"HANDING OVER"

No matter what we do or how long we do it there inevitably comes a time when we need to be planning an exit strategy.

Those who live in houses for a very long time find that the back yard appears to have grown larger over time. Those steps become steeper and those corners seem to become increasingly inaccessible. An exit strategy becomes necessary towards downsizing according to our needs and the limit of our capabilities.

Sometimes it is the work we do and the looming need to hand over to some one fitter. I have experienced this over the last few months when the time approached for me to retire from Aged Care honorary chaplaincy ministry. I retired last August from Thomas Bowden Retirement Village after 15 years and during May from the LCM Calvary Homes in Ryde after 20 years. Naturally, I was anxious about handing over so that the ministry there could be maintained after mine ceased.

During this time my mind was drawn to the story of Elijah handing over to Elisha as described in 2 Kings chapter 2. Much of this story is written within an ancient context but the familiar pattern is there. Elijah was given an inevitable exit strategy and I’m sure his feelings were mixed as were Elisha’s. Elisha had big shoes to fill so he asked, “Let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” (v9) This was an ambitious request but we see in the following chapters that Elisha carried on this important prophetic ministry in his own style.

We are now once more into the season of Pentecost where we live out our own inheritance of the Spirit breathed upon us by Jesus Christ. The inwardly warming tongues of flame and the invigorating rush of mighty wind at the first Pentecost has come down through the spiritual generations to us. We are called to ensure this same spirit flows down to those coming on after us. The Spirit is  contagious!

We all have a spirit (Rom 8:16). Even now we remember those who have been influential in our becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. We may or may not have received a double portion of their spirit but we acknowledge that something of their spirit has come across to us. Some of our mentors may have passed on like Elijah but they have left for us their inspiration for us to experience and to pass on. As the burning coals in the grate come and go each in their own time, the fire is kept going.

This is the story of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, warts and all. This is your story and mine, our story. We have a heritage to leave so the gift of mentoring becomes all the more Christ’s call to us. We will not in time be able to keep doing what we are called to do but what is being done still needs to be done even though it will be done in new and different ways. We cannot guarantee clones of ourselves and just as well because we are not the last word in what we do and there are always better ways to come according to the evolving times.

This is the time to pass on what we have received so that a sick and brutal world may glow not with the fires of self-destruction but with a burning hope for a more collaborative future within today’s context of the ongoing Spirit.

“ROTTEN TOMATOES”

My next door neighbour has been picking tomatoes of a bush in a pot. This tomato bush emerged from the pot after she put on some of her compost on some other vegetables she had planted. Apparently she threw an over-ripe tomato into the compost and a seed survived to sprout again.

Whoever thought that out of rotten tomatoes would come fresh unexpected fruit. Is God trying to tell us something?

There’s a sense of Easter here. Out of something dead has come something living. Everyone is surprised. That’s the story of Easter.

As Lent moves on with the crepe myrtle flowers of the Indian summer to remind us with their deep purple blooms with variations of red, we join Jesus in his long journey as again he sets his face toward to Jerusalem the place where they stone prophets.

Like Peter and the others, we beg him not to go where nothing good could happen to him but he looks at us sadly and trudges on relentlessly. It all goes horribly, horribly wrong. We feel his humiliation at the hands of the cruel and his abandonment as his disciples turn their backs on him feeling that God has done so as well.

I won’t go down that path to describe what it must feel like to be nailed to a piece of wood which is jolted into the hole dug for it on top of a hill shaped like a skull. We will, like those who still loved him, follow at a safe distance, and yes, too, silently beat our breasts.

He will be taken down, put away in a borrowed tomb and the stone rolled across to keep body snatchers out. His body will be left behind as past history, perhaps remembered, perhaps not. His friends will meet and wring their hands. It is all over.

Stop the presses! It is not all over. He is not dead. He has risen. Disciples are excited with joy and become apostles with tireless feet. The rest is history, our own history, and it still goes on.

So, where is Jesus now?  In my youth we used to sing a chorus with the words, “You ask me how I know he lives. He lives within our hearts.” It’s more than looking at the story this way and that to make sense out of it all. The story becomes an experience for us and still goes on even though we walk through the shadows of death.

We don’t particularly like change, well, not if we have no say in it so often the case. From the time we are born until the time we die, we keep on changing often without even knowing it although there are times when it can be very sudden. Things and people we are used to are replaced by those we are not.

