December 27, 2015

Jeremy Younger

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

December 25, 2015

Susan Adams

Christmas Day     Luke 2:8-18

Christmas Comes Reaching for Rainbows Anne Weems

Key idea: We all have gifts; we don't always know what gift we have; gifts have to be 'unwrapped'; some gifts have to be 'constructed'; gifts have to be used; our gifts are for sharing with others.

• Who got presents this morning?

• another name for presents is...? gift

• Did you know what your gift was when you first saw it?

• I have a gift – uncover box

• What is in it? Who knows?

• How will we find out? unpack the box

• You might think they are rubber bands, give out the green rubber bands – discuss what they could be for...

But! They are a 'reminder' ! – wear all day to remind us to be kind to one another and to remember to say thank you and smile. These are little gifts we can give all day.

I have a friend who had a baby whose birthday was Christmas Day.

Are any of you born on Christmas Day?

My friend said her baby was the best gift ever... But she didn't know that her baby would have lots of gifts to share with her and with others ... she only discovered this her baby girl grew up. This baby grew up and became ....what ?

Sometimes we hear the story about Jesus being born and we are told that the baby Jesus was God's gift to the people of the world. What do you think that could mean?

Well no one knew at first, not until he grew up and the story writers began to tell us about the things Jesus did when he was and adult. Things like be concerned about people who were sick or who didn't have enough to eat, or getting angry when people were unkind to each other, or when they thought that getting rich was more important than being kind. He didn't like it when one group of people bullied another, or tried to make them work for little wages.

Jesus had time to listen to people and to try to understand what they thought would make their lives happier.

What do you think some of the gifts that Jesus had could be called?

                  kindness, friendliness, love, anger(about things that were unkind), time to listen, caring, love,    fairness (justice), healing (salvation)

Which of these gifts do you have?

What about your friends?

What about your Mum, Dad, grandma, grandpa...? What gifts do they have?

It is very important that as we go about our days – at school or home or work – we try to remember the special gifts that are ours... the more we use them and get good at using them, then the more gifts we will discover we have.

SHOW ANGEL – give out little angels

On Christmas Day we hear the stories about angels who, in the Bible, are God's messengers. They bring special good news to the shepherds who are very poor. But the shepherds didn't just say 'thank you very much for telling us about the baby in Bethlehem' then sit down again and cuddle their sheep to keep warm ... What did they do? Well the story tells us they went down from the hillside to see for themselves what was going on, to see how they could be part of what was happening. Many of our Christmas carols are about this story, about angels and shepherds and the baby in the manger ... and going to see what was happening. It was as if the shepherds wanted to unwrap the gift they had been told about and have a good look to see what it was.

Lots of the stories we have about Jesus are about him giving messages of good news to people, especially people who are poor, or who are sick, or who are not happy for some reason (it is as if he was giving these people little gifts of hope and encouragement to them). There are other stories where he is telling off the bullies and people who are unkind – they might have struggled to hear the 'good news gift' I think. But the good news he told them all was that things could be different for them, for everyone – the world could be a better place, they could all be happier. For some it would be about having more to eat and better places to live, for others it would be a sense of peace in their hearts, a quiet mind because they had done what they knew was the right thing. In the stories we have about Jesus he uses images like heavenly banquets, and salvation, and he uses stories about bread, and treasure, wine and promises.

The world would be different if the people who heard what Jesus had to say got involved in making it different: they had to use their gifts to make things different – to bring love and happiness, kindness, peace and gentleness to each other – if they helped each other; listened to each other; were friendly with one another even if they were different and lived in a different country.

The presents we get from the shops are great, they are lots of fun and we should say a big thank you very much for them.

                  The gifts we are born with are even more fantastic – they never wear out, and, the more we use      them the                more they grow.

                  And, they can be shared with others to make a difference, to make people happier.

Every time we smile when someone is sad, we are sharing one of God's gifts to us; every time we are kind when others are unkind, we share when others are being greedy, we stop and listen when others are rushing about, then God is close, and the angels message of good news to the world is being proclaimed.

If we learn to use the gifts we have well (if we unwrap them and – as sometimes is necessary – take time to put all the pieces together and learn how to use them) they can make the world a better place. If we can do this with our gifts then that will make us all happy people too.

Christmas is the time of year when we stop all our busyness, when we tell the story of the baby and the angels and the shepherds, when sing the Christmas carols and when we are invited to remember to look for the gifts that were given to us at our birth – the ones we can share without having to go shopping!

That was the angels good news,

The gifts of love, peace, compassion, hope were the gifts baby Jesus had to share as he grew up,

Those are our gifts too and we can share them. 

December 24, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Christmas Eve     Isaiah 52:7-10     Psalm 98     Hebrews 1:1-4     John 1:1-14

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Why do we come to church in the dark tonight? Why this night and not other nights? We come to church in the dark on Easter Eve as well but there aren’t as many of you that night. What is it about Christmas that means we want to come to church, and to be here at midnight to usher in the day?

If we were living in some European countries we would be going home after this to Christmas dinner – reveillon as the French call it. I remember my first French Christmas in New Caledonia at the age of 13 – before we went to midnight mass we left a pair of shoes each under the tree and then when we came home our presents were there on top of our shoes. Still to this day I don’t know how the parents got those presents there! 

Maybe coming to church in the dark seems more magical: the candlelight; the joy of being with friends and family. The sense of expectation is heightened.

Maybe there is something too about claiming the darkness. We heard in our gospel reading tonight: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John, the gospel writer, proclaims with confidence that light shines and cannot be overcome.

I don’t think I was ever really afraid of the dark as a child, but lots of children are. We are cautious even as adults of walking alone in the dark. We have security lights and street lights to help us feel secure. In our apartment building the lights in the corridors never go out. In the city the lights never go out. If you want to see some stars you need to get far away from the lights of the city.

Tonight we embrace the dark. We keep the lights in the church lower. We have lit the Christ candle on the Advent wreath, where we have been lighting one candle a week in a countdown to Christmas. Each of the purple candles represents a week of Advent and each candle has a meaning attached to it. The first one is for hope, the second for peace, the third for joy, and the fourth for love. Advent themes that lead us into Christmas. The candles bring light and the darkness does not overcome them. Hope, peace, joy and love are not overcome by the darkness.

The world this year has felt like it could maybe be overcome by darkness. It would be hard to say whether this year has been more “dark” than others; every year has its tragedies and calamities; who is to say one is “worse” than the other. It all depends often on how close you are to the particular darkness. Parisians will be feeling in need of light after the terrorist attacks; the thousands of refugees spending their first Christmas in the cold of Europe have sought light and hope. Closer to home our child poverty statistics are pretty dark.

Simply turning the lights up; more street lights, more security lighting, more candles, does not bring about change. What we need is a different kind of light. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Thousands of years before John wrote these words, storytellers passing down the story of creation from the memories of their foremothers and forefathers, had said the same thing. “In the beginning God said “let there be light” and there was light. And God saw the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Gen 1:4-5). Many creation stories from the cultures of the world speak of the coming of light as essential to the beginning of life.

Like our own story of Rangi and Papatuanuku, the sky and the earth must separate to allow light and to bring forth life.

John’s poem or hymn of the coming of the Word begins in the same place: with light. The light is literally light that shines, like a candle or the sun. And the word “phos” in Greek can also mean understanding, enlightenment or truth. Biblical writers always use words with multiple meanings to encourage us to peel off the layers and wander about in their writing.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Understanding shines in places of ignorance, and the darkness has not seized it.

So tonight in the dark we seek light and we seek understanding, or wisdom. And this light is not just a light as bright as the sun to blind us and banish the darkness. Instead it lives alongside the darkness – like night and day, both were declared good.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an American writer, has a book called Learning to Walk in the Dark and in it she recounts being taken to a cave by a friend so she could experience real darkness. In one cave before turning her headlamp off she spots a sparkly stone full of light and keeps it as a souvenir. When she gets home and takes it out of her bag it looks like a piece of gravel. [1] She says “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” [2]

We don’t want life to be hard, we don’t want suffering for ourselves or others but we know too that from “dark” times in our lives can come learning and strength and hope. To bring about change in amongst the darkness of child poverty or the refugee crisis requires spending time listening and learning. It requires us to spend time in the darkness so we can find out how peoples and governments can work together. We can’t magically fix these problems even on this the most magical of nights. Rather with the strength of the light within, we can together listen and work and bring about change.

Jesus’ journey into our world began in the same way as each of us; in the darkness of the womb. There is an early church tradition that Jesus was born in a cave – which is entirely possible if the house the family stayed in was built against a hill and the section for the animals (which was inside the house) was that end of the house. He was born into the quietness and darkness of a humble home with a family and animals around. [3] His journey ended in the darkness of a tomb, also a cave. Then light broke into the darkness, the light of new life, or resurrection.

And so we gather tonight in the dark, the dark of a womb, the dark of a cave, the dark of the night, the dark of creation waiting for first light.

This darkness is good as God created it, and safe. We know there is much in the world that is not safe, much in the world that is sad and wrong and evil.

And so we come this night to seek the light, the light that was created at the beginning of time; and the light that was born that first Christmas night.

The light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

[1] Chapter 6 “Entering the Stone” Learning to Walk in the Dark 2014 Harper Collins

[2] Ibid p 5

[3] Kenneth Bailey Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes 2008 SPCK chapter 1 

December 20, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Advent 4     Micah 5:2-5     Magnificat     Hebrews 10:5-10     Luke 1:39-45

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It is time for my annual grumpy Christmas sermon. By the time we get to the fourth Sunday of Advent I am usually over Christmas. And Christmas isn’t even here yet. I am over it because it is the end of the year and I guess I am a bit tired. I am over it because a church Christmas seems so irrelevant the Herald newspaper has cancelled Christmas notices this year. (And then tried to charge us double what we paid last year for an ad that will simply be in the classified section.) I am over the commercial Christmas where Westfield is proclaimed as “the home of Christmas” on a full page cover of the same Herald on November 19th! And I am saddened to see the hundreds of people lining up outside the City Mission to seek presents for their children. What kind of merry Christmas can it be when our child poverty rates are rising not falling?

But luckily for me and for you – this year in the lectionary we have my favourite Christmas passage. So I will stop being grumpy. Because what we read today and what a commercial Christmas looks like have nothing in common. Today we hear of the visit of Mary, the mother of Jesus with her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

In Ein Kerem near Jerusalem there is a church built to honour the visit of Mary to Elizabeth when they were both unexpectedly pregnant with their sons. It is called the Church of the Visitation. The Magnificat, the song of Mary, which comes after the passage we read today, is reproduced there in 42 languages. Set in beautiful tiles on the wall of the courtyard of the church her words can be read by all who come. 24 years ago when I was just 3 months pregnant with our daughter Hannah we visited Ein Kerem while we were spending a month in Israel/Palestine. All the members of our group thought it was pretty exciting that we were there, pregnant, and so did we, as we prayed for our baby.

Mary was just an ordinary girl who went to spend time with her cousin Elizabeth. Mary was escaping the shame and scandal and gossip of being an unmarried mother. She may well have been running for her life. No one was going to believe stories of angels; she did what young pregnant women have done for centuries – she got out of town! Elizabeth would have been the object of gossip as well, being pregnant later in life and her husband Zechariah mysteriously struck mute in the process. So the two women took refuge together, supported each other.

I was just an ordinary mother too, like millions before and after me. But the joy of becoming a mother feels unique and extraordinary to everyone. I think the first time you get pregnant you feel like Mary did, unique, chosen, it seems so amazing. I can remember on our trip to Palestine desperately wanting to “look” pregnant but of course I was only 3 months – and as slim as slim! Mary and Elizabeth would have shared thoughts like that, they would have sewed clothes for their babies, talked about their strange experiences, encouraged each other. And Mary would have assisted Elizabeth when the time came for John to be born. The biblical version of an antenatal support group.

Woven into this very personal every day encounter of 2 pregnant woman are threads of Israel’s history – when we hear Elizabeth’s words “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” many of us might think of the RC prayer

Hail Mary, full of grace.
Our Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

The Hail Mary is of course based on Elizabeth’s words and is still prayed by millions every day. It sounds beautiful and it is beautiful.

But when Elizabeth said these words, or when Luke wrote them for her, they were referencing words found in the song of Deborah in the Book of Judges, and said of Judith in the Book of Judith (Apocrypha) [1]. The song of Deborah (who was a prophet and judge in Israel in the 12th century BC) describes the murder of the Assyrian general Sisera by a woman, Jael. “Most blessed of women be Jael” it says, and then the song describes in grisly detail how she struck him with a tent peg and a mallet (Judges 5:24-27). The story of Judith is set in the time of the exile of the 6th century BC but is not thought to be history, rather a tale of a woman Judith held up as an example for the women of Israel to follow. She too kills her enemy (cuts off his head while he is sleeping) and is praised “O daughter you are blessed by the most High God above all women on earth”.

“Blessed are you among women” began life not as a pious prayer but as a war cry of praise of women who joined men in the battle to redeem Israel. Now Mary and Elizabeth join this line of women who bravely stood up to the oppressor. The personal, intimate encounter has woven into it threads of the macro history of the people of Israel. Luke is writing politics here.

And Luke is writing politics in the next verses. Luke says when Mary discovers her part in the story of God’s coming to earth she sings. She sings words based on the ancient song of her foremother Hannah. She sings about God and God’s blessings for the poor and lowly and those who had waited for generations for God to fulfill God’s promises. Her song is a very radical piece of theology about God changing the world. The St Matthew’s Voices are going to sing a Magnificat for us in a moment – they have sung one each Sunday of Advent – this one is composed by our own Michael Bell – it is in Latin so I will just remind you of the words:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

 Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

 and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

 from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

 he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

 and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

 and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

 in remembrance of his mercy,

according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

 to Abraham and to his descendants for ever. (Luke 1:46-55)

Mary was a girl who felt called by God to take risks, be brave, and bring a child into the world who would be God’s son. God dwelling with us, Emmanuel, the word made flesh. A child who would show us the way. At one level this is the story of an ordinary girl who had a baby. The way Luke writes it, it is the story of women claiming their place in the changing of our world forever.

So sing with Mary, sing with Elizabeth, delight in their stories and their courage and our hearts and minds will be alive with the transforming love of God this Christmas season.

[1] Richard Horsley The Liberation of Christmas; the infancy narratives in social context, p 84, 1989, Crossroad 

December 13, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Advent 3     Zephaniah 3:14-20     Philippians 4:4-7     Luke 3:7-18

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Joy is today’s advent theme. Joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Yet our gospel reading starts off with John the Baptist calling the people who came to be baptised “you brood of vipers” and various other names. Not very joyful! I wonder if I should try that at the beginning of a baptism service – call the gathered congregation a brood of vipers – and see how I get on!

The poor old crowd gathered hoping for some good news – they had heard tis was the place to be – here they would be baptized and renewed – but when they get there they are told don’t think just because you are descended from Abraham and Sarah that gives you any rights; and you are like trees that are going to be chopped down, roots and all.

Someone in the crowd bravely asks – well what then should we do? what possible hope is there? And John’s tone changes markedly – oh actually there is lots you can do – phew! If you have two coats, share one with someone who has none; share your food too. Ok – that we can do – sharing food with those in need through foodbanks and the City Mission; but also making food for friends who are ill or just because we love them – we do that – and that brings us joy.

Sharing our clothes, bringing them to the Mission or other op shops – rather than selling them on Trade me. When I was dean of Napier Cathedral we had a thriving op shop but once Trade Me started it was harder to get good quality items to sell and our very good income gradually declined below the level of the rent – and recently the shop has closed. I always figure if I can afford to buy nice clothes I can also afford to give them away.

Ok so coats and food the crowd said – what next – the tax collectors come – and you know they were seen as very wicked – they colluded with the Romans and stole money for themselves. John says – that is ok – just collect the agreed amount – cut out the extortion and you will be ok.

Today we might translate this to deal fairly with people; pay what they deserve; in employment terms pay a living wage; no zero hour contracts; don’t always try and drive the hardest bargain; if you are an employer you find joy in treating people with respect and fairness; seeing them provide for their families. This we can do.

The soldiers come next – the same instruction – don’t extort money; treat people fairly; be satisfied with what you are paid and what you have. We might translate this to dealing honestly with each other and with respect and care; do not bully and harass people. And be satisfied with what you have – do not always want what the next person has – that is also the 10th commandment “you shall not covet anything which belongs to your neighbour”. The fact that I follow a website called Kate’s Closet dedicated to what the Duchess of Cambridge wears probably belongs in this category! being satisfied with what we have brings joy. This we can do. So – share food and coats; receive and give fairly. That is what will bring us joy.

Then all of a sudden John the Baptist is back with fire and brimstone where the chaff will be tossed into that fire. These strong words of John the Baptist that surround the practical and helpful words, might be harder to hear but they are still there to challenge us. Challenging us to watch who we follow, to be careful who we listen to.

The vipers of the Baptist’s day were the religious and political leaders who eventually asked for John’s head on a platter. We hear voices like them today (although we gain nothing by calling them vipers). We can though resist voices which want to hate and voices which label and dismiss. The worst example this week was the unmentionable things Donald Trump has said about people of Islamic faith. And the many fundamentalist and so called Christian leaders who are not far behind him. But there are other examples closer to home. This week we heard about work our security services are doing to follow those who might sympathise with ISIS. Women who might be ISIS sympathizers came up. PM John Key commented and said in relation to women travelling to Syria “There's certainly a few women that have left, engaged in these weddings effectively at the very last minute, and gone to Syria, and all of those factors would point to the fact that they're going as jihadist brides’” [1]

“Jihadist brides” – Anjum Rahman, a leader of the Moslem community in Hamilton, who was a speaker for our Mandela evening recently, commented that to use such a term was fear inducing and labels women who can be easily identified in our community. John Bluck in his sermon on Advent Sunday said “the vocation of every Christian in a time of crisis is to say what’s happening … to speak the truth. … God is the one who works from inside the crisis, not outside.” [2]

Watch our language, speak the truth; do not label a whole group of women whom we know nothing about; because labelling them increases the fear and hatred of others whose only connection to them is the wearing of a headscarf.

Christmas tends to be a time of year when we gather with family who we might not see all that often; and because we don’t get to choose our family we often end up in conversations that might be more varied than our usual dinner conversations. I can think of times over the years when I have put up with racist and sexist comments and glossed over them for the sake of family. But now I am older and maybe wiser I think we have to gently but firmly stand up when people around us are talking about “jihadist brides” or other terms that label and demean.

We can tell positive stories instead. Tonight at our Advent Carols service we will hear 3 stories of refugees who have come to Aotearoa; they are stories of families being reunited after years and years of waiting. A short summary of their lives in no way honours the long years of sorrow and emptiness before coming to live here. But to hear their stories will inspire you – and give you new language and new words to replace the language of vipers in our media.

For the same reason we hear each Sunday in Advent the story of someone supported by CWS – today’s story is about women living in coastal Southern India; learning to develop their own micro businesses and standing up for their rights and those of their daughters. Good positive stories that need to be told. And we support CWS in their work and have the privilege of hearing their stories. I hope you have taken home a donation envelope and send it in.

John the Baptist said – share your coats and your food – deal fairly and honestly with people – that we can do. And we can call on our leaders to do the same.

So where is the joy again? The joy is in the every day, ordinary sharing of food, of clothes, of resources; the joy is in treating people with respect and love; the joy is in hanging on to hope and looking for joy and telling stories of joy when our media is screaming fear and hatred at us.

Tonight you will hear the stories of Yonadab, Joseph and Mohamed alongside the prophets Isaiah, Matthew and Luke. We have heard the CWS stories of Tarek and his mother; Giselle, and the fisherwomen of India. [3] What stories of joy will you tell at your Christmas table this year?

[1] http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/291673/jihadist-bride-comments-'induce-fear'

[2] http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/#!Risking-the-Truth/ctoq/ihpc80z315

[3] http://christmasappeal.org.nz/our-featured-partners/

December 6, 2015

Susan Adams

Advent 2     Malachi 3:1-4     Luke 3:1-6

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

I was complaining to John the other day that I always seem to preach 'political' sermons, sermons that seem to be a challenge either to action or to thinking – action and thinking in relation to our world and our faith and theology. He responded by asking me 'What season is this in the liturgical calendar?' And, 'Are you intending to preach the Gospel?' To which I replied 'Advent' to the first question and then 'yes' to the second. I thought about it a bit then I remembered what I used to say to students "Any half good sermon should be a message to yourself." So here I go again in the hope of challenging myself with the gospel once more – and perhaps you too.

When we watch the news unfolding on TV we are presented with unfathomable violence in Syria and terror perpetrated by ISIS; mindless gun violence in the USA; incomprehensible poverty in this land that forces children and families to live in cars and an increase in food parcels; the dreadfully sad breakdown of relationships that sees women and men murdered by people they once loved; political manoeuvring to keep 'self' in power; pay-rises and bonuses awarded to those with already eye-watering incomes; and decisions by leaders that ignore the plight of our planet earth in favour of increasing consumption. We are seeing history made by war generals, politicians, the power-hungry and the profit-mongers.

Then we come to church, perhaps seeking an antidote to the horror or in the hope of hearing stories that build up our faith; that bring us comfort. And we hear "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked path shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Great, we might think, I can hope for that, ... but we need to pay attention to the beginning of the reading set for today, the bit where Luke sets out the historical context!

That is where we hear that it was the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. All who heard the writings of Luke would have known what this was telling them – what was encoded in that little bit of history. They would have know that when John began preaching his message of repentance and baptism Tiberius from his base in Rome was engaged in a bloody purge of anyone who seemed to be in opposition to him and the Roman rule, Herod was bleeding the treasury in Galilee dry, and eventually, in about AD29, was responsible for decapitating John the Baptist; and Pontius Pilate authorised Jesus' crucifixion only a few years later. The times were terrible – we are hearing stories about politicians, war generals, the power-hungry and the profit mongers!

John the Baptist in many ways was a 'voice in the wilderness' calling for repentance, for a change of mind amongst the leaders, for a conversion to a different way. It might seem to us he was dreaming of seemingly impossible changes that would bring about a world of peace with justice and love in the face of the corruption and violence he and his contemporaries were experiencing. And his cousin Jesus took up the 'dream' too, also calling for a change of heart and mind, for a broadening of the horizons of compassion. He was directly confronting those in places of power while at the same time building a people's movement to oppose the corruption, marginalisation and social disregard that was rife. Both Jesus and John demand a change in behaviour, as well as mindset, amongst their followers in how they treated each other and in what they were prepared to accept. They demanded a change amongst those with power in relation to their priorities and their sense of responsibility. Both men reached back to the first Testament prophets and wisdom teachers to give substance to the dream of a new and redeemed world, a world saved from despair. Both men were killed within a few years of each other. We should not be surprised about that. We too know what happens to those who speak and act contrary to prevailing power.

We could tell a version of Luke's story in our own time citing Syrian leadership and ISIS, noting the supply of weapons of war from Russia and countries in the western alliance; we could tell of the migration of millions of refugees trying to escape the horrors of their homeland; we could point to racism and sexual violence and to poverty here in our homeland; we could name those in leadership – presidents and dictators, CEOs and those holding ministerial office – all leading the way to water shortages, and poverty, to rising sea levels, to war and to the continuing abuse of women and children. We know the names of many of them. Do we have the courage to shout out about it, to be voices in the wilderness in our own time demanding repentance, demanding a change of mind about what is important in earth today? Are we preparing to doing that? As Bishop John said last week "There are no easy answers to any of it. But we can speak out."

