Parish Of Opawa St Martins Blog

Today the gospel reading is about ways we respond to painful situations in our world. There is something about human nature that we feel the need to blame victims for their circumstances. It is not unusual, for instance, to hear people blaming those who are on the dole for their plight. We sometimes call them dole bludgers. It is said that the reason they are there is because they are lazy free loaders who don’t really want to work. In some cases that may be true, but it is also true that we make comments like that when we don’t want to face the painful possibility that there are not enough jobs to go around. We blame victims or “the outsider” when we don’t want to face a painful truth, or when we need to feel better about ourselves.

There is another thing we sometimes do in the face of our own pain. From time to time, we say that the reason for the predicament we are in is that we must be useless human beings. So we blame ourselves. It is also a human reaction to think that God is punishing us or doing something to teach us a lesson. Or we think the reason we are where we are, is because it’s our fault and that we are not good enough. If we put this into religious language, we are in effect, suggesting that sin and suffering are linked. In other words, if someone is suffering, this is the result of God’s punishment. Luckily, in the text before us today, Jesus kicks this view into touch, well and truly.

The people who came to Jesus in today’s gospel held to the popular opinion that suffering was brought about by God’s judgement. They asked Jesus about to two recent disasters in the city of Jerusalem. Innocent worshippers who had come to the temple to offer sacrifices had been caught in the crossfire of a riot. They were killed by Pilate’s military police. And in a separate incident, a construction accident had killed eighteen people in Siloam. The people who came to Jesus were saying, “Is this the result of their sin? Is it because they were worse sinners than us? Had they brought suffering upon themselves?”

Typically, Jesus does not answer their question with an explanation. Instead, as he often does, he puts the question back to those who approach him. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the others, because they suffered thus? I tell you, no!” This is good news. As he does on many other occasions, Jesus declares that fatal accidents, or physical deformities or illnesses for that matter, are not visited on us by a retributive God meeting out punishment for sin. This is an issue that the book of Job deals with extensively; perhaps even suggesting that the idea of an angry God raining down punishment on us is a human projection onto God. So if you have been through such a crisis, or if you are living with one, please note that all through the gospels it is clear that Jesus refused to proclaim a God of retributive judgement. He rejects that idea in the case of the man born blind, and again when the disciples wanted Jesus to call down fire and brimstone on the Samaritans. So, we can and should put that idea right out of our heads. As one of my spiritual directors once said, the voice suggesting God is like this needs to be taken into a back room of our minds and shut away where it can no longer be heard.

The idea that suffering is caused by our sin, however, is as old as human existence. Much of the Old Testament deals with this question, especially in relation to the exile into Babylon. There was a dominant party in ancient Israel who believed the exile was God’s punishment for years of poor leadership offered by bad kings. The book of Job and many of the psalms question this theological position. “What if suffering is undeserved?” they ask. “What if the people have been faithful to God, like Job, and still suffer?”

The idea that all suffering is the result of God’s punishment is questioned by Job, and by Christ. Even so, it is human nature to believe it. The language of our secular culture puts this in terms of the right to punitive action when other people hurt us, and we see that being played out in discourse about law and order in this country. Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi in the UK, points out that part of the reason for this need for retribution stems from the way our culture is turning key relationships into a commodity. We now have therapists and counsellors telling us how to run our lives, fulfilling the role that once would have been filled over a cup of tea with our elders and mentors. As a church leader, I am aware of the need for these services for those in responsibility, don’t get me wrong, they do an important job. Sacks’ point, however, is that because of the commodification of relationships, when disaster strikes we find ourselves no longer in control of our destiny. Other’s control it. The result is the intensification of despair. That’s when it becomes too easy to say, “I am not good enough. I am useless. Someone has to be blamed.”

Today Jesus is saying that this is not the way Christians should act or think or view the world. We are to be motivated out of our experience of God’s grace and compassion. That’s what should drive our thoughts and our actions. Already, we know that Jesus has resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem. We know that Jesus will suffer and will lay down his life as a costly demonstration of God’s love. The call to repent that Jesus’ issues in this text is an indication that Jesus knows that time is short. The time for giving and receiving God’s love is now. If you refuse to adopt the way of love and compassion, there will be a natural consequence; the need for revenge, to strike back, will turn bitter and toxic. This is this kind of living death that God wants to save us from.

So Jesus plainly rejects the notion that calamities come as a result of sin. Jesus’ point is that all of us are frail human beings and all of us are equally vulnerable. He is saying that suffering is often arbitrary, that there is no explanation, and there aren’t easy platitudinous words that can make it all better. St Paul will go on to say that Jesus becomes an embodied image of what we are. He takes upon himself the same trials and suffering that we experience so that he can take all that into God. Having brought our pain and suffering to God he prays for us with sighs and moans too deep for words, that we might be healed, restored, forgiven, raised up to offer praise to God. In our prayer this Lent, our task is to ask God to show us a repentance that enables us love and forgive as Christ taught, even while we cry for justice and for our pain to be heard and acknowledged.

Our gospel reading concludes with a parable about the fig tree, the of the parable being that God gives us time to heal, time to love, time to repent. The first reading today reminds us of another important plant in the history of salvation, the burning bush. By the time of Jesus it was generally accepted that the burning bush was a thorn bush, and it was from this lowly bush that God spoke to Moses to reveal nothing less than his name, and to begin the process of liberating his people from Egypt. God enlightening Moses in the midst of thorns. This has tremendous resonance all through the bible. When Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, one of the consequences was that thorns would cover the ground. The thorn bush appears again when Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac; the saving victim, a ram, appears among thorns. The thorn bush, an unlikely plant, is involved at crucial moments; moments of judgement, revelation, salvation and sacrifice.

