The Day of Pentecost

The festival of Pentecost in the Hebrew traditions and calendar was about two things – a celebration of the giving of the law and the covenant that it established as well as an annual celebration of the beginning of the harvesting.

It is in this context that the Christian church celebrates the Holy Spirit.  A time of harvest and a time of covenant renewal.

Bruce Prewer drew attention to this idea by speaking about the fruitful dimensions of the Holy Spirit’s work in the church as being prolific – extravagant, even – and we get a sense of this in the three New Testament readings set for today.

In our reading from Acts, we see the working of the Holy Spirit breaking down the barriers of language that kept people apart.  Whichever way the miracle happened, everyone was able to hear and understand the gospel proclamation of those first disciples.  It is also worth noting that this story culminates with a huge harvest of souls, as we might call it – thousands of people were drawn by these events into the community of faith.

But the reading from Romans has a different take on the work of the Holy Spirit.  In this short passage we are reminded by Paul that the Spirit is able to step in and pray for us when words fail us – when we do not know how to pray, the Spirit steps in and intercedes for us.

Then, in the Gospel passage we read, the work of the Spirit is compared to a helper or Advocate who enables us to speak on Jesus’ behalf.

These are three very different kinds of fruit in the life of the church – fruit that all have their source in the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

When we think of the Holy Spirit in these terms, then, it is not surprising that the story telling puts these events in the context of the festival of Pentecost – a celebration of first fruits.

But what are we in our time to make of these things?

There are perhaps a couple of ideas we can develop from Luke’s words in The Acts.

If you look at this event as one of the momentous moments in the Gospel stories then it stands apart a little from some that have gone before.  In that story we call The Transfiguration – when Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah – there were a select few witnesses (Peter, James and John). 

But in this story no one is excluded.  The tongues of fire rested on each and every disciple gathered there – not just the select Apostles – and moments later the crowd surged forward because each and every one of them is able to hear what the Disciples are saying in their native tongue.  The extent of the inclusiveness of this image is emphasised by that long list of places from which they came basically covering the known world of the day.

So this Pentecost thing is not an inner mystical experience.  Rather it is an outpouring of God’s energy or power in a way that touches every life present.

The second thing to note in this story is that not everyone was impressed.  Indeed, some people could only understand what was happening by describing them as drunk.  That makes me think of that little story way back in the stories of Israel when Samuel’s mother was so fervently praying to God to have a baby, that Eli the priest thought she was drunk. 

It seems hard to imagine that people did not recognise this as an amazing expression of the Spirit’s presence, because that is what it was, and we are left to hope that those who mocked the disciples would soon, on hearing Peter’s sermon, realise what it really was that they were witnessing.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to that long quotation of the prophet Joel in Peter’s sermon.  We are so used to the interpreting this text in the context of the Day of Pentecost that we have forgotten that when Joel uttered or scribed these words he was forecasting the death and destruction of the nation.  For Joel the signs of the outpouring of the Spirit are a prelude of disaster.

Peter, however, takes these words and transforms them from portents of death and destruction into powerful declarations of new life.  These signs scream out to us that the Spirit of God has invaded human life in ways that shatter old expectations.  It is not death that is the aim of the Spirit’s visitation, but new life – sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life!

And this, of course, becomes the heart of the Gospel message for those disciples.  It is the work of the Spirit to draw us all together into the family of God, and through that same Spirit we are empowered to live that new life that God calls us all into through Jesus.

Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary God.

This sermon was preached by Oliver Yangi, a theological student in our Parish

In our passage in Acts verse 15: “In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about 120 people).  And, as we might expect, there is something significant in the fact that there were 120 people present because, in Jewish Law at that time, 120 men gathered together was the requisite number to form and formalise a new community with its own council and leadership structures.  So there’s something very intentional about Peter’s actions here: he recognises the need for order and structure amongst the people of God and he waits until the time is right and then begins to formalise the community of the church.

Peter’s opening word is “Friends” but actually, the correct translation is “Brothers”. And I think this is a significant point because the word ‘Brothers’ conveys a significant truth to us; that if we are all brothers together we can only hold that relationship because we are children of the same Father.  It is our relationship with God that binds us together as a church: and it is that which differentiates us from a social club or any other organisation and if we lose a sense of that, we will definitely lose a sense of our purpose as a community of God.

