"See! Judge! Act!"

1          GHOSTS OVER MY SHOULDER

1.1       Business end of a teapot

I have a couple of ghosts looking over my shoulder this morning.

First is my late mother-in-law who used to tell me

she thought Martha received a very bad deal in this Gospel reading.

Considering my mother-in-law was much seen

on the business end of a tea-pot

and even brought her knitting to Presbytery

so that she could claim a productive evening she had a strong case.

1.2       The big sister

Second is that of my ubiquitous grandmother,

the firstborn of 12 children with 6 of her own,

whose idea of a good sleep-in was to get up before 7am winter or summer.

Grandma told me wistfully that her mother, an only child and a good Baptist,

would sit and read her Bible most of the day,

while Grandma, being the big sister

would attend to such things as forever tying and untying bootlaces

and helping to blow little noses.

Her name was Mary but her role was Martha.

Grandma was responsible for helping at least two of my great-uncles

start in the world

and when I was baptised in her home her mother was bedridden there.

I don’t think she ever stopped looking after people

and in her latter years had to be guided to comfortable chairs.

2          MARTHA AND MARY (Luke 10:38-42)

2.1       Following the Good Samaritan Parable

So, what’s this all about with Martha and Mary?

You’ve noticed by now this passage

follows the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Last week it was all about hands-on ministry in the face of mere status.

Just when we’ve got the hang of it,

this story seems to take us into the opposite direction.

But Jesus has a habit of doing this.

When he’s around we’re never quite sure we’ve been right.

2.2       Trapped in anxiety (Lk 10:40f)

But this particular passage is not to condemn Martha.

The key is that Martha felt trapped by the many things she was trying to do.

She was not going to sit down any time soon.

Anxiety had taken her over just like I’ve experienced

and probably most of you at some time.

We’ll never be able to complete everything,

and we need that time and space where we can sit down and listen to Jesus.

2.3       The other side of Martha (Jn 11:20-27)

For those who want to see this other side of Martha,

try John 11 where she has this deep conversation

with Jesus on death and resurrection.

It’s OK to be busy, but Jesus does want to get a word in edgeways.

There is much to command our attention.

When the Young Christian Workers organisation was formed

in Belgium about a century ago,

it took on the model of “See, Judge, Act”.

This involves observation, contemplation, and action.

Mary, Martha, and Jesus are all needed here.

3          AMOS WITH THE BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT (Amos 8:1-12)

3.1       Contemplating the figs (Am 8:1)

This is where the minor prophet Amos comes in.

He saw that the nation of Israel in the 8 centuries before Jesus was in trouble.

They were living the good life and the good life wasn’t going to last.

He observed what was happening from his working life down in Tekoa, Judah

as a herder and a dresser of sycamore trees.

Rather than rush into action, he contemplated a basket of summer fruit, probably figs or olives.

We know what happens to fruit in late summer when it’s not eaten.

The richness and the tastiness always wears off,

and “off” is the operative word.

3.2       A curds and whey society (Am 8:4-6)

That was it.

He knew that Israel to his north was going the same way as the summer fruit.

Amos left Tekoa in Judah

and hiked all the way north into the kingdom of Israel.

He had a message to deliver whether the people wanted it or not.

God was being put aside in favour of the “Greed is good” mentality.

The wealth was drifting upward like cream in milk left out in the sun

leaving the poor at the bottom.

When that happens the whole lot goes sour.

Curds and whey like Little Miss Muffet drinks.

3.3       The end for Israel (Am 8:2b,7-12)

The fact that we have what Amos said before us

proves for us that people didn’t listen

except for the few that made sure this was all written down

so it could be read after it had all come about.

And come about it did.

Shortly after the Assyrian Empire from what is now northern Iraq

expanded west into the area sweeping all before it.

4          NOT HERE TODAY, SURELY?

4.1       “It’s the economy, stupid”

We would have to be living under a rock not to see that such events like this have happened over many other times and in many other places.

Not today, surely? Not where we are, surely?

Yet, our whole way of life is based on the belief that the Market is God.

Our cultures are being relentless eroded

in favour of endless and repetitive marketing propaganda

in our respective faces on TV, online, and everywhere.

We cannot get the information to search for truth and wisdom

because our news programs are full of gossip and propaganda censoring out what we really need to know.

It is easier to find funds to build another casino

than it is to lift up those who need a decent break.

Everything is decided on the premise that “it’s the economy, stupid”

as if anybody can predict accurately what the economy is going to do

and in the meantime our environment is abused on the way.

4.2       The fruit of the spirit (Gal 5:22f)

Keith Rowe writing in our “With Love to the World” puts it so much better.

“In our day we might say that the destructive actions of brewery barons, media magnates, tobacco tycoons, dodgy developers and finance fiddlers

are abhorrent to God for they contribute

to the destruction of human community and damage individual lives.

