Epiphany 2015

I wonder how differently the gospels might have come out if they had been written as a journal each day as the stories unfolded.

Instead, we know that they were written by people who already knew the end of the story.  They had already experienced the Risen Lord.  So they saw meaning in things that they might not have noticed at the time.  As readers we need to be alert to these.

But also, we need to understand the influence of the historical or political context of these events on the way the stories are told.  Matthew’s announcement that God had appointed a new “King of the Jews” in this child born in Bethlehem takes significance from the nature of Herod as a vassal-King, appointed by Rome and holding power at Rome’s pleasure.

The story we read today, which marks the end of our Season of Christmas, is a story that very clearly has the end of the story in sight.

Matthew places a great significance in his story of the place of King David’s lineage and of the town of Bethlehem.  These ROYAL images are vital in conveying the importance of this man.  And that royalty is focussed in what seems to be a rather exclusive kingdom of Jewish people.

It is true that when you peel away some of the layers that Jewish people had an important responsibility for the Gentiles around them.  In fact the ancient Abrahamic covenant contained the promise that through God’s blessing of the Great Family, all people would be blessed.  But to a large extent, Jewish people felt that they had an exclusive relationship with YHWH.

So right from the outset of his telling of the Gospel story, Matthew alerts his readers to the beginning of a new way.

Now, we must consider what sorts of people these Wise men or Magi were.  They were not actually kings.  There were not necessarily three of them.  Astronomers or astrologers, we only know that they saw significance in the alignment of stars and planets.  And these things led them to Jerusalem.

These men came and by their gifts and devotion to the Christ Child transcended race, culture and religion to acknowledge the incarnation – of God come among us.

The ability of those outside the “elect” nation of Israel to recognise God among us is at the heart of our traditional emphasis on this celebration of Epiphany.  I was amused by one dictionary definition:     

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely or common-place occurrence or experience.

Through this story of a somewhat common-place event the church gained an insight into a new reality that the incarnation has brought about – that all the world, Jews and Gentiles alike will know that God has come among us.

What I take from this story is that it reminds us that the family of God is an inclusive one, not an exclusive one.  People don’t have to be good enough to become part of this family – none of us are good enough.  When people are welcomed into this family their lives can be transformed.  That is the gospel – or the Good News.

For me this means that the way we are the church must be welcoming and open to all.  This is what GRACE is all about.  It means remembering that we all bleed red blood, we all have feelings that get hurt, we are all children of God and carry God’s image within us.

Like those wise men we are all on a journey of discovery – we are seeking out the one who brought real life to earth.  And he says that he is the way to the Father.  It is that way we are all doing our best to discover and follow. 

So, comrades, let us travel together with the same joy the wise men experienced when they found the Christ Child.

Blessed are Those of Advanced Years

I have decided to invent a new Beatitude – I think we could just add it to the ones we have in Matthew 5.  I am sure everyone will agree.  It goes like this:

Blessed are those of advanced years,

For they shall see the outworking of God’s plans.

What do you reckon?  Is that a good one?

Well maybe we can’t just make out that Jesus said it but it was inspired in me by our Gospel reading today.

In our story we have the interaction of young and old.  We have the birth of a child.  We have the young parents doing all the right things for their new baby.  And we have two dear and godly old people who saw something that for them finally made sense of it all.

I know that it sometimes seems that the sidelining of the elderly by young people is a relatively recent phenomenon, but I recall seeing a quotation Aristotle, I think, or it may have been Plato, complaining of that very same thing.

I might have been guilty of expressing such attitudes when I was much younger, but now that the silver hairs are shining through, I have formed a different view. 

Now this will make you smile.  When I was in seminary we were discussed the role that ministers often have to make changes in congregations.  Our professor asked us who we thought would be most resistant to change.  Of course, we all said the oldies – the ones with the grey hair.  He then surprised us.  He said that in most circumstances it would be the middle aged people that would resist most strenuously.

The thing about being “of advanced years,” as I said before, is that by then you will have seen a lot of change.  This means that perhaps you understand it or maybe you just accept it.

The thing that alerted me to this in today’s story is the amazing things both Simeon and Anna said about the baby Jesus when they saw him.

Simeon said:

“With my own eyes

I have seen your salvation, 

which you have prepared

in the presence of all peoples: 

a light to reveal your will to the Gentiles 

and bring glory to your people Israel.” 