“Brothers (and sisters), it was necessary for the Scripture to be fulfilled as was told beforehand  by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David concerning Judas…” So what had David prophesied concerning this event.  The reading omits verses 18 and 19, which give us quotes from second is from Psalm 109:8, which suggests that, for those who have opposed God, “let someone else take over his office”.  It is sometimes thought that Judas was replaced purely because he had died but that is not really the case.  When the apostle James was martyred in Acts 12:2, he wasn’t replaced, so it was not about filling a vacancy caused by death that was important. Instead, Judas was replaced because he had fallen away from the ways of God and it was important that all the leaders were known for their faithfulness to the cause of Christ.

And so, in the light of that, Peter proposes a qualification for finding a new apostle in verses 21 and 22: “So one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken from us – one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”

The qualification was that the new apostle must have spent time with Jesus and been a personal witness to his glory.  When we think about the great heroes of the faith, we might think about those people whose names are written large in the history books: the Wesley brothers, Martin Luther, Mother Teresa, Richard Baxter and so on – people who had an extraordinary call on their lives and achieved extraordinary things.

But if we thought a little more personally about that question, we should ask ourselves who are the heroes of the faith to us.  We may come up with a very different answer. For me, the heroes are those people who nurtured me in the faith when I was an arrogant and annoying teenager: local church people who never gave up on me. The heroes of the faith are some elderly people I have known in my life; people who have had a quiet faith but been faithful churchgoers, faithful lovers of Jesus for 40, 50, 60, 70 even 80 years, faithfully praying for the work of the local church.

These, to me, are the true heroes of the faith. Ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things and yet, in their ordinariness, there was exhibited to me an extraordinary faith. And the reason for their extraordinary witness was because they had met with Jesus in the ordinariness of life and had found him in the mundane of daily living: they had spent time with Jesus and were witnesses to his glory. And this seems to me to be what lays behind the call of the replacement apostle: someone who had found the extraordinary God in the ordinary of life.

Two names were recommended: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus. So the disciples prayed together: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship…” And, knowing the tradition of Scripture, we might have expected a calling on God to perform a supernatural miracle, to show everyone who the next Apostle to be chosen. Writing on the wall or a thunderstorm or a voice from heaven: anything like that would have happened. Both had been with Jesus since his baptism in the Jordan. But they needed some way to find out which one God wanted to serve. To do this they did two things, they prayed and they consulted scripture.

But what happens? This reading says: “They cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles”. How ordinary can you get? The apostles cast lots – a bit like flipping a coin - and that was that. We might have expected something more dramatic! But I think there is something for us to learn in the ordinariness of how Matthias was chosen.

Matthias was an ordinary man. We don’t hear anything extraordinary he ever did, before or after his call. Matthias was an ordinary man, chosen to be an apostle in a most ordinary way. Casting lots – a roll of the dice. An ordinary man, ordinary apostles, using an ordinary system of decision-making to bear witness to an extraordinary God.

And that, fundamentally, is what the church is all about. Here we are, ordinary people living in church community in an ordinary way. And yet, by doing so, we are bearing witness to the power of an extraordinary God. Because the qualification of discipleship, as we mentioned earlier is that we ordinary people spend time in the presence of an extraordinary God.

You and I have spent years living in the presence of God.

You and I have spent years knowing what it is to have Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

You and I – ordinary people - know what it is to love and be loved by an extraordinary God.

And so the beautiful things about this story from Acts, the calling of Matthias, is that, actually, it is a story about our calling.  Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary God. And that is why Paul was able to write in his letters that he could never boast in himself and his own achievements but that he could always boast in the awesome power of God. And so it is with us: we don’t boast in ourselves but we can boast in the extraordinary love and the extraordinary power of God whom we have had the privilege to call our Lord for so many years.

