JUSTICE COMPASSION & HUMILITY

Many of you, I am sure, will remember the TV show from the BBC called “Keeping Up Appearances”.  Patricia Routledge created a larger than life character in Mrs Bouquet (Bucket).  She spent so much effort trying to ensure that everyone thought she was rather Upper Class when in reality she came from a much humbler background, perhaps even working class.

I think the reason we laugh at such stories is that we are all susceptible to the same kind of sensitivities about what people will think of us.

Sadly, I think that the tragedy that is unfolding before us in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to allegations of child abuse has its origins in this deeply ingrained personal and institutional instinct.  We denied that terrible things happened because it would not do for people to see the church in that light.  So we keep it hidden.

In the church, as in our wider society, it is always tempting to look to the outward appearances in order to determine whether the church is doing okay.  So we look to outward signs of growth rather than inward signs of faithfulness.  We even measure our blessedness by such things as our prosperity.  Even though we know better it is really hard to avoid this kind of thinking.

It isn’t always as easy as it is today, but the four texts we have in our Lectionary for this Sunday join in warning us all that we should not be confused or intimidated by appearances or by how our society values this or that.  

As a kind of summary statement these texts are telling us that being faithful and responsive to the God of the Bible may not fare so well or look so cool in terms of the world's standards of judgment, but what is required and blessed is a community that is ordered by its covenantal relationship with God, shaped by God’s gracious promises, and attuned to what Paul called the "foolishness" and “weakness” of God.

Micah condemns all the outwardly “lawful” rituals and sacrifices of religious practice, saying that what God really wanted of us was hearts that sought to do justice, love compassion and in all humility know our place in God.

When you consider the things the Psalmist says will please God, most of them are intangible – things of the heart that reflect our relationship to God and one another.

While much could be said about the Beatitudes the standout feature of them is that those who are expressly described as blessed were least likely to be considered blessed by the world’s value systems.  As one commentator said, these people are now regarded as “the apple of God’s eye, singled out for blessing.”  That is the kind of thing people have in mind when they speak of God’s preferential option for the poor.

Finally, Paul engages his Corinthian friends in a counter-intuitive argument that what the world regards as wisdom is folly in God’s eyes, and what they regard as folly is the very wisdom of God.  His reference to Christ crucified was his most potent example – crucifixion was a symbol of the absolute power of the state to crush anyone or anything, but this very defeat has become the power of Christ.  It is just God's way to take the low, the despised, the weak and the foolish to confound the wise and mighty.

Having said all that I wondered what we all needed to consider for today and the days ahead.  What is it that God wants you to take away from your time of worship here, to wrestle with in the days to come, or to be affirmed by?  What is the Word of God here for you today?

Let’s just see if the Holy Spirit can be trusted as I share a few thoughts with you.

When we think about the Old Testament times we generally think of them as the times when the People of God lived under the Law.  We know that sometimes they seemed to be doing okay, and other times they seemed to really get it wrong.

This makes a great prelude for us to think about the New Testament times as the times in which God’s grace has replaced the Law as the pathway for God’s people into the presence of God, holy and acceptable to God.

Jesus and Paul offer insights into the significance of this grace by emphasising that Law was always destined to failure.  No-one can really keep all the Law and, by their own efforts, be holy and acceptable to God, because the law was so focussed on externals.  Jesus showed a better way – a deep and personal relationship with God in which we are committed to loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

What I find fascinating about this is that it is not new.  What Jesus said begins almost word for word with the most important daily prayer for a Jewish person – the Shema.  We use it in our liturgy every week as a constant reminder.  “You shall love the Lord your God…”  the first and great commandment – and the second is like it “Love your neighbours as yourself.”  Jesus says these two commandments do away with all the outward requirements and appearances of the law.

But the prophets had also been telling Israel this kind of thing before their Exile to Babylon and while they were there.  Micah was writing before the Exile and he has a wonderful summary statement to replace all the outwards of religious piety:

And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

These famous words are not much different in practice than the two commandments Jesus said would fulfil all the law.

1.       ACT JUSTLY – in all your dealings with people be honest, fair, and be willing to challenge injustice when you see it.

