“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.

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