And the sacrament we will receive in a few minutes is, of course, the ultimate symbol of what we celebrate today; the ordinariness of bread and wine symbolising for us the extraordinary sacrificial love of God made manifest in the life and death of Jesus Christ. In the Eucharistic meal, we share the ordinary and the extraordinary come together in one moment, in one time, in one place. The bread and the wine. The body and blood of Christ. And so it is we celebrate our relationship with the 

Scandal in Palestine

Have any of you had someone do a surprise birthday or anniversary thing for you?  Eira and I did a marvellous surprise party for my Mum and Dad’s 40^th Wedding Anniversary which they celebrated in Melbourne away from other members of the family. 

We don’t do these things anymore because we have learned that for most people there is as much joy, sometimes even more, in the anticipation of a special event.  Getting ready and imagining what will happen and who will be there has its own dimension of pleasure.

We all know that the Day of Pentecost is a couple of weeks ahead of us and the Lectionary is trying to get us ready for it in the selected readings we have.

Today we have a story that comes at the end of that famous story of Peter and Cornelius.  Let me remind you of it.

Cornelius was a Roman soldier – captain of “The Italian Regiment”.  Not all Roman Soldiers were Italian; they were drawn from the locals of the many countries incorporated into the Roman Empire.  Who knows, a couple of centuries later there may well have been a “British Regiment” controlling the barbarians of some place or another.

The Jews hated the Romans, especially the Italian ones.  One wouldn’t be caught fraternising with such people.

Anyway, Cornelius was having his usual siesta nap after lunch and had a dream – a vision in which an Angel of God told him to send some men to nearby Joppa and find a Jewish man there, named Simon Peter.

The next day, Peter, visiting friends in Joppa, was having his own siesta nap after lunch and he has a dream, too – a vision of a sheet being let down from heaven in which there were a host of animals generally considered by Jewish people as “unclean” or unfit for human consumption.  He hears a voice commanding to kill something and eat it, which he refuses to do, thinking he was thus passing the test.  The voice then tells him that if God says something is “clean” then it is no longer to be shunned.

He had this vision three times – a powerful symbolic number – and then, of course, the men from Cornelius knock on his door.  When they tell their master’s story to Peter, he suddenly understands what God was trying to tell him, so he agrees to go with them the next day to meet Cornelius.

Peter then tells Cornelius what he has just understood himself about the Gospel – that the Good News Jesus brings is for the gentiles as well as the Jews.  This is where our reading of the story began.  All of a sudden this despicable Roman person was clearly filled with the Holy Spirit in just the same way as they, the Apostles and Jews were on the Day of Pentecost – they started speaking in tongues.

I don’t think we can comprehend the “Wow!! factor” of that event.  But this story is at the heart of a game-changing moment in the history of the church.

In this story, Luke is making it clear that it is the nature of the Holy Spirit to remain unbridled – it cannot be controlled by any one of us let alone the Church.  He is bringing to light the intentionality of God in the most astonishing and unexpected ways.

This moment is leading the way towards a new understanding of the family of God.  The family of God in the old dispensation was Israel – the sons and daughters of Jacob.  But Jesus, who was one of these sons, breaks that container and welcomes all people into the family.  We can no longer look on one group of people and say “They are clean!” and declare another group of people “unclean”.  We never know where the Spirit of God is going to pop up next.

This is why, for a little while now, there has been a little sign at the entry of the church that says we are an inclusive church.  Back in 2003 the Social Responsibilities Commission reminded the Diocese that we, as Anglicans, really do believe in an inclusive Church.  We live in a world that thrives on categorising people into one group or another.  Indeed, the church throughout its history has been especially good at determining who is in and who is out – who is clean and who is unclean.

This story of Cornelius is scandalous.  It is scandalous because in it the Holy Spirit lays hold of the most despised or hated person in the eyes of a Jewish person (early Christian) and declares in no uncertain terms that he is one of us – he is welcome.

So, what I want you to do this morning is to think of a person or a group of people who you think is most unlikely to ever grace the chairs of this little church – a person you think is most unlikely to be welcome in such a place.  I suspect we all have an idea of such a person in our mind – and I am not going to suggest one person or group in particular.  Now, I want you to visualise that person or such a group of people coming very tentatively into the back of church here one Sunday.  How easy it would be for us to be cautious, or judgemental and make such a person feel unwelcome. 

But the Gospel expects the opposite from us – for two reasons. 

Firstly, because the Holy Spirit is so completely unpredictable that we had better be on the lookout.