We know that the primary theme in the liturgical season of Advent is preparing, getting ready. This year I have dared to confront myself and ask "For what? What am I preparing for as these weeks unfold?" In church we say in all seriousness 'we are preparing for the birth of the Christ Child' – the one we sing about as the hope of the world, the child of peace, the child of love. But the Advent readings we hear are not about that baby... they are about the world of 2000+ years ago, the horrors of corrupt leadership, and the desperate need for different thinking – for a change of mind and a broadening of vision. They are about not losing hope in the dream of a world where peace and hope and love are key markers in decisions and relationships. We need to be prepared to keep the dream alive even in the face of today's horrors.

John the Baptist, and then Jesus, the dreamers, were killed: one decapitated and one crucified. But the dream of peace with justice that empowered their lives has reached through the centuries to us. They leave us with a sacred and solemn charge. Does it still have power enough to challenge us to change our expectations of what is 'normal', to change our minds and our attitudes and behaviours about how we – all the people of the earth – live together and manage our finite resources?

I read somewhere once "we can choose to do justice out of love, or we can choose to be violent out of pain." There are lots of people today for whom violence seems to be the choice. For those of us who gather in holy places such as this and hear the stories of John the Baptist and Jesus and others, our ancestors in the faith, the invitation is to choose to do justice out of love. That requires courage.

Are we preparing for what this means for us in the coming year?

November 29, 2015

John Bluck

First Sunday of Advent     Luke 21:25-36

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I would be hesitant to tell some people I know and love just what I was doing this morning. Going to church? Well, most of them have guessed I still do that. At St Matthews in the city? Well, for the hipsters and the people who know a thing or two, that’s not so bad if you have to go anywhere near a church.

But on Advent Sunday 2015 to be reading a story about the Son of Man, whoever that is, coming down on a cloud, well, I ask you.

And to try and take that story half way seriously, for a contemporary metro Auckland man or woman, is seriously delusional territory.

The verses that follow the cloud bit do offer a little more resonance with today’s life and times. On the eve of the climate change summit in Paris, a crisis meeting for which failure is not an option if you are among the hundreds of millions who live at sea level around the globe, the gospel words are highly topical: “Nations stand helpless, not knowing which way to turn from the roar and surge of the sea; people faint with terror at the thought of what is coming upon the world..”

Okay, okay. But the Son of Man coming down on a cloud? What are we going to do with that? And not on any old day, what’s more. But on this first Sunday of the church’s year, where we set ourselves up for Christmas and Easter and the whole long procession of living out the Christian story. This is one text, on one day that we somehow or other, have to take seriously.

I could crack a few more jokes about the things that come down on clouds and make some links to the new season of Star Wars and the latest James Bond, but that won’t help us engage with this inconvenient text whose time is out of joint.

And why do we have to deal with it on Advent Sunday? Well, it is the season when we’re asked, pre-Christmas, to do a stocktake on our lives. Not just a personal health check, physically and spiritually, but a 360 degree review of our life and the world around us.

And as we start to do that, we find ourselves in a curious bind. On the one hand, for not all but many of us, things are going along OK. As I sat at home in Pakiri, trying to prepare for this morning, the sun was shining and the roses outside were blooming in their early summer glory, and the green lawn shimmered, and there was no cloud in the sky.

New Zealand is in complacent mode. We’ve got the Rugby World Cup safely locked up for four years, even if the Aussies are venting their spleen by locking some of us up in off shore detention centres. We haven’t had a terrorist attack, yet. Business confidence is up, mortage rates are way down and chances are we’ll jog our way into Christmas inside a consumer spend up haze of happy hedonism.

God’s in heaven and there is a lot right with the world. Except it’s falling apart. That’s the other side of the bind we’re in.

There’s a new global crisis to report every night on the news. Isis terror, unmanageable numbers of refugees, climate change wreaking havoc, basket case economies in Europe and Africa. Add to that the corruption in athletics, football, the scandals of abuse in churches, schools, hospitals, police forces. Institutions that are meant to protect and heal and unite us too often alienate and divide.

And under all of that, the weight of suppressed memories of earlier tragedies that went unspoken and unresolved. I listened to a radio programme last week where survivors of Gallipoli spoke of their time at Chanuk Bair and Pyne’s Gap, living for weeks with dysentery, horrific infections, amidst rotting bodies, under sniper fire, following pointless orders. If their mothers had known what was happening to their sons, said the interviewer, the war would have ended immediately.

But they didn’t know and it didn’t end. It only got worse. Sebasatian Faulk in his new novel “Where my heart used to beat” says humankind did an about face in that war. The survivors who trailed home were different from the 19th century men who had first gone out. There was probably a day, a single hour, a moment, (in the midst of some unspeakable horror at Ypres or Verdun or the Somme when a soldier) was chest deep in gore and “in his heart had a new and terrible knowledge. That we were not what we had thought we were – superior to other living creatures. No. We were the lowest thing on earth… The legacy of those years is that they legitimised contempt for individual life”.

It‘s a contempt we’re still breeding, not only with Isis, but right here at home. In our own parliament two weeks ago, women members stood to try and tell their own stories of family abuse to challenge the casual accusations of rape being bandied about. We live on a thin crust of normality that covers a hidden landscape of history we have yet to own and talk about. Our take it easy, she’ll be right Kiwi culture has a low pain threshold.

The Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggeman calls this dysfunctional, desperate face of the world the “terrible ungluing”. The things that once held us together are falling apart, the inequality gap between rich and poor, hungry children and well fed, haves and have nots keeps growing and our ability to address that, engage with that, let alone solve that, keeps diminishing.

The Son of Man on a cloud may not be the best image to describe this, but the idea of “heaven and earth will pass away” still works for me. You have to reach up to the top shelf of all the language available to even begin to tap the enormity of what is happening to us and our world, right now. The measure of the crisis is almost beyond any words.

But we have to try.

Because the vocation of every Christian in a time of crisis is to say what’s happening, out loud, over and over. To speak the truth, even if it’s deemed unspeakable, unbearable; to uncover what is hidden, even if it’s inconvenient, disturbing. We have an Official Information Act to help us do that, but more powerful still, we have a gospel that says the truth will set us free and calls us to be alert to the kingdom, the reign of God that is breaking in all around us, even in the midst of the crisis.

The old images of a God that comes in from the outside, on clouds or whatever don’t work for us because our world view has changed so radically. Angels don’t peep through the stratosphere, in-between the airliners. The God we know in Jesus Christ is the one who works from inside not outside the crisis, as participant not observer, as the one who shares in the suffering because it is God’s suffering. What happened to Jesus happened to God. What happens to the victims of abuse and oppression and pollution happens to the God in whose image we are made and in whose life we find our life and being, each one of us, Christian, Muslim, Jew, whatever.

And for that reason, for God’s sake as much as for our sake, we have to talk about what’s happening, find words to name the injustice, to unmask the lies. When we demean and do violence to each other, when we treat people who are different from us as less than us, especially right now if they are Muslim believers, we demean and do violence to God.

The only way to deal with this “terrible ungluing” that haunts us through this Advent season is to keep looking for words and then actions that will name the terrors that face us and share in the pain and confusion and the point to the ways through the troubles ahead. There are words and thoughts and lessons that are waiting for us to find. But we’ve got to reach for them. Listen to these words of the poet and priest Malcolm Guite:

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

In this Advent season, within this marvellous community of St Matthews in the heart of this chaotic city, our vocation as people becoming Christian, however slowly and uncertainly, is to give each other the strength and permission to think and speak about the things that the world around us would rather avoid, and to risk being broken ourselves by sharing the weight of the broken people around us.

That sounds like a heavy order. And it is. But in the midst of delivering it, Jesus tells another story, right after about the warnings of the son of man descending.

He tells us to look at the fig tree sprouting. As soon as it does, and it is right now, then you can see for yourselves that summer is near. The signs of trouble also hold the seeds of promise. If you are able to take the heat and stand in the middle of the grief and trouble, to find some words to describe honestly what’s going on, then “stand upright and hold your heads high because your liberation is near.

In the middle of the storm there is a curious calm. When you let yourself be really engaged in the suffering around you, there is an extraordinary freedom to be found.

Be alert, says Jesus, pray for the strength to pass safely through all these troubles, and you will find yourself standing in the presence of God.

November 15, 2015

Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 33     1 Sam 2:1-9     Mark 13:1-8

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I want to read you a letter that I received by email this past week.

       Dear Susan,

       how sad that a Christian church will seek to honour the memory of a man who espoused Communism with violence, and, when he obtained power, treated in utero children as Hitler treated Jews. I guess that it’s just another demonstration of the descent of Anglicanism into a tool of rabid left-wing political and social activists.

       Yours,

Leo

I am feeling the weight of responsibility as I stand here this morning after what we have been considering for the past two days and the news yesterday of the attacks in Paris!..

The writer of Mark’s Gospel tells us Jesus said to his disciples “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.

It behoves us to take stock from time to time and to ask ourselves “Are we being led astray?” and to wonder how we would know if we were! Can we tell national fanaticism from appropriate national and cultural pride? Can we find values in people different from us that enable us to celebrate our common humanity? Can we respect communities different from our own while condemning the actions of individuals?

This weekend we have been exploring the legacy of a world leader of our time, Nelson Mandela. He was here at St Matthews 20 years ago. We have been considering his challenge: to defeat the powers of racism, to overcome prejudice and social segregation, to build diverse and respectful nations. We have been led in our work this weekend by two Anglican Clergy: Bob Scott who worked for many years in anti-racism both here in Aotearoa-New Zealand and in Geneva, in the WWC Programme to Overcome Racism. The other person was Andrew Beyer, a priest of this parish who on behalf of St Matthew’s, along with other groups active in what became known as 'MOST' (Mobilisation to Stop the Tour) led of many hundreds of people week after week in 1981, in protest marches against the South African Apartheid regime, represented in what we called the ‘racist tour’ of the Springbok rugby team to NZ. The mobilisation of people power was successful from the perspective of those of us involved in the movement as the Hamilton game was stopped thereby drawing international attention to the issue of apartheid – that system of government that discriminated, separated and segregated at all levels of and structures of society according to race.. World pressure on the regime increased and shortly after the South African regime of apartheid came to an end.

Through the unrelenting work to keep in focus the issues of racism that Bob and Andrew were engaged in, along with many women and men (including our own George Armstrong) from different churches and community groups, the people of NZ were challenged sharply to face up to expressions of racism and discrimination in our own society.

It was easier back then to look overseas and to make loud tutting noises at what we saw overseas, than it was for us to look into our own communities and families and insist on an acknowledgement of the changes we needed to make in our own nation. But the work of anti-racism, of bicultural development and the urgent need to overcome personal prejudice, had begun and none could escape it. The whole country was engaged in the conversation and held an opinion one way or another: supportive or resistant; many families struggled with intensely held differences.

In 1995, 20 years ago Nelson Mandela came to this church.

He thanked the people here, from church and from the wider community who were also present, for their commitment to the struggle to overcome racism and to the consequences of intolerance.

Today,

• more than 30 years since the ferment following the 1981 tour that focussed urgency for change here in NZ;

• more than 30 years since the cry to honour the Treaty of Waitangi;

• and more than 30 years since the Rev'd John Mullane Vicar of St Matthew’s, urged the Anglican church in its commitment to bicultural development that gathered momentum and led to the revision of our Anglican constitution,

questions of racism, prejudice, social segregation and racial stereotyping are back on the agenda of our ‘super-diverse’ city as they have not been for some time. The language is different, the focus has shifted, our communities are even more diverse but the impact of racism and prejudice are just as pernicious.

Today, once more, there is urgent need to open our hearts and minds and eyes to what is happening to the people of our communities. Once more there is need to look closely and notice the subtle expressions of racial stereotyping reported in our media, and to be aware of the not so subtle racism expressed in the negative statistics in health, education, employment.

Who are the leaders of today who will show us a way to a compassionate expression of our common humanity before we spiral into the ghettos of fear and exclusion that lead to violence?

What we do know about leadership is that anytime it leads us into fear, into isolation, segregation or hate it is bad; it is leading us astray, it has to be challenged. Leadership worthy of our allegiance is leadership that encourages us to overcome our fear of difference, that models and encourages respect, that includes and supports people and groups of people who struggle.

The apocalyptic reading from the Gospel of Mark that we heard this morning, is probably not (according to scholars), part of the collection of authentic Jesus sayings. But that is not to discount it as it certainly points to the overall purpose of Mark's Gospel. This gospel has urgency about it: there is no time to waste in changing hearts and minds, and there is no time to waste in choosing the 'way of Jesus' that leads toward a better, healthier world. The writer was addressing a community that seemed to believe the second coming imminent. This Gospel records persuasively, the ministry activity and teaching of Jesus highlighting how and why we should be following the Way of Jesus, choosing to live differently…

Another wave of persecution had begun for them, and with it violence toward those who did not conform or who dared to speak out against the prevailing norms and oppressive racist powers: 'nation will rise against nation', the writer has Jesus say, death and destruction are at hand. So, the writer urges through his gospel, take up the Jesus Way that leads to a different, better life for all. This Way includes standing against the powers of oppression and death, standing against structural injustice, against discrimination and standing for a kinder, gentler way of respect and inclusion. The 'Jesus Way' requires openness to difference, compassion, love, and justice for those on the margins; it leads to life in harmony with neighbours and the earth; to ways that release the life-giving spirit of God. We seek leaders who will lead us into these ways.

Hannah's prayer, the reading from the First Testament that we heard earlier, paints a word picture of how our world could be if God's vision for creation was realised: the bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. but those who were hungry are fat. God will raise up the poor from the dust and lift the needy from the ash heap. And what is more all the components are present amongst us. We hear resonances of Hanna's prayer in Mary's Song when Jesus is conceived, it is the prayers of these two women that seem to lie behind the vision the Jesus Way leads us toward.

• It seems to me, that once more churches like St Matthew-in-the-City need to hold a place for leaders who will encourage us on the way that leads us beyond our fear of change, beyond our limited experience of difference and toward peaceful and just co-existence. We can all be these leaders in our own places of influence – homes, amongst friends, at work...

• It seems to me we have rested long enough on the achievements of the past. That once more it is time to mobilise and move further along the way toward the place where the feeble find strength, the hungry find bread and the needy sit in places of honour.

I can think of nothing better than to give Nelson Mandela the last word on this day. So, as he says in the final paragraph of his book 'Long Walk to Freedom'

"I have walked the long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hiss, one finds there are many more hill to climb. I have take a moment to here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger for my long walk to freedom is not yet ended."

November 8, 2015

Linda Murphy

Ordinary Sunday 32     Remembrance Day     Mark 12:38-44

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On ANZAC Day I sowed poppy seeds in my garden and today as I write this sermon I have the joy of these beautiful red poppies; the quintessential emblem of the Great War. St Matthew in the City has a number of memorials within the church such as our choir stalls and pews, a number of brass plagues, and a marble memorial on the South wall. This parish lost many of its young men to this war. We are now in year two of the centennial of “The war to end all war.”

Many of you may have studied history as I did at school and I still remember the causes of the WWI and AJP Taylor which we studied for both School Certificate and University Entrance. Why we studied this for both exams has always puzzled me and I remember my history teacher explaining to me that by the sixth form we were expected to give much more detailed answers!

 The social and political impact of this war was immense.

World War I resulted in the death of empires and the birth of nations, and in national boundaries being redrawn around the world. It ushered in prosperity for some countries, while it brought economic depression to others. It influenced literature. It changed culture. It did not end war.

The war, especially the Gallipoli campaign, also had a marked influence on the development of a distinctive New Zealand national identity.16,697 New Zealand soldiers died in WWI and about another 80,000 men who survived, suffering from the effects of wounds, gassing and shell shock. This shell shock is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. We also had 550 nurses who were officially employed overseas and probably another 500 or so including doctors and volunteers who were not officially part the war effort and these were all women and are usually forgotten.

Our widow in the Gospel is also easily unnoticed and forgotten her generosity unobserved. The widow simply makes her gift to the temple treasury from an impulse of faith. An impulse that discloses her quiet gratitude and trust in God. Jesus sees in this woman a genuine heart, a grateful spirit and a generous attitude. Or is this what he sees. He sees the Jewish elite devouring the ‘widows houses’ and leaving them with nothing. This is a lament, an example of exploitation of the disadvantaged widows in the Palestinian society of the first century of the CE.

Jesus wasn’t praising the poor widow for her trusting gift; he was giving the religious and political elite the condemnation they so rightly deserved for creating and perpetuating a society that conditions widows like her to give away money she needed to feed herself with.

The thousands of men and women who volunteered one hundred years ago also had generosity of heart, spirit and attitude. Many paid with their lives and those who returned were changed forever by the experience. World War I had important effects on society at large. If you have watched the series Downton Abbey, this social change of the war is well illustrated. The household staff is reduced in number; technology in the form of the motor car and other forms of mechanisation has changed the way of production and work on the land less people are needed. New opportunities are opened up for the middle and lower classes. The women of the household are becoming managers of the estate and taking control of their own lives. Generally, the war brought an increase in progressive thinking. In many parts of the world, opportunities for lower and middle class people improved, while members of the aristocracy found their power waning.

While the men were away fighting women were employed in the civil service, munitions factories, on the land, docklands and tramways. All roles traditionally filled by men. However at the end of the war they were expected to give up these roles and return to life as if the War of all War had never happened. Of course some women did return to their traditional roles however many did not, women’s extensive war participation helped convince the British politicians that it would be alright to give women the vote nevertheless it took until 1928 for this to be achieved. On the other hand down at the bottom of the world New Zealand had given women the vote in 1893, why this happened is a topic for discussion at another time.

Women cut their hair wore shorter skirts even trousers, life would never be the same. Full employment due to the war effort, rationing, rent control and increased consumption of milk and eggs, and improved social provision meant that working-class families were better off. Indeed, on average working-class incomes doubled between 1914 and 1920 in Britain.

A New Zealand woman by the name of Ethel Watkins Taylor born in Onehunga and of Ngapuhi descent volunteered in 1914 as a nurse in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service. She serviced mainly in Egypt caring for our soldiers in a hospital of tents. When she returned to New Zealand she was appointed the Native Health Nurse at Te Karaka and was awarded the MBE for her work in the community.

The social change was immense.

A number of peace organisations were formed in response to World War I such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. The determination of 1200 spirited women from 12 countries who gathered in The Hague in 1915 as war raged. They drew up 20 proposals for stopping the war by a negotiated peace and took these personally to world leaders. While they didn’t succeed, changes occurred for those who as conscientious objectors, refused conscription – a right which has since been endorsed by the United Nations but sadly is still not recognised in all countries.

The social and political landscape changed forever.

Today our world is engulfed in war again being fought in the Middle East. A conflict that seems so immense that it is seemingly impossible for our current world powers to stop. A negotiation towards peace is insurmountable. This current conflict has been described by theologian Karen Armstrong as being a result of Western social change being incomprehensible to the Middle Eastern Muslim mind. In Karen Armstrong’s book, Fields of Blood she states, “…we must find ways of contemplating these distressing facts of modern life or we will lose the best part of our humanity. Somehow we have to find ways of doing what religion – at its best – has done for centuries: build a sense of global community, cultivate a sense of reverence and ‘equanimity for all, and take responsibility for the suffering we see in the world.”

Mark’s Jesus advocated for social change he challenged the occupying Roman Empire and the collaborating Jewish elite. His message was one of empowering the disenfranchised such as our widow in today’s Gospel. It is doubtful that the intention of war is to bring about social change nevertheless this is what happened after the ‘war to end all war.’

November 1, 2015

Helen Jacobi

All Saints' Day     Isaiah 25:6-9    Psalm 24    Revelation 21:1-6    John 11:32-44

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[1]  Lazarus was brother to Mary and Martha. They were family, they grew up together. Jesus knew them well, he stayed with them often, they were close. Families, friendships, the stuff of life. Mary sat once at the feet of Jesus to listen and learn, Martha complained to him and said, make her come and help me in the kitchen. Jesus declined, he was happy to teach Mary.

When word came to Jesus that Lazarus was ill he didn’t seem too concerned, nor did he hurry to his bedside; hardly the actions of a friend. And so when he finally arrives Lazarus is dead and already buried. Mary is angry “if you had been here my brother would not have died”. Jesus weeps, and is disturbed in spirit. What does that mean, he is disturbed in spirit? He is upset, he sobs. Jesus at his most human. But some of the crowd scoff “if he opened the eyes of a blind man, could he not have stopped this man from dying?” He goes to the tomb and tells them to roll away the stone from the entrance to the cave. Martha, ever practical, points out that it might be a little smelly. Somewhere here Jesus is no longer the human Jesus, the friend weeping, he is Jesus Christ, the son of God. John weaves the two together in this story. And Jesus says “Lazarus, come out”. How did the crowd react? Gasps, scoffing still, silence? And Lazarus comes out. He is wrapped in the grave cloths (wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy). “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind him.

On a day when we gather to mourn our loved ones what use is a reading about Jesus raising someone from the dead? What are we supposed to do with that? It all seems too fanciful. And what about the people we love who have died too young, what about them? On our list of names today I know there are children, young people. What was so special about Lazarus? What about our brothers and sisters and friends whom we weep for, what about them. What was so special about Lazarus? Unbind him, unbind him and let him go.

Why does John give us this story? Well, there is the tomb, there is a stone which has to be rolled away, days have passed, there are grave clothes left behind, and the women are there. Is this about Jesus’ own death and resurrection?

Maybe; but I am drawn back to those words: Unbind him. [2] This is the same word used by John the Baptist when he says “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” (Mark 1:7) Unbind could mean untie him, the simple untying of the grave cloths.

Unbind, the same word used for the promise to Peter “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19) Peter was being given, power and control over life itself, whose sins would be forgiven, who would be set free.

The same word used when Jesus heals a woman crippled with disability and is criticized for it: “And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). People set free from sin; set free from bondage; people set free from what binds them. Unbind her and let her go.

The raising of Lazarus certainly echoes the resurrection of Jesus. But it is more than Lazarus being raised (as if that is not enough). Unbind him; set her free.

Today we come to mourn and we come to be set free.  What is it that binds you? What are the grave cloths that hold you down, or hold you back. It might be grief, it might be resentment, it might be disappointment, it might be fatigue, it might be violence, it might be someone else controlling your life. They are like the “shroud” the prophet Isaiah spoke of “that is cast over all peoples.” [3] The shroud of death and fear which darkens our sky.

What binds us are not just personal fears but world issues as well: poverty, violence, racism, environmental crises. We are bound tight in our grave cloths. Death haunts us at every turn, in many guises.

One writer says: “As followers of Jesus, we cannot save death and dying for the end of our lives.” [4] Paul in his letter to the Romans says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4). Our baptism service says “We thank you that through the waters of baptism you cleanse us, renew us by your Spirit and raise us to new life.” [5]

Every day in our lives as Christians we stare death in the face. We experience death in the loss of our loved ones and we experience death in all the things in this world which diminish us and dehumanize us. From the global tragedies to the personal tragedies. Why do we bother? Why do we carry on? Because Jesus calls us to stand up and walk out of that grave. We rise every day from the waters of baptism and claim our freedom. We hold out our arms as he unwinds the grave wrappings and sets us free.