And Anna:

“gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were waiting for God to set Jerusalem free.” 

How did these two old people get so that when they saw the baby Jesus, they just knew these things about him?  Well, we could say it was the result of a miracle of revelation by the Holy Spirit.  I think there is a more obvious clue in the text.

Simeon is described as a good, god-fearing man who was “waiting for Israel to be saved.”  This lovely old spiritual man walked closely with his God.  He had even experienced the Holy Spirit in a special way.  He knew with great confidence that he would see the Messiah before he died.

And Anna was well known around the Temple area.  She was a widow who was now 84 and she had devoted her life to temple prayers.  The Spirit of God made her heart skip a beat, too, when she saw the baby Jesus.  She praised God and then told everyone who would listen that this child would be the means of salvation for the great city, Jerusalem.

Here we have the example of two wonderful people of advanced years.  They had devoted these later days of their lived to prayer and worship.  And because of that they were able to recognise Jesus for who he was.

What I would like to suggest is that we don’t need to wait until we are of advanced years to dedicate out lives to prayer and worship.  The example of these two can be an inspiration for us all, because it is through this devotion that we are all enabled to see Jesus for whom he is.

The Lord be with you.

#illridewithyou

When I think about Christmas and the meaning of the birth of Jesus, I am afraid it is easy for me to get into a bit of a whirlwind of ideas about what is so wonderful.  I think I have always been fascinated by the world of ideas.  This makes the fashioning of a Christmas Day message all the more difficult.  My primary question is:

Of all the things that I could talk about, what is it that we need to hear today?

Whether we like it or not, the Christmas and Easter stories both bring into stark contrast the humanity and divinity of Jesus – and this is perhaps the one unique dimension of Christianity among the world’s many religions.  And these two things are the hardest things for us to keep in perspective.

We have the vulnerable child born in an outhouse

AND

We see the whole cosmos – stars and divine messengers – acknowledging his birth.

There is an ancient name that was said to sum up tis child’s place on earth – Emmanuel which means “God with us.” 

In this child, God has stepped out of his omni-everything to become one of us. 

In this child God experienced humanity just as we experience it – with all its pain and uncertainty.

In this child God shows us a way of living that leads to a renewal of life.  I think this is what the little quote from Bishop Wright means:

“The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that he was doing close up, in the present, what he was promising long-term in the future.  And what he was promising for that future and doing in the present was (about …) rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose – and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that large project.”

I think this is what Jesus was pointing to when he said “I am the Way!”  He is pointing us towards a new way of living that turns upside down all those standards by which we might naturally choose to live – like “love your enemies; and pray for those who persecute you.”  Living this way is so transformative that it looks to others like we have been rescued from the corruption and decay that normally besets our humanity.

Last week we saw evidence of some people breaking away from this power of corruption and decay in ways that can only be God-breathed.

On Monday last, while a terrible siege was being acted out in Sydney, a woman noticed another passenger on her train, a Muslim woman, discreetly removing her hijab, a clear symbol of her declaration of faith in Islam.  The women got up the courage to speak to the Muslim stranger and found out that the Muslim woman was afraid of being vilified by Aussies because of that a clearly deranged Muslim man was doing.

So the Australian woman said she would travel with her if she was afraid, and this was the beginning of a turnaround in everyday values in Australia.  Where once the stranger was vilified, now a “mate” was being protected from idiots.  People have used the hashtag #IllRideWithYou to declare their intention to overcome fear.

For those of us advocating for a more compassionate response to the aliens among us through our refugee policies, the positive traction this got was a real surprise – a pleasant surprise. 

Somehow, I think it reached into a very deeply held “Aussie” value of mateship.  The idea of this is that if your mate is doing it tough, you stand alongside them, you help them out.  Our national mythology says this was forged a hundred years ago in the trenches of war in Turkey and Europe.  I am not sure about that.  Somehow I think it goes deeper than that, and perhaps is not so idiosyncratic to Australia as we like to think it is.

In reflecting on this a number of Christians have observed that the coming of Jesus was God’s ultimate #IllRideWithYou declaration.  I think this is a good idea to take home today as a Christmas Gift from God.

What this means is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in our human experience that our God, whom some call the Source of our being, has not already experienced just like us. 

