Parish Of Opawa St Martins Blog

Sunday 27 September 2009
Open hearts – open church

Numbers 11: 4 – 6, 10 – 16, 24 – 29,
James 5: 13 – 20,
Mark 9: 38 – 50

There is a story told that an earnest theological student sought out a teacher for instruction in the meaning of the gospel. The student spent many years studying the sacred scriptures, but his mind was filled with many questions. Which teacher of theology was the most trustworthy? Which of the scriptures were most reliable and what weight should be given to the various parts of the bible?

He took all these questions to the teacher. Upon hearing all these questions, the teacher immediately threw the student’s books into the fire, refused to answer any questions and dragged the student into the market place where he confronted the student with a poor, crippled beggar. “Learn righteousness,” he admonished the student.

The central question of this part of Mark’s gospel concerns the question of discipleship. Who is the true disciple? What do true disciples do? What kind of attitudes so they display? In the previous week’s gospel readings, Jesus has talked about taking up the cross. In response, the disciples have argued about greatness. For them, discipleship is about being important, or being special, or being in control. So Jesus had to show them the irrelevance of status in the kingdom of God. Disciples of Jesus have learned the humility of servanthood. They have captured the simplicity of a child’s eyes and know how to build trust.

To be frank, the disciples look thick as Mark relates his story of Jesus. The thing we learn from them is that they are not ashamed to Bring to Jesus their faults and deficiencies, because as we see, Jesus is able to help overcome them and grow through them. So today, the disciples confront Jesus with a new issue. “Teacher,” they say, “We saw a man casting out demons in your name whom we forbade, because he was not one of us” In other words, they complain because this outsider is not in ‘the club’! Here are the disciples displaying their worst proprietary tendencies. Perhaps they wanted to keep Jesus and his power all to themselves. Perhaps they were control freaks. Maybe they thought they were the only ones who deserved their positions and so now they needed to defend their patch. Or it may be they thought they were the only ones who new how to do things properly because they had experience. Whatever motivation they had, the outcome was going to be ugly and so once again Jesus has to teach them.

So it is notable that when the disciples ask about the man who is “not one of us”, Jesus does not brush the issue aside. This becomes a teachable moment. Jesus begins to explain that being a disciple means putting aside their pride and opening their hearts to see good in others. He tells them that good works done in his name are to be celebrated whoever does them. Even if the words aren’t quite right, and even if the membership credentials are not in order, disciples can and ought to see the good in others and rejoice that good work is being done. The kind of attitude Jesus is looking for in his disciples is an attitude that ‘gives permission’ rather than ceases control. He wants us to have open and flexible hearts that say, “Yes, we can make room for that person. Yes, that group can try that experiment! Yes, they can share in our ministry! Yes, they are welcome to walk with us.” The key thing here is to be an open community of faith, a church that is prepared to move over to make space for others. That’s what being in a growing church is all about. Every time a new person comes in, we all have to move over to make room. The gospel requires it. Sadly, we will put new people on trial, sometimes for years, before they are allowed to be “one of us”. Sometimes we will get grumpy and proprietorial and give new people a taste of our power and the benefit of proving our superior experience and wisdom around here. But Jesus has particular expectations of his disciples. He wants the boundaries to our church community to be porous. He expects our hearts to be open and flexible and our space to be shared. He wants us to let go of our need to be in control. This is a difficult spiritual journey. It is part of the unfolding of what it is to take up our cross and to follow Jesus. As Joshua says in the first reading, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit in them!” Well that is exactly what has happened in baptism. God has poured out his spirit on us all and our task is to be a church with a wide open door. We are to co-operate with God’s intention to make room for everyone in the household of God.

So what are we to make of the subsequent text; warnings about being a stumbling block, better to have hands and feet cut off and eyes put out, and so on. On the face of it these are hard words. The substantive issue is accountability to one another as members of the body of Christ. While we are to have open and flexible hearts, the other side of the coin is that we are to be accountable to one another and not simple do what ever we like, and Jesus is using harsh language to make his point.

Some years ago I visited the United States of America at a time when interesting escapades of television evangelists were coming to light. TV news crews were coming out with one scandal after another. I thought about the sincere people who had lost money and even their faith because of the actions of some of the TV preachers. I thought about the damage that was done to the whole Church because of the foolish actions of a few. There were people who said, “Well, I didn’t agree with everything they said, but they still did a lot of good.” But was it not more accurate to say that those who invoked the name of Jesus on TV thought they were immune from accountability?