James Wall, writing in the Christian Century some years ago said “Death is part of God's plan, of course, but that is no reason to accept it without protest.” [6] We claim life every day. We claim life in the face of death. And we can claim life because Jesus has been there before us. Lazarus and Martha and Mary have been there before us. Jesus wept, Mary and Martha wept. It wasn’t a game or a pretence, it was real. They wept, they suffered, they knew pain and sorrow.

“Lazarus come out” he said. “Unbind him and let him go”. Can we hear those words for ourselves and know they are spoken to each of us? Can we embrace life with confidence knowing that God is with us, loves us and weeps with us?

We respond to God’s call each week in our liturgy in different ways. In the eucharistic prayer we are using today which is more traditional than our usual liturgy we say “Glory to you Lord Christ; your death we show forth; your resurrection we proclaim; your coming we await; Amen! Come Lord Jesus.” [7] Those words stare death in the face and walk out of the grave.

In the liturgy we have been using in ordinary time we say “Jesus threw open the doors of freedom, casting out the darkness of our hearts”. There is a Taize chant we often sing before communion “love triumphs over fear.”

These words are all about what we bring bound up to the table and what unbinds us and sends us on our way.

How do we live out those words which send us from the table? How do we live out the resurrection we celebrate, as we eat bread and sip wine?

We live out those words by living our lives of faith. By caring for a partner who is dying; by walking with our friends who have lost a child; by bringing hope and laughter to someone who is depressed; by cooking and mowing lawns and sharing cups of coffee. By protesting and lamenting and saying to God, this is so wrong, and believing in God anyway.

“As followers of Jesus, we cannot save death and dying for the end of our lives.” [8] We walk free from the tomb of death every day. Hear Jesus calling you out. Unbind him and let him go; unbind her and let her go; the words are spoken for you.

[1] The original version of this sermon was preached in Waiapu Cathedral, Napier on 1 November 2009 and published in my thesis Guests in the House; Preaching a Cathedral Ministry Feb 2010 (Seabury Western).

[2] http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Jhn&c=11&t=RSV#

[3] Isaiah 25:7

[4] http://www.practicingourfaith.org/dying-well

[5] NZ Prayer Book p386

[6] James M. Wall, "Grief and Loss" in The Christian Century, September 24-October 1, 1997, p. 819

[7] p423

[8] http://www.practicingourfaith.org/prct_dying.html

October 25, 2015

Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 30     Mark 10:46-52

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

So, what do you feel when you hear this story?

Do experience a sense of euphoria – yeah! miracles happen, Jesus can fix physical imperfections, Jesus can fix me!

Or do you experience despair – what am I doing wrong, Jesus hasn't fixed me!

Or do you experience a sense of emptiness, sadness even – nothing like that can possibly happen, ever, miracles don't actually happen.

Well, I thought I would 'bring' Jesus to church today, so to speak, to see if he could shed some light on the matter – help us to see what is this story might be about.

I know it is a bit unusual to bring Jesus into church, and in fact it is a bit risky. If we could hear Jesus speak about this 'incident report' we might not recognise what he says as being him at all! I'm a bit nervous because we are not always welcoming to people we do not know well, and, we actually don't know Jesus very well. And, we are often cautious about people who turn out to be different from what we expect – the Jesus of history is likely very different from the Jesus of the Church's stories about him.

You know I am not actually going to bring a physical man called Jesus to church, but I do want to consider the story we have just heard from the perspective of an earthy human Jesus – someone with 'wisdom' to share about life and community – rather than from the perspective of the more 'traditionally church' 'risen Christ Jesus', the divine one who can 'change the course of nature'.

It seems to me that in church we most readily abandon the man Jesus on the Golgotha hillside and look back at the 30 or so years of his life from a place of 'virtual reality'. It is as if 'Christ' is the avatar we 'play' with, that we have built on the historic person of Jesus. We have become such good 'gamers' in the virtual story that we find it very hard to identify the difference between history and metaphor, the individual and the collective, miracles and healing, even between Jesus and 'the Christ'. And, it is the 'Christ' that has come to dominate our interpretative perspectives when we hear the stories drawn from Jesus life such as this one about Bartimaeus. This is not surprising really, thanks to Paul, the Christ obsessed convert and spin doctor, who offered the hearers of his own day (and those of us who followed) an emphasis on protest against structural injustice, redistribution of wealth, the possibility of peace, the celebration of diversity...

We owe Paul a heap of thanks, because it was him and his obsession that was instrumental in creating the myths that embrace the man Jesus – those big stories about life, and healing: creation and salvation – that still have the power to change lives today (and which are at the heart of 'church at its best).

So let's join the story where blind Bartimaeus is sitting on his cloak at the Jericho gate midst a crowd and meets Jesus. Scholars say there is no evidence of historicity in this story but that doesn't matter because it is pointing us toward a significant 'truth'; the kernel of the myth that surrounds Jesus and makes claims he can change lives.

To help us understand the 'truth' contained in what is often discussed as a 'miracle story' let us note a few interesting features of the story:

• Bartimaeus – is a curious name meaning 'son of poverty'

• Bartimaeus asks to 'see again'

• The Greek translates literally as "he looked up" rather than 'received his sight'

• The crowd was trying to double his disability by making him mute.

• Jesus tells Bartimaeus to 'go' not to 'follow'

This story told by Mark, with all its interesting allusions, comes at the end of a long journey through towns and villages where Jesus has, once more, been teaching crowds as well as his disciples.

Sometimes interpreters locate it in the genre of allegory rather than 'miracle' story. Then we assign ourselves places within the story amongst the many allegorical features so we can ponder our behaviour.

This is not un-useful, but what if we take another tack?

What if we consider it as a parable, a piece of wisdom teaching from Jesus such as we are invited to do by contemporary 'Jesus scholars' (Borg, Galston).

Then we come to Jericho, where we find Bartimaeus yelling at Jesus. Jesus says to him 'what do you want from me now?' or words to that effect. "Let me see again" Bartimaeus replies. The earthy, human Jesus replies to his apparent loss of vision with "Go, you know all you need to know: the vision you want to rediscover is out there amongst the people".

As with all good teachers, Jesus tells Bartimaeus to go, to get on with his own stuff. He – Jesus – doesn't want just followers and perpetual students hanging around, he wants people with vision of what can be done to make the world a better place and the courage to act on that vision.

It seems to me, many of us need to rediscover our vision of a more kind and generous world, to recapture our courage to get on with the work of building relationships, giving a voice to those we all o frequently silence, and generally to start living in ways that demonstrate we believe the world can be a better place.

'Go', says Jesus the wisdom teacher 'you know what needs to be done – get on with it! He might say to us today "Stop being perpetual students who hang about attending this lecture and that, this workshop and that, accumulating more and more information. Rather go and ensure the structures of society are not racist or promoting racial discrimination, insist on a fair distribution the wealth we have, do all you can to support efforts to manage climate change"...

I want to say – if you need a miracle, and we all need one from time to time, then let it be this:

 Jesus, the wisdom teacher, encouraged his followers, ordinary people, to have faith

• that ordinary people (like us) have enough insight into our own social situations to know what needs to be done to make them places of respect, compassion and wellbeing

• that we can find enough courage to bring necessary change about, if we support each other rather than silence each other

• that the vision of a creative future is to be found in the diversity of our community as we learn to live and work together

• that in all these ways we see the 'face of God'

October 18, 2015

Helen Jacobi

St Luke the Evangelist     Isaiah 35:3-7     Luke 10:1-9

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Jesus sends out 70 to represent him – the All Black squad has 31 players but I am sure by the time you add all the support staff and coaches you will get closer to a good biblical number of 70. We send our players out to take on the world and we watch their successes and their failures. There is much commentary on their training, their abilities and those of the opposing teams. We would never send our All Blacks out unprepared, without training; and certainly not without bags of gear – their uniforms, suits, boots; all with appropriate sponsor logos for maximum exposure.

Jesus on the other hand sends 70 of his disciples out with nothing but themselves. Why 70? Well Moses commissioned 70 way back in the days of the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 24) and 70 was considered a number which encompassed all peoples – because there were 70 descendants of Noah listed in Genesis chapter 10. So sending 70 meant sending enough to cover the whole earth and all peoples. (Let’s hope the All Blacks can keep managing with 15 of their 31).

Of the four gospel writers Luke is the one with the widest vision of how the Jesus movement is going to reach to the ends of the earth. Luke is the only writer to have Jesus send out 70 disciples (instead of 12). Luke (or the writer we call Luke) is also the author of the Book of Acts which records the expansion of the early churches. Luke places an emphasis on connecting with the Gentiles or foreigners. He tells more stories about women, has a focus on the poor and the outcast. Without Luke we wouldn’t have the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the road to Emmaus. We also wouldn’t have the angel Gabriel visiting Mary, the shepherds in the birth story, and the Magnificat and the Song of Simeon.

The setting for today’s passage is Samaria – remember Samaritans were despised by their Jewish neighbours – and so Luke has Jesus send the 70 on their first mission to Samaria where they might expect not to be welcome. But they are not to take bags of camping gear in case no one welcomes them – they are to have no purse, no bag, no extra pair of shoes. If they are welcomed they are to stay, and if not they are to move on. They are to be clear that they come in peace and not with the usual Jewish / Samaritan hostility.

The 70 are just to bring themselves, their knowledge of Jesus, their desire for a better world, their faith, and the clothes they stand up in. Wouldn’t work for a rugby team. Or would it? Once the rugby team gets on the field, it is just them and what they have. They have prepared, trained, worked hard, but in the moment, it is just them and the clothes they stand up in.

The latest TIME magazine (Oct 19) has a series of articles about the refugee crisis. But the most powerful thing as often with TIME is a photo essay called “The things migrants carry” – beautiful pictures: a ring with a cross on it; a pendant with some verses of the Quran inside; a phone charger; some medical supplies; a small handbag; a watch; and someone with nothing, just the clothes they stand up in. Visual images of the exodus of refugees, walking with hope, walking in desperation, carrying nothing.

What do we carry with us each day – for at least a year after the Chch earthquake I carried my phone charger and a bottle of water in my handbag – those were the two things we needed that day. When I travel I always pack more clothes than I end up needing – just in case…

We are sent out each week from church by the deacon. The deacon who serves both church and community. The one who connects us. We are sent out to live, breath, serve, work, laugh, cry, care for others. And what do we carry? What are our tools? Our hands, our hearts, our knowledge and love of God, of the way of Jesus. How well equipped do we feel for our lives as followers of the Jesus Way? What training do we need? Our worship each week is designed to refresh us in the faith, to renew our hearts and minds; to remind us of our patterns of prayer, confession, forgiveness, commitment, service, our need to be fed by the word of God and the bread of life.

Is that enough? It may well be – I think of my father who I describe as an “economic” Christian. He went to church pretty much every Sunday, but never to Bible classes or study groups or prayer groups. He got what he needed on a Sunday morning. My mother on the other hand attends all the groups. For some of us Sunday is enough; others need more.

I have been wondering what we might need to offer here at St Matthew’s to equip us, to send us on our way. In recent weeks we have had a few sessions for “new” parishioners and that has been a fruitful discussion and learning. Next year we might offer that series again, and some other things too. There is a survey you have been given today – I would be very grateful if you could complete it before you leave today – and also I am sending it out by email this week. So if you fill it out today ignore the email! I have listed a few possibilities but you may have lots more ideas so put them down. Of course we won’t do everything but I feel we could do one or two things.

Jesus sent the 70 out with no bags because they had what they needed within themselves. They had a love for Jesus and for each other; they had sat at his feet and listened and learned; they had broken bread together and prayed together. All of this they carried with them; like the disciples on the Emmaus road “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us” (Luke 24:32)

What do we need as each week we are sent out to love and to serve? Think about it and we will see what we can do together.

October 11, 2015

John Salmon

Ordinary Sunday 28     Mark 10:17-27 (31)

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Introduction

Pope Francis is attracting people’s attention.

It’s not just Catholics – or even Christians – who look to him as a voice of common sense from what is, perhaps, a surprising source. Despite his continuing conservatism in key areas such as the role of women and aspects of sexuality, he’s seen as a leader, as a clear voice on current issues.

Yet, he says little that is new.

• His challenge on climate change in the encyclical Laudato si’ has been issued by many others for some time.

• His call to give hospitality to refugees from Africa and Syria echoes many other voices.

• His approach to poverty and the impact of wealth inequality is widely discussed in the UN and in economic circles.

So why is he listened to when others have not been?

I suggest that’s because he is a symbolic figure in a symbolic position – when the Pope speaks, he is heard as speaking on behalf of something much bigger than himself. He is one individual, but represents and points towards things beyond himself.

1. The Symbolic ‘One’

Even in relation to huge seemingly impossible issues, one symbolic individual can focus attention, shift the ground, revise our world-view – and keep on doing so beyond their lifetime. Think Nelson Mandela, Kate Shepherd, Martin Luther King.

A while ago there was a lot of talk in NZ about “doing something” about refugees, about increasing the numbers we might take, with little effect.

Then we saw the pictures of the small body of Syrian boy Aylan washed up on a Turkish beach – that one image, the plight of that one small boy, resulted in almost immediate Govt action as a result of the ‘noise’ made in protest.

Symbolism around an individual – or a single image – can make a difference, can raise the pressure, can help people change their minds and Governments change their policy.

It is easier for us to imagine the significance of a damaging situation when see it focused on one individual than we can from a set of huge statistical numbers. One matters.

2. Jesus worked this way

If you look at Jesus’ parables, they almost always tell the story of one person. He recognises that a point about compassion is best expressed in relation to a single individual – as in the story we call ‘the Good Samaritan’.

That’s not simply about the individuals in the story. It’s a challenge to Jesus’ hearers to shift their ideas, a challenge to all of us who hear to shake off our prejudices, to enact compassion towards all around us – and it’s a challenge to religious leaders, too, to change ingrained rules and priorities. It’s focused on one symbolic figure, but it’s not about that one.

In this morning’s gospel, we have Jesus focusing on wealth issues in response to one “good man” – then expanded, at least in part, by the gospel writer commenting on how hard it is for a rich person to live a fulfilled life – harder even than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle (that’s probably the bit that Jesus actually said)!

Biblical scholars are increasingly certain that Jesus was a wisdom preacher rather than a prophet. That he spoke in parables and short sayings, packed with insight, but making you think to get the point. These all aimed at shifting perceptions, ideas of life, priorities:

Do not be anxious about life... How happy are you who are poor... Many who are last shall be first...

And he adds humour:

• the camel and the eye of the needle compared with a rich person wanting a fulfilled life;

• a ‘good man’ needing to give away his wealth rather than following all the standard commandments.

Jokes, used to aid memory of his hearers.

And in these words, Jesus reflects a core biblical theme: economic justice is crucially important; how we deal with wealth and poverty is central in biblical ethics.

3. The impacts of wealth inequality

Most of us have heard many stories or seen lots of pictures of individuals suffering the effects of poverty, yet somehow those have not motivated us to action around the core issues of money, wealth, economics.

Perhaps that’s because all of us are entwined with money-issues, whether we’re wealthy or not. It’s very personal for us.

Yet, it’s important to recognise that this is not about me. Symbolic stories point to something more than any individual. Jesus’ story about the rich man is not telling us, individually, to give our money away. That’s not how Jesus’ stories work: they are designed, rather, to make us think, to review and revise our priorities, to shift our view away from ourselves and to the larger picture of community, of society, of the world in which we are a part.

In these stories Jesus is pointing up the impossibility of fulfilled lives for communities when some are very rich and others struggle.

Wealth inequality – usually defined as the gap between the top 20% in a society and the lowest 20% – and its impacts on persons and societies is currently a central concern for economic theorists. The form we have it today is seen to be embedded in capitalism, and that’s pushing for a re-shaping of the capitalist structure.    

What’s more, there is strong statistical evidence that the more unequal a society is, the lower its life expectancy, the higher its crime levels, the poorer the health of it population. That so whether the country itself is poor or wealthy, and the impacts affect even those who are well off.

So, many of the things we blame on the way individuals live or on poor performance by CYFS or the police, seem more likely to be an inevitable result of the wealth imbalance. More significantly perhaps, the wealth imbalance and the attitudes and policies that drive it, also underlie the issues we noted at the beginning:

• The conditions of conflict that produce the refugees seeking a better life;

• The disastrous effects of international poverty;

• Climate change and governmental inaction in making effective changes.

Conclusion

One difference we as individuals can make is to live and speak the gospel story about the “good man”.

If each of us and all of us together, building on the message of Jesus, recognise that specific rules of behaviour or particular items of faith are not as important for a good life as the way we approach money, that becomes a symbol of a different world.

If each of us and all of us together, recognising the challenge Jesus makes to the doctrines and structures of faith and church, seek to ask questions of our Christian community about priorities that favour commandments over compassionate use of wealth, that moves from symbol to action.

If each of us and all of us together, hearing Jesus’ wisdom about the ultimate impossibility of fulfilled life for a community while wealth inequalities exist, take courage to critique social and economic policies, that puts direct action at the heart of our life together.

October 4, 2015

Margaret Bedggood

The Feast of St Francis of Assissi

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Many of you will be aware of Pope Francis’ recent Encyclical or Letter, addressed to “everyone on the planet” Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home. One of its major themes is our responsibility for what is happening to the Earth, our common home. And so it has been hailed as significant for its environmental message and for its call to action on climate change. And there can be no doubt that the timing had an eye to the major international conference on climate change which is to be held in Paris in December: “our last chance” as many have called it. Of course this is a good thing in itself, and it is helpful for Christians to have this urgent cause set within a religious context.

Today we celebrate St. Francis of Assisi, who is also known for his special devotion to all of creation. Pope Francis (who took that name deliberately) clearly links his Letter with St. Francis. The title, Laudato Si, is Italian dialect for “Praise be to you, (my lord)” the opening of St. Francis’ Canticle of Brother Sun which we sang a version of earlier. [1] So we have a Letter which is clearly about environmental concerns, closely tied to the Saint who, of all the saints, is most immediately identified with the care of creation.

But it would be a grave mistake to think that that is the only subject of this Letter, or of Francis’ teaching. In both, for Christians, there are several other related aspects of immense importance.

The first is the link made throughout the Letter between care for the Earth and care for the poor. The latter is classic Catholic Social Teaching – and not Marxism, as the Pope pointed out recently on his trip to the USA – well even if it is Marxism it is still Catholic Social teaching. So the Pope calls for social and economic, as well as environmental change, an integral theology. Francis too was entirely devoted to care for the poor and marginalised. [2]  But it is surely worth asking why Francis felt and acted in this way? Certainly he regarded every living thing as of inherent worth and value. But why?

There are two linked reasons why creation is so precious in Francis’ sight. First, he sees all things as God’s creation and therefore worthy of reverence because of that: to contemplate creation is “to hear a message from God”.

Likewise, T.S.Eliot, surely one of the great religious poets of the twentieth century: We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed in all the creatures of the earth, in the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm; in all of thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted....

They affirm thee in living, all things affirm thee in living; ..

Therefore we, whom thou hast made to be conscious of thee, must consciously praise thee, in thought and in word and in deed. [3]

Looking at it in another way, Francis sees God in Christ in all of creation. A reflection from a modern religious might give us the idea:

My brother recently chided me for wasting days and nights in fruitless prayer and search for a dog lost in the woods. ‘After all’, he said, ‘it’s just a dog, and you’ve got pressing things to do.’ I’ve got to make him understand there’s no such thing as just a dog. Every dog expresses uniquely the dogginess of God, a quality of God that can be found nowhere else. God is that dog lost in the woods. While he is lost, though I may not and need not find him, there is no other way for me to seek God here and now except by seeking the lost dog... The dog, lost or found, cannot be loved too much... [for] love itself has no excess. (William McNamara, OCD)

In much the same way, Francis devotion to the Crucified Christ thus extended to embrace all God’s creatures.

And this includes, of course, humankind. In every person, he saw Christ: in Clare, his pupil and friend; in the leper, whom he first recoiled from and then embraced; in the Sultan, his “enemy”, yet with whom he achieved at least a measure of dialogue and from whom, who knows, a broadening of his ‘world-view’.  

So what does this all say about our role here, as part of creation? To praise the Creator certainly, as T.S.Eliot says. But, and here we venture into a contentious issue: what is our role in relation to all these other creatures of the Creation? Surely not one of dominion and exploitation, with ourselves at the centre. But one of stewardship and care? But not one of abandonment either. we have done so much damage; we must have a duty to make reparation too, where we can.

Faced with this deeper Franciscan focus and the Pope’s call to action, what might our response be? Holiness, said, the Pope on his USA visit last week, consists in small acts of kindness. So let us start there.

First with our relationships with others, taking the three examples from Francis: someone who is a friend, maybe a pupil, maybe a colleague – pretty easy there. Someone you don’t like or recoil from, because of disability for example? Someone whose ideas you find difficult or repulsive – or challenging?

On a communal level: one of the themes which runs through the Letter is that of “the common good”. The common good is most often used to refer to social policies, for example to combat poverty or inequality. While the Pope does use the phrase in that context, he also uses it to refer to our responsibility for climate change, for the oceans, for the preservation of biodiversity. Are our policies and actions here in Aotearoa the best they could be? If not, what might we do about that, both individually and collectively?

What if we extend these questions to the global context? Here it might seem that there is little we can do. But we can try and influence our country’s stance at the December Paris meeting on climate change. Another issue which has been in the news this week is the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These cover social, economic and environmental issues – the Pope’s agenda.

So, here’s a programme for our new Social Justice Committee? (which meets for the first time on Tuesday).

Finally, there is one other factor which is part of the Franciscan ethos, and the Pope’s letter. It is exemplified in the first verse of today’s reading: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and not to us.

I was determined that today’s talk would not be about animals and birds – but let us nevertheless end with a story, or two stories, about Francis and birds. You may know the first story, of how Francis once preached to a flock of birds. They did not fly away but waited and listened and then left at his dismissal of them? Here is a parallel story, from a medieval Franciscan manuscript:

Rapt in devotion, Francis once found by the roadside a large flock of birds, to whom he turned aside to preach, as he had done before to another flock. But when the birds saw him approaching they all flew away at the very sight of him. Then he came back and began to accuse himself most bitterly saying ‘What effrontery you have, you impudent son of Pietro Bernadone’ and this because he had expected irrational creatures to obey him as if he, and not God, were their creator.’

This is our task then: to praise God, in word and deed, and with humility, as one, but only one, of God’s creatures.

God of mercy, giver of life,

earth and sea and sky

and all that lives,

declare your presence and your glory.

Amen.

[1] The text is included later in the Letter and there are echoes of the Canticle throughout.

[2] The Pope says of him:  that he is “the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically”.

[3] The Song of the Women – NZPB p.160

September 20, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 25     Jeremiah 11:18-20     Psalm 54     James 3:13-4:3, 7-8     Mark 9:30-37

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

The gospel of Mark reads like those headline banners that run across the bottom of your TV screen on the BBC or CNN. I tend to read them when I am at the gym on the treadmill and it only takes a minute or so for them to start repeating again. Today they probably read – refugees continue to flood Europe; the Pope arrives in Cuba; and maybe a rugby world cup score. Mark’s headline banners would be: Jesus continues to draw large crowds; Jesus heals everyone; Jesus confuses his disciples with strange teaching; then they would repeat again: Jesus continues to draw large crowds; Jesus heals everyone; Jesus confuses his disciples with strange teaching.