2.       LOVE MERCY – Mercy is actually too weak a word for me in this translation, and others prefer the word COMPASSION.  Either way, though, we are called into a life that cares about the welfare of others by this term.

3.       WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD – can mean nothing more than walking humbly in a Creature-Creator relationship with God.  God is the source of our being and in him we live and move and have our being.

I have these words on a plaque on my lounge-room wall.  Each morning Eira and I say the Daily Office there and they are a constant challenge to me and maybe they will be for you.  In what ways will your life today reflect these three things:

ACT JUSTLY

LOVE MERCY (or Compassion)

WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD.

Maria Montessori Shows the Way

At the beginning of the 20^th century an Italian Paediatrician was doing some important work leaning how to help children with disabilities learn best.

Her work with those special needs children grew into a general approach to education for all children that is best embodied in what we call Montessori Schools today.

Among many aspects of her approach she discovered that most of us learn things in one of three different ways.  Some of us learn best by being TOLD what to do.  Some of us learn best by being SHOWN what to do or being given some written or illustrated instructions.  Some of learn best by DOING things – having a go and learning by trial and error.  These are what she called Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic pathways for learning.

A very simple way to demonstrate how you learn best is to think about what you do when you get a new Mobile Phone.  Do you read the instruction book?  Do you ask one of your children how it should work?  Or do you just try it and see what happens?  Hold onto that thought.

In John’s Gospel today we read a slightly different version of the story we read last week – the Baptism of Jesus.  John seems much less concerned about whether or not Jesus was actually baptised, but utterly concerned to let us know the revelation that was made to John through this encounter with Jesus.  It is a profound moment and very important for John the Baptist and John the Gospel writer.

What follows that REVELATION to John the Baptist that this man is the One who is to come – the Son of God – is what I want us to think about today.

In a funny kind of way, those two disciples did something I said last week was evidence of our failings as human beings.  They thought John the Baptist was the best prophet around and they were his followers.  But as soon as John says that this Jesus is greater than himself, they just dumped John and followed Jesus.  Anyway, I want to consider the things that John the Gospel writer says happened after that.

You can just imagine Jesus wandering off after John had given everyone a rather cryptic clue about how special he was – “Look, the Lamb of God!”  Maybe he was trying to be a bit inconspicuous but two of John’s disciples followed straight after him.

Jesus says straight to them, “What do you want?”

Were you surprised by their answer?  They said “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  I was surprised.  I think I might have said something quite different.  Maybe I would have said something like “We want to follow you, Rabbi.”  I would have then waited to see what he said to do next.

But these guys were very direct.  Perhaps they thought that if they could go to where he was staying he might sit down and teach them stuff.  This seems to be what actually happened because Jesus said they could come along and they stayed the rest of the day with him.

Now there is a particular word John uses numerous times in his Gospel.  It is a very important word for those of us who have lived a while in the Christian faith.  It is the word ABIDE. 

I am sure you are familiar with that phrase in John 15 when Jesus is describing himself as a Vine that nurtures all of us who are his followers – the branches.  Jesus says “Abide in me, as I abide in you.”  The NIV loses this word by using the word “remain” in our story today and so you would miss the link with this important word for John.

This word has become a theological word for us – it certainly was for John – and so when you realise that when the disciples ask Jesus where he is staying they are actually asking “Where are you ABIDING?” you must understand that John wants us to think of much more than which Inn he was staying at.

These two new followers of Jesus – the very first in John’s Gospel – are shown asking and doing the most important thing that John can think of: they are choosing to ABIDE with Jesus.

When we talk about ABIDING as a theological term we mean a very intimate learning and supporting relationship.  Elsewhere Jesus talks about abiding in the Father and about the Father abiding in him.  This seems to be about being closer to each other than the air we breathe is close to us.  It is deep within and it is life-giving.

So the first thing these two disciples wanted to do was ABIDE with Jesus – to learn from him, to get to know him, to discover what he wanted us to know about himself and God.  They stayed all day.

This has become a wonderful way of describing how to be a disciple.  It is a way of allowing all those different learning styles I mentioned at the beginning to come into play and help us learn the most – in a place where we can learn by hearing, by seeing and by doing. 