For Christians, in this season of Lent, thorns come to mind again. “And soldiers, platting a crown of thorns, put it on his head.” Like the burning bush, the thorniness of our humanity is joined to Jesus, and his humanity is joined to the fire of his divinity. In his dying he speaks words of comfort to the thief, words of hope to his mother and a disciple, words of love and obedience to God the Father. But the thorns are not the end of the story. As the wood of the cross becomes the tree of life, so the crown of thorns becomes the crown of glory at the resurrection. God raises Jesus and crowns him with glory and honour. A crown of glory awaits us too, as it has been given to those who have gone before us. In the meantime, much of life has the harshness of thorns, but it is here that God comes to us bringing healing and salvation. God gives us time: time to repent, time to receive healing, time to accept forgiveness, and time to live with compassion.

Today is the beginning of Lent. The word Lent is an old English word for “lengthen” relating to the lengthening of days in the northern hemisphere spring. Lent is a time when we think about renewing our relationship with God. The season began as the church’s time for preparing adults for baptism. So today, we will welcome Jessica and Michelle as our baptism candidates for this year. Over the centuries, the season of Lent has acquired other themes. The medieval church emphasised Lent as a season of penitence. Many still think of it as a season for focusing on the cross of Christ. So our modern understanding of Lent brings all these themes together. We will be preparing adults for baptism. Some of us will study the faith in Lent groups. The bishop expects your vicar to begin introducing the practice of “Reconciliation of a penitent” to the life of this parish. That has commonly been called “confession”. I will speak more about that in the weeks and months to come.

You will have noticed some changes in our liturgy to give this season a special feel. There is a change in the tone of the music for Lent. We omit singing “the Gloria” and the singing of “alleluia” for the next six weeks. Don’t think this means we stop giving glory and praise to God. What we are doing is slimming things down to essentials, getting rid of some of the clutter in our worship. Just as people give things up in Lent to focus more on God, that’s what the church does with the Liturgy in Lent, so that we can focus on communion with Christ. In the same vein, we have no flowers in church. The colour we wear is purple, the colour we use for seasons of the year when we are on an intentional journey. The church, you and me, are all on a journey to the cross and to the empty tomb. We are preparing to be joined to Christ’s death on the cross; to be participants in his suffering and death, so that God can raise us up with him into eternal life. That’s why this season of Lent is so important, and why Holy Week and Easter are the most important days of the church year. This season reminds us that being faithful Christians is about being on a journey. Michelle and Jessica will be walking reminders for us all, of this journey of growth and discovery in our relationship with God. It doesn’t matter how old or who young you are; all of us are invited on this journey with Christ to the cross. Faithful Christians will be planning for Holy Week and Easter now. Whether you will be at home or on holiday this Easter, all of us need to be making sure we can get to the key services on Maundy Thursday evening, Good Friday and, of course, the Great Vigil of Easter which is the most important liturgy of the whole year unfolding the mysteries of Easter with such richness.

We have before us in our gospel reading Luke’s account of Jesus sojourn in the desert. Often we hear of Christians talking disparagingly about “wilderness times” in their spiritual lives. They speak of times of dryness; times when God seems to be absent. So it’s not surprising that the bible often talks about the wilderness. All through the bible, though, we notice that the wilderness is a place of encounter with God. Prophets like Hosea and Jeremiah talk about God drawing Israel away into the desert like a lover seducing his mistress. It was in the desert that Moses and Israel experience God’s provision of water and food. It is in the wilderness that we encounter hunger and thirst, and with nothing else to sustain us we become utterly aware of our dependence on God for everything. Wilderness times are time of the greatest vulnerability and they have the potential to be the times of greatest growth in our relationship with God.

So it was for Jesus. In the wilderness he too struggled with the same things that we struggle with in our lives; the same pains, the same tensions, the same wondering about the silence of God, the same frustrations that we live with day by day. Just as Moses and the people of Israel had done years before, Jesus, one greater than Moses, recapitulates Israel’s sojourn through the desert. He faces the same of temptations that Israel faced all those years before. It is in the wilderness he learns about the pitfalls of life and his need of God.

Temptations often appear camouflaged as blessings that offer an exit when there seems to be no way out. Sometimes they come in the guise of goodness for someone who is down. These are the sort of temptations Jesus encountered in his sojourn through the desert. They are the same temptations we too encounter in our every day living. The first temptation has to do with how Jesus will use his divine authority and power. The challenge: turn these stones into bread! This would be an irresistible temptation after 40 days of fasting. Here is the chance to alleviate excruciating hunger and to show convincingly that God is with Jesus. Yet Jesus resisted the temptation, for only God calls forth the power of God. When the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, they were given manna to sustain them. We are given the bread of life. “I am the bread of life,” says Jesus. “I was once desperately hungry. Come to me all who hunger, and you will never be hungry again.” Jesus experienced genuine hunger. He knows about our physical hunger, and he understands the hunger of our souls. He taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This prayer is for all who hunger for survival, and, who like Jesus are tempted to compromise their souls to satisfy the hunger within.

Jesus endured three temptations when he was in the wilderness. The final two seem entwined. One addresses power and the human tendency to dominate and control other people (the temptation to take power over the nations on earth); the other concerns religious power, the extent to which we try and exert power over God (the temptation to perform a miracle at the temple to prove God’s favour.).

At the heart of temptation is that word “if.” In the story, Satan uses that horrible, seductive, manipulative word “if”. If you really are God…,” Satan said to Jesus. We are prone to say the same to God are we not? “If you’re really there God,” we say, “then answer my prayer,” by which we really mean, “Come on God, do what I want!” Sometimes I wish the word “If” could be taken out of our vocabulary. Jesus resisted that temptation. He let God be God, and resisted putting pressure on God, or manipulating God. What he is showing us is that we need to take our share of responsibility for the way we use the gifts and freedoms God has given us. We need to trust that God loves us and accepts us as we are and wants only good for us. We also need to avoid the temptation of trying anything to get God on side with our agenda. It’s fair enough to be honest with God about our needs and our agendas, but God is not open to manipulation and will not be used as an instrument to help us get our own way.