Secondly, because we don’t know the end of this person’s story, and we have an obligation to do as much positively as we can to draw that person towards God, rather than pushing them away. 

It is so easy to push them away with all our little rules – our requirements and rewards for those who are “good enough”!!  None of us is “good enough”!!  So who are we to shun another fellow traveller?

Salvation

In the olden days, the first thing a preacher would do when he got up to preach was announce the text on which his sermon would be based.

Today I am going to try it out and see how it works.

My text for today is:

“Jesus is the one of whom the scripture says, 

  ‘The stone that you the builders despised

            turned out to be the most important of all.' 

Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us." – Acts 4:11-12

As I came across these words in our Acts reading today, and was wondering what I could explore with you it occurred to me that it might be a useful exercise for us to consider what it is that we really mean when we speak of “salvation” and of “being saved”.

Christianity, as we talk about it, is full of words that are a bit like shorthand – the one word says a lot of stuff, and when we hear that word, we all know the whole lot of stuff that the word means.  But if you are not a Christian you can only understand the literal meaning of the word.  With this in mind, Marcus Borg published a book in 2011 called "Speaking Christian: Why Christian words have lost their meaning and power - and how they can be restored."  The first key word he explores is Salvation and my thoughts here are inspired by that chapter.

I think the most common idea we have of Salvation is that it means we are going to go to heaven – and in a sense we are therefore saved from going to Hell.  This idea is actually not as common in the Bible as you might think, and it sometimes gets people scared about whether they have been good enough to be saved – because they sure don’t want to go to hell.  It is also a word we use to decide who is “in” this group we call Church, and who is “out” of it.  It has become the marker word of exclusion.

The word Salvation or words related to it is found about 500 times in the Bible and roughly two thirds of these are in the Old Testament.  What is interesting about that is that the only Old Testament reference to life after death comes in Daniel 12:2-3 and this wasn't written till about 180bce.  So none of the OT references to Salvation have this idea behind them

We know from some of the Gospel stories that there were some in Israel who did not believe in life after death – the Sadducees, for example – and so it should not be surprising that this concept is probably fairly modern to Jesus’ time and probably foreign to almost all Old Testament writers.

What this means is that when Salvation was used in the Old Testament it was not making any reference to the idea of us being saved for a life in heaven with God.

There are three great themes of Salvation in the OT that I am sure you will recognise. 

First the stories about and reflecting on the Exodus event reveal a theme of Salvation as Liberation from Bondage.  Again and again the people are reminded that they were slaves in Egypt and that it was by the act of God that they were Liberated – they were SAVED.

Secondly the stories about Israel’s return from Babylon and nations to the East to their homeland reveal a theme of Salvation as Return from Exile.  The period of punishment or banishment was over – Salvation is focussed on their return home.

Finally, the Psalmists again and again pick the idea of Salvation as Rescue from Peril.  “The Lord is my light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear.”  Psalm 27:1

In the New Testament, there are echoes of all three of these ideas in the discussion of Salvation, but the new focus is more strongly on the idea that Salvation means Deliverance or Rescue from that which ails us.

But the New Testament introduces a slightly new idea – that Salvation is about Entering Into a New Kind of Life.  This is a life covenanted with God through which we experience deliverance and transformation.

But one thing that comes through again and again is that while this idea of Salvation has some very personal dimensions, it also has corporate, even global dimensions.  God’s purpose in Salvation is not just deliverance and transformation of life for you and me, it is also very much about the deliverance and transformation of the church and even the whole world.

This actually touches a deep yearning that is felt by most people.  Most of us live with a feeling that we need to be liberated from things in our lives that keep us from being the best we could be.  Most of us want to be better that we know we are.  We might expend a lot of energy trying to get other people to think we are better than we know we are, but we still want to be better.

But we also long for the world to be a better place – both in overcoming the bitterness that fuels enmity and war between peoples, as well as reversing the adverse impacts on our environment of the many terrible things we have do to it.

Salvation, therefore concerns these two transformations.  This is what Christianity at its best is all about.

The group of believers was one in mind and heart.

