“PEOPLE ON THE MOVE ”

            

Where did your family come from? Delving into the stories of our forebears (Goldilocks had but three), I find mine just didn’t stay put. Born a 4^th/5^th generation South Australian I found my Manchester Ridings ancestors probably arrived there from Yorkshire centuries before. Some of my German ancestors (Nitschke) were in Poland with one line (Gehling from Gael-ing) settling via Denmark from France. These were Huguenots, and I have several other ancestors like them who scattered to parts of England (Coe from De Caux) and Ireland (Bunn from Le Bon).

No matter where I looked I recognised refugees who are now part of my becoming who I am. Ancestors of mine emigrated from religious persecution, political turmoil, war, financial hardship, hunger, and from even family disputes. They kept moving from places where they were not safe, taking risks in finding new homes in strange lands. What are the stories of your families?

When I look at the Christmas Bowl appeal, I still see desperate people forced onto the move. Some yearn to be able to return to their damaged homes to rebuild their shattered lives. Some are stranded for generations in makeshift slums we call displaced persons camps. Others flee far away to find fresh places where they are allowed to settle.

On the poster this year we can read the plea, “Show you care this Christmas” and one of the calls is to help Burmese refugees have enough to eat until it is safe to return home. You can be assured that our gifts are not wasted. Like some of our ancestors, people today have no choice but to find safety somewhere and to survive until they can again stand on their own feet.

We will hear again the story of Jesus born in a stable that was away from home. We will remember how Joseph and Mary took him even further away because he was in danger. We see this story re-enacted not just in our Nativity plays but also lived out, as we read this, in the lives of countless children who are at risk by staying where their families used to call “home”.

There are reasons why people cannot stay put. When you look at it people have been on the move since humans came into being. I am sorry to say that they have not always been welcomed by those who have arrived before. History is littered with hard examples, and still goes on too close to home even as I write this. But when we do welcome those coming to us with our support, we are welcoming Jesus himself because he remembered all too well what it was like.

Show you care this Christmas! God has done so through Jesus.

“WHAT IS FAIR?”

           

What is our place in God’s world? Synod is looming with some thorny issues and difficult decisions. Social Justice Sunday is upon us. The challenge of ethical choices within a world not known for fairness stalks us relentlessly.

The recent re-telling of the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-16) brought back to my mind an historical event in Australia just over a century ago. High Court Justice Henry Bournes Higgins (1851-1929) brought down a judgement establishing the basic wage as a fair and reasonable return for work done that enabled a family of five to survive. A son of a Methodist minister, he would have heard his father preach on this parable and I would like to think that it remained in the back of his mind when he considered his judgement.

The story also reminded me of today’s employment difficulties for the young with little work experience, for the older workers past their peak, income discrimination based on gender, and for those with disabilities, whether from birth or acquired, who are unable to compete in the labour market.

Whatever is trumpeted about the market, we cannot say that is fair. Both business and politics are practised in a “hard ball” way with no quarter given to any vulnerability. This parable still embarrasses those of us who, consciously or unconsciously, evaluate human life and dignity according to economic worth.

Jesus, as usual, turns such thinking on its head. God wants us, so Matthew’s gospel tells us, to look at people regarding their needs rather than their worth. It becomes a decision made not just about “bottom line” figures but involving moral and ethical choices which cannot and must not be evaded.

We use the word “grace” for a number of things. I had a great-aunt and now a great-half-niece both named Grace. We say grace before meals. The grace features in the Benediction. Grace is God providing space for us to breathe in a world that attempts to confine us within the straightjackets of our human invention.

Every one of us breathing depends upon the unpredictable grace of those stronger than us. The market has no grace. That alone comes from God as expressed through Jesus Christ. Those around us can only know grace when it is can be demonstrated and thus recognised. Thus the least deserving labourer in the vineyard experienced the evaluation of his need rather than what his labour was worth. We have the opportunity to act like the householder in the parable rather than like the earliest labourers and thus show grace is still possible.