Brothers and sisters, there is no escaping the wilderness. We all have wilderness times in our lives whether we like it or not. The wilderness may come at times of great sadness and huge suffering. When it comes, it surrounds us with its relentless heat and awesome silence, and it is teeming with loneliness and temptation. If that is where you are now, be on the watch for God. Nothing separates us from God. He will be come to you and be with you. The witness of the biblical writers is that whenever they found themselves in the desert, that was when they encountered God; think of Moses and the burning bush at a time when he thought he run away in shame, defeat and failure. Think of the exiles who had watched their loved ones die and their homes being destroyed. These people all wrestled with the silence of God, the absence of God, the feelings of loss and defeat and shame. Yet God restored them all, every time. God sustained Jesus too, and when he emerged from the desert empowered by the Spirit all were amazed at his wisdom and the authority of his teaching. God will come to you too. He will raise you up and restore and heal, because that is who God us. God is faithful and has never failed to bring the people of God into the Promised Land. Like Jesus, the Spirit of God enables us to emerge in the power of the Spirit to preach the good news to the poor, to free those who are imprisoned, to liberate those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of God. We’re also led to pray: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil, for the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever Amen.

Today, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. It is the day of ashes – a day for us to begin our turning to the Lord – a day for turning of the heart to God.

In the bible, as we know, ashes were a symbol. All through the bible, people put on ash to symbolise their turning to God. When they turned away from their pride, arrogance, their collusion with injustice, and embraced God, they would put on ash. The ash was an outward sign of contrition and penitence, and a new willingness to turn again to the Lord. Can you remember people in the bible who wore ashes?

Ash is a symbol in the bible – it is a Christian symbol for us as well. Here is some ash. What are the images that come into mind when you think of ash?

I think of the wheat and barley fields being burnt off in the autumn in readiness for a new growing season. I recall the bomb fires we used to have at home when I was a child, when Dad cleaned out his study, and we got rid of piles of junk cluttering up the house – so the ash is an image of clearing away the unnecessary and getting back to essentials.

Ash also reminds me of the tragedies and the violent things people have done – the house fire which killed someone recently – the wars we have fought where whole villages and forests were burned, when nuclear bombs on Japan; and so on. These things make us grieve over the plight of our humanity – the great suffering that people go through – the amount of money we spend on weapons of destruction when so many people are starving to death.

Above all, these ashes are a symbol of our human finiteness, from dust we come and to dust we will return. I won’t live forever, there are things I can’t do any more that I used to be able to. The ash is a reminder of the fragility of human life.

Christianity is a religion that remembers and keeps the stories alive of redemptive memory. In our tradition, we remember great suffering. We remember the saints – many of whom died terrible deaths for their faith. And we remember above all death of Christ – who came into this world – and who at great cost offered God’s love and forgiveness and made available the new life of the resurrection to us all.

Do not take lightly the imposition of ashes today. Don’t come just because the vicar thinks it’s a good idea. Don’t come to appease God, or out of some sense of obligation. Come to receive these ashes today, because we are recalling the costly love shown us by Jesus, who loves each and every one of us, and knows the number of hairs on our head – the same Son of God, who has become one with our humanity, and who shares our joys and sorrows now.

As you come to receive the ashes – remember the ways Jesus resisted human evil and hatred and violence; the ways he laid down his life for those he loved. Come to be joined to his dying so that he can raise you up into the new life of his resurrection; come because he calls each of us to a new lives of love and compassion.

As the ashes are put on all of us today then, they remind us to turn again to the Lord. We come repentant, in an attitude of sorrow for our part in adding to the suffering of the world. May the ashes remind you of your deep need of God. Come because of your commitment to being renewed and made holy and because you wish to make a new start with God again. Be sealed once again with the sign of the cross of Christ as on that day when you were baptised and made a child of God – when with this same sign you received the promised forgiveness of God, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Return to the Lord your God, for the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in love. Return to the Lord, for a close relationship with God is the purpose of our lives, which means our repentance is a decision to devote our will and our attention to strengthening our relationship with God. Do not take God’s goodness for granted, but “return to the Lord with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning.” The beginning of Lent is a good time to reassess our relationship with God, to review the last year, where we have squandered opportunities or lacked commitment. Now is a good time to make up for these lost opportunities and to do something about them. Matthew suggests we practice the unobtrusive form of spiritual exercises. Jesus tells us which spiritual exercises will make us spiritually fit. They focus on what is essential and what will bring us closer to God. These include alms giving, praying more, and fasting. And if we go about these in secret, from the depths of our being where all important things happen, then God will come to the party and reward us at a deep personal level where our relationship with him is to be found.

So, this Lent, make time to be more fervent in your life of prayer. If you give something up, do so to realise your dependence on God for everything. Whatever money you save, give away to the needy. Every major religion practices the discipline of fasting. Christian fast days are traditionally Wednesdays and Fridays. Those could be non meat days when you eat vegetarian food. So, come to God with fasting. Come with a renewed willingness to give to others in need. And your heavenly Father, who sees what you do in secret, will reward you.

Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20; Luke 6: 17-26

During a film festival here in Christchurch a few years ago there was a French movie in the comedy section called The Valet. This was French farce at its best. The story contrasts the lives of two men who are desperate to live the good life. Both want to win the hearts of the woman with whom they are in love. The first man is young and poor. He lives in a one bedroom flat with a friend and his job is to park cars for the rich and powerful at one of Paris’ exclusive five star hotels. The woman he loves is his childhood sweetheart. She is beautiful and intelligent; but she is deeply in debt, having just taken out a Euro34,000.00 loan to set herself up in business. The poor man sums up his situation as hopeless when he discovers that the lady of his dreams wants a man with much better career prospects to provide security in case the new business struggles.

