Besides, they were conveniently in neat rows, not higgled-piggledy like those tough things.

An adult in my life came to hover over me and I looked upwards to receive well-deserved praise.

High-pitched agitated tones were not what I was expecting.

“You’ve pulled out all the plants I put in just yesterday!”

My budding career in horticulture came to an abrupt end and my fingers have none of that green tinge you would expect of normal gardeners.

2 GETTING TO THE DILEMMA

2.1 Weeds just show up (Matt 13:25)

When reading this parable, I’ve always wondered why it was necessary to put in the bit (v25) about enemies coming in to sow weeds.

Weeds just seem to show up in gardens.

Maybe they were here beforehand all those centuries before we occupied this country and began growing things we liked.

Maybe they came from seeds that from overseas aboard the old sailing ships or their cargo.

I’ll let you tell me about the weeds in your garden over morning-coffee even though I know you won’t ever want to let me loose in it.

2.2 Finding the classroom culprit

The parable is not so much about weeds but that hard fact that not only are they sometimes hard, to me at least, to distinguish them from the real thing, but hard to separate out without damaging the growing plants.

We would be living under a rock if we’ve not experienced this dilemma sometime.

We’ve been in a class in school when one student, generally a boy, of course, gets up to mischief.

The teacher comes in, sees the disruption and the damage, calls for the little miscreant to own up, and then listens to the longest innocent silence heard in that classroom for ages.

What does the teacher do?

With no one to punish, and the teacher’s authority at stake, the whole class is kept in, or misses out on that promised trip next week.

Should the teacher have punished the whole class because that little weed couldn’t be found out, or should have the teacher ignored the whole incident?

Any teachers here can tell me the answer over morning coffee?

2.3 Human Shields and Collateral Damage

Worse still are the war situations and the collateral damage that comes with them.

What should one do when a dangerous enemy is using human shields?

How can one ensure that one’s bullets are marked with “enemy only” on them?

Close to home, my father was a bomb aimer on Lancasters in WW2.

How could he ensure that his bombs landed on the military targets without some innocent person getting in the way?

3 GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL

3.1 The Barbary Sheep

This is the heart of the Parable of the Weeds.

How does one punish the guilty without affecting the innocent?

How does one punish a bad parent without the child still suffering?

You may try to reassure me that the final Parable of the Sheep and the Goats will help me tell the difference.

After all who can mix up a merino with an angora?

Last time I visited the Zoo down the road, I saw this beastie with curved horns and a long beard perched up on the top of a large rock.

“What a magnificent goat,” I burst forth.

I then read the sign – “Barbary Sheep”.

Perhaps I should have stuck to horticulture.

3.2 Portia to our Shylock

It always amazes me how Jesus came to this dilemma so early in his life and ministry.

He puts the brakes on our passionate rush to judgement.

He becomes the Portia to our Shylock.

More than that, rather than inflict judgement that would harm the innocent, he was prepared to endure it himself.

Within the heart of the dilemma lies the heart of the Gospel.

4 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

4.1 Groans of Frustration

Where does this leave us on this cold winter’s morn?

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul writes about the groans of frustration that we all go through.

And we go through them, even when we seek what is good, but evil keeps using that good as its shield.

The Book of Revelation reminds us when the archangel Michael is used to conquer the dragon of evil, that only spiritual power can overcome this super-human sabotaging force of evil.

4.2 Sorting out the dilemmas

Paul reassures us that we have been adopted by God himself.

This leads us open to receive something of the wisdom Jesus himself showed, to receive that continuous growth in maturity of the spirit that will help us recognise more of these dilemmas before we fall into those traps.

In all, we are helped to love beyond the anger and to await those times when dilemmas can be eventually sorted out.

Meanwhile, garden in peace!

AMEN

"The Spirit Bond"

I was touched very recently by the visit to Crete of several very elderly returned soldiers who had returned to pay their respects to their fallen comrades.

On what would have been their last opportunity to do so, these frail but proud men struggled against their growing infirmities to walk shakily but independently down the path to visit the memorial headstones.

When each veteran saw each name upon a headstone, it was if the spirit of that young soldier had suddenly emerged into the vision of the visitor who became young again for a moment as the memories of comradeship flooded back. The returned soldiers would resume their shaky journey to return again to safety but with the reassurance that there was some closure with the spirit of the fallen soldiers now at peace.