It means living intimately with Jesus as a friend.  It means learning from him every day about the Way that he has shown to us and called us to live by – the Way that leads us into the same intimate presence of God.  In this Way we become fully human as Jesus was – made holy and acceptable to God by grace.

The question we need to take home from this is “Am I still doing my best at ABIDING in Jesus?”  Not that this is a work by which we obtain our salvation.  Not in the least!  It is a question of accountability from those you love within this Community of the Holy Cross.  If we are all doing our utmost to ABIDE in Him, then there is just a chance that we will see his presence evident among us and within our community.

But, wait!  There’s more!  Just like the salesman on the TV I have the pleasure of telling you that there is more for us in this story.

Andrew was one of those first disciples.  John tells us very simply that the first thing Andrew did was go and find his brother and he told Simon about this wonderful Rabbi they had just met.  But Andrew had obviously drawn a conclusion about this wonderful Rabbi – “We have found the Messiah” he said.

John is using this story to tell us all that when we discover who Jesus really is we will inevitably want to tell others about it. 

In our modern expression of Christianity I think we have allowed many things to prevent us from doing what really is a rather natural thing to do.  We think we need to have a nice set of words prepared that will convince people to follow Him too.  Or we think we need a special program in Church to do it for us – like Alpha or Christianity Explained.   We also know how hard it is when doorknockers come telling us about their church.  We don’t want people to think we are weirdoes.  As a result we often don’t do much of this.

John isn't talking about that.

Here are two ideas that might help unpack this for you.  I grew up in the Christian faith.  I can’t think of a time when I was not a Christian.  Yes, I made a personal confession of faith, but there was no Road of Damascus experience for me.  So I have to look elsewhere for help to understand what it must have been like for Andrew in this story.

Nearly 40 years ago, after I had known her for a rather short period of time, really, I asked my wife to marry me.  I asked her after church one Sunday night, and when she said yes we just talked and talked and talked.  It must have been after 2pm when I drove home because the street lights had gone off (only the old people remember those days in Perth).

The next day I just busting to tell people – but we wanted to follow the tradition of seeking her Father’s permission before it was made public.  But as soon as that was settled, everyone knew about it, albeit not as quickly as people get to know things these days with Facebook and the like.  That’s how I think Andrew felt, and how Saul felt on that road to Damascus.  And some of you can remember feeling that way.  Maybe that can inspire you about how to talk to people about your Jesus.

Another way might look like this.  I remember in a class in Seminary being told that Paul in one of his letters is basically telling people to go about “Gossiping the Gospel.”  Now don’t ask me for a reference or anything, but the idea has stuck and I think it is helpful. 

It creates in my mind the sense of talking in intimate circles to close friends and acquaintances about the things we see and hear.  It is deeply grounded in our personal experience and it is about speaking from our heart about everyday but deep things.  It is not a rehearsed script.  It is not part of a “program”.  It is just you being real with the people you know.

I hope that one way or another you can catch hold of a possibility for you to do as Andrew did – because I think it is important.

Now I wonder if you noticed the very last sentence in our story.  It was very important, too.

When Peter is brought to Jesus he does something that you and I might think strange or at lease unexpected.  Jesus gave Simon a new name.  We echo this when we give our children a Baptismal name (at least some of us did).  I like to think of this as a further expression of the intimacy of this new relationship we have when we ABIDE in Jesus – it changes us so much that we deserve to have a new name – a name that marks us as part of God’s family.

There is a huge niche in the book publishing market providing books with explanations of the meaning of names.  There are some Christian groups that really emphasised this name thing and they take on a Christian name in the proper sense of it.

I am not sure if you have a Christian Name, but maybe a good thing for you to do sometime, if you don’t, is spend time considering this question: “What name do you think Jesus would give to you?”  If you come up with one you might like to celebrate it with your friends here some time.

For Bruised Reeds and Smoky Candles

I have not always been an Anglican.  In the church I grew up in, baptism was not for babies.  It was only for people old enough to confess their personal faith in Jesus. 

I was 10 years old when I was baptised.  I think that I had one burning desire of my heart when I was baptised.  In a way I was saying that I would then be a good boy.  I would no longer be troubled by all my sins – the things I did wrong.

I think I misunderstood something about what would happen when I was baptised.  You have to remember I was only 10 years old.  I thought that it would be one of those “Wow!” moments when I really felt God in a powerful way and so would be assured of my inward transformation.