It also happens with churches even if we want to sing “and nothing changes here.” During April, the Easter season, several of us will be attending Synod 2013 at Knox College where we will be obliged to face uncomfortable changes outside of our control. We will have to learn how to work smarter rather than harder, learning good stewardship of shrinking resources just when the need is greater. In so many ways, we are called to walk the dying and rising again experience.

The church is not meant to avoid these experiences of the world into which we are sent. Somewhere deep down in us often where we can’t always find it is that little seed escaped from something that is forever gone.

After Easter will come Pentecost where the church acknowledges that though the body of Jesus has gone his spirit has chosen our flesh to clothe our new life for the sake of the world. Remember, Jesus Christ has breathed on his disciples so that we receive his spirit, so that just as the Father sent him so he sends us.

May the death and life of Jesus grow within you!

"The Spiritual Body"

1 THE GOSPEL THAT GOT ME INTO TROUBLE (Jn 2:1-11)
1.1 Methodist Book of Offices
Of all the Gospel passages, this one has got me into the most trouble.

In my old Methodist days in the ministry I used to conduct my weddings from the Methodist Book of Offices.

We always began with the reference to this recorded early miracle by Jesus at a wedding.

It surprised me no end at how informed everyone seemed to be about this Gospel story and that Methodist ministers were sworn off this wine that Jesus had appeared to have created out of water.

Invariably I was questioned about this apparent contradiction.
They may have known little else about the Bible but they all knew this story.

1.2 Candidating for Methodist ministry (1961)
In the days of my entry into the ministry, all candidates were ushered into an austere wood-panelled room,
lined up inside the door facing a long table
surrounded by the fathers of the Methodist Conference,
each in their black suits with those gleaming clerical collars.

I was warned beforehand that one of the last questions asked of each of us was whether we had sworn off spirituous liquors, and sure enough this happened.

I have over the years studiously avoided preaching on this passage fearing riots among the congregation.

So, having said this, we shall return to this passage after a short visit to Corinth.

2 CORINTH (1 Cor 12:1-11)
2.1 The isthmus of Corinth
We need this brief visit to get into why Paul wrote what he did when he did.
On your next trip to Greece, have a look at Corinth.

It’s stuck in that narrow neck separating those land masses in Greece to the north and south and separating the Ionic and the Aegean Seas.

Everyone travelling by land or by sea then had to go through Corinth.

To avoid the Mediterranean westerly gales, ships and their goods were transported across the isthmus by imported heavy lifters, so it ended up peopled by a throng of diverse cultures and not a place you would want to frequent at night.

2.2 Speaking in tongues
This diversity was reflected in the church founded by Paul with all sorts of factions mainly based around respective cultural traditions.

One of them, mostly the original Corinthians, were given to strange spontaneous emotional utterances, known as speaking in tongues under the influence of the Spirit (no, nothing to do with our Gospel reading).

Now, when we were studying this letter at Kingswood College, a few of us snuck out one Sunday evening to a Pentecostal service to see this phenomenon for ourselves.

During the service, one would start then each would set others off, a bit like dogs barking.

2.3 Glossolalian snobbery
This practice has been around all the church’s life mainly at the fringes.

The problem arises when people who practise this glossolalia look down their noses at those who don’t, judging them to be not true Christians because they haven’t received a good enough dose of the Spirit.

This is what was happening at Corinth.

3 THE SPIRITUAL BODY (1 Cor 12 – 15)
3.1 Chapters 12 to 14
To understand where Paul is heading, following this passage, Paul speaks about the Church as the body of Christ with parts making up the whole.

He then moves into ch 13 – “Though I speak….”

He returns to write about speaking in tongues, concluding with 14:40 that “all things should be done decently and in order.”

Sounds like the Uniting Church.

3.2 Chapter 15
Ch 15 starts with the Resurrection and Paul talks about the body again that in 15:44 we are risen as a “spiritual body”.

“Spirit”? “Body”? That sounds like a contradiction in terms.
And yet it makes sense.

The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, in Paul’s eyes, is the spiritual body of the risen Christ.

This is the climax, I believe, of the whole letter which I hope you’ll read for yourself.

3.3 Community of Body and Spirit
We, the Church together, are a body but it is spirit within us and between us that holds this body together.

In today’s language we are a community.
This is why we are here and why we keep meeting.