The gospel writer we call Mark is just trying to get it all down and get the story circulating. No words are wasted or embellished; it is all a bit breathless. The mood goes up and down too. In chapter 9 we have had the “transfiguration” where Peter, James and John have a vision of Jesus and Moses and Elijah; then the dramatic healing of a young boy “possessed by a demon”; all very exciting and upbeat; and then suddenly (today’s passage) they are on the road and Jesus is talking about his death; the disciples are arguing (again) who will be greatest; and then he is telling them to become slaves and bother with children, who no one but women bothered with. A rollercoaster of up and down; feelings of great excitement and then challenge and bewilderment.

When Barbara Brown Taylor examines a biblical passage she uses all five senses and asks what colour is the passage? What does the passage taste or smell like? This passage today starts off with fear, the shadow of betrayal, and fear of the unknown. Purple maybe. Or a stormy sky kind of colour. The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.

Then silence and embarrassment; a bitter taste; or maybe the taste of a stale, dry biscuit. ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. Silence, embarrassment.

Then Jesus tries to teach them, lift the mood. The last will be first; welcoming a child is where you begin. This part about Jesus welcoming the children conjures up picture perfect Sunday School books; and saccharine sermons about welcoming sweet children. In Jesus’ day children were worthless until they could work and certainly did not merit the notice of a teacher like Jesus. So the welcome of the child belongs with the last being first. Children were most certainly last. This is not a sweet tasting image but a challenging one. Hot spices; wake up. Red alert. Change your ways.

Mark’s community had lots of questions – which is why Mark starts writing his gospel full of quick headlines. Why did Jesus die? Why are our leaders continually arguing who is the greatest? What about the slaves and those of lower status – do we really have to include them in our midst? Each line of Mark’s writing is an answer to a question.

And the letter of James, written a generation at least later, elaborates. Watch out for envy and ambition; seek wisdom and peace; not murder and conflict. Things seem to have got worse, not better in the Christian community. Mark’s headlines don’t seem to have stuck and so James, like the other letter writers, tries to guide the church.

Are these snippets of teaching and glimpses into the life of Jesus any use to us today? As we tackle the challenges of our age are they any help? This month we have been reflecting on the care of creation and the challenges of climate change. But we can ask the same question of any issue we face – does the Jesus story help? The purple, dark clouds of despair certainly gather gloomy over our heads. The earth is warming, the seas are rising. For decades now we have been arguing, who is right; who has the best science; which political deal might be a way forward. It feels stale and dry in our mouths. We have heard it all before. Now as the headline flashes past on our screen we barely see it.

There has been the case in the news this week of Ioane Teitiota, from Kiribati who has been trying to argue that he and his family should be allowed to stay in NZ because of rising sea levels from climate change. If we continue the way we are there will be no Kiribati for him to call home. The churches in Polynesia have been calling for us to pay attention to climate change for some years. Archbishop Winston Halapua talks about “moana” theology. A theology of the sea which connects us all but which also has danger in it, the danger of the rising sea.

And what is Jesus message? red hot as usual; spicy. Look out for the child; look out for the least. Of course we say, we would always do that. Yet we are deporting a family to Kiribati. We are continuing to dither on climate change goals which mean that eventually we will have to welcome all of the Kiribati people as climate change refugees. We are not looking out for the child and the least at all. Yet as individuals we feel pretty powerless; we are the confused silenced disciples not understanding and not knowing which way to turn. And so we need to start as Jesus did with the people in front of him; the child in the crowd. He said welcome this child, this one right here, and you welcome me, and by welcoming me you welcome God. Finally a brighter colour and the taste of fresh fruit and hope. Start here with what is in front of you.

As a church community we have a new social justice committee who are going to guide us in actions we can take together; and who are going to be a conduit of information for all the actions you are already taking in your own contexts and lives. We are going to get going on the renewal of our precious green space outside our church. We are going to start with what is right here; the gardens, the paths; the green space which can be a haven for us and our neighbours in our city. Fixing up our gardens won’t change the world, solve climate change, and bring about world peace. But the conversations we have with each other and our neighbours about what we want and what they need, will change us.

The conversations we have with the city about this church and its place in the city will change us and maybe the city just a little. You never know we might even make a headline or two.

September 13, 2015

Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 24     Genesis 1:1-28, 31     Mark 10:35-45

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Few, if any of us, who have seen the waves of refugees in their thousands trekking out of Syria and into Europe, can fail to have been moved. What has our world come to?

Few, of any of us, who have seen the pictures and heard the stories of the hundreds of migrants packed onto leaky boats or dying in the back of trucks can fail to have been moved. What on earth is happening?

Few, if any of us, who have seen the video clips of the fires in California that are razing forest and buildings to swaths of charcoal (or of the devastating floods in Japan) can help but wonder what we would do if we were living there. Whatever is going on?

Few, if any of us, if we know young people trying to buy a modest first home in Auckland, can help but ask when will it end? What on earth has gone wrong?

It is all far from the vision and hope of the Genesis poet who wrote "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

A few weeks ago I reflected on the 'big story' that we tell as Christians and how in different times and contexts those stories are dressed and glossed differently according the purposes of the story-teller. Today we have heard one of our big stories. We have heard the creation myth from Genesis. This story, is a magnificent poetic reminder to us, to wonder about who we are as creatures of the earth. At each phase of the recitation, from the separation of the earth from the sky; the dark from the light; from the creation of plants and animals and creepy crawlies, to humankind, the poet declares "God saw that it was good."

To be creatures of the earth, sharing the earth and sea and sky with all the other creatures and plants and hearing that it is all so very good, is one thing, it warms our hearts, but to imagine for one minute, that all creation is there for our benefit because we are the pinnacle of God's creation, is quite another thing: it sets us up for a fall – as the story of Adam and Eve prefigures.

It seems to me that we have pinned too much on verses 26 and 28 of the Genesis poem, these verses include the words often translated from the Hebrew as "dominion over" and "subdue". In our all too frequent western predilection for power and control we have stuck with these words, and shaped our God-story around them believing that this poem provides us with the rational for our human superiority over all things, that all aspects of creation, as set out in the poem, are for our benefit. And, if they don't seem to be working for us we are not above believing a few earnest and well phrased prayers will fix it! This perspective has found its way into many theological frameworks even, if we are not alert, into more progressive theology where we are keen to see the god-spark in ourselves.

The ancient Greeks knew this thinking was erroneous, they knew that this was 'hubris', the most destructive aspect of being human: thinking that we were equal to the gods with power over the dynamics of earth and over creaturely relationships even as they had. The ancient Hebrews knew this thinking was misleading too, and so the creation poem reminds us we are but one of God's creations and all of creation was good, with its place and contribution. In the gospel of Mark we are told of an occasion in which Jesus tries to point out to his friends who are wanting special favours that they are one of many and have responsibilities – reminding them they must look after others, they must serve the needs of the many and not seek privileges for themselves or think they are better somehow and deserve more. it must have been a salutary lesson for those friends after all their commitment and hard work.

Notwithstanding the warnings that are liberally scattered through our scriptures, of what would become of us if we let 'hubris' get out of hand; if we let our pride in being human and our sense that we can manage/control all things, blind us to our limitations, we have continued along this path. Now we find ourselves on a precipice as it were, and very soon our little planet-earth will be unable to help us. Planet-earth will be unable to keep restoring the harmony, the balance of creation that we keep destroying; it will be unable to keep cleaning the air we pollute, to continue purifying the water we contaminate, to keep the seas stocked and the soils fertile.

Our story needs retelling for our time. We are the storytellers today. Like all good myths the story we tell needs the power to bring about change in the hearts and minds our contemporaries.

But, we have created a conundrum for ourselves, and this needs careful thought as we embark on our story-retelling. While we have taken to heart the story of incarnation – God in human form – and relocated the divine spark from heaven to earth now to be found in each of us, and so brought the all powerful king and judge-God to earth to live amongst us and within us as the vulnerable power of love and compassion, we haven't always recognised vulnerability and compassion as that god-spark so we have failed to take on the responsibility of godly risk-management for how we inhabit the earth. We haven't sought to live with gentleness and humility caring for our companion creatures and for the ground beneath our feet.

It seems we are failing to accept that the trajectory – the path of unending GDP growth that we are on - is not about love and compassion but rather about greed and hubris.

It is time to wake up to the unwelcome fact that no matter how smart and technologically advanced we are today, we cannot control the unintended outcomes of all we do, even when our intentions are good! To maintain our lifestyle we are outstripping the natural processes of the earth to restore itself; we are destroying animals and plants at an alarming rate; we are destroying our own life-giving habitat.

So let us reframe the poem, let us recite it using a different interpretation of the Hebrew word rada: instead of 'dominion' and 'subdue' let us use 'care-giving' and 'nurturing': let us help the earth to fulfil its life-giving potential and so be life-givers ourselves rather than life-takers; be restorers not destroyers, be celebrators of abundance rather than hoarders on account of scarcity. We need a partnership, the interdependence of earth and creatures and plants if humanity is to survive.

But, while we speak, while we tell the story of humanity's relationship with the earth in a different way, the urgency of our predicament requires we demand action by those who make decisions on our behalf. Whatever their political stripe we need to see commitment to managing climate-change by a move away from fossil fuels; we need to demand commitment to managing land fertility and its capacity to produce food; we need to hear commitment plans for restoring housing to the place of homes rather than investments; we need evidence of commitment to wages that reflect the dignity of work and are sufficient to live modestly.

Each of us too needs to consider our part and what we do in our personal lives about fossil fuels and the bi-products we consume, about the food choices we make, and our attitude and expectations about housing and wages.

And then we might say: It was the sixth day. God looked all around at everything that was made: light and darkness; earth and seas and sky; plants and birds and fish and creepy crawlies; the sun, the moon and the stars. And God said "that's good, that's very good." Then God took some time to think, and to wonder about all that had been created. Then God said "I need some help to care for all these wonders. Let there be humankind to help me, let their hearts reflect my heart and be filled with love for all creation." And so it was, and God looked around again in wonder at all that was. Then God said "That's good... that's very, very, very good."

September 6, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 23     Isaiah 35:4-7     Psalm 14      James 2:1-17     Mark 7:24-37

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“The earth dries up and withers; the earth lies polluted under its inhabitants … desolation is left in the city: (Is 24) “The streams will be turned into pitch; and the soil to sulphur; the land will become burning pitch. Night and day it will not be quenched; from generation to generation it will lie waste; thorns will grow and nettles and thistles; it will be the haunt of jackals.” (Is 34)

Do you think those words are from a climate change action manifesto? Sounds like it, but they are from the prophet Isaiah chs 24 and 34; Isaiah paints a picture of what will happen to the earth if the people lose touch with God. It is in the context of the people of Israel heading into exile (from 587 BC fall of Jerusalem) at the hands of the Babylonians with war waging this way and that. Absolutely similar to the exile of current refugees from Syria and other countries. The words of utter desolation of people and land laid waste sound very current. And then all of a sudden we have the passage Caspar read for us. The tone changes to one of hope “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom”.Many scholars think the editors of Isaiah put this passage in the wrong place – it seems to belong with the later chapters of Isaiah from ch 40 on which have all the hopeful passages from the end of the exile “Comfort, o comfort my people …”

Barbara Lundblad says “Isaiah dares to speak a word out of place. A word that refused to wait until things improved.” [1] While these words don’t seem to belong, they show us it was the prophet’s job to name both the despair of the current situation and the hope for the future. And so in the same breath we have desolation and hope.

The writers and prophets of the OT were always firmly grounded in their understanding of God as creator of the earth and the people. To tend the earth and care for it was the task of the people. And if the earth was suffering it must be because the people had failed in their duty to God. OT people saw a line of cause and effect from actions of the people – to the actions of God towards the earth. We would no longer say that the rivers have dried up because God is “punishing” the people for their wicked ways. But we do understand now that our actions lead directly to the drying up of rivers or the rising of sea levels and so have the potential to wipe out whole communities in the Pacific Islands. Isaiah and others instinctively understood that actions have consequences. Now we have the climate change science to show they were right. Prophets did not predict the future but named the reality of the present. In this case they seem to have predicted the future as well.

“Isaiah dares to speak a word out of place. A word that refused to wait until things improved.” [2] It is when people speak words out of place that change happens. At the recent film festival we saw “Merchants of Doubt” [3] a documentary about both the tobacco industry and climate change and how the various messages get twisted and used by different groups according to their own interest.  From the climate change perspective it traced how the world has gradually shifted to understand the science of climate change and how the early deniers claimed “science” was on their side while many were not in fact scientists. The early lone voice of James Hansen has now become more the norm of the client change debate. He was one who dared to speak “a word out of place”.

In our gospel reading today we have the story of Jesus’ encounter with the unnamed Syrophoenician woman. Remember that Jesus as a Jewish man would not normally interact directly with women (a rule he broke all the time) and certainly not with a Gentile (non Jewish) woman. And so he responds to her request for healing for her daughter with a very rude and derogatory reply “let the children be fed first (ie the people of Israel), it is not fair to take the children’s foods and throw it to the dogs.” She is the one then to “speak a word out of place” and talks back to him “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”. And her word out of place changes Jesus’ mind and he heals her daughter. She speaks out, she protests, she names the reality of the divisions between Jew and Gentile, man and woman. She protests and change happens.

This story of healing is not told by Mark to recount the individual personal story of this one woman and her daughter; Mark tells it to make a much bigger point about the breaking down of divisions and the way the new community of followers of Jesus is going to be. Even Jesus had to be challenged in order to break out of the exclusive mould that was the norm for his time. And so the new community of followers could be brave enough to break down their barriers too. [4]

The same is true in the healing of the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. The language of this story echoes the language of Isaiah “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped; the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy”. Any of Mark’s readers would recognise the language from Isaiah and make the link from one individual healing, to the healing of the earth Isaiah speaks of: “the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy and the waters will break forth in the wilderness and steams in the desert”. The personal healing and the healing of the earth are all the same. They are all part of the great dream and vision of the kingdom, the realm of God.

And the healing comes about when someone speaks a word out of place – the prophet Isaiah in the midst of the doom of the exile; the woman rejected by Jesus; the man who could not speak but his friends hoped he might.

As the world looks towards the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December and as the world continues to warm, we are looking for leaders who will speak – who will name the reality of where the world is and give us ways to act for change and give us hope that we can change. Sometimes the key to change is not just to paint the doom and gloom but to give people hope and even some certainty that if we change our ways it will have an impact and will be worth the effort. For people of faith the ground we stand on when looking at environmental issues is the heritage of 1000s of years of understanding of our relationship with our creator and so our relationship with the earth. The earth suffers when we forget our sacred duty to care for it and not abuse it. The earth flourishes when we are in tune with our creator and the creation. It is not by chance that the opening words of our Bible are “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth …” (Gen 1:1) but that is next week’s sermon.

In the meantime, as Archbp Tutu said “love the earth as much as God does.” [5]

[1] Barbara Lundblad http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1941

[2] Barbara Lundblad http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1941

[3] http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/auckland/merchants-of-doubt/

[4] see my sermon Aug 17 2014 on the Matthew version of this passage http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/#!Inviting-the-Other-to-the-Table/cm37/hzqbw3ws79

[5] http://www.greenanglicans.org/diocese-of-lesotho-environmental-conference/

August 30, 2015

Wilf Holt

Ordinary Sunday 22     Mark 7:1-23

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Many years ago I sat on the knee (metaphorically speaking) of a bishop. Our parish had gathered to discuss an issue that was contentious and threatening and our bishop opened the proceedings with some advice on how we might approach the topic before us. In thinking about and discussing this issue we were urged to draw from the resources that had – traditionally – stood our church in good stead. He went on to describe the merits of a three legged seat or stool – the legs of which could be seen to represent Scripture, Reason and Tradition. – for it was by those three legs that the church had maintained itself in steadiness throughout the years and was able to manage its ecclesiastical conundrums and difficulties.

Relying on all three legs in balance we were encouraged to draw from each those things that which would assist us in reaching a decision. We all nodded and made him himing sort of noises.

I must say that at the time it all made good sense – I remember being impressed with the wisdom of this analogy. Ah – but I was young then.

Well today we don't have time to delve into a lot of scripture and I'm far to canny and unqualified to resort to pure reason – so its the third leg today – tradition. For Marks reading does seem to focus on Tradition – the word is mentioned 6 time in the reading and alluded to often - certainly in the first few verses.

I like to think that in many respects I'm a reasonably traditional sort of fellow and in other respects not so traditional. I do however enjoy many of the rituals of Christmas and Easter, our family has many small traditions that help bind us together and I'm often surprised when something we have done on a regular basis is repeated at the request of our children with the words "well we traditionally do such and such in this circumstance or time of the year". As I've said – these things help us as a family to be a family – we welcome new members to the family by often invoking small rituals at birthdays and celebrations of one sort or another and we seem to have a number of unwritten rules that ease difficult situations or by which we can give support to those of our family that need it.

I'm sure you all have family traditions that achieve similar things. We of course have our own traditions here at St Mats – Puppe bakes our bread for communion, we continuously develop new liturgies, we offer great music – we use smoke for our major celebrations – the list goes on.

Off course not all tradition can be seen in such a benign way.

I'm reminded of a story about a relieving minister at a small church. When it came time for the words of institution, he stood behind the altar, spoke the words, raised up the wafer and chalice, and then invited everyone to the table. No one moved .The whole congregation sat still and silent. Finally, someone came forward and whispered in his ear.

Immediately the minister went back to the altar, lifted high the wafer, broke it in two and then invited everyone to the table again. The congregation gave an audible sigh of relief and Communion proceeded. They couldn't take communion until the bread was broken. That was the tradition and well – it just wasn't right to come forward without the action.

Despite all the words – both explicit and implied – 'given for you' "come gods people" none of the congregation heard them – none could heed the call until the wafer was broken.

In this instance the congregation subdued the ancient intent of the action replacing it with a new tradition that had assumed a sacred status obscuring the original meaning and ritual.

Its tradition that Mark now writes about in our Gospel today. The tradition of the elders as practiced by the Pharisees and some of the scribes.

This tradition comprised a comprehensive and complex holiness code and laws that regulated personal and community life for all Jewish people. By one count there are over 600 mizvot or "commandments" in the Torah.

The purity laws of Leviticus specify in detail – clean and unclean foods, purity rituals after childbirth or a menstrual cycle, regulations for skin infections and contaminated clothing or furniture, prohibitions against contact with a human corpse, agricultural guidelines about planting seeds and mating animals, and decrees about lawful sexual relationships, keeping the sabbath, forsaking idols, and even tattoos.

These laws encompassed nearly every aspect of being human­ birth, death, sex, gender, health, economics, jurisprudence, social relations, hygiene, marriage, behavior, and matters of ethnicity – Gentiles were definitely· not pure.

Some of these purity laws encoded simple common sense or moral ideals that make sense today, such as prohibitions against incest. Others regulated hygiene and sanitation.

Still others sought to maintain Israel as a unique identity that differentiated itself from pagan nations.

Ultimately, the purity laws and holiness code ritualized an exhortation from God: "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy".

When scripture asks, "Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?" the "proper" response is that only people who are ritually clean may approach a holy God. At the center of the purity system, both literally and symbolically, stood the Temple, where one performed rites of purification.

Its debatable just how much or how little ordinary first-century Jews concerned themselves with maintaining ritual purity, but the Pharisees whom we have heard so much about in Marks Gospel certainly did.

We have recently heard how they repeatedly confronted Jesus because of his flagrant disregard for ritual purity. Jesus the Jew touched a leper, his disciples did not fast, he ignored sabbath laws, he touched a woman with a discharge and handled a corpse, and immediately after this week's story he heals two Gentiles.

In our Gospel reading this week, Mark recounts a clash between Jesus and the Pharisees about food purity. Why, asked the Pharisees, did Jesus's disciples eat with "unclean" hands? A direct challenge to Jesus drawn squarely from the traditions of the day with the central accusation in this clash being that the Pharisees considered Jesus and his followers as ritually unclean sinners.

Here Mark clearly places the pharisees as the central opponents of Jesus because they were the central opponents of the church late in the first century when the gospel was written. With the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the principal opponents of the pharisees, the Temple-based Sadducees, were destroyed. At the time of Jesus (c. AD 30), two-thirds of the ruling council, the Sanhedrin, were Sadducees, and only one-third were pharisees. After AD 70, the Sanhedrin was entirely composed of Pharisees.

Mark certainly gives the pharisees a bad press yet its hard to imagine that all pharisees were blind to what Jesus had to say. We know that the pharisees saw themselves as a reformist group. They were mainly lay people, not priests, and they believed that the faith of Israel ought to be something lived in the daily life of every Jew, not merely something observed by the priests in Jerusalem.

Everything belonged to God, and the Torah touched on all matters of life. Keeping Torah was a way of living continually in God's care, and acknowledging God's presence every where and in every thing. Hard to point the finger when there.

Unfortunately given the human propensity for justifying ourselves and for scape-goating others, the holiness code and purity laws lent themselves to a spiritual stratification or hierarchy between the ritually "clean" who considered themselves to be close to God, and the "unclean" who were shunned as impure sinners who were far from God. Instead of expressing the holiness of God, ritual purity became a means of excluding people considered dirty, polluted, or contaminated.

Jesus did not by into the argument at all – he quotes Isaiah – "you abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition" and in doing so rescinded any distinction of ritual purity as a measure of spiritual status.

In Marcus Borg's view, Jesus turned the purity system with its "sharp social boundaries" on its head, and in its place substituted a radically alternate social vision. The new community that Jesus announced would be characterized by interior compassion for all, not external compliance to a purity code, by radical inclusivity rather than by hierarchical exclusivity, and by inward transformation rather than outward ritual. In place of "be holy, for I am holy", says Borg, Jesus deliberately substituted the call to "be merciful, just as your Father is merciful".

The old tradition is supplanted by a new one.

No one is excluded – not Roman collaborators, or lepers, not prostitutes, nor the possessed. No one can now be excluded by who or what they are.

Well what went wrong?

Well I guess we need to answer that question by looking at ourselves.

Who today might we regard as "outcasts", who might we regard as impure, unclean, dirty, or contaminated.

Are the "who: those who are mentally ill, are they people who have married three or four times, extremely wealthy executives, beneficiaries, people who hold conservative political views, or maybe people who sell sex on our streets?

What boundaries do we build to keep ourselves, our institutions and our communities clean.

On the other hand how do we embrace both holiness and compassion, instead of choosing one or the other? Or how do we remove the boundaries we have built to keep ourselves our institutions and our communities separate.

How could we participate in what Borg calls a "community shaped not by the ethos and politics of purity, but by the ethos and politics of compassion."

Not easy!

Perhaps the last words of today's gospel give us a clue.

The spirit of the Pharisees Judaism intended that the external rituals or traditions would keep the inward heart focused on the central message of the Torah. The goal was to keep a people mindful of their duty to God and neighbor whilst immersed in the details of daily life.

Jesus knew that even the best intentions can become corrupted. They can become substitutes for devotion to God while our hearts are occupied with thoughts that promote our own agendas and ignore others. We can ''honor God with our lips," while our "hearts are far from God".