I hope I’m not becoming doddery in my mind as I have relatives fallen somewhere overseas. Great-uncle Alec lies with mates somewhere at Pope’s Hill, Gallipoli. Grandpa’s two first cousins, memorialised at Villers-Bretonneux, were last seen at Bullecourt and off the Fremantle coast respectively. That was WW1. During the second global conflict, uncle Arthur fell somewhere in the swamps outside Buna, New Guinea. Dad’s cricketing cousin Ken went down in a Short Sunderland over the Mediterranean.

Several cousins of my mother, were found and buried appropriately. For so many war casualties, however, no final resting place was ever found. In many cultures around the world, there is the belief that their spirits cannot rest until proper respect is made. In many cultures and belief systems, respect is continually paid to the spirits of departed ancestors.

I used to disparage such practices in my youth but when one becomes old enough to experience bereavement a continuing bond remains with the departed out of respect. I saw this in the bearing of these veterans returning to Crete and this would be true for many as the years turn over.

There is still that sense of mystery regarding the afterlife. The body is farewelled to the elements with all its molecules dispersed and recycled into new forms of stardust. The spirit stays on in the memory of the mourners and often invigorates the lives of those now holding the baton passed to them.

We are about to leave the Easter season and move into Pentecost. In the latter parts of John’s Gospel, Jesus shocks his first disciples with the news of his coming death. He reassures them that, though his body will be gone, the bond of his spirit will stay with them if they carry out what the Father had sent him to do.

Pentecost reminds us that we, part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, remain with Jesus in spirit. We pray through his name, we read about him regularly, we hear what God has to say to us, and we commemorate him at the table.

Our bond with him is strengthened because it is a bond of spirit. We can continue doing some of the things that Jesus used to do when we continue with his values. We may ourselves walk shakily one way or another but with our insight we have seen his face and we know we are a part of him and he with us.

SERMON CNR1059

EASTER 4a Mosman 15 May 2011, 9.30am

Ps 23; John 10:1-10; Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25

“GOOD SHEPHERDS”

John 10:1-18

Sheep Congestion

When I’ve been here, we’ve often talked about the traffic congestion along Military Road and how we’ve had to fight the good fight through the traffic. It may surprise you when I say that I’ve encountered congestion along rural roads across Australia. They weren’t other cars, but sheep, hundreds of sheep surrounding my little car as farmers and sheepdogs drove these woolly things along the road. I was tempted to bring one of these large flocks here this morning to add rural atmosphere and so they could hear about themselves. Baaaa!

The Good Shepherd Laying Down His Life

Adding the eight verses (Jn 10:11-18)

This morning, I’ve added 8 verses to the Gospel reading as it would be a shame to break off a good story before it gets to the punch line.

This whole story has become well engrained in our churches. There are stained glass windows of Jesus as the good shepherd, and this part of the story does not begin until v11 so really all the first 10 verses are leading up to this point.

Being a shepherd as the young David was before he became king of Israel is no easy job. You had to fend off wild beasts and sheep rustlers. Farmers used to tell me about foxes and wild dogs along with the occasional 2 footed predator. Our national song, “Waltzing Matilda” is all about a swagman shoving a jolly jumbuck into his tucker-bag.

Over my dead body

Sheep were guarded with one’s life. Jesus is described as the Door (v9) and the Good Shepherd (v11). To guard the sheep in their sheepfold, the shepherd would curl up in the doorway between his sheep and any predator. Literally, no one would take his sheep except over his dead body. Jesus is saying just that. “No one gets to my sheep except over my dead body.” Easter is all about what Jesus did to keep us secure in God.

Not a safe world

This is not a safe world. My alarm clock radio wakes me in the morning with the news, and it is mostly about bad news happening to people while I’ve been sleeping. People do such bad things to other people. It’s so tempting to bury my head under my warm doona and retreat into more sleep. But the good news is that our Good Shepherd has laid down his life for us sheep. We have not been fleeced, neither has the wool been pulled over our eyes. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

From Sheep To Shepherd

Breakfast on the beach

Another reason why I included the extra verses is that the story leads even further. One of the surprises about John’s Gospel is the way themes like this re-surface later on with a twist. You remember the story near the end of this Gospel in ch 21 where the risen Jesus meets his disciples for breakfast on the beach. He charges Peter to feed and tend his lambs and sheep. The disciples now become more than sheep. They become shepherds themselves, good shepherds.