“THE CHATTERING TREE”

           

Have you noticed the “chattering tree” on your way to North Ryde Community Church? It’s a huge tree (you can’t miss it) on the corner block facing our church. Each time I arrive this tree is alive, its leaves hiding a mass of resident birds of differing species loudly discussing their accommodation arrangements with their neighbours.

There are other noticeable things available. When the bottlebrush trees alongside Cutler Parade are in bloom, each tree quivers full of lorikeets feasting upon the nectar. In the front of the North Ryde Community Aid Centre you can notice community beds of flowers and of vegetables and herbs growing.

Perhaps we may have been in too much of a hurry or have too many things on our minds to notice any of these things. God has so much to show us and we do mean sometime to stop and smell the Manse roses but procrastination is always something we put off trying to correct.

We are entering that long part of the season of Pentecost where we are called upon, according to “With Love to the World” to “focus on God’s creation and reflect on our own faith journey”. We are often so busy trying to keep on top of things that we miss the simple messages of creation all about us. We ignore them at our peril and at the peril of those who will come after us who may well find them no longer there when it is too late.

Less and less we taste the locally grown food and depend upon imports from God knows where. Not only is the little community garden next door to our church hardly noticed but its purpose to encourage attenders at the Centre to participate in the nurture of these plants. In times of disadvantage, an ability to grow and prepare one’s own food can mean the difference between dignity and despair, between self-reliance and dependency. And it is only when we begin to notice our environment that we find our proper place within it.

I suspect that El Nino is arriving in what is turning out to be a dry time for us where water and therefore some foods become all the more precious through their scarcity. The bowling green lawns look brown. Watering is taking place this winter because the rains are spasmodic.

All these are signs that we are neglecting our environment – the creation of God. Our farmers continue to find rural life more difficult with our cities becoming more congested by default. Country bridges, the lifeline to many communities, fall into disrepair because resources seem only available to develop high-rise urban living.

The sign of the chattering tree is that of God telling us something about his creation. In Jesus Christ we have been given the opportunity for new life, not just for us, but for our community, not only for ourselves but for all life placed around us. When we stop for a moment, we may hear the cries of people treated badly, near and far away. We may experience in the changes of our climate that we have not treated our environment much more kindly than those seeking asylum. We find to our horror we are capable of great cruelty and indifference when what we want is put at risk in any way. Nature and human victims cry out like the murdered Abel in Genesis ch 4 from the ground on which we stand.

We remember Jesus who did not shrink from putting himself at great risk so that we may have life abundant. Our call to discipleship is to include others and our environment to taste this great life which God has given to us.

“A SEA OF REEDS”

            S E R M O N CNR1073                              

Pentecost 14a (24)           North Ryde Community Church 14 Sep 2014, 9.30am

Exd 14:19-31; 15:1b-20f; Matt 18: 21-35; Rom 14:1-12

1          A MESSAGE FROM SANTORINI (Exd 14:19-31)

            1.1       Mt Thera blows its top

Around 1540BC was not a very good time

and should you visit the Greek island of Santorini you would see why.

Back in those ancient times there was a certain Mt Thera

and it was a volcano, a very active volcano.

Around 1540BC following earthquakes in the region Mt Thera blew its top.

Certain records describe from miles away

a tall pillar of cloud surging high into the sky during the day

turning into a pillar of fire by night.

Huge waves formed a tsunami which crashed

into what was left of the ancient Minoan civilisation on the island of Crete.

It surged further southward into the Nile delta in Egypt.

1.2       Pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exd 13:21-22)

Why have I told you this ancient story

and how do we know this great event was recorded?

Did we not read in Sunday School in those days before LiftOff

that certain groups of former slaves were leaving Egypt

under their leader Moses,

and how they were guided in Exd 13:21-22 by

“a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night …

a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night … and did not depart from before the people.”?

They were not to know the origins of this pillar as we can now know

but to the children of Israel this was their deliverance out of slavery in Egypt.

1.3       The Tsunami

They were not to know how after such a volcanic event

the waters were sucked in before flooding back with a vengeance.