Our God seemed to understand that a relationship with us based on us reaching out from our humanity to attain something of the divine was destined to failure – people wouldn’t be able to do it. 

So our God chose to come to us from the divine realm into our humanity and in doing so he has created a Way that we can all succeed in – a way of being in relationship with God – in Jesus.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace.

I found a little quote of words by Mother Teresa of Calcutta which I thought would set the scene well for today’s thoughts.

There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.  We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain.  Then suddenly the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.

                                                                                                         - Mother Teresa

Every year, one of the Sundays in Advent focuses on Mary.  And obviously Mary is pretty important in the Christmas story. 

But it seems to me a funny thing that we rarely mention her in sermons.  Other women in the Bible get more sermons about them than Mary does.  And this is rather amazing given that she is the one who bore our Lord Jesus.  She is the one who suckled him, and taught him and shaped his character to give and receive much love.  She was the one who at the end stood by him when he was raised on the cross. 

Even thinking about what we might call her creates a problem for us as Protestants.  Here’s a list:

·        The Blessed Virgin Mary

·        Mary the Mother of Christ

·        The Holy Mother

·        The Virgin Mother

·        The Mother of our Lord

·        Our Lady – even

I suppose our little blind-spot here is understandable.  In the Protestant reaction to Roman Catholicism we ditched most forms of piety involving Mary.  It seemed to us that Mary was not merely venerated by Roman Catholics.  It seemed as if she had been elevated almost ahead of God – via the language they use of Mary as the Mother of God.  This to us seemed like blasphemy and we have backed away from it and now seem almost to ignore her, except at Christmas.

But surely we can do better than that?  

In our Anglican Calendar of Feasts and Holy Days there are five days each year set aside to remember aspects of the life of Mary.  This woman is a most significant of women.  She can be an example to us; an inspiration to encourage us in our love of God and of each other.  So much so that we should not feel apologetic about saying, as the Angel Gabriel said:

            “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”

            and adding as Mary’s cousin Elizabeth said:

            “blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed     is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Now I am not advocating that we all learn the prayer of the Rosary.  I’m just trying to make the point that Mary is a person who is worthy of our close consideration.

WHO WAS SHE?

So the question arises for us:  Who was she?

If I was to just rely on Luke’s stories I would come up with four facets of her life that can be inspirational for us as we try to follow in the way Jesus showed us.

1.     She has a profound and tough faith in God

The way Luke tells the story we find Mary doing a most unlikely thing.  She is told she is going to be the mother of God’s Messiah, and she says “Okay!  Whatever!”  She seems to have been the kind of person who readily put aside her own hopes and plans when God placed a much harder plan in front of her.  In a way this is showing how much she was able to be God-centred rather than self-centred. 

Her ability to put her own fears aside and say to the angel “Let it be according to your word” is what should inspire us.  She had a tough and profound faith in God – an absolute assurance that God would not let her down. 

2.     She understood that doing God’s will might involve suffering

Communities can be really hard on people who step outside the cultural norms for that community.  Surely Mary understood that what the angel was telling her would happen would cause her a lot of trouble.  But that did not stop her from saying yes.  It must have helped her that Joseph chose to stand by her despite the gossip of others.  She did not let these difficulties stop her.  She was willing to suffer for God’s sake.

3.     Mary’s voice echoes the rich prophetic traditions of Israel

When you unpack the words of what we call the Magnificat or the Song of Mary, they are full of prophetic language.  In these words she is a visionary; a seer who looked towards a future day when God would do away with all forms of injustice.

I want to encourage you in the days between now and Christmas to read this prayer of Mary over slowly – it’s in Luke 1 – you can find it – and you’ll find there a profound prophetic vision:

The Lord has shown strength with his arm:

and scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones:

and lifting up the lowly.

God has filled the hungry with good things:

and sent the rich away empty.

Mary has a right to stand among the great prophets.

4.     Mary was a Revolutionary

This idea flows from the sense of her prophetic voice.  Too often we have thought of Mary as a meek, demure, self-effacing and compliant wife.  The kind of woman some men think might be good to have around, who say “Yes sir!  No Sir!  I beg your pardon, Sir!  Whatever you say, Sir!”  And so she is presented as this kind of door-mat wife.  But when you read that song – the Magnificat – it is like a revolutionary manifesto.

Tyrants are to be dispossessed of their thrones,

the down trodden poor lifted up from their misery, the hungry millions will be fed

            while the rich will be send packing, and empty!

