“JESUS IS COMING”

 

            I was early for worship and I was a little down that morning. I trudged in to find my seat and noticed the choir practising for Advent. Suddenly they burst out with, “Jesus is coming. O yes I know!” with such vim and confidence that my spirits shot up like a dog stung by an ant.

            It’s been a difficult year for so many of us in so many different ways. Changes come our way whether we will them or not. Our lifestyles are reduced by the downsizing of our lives and we grieve for what we had and what we could do.

The news outside puts our little crises back into the first world bracket. Whoever first wrote, and I suspect the prophet Joel, “There shall be blood and fire. The sun shall not give off its light and the moon shall turn to blood” seems to be referring to the morning Al Jazeera news on SBS each time I turn it on. If you want to know what I pray during the news, the prayers are laments and intercessions as the common people suffer while their leaders muddle. How long, O Lord, how long, my insides wail silently.

“Jesus is coming. O yes I know!”  Whatever is happening to each of us and all of us anywhere, we can now sing this affirmation as the budding agapanthus outside ushers in Advent joining with the already ubiquitous jacaranda. In fact, throughout this spring the flowers in their diverse harmony of colour speak the colours of the rainbow to us when our spirits descend into grey.

Living in Arrunga among the aches and pains of looming age, I can look out on the rose bed where the carefully tended square garden of roses still flaunts its living beauty. On the way into RNSH for my haemodialysis, we pass garden after garden in the streets of bouganvillia with a glimpse of Illawarra flame tree and liquid amber with the emerging Christmas bush. Each in its own way and from its own place, they cry peace through beauty and hope after winter.

I can’t help noticing the landscape of most of these places wrecked by conflict, covered with stones, rubble, and dust, the only colour being the clothing of survivors fleeing to God knows where, crying for help from God knows whom.

“Jesus is coming. O yes I know!” We hear these words ringing in our ears and in our hearts even from the colour in the flowers around us. Would that we could send all these colours to those for whom their environment for the forseeable future is the greyness of endless dust. How will they know the hope we can now sing? Well, we have the Christmas giving tree, the Uniting World giving scheme, and our Christmas Bowl, plus many other opportunities to send hope somewhere that needs to hear what our choir sings to us.

Forget those congested shops encouraging children to visit “Satan” as one typo affected blurb put it and to buy one of those floor sized lime green and purple plastic pencil-sharpeners on special. Bethlehem sends out a quieter but longer lasting gift to all the world in all its wretchedness, one who brings beauty and colour and peace more reliable than whatever we can anxiously muster.

“Jesus is coming. O yes I know!”

“CORNELIUS”

            The Apostle Simon Peter, deemed the Rock of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, had been sent away with a flea in his ear by that upstart Paul from Tarsus. This humiliating story is told in Galatians chapter 2 when Paul rounded on Peter why he believed that all Christians, whether Jewish or not, should live the same as Jews.

            The Galatians themselves were an example of this unnecessary victimisation. They had little or no background in what we call the Old Testament so Paul had to start from square one to present to them the good news about this Jesus whom he called Christ. This epistle is the result of the events in Acts 14:8-23,27. After Paul had left, the area was visited by Christians from Jerusalem determined to ensure the Galatians Christians filled in the missing Jewish gaps.

This included the whole law of Moses, especially the dreaded Leviticus, including the stipulation that all faithful males be circumcised (ouch!), a painful practice from which we males are thankfully now exempt. And Peter had, without thinking this through, had gone along with this. Paul was livid at this misguided leadership display when they met at Antioch and told Peter so.  

The flea in Peter’s ear had not retreated when he arrived at Joppa (Acts 10). While waiting for lunch, he dozed off on the roof and dreamed of all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds coming to him and a command to kill and eat from them. Being still a good Jew, Peter protested to God, quoting from Leviticus as one does as if God cannot read, aghast at eating anything “common or unclean”.

Back came the voice, “What God has cleaned, you must not call unclean.” The penny was beginning to drop for Peter as he was invited to visit the centurion Cornelius from the Italian Cohort, as Gentile as they come. The rest is history continuing into Acts chs 11, 15. Several of the chapters in Acts are out of sequence when first compiled but once sorted out the message becomes clearer.

Because of that historic meeting between Peter and Cornelius, stimulated by Paul, the good news of Jesus Christ has come down to us. Peter probably accompanied Cornelius when he returned to Rome so here we are.

We are here because our spiritual ancestors were prepared to step out of their comfortable box to include those they had previously left out. Cornelius keeps coming to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church through our yesterdays and today, knocking on the door, strangers to what we have become used to, to seek inclusion.

Cornelius comes from different ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, from women seeking ordination, from those with all sorts of disability, and from people of differing and diverse sexual orientation. That voice still comes back to us, again and again, just when we thought we were comfortable in our own familiar ways, “What God has cleaned, you must not call unclean.”