“Other sheep that are not of this fold” (Jn 10:16a)

Back to this passage, from v16, Jesus talks about “other sheep that are not of this fold”.It was left to the first disciples to continue the good shepherding, and it is also left to us as his 21^st century disciples to be good shepherds.

“One flock, one shepherd” (Jn 10:16z)

The vision of Jesus remains, “one flock, one shepherd”. His sheepfold is too big for our imagination because he doesn’t want any of his flock to be left out. In ch 3, John writes of God loving the whole world, so that’s a big sheepfold. If we can look at this from God’s point of view, it does make sense. The strife we keep hearing and seeing on the news is caused because human beings want to define the sheepfold boundaries. Human beings want to keep defining who is in and who is out.

Defining black sheep

We have our own ways of defining who are the black sheep who must be kept out of our fold. Our church has spoken out, and quite rightly, too, about the way our successive governments have kept wanting to process asylum seekers offshore. All this excluding never works, of course. All that happens is pain and anguish, and we keep hearing from among them the voice of Jesus as he suffers with them yet again. We have to find ways of ensuring how this world can become an open sheepfold so that our first Good Shepherd can be recognised.

Ecumenical Convocation for Peace

Next week, three Uniting Church ministers, Terence Corkin, Tara Curlewis, and Chris Walker, will be travelling to Jamaica on our behalf to attend the International Ecumenical Convocation for Peace held between 17-25 May. The convocation calls for peace so that the world may know an open sheepfold where the sheep of this world may not be wolves to one another. For this to happen requires a lot of good shepherding. As the Father has sent the Son, so we are sent as good shepherds.

GRIEF PROOF?

My mother and grandmother were cooking in the kitchen when they ran out of greaseproof paper, so, being the small boy of the house, I was dispatched to run up the street to buy some more. Breathless, I ran into the grocer’s and asked for some “grief-proof paper”. The grocer peered over his half-moon glasses and sagely muttered, “Lad, there’s nothing grief-proof in this world.”

True, being the small boy of the house meant I was sheltered from many of the facts of life. I found adults whispering and when I asked my usual inquisitive questions, I heard what sounded to me like “little pictures have big ears”.

There had been a war on and when I had a few years previously asked for my Daddy, there was no way I could have understood that at the time of my asking he was likely then to have been somewhere up in the air in a Lancaster bomber on a night raid over Germany. Nor would I have understood that his brother, my uncle, had earlier been killed in Buna, New Guinea.

But, try as one does to protect children, time eventually seeps through the “grief-proof” covering and we do have to face the inevitable disappointments, the losses, and the failures in life. The longer this acceptance is put off, the harder the let down later on when eventual growing up has to take place.

This year of 2011 has been a hard one. We have witnessed scenes of utter devastation. Floods, fires, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, and God knows what next, have each pursued one another each outdoing the previous disaster in horror. We have caught the grief of people of all ages losing homes, livelihoods, pets, loved ones, when they have been separated from more than they can bear. We lose our own “grief-proof” cover just by what we have seen on the news.

How do we cope with the reality of disaster around us? How do we view and review life which brings undeserved tragedy to so many fellow human beings just like us? We fuss over the right flavours when others now struggle to find the mere staples. We waste water when others now queue for it in containers. We snuggle into our favourite pillows when others now camp together in unfamiliar noisy halls. It is only an accident of geography that has saved us from being them.

Lent brings to our attention that we follow a person called Jesus who wasn’t “grief-proof”. We follow some one who put his comforts aside to wander around the country with a seamless robe as his back-pack along with those who went with him. He taught and he healed. He was arrested like a criminal and died an undeserved cruel death, a fact from which we cannot “grief-proof” ourselves. There’s no leaping over it for a short cut to Easter morn.

Travelling with Jesus this Lent will strengthen our backbone when we face the griefs that come around us or even to us. The spirit he leaves with us seeds us afresh with hope. Hope is infectious the more we let it spread and there are so many who need it now and through the times ahead.

We don’t need “grief-proof” protection any more. On the way nail-marked hands hold ours and that’s enough to start afresh.

"THE GREAT FLOOD"

However it happens, a flood is devastating. Whether it rushes through carrying all before it as happened in Toowoomba or quietly rising in other places in Queensland to soak or dampen precious belongings it can prove traumatic.