Mary sees her own role, with its suffering,

as directly involved in God’s revolution.

So she is:

            A person of profound, tough faith.

            A mother who is willing to suffer for God.

            A visionary who stands with the prophets.

            A woman who takes part in a revolution.

AN EXAMPLE FOR US ALL

Mary, then, is a prototype for all people of faith, young or old, male or female, but I have to say especially for women, who are so often sidelined.  In her we see a believer who, in spite of the greed, apathy and despair in the world around her, embraces the awkward, revolutionary Word of God.  

She is at the vanguard of those who make God’s new world their top priority:

            Who seek first the kingdom of God.

            Who are willing to suffer for their faith.

            Who are prepared to be the unpopular                                  prophetic voices.

            Who are the loving revolutionaries of God.

Mary, the Holy Mother, was open to God, open to God’s future, even though it can often be a frustrating, painful and frightening way to go.  She was open to God and joyful about it.  The Magnificat is a song of sheer joy!

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”

And “blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Comfort My People

I had an attack of sadness this week.  It is not the first time.  But when I came to consider the readings for today, Isaiah said it all to me.  I wonder what he has to say for you.

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.  
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins. 

My sadness this week was triggered by the passage by the Senate of Migration and Maritime Powers Amendments Bill.  This legislation will change the landscape for refugees seeking protection in Australia.  My sadness was a personal sadness because I have been advocating against these kind of laws for years – along with many others of good will.  My sadness was representative – sad for those who will never gain our protection even though they deserve it.

It is a very complex matter to explain to you.  I think the implications are almost solely for those who arrived here by boat.  Those of you who came through UN facilities overseas should not be adversely affected.  But those who know far more than me about these things are also very sad that our parliament has done this.

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.  

These are the words we need to hear.  I remember a wise old man illuminating me on the meaning of Comfort.  There are two parts to this word – com and fort.  In the Latin these together mean WITH STRENGTH.  This is not always a part of what we mean when we use the words.  The same is true when we offer comfort to another.  So this is a good word for us today.

But what about the people in this congregation who were refugees?  How many of you have family members still back at home in danger?  How many of you long to have someone in your family join you here in this wonderful place?  As we come to the end of another year that you have been here, perhaps you too are feeling sad that you have still not been able to keep a promise you made.  Maybe you are sad that you have not yet fulfilled a wish or hope you had.

And maybe there are others here who are sad in these days leading up to Christmas.  Perhaps there are squabbles in families.  Perhaps there are disappointments and regrets.  Perhaps there is loss and separation.

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.  
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

“Jerusalem” simply means “the people of God”.  These words are for us.  The Lord has tender words for us.

And what are the tender words he has for us?  With what would he strengthen us in times like these?  The prophet goes on with these words.  You will be familiar with them because we use them in our liturgies.  Our sacred songs have echoed them as well:

Get you up to a high mountain,
   O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
   O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
   lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
   ‘Here is your God!’ 
See, the Lord God comes with might,
   and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
   and his recompense before him.  
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
   he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
   and gently lead the mother sheep. 

There is an important message for us in these words.  

We are reminded that our God is HERE. 

Right here! 

Now! 

With us! 

Not far away! 

With us!

And he has come among us so that he can feed us like a shepherd feeds his sheep.

He has come among us so that he can hold us in his arms – in a loving embrace that protects us and strengthens us.

He has come among us so that he can gently lead us in his ways.

Are these the words you need to hear today?

For me this is the real joy of the Incarnation that we celebrate in the Christmas Season.  That God has come among us.  Oscar Romero once explained it like this.  If Jesus had been born in a  little village in El Salvador and if he had come into the church that Romero was speaking in, Jesus would have looked just like any one of the peasant farmers who were there in church that day.  So today, we need to remember that if Jesus had been born in a western city like this and if he came into our little church here in Hamersley, he would look just like you and me – he would fit right in.

And if he is here with us, then no matter what happens, even if it is not God’s will, Jesus will keep on walking with us, feeding us, loving us, guiding us.  Surely that is a Good News story. 

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.  

Be on watch! Be Alert!

It has become a tradition in the celebrating of ADVENT to focus on four key words that seem to sum up what we are preparing for in the birth of Jesus, the coming of God among us and as one of us.