Throughout the gospels, Jesus emphasises relationships of mutuality, which means we are all accountable to one another for the way we live as Christian people and for the way we exercise our gifts in the name of Christ. We are all accountable, and there is a means of measurement: and the measurement is the gospel. We are expected to be Christ for others as we go about our lives and we are to be accountable to the body for the way we go about being Good News. The gospel is a matter of works of compassion from relatively small works of love, such as giving a cold cup of water to someone in Jesus’ name, to world wide movements to eliminate poverty or to address global warming, something our parish mission committee has been bringing to our attention. The Christian life is not a matter of doing anything we want with nothing more to commend us than a muddle-headed warm glow of religion. It is a matter of being faithful to the gospel which puts high value on concrete, visible, practical love in action.

No doubt the early church had to make proper distinctions between those who actually follow Jesus and those who were terribly confused about Jesus. But “not being one of us” is not an adequate criterion for determining who is or who is not a Christian. Knowing that God’s kingdom is bigger than our own particular definitions of it, we can expect to be pleasantly surprised by the rich array of responses which the presence of Christ evokes. As we come to the Lord’s table, be reminded that our faith is a matter of correct doctrine, orthodox belief, clear thinking; but it is also a matter of the small works of love, the giving of a cup of water, as well as the cup of Eucharistic wine, given in the name of the one who so richly offered himself to us that we might offer ourselves to others.

Sunday 20 September

Wisdom of Solomon 1.16 – 2.1, 12–22
Psalm 54
James 3.13 – 4.3, 7–8a
Mark 9.30–37

A Franciscan brother once made a surprise visit to our vicarage. He was visiting New Zealand from Australia. He was still classified as “youth” by the World Council of Churches, being just 33 years of age at the time. He was just completing 10 years of training to become a medical doctor. Although that period of 10 years was extended by various stops and starts in the programme of study, nevertheless we all know that to practice medicine takes many years of intense study and long hours of working alongside other doctors in a kind of apprenticeship role. It is the same when it comes to learning what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

Today we see Jesus moving away from Galilee and beginning the journey to Jerusalem. Part of the purpose of this journey is to take the twelve aside in order to give them personal instruction about how to be faithful followers. The crux of his teaching is that God’s purposes will be fulfilled in Jesus’ death on the cross, and that to be a disciple we too must be ready to take up our cross and follow in the same footsteps. As we know, the disciples thought this teaching was a scandal. Even now, many preachers avoid this aspect of Jesus’ teaching in their rush to fill their pews with a gospel packaged for consumers in an age of materialistic consumption. But the message of the cross is so central to Jesus’ self understanding and his teaching that we have to grapple with this message Jesus is trying to impart to his disciples.

One reason Jesus was so misunderstood was that he came with a completely new understanding of what it meant to be the Messiah. Most people imagined that the Messiah would be an even greater King David. King David was a shepherd king par excellence who expanded the physical boundaries of Israel and drove out their enemies. This was just what Jesus’ audience hoped for. Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of the Roman army and their cruel taxation system and go back to self determination? But Jesus was the first person to suggest the radical idea that the Messiah would instead be the embodiment of the suffering servant of Isaiah 52 & 53. Instead of a warrior king, the Messiah would embody Isaiah’s vision of the cruelly disfigured, powerless suffering servant who would be exalted by God. Never before had anyone suggested a vision of the messiah that looked like this. Jesus’ enemies label him a blasphemer and the disciples fail completely to get with the programme.

It could take many of us a while to click onto Jesus’ wavelength as well. This is not an easy part of the gospel. The text before us shows the confusion that reigned within the group of Jesus’ followers. Here is the scenario. Jesus tells the disciples once again, that he will handed over and killed, and on the third day he will rise again. Whereas before Peter had rebuked Jesus, this time the scandalised disciples give Jesus the silent treatment. Perhaps they hoped that by ignoring Jesus for long enough he’d give up speaking like this. Or maybe they thought it would be better to stay quiet than to open their mouths and demonstrate their ignorance.

The point of Jesus’ teaching is that the life in abundance being offered by God is accessible when we are able to embrace our dying. Jesus may well have thought of this in terms of a physical death, but he meant it on other levels as well. It’s a bit like being Tarzan for a moment, if you can forgive the metaphor. Imagine swinging through the bush from one vine to another, there comes a point where one has to let go of one vine to grab the next. The kind of dying Jesus is talking about is the letting go of the security of the vine we know and finding ourselves suspended in mid-air reaching out in trust for the next vine. Picture for a moment that point of ‘unknowing suspension’ in mid-air. Jesus is daring us to sit in that kind of space. From Jesus’ perspective, the next vine, as it were, is God. But to embrace God we have to let go of our existing securities. Jesus is saying to the disciples, “Let go of the known, the things that make you popular, powerful, central, in control, or loveable. Let go of the things that enable you to wow the voting public or to be the media star.” In that moment of suspension, when we have to let go and find ourselves hanging in mid-air, at that point we find our true identity in being held and loved by God. The problem is: that’s a very scary spiritual journey and if God leads us there we likely to feel he has betrayed us. In that moment of suspension we are likely to feel fear, loneliness, isolation, irrelevance, all the things we expect God to save us from. This is what Jesus experienced on the cross and he challenges us to make the same journey. Jesus is saying that leaving all these attachments behind and embracing God alone is the pathway that will enable us to discover who God has created us to be, and it will enable us to be free to be fully known and to give and receive love in depth. This is the essence of Jesus’ message, but the journey is risky. Who will do it? Are you willing to let go of everything and let God be God like this?