Most of us were brought up with stories of the Great Flood and had long discussions as to how Noah managed his menagerie aboard the Ark. Stories of the Great Flood reach us in Genesis chapters 6 to 9, one from a southern tradition called “J” around 900BC, the other later around 597BC during the Jewish exile in Babylon from the priestly tradition called “P”.

Nevertheless, these stories had been around in various written forms for a long time beforehand. The first form of writing emerged nearly 5000 years ago in the area we now know as Iraq in that fertile area between the Tigris and the Euphrates, those rivers mentioned as early in Genesis as 2:14. This was the first known area and time when historical records were kept.

But the Great Flood story is even older than that. Before it hit print, or should I say “tablet”, stories like this had been handed down from generation to generation over thousands of years. This struck me when listening to some Aboriginal dreaming stories and the style of these stories reminded me of some of the early Genesis stories. They were meant to be heard rather than read. It also came home to me that these stories could be very, very old.

Our first peoples settled where we now live probably over 40,000 years ago. As soon as they learned how to understand one another’s words, they would have told stories. All over the world since humans could communicate with language, they told stories.

I cannot pin down the date, of course, but there are stories of how the Tigris and the Euphrates broke their banks and flooded the whole area. Paleontologists suggest one or two really big floods caused by climatic or other conditions, and it is likely this Great Flood we now read about in Genesis occurred at least 10,000 years ago covering southern Iraq which, of course, included Babylon.

One way or another the stories reached the whole area from different sources, one through the south in 900BC and the other picked up from the Babylonians themselves during the Hebrew Exile there.

In it the writers addressed the question as to why this inexplicable Great Flood happened and they recorded the message that the people had gone off the rails, so to speak. Even today, when disaster strikes, we wonder why it happens. Often we look for some one to blame. Hindsight is always perfect, as Jesus pointed out in Matthew 24:42-44 about “the thief in the night”. Much of our learning comes through finding out the hard way.

It’s not so simple as our ancestors did all those years ago to find scapegoats (established in Leviticus 16:7-10), and much as it would be tempting to do so, burrowing into the causes as to why things happen the way they do takes a lot of persistence and patience. We know so much more nowadays, but the challenge is to use it, loving God with our mind (Matthew 22:37).

While we are doing that, we remember Jesus in that same verse, called us to love God with all our heart as well and to love our neighbour as ourselves, to put ourselves in their position. Having one’s life turned upside down in a sudden disaster is unimaginable unless one has gone through that experience.

First we reach out to those undergoing this distress and on the way we may find the causes and make sufficient sense of it all to be equipped for the future.

Pilots and Prototypes

Isaiah 49:6

1 PILOTS AND PROTOTYPES

1.1 New Inventors

You’ve heard of pilot schemes or prototypes

where something is launched to see how it works before a pattern is made?

We’ve seen on “The New Inventors” inventions that have gone through prototypes.

Sometimes a pilot scheme may involve people.

It means more to us when we think of a pilot boarding a large ship to guide it into port.

One nervous captain asked the pilot.

“Do you know where the reefs are?”

“Not exactly”, confessed the pilot,

“But I do know where they’re not.”

Here at the beginning of 2011, it’s good timing to talk about prototypes and pilots.

1.2 Experience is a Pilot (Ps 40:3)

The lectionary readings this morning speak to us about prototypes and pilot schemes.

The composer of Psalm 40 sings to us from v3,

“He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God,

Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord”

Just one person experiencing God can be a pilot for others.

We worship together so that like coals in a fire we warm one another and keep one another alive.

Our very worship here this morning becomes a prototype for the world around us.

2 A LIGHT TO THE NATIONS (Isa 49:6)

2.1 Further than a flat earth

The reading from Isaiah re-inforces this.It goes further in 49:6.

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Israel.

I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Mind you, they thought the earth was flat at the time, but we know what is meant.

In fact, now we know that the earth is round, there’s no stopping, and therefore no excuse for stopping.

2.2 Experience is contagious

The servant is not to be just a pilot to raise up the tribes of Israel then in exile in lonely Babylon, somewhere in what is now southern Iraq.

No, it was going to be contagious.

The very fact that the servant would inspire his people would mean that the people once inspired would inspire the world.

We are in the season of Epiphany where the good news of great joy experienced in Bethlehem

is to be made known to inspire the world as we find it in 2011.

So, how are we going to do it?