A clean body by itself is not enough. Cleanliness may be next to godliness but it makes a poor substitute! We need to have pure hearts before we can have pure words. Our inner health will determine our status with God – not the traditions and rituals we adopt. Our relationship to god is not determined by what we eat but by what we do.

And so back to the Bishops seat. The three legs – Scripture, Reason and Tradition. A stool of course is made up of more than its legs. It needs a seat to hold everything together.

And if one of the characteristic of Progressive Christianity is its willingness to question tradition, (and by that definition I guess Jesus is probably the proto progressive) then I can imagine the seat holding that questioning secure.

If that questioning applied to the three legs becomes the norm - the new tradition then I'm quite comfortable (if you can excuse the pun) with the analogy.

Despite how uncomfortable at times that tradition might be. Amen.

August 23, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 21     Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18     Psalm 34:15-22     Ephesians 6:10-20     John 6:56-69

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

There is a hashtag on twitter at the moment #ThingsJesusNeverSaid. One of the tweets this week was obviously from a preacher struggling with John chapter 6 as we have been for the last 5 Sundays. It said “Take, eat, this is my body. But first let’s write thousands of pages of theology about it.” [1] #ThingsJesusNeverSaid@fatherTim.

As Susan said in her sermon last week all this talk of eating and drinking body and blood was offensive to Jesus’ audience and can be offensive to us as well. And as we get to the end of chapter 6 today we see the result. John tells us: “Many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” The rest of us write thousands of pages of theology about it! which can be another way of turning back or avoiding the living out of the gospel.

The disciples or followers turned back, they returned home, to pick up their lives again. They found Jesus’ teaching too hard, too challenging. “I am the bread of life” he said “I am bread from heaven”; come break bread with me and you will have eternal life. That doesn’t seem so hard does it? What was so challenging about this teaching that made them turn back?

They had witnessed the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 with the loaves and fish belonging to the little boy; they had heard Jesus reflect on this miracle and make claims about himself; how the bread he gave was more important than the manna, the bread that had fed the people in the wilderness with Moses.

Well nothing was more important for the people of Israel than the story of the escape from slavery in Egypt, and how God fed them in the wilderness till they made it to the promised land. Jesus was saying his bread was more important and more lifegiving. They turned back, they went home.

Jesus went on to claim that he was living bread from heaven, a reference to being the word of God or the wisdom of God. In Proverbs 9: “Wisdom has built her house, laid her table, come eat of my bread and drink of my wine, and walk in the way of insight.” Bread as wisdom; I am wisdom Jesus claims; I am God’s word. They turned back, they went home.

Everywhere they went Jesus gathered all people to his table; even the unclean, even the sinners, the tax collectors and the prostitutes; to eat with the unrighteous was to make yourself unclean in the eyes of God; Jesus gathered them all to his table.

For first century people in Israel/Palestine hospitality was expected and an absolute duty. To welcome the stranger at table was part of God’s way; except that is if your were a tax collector or other unclean person.

And once the person shared bread with you at your table you were then responsible for their wellbeing and protection. They became your responsibility. Jesus wanted the disciples to gather everyone to the table, especially the unclean and the unrighteous. And more of the followers turned back, more went home.

By the time the first century Christians get to hear John’s gospel many Gentiles were part of the faith community. For them meals were important social occasions too; occasions to show off your wealth, occasions to honour some guests more than others, those at the top of the table were fed better quality food and wine than those at the end of the table. Social status and hierarchy was upheld and cemented in the meals of the household. Jesus tells them too that all are welcome at the table and all will receive the same bread and wine, all will be fed by Jesus himself. And they found this teaching difficult, more of the followers turned back, more went home.

Charles Campbell, one of my professors I studied with in Chicago a few years back, says “it is no surprise that a meal, (the last supper) serves as the image for the radical reversal of power Jesus embodied throughout his ministry” [2]. Jesus had been upsetting people all along by breaking bread with them; and so making himself responsible for their wellbeing. And the disciples whom he expected to be hosts at the table with him were not comfortable with these implications at all.

Campbell says Jesus uses table fellowship to stand up to the powers of domination, hierarchy, and the violence of exclusion of his world. It was part of “putting on the whole armour of God” and standing up to the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers, which Paul talks about in Ephesians (6:11). Susan pointed out last week that we need the writings of something like Ephesians to help us live out the theology of John. I didn’t choose the Ephesians reading for today because it has that imagery of armour which feels bit militaristic for our ears. But it is about standing up for what we believe in “Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness”. This was all a bit too tough for the disciples and more of the followers turned back, more went home.

Another writer Loye Ashton [3] says the disciples turn away because they want to separate the holy, the religious ritual, the spiritual, from real life, the life of flesh and blood. And Jesus does the opposite – that is what incarnation is all about. God becoming incarnate, embodied. John says without the spirit, flesh is useless (v63). And so Ashton says this applies to all of life and the way we treat our earth “We eat up the world without appreciating how God has infused creation with the Spirit; thus we use and discard it in materialist ways. The ethical imperative at the heart of John’s incarnational theology of the Eucharist is clear. Will we treat the world around us as incarnational or simply as material?” [4] Therein lies another whole sermon I think!

If we do not turn back and go home, if we stay at the table, by taking the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, we commit to engaging with the world, with the word made flesh, God’s creation. Those who turned back wanted their religion to be holy and separate; those who stay at the table choose to be part of life incarnate. Those who turned back chose to go along with the violence of exclusion, of excluding the “unclean” from the table.

In our OT reading Joshua says “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”; he chose for Yahweh, not for the gods of the Canaanites. We make a choice for God when we respond to the invitation to come to the table. It is a radical choice. Not one we have to make. Most of our friends and families don’t make the choice to come and be part of this worship or the worship of other churches. They choose not to be fed and challenged by the morsel of bread and wine which embody and symbolise our engagement with God’s creation; our choice to see the spirit of God enfleshed in the world.

Jesus asked Peter; do you wish to go away also? Peter answered “to whom can we go? We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God”. For me and my household we will serve the Lord. Here we stand, we can do no other.

As we come to the table today, hear Jesus calling us forth, to partake of the bread of life, promised from the time of Moses. Many found this teaching difficult, many of the followers turned back, many went home. We are here today, invited and included; without thousands of pages of theology we can eat and drink and embody God’s love.

[1] @FatherTim

[2] The Word before the Powers p51

[3] Feasting on the Word Year B, vol 3, p 380-4

[4] p382

August 16, 2015

Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 20

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

As a preacher the Gospel reading today is one of those that makes me want to say. "Oh dear, whatever is this all about?" More bread stories and more what to do instructions. So much for the simple stories about Jesus that we 'long to hear'!

Just so you know, I am share with you my thinking about this couple of readings as it is unfolding. So I am very happy to talk with you over morning tea if you are interested in pursuing any of the ideas further.

I thought initially that I would cheat and only address the Epistle. This seemed straight forward, and as relevant for us today at St Matthews as we think about who we are as a congregation of faith in the city, as it was when Paul wrote it to the infant churches in Ephesus.

You will know by now, if you didn't know before, that Ephesus was a cosmopolitan commercial centre. There were many religious traditions practised there, many languages, many cultures and races – a bit like Auckland today. Paul is writing to the various embryonic groups of Christians in Ephesus. His concern, as expressed in this letter, is to remind the groups that though they may be made up of people amongst whom there is great diversity, they need each other. And what is more, the charge to them as Christians is to uphold unity and peace notwithstanding the differences and diversity amongst them. This, he says, would be achieved more readily if they treated each other with humility and patience, respecting the range of skills and abilities amongst the various people, and doing their best to model themselves on the one they had come to call the 'Christ' (Paul seldom speaks of Jesus).

In our reading today, we hear Paul telling them to be wise about how they live, not to be naive about what is going on around them, and to hold fast to what they know about God's vision for humanity in the midst of the complex social environment they live in. All that seems relevant to us here at St Matthews – don't you think – as we keep reminding ourselves of these characteristics.

But as the week unfolded, and my brain cogitated on the two readings, it didn't seem enough to focus on Ephesians and I thought I had better have a go and see what I could make of the Gospel. I had become curious about why there were so many readings from John's Gospel paired with Pauls letter to the churches of Ephesus. I began to think about them in a bigger framework than the particulars of biblical exegesis, or even trying to shape a logical deconstructive argument (which is often what those of us who want to claim the 'progressive' label are wont to do.

The Ephesians reading is about behaviour, how we behave ourselves, and how we behave toward others: it is action oriented – directive and unambiguous. By contrast the Gospel of John is much more esoteric, it is image laden and shocking – cannibalistic even today! John has been going on and on attempting to unpack for us the bread image that is used so frequently in the scriptures – from Moses to Jesus. John wants us to be in no doubt that while Moses fed the people in the wilderness with mana to sustain their physical bodies in a time of great need, it was God that provided what was necessary, and, it is God that provides Jesus, as sustenance for the nourishment of our faith: bread of life; 'living' bread as it were. This bread John tells us will give us not just physical life but eternal life: not quantity or never ending life (that would be terrible, hellish for most of us), but access into 'God's life', eternal life, or into the elemental substances and energies of all that is – for now and for always. Eternal life: quality not quantity is what he reminds us Jesus offers.

But all this is very difficult for us to unpack. It always seems to me to be complicated theological stuff; material that I say 'yes' to because it sounds good and I think I should, and then I skip on, or alternatively, I say "that doesn't make sense, it requires more mental gymnastics that I am prepared for, so I'll give that bit a miss!"

Today, however, I want to suggest that that this reading from John's Gospel, and those we have been hearing in this cycle of bread readings, had a deeply significant impact on the Christian community as it took shape, and consequently on us today.

I want to suggest that in these readings from John, the logos – the word of God – and the mythos – the big behaviour-changing story about God – come together. And, what is more, it is the 'behaviour-changing' story, or the myth, that we are bringing to life each week as we celebrate the Eucharist – sharing together, symbolically, the 'life-giving bread' in remembrance and with thanksgiving. This myth, this big story shapes who we are. It helps us to tell ourselves who we are, and to tell others who we are, and in so doing it shapes the culture, the ethos, of who we are. It shapes how we comport ourselves, how we seek to relate to one another, and what our values are.

Now please do not mishear me. A myth is a very important story about something that, in some way, once happened and now has the power to change lives and behaviour through people remembering and re-enacting that story. However, without regular re-telling and re-enactment the story loses potency, it becomes just words, just a 'once upon a time' story. But if subsequent generations retell and re-enact the story it gathers life and power, and its significance grows and changes as it speaks to successive generations differently in their own time.

A grand-child once asked me as I was reading a bed-time story "Is it a true story?" They knew the story was not reciting events of history, but they were listening for resonances of 'truth' as they knew from their life experience.

That is what we do with myth – we listen for the resonances of truth that tell us who we are (our best selves), they tell us what is important, and remind us where we fit in the scheme of things alongside others.

Today we will retell in words and actions the death and new-life story of Jesus, we will retell and re-enact the story of life-giving bread available to be shared amongst all people.

Myths usually take place at the very edge of our human understandings, they push us to the very edge of our human certainties, to the liminal places where imagination kicks in and change can occur if we dare to ask "what if...".

The 'bread of life' story of Jesus, that we retell and re-enact – this story where word and action meet in the potential for change – is for me at the edge of my capacity to comprehend, it is here I am glad of the behavioural instructions that Paul provides in his letter to give me guidelines to be going on with till I come to trust my companions. We could say that Paul is providing for the Christian community, through his behavioural instructions, the ethos of who we are as the 'living body of Christ' of which he spoke previously. In a way we are being invited to ask "what if we lived this way?" Then to test it out by stepping into the unknown to see!

So, I want to say that logos and mythos come together in ethos: that what we say about the story that shapes us is acted out in how we live together: in what we do with one another and for one another and amongst those who are different from us but with whom we share the earth. The vision statement that has been developed by a process of consultation and refinement amongst this community seeks to put some contemporary shape to the story for now, here. How we act it out will tell if it reflects the truth of who we are or not.

It seems this is so for us as a nation as well as a community of Christians. If we listen to the words that are used by leaders in our nation we can hear the current story that is being shaped about who we are and the values and priorities that we espouse. We may or may not like this emerging story, we may or may not be trying to counter it with a different story. But it will be in how we enact the story or counteract the story, that the values and the ethos of our nation will be demonstrated.

For me, and I hope for you, this weekly celebration of the story of 'life-giving bread' is both deeply reassuring (for which I am grateful), and uncomfortably challenging.
 

The story is a story of compassion and concern, it is one that seeks to value diversity and respect, it is one that seeks honesty compassion and peace.

I am convinced, as Paul was, that we need each other as companions, able to support each other in living into the life-changing challenge of the Christian story, because, it isn't just about the coming together of myth and logos to produce the ethos of who we are as a Christian community. It goes further. It goes to the place where courage is required, and imagination, and faith in the life-changing power of the story we tell; it leads us into the place where our ethics are shaped, where we are required to actively pursue justice-making love, peace and compassion.

August 9, 2015

Dr Nicola Hoggard-Creegan

Ordinary Sunday 19

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

It isn’t possible to speak today without reflecting on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seventy years ago today the plutonium bomb Fat Boy destroyed Nagasaki, and many of its inhabitants. The American bomber was running out of fuel and Nagasaki was a standby target. Thursday was the 70th anniversary of the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima. The beautiful powerful mushroom clouds and the sustained flash of light associated with them will always scar the twentieth century memory. 2001 pales into insignificance when compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilians who lost their lives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They were the explosions that released the startling energy and light of an atom, and indirectly the energy of the sun on earth. After these explosions we were less innocent. We know that nature is not just mild and biddable, it is power and energy of unbelievable proportions. We now know we control something too big for us. At the time the US government and scientists risked everything to try them out. And they had dozens more bombings of Japanese cities planned. Politics since that time has been very largely aimed at managing and containing risk in a world with 15000 nuclear weapons, 450 on hair trigger alert in the United States alone.

Oppenheimer the author of the bomb famously said: I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.

I have had two personal acquaintances with Hiroshima. The acerbic English professor across the hallway when I was teaching in a liberal arts college in North Carolina turned out to be the son of the Hiroshima bombardier, Thomas Ferebee. On the other side, and more recently a Japanese student who was studying why the atonement makes no sense to Japanese told me one day that she had been born in Hiroshima. Her great-grandfather had a premonition on August 5th 1945 that he should walk away from the city. He took his grandson, her father, with him and survived. They saw the bomb explode from the distance and walked back. Life continued amongst the ashes. By some extraordinary sequence of events she embraced Christian faith. These encounters made me realize how these historic tragedies had tentacles that spread very far from the epicentre.

The people who dropped those bombs, most of them anyway, probably didn’t know the full extent of what they were doing. They were after all, partly experiments. But it is odd that the reaction to these tragedies is still muted. Unlike the other atrocities of the twentieth century Hiroshima is regretted, in the way one might regret a natural tragedy, but it is not condemned outright. We do not speak of it as a war crime. Although our attention is largely taken up elsewhere the Doomsday clock is now set at three minutes to midnight, almost the closest it has even been.

How can we live with the memory of all of this, and with the threat for the future it entails? Our response, the response of the Church is that we can still live and hope because in Jesus we have the antidote to death: the bread of life. But that is complicated. And because in the world of the Bible nothing is as it first appears. There is always a deeper reality. It is ironic that August 6th has long had another meaning: it is the feast-day of the transfiguration, that time when Jesus went up a mountain with his disciples and his face shone with light. When Moses and Elijah appeared and Peter wanted to erect some tents. Jesus was revealing that things are not as they appear. That life and light and matter are all connected. They were connected long before the atomic bomb and modern physics showed us these things. Transfiguration though is probably more than ironic. It is also an example of synchronicity. Two events paired together. Synchronous events do not cause each other, but they seem to share a meaning, in this case one is darkness and the other life. They represent death and life. Both show the secret of the way in which energy and light and matter are all connected. One was powerful and deadly. The other was obscure and private, and although also linked to death, it was a death that brought us life. Transfiguration is like the last word to the scandalous deaths of August 6 and 9 1945. The light of Christ can banish even the scorching heat of the fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It shows through the eyes of faith that meaning is present in the universe if only we look.

Today’s gospel speaks of another conversion of the sun’s energy for human purposes: This time it is through the peaceful and natural process of photosynthesis and the cultural practices of bread making. Bread has been given a bad press recently but it is a miracle food and nutrient rich. Bread is in part responsible for the meteoric rise of human kind in the last 13000 years. It is marked by the invisible signs of culture. A baguette is not a naan. But they are made of the same stuff. The symbol of bread resonates through the Scriptures. The unleavened bread of exodus and Passover, the mana in the desert, the bread that gave Elijah sustenance for 40 days, the bread Jesus did not make of stones, the bread he shared with 5000 just before today’s gospel, the bread of his body, the daily bread we pray for in the Lord’s prayer, the bread and wine of the Last Supper, and the bread he broke at Emmaus. All these breads resonate with the ongoing bread of communion for the last two thousand years.

If we think about it bread is a sign of God’s accommodation to human culture. Jesus claims to be the bread of life. Bread, which is the positive result of human effort and cooperation is marked forever as linked to Jesus. It is a sign of God’s love, it bears in it the presence of Jesus amongst us still and it symbolizes all our hopes. For this bread will not perish we are told. And this bread is the exorbitant promise of life coming out of death. I am the bread of life resonates back and counters the hopelessness of Oppenheimer’s words, I am become death.

And we are here in part to keep those words of life alive and to share them. Although we are few, the world is hungry for signs of spiritual meaning and the exorbitant hope they come with. It is only if we do acknowledge the hope that we can also acknowledge the death. Perhaps that is why we have not yet really come to terms with what happened in Japan 70 years ago. Although we are few, especially here in New Zealand we keep alive the faith that Jesus holds out to us, the bread of eternal life. In a world that is obsessed with death this inwardness, this spirituality, this affirmation of life matters more than anything else.

The spiritual hunger around us is revealed in the symbols of redemption in so many stories, movies and television. I have just watched the gripping Flemish TV series Cordon. The storyline involves a deadly flu that breaks out in the centre of Antwerp which is then cordoned off and cut off from the rest of Belgium. I don’t think I am giving anything away when I say that it has a new baby born in unlikely circumstances to a young girl, and a boy who was going to save people from the plague. We are greedy for signs and symbols of hope and new life. The world wants to see the face of God. In Jesus we have the source of all these symbols and signs and reality here in the bread and wine of the communion. And although world leaders, and powers and principalities continue to court death and to play with the weapons of war, we can also testify that there is a child and young man who are with us still and hold the deeper secret of life.

August 2, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 18     Exodus 16:2-14, 9-15     Psalm 78:23-29     Ephesians 4:1-16     John 6:24-35

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“Jesus said to them ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’.” (v35) The people have come looking for signs and miracles – they heard Jesus has fed 5000 people; they want to see that happen or even better a miracle like the one from the time of the Exodus, the manna that fed the people in the desert. They want signs, they want evidence, and they too want “to perform the works of God” (v28). But Jesus says – this is the work of God – believe in the one God has sent. (v29) ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. This line could be seen as a mission statement for Jesus. Certainly for the Johannine Jesus, and probably for the other gospel writers as well. Like all John’s writing it operates at many levels – John is talking about actual bread and water – Jesus has just fed 5000 people in the desert; Jesus speaks about the needs of the poor and the hungry; and then it has symbolic levels – food for the heart, water for the soul; Jesus feeds our souls; and then the combination of real food and soul food we discover in the eucharist and in baptism. The bread of life in the communion service; the water of life on the baptism service. There is history there too – the people of God being fed in the wilderness at the time of the exodus and passing through the waters of the Red Sea to freedom. Layer upon layer of meaning from John: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” – real food, soul food, sacramental food, food from faith history.

Writers of mission statements and vision statements today never get to quite nail it like the gospel writer John. Statements like Nike’s “let’s do it” are pretty good.

In our own humble way we have been working on our vision statement here at St Matthew’s. We have wanted to take stock, to reflect and think and answer the question – why are we here? why do we exist; what is the vision we want to aspire to? 30 parishioners gathered at our Visioning Day at the beginning of June and since then a small group have worked (quite hard) to formulate some words we can look to to guide us. Like the gospel of John they are layered with meaning, and we hope you will find a place for yourself within them.

St Matthew-in-the-City: a spirited place where people stand, connect, and seek common ground

St Matthew-in-the-City – our very name defines us – in the city – our location, our connections are with the city in all its vibrancy and all its challenges. We can never be tempted to be cut off in our own little religious hideaway.

a spirited place – this place is key to who we are, these stone pillars, the windows, the light, the organ. Many churches might say we are the people and the building is immaterial – for us the building matters, the church building is a key character in our story. And it is a spirited place – spiritual, spirit filled, energetic, fiery, moving, not static. Like the breath/wind/spirit of God that moved across the earth on the day of creation (Gen 1:2) we allow the Spirit (capital S) to move in this place and in our lives.

where people stand, – and we are about people – this is a place where people gather, and stand; a turangawaewae; people stand here to worship God, to stand next to each other – rich and poor, housed and homeless, tourists and locals. We stand together on issues of concern – at times we have marched together – on the Hikoi of Hope, against the Springbok tour, for peace, for justice. We take stands, we stand together.

connect, – we connect – we build relationships, we look out for one another; the regulars connect and get to know each other; we connect with other groups, churches, communities, businesses.

We are a place where people can come and find connections. And we connect on the web – we have many followers across Aotearoa and across the world who are interested in what we have to say and how we worship.

seek common ground – ground is about the actual ground – our land, which we hold in common together, like the old English idea of “the commons”; and common ground is about coming together to find a safe place for dialogue and debate, for learning and growth; common ground is about finding things in common with people of other faiths and cultures. It is not about all thinking the same thing!

St Matthew-in-the-City: a spirited place where people stand, connect, and seek common ground.

Then we have some sentences which flesh out who are and how we operate together – they are our values and descriptions of who we aspire to be. We know we don’t live up to them all the time but we aspire to them.

Theology:               

Encouraging critical thinking and progressive theological exploration.

You don’t check your brain at the door when you come here, we like to think and to challenge and to learn. We do not feel at all constrained by the inherited doctrines and traditions of our church – in fact we love to challenge them!

Spirituality:            

Worshipping in an Anglican tradition with creative liturgy and inspiring music.

We are an Anglican church and we worship in that tradition, using the best we can find in creative writing and music. We have no problem with chanting an ancient chant alongside a brand new composition; we find what speaks to our souls.

Hospitality:             

Welcoming all people – no exceptions – to the table.

All are welcome here – people of different faiths and no faiths; people of any background and sexuality; they are welcome at the communion table, the morning tea table and the discussion table.

Community:

Fostering respect, compassion, understanding and generosity in a spirit of manaakitanga.

Manaakitanga means hospitality and care; we want to be a community who lives and breathes manaakitanga.

Intention:                

Supporting each other to live out the radical way of Jesus of Nazareth in the world.

Why do we come; what is the point of all this – it is more than our Sunday gathering; our intention in being here is to be able to live better in the world. To attempt to follow the Jesus Way, to live the Jesus Way in our world, not just for one hour on a Sunday.

Justice:                     

Engaging in just and radical action for the dignity of all and the sustainability of the Earth.