4 BACK TO THAT GOSPEL
4.1 New wine out of water (Jn 2:10)
I mentioned earlier that I would return to the Gospel reading before I drive you to drink.

Having returned from Corinth, we can now get the message John intended when he wrote this story into his Gospel.

The new wine out of water represents the people made new by the word who is Jesus.

4.2 Poured into the world
We are poured into the world that the world, in the words from Ps 34, may taste the Lord and see that he is good.

Be of good spirit!

“HELP REBUILD LIVES THIS CHRISTMAS”

Some years ago I rescued a little broken wooden Nativity Scene which I now bring out each year at the beginning of Advent. The scene reminds me, as St Francis of Assisi originally intended, that hidden within the commercial loudness, the frantic busy-ness, and all that other stress, the focus is on the glow of new human life gurgling from a manger.

My little Nativity Scene is made of wood to remind me this is what the cross was made of. It remains broken because this reminds me of the broken-ness of humanity then and now and of the body of Jesus broken for us. I keep this little scene particularly as I believe the noise of this season is deliberately encouraged for humanity to forget the baby first placed in a wooden manger who grew up to be placed on a wooden cross.

On top of my little broken wooden Nativity Scene is a slightly wobbly wooden angel announcing “good news of great joy for all the people”. This good news is mostly muted these days drowned out by the noise of greed and violence. The worst thing about this is that there are many who long for some good news. All is not lost, because we who have heard, and keep on hearing the good news for ourselves, can channel all this to them.

The theme for this year’s Christmas Bowl Appeal is the call for us to “help rebuild lives this Christmas”. Highlighted are people within three countries by now known to us. They look to people like us for some good news, some light within their darkness.

First is Sri Lanka. Contrary to media perception, not that many Sri Lankans have tried to come by boat to Australia. For a complete generation, they fled their country in conflict across to India. Now 100,000 are still there stuck mainly in refugee camps without the resources to make it home again and with very limited resources just to survive. They need good news.

Second is Sudan. Conflict there lasted even longer. In the western province of Darfur, 2,000,000 people have been internally displaced. That would be equivalent to about half of Sydney having to find shelter away from home. Finding clean water to drink or even to wash in is a daily challenge. We feel put out when the plumber turns off our water for half a day. How would we cope if the entire City of Ryde was deprived of all water for an indefinite period? Just providing hand washing facilities for a school in Sudan would be good news.

Third is Iraq. News about this country is now off our front pages after war and civil conflict, but there it is still not safe. So far, there is no enforceable international law that demands that participants in war immediately remove their landmines and other unexploded devices from the scene. Just imagine children coming across them at play or on their way to school. Resources are required to bring good news to them of how best to stay safe in their own homeland.

Help rebuild lives this Christmas and may peace remain with you.

“PEACE IN THE MARKETPLACE”

     The Social Justice theme set by the National Council of Churches in Australia for 2012 is about Peace in the Marketplace so all may live in dignity. The booklet can be downloaded at www.ncca.org.au. The subject matter of economics, the marketplace, and the level playing field is a big ask so I shall leave it for you to read it at your leisure and talk it over.

     Meanwhile, I’ll try to potter on in my own words and reminisce about my grandfather who was the hardware merchant in the country district centred round a small country town in which I was the third generation to grow up. I remember Grandpa explaining to us why he persisted in supporting all the other businesses in town whether one was considered better than another in their field.

     It kept the trade in the town, he said, and maintained the families. It was my first understanding how small business operated within the town economics. It was what I would call today “symbiotic economics”. It describes a marketplace which survives by mutual support. It was the nearest in my experience to what everyone calls the level playing field. Everyone benefits.

     You may well mutter about my living like a dinosaur in some mythical golden age. The rich and the poor and those in between were kept within nodding distance and help was given on the side. What is happening today? What we see is “parasitic economics” where the objective is to make more money by milking the vulnerable. Have you been like me trying to interpret all that shrinking small print on those “very important” letters and even on the side of some food packages?

     We think we have had some education to cope around some of these things, so what about those who just don’t have those capabilities to avoid being taken in and to lose what they cannot afford to lose?

     Yes, we know all the right words about social justice but what is to be done that can be done? Yes, I know I seem to belong to the Order of St Jude that patron saint of lost and hopeless causes – although there have been some small victories along the way. It’s time to drag down from the shelf that black leather-bound book with the gold lettering on the cover and follow that ancient question of “What would Jesus do?”