“LEARNING THE GREEN THUMB”

            I was never meant to have green thumbs. Some authority adult guided me when I was a boy to a garden bed and bid me pull out some tough looking things called weeds then left me to it. They were certainly tough weeds and the novelty of this new experience soon wore off once my hands started protesting.

            Much more inviting were similar looking plants nearby and I found them much easier to pull out. The authority adult returned to scrutinise what I’d done and I looked up with my beaming smile to receive my well-deserved praise. Instead a thundery brow loomed down on me, “You stupid little boy. You were meant to pull out those infernal weeds, not those flower plants I planted yesterday.” Sigh! Ever since then I’ve been guilty of watering plants that ought not to have be watered and leaving unwatered those plants that ought to have been watered. Gardeners, have mercy on me!

            How that reminds me of Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds found in Matthew 13:24-30 among the parables of growing things. Weeds are defined as plants in the wrong place. They have a special habit of sneaking among the “good” plants and using them as shields when human hands reach down to uproot them. I am sure other would-be gardeners have caused some collateral damage in finding they have uprooted the wrong plants in their tidying up the garden patch.

            The gardener in this parable is fortunately very wise. Obviously having heard of my experience in my boyhood attempts at horticulture, he hesitates to let his staff loose on his garden at this point, preferring to wait until the reapers can better distinguish the crops.

            If only we could take this to heart more often today. Over this year or more, two great ancient cities have been destroyed before our televiewing eyes.

Aleppo was known to me in my childhood as a prominent trading centre, and Mosul was just across the River Tigris (one of the first rivers mentioned in the Bible) from even more ancient Ninevah, capital of ancient Assyria, known to us from the Book of Jonah and other parts of our Old Testament. To see such ancient history destroyed before our eyes is enough, in itself, to make one weep.

            Aleppo and Mosul have been unlucky to be caught up in two not unrelated wars continuing side by side. Invading forces have determined to root out militant resistance hiding within those cities among the terrified citizens. On this morning’s news, I learned that 40,000 civilians in Mosul have been killed, and God knows how many before in Aleppo.

            Tragically absent in all of the falling of Aleppo and Mosul is the wise words of the gardener in this parable. The “weeds” defending their patch in these respective cities have been hiding behind the civilians, effectively using them as human shields. Families able to flee are caught in the cross-fire, escaping one danger and succumbing to another. Just seeing their distressed faces and hearing their stories of unrelenting crises brings out the lament in me. Good Lord! Where are you?

            We hear excited shouts of victory with guns let off into the air and flags flying as if returning from a footy match where our team has won. The weeds have been taken out, yes, but what a pyrrhic victory with even more civilians, children, women, and men, those who couldn’t get out of the road in time, the casualties numbering much more than these “weeds”.

            Just imagine these cities were ours, every place bearing our postcode number reduced to unlivable rubble, family members, friends and neighbours no more to be seen or heard and we reduced to living from crisis to crisis. Not even a church building for shelter. Doesn’t bear thinking about it, does it?

            All this has happened before, of course. During the Normandy invasion after D-Day, the ancient city of Caen was bombed by the Allies to flush out German defenders, who had already retreated. Look up for yourselves the number of civilian citizens who perished in what was then considered a necessary act. “C’est la guerre!” was the resigned shrug.

            It’s so easy to plunge right in when wrongs need to be righted without considering the collateral damage which may well exceed the worth of the effort made. The number of civilians caught in crossfire by being in the wrong place at the wrong time because of human irresponsibility should sit heavily on human conscience while God weeps over the loss of human beings loved by him and by one another, future doctors, teachers, prime ministers, scientists all necessary to the future of their communities.

            Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers, as Tennyson keeps reminding us.

We may know this parable but we also need to have the wisdom to remember it when tough decisions are being made.

“THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT”

Mothers’ Day this year was significant for those who remembered our mothers now long gone. It is amazing to hear the stories from so many who felt their mothers still with them in spirit guiding or just being there for them in times of uncertainty and challenge.

Looking back, I would say, no matter what our age, we remain influenced and inspired by inner voices from our past representing the people now no longer with us. In an uncertain world with uncertain values and goals, we depend upon those influences to help see us do. It may be simplistic to discuss, “What would Jesus do?” when there are factors in what confronts us completely unknown in his time. Churches have held many councils to try to work out how best to follow the way of Jesus for the time.

That period between Easter Day and Pentecost is the time when the disciples of Jesus Christ accept that Good Friday was not the end of the story but that Jesus remains unconquered despite the worst that could be hurled at him and still can be hurled at his disciples, past and present.

