"A Prophet's Plea"

1          AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

1.1       Sisyphus of Corinth

There is an ancient Corinthian myth that its first king, Sisyphus,

was punished by the gods by having to roll a massive boulder up a steep hill.

Just before he reached the top, this boulder slipped from his grasp

and bounced all the way down to the bottom

forcing Sisyphus to scamper down the hill to begin all over

again and again and again.

Thus the gods consigned Sisyphus to an eternity

of useless efforts and unending frustration.

1.2       Déjà vu?

Every new year we hope will be different to the last

but it is about this time of January that we begin to feel a bit like Sisyphus

that it’s all going to be the same again and again and again.

We have times during the year when the futility of our best efforts

can seem to overwhelm us.

2          HAS ALL OUR EFFORTS BEEN IN VAIN?

2.1       Preaching for 50 years (Isa 49:3a)

We are pleased to notice that at least one prophet in the Hebrew scriptures, called by God into ministry, felt like this.

We read his words, “But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain,

I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.’” (Isa 49:3a)

This is my 1070^th sermon and I have now been preaching for over 50 years.

(I know what you are thinking.

You are thinking that I should have got to the point by now.)

Over this time

a lot of water has flown under the bridge.

2.2       After the two Johns

When I began two men called John were then influential.

The first was the good Pope John XXIII

who opened the stuffy windows of the Vatican

so that Christians might embrace each other.

The second was John Kennedy who became President during the Cold War

and who over Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam,

3 times pulled us back from world war.

By the end of 1963 these 2 Johns were gone.

The Vietnam War had begun, dividing the nations, the communities,

the churches, and even families.

Church and Sunday School attendance showed signs of decline.

More and more we seemed to become voices in the wilderness.

And we can’t blame the Beatles for this.

2.3       The call for mercy (Ps 40:11)

Among my generation of those who have ministered through these times

has sometimes come the feeling that the boulders we have heaved to the top have not stayed there.

Like the psalmist in Psalm 40:11, we have cried,

“Do not withhold your mercy from me.

Let your steadfast love and your faithfulness ever preserve me!”

2.4       Reassurance (Isa 49:4b)

The answer comes from the prophet’s cry as he continues,

“Yet surely my right is with the Lord,

and my recompense with my God.” (Isa 49:4b)

3          A LIGHT TO THE NATIONS

3.1       The Spirit at Jesus’ baptism (Jn 1:32f)

This is where the Gospel comes in for us.

Last week, we reflected upon a previous passage of Isaiah

and upon Jesus’ baptism.

Here within this passage from John 1:29-42,

we have John’s particular take on the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist

and what happened afterwards.

JB was himself inspired by witnessing the Spirit descending like a dove

on Jesus and remaining with him. (Jn 1:32)

Even more important, and this is linked only in John’s Gospel,

this event announced that Jesus, himself baptised by the Spirit

would baptise others with that same Spirit. (Jn 1:33)

3.2       The source of our spirit

That’s it!

Immediately afterwards, John’s Gospel tells us

that Jesus becomes a magnet for disciples.

That’s how the spirit worked then and works now.

All of us here can recall how we came to be here in worship.

We each have stories of how we have been inspired by people in our lives, parents, teachers, and other people who have been touched

by the same Spirit that hovered over Jesus

and spread to his first disciples.

In short, we have been and continue to be inspired.

That word “inspired” comes from “spirit” or “breath”.

Thus the disciples followed and were in their turn sent.

If we could trace back to how the people inspired us received their inspiration and if they could, in turn trace their inspiration back,

we would arrive at this very event we commemorated last week.

3.3       Passing on the Spirit (Isa 49:7)

What really matters now

is not so much to focus on the spirit

hovering over Jesus

but on that same spirit that now takes up residence in us.

Recently, we have been experiencing the loss from our midst

those who have inspired us over the years.

Inevitably this leads us to reflect upon the hope that when our own times come we will have passed on the spirit to those who remain.

This, in itself, should give hope as we become part of this relay of the spirit from those who have gone before us to those who come after us.

Then we can take in those words which complete the reading from Isa 49:1-7,

“I will give you as a light to the nations,

that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”

"The Unnamed"

S E R M O N             CNR1068                 

PENTECOST 19c [26]           Epping  29 Sep 2013, 9.30am

Ps 91:1-6,14-16; Jer 32:1-3a,6-15; Luke 16:19-31; 1 Tim 6:6-19

(Exd 1:8-21)

“THE UNNAMED”

Luke 16:19-31

1          THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET POORER

            1.1       “Ain’t we got fun”

Have you ever had one of those irritating songs

become stuck forever in your memory?

Mine was old even before I was born.

As a child I heard it frequently sung on the morning radio programs

 with what I thought was bad grammar and irreverent glee.

It was “Ain’t we got fun” – American, of course with a glib refrain

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”

I thought as a child that it was irreverent to sing so gleefully about poor people as if they are going to be with us like that forever

and that there was nothing anyone could do about it.

1.2       “The poor you will have with you always” (Mk 14:7a; Jn 12:8a)

Mind you, that throwaway aside from Jesus

“The poor you will have with you always”

was something that I also wanted to prove wrong.

The sad reality dogs us that at any time and in any place

this merciless chasm between rich and poor remains an indelible scar

to blight the beauty of the earth.

This chasm mentioned in Luke 16:26 in our gospel reading

is as frightening to us as it was to the rich man.

2          THE GREAT CHASM (Lk 16:26)

2.1       The bottle of milk left in the sun

Yes, we know all too well that the setting of the story of the rich man

and Lazarus sadly can apply anytime anywhere.