     John Chapter 10 describes Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Yes, we know all about those sheep and the sheepfold with all those lovely pastoral sermons. This is a lot stronger than that and it is far from romantic. The job of a good shepherd is to protect the sheep from the predators. This is why Jesus describes himself in v7 as “The Door”. He is not changing tack here. What he is saying that it is his job as a good shepherd to keep himself between the sheep and the predators by lying down overnight in the doorway. To get to his sheep those predators have to get past him over his dead body first.

     Later in the same gospel, Jesus tells his surprised disciples in 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. Gulp! How are we going to apply this to our parasitic economy? We’re not good at abolishing evil (unless you’ve had more success at this than I have). That’s not our job. Our job is to flush what is evil out into the light where it can be exposed for what it is. This is described in John 3:19-20. We are called to be whistleblowers, those people who, like Jesus, put themselves between the predators and the vulnerable.

     Jesus has brought peace, hope and dignity to many lives by the way he put himself between them and the greedy parasites of this world. Because we have been strengthened by him, others can continue that same redeeming experience when we do the same.

Chris Ridings

who on 15th October this year 

remembers the 45th anniversary of ordination

 in Wesley Church, Perth 1967.

"Keeping One's Head"

S E R M O N CNR1064

PENTECOST 7b (15) Crows Nest, 15 July 2012, 10am

2 Sam 6:1-5, 9-10; Ps 24; Mk 6:14-29; Eph 1:3-14

1 DANCING AND SUDDEN DEATH

1.1 Returning to Crows Nest 

It’s been 31 years since I last stood in this part of Crows Nest Church 

with its long memories of my in-laws 

who were part of this people of faith for at least three generations.

This was also the first Uniting Church place of worship I attended in NSW 

and it was on my honeymoon some years before that.

1.2 Dying and Dancing before the Ark (2 Sam 6:1-5,12b-19)

I was looking through the lectionary passages.

I read through the OT passage only to find 

the story of some faithful subject of King David being struck dead 

for touching the Ark, held to be a sacred object, so I shall be very careful.

Even though it also tells the story of King David dancing before the Ark, 

I decided to leave this passage alone.

Besides, I was raised a Methodist with two left feet, 

and my knees are starting to object to too much strenuous activity.

1.3 Losing one’s head over women (Mk 6:22-25)

Surely, the Gospel reading has something different.

It has.

This time it is a young princess who is dancing before Herod very much before mature audiences only.

This time the sudden death comes after the dancing.

It is John the Baptist, and it has been told to me 

that he is the patron saint of all those men 

who have lost their head over a woman.

2 THE EXECUTION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST (Mk 6:14-29)

2.1 Murder most foul

Yes, it is indeed “murder most foul”, 

those words first uttered by the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

Even as a boy, then looking for the boyish bits in the Bible stories, 

I thought it so grossly unfair that an honest prophet, 

albeit not always tactful, 

should be executed for telling someone, 

despite their being royalty, a few home truths.

2.2 Victims of self-justified murders

From this gruesome story one cannot escape the feeling 

that such self-justified murders have not only gone on in history 

but they still do so right now.

Many of us have been horrified at a woman being lynched in Afghanistan 

this past week, not just for adultery, but because she was a woman.

It may have reminded us of that passage in John chapter 8 

where Jesus was brought a woman “taken in adultery” ready for lynching.

He wrote something in the sand which I have suggested were the words, “Where’s the bloke?”

We can become so selective in our indignation 

and use our outrage as an excuse for violence.

There are countless stories of victims of others, who use any excuse, 

or even none, to commit murder. 

This is not necessarily a good topic for morning tea afterwards, 

but as we watch the nightly news, this must surely come to mind. 

2.3 Kangaroo Court to come

Even though this particular Gospel passage has Jesus only in the background not in this actual narrative, unique in Mark’s Gospel, 

one cannot escape the foreboding atmosphere 

that Jesus himself will meet a similar unfair fate.

The kangaroo court is still to come.

Out of determined spite, without logical reasoning, the writing is on the wall, written in by those who want their way at others’ cost.

3 GOOD NEWS FROM EPHESIANS (Eph 1:3-14)

3.1 Guiding us where to go from here

Which is just as well the Epistle for the day comes with good news 

out of all this ominous foreshadowing.