When I preach through this Easter Season I want to draw my thoughts for you from the selections in the Lectionary from the Acts of the Apostles.  We don’t often take the time to explore these texts so I thought there might be some good material there for us.  So if you were hoping for a sermon about Doubting Thomas today, I am sorry to disappoint you.

So, what do we make of this story today?

The first two chapters of Acts prepare for and then tell the story of the Day of Pentecost.  What then follows are various snapshots of life in this community of the very first Christians.

These stories seem to give us a clear message – the resurrection of Jesus empowers people to live their lives differently.  In Acts we see many stories of signs and wonders happening – evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit.  But there is another striking feature in these stories – it is mentioned in the very first sentence we read today:

“The group of believers was one in mind and heart.”

Now that must rank as something higher than a minor miracle.  Indeed, it could rank as the supreme miracle.

I was thinking about this in relation to the churches I have belonged to.  I think I have been an active participant or member in 15 congregations of the church.  That is probably a few more than most of you.  I remember an Elder in the first church I was a minister in.  He was about 80 years old and had come to that church as a 2 year old.  He had never been a member of any other congregation.  Wow!!!!

As I think about all those congregations I have been a part of – with the exception of this congregation, that is – I don’t think I would be able to apply these words to any of them.  Petty rivalries or ancient upsets fester away, usually just under the surface of a veneer of formal niceties.  There is no way I could say that the whole community of believers in each place was “one in mind and heart.”

You only have to read the letters of Paul and some of the later episodes in this book of the Acts to realise that this ideal was a lot harder to achieve than these words suggest.  And it seems to be an unavoidable part of human nature to be unable really to be “one in mind and heart” with the whole group we belong to.  Indeed the only real examples we can think of these days are the totalitarian societies ruled by despots – like North Korea.

So, why do you think this became part of the story?  Luke didn’t have to put it there.

I guess like all ideals it stands out there in front of us encouraging us always to strive towards that kind of unity.  If that is the case, what would our community here at Holy Cross look like if we were getting closer to that ideal?

The stories immediately preceding this finish with the words, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim God’s message with boldness.”  This business of the whole community of believers being “one in mind and heart” is something that is empowered by that same Holy Spirit.  So they begin to share with one another and care for those in need with a new boldness that was not much different from the boldness of their speech.

In our modern minds we can’t think of this experiment in communal living without conjuring up images of modern social and political movements that tried to do the same.  But the rationale for this activity on the part of the early Christians was not political, but theological and humanitarian.  It arose out of their conviction that in Jesus they were now one people – each stood alongside the other in the face of God as equals; none had precedence over any other.

The Kingdom of God was at hand; indeed it was already among them.  The resurrection stories were the greatest sign of that.  So these people committed themselves to living as if that Kingdom was a present reality.

The clearest sign of this, they were convinced, was their sense of unity with each other.  But there was more – just like those ads on television where the man says “But wait, there’s more.”  This sense of unity underpinned an idea that none in their community should live in need and so we read “there was no one in the group who was in need.”

I think it is interesting to consider our reaction to this as modern people living in a complex cash economy.  We feel strangely uncomfortable when we are faced with the practice of Aboriginal people whose cultural value-system is much closer to this than ours – especially when it so often means their homes are over-crowded and such things.

And perhaps we feel similarly when we see our Nuba community right here at Holy Cross gathering funds together to help one of the community pay for something, or to send cash home to Sudan.

This is as much a social thing as it is an economic thing.  A legacy of the Greek and Roman empires among the Hebrew people and many others was a cosmopolitan life-style in cities in which family groups and the support systems of family were inevitably being broken down.  We can see the same thing in our day – especially when people like the Nuba come among us, because they are still caught up in a social system in which family is a fundamental factor.

In Jesus Christ, however, there is now a new family of which we are a part: the Church.  It was into this fellowship of other Christians that the men and women of the risen Lord Jesus submitted their goods for the well-being of all, and it was into this fellowship that they all looked for support in times of need.

And in case you are wondering why they did this, it seems clear that they saw this as proclamation itself.  “With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord, and God poured rich blessings on them all.”

Not only in word, but also in deed, these early Christians lived out their witness to the renewing power of Jesus.  And lives were touched and transformed.

I wonder how closely we could come to this ideal in the way we live together at Holy Cross.