But their days are numbered.

The future belongs to those who walk in the pathways of God’s love,

who trust in the steadfast love of God.”

There is a time to be Mary, to be Martha, to be Amos,

and most of all to be like Jesus for the fruit of the Spirit will never perish.

“DELIVERING THE VULNERABLE”

1          A JUST SOCIETY?

1.1       Your Faith, Your Voice, Your Vote

One would have to be living under a log

not to know that recent weeks have been one of political turmoil

and that we have a Federal election still to come down the track.

Already our Uniting Church Assembly has released a booklet

for “A Just Society” subtitled,

“Your Faith, Your Voice, Your Vote”.

I presume copies would be available here.

1.2       God lays it on the line (Ps 82:1f)

However, it is not my place to repeat this here

but to affirm that what we believe, what we say, and how we act

is always under God’s supervision.

This hits us when we read our lectionary Psalm 82.

God strides into the divine council and lays it on the line.

“How long will you judge unjustly

and show partiality to the wicked?” (v2)

2          GOD’S PSALM OF INJUSTICE (Ps 82)

2.1       Unfairness of the Filthy Rich

We do well to keep complaining about the unfairness

in what happens around us.

It is always uphill to maintain services for those who need it most

yet a rich man can walk in, demand a casino, and get it.

It seems that if jobs are to be had,

the filthy rich must become filthier and richer still.

2.2       Giving Justice to the vulnerable (Ps 82:3)

In life’s stark realities, it’s so easy to lose sight that God remains on the side of those who get the short end of the deal.

Psalm 82 continues,

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” (v3)

In all the deals done these are the ones who pay through the nose.

If you have a disability (like my daughter),

if your father leaves home (like mine did),

if you cannot cope with all the demands of today’s life,

if you cannot make the basic ends meet,

God is still on your side calling out for a fair go for you.

2.3       Delivering the vulnerable (Ps 82:4)

God calls out,

“Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (v4)

Not only are the rest of us called to provide justice

but to take those active steps to help deliver the vulnerable

from whoever seeks to make money out of their vulnerability.

3          NOT A PROPHET AMOS (Amos 7:7-17)

3.1       On the level?

A simple herdsman who dresses sycamore trees on the side

shows the way.

Amos sees God travelling around with a surveyor’s plumb-line

measuring Israel to test its uprightness.

My local hardware store does not store plumb-lines

so I bought this spirit-level instead.

It does the job well.

It can test whether walls are straight and upright.

It can tell us whether tables are on the level.

3.2       What does God show us?

God goes around today to test to see

whether the world we occupy is on the level and whether it is upright.

What does he show us?

What does he want us to do about it?

4          PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN (Lk 10:25-37)

4.1       The Great Commandment (Lk 10:27)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is known to us like the back of our hand.

It stems from the Great Commandment to

“love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourselves.” (v27)

We can rattle this off word perfect like we did in Sunday School,

both the Commandment and the Parable.

I remember being part of acting the story out in Junior Class.

That’s not the point.

4.2       Not being seen dead with?

Jesus makes it harder.

He creates a scene where muggers have done their sordid work,

leaving the poor victim to bleed to death.

Two respectable citizens you’d want to know see him and leave him there.

Think of a type of person you wouldn’t be seen dead with.

This person comes by and becomes the very one

who delivers the still vulnerable from his fate.

O, the humiliation of being abandoned by the ones you look up to

and rescued by the very one you’d despise!

When you’re half-dead,

you are saved by the one you wouldn’t be seen dead with.

The irony of it all.

5          TAKING HIS SPIRIT-LEVEL HOME

5.1       Whistle-blowers not respectable?

Yet, this is how it has to turn out.

In the Book of Amos, you would have expected Amaziah, the priest of Bethel to be the one to turn to,

not this scruffy herder of cows to see the situation for what it is.

Yet, too often particularly in recent times

the Church has been depicted as the predator of the vulnerable

and we have a Royal Commission because of it.

And too often we, the Church have not risked the way of Jesus

to side with those getting life’s raw deal

because we know only too well what happens to whistle-blowers.

While tending the traveller’s wounds, the Samaritan left himself vulnerable

to any muggers still lurking in the shadows.

He delayed his own journey and put himself out of pocket to deliver

the traveller to where he could be healed and restored to life.

5.2       God strides into our comfort zone

Ahh, yes, this is where we have to go

and there will be many unexpected ways for us to go about it.

The decisions we make come to us

according to where we are what we see and what we hear.

God strides into our comfort zone with his spirit level

so that we can echo the psalmist’s conclusion,

“Arise, O God, judge the earth,

for to you belong all the nations.”(v6)

Let us take his spirit level home with us to provide His justice

and deliver the vulnerable.

"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.