I frequently ask where is the country

where there are the least poor in the world

and am met with silence.

This chasm between rich and poor goes right around the world.

Like a bottle of milk left out on the front doorstep in the sun

the rich float to the top leaving the poor behind

and like the milk it eventually all goes sour.

2.2       Our named and the un-named

So, what is going to be any different about this story about rich and poor?

We know about the VIPs in this country.

If I mention Rupert and Gina, and perhaps even Clive, you know who I mean

even without mentioning their surnames.

If I cite Julia, Kevin, and Tony, the same applies.

But who has noticed the long-bearded man

who has lived for years on the footpath

opposite our Pitt Street church or even knows his name?

The names of the people at the top of the tree are well known to us

even if we may never have met them

but we have encountered those over whom we stumble on the footpaths

and in the doorways of the inner streets of Sydney

without knowing who they are.

Though it happened years ago, I cannot get out of my mind

the sight of a bare foot covered with sores sticking out from a dark coat

in a doorway along Martin Place as I hurried to a gathering.

2.3       Eleazar and the Purple (Gen 15:2)

The story in Luke is different.

As Jesus tells it we know the name of the poor man covered with sores.

He is called Lazarus, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Eliezar,

the name of Abraham’s steward (Gen 15:2),

and a name to be worn with pride.

But what is the name of the man clothed with purple?

Purple cloth was almost priceless,

worn mainly by Roman Emperors and kings.

This would be equivalent today to having your own private jet.

But what is his name?

Tradition frustrated with not knowing has called him Dives.

But Jesus deliberately gives him no name.

3          NAMED AND UN-NAMED

3.1       The Hebrew midwives (Ex 1:15-21)

This has happened before.

At the Common Dreams conference down in Canberra recently,

I heard again that delicious story from Exodus ch 1.

The most powerful man then in the known world was the Egyptian king

and he was having trouble with these multiplying Hebrew asylum seekers.

He ordered the Hebrew midwives to murder the infants

should they turn out to be boys.

3.2       Shiphrah and Puah (Ex 1:15)

The midwives smiled with gritted teeth and managed to let the little boys live.

The names of the midwives in this story were Shiphrah and Puah.

We don’t know the name of the king.

He is not even given the title of Pharaoh.

As you well know by now, a person’s name gives that person respect.

Not to acknowledge that person’s name is not to give that person respect.

In the Exodus story, the humble Hebrew midwives are named

so we who are well down the line in history

know them by name and respect them.

We don’t know the name of the king of Egypt and we don’t really care.

3.3       God knows the names

So, it is with the rich man and Lazarus.

This poor man covered with sores is still known to us

while the self-important rich man remains for us an unimportant nobody.

In both these stories, we hear how God knows the name

of the despised and rejected ones

and through the Scriptures we who read them are invited to know them

as part of our journey.

The high and mighty whose names may be written in newspapers and history books are likely to have their come-uppance.

3.4       The un-named asylum seekers

But known to God and remembered by him are those who are neither noticed nor remembered by name.

What is happening today are asylum seekers who are not mentioned by name in our news or by our successive political leaders.

The powerful seek for us not to know the names

of those who still struggle to reach us in their leaky boats nor their plight

while these leaders themselves take centre stage for our attention.

We now know who gets God’s attention, respect, and affection

and who are left out.

He has crossed the chasm as expressed in Jesus Christ

and invites us to make that crossing with him.

AMEN!

"Ubuntu"

My son has the incredible knack of giving me interesting and challenging books for me. I have just finished reading his latest gift to me, “God is not a Christian”, subtitled “Speaking the truth in times of crisis”, excerpts from a series of articles, speeches, sermons and letters written over thirty years by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

The archbishop presents for us the Xhosa word, “ubuntu” which he translates for us as “a person is a person through other persons”. Tutu writes, “We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.”

He wrote these words at a time when his native South Africa was forcibly divided simply by skin colour into people who ruled and people who were ruled. He articulated in simple yet profound terms the traumatic results of such division of peoples and called upon both the leaders and the led to turn themselves around into a rainbow nation of many hues and tongues.

This is straight from Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven and echoed right throughout our New Testament. For example Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 2:28) This radical statement sent a shudder even through the infant Church and eventually through the Roman Empire. Those in power still loudly exclaim, “This will be the end of civilisation as we know it.”  And it is.

Civilisation as we know it needs to give way to civilisation as God intended it embracing all creation. Desmond Tutu remains for us an inspiration to keep up the non-violent struggle for this to be so. We cannot force the world into it. Bombs only destroy the landscape and the people. They do not make the world better. Whenever anyone reads this it is read always in the world context of violence and oppression somewhere going on.

Jesus becomes deliberately ignored so that human beings can vainly look for more forceful ways of running this world. I think we all have difficulties with his way of doing so, steadfastly walking into the face of danger where self-sacrifice becomes his option. Finding a way of overcoming what we believe to be evil by coming out on top is an all too elusive goal.

This is why we need “ubuntu”. Many self-sacrifices become possible only in company as many stories from the wars have attested. Jesus made his self-sacrifice very much alone. Not only was his crucifixion was excruciatingly painful to say the least, Jesus knew that no one else really had a clue as to what it was all about. Only the Church through the New Testament later describes the effect and the influence this self-sacrifice had and continues to have.

Life does have its solitude and its loneliness. No one really finds oneself merely on one’s own. We belong because we find that others are also peculiar. Well might we be described as God’s peculiar people simply because knowing Jesus sets us towards a more productive direction as far as the Kingdom of God is concerned. Jesus gave us “ubuntu” and that is what we are called to pass on.