We Never Leave our People Behind

Ages ago I was a fan of a Sci-fi TV show called Stargate in which people travelled through what they called a wormhole to other places and times – and most of the time they were all lucky to get back alive.  One of the phrases that crept into the scrip again and again is “We never leave our people behind.”

I guess this term is a reassurance to anyone involved in a military-kind of operation – we all abhorr the idea of a casualty being left behind on foreign soil.

I would like to explore this as an idea to help us understand something that happened at Easter.

Now, we all know what happened at Easter, don’t we?

Jesus was put through three kangaroo-court trials – Caiphus, Pilate and King Herod – and in the end he was executed as a blasphemer, hardly a Capital offence to the Romans.

So, he died on Good Friday, after which he “descended to the dead” as we affirm in the Apostle’s Creed and “On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, (where) he is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Now I want to know what you think happened when he “descended to the dead.”

I have to admit that in my studies at Bible College we did not examine the notion that Jesus descended to the dead in order to fight a cosmic battle against the evil one – we call him The Devil, Lucifer or Satan.

Even though such an idea is not present in the words of the Creed, I think we have developed the idea as a result of some of the other New Testament writings which do convey the sense of a cosmic battle having happened, and of Jesus winning that Battle, and of the Resurrection being the foundational evidence of his victory over evil in the person of the Devil.

This icon first appeared as a mosaic in the Monastry of Daphni in Athnens nearly a thousand years ago.  This is a re-written version of the Icon by the Rev’d Dr Bob Gallagher and it is called “The Anastasis” or “The Resurrection”. 

There are many other forms of this Icon that have minor variations, but I would like us to look at this one and examine the story it is telling.

The central figure is, of course, Jesus who is lifting up through the gates of hell, which are now broken, the two seminal humans – Adam and Eve.  Through these two, sin and death entered into the human experience and their presence in this icon represents the whole human race.

So, Jesus is lifting Adam and Eve out of the place of the dead while, at the same time, trampling on the gates of hell and breaking the power of evil – Evil is represented here by the strong man that Jesus is walking over and you will notice that he is now bound up with chains.  That little space where he is lying is filled with important imagery, also, because there you can see the broken gates and the discarded key and these also represent the liberation Jesus has now achieved for us.

Who are the other people in the Icon?

On the left we have a father and son combination – King David & King Solomon – signifying Jesus’ own royalty; and there on the right we have a scruffy looking John the Baptist in green, blessing Jesus as “The Lamb of God.”

There are two important aspects to do with the Cross in this Icon.  Firstly, it is placed between Adam and Christ as a way of saying that Jesus puts right what began in Adam; that the way to life is through the Cross.

Secondly, you can see that the bottom of the cross is firmly placed on the neck of the Evil One indicating his total subjugation by the Cross. 

As you look at this part of the Icon you will notice that The Evil One has a firm grip on Adam’s foot and is clearly unwilling to let him go.  By this the writer of the Icon is saying to us that the experience of receiving new life through Christ does not make us immune from sin.

Finally, take a look at the backgrounds.  In the lower part of the Icon we have dark and deathly colours for the place of the dead.  The upper part, however, is golden; incorruptible, eternal and blazing with light.

Now you know the origin of the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  Icons are not portraits.  They do not capture a moment in time.  They tell a whole story.

The reason I wanted us to look at this today is that it opens the door for us to gain perhaps a new, but ancient, understanding of what was happening in this Easter.

Let’s think about the implications of the Genesis story of Adam & Eve.  God spent a great deal of effort creating the world and the people on it, and they were regarded as the pinnacle of God’s creation.  The catechism that has been used for generations to prepare people for baptism says that people were created for God’s pleasure and company.

The story we call The Fall in Genesis 3 is really saying that through their sin God was deprived of the pleasure of the company of those first humans – and as a consequence, they were consigned to a place beyond God’s reach, in a way, the place of the dead.

But this Icon tells us in a very vivid way that just like the Stargate people, God does not leave his people behind.

Through Jesus, God has broken the doors that kept him out of the place of the dead and freed all those who up until that time had been consigned to it.

And now, all who follow in Jesus’ way can experience liberation from the powers that would otherwise keep them in that place of the dead.