I don’t think I said anything about this at the time.  But I felt let down because it seemed to me that nothing happened.  And to make things worse, the next day one of my friends at school said to me that now I had to be good all the time. 

The story of Jesus’ baptism has in it some really important things for us to remember and think about.

Much of what the early Christians thought about Jesus was influenced by their ideas of what the Messiah would be like.  There are numerous prophecies, especially in Isaiah that they relied on.  The hymn we read today from Isaiah is wonderful.  Let me remind you of the first three verses of it:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.
² He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.
³ A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

There is an echo of this in the Baptism story.  Matthew says the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.  There are other stories that use similar words to describe who Jesus has come to help. 

It is from the last verse I just read to you that I would like to draw our thoughts today.

All poets use images to help us grasp the ideas they want to convey. 

The idea of the bruised reed is rather wonderful.  This makes me think of the long reed of a bulrush on the banks of a river.  Such a reed, bent over but not broken, fits for me with this image of a bruised reed.

The idea of the smouldering wick is easy to understand, too.  Some people would discard a candle with a smoky wick.  If they knew how to trim the wick they could get it to shine brightly again.   

These two images then have a common message for us.  They tell us that this Servant of God has come for the battered and bruised ones.  His plan is not to discard them, but to put them back together again and give them justice.

Again and again we see Jesus reaching out to the poor and the marginalised and seeking justice for them.  It actually got him a bad reputation but he never minded that.

A THROW AWAY SOCIETY

We get very used to throwing things away when they get a bit dirty or broken. 

Sadly, we seem to do the same with people.  We do it to our sporting heroes – as soon as they stopping being as good as they used to be we find someone else to be our hero.  We do it in business as well as in our personal relationships.  When people are no longer useful to us we discard them.

There is something that I think is even worse.  There are people in our society who for some reason don’t fit.  They might have a disability.  They might be homeless.  They might have the wrong religion.  We seem to ignore them as much as possible just because they are different. 

These are the broken reeds; these are the smoky wicks that Isaiah was thinking of for whom Jesus came – to bind up their wounds and make them shine brightly again and give them justice.  We in the church must continue to do this in his name. 

ONE MORE BRUISED REED

But I wonder if I could get a bit personal.

There have been many times when I have felt like a bruised reed or a smoky wick.

In a sense, my mere admission of the need to follow Jesus is a recognition that I couldn’t do it all by myself – that faith in him offered the world a much better version of me that I could ever give it in my own strength.  Jesus has bound up those bruises and trimmed the wick so that the light shines true and clear.

There is also a sense that even though I would like you all to think that my life in God is wonderful and that I am profoundly wise, that I am a widely read scholar and am exceptionally prayerful I know I am not.  That is a plain fact.  I am a bruised reed and I am always in need of the Servant.

It is this humble reality that binds all of us in the church together – we all know that without our life in Jesus, learning from him daily about the Way he has called us to live, we would simply be self-seeking bruised reeds and smoky candles.

GIVE CHRIST A GO

Why am I telling you this?

Well frankly,  I don’t want you to miss out.

Maybe some of you may need reminding for the thousandth time of Jesus the truest Lover.  He has time for flickering lamps and bruised reeds.  He wants you to be the very best version of you that you can be.

Or perhaps for the first time, you are at a point in your life where you dare acknowledge your frailty and need of a Saviour.  To all such I say:  What God can do with one bruised reed he can do with another. 

But you’ll never ever know if you never ever give Christ a go.

That's not how you make porridge!

Have you ever thought about how much easier the shepherds had it than the Magi?

I mean, the shepherds were just out there in the fields minding their sheep.  They probably all had their own homes in Bethlehem so they already knew the way.

The Magi, on the other hand, lived far away.  They were used to reading signs in the heavens – but signs always held a certain ambiguity – there was always a chance that you misunderstood what they meant.

This ambiguity didn't stop the Magi – they set out on the journey.  They knew they were heading for Jerusalem, but when they got there they still had to check out with the locals to see if they had got it right.  They found out they were in the wrong place.

But once they were pointed in the right direction – towards Bethlehem – the star seemed to be leading the way for them, reassuring them if they had any lingering anxieties.