3 ANNOUNCING THE PROTOYPE

3.1 The Great Pilot (John 1:29-34)

What happens to the babe of Bethlehem?

He grows up to be our great pilot, the prototype for all humanity.

The words put into the mouth of John the Baptist announces him as this great pilot,

our prototype as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” who gives the world a new lease of life.

Jesus is not just some other good bloke.He breaks the previous mould and becomes a pilot for us then and now.He undergoes baptism by water so that he may baptise with spirit.

He sets out before us as pilot and prototype so that we may follow in his footsteps throughout 2011 and forevermore.

3.2 The Disciple Magnet (John 1:35-42)

This becomes his active intention. This prototype, this pilot, becomes a magnet attracting disciples. This is the whole point.

He invites them and us to come and see, then follow him.

What is the point of a pilot if there is none to follow?

What is the point of a prototype if that is the end of it?

4 THE CHURCH

4.1 The Church enriched (1 Cor 1-9)

Paul continues this theme to the church in Corinth.

Those who follow Jesus, then and now, keeping affirming at worship together and in service outside that we are warmed by this great pilot and prototype of all humanity.

Paul writes about the church:

“being enriched in him” (1:5),

“not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1:7), and

that we shall be sustained to the end (1:8).

4.2 Refreshing the world

We are a fire never meant to go out but to catch others alight.We are in 2011, a fresh new year in the season of Epiphany.

The world is tired and needs refreshing with the prototype who is our great pilot.

Our task as the church in 2011 is to refresh the world with the hope we keep finding in Jesus who keeps refreshing us, and who sends us from here to refresh the world.

AMEN

Share Christmas!

I shall miss the Chasers from the ABC (Australia). Not all their stunts came off, of course, but there were a few classic masterpieces that I shall remember for their insight.

Once they gate crashed an AGM of one of those banks and made an appeal for its CEO to hire an unemployed bank worker. One of the Chasers read out the salary rate required, assessing that it would only cost this CEO his lunch- money. I think the CEO squirmed all the way back to his stockbroker.

Nothing infuriates us more than greed, and there is plenty of it about to get infuriated about. A group of billionaires was once interviewed and they were asked what they looked forward to in life. Their reply was simple and unanimous, “More!” Nothing scares us more than those who can never get enough, because we know that a lot of others are going to have to pay for it.

I do not have to relate to you the images of poverty brought to us from too many parts of the world. Your TV has the same channels as mine. Basic necessities for life are wanting for too many while we are embarrassed by choice and instant access. “What do we want?” “More!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” That sense of entitlement is growing whatever it costs others, and it does cost.

Advent is the time when we remind ourselves of the coming of Jesus and his new world order. I cannot find an instance where what Jesus wanted cost anyone else but himself. People who came to him were uplifted, often literally. He healed, he restored, he resurrected. Whoever approached Jesus benefited. Our own lives become enriched because his spirit comes to us. We become freed from the addiction to aggregate what we can. His spirit enables us to reach out to others so they are lifted up. We are lifted up when we act to lift others up, even as we know Jesus lifts us up. Eat your heart out, Gordon Gecko of “Wall Street”!

This is why the Christmas Bowl keeps working. During Advent we hear the stories of the way it does work, of how Jesus, through us, keeps uplifting those around the world who have experienced so little hope in their surroundings. We are not pouring endless resources down a bottomless pit. We are kick-starting others into possibilities for them to get going for themselves, just as Jesus himself kept kick-starting so many into life.

The lepers were made clean, the blind could see, a hand up was literally given to those on their sick-beds. We may not get to do anything so spectacular, but a little girl who is enabled to read, a family enabled to earn their own living, a village given access to clean water, and those who live in fear given hope, are a few examples of a hand-up that we have given and can continue to give.

Jesus’ coming is something we can still become excited about. We know his entry into human affairs keeps giving human beings that jump-start in life. There is more impacting to go, and we who have been impacted by him, now pass on that impact wherever we can.

That baby in the manger grew to give up more than his lunch-money to make this happen. That is why we don’t keep Christmas. No, we share Christmas. May the peace of this Christmas sustain and enrich you and yours well into the New Year.

The Word Made Flesh

(Sermon preached on Sunday 2nd January 2011 at North Ryde Community Church).

Still in the Christmas Season

Today is the 9th day of Christmas, and, if your true love is sending you 9 drummers drumming, it will be a noisy day for you.