It just so happened these children of Israel were trying to get across

the “Yam Suph” or the “Sea of Reeds” within the Nile delta,

mistakenly confused with the Red Sea.

Just in time, the waters that blocked their path retreated as if sucked out,

as indeed it was.

The children of Israel saw this opportunity and made it across the other side

before the waters came surging back to catch the pursuing Pharaoh’s army and drown them.

1.4       The miraculous deliverance

We who know about tsunamis, at least since 2004, know how it happened while back then no one then could possibly have known

how this miraculous deliverance happened.

It matters not because for the children of Israel

it still was a miraculous deliverance that changed forever their future

as a people in the hands of God.

And that is the point of this Exodus story.

Deliverance from certain disaster focuses the mind

on what really matters in life.

2          THE PARABLE OF THE MEAN SERVANT (Matt 18:21-35)

2.1       The thousand dollar debt (Mt 18:24)

Which is why our Gospel reading draws our attention

as to how Jesus in his coming to deliver us from the disaster of ourselves focuses our attention on our future directions.

This parable on forgiveness is a case in point.

Here we have a ruler out to collect his debts

from those to whom he had lent money.

There were no banks then.

Kings owned the wealth so their subjects had to borrow from them

to get their start in business.

Servant No 1 owed in our currency about $1000 and wasn’t doing very well so the king was about to foreclose

and to have him and his family sold into slavery to pay his debt.

2.2       An unexpected forgiveness (Mt 18:27)

Servant No 1 was not happy about this arrangement.

After much pleading and grovelling and bargaining,

he was forgiven his $1000 debt altogether,

which was actually more than he’d expected.

O for a kind bank manager like this, or at this time of the year, the ATO.

2.3       The two dollar debt (Mt 18:28)

Servant No 1 emerged into the sunlight breathing again.

He suddenly spotted Servant No 2.

He grabbed the poor unsuspecting fellow by the throat

(we were going to re-enact this parable except for our safety regulations).

Servant No 1 loudly demanded Servant No 2 pay Servant No 1

the $2 he owed him.

The spluttering Servant No 2 didn’t have any money on him at the time,

so Servant No 1 led him firmly by the ear and had him locked up in prison

for depriving Servant No 1 of his $2.

As was once put Servant No 1 was mean enough to take the holes out of a harness strap.

2.4       The small debt part of the bigger debt (Mt 18:31-35)

This did not go down well with the neighbours, nor with the king.

“OK”, he said, “all bets are off”.

Servant No1 had it coming to him because that’s how he treated Servant No 2 for the mere 0.2% of the amount owing.

For those of you who have been secretly calculating

these financial transactions on your electronic security blankets,

you will have picked up that not only was the 2^nd debt 0.2% of the 1^st debt,

it was also part of the 1^st debt that would have been owed back to the king

in the 1^st place.

So, the money Servant No 2 owed Servant No 1 wasn’t Servant No 1’s money in the 1^st place.

3          A NEW OUTLOOK (Rom 14:1-12)

3.1       Christ the Lord of Living and Dead (Rom 14:9)

Which is what Paul was explaining to the Romans in his epistle to them.

Just as the children of Israel under Moses were miraculously delivered

from disaster to face their future under an unexpected freedom,

so we have been miraculously delivered from ourselves through Jesus Christ.

Both the Gospel and the Epistle bring to our attention

that because we have this new lease of life through Jesus Christ

then our outlook changes.

3.2       God tears up the debt

We cease to measure the list of wrongs done to us by others

because we have experienced God, through Jesus Christ,

tearing up the list of wrongs we have done in our time.

God could well run an eternal ICAC and Royal Commission forever

over the wrongs human beings have done and keep on doing to one another.

God, instead through Jesus Christ,

as Paul has reminded the Romans and others,

has torn up this unsurmountable debt.

Because we have this new freedom, we are freed to have a fresh outlook, imitating the outlook God has expressed to us through Jesus Christ.

This remains his message to us and, through our outlook,

our message to the world

so the world may come through its own Sea of Reeds and live in hope.