This story was a really important story for the early church to record for posterity.  It became a reminder to them that with Jesus’ coming there was now a pathway for all people to find God – not just the Jews, but the Gentiles as well [and you’ll remember that Gentiles means all the rest].

Israel had been in an “In-between” place for a couple of centuries since they returned to Palestine after the exile.  They were successively occupied and ruled by the Greeks and then the Romans.  This seemed to be thwarting their desire to set up God’s Kingdom again under that Son of David that had been promised so long ago.

We all experience in-between places in our lives from time to time and most people find them rather scary.  The future is uncertain, unpredictable, anything could happen – good or bad. 

When Jesus came he brought the in-between time to an end.  He was the Messiah, the Davidic King that al Israel was waiting for.  But it didn't work out like they were thinking.

They thought he would banish the Gentile oppressors and set up the Golden-age Kingdom of David again.

Instead he comes opposing violence and proclaiming a new kind of Kingdom.

And right from the outset in the telling of his story the Jewish Christians are confronted with the suggestion that this new kind of Kingdom was not to be just for them.  “This isn’t the way it was meant to be,” they thought.

Have you ever had that feeling?

This story we call “The Epiphany” is one that is there to remind us that there are many more roads to God than we can imagine.  It challenges us with the arrival of these men, who were clearly outsiders, but who were welcomed with their gifts.  They were on a journey of faith.  We will never know whether they travelled separately or as a party.  But their faith journey brought them together with the Holy Family in that place in Bethlehem.

So, a question for us all today:

Where are we on our journey of faith?

I would like us to consider this individually as well as collectively, as the Community of the Holy Cross meeting in this place.

For each of you, the consideration of your personal journal will be very much a self-evaluation.  

1. How am I going?  
2. Are the fruit of the Spirit showing themselves in the way I live?  
3. Is this what God wants for me just now?  

You will all have your own questions as well as your own answers.  Some people like to explore these questions with a friend of companion – informally or formally – as a way of keeping on at it.

I want to use this day to begin setting the scene for some work we will be doing together over the next few months.

We as a community are in an in-between time.  You have just concluded a period of years of ministry under Rob’s guidance.  

Things have not been going well for us so this in-between time creates an opportunity for us to see how we might create a new future.  We know we can’t continue as we have been going.  We need to find some way of revitalising our community.

It is natural for us all to want to just do what we are familiar with in the hope that if we do more of it things will get better.  There is an old saying, however, that if we keep on doing the same things, we will get the same results.

This is going to be scary and risky, but when you are feeling scared, or feeling like a certain risk seems too much for you, I want you to remember what it must have been like for those early Jewish Christians who all thought they knew how the Kingdom of God was going to work – and then Jesus came along and showed them a different way.

But, do you know what?  That different way was guided by the two greatest guiding principles of the People of Israel – loving God, and loving one another.

When we come to consider what sort of new future God has for us here as the Community of the Holy Cross our decisions will be guided by what has always been the core values of this community. You might not be able to articulate them – but you most certainly are guided by them. 

My work with you will involve clarifying just what those core values are and then guiding the decisions we will make together about how we shall be that Community and remain true to our calling and be vibrant and sufficient for the demands the future will make on us.

To finish I want to take you back to the story with some thoughts by David Adam in his recent book "Searchlights".  The Magi brought gifts and if we consider them allegorically we can find some food for our journey today.

The gold is seen by some as a symbol of all God’s gifts – all things come from God, and whatever we give back to God is nothing more than we have by God’s grace received as a gift.  For us today, let us claim an assurance that God has given us all that we need.

Frankincense is symbolic of awe, of mystery and adoration.  This centres on our personal life in God in which we pray and worship.  For us today, may we never forget to bring with us a sense of awe when we gather as the Community of the Holy Cross.

Myrrh is seen as a symbol of pain and the relief of pain.  Our life in God is not always easy.  Sometimes we fail to be what we could be.  Sometimes others fail and let us down or hurt us.  One cannot live long on this journey of faith without being hurt or disappointed in some way.  Yet here in this birth story we have an assurance from God that there will be relief from the pain.  There will always be a way through with these gifts at our disposal.