"CHRIST IN A DANGEROUS WORLD"

       

            Back in 1978 our family were moving from Nedlands to Gosnells. At the same time my doctor whisked me into hospital for a biopsy on my thigh. I came home with a bandaged thigh propped with me on a chair while the home furniture was moved out from around me. I was the last piece of furniture moved to Gosnells and hobbled to the ringing ‘phone. The hospital was ringing me urgently to book me in for surgery for suspected melanoma so back I went for a fortnight.

By the time I was allowed out, Gosnells’ new minister had to conduct worship over a few weeks from a lazy-boy lounge.

            I remembered that little adventure recently. My number came up for a room at Arrunga, our new assisted care home centre in Ermington at the same time a surgeon took to me to remove my parathyroid glands from which I am hopefully recovering. My son flew back from Brisbane where he was moving to a new human filing cabinet and filing work applications. He stayed at the unit while caring for frail father and doing the bulk of clearing my unit putting his life on hold again like he did this time last year. He has fled exhausted back to move his own stuff into his new place.

            The moral of my story so far is to avoid moving and surgery at the same time. I have now done it twice 38 years apart. Between my long surges of self-pity which some of you have had to endure, I thought what has occurred to millions of people around the world this year.

            Millions of people have been desperately on the move fleeing for a chance to survive. Few end up at their preferred destinations. Organisations are unprepared and, dare I say it, unwelcoming, treat the refugees like plagues. Those of us who care have found ourselves challenged by unavailable resources and opposition from those with xenophobia. Our own little moving issues are like packing for holidays compared to the risky upheavals in their life. Fortunately, we can contribute through the Christmas Bowl to help.

           

            Being pursued by physicians and surgeons to spend time in hospitals is like an overseas holiday when we become aware of the brutal bombing of hospitals in Aleppo and other places. We look at our children and then watch the horror of little children rescued from rubble, traumatised by organised terror, often the only survivors of their families. They will need support for years. The Christmas Bowl and Act of Peace can be our conduit by which this support can come.

            We can think of Jesus born of a Middle Eastern family to flee to Egypt from a ruthless ruler and had a taste himself of what so many are going through right now as you read this. Jesus comes to us again this Christmas. We see his face on everyone experiencing and fleeing danger. Remember that when we celebrate this Christmas. May Christmas come to all of you.

“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.

“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.