Today our key word is HOPE and there are echoes of HOPE ringing around in the selected Scriptures we read out loud today.  Together they seem to be pointing us to something they call “The Day of the Lord,” and while some of the imagery around this great a marvellous day seem to be judgemental and fearful, implicit in the texts is the idea that we who call him Lord have cause for HOPE – even in the midst of terrible and frightening things.

Be on watch.  Be alert.  

For you do not know when the time will come.

Chapter 13 in Mark’s Gospel is called “A Little Apocalypse” because it concerns the coming of Christ on earth on judgement day, something that theologians call the parousia.  This word used by Mark, means “with essence” or “to become present or real.”  Christian tradition has also taken parousia to mean The Second Coming of Christ.

But in the original mother tongue of Jesus, Aramaic, there is no word for “return” or “to come again.”  But there is a word for “appearance”.  So the early Christians looked eagerly for the appearance of Christ in power and glory.  

They lived in this HOPE which is picked up as our ADVENT theme today.  At the beginning they expected his final appearance to come soon.  As time wore on, they decided they would have to be more patient.  And they told each other stories that would keep this HOPE alive.

THE IMPLICATIONS

In the story that Jesus alludes to, I am sure you could not help thinking of the stories we had over the past few weeks that also spoke of us not knowing when the final judgement would happen.

In this version of the story, the listeners would all have understood that each servant would have been given work to be done while the master was travelling abroad.  To watch, to be alert, meant doing the work to which they had been assigned:

·        the gardener was to garden,

·        the tutor was to teach the children,

·        the cook was to do the cooking,

·        the secretary was to answer letters for the master,

·        the accountant was to pay the bills,

·        the cleaners were to clean the house, and

·        the cook was to keep busy in the kitchen.

Be on watch.  Be alert.  

For you do not know when the time will come.

This was not a WATCH & WAIT order.  It did not mean to sit around anxiously waiting.  To be ready was to be busy serving their lord.  

So this story points to the way that Christ’s followers were to live.  They were to BE READY for the appearance of the holy Son of God whenever that might happen.

Remember the truth that flows from the story about the master of the house going abroad.  This story points the way for contemporary believers.

To be really ready we must be actively involved in our Lord’s work, work which has been clearly spelled out to us:

·        loving God as we go about loving one another.  

·        forgiving enemies,

·        praying for our persecutors,

·        giving without expected reward,

·        going the second mile,

·        storing up treasure not on earth

      but building spiritual capital in heaven

·        seeking not the praises of men,

·        healing the sick and releasing the prisoner,

·        welcoming the refugee,

·        rescuing the lost,

·        and housing the homeless.

This is what being ready for the appearance of the Lord means.  And only you can judge if you have become so involved in this work of ministry that you can say you are ready.

Be on watch.  Be alert.  

For you do not know when the time will come.

MAYBE IT IS TIME?

So, are you ready?

If you made an honest audit of your life and its priorities, would it show you as being ready for the appearance of Christ Jesus?  

“Are you ready” means today, because today is the moment of opportunity?

Remain faithful and alert, taking the opportunities as they arise, is the best kind of watching for Christ Jesus that we have.  That means being alert to those around us, be they family members who we take for granted or strangers in the supermarket

Are you ready?  Am I ready?  

The business of the master’s house is all around us.  It will be a wonderful thing to be awake and ready whenever he comes.

The Joy of the Master

Are you good at taking risks?  Some people are and others are so cautious you wonder how they even get to work every day.

The world we live in is one that is almost obsessed with risk mitigation.  Even the slightest risk – once made public is something we must avoid no matter how miniscule the risk.  And so our children aren’t allowed to play in the streets or climb trees or ride their bikes wherever they want to go.  Something might happen to them.  They might meet a stranger who will abuse them.

Some parents are so afraid of the risk their children will have an adverse reaction to a vaccination that they would prefer to expose their children to the risk of catching the diseases they could be vaccinated against.

And then on the other hand we have those people who seem to poke their tongues out at the risks they deliberately take on – such as climbing up rock faces without ropes to secure themselves against a fall; or base jumping; or ay of a whole range of extreme sports.  And what about those people who have no fear about putting up $40,000 to borrow $400,000 to buy an investment of some sort, and soon after take out another loan on the strength of what they bought before, and all the time they seem to be making one capital gain after another.