If you think this looks too scary, so did the disciples. So they went into deflection and avoidance by fantasising about their naked ambition for the top job in the kingdom. Perhaps some of the disciples needed to be in the centre, close to the pivot person around whom everything was revolving. Maybe some needed power, some needed to be special, some needed to be loved, and some just needed to be the boss and the ones in control.

So Jesus addresses them with teaching about greatness in the Kingdom. Not only is true greatness found in the humble service of others, the disciples have to accept that they cannot keep Jesus to themselves and hoard his power to their own small group. To illustrate, Jesus takes a small child and places that child in the centre of their group. A child symbolises trust and innocence. But the child is also the ultimate outsider, a social non-entity. A child in Jesus’ society was a “non-person”, someone no one took notice of and who could not return any favours. The point is that such a child is equally worthy of the same respect and care that would be offered to an important world leader. All of this means that disciples of Jesus should not aspire to high office but be willing to empty themselves to the point of being a social non-entity. The child is a symbol of the kind of disciple Jesus wants his followers to be.
A child calls to mind a family, a household. In proclaiming the kingdom, Jesus is establishing a household of faith, a spiritual home for us to dwell in. The question becomes, “What kind of spiritual home is Jesus building?” Mark is suggesting that our attitude to children becomes the touchstone of true discipleship. Are children treated as full members of our church, or are they to be seen and not heard? How do we treat those who are powerless, the least important in our society? Jesus wrapping his arms around the child is illustrative of the kind of nurturing household of faith we are called to be; a place where even the least important and the most vulnerable have equal status with the great.

Jesus put his disciples on a steep learning curve. He challenged their assumptions about God, and he challenged the values they were living by. For three years, they learned, they trained so that they would be equipped to become fearless apostles. The gospel calls us to go through the same drills, to examine our values and our assumptions about God and to practice a disciplined life of self examination and prayer. Today, we are asked to look at God through the eyes of a child, to see Christ present in this holy meal, and to wonder with delight and fascination at the God who comes to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

Sunday 6 September
Sermon
Ps 146
Isa 35:4-7a
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

When I was a small child, so young I was barely at school, I recall a time when my Father drove the car down onto a river bed in the back country behind Tapawera where we lived at the time. The idea was that we were going to load the boot up with nice dry firewood. The particular riverbed had plenty of wood and without too much work we could take it home and stay warm in the winter. However, the main reason I remember the trip was that the car got bogged in the sand. Every time Dad tried to move the car the wheels simply spun a bigger hole so that the whole back of the car sank completely. Great drama when you’re a small boy, but hugely distressing for my parents who became highly anxious – miles from anywhere and no help in sight. Suddenly out of the blue a farmer turned with his Massey Ferguson tractor. In a jiffy, he had hooked up a towrope and pulled the car out to safety. He didn’t say much. “No worries mate!” might have been the extent of it. I never knew his name and I don’t think we ever saw him again. But that chap who happened upon us on the tractor made our day.

His word to us was, “No worries mate!” And that was the word we welcomed into our hearts that day. When it comes to God and the bible, we welcome the Word into our hearts every time it is proclaimed. What we often miss is that we ourselves are the word before we say anything or do anything. Martin Luther once said, “Your life might be the only bible your neighbour ever reads.” And that is true. Our lives are the medium through which many people will hear the message of God’s Good News.

What kind of word are we? Some people radiate peace and when you are with them one feels a peaceful presence. Some people radiate fun and frivolity. All you have to do is look at their face and you feel like laughing. Some people radiate anger and prickliness and they send a chill up the spine when they come near.