The other man in the movie is wealthy. He is the CEO of one of France’s biggest multinationals. He is already married and highly successful and rich, but this is not enough. He is desperately in love with his mistress; one of Paris’s top 10 models. The problem is that divorcing his wife will cost him hundred’s of millions. He wants to avoid this huge cost, yet he is desperate for the affections of his mistress. While scheming about what to do about all this, a newspaper photographs him with his mistress and publishes the photo on the front page. So begins an elaborate plan to convince his wife that his mistress means nothing to him. Of course, everything goes wrong. In the resulting fiasco the rich man looses everything he has ever valued. His wife uncovers the plot and dumps him, his mistress realises she is being used and his Board of Directors decide to sack him and get a new CEO. Meanwhile, the poor man, presented with huge temptations, the possibility of enormous wealth, the chance to blackmail one of France’s richest men and having other top ten models throwing themselves at his feet, turns away from all of these temptations and remains totally faithful to his first love. By twist of fate, he ends up engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart having paid off her debt in total. The Rich man however, is really the poor man in the story.

That movie sums up a great deal of the bible’s teaching about what it is that really makes us rich. The question before us in today’s gospel could be phrased this way: What is living the good life really all about? The gospel text before us today uses the language of blessings and woes, contrasting two different approaches to life. Luke’s gospel today is asking us to understand what the good life is really all about in terms of the Kingdom of God, to see it from God’s point of view. We might be tempted to think that the good life is really about being the CEO in the movie with a bit of religion tacked on. If only he want to church occasionally, sorted out his private life and lived with a bit of compassion, all would be well.

But what if living good life is about something else all together? This is where Jesus is going with his ‘Sermon on the Plain’. Jesus is steeped in the tradition of the prophets of the Old Testament. The prophets understood God’s creation as gift, God’s provision of a world of abundance and fullness. All through their proclamation and poetry their prayer is that God’s people would open their eyes and see that reality, instead of seeing the world’s resources as a scarcity to be hoarded. Jesus wants his disciples to see this, to learn to trust God’s providence and that he will provide a fullness and a plenty that we can only begin to imagine. Disciples of Jesus will learn to see the world as God’s gift, with life in abundance. Then they will be willing to share one’s possessions and goods; this willingness to share will be a sign of whether or not the gospel has taken root in our lives.

Blessed are they who this day hunger for God, who love with a spirit of sacrifice, and who act for the coming of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven; sharing our possessions, working for justice. This is the emphasis in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Following the Lord is done every day. “Blessed are your poor… who hunger now… who weep now… who are hated now… and woe to you who are rich now, who are full now, who laugh now…” The gospel couldn’t be clearer. It’s almost as if the movie makers were thinking of Luke’s gospel when they made their film. Those who hunger for what is right, who seek the best for ones they love, who share what they have with others; these are the ones who live the good life, who really are rich. Whereas those who abuse their power, who care only for their own needs and walk over everyone else, these end up living in a hell of their own making.

Therese of Avila is arguably one of the greatest thinkers and spiritual directors of the church in the West. She describes the human soul as an interior castle, a house with many rooms. In the centre of the castle is a special room; a place for God. The spiritual journey for every person is to enter that room and to become comfortable communing with God. Living the good life as a disciple of Christ is more than sharing possessions and seeking what is right. These are the outward signs that the kingdom has taken root in you heart. We need first of all to encounter God. Jesus is the revelation of God, but he comes to lead us to God, to reveal what living the Christian life is all about. At the centre of his life is an intimate relationship of trust in God. We need that trusting relationship with God to be fully human. When we find ourselves fully loved by God, there is a sense of being “filled up” with God. At that point, all our other needs dissipate and seem no longer to matter. Now we can lift the focus of our attention from self to loving others as much as ourselves. Now we can share. Now we can trust. Just as Christ gives of himself to us and to the world, so we begin to give of ourselves to others. We carry that attitude of love and trust into our human relationships. At the heart of the Christian way we are called to love God and others as much as we love ourselves. The more we do this, the more we live the good life of the Kingdom.

Even the most pious among us struggle on this journey. One of the biggest motivators in human behaviour is the fear of loss, the fear of missing out on what others have got. That’s often what makes us hoard possessions and prevents us from sharing. A real estate agent on of those TV real estate programmes noted that people will keep bidding in an auction way beyond the point they had agreed to just because they hate loosing to that other guy over there or because of the fear of missing out on something they think they desire more than anything else. And so it is that the space within each of us that is reserved for God is easily crowded out by consumerism, the need to be seen as one of the beautiful and successful people of our culture. The fear of loosing is or missing out on what others have is what makes us distrustful and puts love of ourselves at the centre.

Recall Jeremiah’s message, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord… and cursed is the one whose heart turns away from God.” It is important to sense this direction of the heart, the magnet that is pulling our hearts. Are our hearts restless because they already know God and desire to seek the Lord more fully? Or are they restless because they wish for that which is more temporarily satisfying? Are we impatient for the next pair of shoes, a better car, and the right make-up for our faces? Do we hunger for the acclaim of our friends and the safeguarding of our reputation? Are these the things that claim the attention of our hearts?

In the beatitudes of Luke, the direction of the heart is a key concern of Jesus. The readings today call us to search our hearts. We are gathered around a table of blessing here, of course. The point of the Eucharist is to sit down to eat and drink with God and experience the cup of blessing, God’s meal of abundance; eating with God who longs to fill us up and who wants us to enjoy the Good Life of the Kingdom.

If you are able to place our needs and desires before God, you can be assured that God will come to the party. But the journey is costly. Admitting our need, even to God, is never comfortable. Differentiating ourselves from the noisy mass culture that surrounds us can be scary. Ultimately though, the way of the gospel is costly not because we must face down our fears and anxieties. The way of Jesus is costly because we are called to love and serve others. We are called to love God, and to love our neighbour, and to love ourselves. Jesus came to reveal the extent of God’s love. Ultimately he was prepared to pay the price of loving to the end, which is what the cross is all about. But those who choose the way of love will find that God makes ours lives richer than we could ever have imagined possible. Blessed are you who hunger, who thirst, who are poor now: yours is the dominion of heaven.

Readings: Isaiah 6:1–8; 1 Corinthians 15:1–11;
Luke 5:1–11

Today’s gospel is one of the best told stories in the gospel of Luke. It is a simple and yet profound tale, with important implications for us. Today we look at the call of the first disciples, and by looking at that call we find our own ability or inability to hear the gospel brought into focus, along with the extent of our willingness to respond to it.