First is the promise that although Jesus has left us in the flesh, we need not feel abandoned. The disciples had felt this on that Good Friday. We feel it today when a chapter in our lives slams shut when a loved one is taken forever from our midst. Where do we go from here? Time and time again, we have heard Jesus’ words about leaving his spirit, coming from God, with whoever loved and followed him, then and now, as a “paraclete”, one who comes alongside and even stays within. As a child remarked when taking Holy Communion, “We take a little piece of Jesus home within us.”

Jesus ascends to the Father, leaving his guarantee to us as his church. How do we know his spirit is alive and well within and among us? Paul wrote about this to the Galatians in chapter five. I won’t quote the verses leading up to verse 22 because I don’t have your mother’s permission to expose you to the bad things that were, and probably still are, got up to in a dreadful world. But these words in verses 22 and 23 have become for me the yardstick by which I measure Christ in me (and see where I have a long way to go).

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.”

These words returned to me recently when some of us farewelled a quiet and much beloved friend. I had found him the gentlest of men, embodying the fruit of the spirit left behind by Jesus Christ for us to live and show the world that such values are not only possible but so necessary if anything in this world is ever going to work. Our friend has gone but we can take on board the fruit of the Spirit now passed on to us to flourish in us.

This is why Jesus breathed on his first disciples to receive his spirit and those who lived this life of discipleship have left this spirit so that we who are still left may continue to let the fruit of the Spirit continue to flourish (even if I have mixed my metaphors again).

Now through science, we have access to know all about the molecules that came from the Big Bang, recycled through us, then on to eternity. But science steps back when it comes to defining how the fruits of the spirit came about. We know the fruits of the spirit are the ongoing creation by God through Jesus Christ to us and beyond.

When we turn on the news only to hear a further act of evil destroying so many innocent lives in Manchester and elsewhere, it so so easy to give into the fear and hate whipped up by populist demagogues. But Jesus never gave into evil as we well know. Paul describes his nature. The fruits of the spirit are the results of who Jesus was and what he did and these are what have now been passed to us to cherish and in our own time pass onto those who come after us.

Without the fruits of the spirit, nothing ever works. And this world we go out to and live in needs them right now. Go in the Spirit because the Spirit is among and within you!

“IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS”

          

            Easter holidays are coming and right across Australia plans are underfoot, as they are for any holidays, on the best ways to enjoy a good break from work and school. There’s footy to watch, sailing on the river, camping in the bush, perhaps a tour away from the traffic congestion to somewhere more exotic.

            Australians look forward to holidays. Maybe somewhere along the line some one may pause to ask if anyone knows what the holiday is for. Amongst the shrugs a voice plaintively utters something about chocolate eggs and bunnies so a toast is raised to chocolate bunnies and the show moves on.

            The media don’t help that much. Amongst all the special days in the year, when did you last see or hear Ash Wednesday mentioned? The day before, certainly, but the season of Lent has now been all but forgotten in the public eye.

Conspicuous consumption continues its reign uninterrupted by little known seasons like this.

            Mentioning Lent does not boost sales, the market cries. Closing down for respect for Good Friday is considered a nuisance. Paying penalty rates for working Sundays and any other special day when work has to be done is grizzled about. In all, we are encouraged to forget the reason for the season.

            The culture we now live in today is at pains to airbrush the name of Jesus from society. It is socially taboo to talk about him even to mention him as an historical figure. Certainly, bringing to anyone else’s attention, his self-sacrifice on Good Friday, particularly if others are in the middle of a good time, is being the wettest blanket of all. Try raising the reason for the season this Easter.

            I had an unforgettable experience the first time I walked into Holy Spirit Catholic Church. As soon as I’d come through the doorway, there confronting me was a life-sized, life-coloured crucifix with the bleeding Saviour of this world draped awkwardly from it. In that church there was nowhere else to look. I was left in not the slightest doubt what it was all about.

            It’s easy for even us disciples of Jesus Christ to become so caught up in the business of church and of life itself that we can erase from our minds that it is all about Jesus. Jesus is no narcissist even in an age where narcissism is thrust into our faces almost everywhere we turn and that is the point. Where “fake news”, “alternative facts”, and “disinformation” become fashionable, the idea of self-sacrifice is shoved off the radar even at Easter.

            So, what we are called to do during the rest of Lent coming up to Easter is to ensure that in the living of our lives this time is all about Jesus. Put your head inside the doorway of Holy Spirit Church and get the picture. Everything else is meant to fit behind the one whose kingdom is not pre-occupied in bombing civilians or cornering the global market but rests in the spirit where love, joy, peace, goodness, gentleness, and self-control become currency for now and the future, just as Jesus showed us in spades.

            Yes, it’s all about Jesus and the sooner the world is exposed to this truth the better it will be for the future.