Many of our Epistle readings are good at taking the narratives 

we find in the Old Testament and Gospel readings 

and guide us where to go from there.

I’m sure this congregation is finding its way 

after the closure of a previous ministry as to where to go next.

3.2 Chosen for integrity (Eph 1:4)

This particular passage from Ephesians was one I remember reading 

on the first Sunday of our new millennium.

Despite its long sentences, 

the original passage in Greek said to be one long continuous sentence, 

too much for translation into English, this is where we start again.

This same Jesus, unjustly tried, unjustly convicted, and unjustly crucified 

before the most notorious kangaroo court in history, 

is the same one of whom it is now written, 

“He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, 

that we should live with integrity before him” (v4)

Jesus’ sacrifice for us has opened the door for hope.

Despite the continual uncertainties we face, either together or alone, 

this is something we hang on to and climb up from there.

3.3 Purpose for unity (Eph 1:9f)

We read in another long sentence that, 

“he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ 

as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, 

things in heaven and things on earth.” (vv9f)

Here we are still given purpose whatever has been happening about us 

to still steadfastly go on into an unknown future 

knowing that God’s ultimate plan is to unite everything together.

Yes, these long sentences are catching, but even when we reflect upon the physical fact that we are stardust before we began and after we finish, we remain part of God’s purpose to bring it all together.

So, we are not wandering around lost in space where no one can hear us scream, but we remain part of the biggest project of all time, that of God bringing all his creation into unity.

We need never forget that.

3.4 The home truths of good news (Eph 1:13-14)

Life keeps evolving around us and before our eyes.

Even this congregation is different since the last time I preached here 

a whole generation ago when Doug Cole demitted the charge.

This whole passage describes how, as the people called by Jesus Christ, 

we keep having the home truths of good news, 

with the faithful companionship of his Spirit within us and among us (v13).

Our future relationship is guaranteed with him (v14). 

That should see us over the hurdles yet to come 

within a world which we cannot similarly guarantee to be just.

Unlike John the Baptist, let’s never lose our heads but face the challenging future with the hope that Jesus Christ has passed on to us.

AMEN

Time Poor?

     I hope you have the time to read this. Almost everyone claims to be “time poor” these days. I have known the feeling at times when I’m done before the day is done before the work is done. 

     Being “time poor” has become worse in the 21st century with the proliferation of electronic devises that claim our attention 24/7. It is easy to become so attached to these sociological soldering irons, now permanently in our faces. Pedestrians and motorists have come to grief because they have been too pre-occupied with them that they lose focus on how they are travelling.

     Because of these handy implements each meant to save time, we have become busier than ever to the extent that roses have gone un-smelt, music un-heard, views un-watched, and human beings un-eyeballed.

     When the BBC interviewer David Frost was asked what it was like to have become one of the first broadcasters to have become a millionaire, he wistfully observed that he still only had 24 hours in the day. It’s the same with us, no matter what labour-saving gadgets we possess (or vice versa). The sun still rises and sets around the same time it always has. The clock at Greenwich Observatory occasionally adjusts the time by a second but by the time we’ve heard about it, we’ve wasted all that advantage.

     All this brings back to mind the story of Martha and Mary of Bethany, told in Luke 10:38-42, of the time Jesus was invited into their house. Many hackles have been raised in defence of Martha who was left to do all the work while Mary sat dreamily at Jesus’ feet, taking in what he was saying. Overworked wives and mothers, particularly have come to Martha’s defence when husbands have been watching football on TV and teenage children have their heads buried in computer games.

     Jesus shrewdly pointed out, though, that the problem was not that Martha was busy but she was busy being busy. She was not about to sit down with Jesus and Mary any time soon, no matter what had been accomplished. Martha would have seen herself as “time poor”. The more that was done the more was seen to be needed to be done. In Jesus’ words, Martha was anxious and distressed to the end of her tether. Mary was the one who was at peace.

     When you look at it, how can one be “time poor” when each of us, like David Frost, has no more or less time than anyone else? In our overly materialist world, it is so easy not only to become greedy when we keep wanting things but also to be “time-greedy” when we want more time than the 24 hours allotted to us.

     When he came to Bethany, Jesus wanted some one to talk to rather than the silver service. Luke has included this story in his Gospel because listening to Jesus becomes what is most important. What would Jesus say when we tell him we are “time-poor”?