We care about the needs and rights of others, and about the earth, our fragile home. We care and want to act in ways that sustain the earth. This is going to be a particular focus for us in the year to come – the earth – our patch of land outside the church and the Earth, God’s creation, which needs our care.

Heritage:                

Valuing our church as a beautiful taonga in the heart of Auckland City, where celebrations and events take place, and people find refuge.

We look after our heritage, this building, its fabric on behalf of all who wish to gather here. From the homeless who take refuge here to the businesses who hold events here; from the celebrations to the funerals; all who come look to us to be caring for the stones and passing them to the next generation.

Lots of words! Lots of aspirations. I hope you can find yourself in amongst them; I am sure you have ideas which you think should be added in or some you think don’t belong. The small group that wrote this on your behalf debated every word I can assure you! We hope the words are layered enough that everyone can find a place to stand and room to move.

What now? well words are great but now we carry on with the job of living them out. The Vestry and other groups within the church will be looking at their work in the light of our new words and looking at how we continue to put flesh on them. I certainly feel privileged to stand with clergy who have gone before me in this place and who have passed this heritage on to me. You all stand with the thousands of people who have passed this heritage on to you.

St Matthew-in-the-City: a spirited place where people stand, connect, and seek common ground.

July 26, 2015

Helen Robinson

Social Services Sunday

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Helen Robinson from the Auckland City Mission shares insights from the report recently published and linked here http://www.aucklandcitymission.org.nz/uploads/file/Research/An%20insight%20into%20the%20experience%20of%20rough%20sleeping%20in%20Central%20Auckland.pdf

July 19, 2015

 Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 16     Mark 6:30-48 

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When I was newly ordained there was a story that was often told. Some of you will remember it I am sure. it goes like this:

A newly ordained woman was appointed to a parish where there were a male vicar and male associate priest.

The vicar and his associate were used to spending time together about once a fortnight to chat over parish matters and to do a bit of team building. It had been their practice to spend this time together pleasantly in a little boat belonging to the vicar and to do a bit of fishing while they talked. When the time came round for the next team outing the two me thought they had better invite the new curate to go with them. the arrangement was they would sort the fishing gear and the boat and she would bring a spot of lunch for them all. So the curate heads off to the supermarket for the lunch stuff and the men to the marina to get the boat ready. They waited a bit, and were getting a bit impatient to be underway so decided to row a little way out and sort the lines. Meanwhile the curate, who had been held up in the supermarket by a parishioner who wanted to chat, arrived at the wharf. The men caught sight of her out of the corner of their eyes and while keeping their heads down conferred as to whether they could possibly pretend they had not seen her and carry on with the fishing expedition, or if they should 'suck it up' as they say and go back and pick her up. They decided this would be the best option for future relationships and looked up ready to wave to her to signal their intentions to return to the wharf for her. But being independent, and not wanting to delay the men any longer, she had set out to each them already. When they saw her coming toward them they looked at each other and said "My God, she can't even swim!".

This old story reminds me very poignantly how often we miss the truly amazing because we expect to see or experience something else.

The writer of Mark's gospel, writing about 30-35 years after Jesus death at the time of increasing pressure and persecution of the small Christian community by Rome, is concerned to set out Jesus' actions so as to convince hearers that this person, Jesus, was an amazing person, was divine, and that his teaching was certainly worth following – one only had to look at what he did! The gospel writer was in the business of raising expectations amongst a new generation of people who heard about Jesus, as well as maintaining commitment amongst those who had met him.

Today's gospel reading is full of urgency, and unashamedly holding Jesus up as someone capable of changing the course of events. We hear that the disciples as well as Jesus have been so busy teaching and preaching and ministering in various ways around the countryside that they have not got together for a while to share what they have been up to, and in fact have been so busy that have not even had time to eat! Jesus was hoping for a bit of quiet time with them.

But this was not to happen, the crowd (the story tells us) followed, stayed past dinner time, and got hungry. Then, it goes on to say, Jesus was filled with compassion when he realised they were hungry, and in response to their very basic need for food, found a way of ensuring they were fed.

Then later, still in need of a bit of quiet, sent his disciples off home, in the boat, ahead of him – but a wind blew up we are told, and they had difficulty navigating the waters.

What I find interesting is that the story points to how basic human needs are met: spiritual needs; physical needs; and emotional needs.

                  The need to find quiet time in the midst of much busyness is recognised and met;

                  the need for food when hungry is met;

                   the need for the emotional support of friendship when the going is rough is met.

Apart from Jesus making time for himself when there is so much urgent work to be doing (though in today's western world it might seem like a miracle in itself) the other two situations are often presented as 'miracles' – situations in which Jesus changes the natural course of events and physical substance of matter by a supernatural action; by shifting the cosmic order of things, and in so doing multiplying bread and walking on water.

At the time of writing this may well have been intentional, it certainly would have achieved the goal of raising expectations around Jesus. We have got so used to hearing these miracle stories, and others similar, that we too have often been caught with unreasonably raised expectations when we think of miracles. Often, as we have matured in our faith, we have found ourselves puzzled by such stories and felt either the need to rubbish them or to defend them. Neither action is, however, necessary, only to remember it how stories about miracles worked at the time they were written down and what they were pointing toward.

• I think there is nothing in the stories we have heard this morning that should surprise us: Jesus, seeing that the people were hungry, were lacking food, (a basic necessity), instructed the people to share what they had and they did;

• he saw his friends were struggling to navigate the waters and he moved alongside them to give support.

Today this feeding the hungry surely would be a miracle a shift in the natural order of things! Today we would rather throw food away than give it away – we do it through dumping and expiration dates. Today, food not just a basic resource to satisfy hunger and keep people alive, it is a basic resource for monetary growth and profit. We cannot imagine just giving it to people – they have to buy it – how can we make a profit if they don't? We can hardly imagine just sharing it out, our contemporary world does not work like that; our global food-supply chains are part of a complex capitalist economic system of supply and demand shaped to ensure profit margins.

Consider Greece for a moment, and what has been happening in the Euro-Zone. And, I note that John and I have just come home from time in Crete and were privileged to experience the situation there first hand. We were surprised that almost every day we were there, in a little village of 700 people, we received a gift of food. Eggs, honey, cheese, pastries, oil – all from the little farms people had, some no bigger than a city section here in NZ. We experienced people with little sharing what they had. A piece of the puzzle seems to be that Greece is working on a set of values and expectations that are different from the big players in the zone. Listening to President Tsipras speak about democracy as Greece interprets the concept, and about debt and development and basic rights for people, and you hear a story different from one that positions capitalist investment profit and growth as supreme values.

It seems to me that the miracle in all the anger and confusion that surrounds this situation is that Greece, with its small under-developed economy (by the standards of western-capitalism) dared to challenge the big super-economies of Germany, the Netherlands and others (even us here in NZ) to a rethink about economics and community. Greece challenged the members of the Euro-Zone, especially the bankers and economists to remember what economics is all about: the gathering and distribution of the resources of the earth so the people can live. And further, it urged them to remember that in communities of friends and neighbours, with mutual concern for each other, there is health and strength. There is nothing to be gained if one member of the community is driven out – shamed and belittled.

I guess it depends on what you expect to see whether or not you see a miracle in any of the chaos around the Greek catastrophe.

We have become so used to expecting to see the work of Jesus with all the fanfare and bells and whistles of the 'miraculous' – with the intervention of the supernatural in some way – that we overlook the everyday miracles that we are invited to participate in without any fanfare.

As in today's gospel, miracle stories still point toward things that are important for us in out time:

the importance of finding quiet time in the midst of busyness

the urgency of meeting peoples basic needs

the life-giving gift of supportive friendships

It seems to me that we might feel very encouraged in our faith and ministry if we take a little time out from the ordinary busyness of our lives and consider what we expect the work of Jesus to look like today: do we expect ourselves to be engaged in activities that will lead to the hungry being fed; do we offer friendship and the life-giving and respectful support that goes with it?

What do you expect of your faith commitment?

I want to say that miracles are in the ordinary compassionate actions between humans individuals and between human communities that bring life and hope and which restore people and nations to places of dignity and full, responsible, participation and that we should expect to be engaged in miracles every day.

July 12, 2015

Jeremy Younger    

At the launch of Jenny Blood’s book of poems

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

I could start in so many places.

I could start in 1946 with my birth and my knowing from that moment that I was different – that I was queer. Some queer people do, for some it a realisation they takes much longer to reach.

I could start with the story I told my best friend Andrew – he was just so sexy but I had no words for it but anyway I invented a great story – that I was really the son of a rich and sparkly prince and I had been adopted by my suburban, North London, family and nobody knew. I was nine and I told him on the edge of the cricket field when we were supposed to be fielding – he believed me! I knew from then on that being queer meant being different.

I could start with the postcard I wrote to the composer Benjamin Britten. I knew he was queer – perhaps my father told me and he would have read it in the News of the World – so I sent him a postcard – I was about 16 – I told him I thought I was gay and what should I do. And he replied – “keep going” he said “you’re OK” – and he invited me to tea if I was ever in Norfolk! If only I could have got there!

I could start on the top deck of a red, London Transport bus on my way either to or from my friend Paul with whom I was exploring sex, even exploring love. That bus ride was such a regular, transitional passage from one part of me with, David, to the other with my parents.

I became highly adept as time went on moving between spaces. However the place really to begin what I want to say is not on a London Transport Bus (perhaps that was just a rehearsal!) but on the British Airways plane that brought me to Aotearoa, New Zealand in 1994.

This then is what I want to explore or open up today in this brief ten minute contribution: the interrelationship on the one hand between my understanding of myself as a queer – with a lifetime of being “colonised” as are all queers within the colonising “normal” straight world; and on the other hand my understanding of myself as a settler – becoming part of the world of the “coloniser” as are all settlers.

For me as both queer and settler it is a life in a half empowered limbo.

As the Queer I fetishize yet disparage the “normal” world which in turn deprecates me while envying my sexual freedom and creativity. And I recognise that by turn I infantilise and displace my desire completing the hierarchy of parallel loathing.

For the Settler I fetishize yet disparage the homeland which in turn deprecates me while envying my energy and enterprise. And I recognise also by turn that I infantilise and displace the indigene completing the hierarchy of parallel loathing.

In both it is the inherent awareness of “there” and “here” – the space of “intermediary knowledge” – “the fusion of horizon”. I shall come back to this idea later, especially using Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea of the “Fusion of horizons”.

The writings of Homi Bhabha give us a way to language what happens in relationship, especially but not only postcolonial relationships. He talks of the structures of control and uses three key interrelated concepts: hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence.

Hybridity speaks of the way identity – any identity: cultural, sexual, psychotherapeutic – the way identity is always constructed in a contradictory and ambivalent space, which contradicts any notion of “purity”. When you and I come into relationship we create this hybrid, this ambivalent space and from whichever side we view it – your side or mine – we experience it as a lack. We then have two choices; either we can stay resolutely on the one side or the other, clutching the myth of cultural, sexual, therapeutic purity - and from that isolated place judge the hybrid space – the space we have created – as lacking authenticity or we can do the risky thing and move into the hybrid space, experience it and celebrate it. The hybrid space is the only space in which we can make relationship.

Mimicry, which very easily becomes mockery and undermines the coloniser’s authority, occurs when colonial discourse encourages the colonised subject to mimic the coloniser’s cultural habits, assumptions, institutions, and values, resulting in “blurred copies” and "authorised versions of otherness".

Ambivalence, a term borrowed from our world of psychoanalysis, describes the continual fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite – simultaneous attraction and repulsion.

Bhabha is saying what we know as therapists that communication is a process which is never perfectly achieved; that there is always a slippage or gap between what is being said and what is being heard; that we try to get control by getting the other to be like us and we always fail, and anyway we are ambivalent about what we desire and complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relationship.

Some would argue that Pakeha culture in New Zealand with its preference for the anodyne, clean, clear agendas of mainstream modernism is so close to the first world as to make no conceivable difference.

I would suggest that the difference is not perceived because Pakeha culture is not ready to acknowledge it. It’s just too scary.

The argument is made that because of this slippage in the discourse of relationship the coloniser can never represent the Colonised. Edward Said’s profoundly influential critique on representation has shaped, in a fundamental way, the debate in this area. He says:

“The act of representation almost always represents violence of some sort to the subject of the representation, It implies confinement, it implies a certain kind of estrangement or disorientation on the part of the one representing.”

This Post-Colonial received wisdom presents us with an essentialist view that suggests that any representation by the coloniser renders the colonised as irredeemably and pathetically vulnerable.

It seems to me that if authentic representation is restricted only to those ideas, beliefs, icons, images and symbols to which you lay claim by birth, skin colour, gender and so on then any engagement with complex exterior worlds is ruled out and leaves only a move towards interiority and a manufactured complexity; taken to the extreme: if all representation can be reduced to abuse, then autobiography and the exploration of the self soon become self-abuse.

If the world of sensual and intellectual experience can be carved up into no-go zones, then each of these zones must be occupied by inhabitants with natural and exclusive rights

Can I only represent late middle aged, white gay males living in Grey Lynn? To whom does plight and predicament belong? Does it only belong to the afflicted? I am not Jewish – may I not speak out against the Holocaust? I am not Japanese – may I not grapple with Hiroshima?

Rightly, one of the chief insights postcolonial theory has given us is that Western representations of ‘others’ (paintings of exotic women, novels set in some distant colony, academic discourse about the Orient, photographs of Papua New Guinea tribesmen and women, video footage of peace keeping excursions in East Timor) reveal more about the interests of the ‘self’ than they do about the realities of the represented. But is this to say that they speak abusively when they do so? If that is so, the relationship of the ‘self’ to the ‘other’ is frozen into a scenario where the former always dominates the latter. We co-habit the same space but we are not allowed to talk about each other?

Should we not challenge this binary model which refuses the ‘other’ any agency? When ‘self’ and ‘other’ are always fixed by this postcolonial construct, the ‘other’ is always silenced, determined and acted upon. I want to suggest that this position is as oppressive as its colonial antecedent, and it suggests a kind of essential purity that is just not possible in our lived experience in New Zealand today. Who is pure enough? How will we tell? What if we are too grubby and contaminated? Are we to be silenced?

To arrive at a true postcolonial position in New Zealand will mean that the dialogue will be stretched, extended and possibly even be seen to be abused in the process, torn out of its intended limits. Misconceived or other-conceived juxtapositions will mock our initial intentions. As we seek symbols of the self, the self will be symbolically torn and distorted in the exchange.

One would think that a postcolonial attitude must admit different theories of knowledge. And by that

admission one is bound to admit some that imply the falsity of one’s own inherited assumptions. One is bound, in other words, to betray one’s own ethnic inheritance in an attempt to open oneself to the reality of others – to quote Tzvetan Todorov, the Bulgarian Philosopher “The need to try to do away with my own presence for the others sake." The only option, and it is a rather scary one to contemplate, is to give up truth and its security of self, the very values for which a theory of knowledge was developed in the first place, and accepts that all such matters are simply what Foucault calls the game of truth and falsity.

There is not much evidence of that around; lets face it, when the structures of control like the Registration Board or even NZAP, have not even begun to allow themselves to be prised from their traditional Eurocentric perches.

Michael Parekowhai, the Māori artist, in an interview said: ‘Don’t give me that "What we need is one big melting pot. Big enough to take the world and all it’s got!”stuff. What that’s asking for is for all of us to become white’.

He is right; the dominant culture has to be prepared to transform itself. This is the real postcolonial challenge and in my opinion the only option facing us in New Zealand if we do not want to denigrate who we are and how we can articulate our unique position in the world. What a long way we have to go, when European design, Western intellectuals and Coronation Street are all in their way so highly privileged here.

What I’m suggesting certainly will disturb the rather elegant streamlined binaries that the influential theorists, who have shaped the debate to this point, hold onto. I would suggest that it is this essentialist terrain that makes it difficult for us in New Zealand to locate ourselves.

Surely one of the advantages we can embrace from ‘the post modern condition’ is a jettisoning of rigid binaries. Starting with two sexes, described as opposites or alternatives or complements – locks us into a logic, a limiting binary system, that often seems remote from lived, spoken experience and is complicit with all those other binary pairs I have alluded to today. There is surely another alternative. Should we not be talking of paradoxes and spectrums, not contradictions and mutual exclusions? ‘The unconscious,’ Freud reminds us,’ speaks more than one dialect.’

I spoke at the beginning of Gadamer’s phrase “Fusion of horizons”. And I want to return to it as a way to hold coloniser and the colonised, queer and normal. It is easy to think of the horizon as a boundary, that’s its deceit, an horizon is that which expands, that which we can see beyond with a little effort, and that which points toward something more. Although a horizon marks the limit of sight at any moment, it is not an insurmountable limit. Simply walking a short distance, or going to the top floor of a building can help us see beyond our previous horizon. Horizons might appear as a limit at a particular time, but they are always also gateways to something beyond.

Both the queer and the colonial demand that we see further and risk welcoming what’s over the horizon. This is about more not less – about difference not identity, about opening up not closing down, not saying that’s all there is but knowing there is always more.

To reduce a discussion of cultural difference or sexual orientation to coloniser/colonised queer/normal and by extension, Maori/Pakeha or black/white or the historically disempowered and the powerful, or gay/straight is to perpetuate flawed assumptions of fixity.

In closing I am reminded of Satre’s reworking of Hegel in his introduction to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

“I am possessed by the Other; the Other’s look fashions my body in its nakedness, causes it to be born, sculpts it, produces it as it is, sees it as I shall never see it. The Other holds a secret - the secret of what I am. The true stranger, the Other, whom one meets, is, therefore, intimately known. His attractions are endlessly beguiling. He is me.

July 5, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 14     Ezekiel 2:1-5     Psalm 123     2 Corinthians 12:2-10     Mark 6:1-13

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Jesus quotes a well known saying of his time to describe the response he received on a visit to Nazareth. We know this guy; we know his brothers and sisters; who does he think he is coming to preach to us? Tall poppy syndrome at work in first century Nazareth. Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Hard to take, from his own, they couldn’t see who he was and what he came to teach.

Over the last month I have been thinking a lot about the church’s voice in society. I had to write a chapter for a book marking the 25th anniversary of the ordination as bishop of Penny Jamieson. Penny was ordained 25 years ago, the first woman in the Anglican Communion to be a diocesan bishop. My topic for the book was the voice of the church in the public square. 25 years ago Bishop Penny’s ordination was on TV. Now the church only gets on TV if we are being scandalous or stupid. We pine for a time when the church had a voice in society, when what we said counted for something. There was a time when the church spent money and personnel on ecumenical agencies who gave us a voice and on research and positions such as our Social Responsibility Commissioner. Now every time we speak or try to speak we feel I think like Jesus in Nazareth – no one is listening, no one cares. I think the billboards at St Matthew’s, the most controversial ones, fell into that trap of desperately wanting to be heard and get some attention. And they did get heard but only for a moment and then gone again. They too were part of the lamenting of our lost voice. We hate it that no one is listening, and so we desperately try to get their attention.

Expecting a voice for the church in the public square, as of right, is part of the old world of Christendom. The old world of Christendom when church and society were roughly the same thing. Church was an institution like Parliament, or the justice system, or education – an institution which had a voice alongside all the others. Most people belonged or were involved in some way. But Christendom is over now. In our post modern, new millennium world institutional voices no longer carry weight. We have been saying this in the church all the time I have been ordained but we still don’t act like it. We still have large bureaucratic structures; we still want our bishops to speak out on political issues – as long as they agree with us of course.

So instead what might the voice of the church look like in a truly post Christendom, post modern world? For my chapter I asked the statisticians how many people actually attend church in an Anglican church on a Sunday? It is a hard figure to get but we came to the conclusion that 76,000 people attend an Anglican church in NZ at least once a month. 76,000. That is a lot of voices. Our post modern voice is not a single voice. In post modernity a plurality of voices is common. There is no one right definitive answer. There is no single doctrine any more. 76,000 voices, 76,000 ministries, 76,000 daily lives and callings. Our voice as a church is the voices of the people of faith – you – living out your daily lives. Being leaders and followers at work, being neighbours and community leaders, being volunteers, voters, politically engaged activists. Being teachers and doctors and shop assistant and digital workers and mothers and poets and writers and bus drivers and students. These voices have power and influence. And as a church we need to support you, empower you, educate you maybe. We can be a place where you reflect on your calling and contribution to society and we back you up and equip you. Instead of pouring money into a church bureaucracy who might somehow speak for us we should be pouring resources into you and your lives and hearing you speak.

And that means of course that we have more than one voice.

Even on one of the crucial issues of this decade – marriage equality – the church has so far agreed to have two voices and live with two voices; so the likelihood of us having one voice on any issue is unlikely. But we can be part of debates and partnerships and projects in a dynamic way at many levels without having to have one institutional voice. Each time though I think we have to earn the right to speak alongside other community groups and potential partners. If we wish to speak about the need to welcome more refugees into NZ we had better be sure we are supporting a refugee programme. If we wish to speak about poverty we had better be sure we are engaging in work with those in need and understanding the complexities of the causes of poverty. If we wish to speak about the environment we had better be sure we have completed our environmental audits of our churches and made the changes we can to be better stewards of our buildings and resources. If we wish to speak about business ethics we had better be engaged in conversation with local businesses.

And the church cannot speak about marriage equality when we are not offering marriage to people of the same gender ourselves. That conversation has become an internal church conversation while the rest of the world moves on. Our prophetic voice there has to be turned inward on our own institution. The Episcopal Church in the USA showed us this week that change is possible by voting strongly in favour of marriage equality. We now call on our own Anglican church to follow.

In our gospel reading this morning Jesus guides us in how we are to act in this post modern world where we no longer matter as an institution. Jesus’ response to not being listened to in his home town was this: He called the twelve and sent them off in pairs, not alone. (No committees, no structures) And they were to travel light, a staff for walking, but no bag, no money, no bread, no change of clothes. They were to go to households that welcomed them and stay for a while. There they would engage, share the news of the coming kingdom, listen, pray. And then it would be time to move on. If they weren’t welcomed they were to shake the dust off their feet and move on. No drama, no preaching, no recriminations. Just move on. Travel light, no baggage from the past. Listen, talk, work in partnership, find ways to get things done. Do not build a monolithic institution, with one doctrine and one voice.

In our visioning work that we did together a month ago there was a lot about making connections, within our church community, and in the wider community – networks, connections, partnerships – fluid not static – inspired by our worship in this sacred space, this spirited space. To make those connections work, to find common ground on which to work together, we need every voice. We have a few hundred of the 76,000 voices. And each voice can be a voice for the church in turn in the public square. And maybe that way you prophets will be listened to even in your home town.

June 28, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 13     Lamentations 3:22-33     Psalm 30     2 Corinthians 8:7-15     Mark 5:21-43

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Hands.

One of the privileges of being a priest is the giving of the bread at communion. And I often notice your hands. Open, ready to receive. Sometimes one hand, sometimes two. Some hands crossed over in the sign of the cross – as some of us were taught to do at confirmation classes. Some hands cupped like a bowl ready to receive grace. Some hands have lots of rings, some have none. Some hands have tattoos. Some have pretty colours of nail polish. Some hands are workers hands – lined and creased; gardeners’ hands – scratched and discoloured; some hands are dry; some are smooth; some are shaky, others still.