Over the last few Sundays we have reflected much on the holiness of Jesus encountered in places of worship; in the temple and in the synagogue. Isaiah tells us he encountered God there too; in the smoke and incense of the temple liturgy. Lots of people encounter God this way, in a sacred world cut off from real life. But when we come to Luke’s gospel today, Jesus has come out of the holy places of worship into the workplace. He is teaching from a fisherman’s boat. As we noticed in the synagogue, the people who heard Jesus were mesmerised by him. The people pressed in to hear Jesus because of his natural authority and deeds of power. One didn’t have to be a fool to see that there was something different about Jesus. In a world where life was a struggle, it was not hard to see there was something special about Jesus. He was a very attractive character. They were entertained by Jesus winning debates with religious leaders. Some would be waiting to see if he would perform a miracle. Some even hoped they would benefit directly from a miracle themselves. Some of them enjoyed the piercing and clever ways he put down the rich people or those who held power. Those with insight perceived a deeper reality in him; they knew he was of God and they were hungry to discover more of him themselves.

If the people who gathered around Jesus had mixed motives, a mixture of the motives I just described and perhaps some others; so it is with us. Most of us have mixed motives for following Jesus. Some follow Jesus because they like being with the people they meet at church, or so that their children can come to Sunday School or access a Christian education. Some come to church to get away from their normal environment of home or work to find a place of peace and rest and well being, to have their batteries re-charged. Some of this will have something to do with our own relationship with God. All of us have mixed motives for counting ourselves as Christians, and we shouldn’t worry about that; we should be aware of them and be honest with ourselves and God about them.

There were some people, just a few, who found in Jesus something utterly compelling and irresistible. They didn’t just see that Jesus came from God. They experienced the very presence of God when they were with Jesus. In Jesus’ presence they experienced the actualisation of God’s kingdom. When they were with him, it was like touching heaven. They found him disturbing, sometimes a bit frightening, but they also found him fun and enjoyable. In his presence there was an added richness to human existence they had not known before. The first to experience this humbling and exhilarating awe was Simon. Sitting on his boat on the edge of the lake, Simon listened to Jesus and was won, heart and soul.

I don’t know about you, but I hate having someone else tell me how to do my job. When it happens, I usually pull faces and start feeling grumpy and snap back at people. If you are like me, spare a thought today for these fishermen who had fished all night and had caught nothing. If someone, particularly someone who did not fish, told me to have another go after a long fruitless night, they’d be likely to get some fishing tackle wrapped round their neck. But it was not so with Simon. He was already so captivated by Jesus, that although he was a professional fisherman and Jesus was not, although reason, common sense and fisherman’s lore told him to go home to bed; despite all that, when Jesus told him to let down the nets he did just that.

The great haul of fish that ensued was a sign to Simon of the immensity of the task before the church, and the gravity of its responsibility. This was a huge haul of fish, a massive haul, which had nets tearing and both boats at sinking point. This haul of fish is a sign of the future church, encompassing all races, nations and types of people. The real catch was yet to come, but this haul was a sign.

Peter’s response was one of awe and penitence. Aware of the presence of God, and overwhelmed by it, the first thing he did was to acknowledge his sinful state. This is what we do when we gather for Eucharist. We always begin by acknowledging that we gather in the presence of God (“We gather in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”). The very next thing we do is acknowledge our sin and our human frailty to God. This is why the penitential rite, the confession and the singing of “Lord, have mercy”, properly belongs at the beginning of the liturgy. Like Simon, James and John, when we realise we are in the presence of God, the first thing that happens is that we become aware of our need of God’s mercy and compassion.

Such was the impact of this scene on Simon, James and John, that they left everything they had to follow Jesus. They left their jobs, all their securities, their possessions, their way of life, and they followed Jesus. From now on, nothing else mattered. There was no where else to go than to be where Jesus was, to do the things Jesus did and to speak and think like him. That is what these disciples began to do. It would involve a life time journey of faith. It will involve a radical reorganisation of their lives to orient them toward God.

Those fishermen left everything for the sake of Christ because they believed God was with them, and because they wanted be involved in God’s mission. Jesus needs followers who are prepared to let go of the present reality to follow him. This can be really hard, even painful. Am I prepared to give up big things, which may include my present job, my present identity and securities for God? That is what God’s call may involve. It’s an inspiring call to an adventure with God that will lead us to places and people we can’t even begin to imagine. When God calls us, we might feel a sense of unworthiness, but we are not banished by God. God sees past our hurts and failures and the messes we get ourselves into. He endows us with gifts. By God’s grace, we are made heralds of his word. He calls and sends us out into the deep, into the unknown to make his glory manifest in a needy world. Our prayer each week needs to involve asking God to guide us, to show us our vocation and our call, and to ask for the courage to respond.

If we want to be part of God’s mission, we must be prepared to let go and let God; let go of our insecurities and our fears and our sense of inadequacy; let go of our past hurts and failures. We need to let go of those things that tell us to hold back. We need to believe in God’s presence with us, and back ourselves as God’s people doing God’s work in our places of work, in our homes and when we are at play. The mission is God’s and God will ensure the harvest.

We might well ask why Jesus chose those fishermen people to be disciples. We might well ask, and so will those who follow after us. We can only speculate, but there are some clues. Simon, James and John were no strangers to hard work, and the business of being a disciple was going to be hard, and it still is. They were no stranger to disappointment, and the business of being a disciple would involve much failure and disappointment, and it still does. Jesus needed people like that, people who could sit lightly to the trappings of life and who had the fibre to leave it all and go where they were sent. He needed people like that then and he still does.

Jesus still needs people with those characteristics. Those fishermen were dead and buried long ago. Since then there have been many, some like those fishermen, others quite different, but all with personalities able to hear and respond to his call. Those people done their bit and they have gone to meet their maker. Now there is only us, we are it. If the gospel is to be proclaimed today it has to be done by us, there isn’t anybody else. If the church’s mission is to continue to be like a great haul of fish it will be because we understand that Jesus needed people like those fishermen then, and he still does today.