These are the issues that seem to be at stake in the parable of Jesus that Matthew tells us here right near the end of his Gospel.  It is clear from the context of the story that a key issue in it is the unexpected return of Jesus – some time, like a thief in the night.

But I think it is fair to say that most of us, when we read this story get stuck on what seems to be the unfair treatment of the man who got just 1000 silver coins.  To do this is to run the risk of missing the important thing we have to notice in the story.

There is something strange in the economy of God that many of us in the church have not understood again and again.  That is, that if you want real security you have to risk it.  Remember when Jesus said that if you want to save your life you have to be willing to lose it.  This parable is an example of this principle at work.

Now it is not talking about money.  It is talking about an attitude of mind and heart.  It is an attitude in which we understand that everything we have has been given to us and that the economy of God needs it to be working in Kingdom ways. 

The emotion that drives security is fear.  Listen to how the man with his 1000 silver coins described the Master:

‘Sir, I know you are a hard man; you reap harvests where you did not plant, and you gather crops where you did not scatter seed.  ²⁵ I was afraid, so I went off and hid your money in the ground.’

And that fear is what prevented him from doing anything in the economy of God.  He thought his primary task was to preserve the capital, as we might say today.  He thought all he had to do was protect what the Master had given him.

What he found out was that the Master really wanted him to do was use it.  Take a risk with it.  See what might happen if you dared to venture it in some risky enterprise.

I think it is very easy for us in the church to be like this.  We get caught up in the fear of losing what we have so much that we become paralysed and nothing happens.

Whereas the two who invested the money seemed to have much more freedom, and certainly joy when it came to facing up to the Master when he came back.  I find it interesting that the two faithful ones don’t get higher salaries or gold watches or plaques for their walls as some kind of reward for their faithfulness.  It seems that they get just two things:

1.     They get more responsibility.  In Jesus words “Because you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.”  In a sense the reward for taking such risks is the encouragement – the responsibility – to take even more risks.

2.     But with the responsibility came a second reward: the joy of the Master’s presence.  The attitude of mind of the first servant towards the master would have found no joy in the master’s presence, and while his banishment is seen as a punishment, in some senses it was a natural consequence, rather than a direct action of the Master.

So, this parable clarifies for us the two alternative ways of being part of this Kingdom of Heaven. 

To the one choosing security over risk, the Lord remains a hard master, one who seems to reap where he does not sow and gather where he has not planted.  Fearfulness breeds more fear.  The prospect of joy and the freedom of response are gone.

But those who risk discover a Lord ready to share the delight of his presence and participation in his mission.  They discover the joy of an abundance mentality in which there is more than enough for everyone – and some to share beyond.  The Kingdom of Heaven knows no boundaries.  And they discover they have a link with the teller of this story, who knows all about risks and whose love is neither prudent nor calculating; indeed it is prodigal.

Be Prepared

When I was in primary school I was encouraged to join a Boy Scouts Group in my community.  I don’t think I stayed in it for a long time – then my family moved to Albany I got involved in a Boy’s Brigade which felt like the same thing only in church.

But I do remember the motto of the Boy Scouts, that Baden Powell knew was an important thing for us all to remember.  It was “BE PREPARED.”

In a sense this will be a theme that is reiterated in our services over the next seven weeks in the run up to Christmas.  Be Prepared!

Joshua, that great successor to Moses, just before his death, reminds the people of the wonderful ways in which God had shown his utter faithfulness to them since they left Egypt and had come to this wonderful “Promised Land” and that all God asks of them in response to his faithfulness is a commitment to similar faithfulness – and the kind of faithfulness he is talking of is the faithfulness in relationship that should exist between a man and woman who are married.

That is why the idea of foreign gods is so abhorrent.  They are like a partner in marriage committing adultery – and indeed this term “adulterer” was frequently applied to the people of Israel by the prophets because they had fallen away from their One and True God – The Lord, who rescued them from the Pharaoh.

The covenant Joshua drew up to remind them of all this was really a kind of BE PREPARED Manifesto – be prepared to do all these things to show that you intend always to be faithful to God.

There are echoes of PE PREPARED in the Psalm as well.  The Psalmist reminds the people that they took on an obligation to teach these things to their next generation so that they, too, would know and understand how important their faithfulness to God was.