This is what Easter is about – the liberation from the place of the dead of all those who would follow in Jesus’ way.

Now that has got to be worth celebrating with the longest long-weekend we have each year.

Go and Do Likewise

The celebration of Maundy Thursday is something of a puzzle to me at times. 

We mostly think of this service as commemorating the institution of the Last Supper, yet in the story of this Passover meal in John 13 we see no focus on bread and wine, we see no reference to “my body and my blood,” no direction to “remember”.

What we have in this story is two commandments:

“I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet.  You, then, should wash one another’s feet.” v.14

and

“And now I give you a new commandment: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  v.34

It is these two commandments that are behind the name “Maundy”.  The Latin word for ‘commandment’  which is mandatum, but linguists cannot readily explain how that word morphed into Maundy.  So the focus this evening should rightly be on the commandments rather than the Lord’s Supper.

The story has some powerful elements which we might easily pass over out of familiarity.  Did you notice right at the beginning the statement that Jesus loved his friends to the very end?  John is clearly getting us ready for something – and this is what we celebrate.

This is the day that Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment.

This is the day that Jesus models that commandment to his friends around the Passover meal table.

This is the day when Judas sneaks off into the night to begin the undoing process.

This is the day and the night when Jesus eats and drinks and touches and loves and prays.

This is the last time that Jesus was a free man.

“I have set an example for you so that you will do just what I have done to you.  I am telling you the truth, no slaves are greater than their masters, and no messengers are greater than the one who sent them.  Now that you know this truth, how happy you will be if you put it into practice.

Even on the last night of his life, Jesus is beating the same drum:

            hearing is good, doing is better;

            knowledge is good, doing is better. 

            if the story is to be told, it has to be lived.

This is another thing we can pass over in the story.  But this is the piece that we need to grapple with every-single-day because there is a big, big difference between knowing and doing.  There is a big, big difference between knowing about love and loving. 

What this meant for Jesus was to act in ways that turned many rules and social conventions upside down.  Jesus, the host of this meal and a guest in another’s house, strips down, grabs a towel, then bends over and begins, gently but insistently, to wash the dusty feet of his friends.

Now washing feet was an everyday occurrence in 1^st century Palestine.  People walked everywhere.  Dinner gatherings were enjoyed reclining on and couches around the table full of food.  Putting your dirty feet up on someone’s couch simply was not done, it was impolite in the extreme.  Water, towel and basin would be provided to all, as an act of welcome, of hospitality.

Ordinarily people would wash their own feet when they came into a house as a guest.  A wealthy homeowner might have a servant to do this.  The host did not wash his guests’ feet.  This task was given to the lowest member of the household: the servant.

For the Teacher, the Rabbi, the leader of the band, to ‘assume the position,’ to bend down and do the dirty work — well, it just was not done.  It was an extremely humble act, and I imagine it was a humbling thing to receive as well.  

Jesus had turned the rules upside down before:

·        Touching lepers

·        Eating with tax collectors & sinners

·        Reinterpreting the Sabbath command to honour women and children

Jesus was wiling to change the meaning, to tweak it in such a way that it could never be looked at the same way again.  

“Watch and learn,” seem to be his bywords.  “Let me tell you the story in a new way.”   

And in this particular piece of the story, the action precedes the commandment.  “Let me show you,” he says, “let me show you how to love one another.  Then go, and do likewise.”

You know, life would be so much simpler if he had said something like, “Go and think likewise.”  Or, “Go, and believe likewise.”  But he didn’t say that.  

He said, “Go, and DO likewise.”  And most of us find this really hard to do.

Like you, I am sure, I have thought about the Christian faith a lot and for all sorts of reasons I have decided to believe it.  I am constantly working on and refining what I think and what I believe – clarifying what I call the content of my faith.  

But the actual doing part; that part is much tougher for me.  

            I am impatient,

            I am cranky, 

            I am judgmental,

            I am intolerant — with myself and with others.  

I don’t always look for ways to ‘be the servant’ in a given situation but. . . most of the time, in most situations, that is, and always will be, the best, the truest, the most-likely-to-line-up-with-the-story thing to do.  BE THE SERVANT.