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

Noise! There is a great deal of it in our world today. We constantly surrounded by it, perhaps we even feel we need lots of it to feel at home, because there so much of it. For some of us the first thing we hear in the morning is the news on the radio. “Good morning. This is Radio New Zealand News and I am Stuart Keith,” or whoever it is who reads the news. This noise is especially startling on Monday mornings, as we are woken from peaceful bliss with the invigorating and rude noise of the world outside being played right into our sleeping ears. Then we hear the rumble of a train and the traffic; someone outside starts up a concrete cutter to fix the drains and the builders start banging away on the nearby building site. The phone goes. The TV is on covering the Aussie Open, there’s a computer game that is crying out to be played and the soduko in the newspaper to be solved. Where is there time and space to listen to the voice of God? We strain to hear the voice of God above the noise of the world; God’s eternal words laden with meaning that enrich our lives with meaning. So much of the noise around us is distraction. We tell ourselves that we are too busy dealing with all that has to be done to notice the needs of others. Sometimes we turn the noise up so that we can ignore the gnawing ache in our soul. The noise becomes an escape from ourselves; perhaps even an escape from God, a web of deceit into which we become enclosed; our own tower of Babel that makes us think we are in control and masters of our universe.

Our souls, in fact, are tuned to hear the voice of God, if only we would take notice. God has made us to long for himself, to find in him meaning and wisdom and life. More often than not, our desire for retail therapy, music on the radio, or the addiction to the computer game or to texting on the cell phone or our busyness is because our need for God is deep, and yet unrecognised, and so we try and fill that void with material things or lots more activity.

Our longing for God is also a longing for the shackles that bind us to be broken so that we can be truly free. The people Ezra spoke to in the first reading today were in that very position. They were a crowd of about 5000 who had returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. God had been down in Babylon and had freed them and brought them home. They had made the journey from captivity into freedom. They knew what it was to be liberated, to be set free. So they longed to able to hear God’s word piercing the heart, making them weep for his law, washing away the false identities that held them back. Now home in Jerusalem they were able to hear God’s word proclaimed to them in the heart of the holy city. By then Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language, so Ezra and his leaders translated the text into the Aramaic language of the Persian Empire so that they could understand. “With interpretation they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” They were utterly mesmerised. They wept for God’s law and they sensed as they listened that God was washing away the things that held them back. Here is a new freedom to be God’s people. Here we have found our true home.

How much more were the people, who heard Jesus preach in the synagogue, longing to be set free from bondage! Once again they were mesmerised. In fact, they were transfixed. They hung on every word, at least in the first instance. Jesus does a radical thing in this sermon. He gets up and quotes a well known passage from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed to me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” You might well be wondering what is so radical about that. All he has done is read a familiar passage from the bible. The shock comes when Jesus says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This was a huge surprise. Isaiah 61 recalls the Servant Songs earlier in Isaiah; the suffering servant who was marred and disfigured so that we recognised him not. In this moment, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah, and then he links his self understanding of his Messiahship to the suffering servant of Isaiah. No one had ever done that before. Most people thought the Messiah would be an idealised King David; a military figure who would be powerful enough to restore Israel to even greater glory than ages past. How could the Messiah be a servant who would come in humility and in powerlessness to restore justice and bring God’s teaching? It did not compute and before long the adoring crowd will react and become the lynch mob.

Yet, here indeed is the Messiah, the suffering servant, who empties himself to become one with us in great humility. His whole being is a microcosm of the kingdom. In his presence the poor have good news proclaimed to them. It will be in his nature to stand with the disadvantaged, the oppressed, the imprisoned, and the disabled. All those regarded as outsiders, Jesus will be alongside. He is restoration to the community of the redeemed. Liberation from bondage will take many forms, but they will be concrete and real. In his presence, they will know God’s freedom and restoration. Release of the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, setting at liberty those who are oppressed will be the messianic agenda. These are programmatic words for God’s people too, for you and me. And they will only be meaningful when we as Christ’s representatives take them seriously. Our task is to co-operate with God in making them real in our world today. Faith must lead us to action, to being “little Christ’s” and living the Word, to eyes that see God at work in our world already and hands ready to assist. Then we too will find ourselves standing with Christ in the poor and the marginalised feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and setting people free.

This is the reality that St Paul is sensing in his letter to the Corinthians. But the biggest block disabling our ability to listen to God, the things that traps the most, is an ego thinking it’s in charge. Although Paul’s words seem mundane, they speak of a reality that draws us away from self-centred isolation and that draws into relation with one another. Christianity is a communal religion. We listen to the Word together. We reflect on it together. We become Christ’s body together. Our baptism makes us members of that body. The Body of Christ speaks of our solidarity together, our call to play an integral part of each other’s lives. We will never be able to listen to God while we think we are the masters of our destiny and that the ego is absolute. As long as we are locked into the isolation of self-absorption, attentiveness to God, freedom to be the people God has made us to be, will never come. No matter how many gadgets we have and no matter how socially networked we are, it’s all a lie if we fail to be the mystical body of Christ. Communion with Christ, being in relationship with the Body, this is what completes us, and sets us free. Incorporation into the Body of Christ makes us whole. It is by being in relation with the Body that we hear the voice of Christ breaking the chains that bind us.

Jesus, in his being, is the Word-made-flesh. He is Word who has power to heal us, to set us free, to restore our sight, to give us comfort. All we have to do is listen to his voice. Turn off the noise, be still, and you will hear Christ’s voice, clear as a bell. He longs to be with you, to love you, to give you life, to commune with you. He is here speaking to you now. He is present in the lives and hearts of those gathered around this holy table. His body is made real in our “Amen” to the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. He comes to be enfleshed in our lives and to dwell in our hearts; he comes to be what we receive, the body and blood of Christ. Do you hear him? Does he speak to your soul and does he call you into loving and caring? For therein lies the power of being the Body of Christ.