Like it or not, we transmit all sorts of messages about who we are and people pick up a lot about us before we even open our mouths. We receive signals from people and like a finely tuned sonar instrument we pick them up. According to the view point of the letter to James, faith is all about a life that is lived emulating Christ himself. James wants us to be aware of the signals we send out. Our lives, our way of being human is a living word proclaimed. Being Christian means answering the call of God to enflesh the essence and values of Christ in our lives so that all we do reveals the fullness of God’s grace in us. We are to be doers of word, not just hearers. The example he gives today is about refusing to show favouritism to some people. James wants us to see beyond surface appearances to see the humanity of the person before us so that we treat all people with reverence. He wants us to do this because this is how Jesus himself approached people; well most of the time anyway.

Today’s gospel is actually an exception for that. The Syrophoenecian woman is a double outsider. The way St Mark’s unfolds the story of Jesus, we note that Jesus has crossed to the “other side” of the lake, into Gentile territory and in doing so he is extending the frontiers of the kingdom of God to encompass those who tradition said could never be part of the community of the redeemed because of their race. The disciples are way out of their comfort zone, perhaps Jesus is too. He encounters the Syrophoenecian woman, or maybe she encounters him. Not only is she a Gentile, but she is also a woman speaking to a religious leader. According to the values of the culture around them, the woman should be silent unless first spoken to by Jesus. But not today; she initiates the conversation. She demands that Jesus heal her daughter. How does Jesus respond? His words are an insult revealing Jesus’ carries prejudice from his own culture. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to taker the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In one foul swoop Jesus has called the woman a Gentile dog undeserving of God’s salvation. Undeterred, the woman comes back at Jesus. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” The woman’s daughter is healed, not because of her faith, but because she has outwitted Jesus in a verbal repartee. As numerous commentators have mentioned, this is an occasion when Jesus is the one who has to change attitudes. Jesus is the one taught by the woman. It is she who throws Jesus’ own teaching back in his face and shows him that God’s salvation is for those outside Judaism.

Jesus is the one doing the learning but he is able to learn because of two important things. First of all, he carries within him an openness of heart that is key to a Christian understanding of holiness. Sometimes our language takes a while to catch up with the pilgrimage of faith that God is taking us on. Jesus knew from his study of scripture and from his self understanding that it was the will of God to include Gentiles in the kingdom and when the woman responds he knows that what she says resonates with the leading of the Holy Spirit. The second reason Jesus is able to learn from this woman is because he listens so attentively to her response. Being fully present and fully attentive to someone when they are speaking to us is an important sign of holiness.

What prevents us from being a living word of God? Prejudice and a refusal to learn and change is one of the major blocks. Jesus’ initial response suggested that he had written this woman off. He saw a gentile person, and his first words said that God’s priority was with his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters. This is a story about Jesus having to let go of his Jewish prejudice and accept this woman on her own terms. This is a salient warning for those of us who would be Disciples of Christ. Even Jesus had to keep learning and growing and changing. Even Jesus found God speaking to him through a most unexpected person. We can never say that we have arrived in our relationship with God. The minute we think we have God sorted, you can expect Him to come and poke us from an unexpected place, and speak to us through people we had discounted. Faith is a journey and God will keep us on the move.

What prevents us being a good word for the Word of God? We might also be pitifully deaf and mute and unable to be who we are with those we live and meet. We might be so plugged up with self importance or self interest that the sound of who we are never gets through. Like a stopped up flute we never sound a true tone. What does emerge is the whine of self-centredness and self-importance. We need to be un-stopped, to be opened up and healed. This is where Isaiah’s message is laden with hope. Our God is here and he will do it. God has spoken a word, and that Word stands among us clothed in human flesh. We, the human words of God will be restored and vindicated. The divine word of God will sound through us. It will sound through our crippled humanity. God word will take on our brokenness. This word comes with human fingers that can be placed in human ears so that blockages melt away at a touch. This word comes with a tongue, and its saliva can snap our tongue tied-ness to speak our own integrity and reveal the unique image of God that we have been given to bear. We might be the deaf ones and the voiceless ones who prefer not to hear the cries of our brothers and sisters or to speak up for those with no voice. But when Christ, the Word-Made-Flesh touches us, he does indeed do all things well. He opens our ears and enables us to hear the cries that we were deaf to hearing. He is present in our speaking and in our doing. The Word is no longer bound up tight in our chained up lives.

Today we will pray for those preparing for confirmation. We pray for them as they continue on the same journey that Jesus himself travelled, a journey of faith in which God enlarges our hearts and minds. It’s a risky journey, and we are all travelling “the way”. It is risky a risky journey because we have no idea where God might take us. Whenever we gather here, whenever we pray, we risk being touched by him. When this happens we no longer remain deaf or blind or safely silent. Our being here waiting for the touch of Christ means our heart might well be changed, and we will leave this assembly opened and ready.

God needs us to be his living word incarnated in our hearts for others today. Someone will be waiting. Go then and be God’s word at home, at play, and in the marketplace.