It is a joy each Sunday to place the bread into your hands. Our hands that bring us to communion have already shared the peace; made the sign of the cross; turned the pages of the liturgy; put something in the collection; rubbed together with the cold; shaken the hand of a stranger or a friend.

These hands have made our breakfast, dressed and fed our children, driven us here, tagged on to the bus; held our umbrella as we walked; they have texted, posted and twittered already maybe; or just wiped the sleep from our eyes, and waved to a neighbour.

Jairus comes to Jesus, kneels down and begs – with hands clasped maybe; or hands open? He asks Jesus to come and lay hands on his daughter who is dying. In the Greek “to lay hands on” there is an underlying meaning for hands – the power of God to create, protect and preserve creation [1]. These hands have creative force and healing. Our hands have creative force and healing.

Jesus is on his way to Jairus’ house and the story is interrupted by a woman who comes and reaches her hand out to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak. She does not presume to stop him, to speak to him, or to call out, or to touch him. She cannot for she is unclean. She just wants to touch the hem of his robe, that will be enough. But Jesus stops and asks – who touched  me? Silly question say the disciples – look at the crowds – everyone is trying to touch you! Jesus persists and looks through the crowd to find the woman. He picks her up from the ground “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” And before he has finished speaking word comes that it is too late for the daughter of Jairus; but he continues to journey and arrives at Jairus’ house; sends everyone out of the room; and takes the girl by the hand and says “talitha cum” – little girl – get up.

Will you lay hands on her?

If only I can touch his robe

He takes the girl by the hand.

More hands; hands that reach out in hope; hands that heal; hands that receive healing.

At first glance our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians doesn’t seem to have anything to do with hands. But it does. Because it is about generosity and community.

Paul is seeking support for the church in Jerusalem and wants the church at Corinth to help – he has asked for help from other churches too (Rome and Macedonia) and they have offered more than the church at Corinth. So he asks the Corinthian church to consider what gift might be acceptable – not so that it will cause hardship for them, but enough to rebalance the resources.

“I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of fair balance between your present abundance, and their need” (8:13).

A call from 2000 years ago for the balancing of resources – a guide not just for churches but for society; for tax systems and welfare systems.

A call for reaching out and sharing with neighbour both near and far.

For in the offering – and in the receiving – we all reach out our hands with openness, ready to receive the gift of grace.

John Koenig says “God, the multiplier of gifts, invests grace in the enterprise of the gospel and receives it back again in the form of ever-growing thanksgivings. Or, to translate this circular flow more directly … the worldwide hospitality of believers, one to another, expands their ability to welcome God with their praises. The new humanity matures and God reaps benefits.” [2]

The open hands that have received the love and grace of God, in turn offer love to others in need, both near and far. The church in Corinth clearly did not feel they should give to the church in Jerusalem but Paul is beginning to help them be the church of the world, not just their own community.

This last week in Vestry we discussed how we are going to manage giving away a portion of our church’s income every year. At our AGM you approved a budget which for the first time in a while had a portion set aside to give away. And so Vestry were looking at a way of dividing that up – some for the City Mission, some for church projects overseas, some for one off appeals. Looking for a balance between our wealth and others’ needs. Reaching out to hold hands with others. Offering and receiving.

Paul says (8:9) “for you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich”. The “generous act” also can be translated grace – the grace of Christ, freely given, with open hands. The grace of Christ pouring his life out for us.

On Friday President Barack Obama preached a sermon about grace at the funeral of Rev Clementa Pinckney in Charleston, South Carolina. He was giving a eulogy but it was a sermon about grace and hope and the sufferings of the past – racism and slavery. In the signature style of the black preacher he brought the congregation with him as they encouraged him on.

He said the grace of God is not earned.

Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God…, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we've been blind. He has given us the chance, where we've been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other – but we got it all the same. God gave it to us anyway. God’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift. [3]

American writer Diana Butler Bass tweeted “a sermon just exploded twitter” and “the media are talking about grace”.  Then hot on the heels of the President’s sermon came another grace filled moment as the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of marriage equality across the whole country. Moments of great joy for many couples and their families.

Into our hands today God pours grace and love.

It is up to us to reach out and receive the grace with an open hand, not a clenched fist.

Whether you feel you can only be brave enough to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe; or whether you are brave enough to throw yourself at his feet – Jesus will respond and fill our empty hands.

Then we in turn can offer something to our neighbor, we go not empty handed but with God’s love.

The world needs God’s love and you have God’s love in your hands today.

How will you share it this week?

Whose hands will you touch?

For whom will you pray?

Where will you go with God’s grace?

[1] http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5495&t=KJV

[2] John Koenig New testament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1985, p.77-78

[3] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8854855/read-full-text-obamas-eulogy-charleston-shooting

June 21, 2015

Bishop John Bluck

Ordinary Sunday 12     Mark 4:35-41

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

In Porirua Jerry Collins was a hero and will continue to be so, perhaps more so, after his funeral there this week. I’m told he was a great All Black, though if you’d been on the receiving end of his smashing runs, you might not agree. He’s been given a hero’s farewell. TV One news devoted the first eight minutes of its 6pm show to his tragic death, the next most important item to the weather. I don’t understand it. But then I don’t understand why a sport that is only played well in half a dozen countries continues to define us. May Jerry and Alana rest in peace.

And I don’t understand this morning’s gospel either, all about another hero who can stop a storm in its tracks. I wish I didn’t have to preach on it, especially to a congregation like this one, full of critical and discerning people who pride themselves on not having religious wool pulled over their eyes. But even smart people need heroes. And this is very clearly a hero story.

The closest parallel I can think of from Aotearoa is not Jerry Collins but Hipa Te Maiharoa, a Ngai Tahu prophet who in 1879 led a hikoi down the Waitaki Valley to protest the fraudulent land grab of the New Zealand Company. In the course of that hikoi, Te Maiharoa was reported to have stopped a steam train in its tracks as it crossed the Waitaki road rail bridge. The Oamaru Mail, which at the time was at least as reliable a source as the New Zealand Herald is today, covered the story. You may have questions about this piece of our history but the way Te Maiharoa’s epic life has been immortalised is nothing compared to what we have done with Jesus, in our attempts as a church from the very beginning to decide who this man is for us.

We can call him the Son of God, and for many Christians, then and now, that was enough. Even though the title is a metaphor, the easiest way to deal with metaphors is to nail them down, give them a literal meaning, preferably only one and get on with your life. No more questions asked. So much for the magic of poetry. Or the mystery of faith. Once you allow metaphors to open up meaning rather than close it down, to provoke more questions than answers, you have to deal with the floodgate you’ve opened. And in this case its more than a flood, it’s a whole storm at sea.

Storms on the sea of Galilee were violent affairs, just as scary as the ones off the Mediterranean coast, and in both places the same demons were at work, as they had been since the first morning of creation. The waters of the deep held the spirits of evil and chaos that only God could control. When Jesus says be still to the storm, his words literally mean, be muzzled, you demons.

So the Old Testament, especially the psalms, are full of references to water management on a divine and cosmic scale. “Save me O God for the waters have come up to my neck,” says Psalm 69.

“Don’t let the deep swallow me up, or the Pit (of Hell) close its mouth over me.” In the Exodus story, Moses invokes God to perform the ultimate miracle which is to turn the angry sea into a safe bridge that the redeemed can walk across with dry feet. And the greatest blessing a person can enjoy is “to lie down in peace and take my rest, for it is you alone O God, who can let me lie down in safety.”

That’s exactly what Jesus does in this story. He himself is sleeping, yes even in the midst of a storm. And when he’s woken, he calms the storm, and no doubt his disciples sleep well that night. For a first century audience, you couldn’t find a story more compelling than this one to reassure that God is still in charge of the world, and this representative of God – son, prophet, rabbi, healer call him what you will – is authentic. But does it work for us, we who still seek reassurance of a God who is present and alive and active in our midst?

Miracles that change the weather in an instant and stop trains in their tracks don’t have the same resonance for post modern urbanites and technocrats. We can do things on our cellphones that would make us godlike to the audience Jesus first addressed. But our need for evidence of God’s presence and action is as strong as ever, the hunger for reassurance gnaws away. Especially as a church.

Because this is a story about church. From the start it’s been read like that – the boat is early symbol of Christian community which is why the ecumenical movement adopted the sail boat as its logo, with the cross as a mast, and it’s why we sit inside buildings like this one in the nave, inside the hull of an upturned boat. Tip a church like this over and can sail away aboard it.

And the church in this story is very anxious about its future. The followers inside are scared they can’t cope, they’re getting old and tired, they don’t have the resources to manage, the task before them is overwhelming, they are about to be swamped and no one is taking any notice of them, and God doesn’t seem to care enough to intervene.

Now where have you heard that before. Maybe this story isn’t so quaint and out of date. We worry a lot about the future of the church. We look at the average age of our congregations, our declining market share, the way we are distorted or worse still ignored by the media and wonder whether we’ll be around in 50 years or swamped by the sea of modernity. The first disciples were just as anxious. But they knew who to trust.

The roles they expected him to play were varied and confusing. For some they wanted a Jesus who would do everything for them. For others it was a political leader, a revolutionary Zealot who would get rid of the Romans, a nationalist freedom fighter. For others it was a guru they needed, a seer in the Wisdom tradition. For others it was a code maker and breaker, a man with the passwords for health and healing who would unlock the secrets of the sort that Dan Brown writes novels about. And for others, an old fashioned miracle worker was enough, bigger and brighter than all the other miracle workers around. Who could instantly feed not five but five thousand, and calm a whole sea with a word.

We too dress Jesus in the clothing of our need. We transform him from judge and general to therapist and friend of little children above the bright blue sky, we sing about him as scarred victim and scapegoat on a cross. We portray him as a Maori chief walking on the water of Lake Rotorua, as a blond blue eyed Lutheran who could play quarterback in American College football, a Samoan All Black, or on the cover of a book of feminist essays published in Christchurch in the 1990’s, as a crucified woman.

We know how to make a Jesus in our own image. And every time we do that, we bring him closer to us, we incarnate him in the world we know, as we need to do, to meet him close up and personal. But at the very same time, we run the risk of distancing Jesus if the language and image doesn’t fit, if we don’t play football for instance. And getting captured by some of the roles, the miracle worker role for example, we may well end up reducing Jesus. Closing him down rather than opening him up and allowing ourselves to be open to him.

The church’s job is not only to retell these old stories but to keep reframing and translating them to tap their potency and power. If Jesus calming storms works for you, good on you, if it helps to lead you into the mystery and love of God, go for it. If it doesn’t, then look elsewhere for different expressions of the same figure playing different roles, revealing different faces of God’s mystery and love. We’ve got plenty to choose from in our own New Zealand heritage of faith.

James K Baxter was a fine theologian as well as one of our greatest poets. He designed his metaphors not to be tied down but to explode in a kaleidoscope of meaning and provocation. Jesus for Baxter was not a figure defined by some magical action, some one off miracle however awesomely performed. He was not a hero for Baxter, certainly not in any All Black mold.

Jesus for him was a poor man who took the form of a swagger and an outcast, a wanderer blowing like the Spirit across a thousand paddocks, singing his song in the hearts of the poor, guiding us, wounding us, healing us.

“A fire who does not cease to burn.

Consuming us with flames of love and peace.

Driving us out like sparks to set the world on fire.

Like the sun in the sky,

The light shining in our darkness.

So that we ourselves can become the light.”

That’s a Jesus I can follow.

That’s a Jesus who will lead me into the heart of God.

Whatever image of him you choose to trust, don’t settle for anything less.

June 14, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Ordinary Sunday 11     Ezekiel 17:22-24     Psalm 92     2 Corinthians 5:6-17     Mark 4:26-34

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

When we moved to Ottawa, Canada in January 1996, it was winter; and our house and garden was buried deep in snow, so it wasn’t until May that we got to see the garden. As the snow melted the whole garden came to life as if by miracle, all by itself. We waited to see what plants would pop up. By our front door we watched some plants grow, which later turned out to be peony bushes. One day I went out and came back a few hours later and looked at the plants and I could have sworn they had grown inches. So the next day I counted the number of bricks to measure them. And sure enough at the end of the day the plants had grown one whole brick! Then the beautiful peony flowers came (and I made the mistake of picking them and putting them in a vase, not knowing that peonies are always crawling with ants!)

The kingdom of God, the realm of God, is like when a plant grows by itself, we do not know how.

Last Monday I went to a meeting of the client committee at the City Mission. It was really good to meet with the group who represent the users of the Mission’s services. Also at the meeting was a woman, Rachel, who had got into the habit of bringing a home cooked meal once a month to the Mission for the evening meal. And her friends found out about it and wanted to do the same. And so they started a Facebook page and now they have two deliveries a day. It is called “Mum’s Mince”. The realm of God is when one mother cooks food for more than her own children and others decide to join her, we do not know how.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like when a farmer scatters seed and the seed sprouts and grows. But the farmer doesn’t understand how or why. The farmer knows and trusts it will grow but he doesn’t know how or why. Any Year 9 science student could tell the farmer how and why, explaining about the soils and the oxygen and the temperatures and the germination process; but a farmer in first century Palestine didn’t know how the seed developed into a plant; but he still knew that it would, every time, as long as there wasn’t a drought, or the seed was bad seed.

Then Jesus says the realm of God is like a mustard seed; mustard seeds are the tiniest of seeds, you can barely see them; and Jesus says the mustard seed grows into a bush and all the birds can nest in it. Well any self respecting Palestinian farmer knows mustard seeds don’t grow into bushes, they are just small flowering plants; but the kingdom of God is like the mustard seed which grows into a bush. So it grows bigger and better than it is supposed to; it doesn’t grow into the tallest and best tree on earth like a towering cedar or kauri; it grows into a bush, a useful bush where the birds can shelter.

The realm of God is like a singer, with a natural talent, who can just sing and we all enjoy their song. The realm of God is like an artist who the minute they have a paintbrush in their hands can paint, and we enjoy it. The realm of God is like the netball player who always gets an intercept and the goal shoot who always gets the goal. The realm of God is like hearing the call of a karanga on the marae as the hosts prepare to welcome the visitors.

The realm of God is not something far away and ethereal and in the future. The realm of God is present and tangible and right here. It is what our lives could be like if we allowed God to be at work, rather than keeping God in the box labelled church or heaven somewhere out there. [1]

Now Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom is very disconcerting for those of us who are mothers, or teachers or employers of staff. Because Jesus says the kingdom just happens, through no effort on our part. “The earth produces of itself” Jesus says – the Greek word is “automatos” – where we get automatic from. We don’t have to try hard, study hard, work hard, put in more effort; the kingdom is just there, like a seed sown in the ground, even a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds. That doesn’t sound right does it? We all know that if we study hard we get results; if we put the effort in at work, we get results. Then we transfer that experience to our life with God. We think we have to work hard to please God, pray hard, do good to others.

Well all of that is great, but Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like a seed sown which grows and we do not know how it grows: the stalk and then the grain, and when the harvest time comes the farmer brings in the harvest. It just happens, because the seed is sown.

The trouble is a lot of the time we don’t even notice the seed growing, we think it’s just a seed, just an ordinary old mustard plant. The first step of living life in the kingdom is noticing the seeds flourishing, noticing the love and action of God which goes on around us all the time. Noticing and naming what we see. God is at work all the time in and around us. Notice it and name it.

Then we get to participate in the love and action of God. The farmer nurtures the seed, waters and tends it, pulls out the weeds. Like the women who have joined the Mum’s Mince group. Like those of you who have tended to sick friends or relatives this week. Like those of you who have listened to a work colleague in distress. Like those of you who have taken a moment to say thank you to someone. Like those of you who have celebrated the success of some young people you know.

The kingdom of God though is not just about love and being nice to each other; for when we take the next step into the realm of God we find we are called to action, the seed grows and is harvested, the mustard seed grows into a bush where all of the birds can take shelter. There is work to be done. So the City Mission are going to invite the mums from Mum’s Mince in to learn more about their work and why people are needing to be cooked for. Raising their awareness above the immediate need brings more voices to the call for political attention for homelessness.

At our parish visioning day last week our facilitator put is in groups and got us to create an article for a parish magazine in 2025 – what might we be doing? And it was interesting to see how many of the groups talked about our outside space: the garden and the carpark, with ideas for development. These ideas are so much more than tidying up the trees or planting new plants – they are about creating beauty in the midst of our urban landscape; they are about greening the earth and being grounded in the land; they are about connecting with the neighbourhood – what might our neighbours need from our green space? We will explore what we might do with our outside space as a task of growing God’s realm. Seeds will be planted, more than actual seeds, seeds of ideas and relationships as well. Seeds of action for our planet, God’s earth.

Our reading from Ezekiel might be a guide:

I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am God. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.

Now that sounds all very lovely, trees growing, birds nesting; but this passage is actually very political – written while the people of Israel are in exile in Babylon (6the century BC). The sprig of cedar to be planted is someone to be king from the line of David; the mountain is Mt Zion in Jerusalem; the tree is like the tree of life from Genesis in which birds of every kind can nest – that is the all people, gentiles and Jews, enemies and friends; and the high tree is to be brought low – the powerful are to be humbled and the low tree high – the poor and the oppressed are to be honoured. This passage from Ezekiel about a tree on a mountain is very political; it is revolutionary talk in code .And so Jesus’ parables about the realm of God are the same.

The kingdom of God is like a parish who decided to plant a garden; they talked to their neighbours and found they wanted vegetables / or a playground / or a beautiful space to sit; and they wanted a beautiful mural to look at as they passed by; so the parish planted a garden and the plants grew; and so did the conversations about the plants and how to care for God’s earth; and the conversations sitting in the sun beneath the tower of the church turned to care of the neighbours and the workers; and one part of the mural changed from time to time with statements and slogans regarding the politics of the day and people looked forward to being challenged.

The realm of God is like a parish who planted a garden. The realm of God is as if someone scattered seed on the ground and it grew, they knew not how. But it did grow, and God knew how.

[1] “the kingdom of God is present on earth whenever life accurately reflects the will and sovereignty of God. It is the way life and society would be if a compassionate God were in charge or imitated instead of Roman governors, client kings and the Temple establishment.” Nelson Pallmeyer quoted in John Dally Choosing the Kingdom p. 63

June 7, 2015

Dr Rosemary Dewerse

Te Pouhere Sunday     John 15:9-17

E te whanau a te Karaiti, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, a threefold greeting to you all.

Ko Ngongotaha te maunga.

Ko Rotorua te moana.

Ko Rosemary Dewerse taku ingoa.

So, yes, I am Rosemary Dewerse, born in Rotorua hospital. That makes Ngongotaha the mountain and Rotorua the lake. My reference points.

I want to thank Helen for inviting me to come and share Te Pouhere Sunday with you. It’s an opportunity of course to celebrate a commitment made in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand to a serious partnership between Maori and Pakeha, respecting autonomy and working in covenant with one another.

We could spend this morning talking history and the constitution of the Anglican Church. But I would like to invite us all to ponder the concept central to today: “Te Pouhere”. I’ll tell you what this means in a moment.

I understand you have been having a time of visioning, thinking of what you in St Matthews sense God is calling you to in this next season of your life and ministry together. As you do this work “Te Pouhere,” I would suggest, offers an opportunity to think on what is most important in your life together and in God’s mission.

“Te Pouhere,” literally means “the hitching post”. It is where you tie your waka up so that it does not get swept away by the tide.

I wonder what you tie your waka up to...

In our gospel reading this morning Jesus is pretty unequivocal about what Te Pouhere is for those who choose to follow him. In the verses just before today’s reading Jesus speaks of himself as the true vine. There is this lovely and powerful metaphor of the trunk and centre of the grapevine with the branches flowing out from it. We are instructed to abide in him as he abides in us. There is a profound invitation, actually a command, to a relationship. There is talk of pruning, of cleansing, of throwing away parts of us, our branches that are not fruit bearing in this relationship. There is also talk of profound love, of the deep love of God and Jesus for us, a love that calls us friends, a love that would lay down everything in order to see us given every chance to flourish. And the invitation – the expectation – is for us to be joined to the vine, gifting the best of ourselves, giving our love to God and to one another. Jesus says that if we choose to abide in him we will be trusted and empowered by God to bear fruit in our communities, fruit that will last.

What is our waka tied up to?

I spoke at St Johns College a few weeks ago on the story of Heni Te Kiri Karamu, an amazing Maori woman who as an Anglican Christian in the 1800s lived in very contradictory times and often in very contested spaces. Plenty of tidal movement in all kinds of directions! Not always was her environment interested in things Christian. Not always were those who claimed to be Christian behaving and sounding like branches connected to the Jesus vine. She had to make choices and we could judge her for those. But the thing that stands out to me from her story is that in very pressured, often dangerous situations, her waka proved to be firmly tied up to a Christian imperative, drawn from scripture, of showing love for her enemies. She is the woman who crossed over and, under gunfire, gave water to a dying, probably Anglican, British officer after he and his men had stormed Gate Pa, during the Land Wars, or NZ Wars, of the 1860s. She also responded bravely and with great courage and love when her second husband, turned mad with alcohol (suffering delirium tremens) attacked her one night with a scythe. She put measures in place but, with her children, committed to caring him back into health, at home.

For Heni her waka was tied up to Jesus’ call to love others, to love in such a way that you are willing to die for your friends and family. Even to risk loving your enemies. She was honest. She was truthful. She was pruned. She was someone I think Jesus definitely considered a friend.

What is your waka tied up to?

I am conscious that in this day and age our Aotearoa New Zealand landscape remains a contested and contradictory one. There is much to challenge us in our communities today. Difference of all kinds can create barriers of ignorance, suspicion and fear amongst us. The speed of change can make us forget earlier commitments we have made that remain important.

A month ago I had the great privilege of spending time with Maori Anglicans of Tairawhiti, in Gisborne. I was there to do a little teaching on mission as their, mainly volunteer, ministers were being trained. But, more importantly, I was there to listen and learn and meet and get to know people. Their manaakitanga, their hospitality, was amazing. They were very welcoming of me and incredibly generous to me. There were some wonderful stories told of mission initiatives being undertaken, including an upcoming Gospel Roots Festival in January. God is doing some amazing things bringing people together for this event. Their theme or kaupapa for the festival? “I am the vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me you will bear much fruit.”

In the midst of this loving hospitality there were, however, some very uncomfortable moments for me as some of those present spoke of ways in which St Johns College has hurt them. I was the only St Johns staff member present and there was palpable pain and direct critique made of my workplace. Some quite deep offence has been caused in recent history as well as in the long past. It was very difficult to listen to.

On the last evening of my time in Gisborne I went up to Rev Don Tamihere, the ministry educator of Tairawhiti, and asked him, in the wake of what I had experienced, the generosity and the critique, what should I be, how should I live when engaging particularly with Maori, with our history, in the present. I caught him at a busy moment but the next morning he especially drove to the airport to give me his response: Rosemary, what it boils down to is truth and grace in the context of relationship.

Can you hear John 15? Pruning, cleansing, love, in a context of us abiding in Jesus and him abiding in us. Truth and grace in the context of relationship.

What is St Matthew’s waka tied up to? Perhaps, this Te Pouhere Sunday, our Maori brothers and sisters, Heni Te Kiri Karamu and the people of Tairawhiti, in their living of John 15, have something profound to offer.