The New Wine of the Kingdom
Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

Weddings! For most people they take a lot of organising and planning. Generally, there is quite a lot of angst that goes in to making the ceremony perfect, dressing the church, choosing readings and music; and then there are beautiful hairdos, dresses and suits to be arranged. But preparation for the marriage liturgy often pales into insignificance when compared with the work that goes into the wedding breakfast to follow. Tradition demands that even more energy is put into this part of the day. There is venue to be dressed up, food to be prepared, speeches to be made (in the correct order), a cake to be cut, the first dance and so on.

Of course, the effort put in to this is because at a wedding, families are doing more than simply providing nourishment for their guests. The primary point of everything is so that the happy couple and their family and supporters can rejoice. It’s a wedding after all. Celebration and rejoicing is compulsory! The reason for the mandatory nature of this is to reflect the nature of the relationship between the newly wedded spouses. The newly weds rejoice in each other and we all rejoice with them. The very idea of getting married involves feasting, whether small or large. Not all of this is easy. Being nice to family members for a whole day can put one under pressure enough. So at times like this a good wine is essential to enable the rejoicing and the celebrating.

In the texts before us today the first thing we note is way the bible uses marriage as a metaphor to describes the relationship between God and Israel. The prophets often describe God and Israel as a bride and bridegroom. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:5). God’s relationship is not just like that between any old husband and wife. The relationship between God and people is like the newly married when everything is new and exciting and there has to be celebration. God never changes, yet God is always new.

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee” (John 2:1). There is rejoicing, and why not. These words have profound resonance in the bible. The third day is the day of the resurrection, Sunday, the day when the glory of God was revealed. It is also the third day in a great week, the week in which Jesus first revealed himself as the Son of God in the presence of John the Baptist. John introduces Jesus at the wedding as if this was the most natural thing in the world. The entire Gospel is an invitation to a wedding feast. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son” (Matt 22:2). The church celebrates the incarnation, the Word-made-flesh, as a wedding banquet between God and humanity, between God and creation. The relationship between God and people has always been sung as a marriage. Jesus even speaks of the end of the world, heaven itself, as a nuptial banquet or even a nuptial meeting between bride and groom. Christ is the groom. Here at Cana he reveals himself as Son of God, with his people, at a wedding. This is the messianic banquet, a celebration of the incarnation as the union between God and humanity. In John’s gospel, this is the first sign that Jesus gives. It is given on the third day. The kingdom of God is made manifest in abundance and plenty and rejoicing. The bridegroom is with his bride and is rejoicing over her. This is another epiphany, and on this occasion it is the epiphany of our salvation, a picture of the kingdom of God, a foretaste of heaven.

The only problem is that the celebration has hit a snag. The wine has run out. Normally, this might not actually have been so important. The guests had probably had enough anyway and would have gone home satisfied. The hosts would have got over any embarrassment that may have arisen after a while. The shortage of wine is about the lack of well being, that certain something that gives a faith community a feeling of quality and depth, a sense of the numinous. When it comes to living the Christian life there are times when something is missing. Perhaps this is because of the temptation to turn the Christian faith into a formula to be followed. “Yes, I tick all the boxes,” I say to myself. I have spent time praying today. I have my quiet time with God and read the bible every day. I do someone a good turn every day. I have donated to the needy and I go to church every Sunday. Churches can do the same by picking out the list provided by the latest consultant: yes, we have updated the liturgy (or updated it too much); we have visited the sick, provided food for the local food bank. Our clergy pray the morning office. We have made our hearts open to newcomers and given them plenty of say along with better coffee delivered with our best smile. The point about the wedding at Cana is that in spite of all the boxes being ticked there is still something missing. There still needs to be that ‘something else’ and that ‘something’ is the very thing that counts most. There has to be new wine.

When Mary says, “Do whatever he tells you” her words also resonate through the bible. These are, in fact, the very words pronounced by Pharoah during the time of famine in Egypt when the people had nothing. “Go to Joseph; what he says to you, do” (Gen 41:55). Then Joseph opened all the storehouses. St John stresses the quality of the wine. “Everyone serves the good wine first, and the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus in his being is that good wine, the rich wine Isaiah so poetically describes. He wants us to experience that wine in our own lives and in our life together as a community of faith. He wants us to experience new wine as joy and love and hope and faith. He wants us to experience this in abundance. Just look at the size of the six stone jars. Each was full to the brim. Is our spiritual life marked by dryness and fatigue, or is there a deep down a gushing wine, the superabundance of the Spirit nourishing us day and night and never running out? What is your life tasting like? Is it a dry ticking of the boxes to make us feel spiritually on top, or is it abundantly rich with the best wine?

The good wine that Jesus describes is the joy of becoming comfortable with the truth of who God has made us to be. It is the joy of being in an intimate communion with Christ and knowing we are loved by him. It is the joy knowing our vocation and our calling and our gifts. It is delighting in sharing those gifts, living our vocation for God and growing into the fullness of Christ. It is our readiness to serve God and the community on concert with all the baptised. This is the wine that Jesus provides. He is one greater than Joseph. His blood will be the blood of the new covenant, poured out for many. His food will satisfy the hunger of the world. His feast foreshadows the consummation of the kingdom, while at the same time, pointing forward to his passion, death, and resurrection and to his saving work that he will accomplish on the cross. He lives and dies to give us a taste of the best wine.

In your prayer this week, ask the risen Christ to watch over our feasts, the feast that is our society, the feast that is our church in Opawa-St Martins and the feast that is the world wide Anglican communion. Ask Jesus to keep us attentive to what is lacking in these feasts, to avoid allowing our hearts to be consumed in worrying about trivialities and rivalries, or the wine of consumerism and materialism, so that with Christ we can see those who have no wine, no bread, and no joy. Ask God to show us how we can be stewards who distribute the new wine of the kingdom. Pray for the confidence to bring others to the banquet of Christ, and pray that Christ may make the good wine appear in our lives and in this church.