The letter of Paul is also full of the BE PREPARED manifesto, as he encourages the people in Thessalonika to remember that those who die in Christ enter into a life in Christ and with God that cannot be taken away from them.

So let’s now have a little look at the Gospel in a way that we have not for a few weeks now.  Here in this story of the ten bridesmaids we have a description of something of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like – “At that time the Kingdom of Heaven will be like this: …”

There are two important elements to the parable.  Firstly there is that idea of BE PREPARED.  We have the wonderful image if the bridesmaids awaiting but they had had to wait so long that the expected amount of oil necessary for their lamps had been exhausted in the waiting, and only five had thought ahead of this possibility and made sure they had some extra supplies – but not enough to share.  There is nothing more to say here than make sure you are ready.  You know the Bridegroom is coming – even if you can’t be sure when.

This provides a nice Segway into the other key theme in this story.  I don’t know about you but this story goes rather against our cultural norms for weddings – it is usually the bride that keeps the guests waiting at a wedding.  In fact my wife was physically constrained by her brother – he was driving one of the bridal cars – to make sure she was late, even though she wanted to be there on time.

But getting to the point it is obvious that this is a story connected with the Christian notion of Christ’s coming again on some great and wonderful day in the future.  Other texts in the Gospels point to it.  Various texts in the Epistles point to it, and the great thinkers of the church have pondered on this idea at great length down through the millennia.  And so we have many ideas all blended together into what we make of this idea of The Second Coming.

When considering this story some might want to pick up on the sense of the unexpectedness of the moment when it happens – “You do not know the day or the hour.”

I want to offer a nuance on that idea.  I wonder if the important idea for the readers here is that the bridegroom’s coming has been delayed – and that in the delay there is a sense of grace.

We know there are texts of Jesus giving the very clear impression that his “second coming” would happen in the lifetime of that generation.  We know that Paul wrote at times warning of the imminent return of the Lord.  Yet as time passed it seems that people had to gradually reorient their expectations in this matter.

Remembering that Matthew was writing his Gospel at least 40 years after Jesus’ at a time when average life expectancy might have been 45 or 50 (so he must have been a venerable old man) in this parable near the end of his story he is giving us a hint that there might be a delay in the Bridegroom coming.

And of course we are reading this story 2000 year on, so we know there has been a delay.  While this delay has led some to consider that we have gotten this idea of a Second Coming wrong and even tried to construct different ideas of what the second coming might mean and that do not involve an event of signs and wonders accompanying the end of all time.

I want to offer the suggestion that in this delay we should see signs of God’s grace – for once the END has come upon us none else can enter into the joy of relationship with God into eternity.

This gift of time means that many more will have the time and opportunity to enter into this covenant of faithfulness with God by which they will be prepared for that final day.  Some people, it seems to me, seem impatient for this Second Coming because they see in it the moment when God’s judgement and condemnation is brought down on those who are not ready.  I am of the view that it is God’s will that none should be lost – and by his grace in this delay those who might otherwise be lost have been given more time to recognise their need to BE PREPARED.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

Every time you read something in the Bible it says something to you right there in that moment.  And since every moment for us is different from another, when we read that same reading again it will say something different to us.

That is how I understand that great saying that the Word of God is dynamic, sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating to the soul.  It is not static like some people believe with no room for variation in meaning.  It speaks daily into the constantly changing circumstances of my life.

When I read the passage from Revelation that you have heard today I have to say that it took on new dimensions of meaning for me.  Here I am in this place surrounded by these my new Nuba friends, who themselves have been through the great trial because of their faith.  And each one of them knows someone who has come to the end of their life here because of that great trial. 

And there they stand, among that great throng of witness from every tribe and nation and tongue – praising God in Nuba and Arabic, and Dinka, and Swahili, and Korean, and English ….  These are faces familiar to us.  Faces of those known to us.

And then we read the beginning of what we call The Sermon on the Mount.  This wonderful collection of the teaching of Jesus begins with 8 beatitudes.  When we read these on a normal Sunday they speak to us of God’s purpose that those who are having a hard time in one way or another will ultimately be blessed – or happy.  I remember Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame wrote a book about these called The Be-Happy Attitudes, in which he expounded these statements as expressing something of how we should choose to live. 

But reading them today they speak so eloquently of the various dimensions of our future reward – a life that is intimately connected to God and in which we will all be called Blessed – not just the Virgin Mary.