Nevertheless, it is still the Christmas season. We can still recall the stories and infancy of Jesus, given to the world as the Christ for all time.

We can still celebrate the wonder of this incarnation as we stand at the threshold of the new year of 2011 with all the challenges and opportunities that it will bring.

In John 1:10, we read the version from John’s Gospel, the Word made flesh, or, as Charles Wesley put it, “Our God contracted to a span Incomprehensibly made man.”

“Incomprehensibly” is the word, particularly in this holiday season when even our brains are likely to go on holiday as well.

We’re having a well-earned break and you want us to get our minds around the Word becoming flesh for us.

The story of Pinocchio - My most influential religious film

Let’s not feel guilty about it. It has taken over 2000 years and the human cranium is still having some difficulty coming to grips with it.

This is why I have found the story of Pinocchio so useful. Some of us saw the film when we were small children. I would say it became one of the most influential films in my childhood.

When I am asked what was the most influential religious film I’ve seen, I raise eyebrows for replying, “Pinocchio”.

The condition for true humanity (Jn 1:10)

It is the story of Geppetto the woodcarver who carved a wooden puppet he named Pinocchio.

This lonely old bachelor carved him in the form of a son he’d wished he had and yearned that this puppet could be a real boy, free from strings and enabled to become truly human.

Geppetto gets his wish from the blue fairy but with the condition that Pinocchio can behave as a real human with all the humane qualities of humanity.

We start to see what it means for God’s Word to become flesh, and again the challenge is for this expression to behave as a real human with all the humane qualities of humanity.

Pilgrim’s Progress

The baby Jesus grew up to be a trailblazer for us, but Pinocchio becomes so much like us stumbling along the way. He becomes like the pilgrim in John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”. I found that book a bid hard and formidable to read, and way above my head.

Pinocchio? He was a child like me, and he was called to be a pilgrim to go on his journey towards true humanity.

Pinocchio is easily distracted by smooth talk to follow the line of least resistance.

A nose for truth (Jn 8:32)

Remember when we were children and we were told when we told a whopper that our nose was growing and growing and soon a little bird would come and build a nest on the end?

We’d get into all kinds of trouble trying to get around the truth. But here again, Jesus tells us through John’s Gospel (8:32), “You will know the truth and the truth will free you.”

Making asses of ourselves

Remember when our antics were described as making an ass of ourselves and how we could be exploited through our unwise decisions?

That is the point of becoming human of rising above those instincts that can trap into mere animal existence.

We see Pinocchio about to become trapped.

Pinocchio Made Flesh - Buried in Monstro (Mt 12:40; Jn 15:13)

Geppetto risks his life to rescue him and is swallowed by Monstro the whale.

Pinocchio, in turn, risks his own life to rescue the man he’d known as creator and father and, like him, ends up in Monstro.

Here, we remember the words from Jesus, this time from Matthew’s Gospel (12:40), “For as Jonah was 3 days and nights in the belly of the whale, so will the son of man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth.”

This refers to the ultimate self-sacrifice this Word made flesh would make, his crucifixion and resurrection, echoed back in John’s Gospel (15:13), “Greater love has no one that anyone should lay life down for friends.”

In the story, Pinocchio becomes entitled to become a living human being because he turns his back on making an ass of himself, or a puppet to others, and gives himself for the life of another.

Also sent (Jn 20:21b)

This is where the story of Pinocchio leads us back into John’s Gospel. The Word became flesh and came and stayed with us. He put his self-interest aside for every human being. So far, we know this.

But where does this take us in this new year of 2011 still within this season of Christmas?

Again, we find the context within John’s Gospel (20:21b), this time towards its end as Jesus breathes upon his disciples. “As the Father sent me, I also send you.”

As God sent Jesus to be truly human, so Jesus breathes upon us to be truly human that all may experience what it means to be truly human.

Jiminy Cricket

It is no coincidence, that Pinocchio was supplied with a companion, named Jiminy Cricket, to be his conscience and his guide.

An earlier film, “The Wizard of Oz” has Dorothy exclaiming, “Gee, gosh, jiminy cricket” as part of the expressions overheard from pious adults disguising their impiety.

The initials “JC” give it all away, don’t they?

This year we have the spirit of Jesus Christ as our constant companion and guide so that the decisions we make, together and personally, reflect the true humanity that has been presented to us through the Word made flesh.

AMEN