The baptism of Jesus

Today we are celebrating another Epiphany. The word Epiphany means “manifestation” or “appearance.” So in this part of the church year, following on as we are from the Christmas festival, we are celebrating the manifestation of God in Jesus, the human being in whom the eternal Word of God was made flesh. We recognise in Jesus the fullness of God, God’s compassionate love in human form, God choosing to be revealed in a complete human life. As Jesus comes to John to be baptised we are seeing in him a person shot through with God’s life and love; God breaking into the human world. There have been many holy people in human history who have provided inspirational spiritual leadership. But few have attracted the kind of language used to describe Jesus. Jesus was more than a someone showing up to give a course of lectures on God and personal self improvement. When we gaze upon Jesus the emphasis is not so much on his ideas. The key question is, “Who are we dealing with?” St Luke has been answering the “who question” in the early stages of his gospel. Ever the master story teller, Luke tells us that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and welcomed with choirs of angels, recognised by John the Baptist before he was even born, blessed by Simeon and Anna in the temple. As Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptised, we are seeing none other than the Creator of the universe dwelling within a human being, Jesus. He is completely associated with God and is now being empowered by the Spirit to do what God does.

In recent novels and popular journalism, in characters like “the teacher” in The Da Vinci Code” there is a suggestion that Jesus was really just a great man who suffered a tragic death. It is said that Jesus’ divinity was a later invention by a power hungry church hierarchy who manipulated generations of people to suit their own ends. But the striking thing here is about how quickly this understanding of Jesus fell into place in the imagination and prayer of the early church. The earliest witnesses, the disciples and the first Christians, had a strong conviction from the start about who Jesus was, and this conviction drove them to communicate the gospel to lands far and near and to risk their lives in its telling. They knew that what they had to say about Jesus would be life giving anywhere and everywhere, that Jesus was for every person in every time and place and that he could transform any situation.

And so we come to contemplate a second Epiphany, a second episode in the life of Our Lord in which he is revealed as the Son of God, his baptism.

We might wonder why Jesus, who is of one substance with God the Father, might need to be baptised at all. Baptism, as John the Baptist practiced it, was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But the gospel writers are on to something here. Jesus is God, not just because he is all presence of the all powerful Creator of the universe and can do what God can do. He shows his divinity also in his humility and in his demonstration of dependence on God. The divine life in Jesus is generated by unconditional, compassionate love. In Jesus there is one who listens in humility to God and responds, who allows his will to be bent to God’s purposes, and that includes being united to the human condition in every way. So Jesus comes to be baptised, just as we do. God is more than power and initiative. God also receives love and reflects that love back with gratitude and thanksgiving.

This is what we are witnessing in the baptism scene today. Jesus is baptised by John in the River Jordan. We see the whole Trinity involved here. We hear the gentle, affirming words of the Father, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased”. We see the Holy Spirit descending upon him in bodily form like a dove. Jesus is embraced and affirmed as the “servant-Messiah” of God that Isaiah foreshadows. From the beginning, God’s energy is flowing through Jesus. This energy will shortly drive him into the desert and empower his ministry of teaching and healing. But this creative, living, communicating energy is not just directed to us and to the world. It is directed back to God. In the baptism we see all the members of the trinity communing together, giving and receiving love, affirmation and support. Jesus is lovingly and humbly receiving love from God and reflecting back that same love and the life to God, the source from which it comes. Jesus is both the outflow of God’s life and energy which is now directed toward us, and he is the world’s energy and love being redirected back to God in a movement of reconciliation, love and gratitude. Jesus stands at the heart therefore of a twofold movement. He comes to communicate God’s compassionate love to us, and he comes to unite us back to God and to redirect our love and energy and our thanks to God. In this short little episode of Jesus baptism, we see this action beginning to unfold. It will become more visible as Jesus’ ministry and his passion, death and resurrection unfold. We are seeing Jesus bound up in the life of the Holy Trinity, being held and affirmed by the Father and the Holy Spirit. He reveals God who is in the habit of sharing love, pouring love out, giving it back with gratitude, a circle of love being given and shared around.

Notice how observant St Luke is in telling his story. St Luke notes that after his baptism, Jesus was praying. All the gospel writers tell us that Jesus was someone who prayed, meaning that he continually put his will and his decisions at the service of God.

While we may nod our heads in wonder as Jesus unites himself with the human condition in submitting to John’s baptism. But the meaning of Jesus’ baptism does not end there. His going down into the water and rising up again Christ anticipates his death and resurrection, his dying and rising again. In doing so, he sanctifies the waters of baptism to be a means by which we are united with him. So Jesus’ baptism becomes a prototype of our own. We too are embraced by God to be included in the mission Jesus freely entered. We too, are caught up in the dynamic of dying and rising, being united to Christ’s death in a baptism like his, so that we might rise again into eternal life with him. We too will be participants in the Day of Pentecost. On that day the whole family of Christ’s people will be incorporated by the Spirit into the servant community, charged with bringing the light of God’s justice and peace into a broken world. It will be our task to allow God to enflesh the Word of God in our hearts and lives and to be channels of God’s love and affirmation, mutually receiving and giving love as we echo the life of the Holy Trinity.

All this means that you and I, in our own baptism, are immersed in the baptismal experience of Jesus. When Mary first said yes to the message of God given her by the angel Gabriel, she seemed to be a very ordinary woman, just like one of us. Yet all was not as it seemed, for the child she carried would turn out to be the Word-made-flesh. When Jesus was born, he was an ordinary baby, just like any other child born every day of the year. But again, all was not what it seemed, as the shepherds and the Magi attest. There is more to Jesus than meets the eye. Today Jesus is seen for what he is. Jesus is “The Beloved Son of God, the Word-made-Flesh.” The ordinariness of his earthly body and his earthly being is united to the divine holiness of God. He has come that we too might be united to one another and to God in a divine circle of love. In our baptism we are immersed into this mystery. God unites us to himself and God’s purposes become ours. We might look like an ordinary group of people, but just as it was with Jesus, all is not what it seems for we are the holy beloved people of God to be driven out into the world by the Spirit.

The Epiphany of Our Lord
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12