So, here we are at All Souls Day, following on immediately after All Saints Day.  What can we learn from these signature Holy Days in the life of the church?

Let me first clarify some terms.

What do you think of when we speak of Saints?  The people with “Saint” at the beginning of their names, like St Francis?  Well, many of us do, and in many respects the celebration of All Saints Day seems to be focussed on those kinds of saints – I call them super-hero saints because they all seem to have done super-human things in the form of various miracles and mysteries.

But there are places in the Scriptures, especially in the letters of Paul, where all the members of the church are called saints.  Now I can relate to those kinds of saints.  Let me tell you a story:

One day a Sunday school class in a Ukrainian Orthodox Church was discussing the topics of sainthood and saints.  The children were riveted to the teacher’s presentation, as they listened to the wondrous miracles and acts of personal sacrifice which were associated with the saints.  As the presentation ended, it was time for the children to ask questions.  All but one child asked a question and received their answer from the teacher.  Little Suzy was the only child who sat silently in her chair looking around with a puzzled look on her face.  Suzy was normally quite vocal and had opinions about everything, but she sat there silently listening to what the other students had to say.  For homework, the teacher asked the students to answer the following questions - who are the saints and what does it take for someone to attain sainthood?  But before class was dismissed, the teacher took the children to their church next door to show them the icons of the saints they had just talked about.

It was a bright sunny day, when the class entered the church.  The children began to walk around and look closely at the icons placed on stands, painted on the iconostasis screen behind which was the Altar and painted on the walls of the church.  But Suzy wasn’t paying any attention to that, instead she was standing in the middle of the church mesmerized and consumed by something else.  Her eyes were fixated on the beautiful stain-glass windows.  The bright sunshine was piercing through them creating a sparkle of different colours with an unbelievable brilliance of the images of the saints depicted there.  Suddenly, little Suzy raised her hand and excitedly yelled out: “I know who saints are!  They are the people who let the light of God shine through them!”

This definition means that we all qualify as saints.  But it also describes what it is about us that makes us saints – we let the light of God shine through us.

This leads to one of the things that I would like to remember about All Saints Day, and perhaps you will too.  The Saints of God is a collective term for the community to which we all belong – the Church. 

When an Orthodox person walks alone into a church they are visibly surrounded by this vast cloud of witnesses who have gone before them.  They know that they are never alone.  They know that they cannot be the church by themselves.  The community and our connection to it is a vital dimension of our everyday saintliness.

But today is actually All Soul’s Day – so perhaps we should discuss this business of Soul for a moment.  In the old fashioned language of the Anglican Church, when a priest was appointed to a parish the bishop gave the priest a very special responsibility – the cure of the souls entrusted to him.  This was the result of a decision to transliterate a Latin term rather than translate it.  It simply means the CARE OF SOULS.  And in this context, souls means the whole person.

A lot of theological debate has been expended on the idea that we are made up of three parts – body, soul and spirit.  While we might get some sense of the differentiation that is being made, most of us end up still wondering what it all means.  The truth of this idea is that it is actually foreign to Hebrew thinkers.  It is a Greek notion and it underpins the same kind of theological argument in the Nicene Creed about the coexistence of flesh and spirit – humanity and divinity – in Jesus.  For our purposes and in the modern era I would think it is much simpler for us to simply understand souls in the pastoral and nautical sense (the ship went down with 95 souls on board) – the whole person.

In its original institution, All Soul’s Day was a time to pray for the Dead.  A thousand years ago there was only the Roman Catholic Church and with their teachings about Purgatory, people in the church were encouraged to pray for the souls in Purgatory to hasten their arrival in Paradise.  We in the Anglican Church did away with this doctrine as did many other churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation. 

This brings me to the second thing that I want to remember out of these two Holy Days.  If I was to reframe the Saints of All Saint’s Day as the Big Saints – the CAPITAL “S” Saints; the ones with Saint before their name, and the Souls of All Soul’s Day as the everyday saints – the lower case “s” saints; the ones without the word Saint in their name.  These two days are days to be thankful to God for all those who have gone before us, whose lives and stories have inspired and encouraged us in our faith. 

In truth, none of us would be here without those who have gone before us.  So, on this Holy Day, let us all think of those whose lives have drawn us towards faith, have sustained and encouraged us in the faith, and who inspire us daily to live lives that are increasingly Christ-like.