As you envision the future, what truths does St Matthews need to hear from the community in which it is located? What grace do you need to be open to, not just giving, but receiving? And what relationships do you already have and are cultivating that will give truth and grace room to be heard and spoken and experienced?

What narrative will you enact when you find yourself in contested or contradictory spaces, or when the tides are threatening to sweep you away? Will the narrative be a gospel one? Might it be one of compassion and genuine, courageous love for your enemies, whether you find them at home in these or other pews or amongst those who inhabit this inner city space?

Is the vine metaphor true?

What is Te Pouhere for you? 

May 31, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Trinity Sunday     Isaiah 6:1-8     Psalm 29     Romans 8:12-17     John 3:1-17

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

In 1899 an African American artist Henry Tanner painted a picture called “Nicodemus visiting Jesus”. Nicodemus and Jesus are seated on the flat rooftop of a Palestinian house. It is night time, they are deep in discussion. Light comes up the stair way from the house, and light also seems to emanate from Jesus. As an African American, Tanner chooses this subject for his painting because the story of Nicodemus visiting Jesus by night was an inspiration to American slaves. They were not given the freedom to worship in the day but met secretly at night to hear the biblical stories of liberation. They were eager to hear God’s word, desperate for the message of hope and salvation they heard, and hanging on to the promise of a place in God’s kingdom, even for those enslaved by their fellow humans.

Nicodemus was also an inspiration because he did not understand what Jesus meant. And so he seemed like an ordinary person you could relate to. Jesus spoke about being born again, or born from above, of being born of water and the spirit, of the wind blowing where it will. Nicodemus had no idea what he was talking about. And Nicodemus was an educated teacher. One writer says “Nicodemus is cast as a character who can’t see in the dark” [1], he stumbles over the ideas Jesus presents to him.

The doctrine of the Trinity is something we often stumble over. How can God be three in one and one in three. We get confused by the concepts like Nicodemus was confused about being born again or being born from above.

Nicodemus wanted to understand the law written in books, he was a rabbi, a teacher and he wanted Jesus to explain how he was doing all these miracles which didn’t fit Nicodemus’ picture of the way things should be. But he overlooked the writings of the prophets who had written with passion about the nature of God. Like Isaiah who saw visions of angels and heard God calling. Like Jeremiah who said that God’s law is written in our hearts.

In our Christian life there is a place for learning and study, it is a joy to learn about our Bible, our heritage our traditions. There is also a much bigger place for living the Christian life for experiencing God the Trinity rather than studying doctrine. And one of the most important aspects of the Trinity is that it is about God in relationship – three beings in relationship (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The Trinity is dynamic, not static. The Trinity is the basis of our Christian community.

Like Nicodemus and Jesus meeting, as a Christian community we meet and ask questions of each other but it does not need to feel like stumbling in the dark as we are all part of God’s community. And because it is God’s kingdom / community and not our community; then we can allow the light of Christ to illuminate things for us. In the Tanner painting there is light emanating from Jesus to light up the darkness of the night, or to help with the confusion; or to give hope perhaps. Jesus invites us all to come sit with him on the rooftop and ponder together what our Christian life and calling is.

On that rooftop with Jesus as our guide we can come to know each other and to discover how it is we continue to build God’s community together here. And there will be times we will talk past each other, like Nicodemus did about the wind and the spirit and being born again. Then Jesus will set us back on the path of discovery and will remind us that it is God’s kingdom, not ours.

If we kept reading in John’s gospel we would find that this Nicodemus story is contrasted with the story which follows in the next chapter of John’s gospel – the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She is a woman, a Samaritan (outsider); Nicodemus is a man and a Pharisee (insider). She meets Jesus in the heat of the noon day sun; Nicodemus meets Jesus at night; they have similar confused conversations about the spirit and worship and truth. The Samaritan woman tells everyone who will listen about Jesus who she proclaims as Messiah. Nicodemus slips away into the night. But we can be encouraged by Nicodemus because John in his gospel is good enough to mention Nicodemus again. Right at the end in chapter 19 (v39) we read that “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.” Nicodemus came to assist at the burial of Jesus, and brought the expensive spices and assisted Joseph of Arimathea in his burial. So Nicodemus must have continued as a follower of Jesus, they must have continued their conversations and begun to understand each other. And Nicodemus stayed till the end, stayed to care for Jesus, his teacher.

We can come to Jesus quietly by night, or in the heat of the noon day sun; we can bring our questions and stumblings. And he will meet us and listen.

We have plenty of questions

• we have a reminder of the Chch earthquake on our walls in the photo exhibition; this can make us think of many “natural” disasters across our word; we come to Jesus on the roof top with the question – why?

• we see images daily of war and conflict in Iraq and the Ukraine and many other places; we come to Jesus on the rooftop with the question – how does humanity have the capacity to be so violent?

• we unlock the church every morning with people sleeping in the doorways; we come to Jesus on the rooftop with the question – what can we do?

• we sit powerless beside a loved one who is sick or dying or just fading away slowly – and we come to Jesus on the rooftop with the question – how do we cope?

• we listen to the news about the budget; the closing of Relationships Aotearoa Counselling Service; the building of the SkyCity Convention Centre; child poverty – and we come to Jesus on the rooftop with the question – how do we get involved and make our society a better place?

And we bring our questions to each other, on a Sunday morning and in our various conversations. We have our parish visioning day next Saturday; we have a dinner a couple of weeks later; we have morning teas; we have various committees and task groups; all places for conversations about our faith and our life together as a community.

We bring all of these things to the rooftop and we listen to Jesus’ answers: this is the way John puts it: For God loved the world in this way; he gave his only son, not to condemn the world but so that all might have eternal life. I come to bring light, to shed light on the darkness; not to magic it away, but to bring light and strength so you can build God’s realm on earth.

Think of yourselves as sitting on that rooftop with Jesus, asking questions and listening to stories. And you will find that you are not stumbling in the dark at all. For Jesus has promised us light.

[1] James D Brown sermon 17.2.08 www.marketsquarechurch.org

May 24, 2015

Helen Jacobi

The Day of Pentecost     Acts 2:1-21     John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Who was there, I wonder? Mary, Jesus’ mother, Salome, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, then the 12 - Peter, James, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, then maybe Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus’ sisters and brothers, his followers, people he had healed. They were all there. They had gone to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of the harvest, the festival of weeks. 50 days since the Passover, 50 days since he had died.

Many of them had seen him, alive, or so they thought. Afterwards, when telling other people and trying to answer their questions, sometimes they weren’t so sure. So they gathered together to reassure each other. Yes they had seen him, it wasn’t just a trick. But now he had gone. He had said to wait, but for what?

At the time, no one had a clue what was happening. Later some of them said it felt like a wind. Made them think of the wind of God at creation. Some of them said they saw fire, but no one was burned, like Moses’ burning bush, or the fire that led the people in the desert. And then they found themselves out on the streets wanting to tell everyone about Jesus and who he was and what he did. And it all seemed much clearer, who he was and what he had done. So clear they were able to explain it to others, and the others understood.

Then Peter gathered a crowd and started preaching about a new way. A way to be, to be a follower of Jesus. God, he said, will give young people visions of the way the world could be, and old people will dream dreams and want it to be so. Others will interpret the events of the day and see them through the eyes of God. And so it was that the Spirit burst once more into the world and turned the world around. And the disciples found an audience receptive to their preaching. Their’s was a world in flux and change. There were many cultures living alongside each other, many religions. People were seeking and searching for a deeper meaning in their lives.

So before too long there were small communities emerging inspired by the Spirit and led and taught by those first followers. But before even a new generation of leaders had emerged there were fights over the interpretation of the teaching and who could speak the “truth” on behalf of Jesus. By the time John wrote his gospel a debate about the nature of truth was well alive.

John has Jesus say, “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (16:13). This is not a true / false kind of truth. Not a modern understanding of truth where if one concept is true the rest are untrue. It is more of a post modern understanding of truth being something to be discovered and not exclusive. The Greek word aletheia means something that is unveiled, or no longer concealed, a mystery that is unveiled, and it is more the truth of wisdom than the truth of knowledge [1]. Aletheia, truth, is a way of being more than a thing to be known. What kind of truth do we seek here this morning as we gather to recall the events of long ago?

Many years ago when I was first ordained, I was a curate at St Marys’ in Karori, Wellington and as a clergy team we were chaplains to Samuel Marsden School across the road. I was assigned an RE class for a 6 week block, teaching something on the NT, I think. The girls were 11 and 12 year olds. I was very excited about this opportunity and was sure I was going to inspire them as a young woman deacon. But of course I knew nothing about teaching 11 year olds… Part way through my first class a hand went up and a sweet young thing asked me “is the Bible true?”. And I said “well, that depends what you mean by truth” and then I got stuck in a conversation about the reliability of scripture and didn’t God write it? (the girl was a Baptist). I now know more about the learning development of children and their different conceptual levels of understanding; and I also know more about being manipulated in the classroom by little brats; and so my answer should have been “yes” and moved on. I never quite got the class back on track after that.

The truth the Spirit brings us at Pentecost is deeper than an 11 year old understanding of truth. It is not black and white, true or false truth. It is an opportunity to discover once again and for us in this time and place who we are called to be as the people of God today. If there was one big Truth with a capital T you would think we would have figured it out by now. But that is not the way God works; instead we are to journey together and discover together for our time the wisdom of our day. Our young people will have a vision and our old people will dream dreams and together we will follow the promptings of the Spirit.

In two weeks time we are having a Visioning Day for the parish – a chance to listen to each other and to listen to the Spirit. There is no script or definitive plan for what our next few years will look like and we are not going to write a 15 page strategic plan. We are going to discern a vision, a dream, for who and what we want to be; and then as time evolves we will see what ministries and initiatives might evolve within that vision. And like long ago it will just be the simple followers of Jesus who will be there; and like long ago we will pray that the breath of God will breathe on us and the warmth of the fire of passion will inspire us. And we will pray for the gift of understanding and the privilege of discovering a little more the mystery that is God and the blessing that we can receive from being part of a community of faith. This might be our prayer:

Pentecost Blessing by Jan Richardson

On the day

when you are wearing


your certainty


like a cloak


and your sureness


goes before you


like a shield


or like a sword,

may the sound


of God’s name


spill from your lips


as you have never


heard it before.

May your knowing


be undone.


May mystery


confound your


understanding.

May the Divine


rain down


in strange syllables


yet with


an ancient familiarity,


a knowing borne


in the blood,


the ear,


the tongue,


bringing the clarity


that comes


not in stone


or in steel


but in fire,


in flame.

May there come


one searing word:


enough to bare

you
to the bone,


enough to set


your heart ablaze,


enough to make you


whole again. [2]

[1] Raymond Brown The Gospel according to John p. 499.

[2] Jan Richardson http://paintedprayerbook.com/2011/06/05/pentecost-one-searing-word

May 17, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Easter 7     Acts 1:15-17, 21-26     Psalm 1     John 5:9-13     John 17:6-19

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

This last Sunday of Easter is a transition time [1] in our church calendar. We are finishing the Easter season and about to be launched next week into Pentecost and getting on with the work of God’s mission in the world. The Easter season resurrection appearances of Jesus are done. Thursday was Ascension Day, marking the close of Jesus’ time with the disciples. When I was in Cape Town my colleagues were talking about the week ahead as we were leaving and some were heading home in time for Ascension Day services. I commented that we don’t really do Ascension Day at St Matthew’s, and one of them quipped – ah yes that would be a bit too inter galactic for you. We soon learnt the place of each other’s church on the theological spectrum. And while they all might mark Ascension day, none of them would believe in the literal ascension of Jesus to the heavens. Ascension Day simply marks a transition, notes that Jesus was for a while with the disciples, and then he wasn’t. The rest is metaphor.

The gospel reading for today shows Jesus in prayer, for the disciples, and for us. Jesus prays for the protection of the disciples, and that they will know closeness with God as Jesus has known closeness with God. The language of John is a little impenetrable at first reading – they are yours, and I am theirs, and words like glorify, sanctify, belonging to the world but not to the world; it is all a bit mesmerizing and the language feels distant. But if we persevere and really read it we find that actually this prayer is all about engagement with the world. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world… I have sent them into the world... I ask you to protect them from the evil one” The evil one in John’s world might have been the Roman emperor of the day – Domitian; or it might have meant evil more generally; persecution and oppression that they were well used to.

In my visit to South Africa in the past week I have been reminded of the reality of pure evil in our world. The weight of apartheid still weighs heavily over that country. 20 years of freedom is a very short time; and the people are far from free. When you visit Robben Island the tour groups are shown around by former prisoners. They spend their days reliving the horror of the prison. That did not feel like freedom to me.

At the cathedral, we had the privilege of meeting one woman “Mama Kate” who told us her story of going home one day in 1981 to find her house demolished. And she was put on a bus and taken to the so called “homeland” of Transkei [2]. From there she and others walked back to Cape Town, a journey of 3 weeks. In the months to follow protests against forced removals increased and she and 50 others went on hunger strike in St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town for 23 days in 1982. Their protest brought about some changes and the government began the establishment of a township outside of Cape Town. We visited that township, Khayalitsha with her. Now part shanty town; part “proper” housing; but the whole town built on sand with no trees, and with floods in the winter. In Mama Kate’s lounge one wall was covered in press cuttings about the protests and more recent write ups of the history. Also proudly displayed a press story about her daughter, a successful business woman – “from shack to board room” read the headline. The residents of Khayalitsha were forced there by the apartheid government; they remain there because of poverty, how could they afford to move? And it is their community now. To be able to move from a corrugated iron lean-to to a house is progress enough. One of our group asked Mama Kate – are you bitter? “No she said, to be bitter only makes me unhappy, and means they have won, we carry on, we live.” Freedom? in theory politically free but not free from poverty; however very free in spirit.

Last Sunday morning St George’s Cathedral was full, with people of every background and colour, as it has always been. People who have prayed together in the long dark years of apartheid, and who have appreciated the prayer and support of the worldwide church. The evil and oppression of apartheid did not turn them away from their faith. It drew them to God, seeking the help they could hear in today’s prayer from Jesus. “Protect them from the evil one; sanctify them; may they have joy; send them into the world.”

They had somehow learned the meaning of Jesus’ prayer to be in the world while not belonging to the world. They belong to the kingdom of God, they know that and yet they engage deeply in the world and serve their communities striving for change. They have been taught by years of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s preaching and that of many other clergy and lay people who led them in the dark years. They claim absolute freedom in Christ while working to free each other from apartheid.

In many conversations I noticed how hard it is to be really free – at the post office I said to the girl serving me what a beautiful place Cape Town was – “lovely to visit she said, not lovely to live here”; to our host at the guest house I said I had enjoyed shopping in some of the shops for young SA designers – “the quality is bad, once you wash them they will fall apart” she said; the driver who took us to the airport – we commented as we passed Khayalitsh that we had enjoyed our visit there – “a busload of tourists were robbed there the other day he said”. It is hard to be positive, to be hopeful, to embrace the future, when the weight of evil still hangs over the city like a shroud, so much so that the people who live there cannot see the extraordinary beauty of where they live.

And so we are called to continue to pray for the people of South Africa; to support them, not to forget them as the world’s attention focuses on the latest crisis elsewhere. The Cathedral in Cape Town needs a new roof. That is a campaign we might be able to support.

The psalmist says “Blessed are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked; they are like trees planted by streams of water; their leaves do not wither”. The people we met in Cape Town have been trees suffering the longest of droughts who are now drinking the water of freedom.

It will take generations to erase the effects of apartheid and in the meantime Jesus prays for them, we pray for them, that they may know God’s protection and that their joy may be made complete.

At the Cathedral in Cape Town they print this prayer on their newsletter every week

“Christ, look upon us in this city

keep our sympathy and pity fresh

and our faces heavenward

lest we grow hard.

Amen.”

[1] George Ramsay in Feasting on the Word, Year B Vol 2, p. 545

[2] http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/cape-town-timeline-1300-1997?page=7

May 10, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Easter 6     Leviticus 25:1-13     Matthew 13: 24-34     

Sermon preached at Evensong Cape Town Cathedral

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

E te whare karakia e tu

E nga mate, haere haere

E te whanau a te karaiti rangimarie

I greet you in the Maori language of the people of Aotearoa, NZ

Greetings

may this house of prayer stand tall

may the ancestors be honoured and remembered

to the family of Christ, peace be with you.

I bring you the greetings of the church of Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia; the greetings of my diocese of Auckland; the greetings of my parish of St Matthew-in-the-City, at the heart of Auckland. It is an honour to stand in this great pulpit of the people’s cathedral.

In the last week I think I and my colleagues who have been visiting from across the Anglican Communion, have felt we are in the kingdom of heaven here in Cape Town. Gorgeous weather, beautiful scenery, warm hospitality, great restaurants and wine. Away from the usual demands of our ministries; enjoying the learning and collegiality.

I think we all like to imagine the kingdom of heaven as some idyllic place far away; like NZ maybe! or an isolated Pacific island; a perfect place of goodness and light. Sounds about right – God’s heaven must be a perfect place.

Well, if we read our passage from the gospel of St Matthew tonight we might have to think again.

We have 3 parables which Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of heaven, and it is not a beach holiday.

We have instead the parable of the wheat and the weeds; the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast.

In the first parable a farmer sows good seed for good wheat in his field, carefully plowed, and tilled and prepared. And overnight an enemy – a rival farmer maybe? sows weeds among the wheat. And the farmer’s slaves say – oh dear let’s get in there quick and weed the plot so the weeds won’t strangle the wheat. But the farmer says, no leave them, we will sort them at harvest time.

Now I know nothing at all about wheat but I am reliably informed that the weeds described here are “darnel wheat” which look exactly like ordinary wheat until the ears of the wheat grow and the real wheat bends over with the weight of the ears; and the false wheat, the darnel wheat stay straight because they bear no fruit, no harvest. So it is not until the harvest that you can tell the difference.

Jesus says “let both of them grow until the harvest”; That little word “let”, apheimi in the Greek, also means to forgive; Forgive them until the harvest…

Matthew adds an explanation and says the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one. But you can’t tell by looking which is which. You can tell later, when they bear grain for the harvest. If God were to judge humanity today as Matthew describes and root out all the evil, all the darnel wheat; none of us would survive. We all have the capacity for evil; we know from history that good people can do unforgivable things. And yet God allows us all to grow in God’s world. God allows us to grow and lets us grow; forgives us as we grow; and waits to see the bearing of the grain, the fruit of our lives. As people of faith we are called to be discerning, to reflect, not to be quick to judge.

And our discernment involves not just our personal actions but the way we react as a society;

the way systemic evils of racism and sexism and economic deprivation wrap their roots around the good wheat and try to strangle them. [1] The way we live and act towards each other can reverse that process and the good roots can strangle the weeds. We are not called to be passive and let evil run rampant; we are called to strengthen the roots of the good wheat, so the darnel wheat cannot strangle the love and hope of God’s people.

Jesus says to us, let the wheat be, let everything grow and take their place in the field, and chances are they will turn out to be good wheat too. The harvest will come, in the meantime you get on with loving and forgiving and believing in the good of my created humanity. Get on with claiming life and hope for your children.

In our visits and presentations in Cape Town this week we have seen many examples of goodness and hope overcoming the evils of the past. But I will not presume to give you examples from your context. But one example from my own.

For people of my generation in NZ the year 1981 is a defining year. As you know we NZers love our rugby; it is our national religion we say. And the Springbok rugby team has always been seen as one of our fiercest and finest opponents.

Way back in 1981 the Springboks were invited to tour NZ to play the All Blacks. But by then of course the whole world was acutely aware of the intolerable suffering of the people of South Africa. And as much as we loved our rugby, to host the team at that time was seen to be supporting the apartheid regime. Many thought sport and politics could be kept separate. Others did not. And so the arguments began across dinner tables, and in families; in workplaces and schools and churches. You were either against the Tour or for the Tour; there was no in between. And for those of us against the tour and especially in the churches we very much saw that this was a time to grow the wheat, to grow the love and hope which would eventually strangle the false wheat of hatred, oppression and apartheid.

What we didn’t realize was how hard people would fight for their rugby; and so the protests began and grew and grew. And the protesters did manage to stop a couple of games going ahead. Our police were forced to defend the rugby stadiums and used violence against the protesters. It was the first time we had seen police in riot gear with batons on our streets. Something of course that was so common then on the streets of South Africa.

The church that I am the rector of now, St Matthew’s, was at the heart of the protest movement. One of the clergy at the time was the chair of MOST “Mobilization to Stop the Tour” – a coalition of all the many protest groups. We have current parishioners who joined the parish at that time, inspired by the sight of the rector in his cassock, celebrating communion on the side of the road for the protesters.

Many years on in 1995 President Nelson Mandela came to NZ to the Commonwealth Heads of Govt meeting. One of his only engagements outside of the official programme was to come to St Matthew’s where he was welcomed and spoke and thanked the people of NZ for their solidarity. People at St Matthew’s still describe that day as our proudest day. We held a commemoration last year on that day and will do so again this year on what will be the 20th anniversary of his visit.

NZ was changed in 1981, the protests and debates about the Tour taught us many things about who we are as a nation while we tried to effect change in a far off land. We were forced to examine more closely our own race relations and identity and our place in the world.

We might have thought we could dig up the darnel wheat easily by just cancelling the tour and so not being seen to condone the apartheid regime. But it was not that simple. In trying to uproot the “evil” we uncovered evil and hatred of our own. And had instead to examine ourselves, and find ways to grow tolerance and respect in our own land, while calling for the same in another land.

Jesus says – let the wheat and the weeds grow – we will sort them at the harvest. Give time for the wheat to grow stronger, let justice and peace flourish, so the weeds might die away.

Jesus goes on to tell two more parables: the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows into a great tree; and the kingdom of heaven is like yeast mixed with flour.

Mustard plants in Palestine are weeds and they certainly do not grow into trees. Matthew places this parable directly following the wheat and the weeds as if to say even the weeds might, if given the chance, grow to something else that will flourish and be useful.

And yeast or leaven was a metaphor for something of bad influence, leaven was in fact “unclean” and Jesus sometimes describes the Pharisees as leaven. [2] But the kingdom of heaven is leaven transformed by the woman who mixes it into bread to feed many.

The kingdom of heaven is not a dream place, it is not a magical holiday in a far off land; but life here and now in all its despair and all its beauty; good and evil mixed in together; we are called to live and to love and to grow; to grow into the people of God as best we can and to pray that at harvesting time God will find only wheat to gather into the barn.

[1] Joni S Sancken p. 330 Preaching God’s Transforming Justice; a lectionary commentary ed Ottoni Wilhelm

[2] Matthew 16:6

May 10, 2015

Jeremy Younger

Easter 6

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Love one another. As we know that’s easier said than done. Love one another. OK look around at all the people here in the pews today. Love one another. Look at the people you’re sitting next to, the people in front and behind you. We are the raw material of God’s love.

Yes. We are told in no uncertain terms to love one another. We are not told to love the nice ones, the respectable ones, the progressive ones, not even the Anglican ones. No, “love one another”. With all it’s difficulty! And Only, that is, if you dare.

Look – We are the evidence. This motley crew.

When we look at the evidence we are confronted immediately with passion – the passion of the Christ. Look at the people here now whom we’re told to love. The writer of John’s Gospel asks us simply to take a chance, to open up to those around us and risk loving. We are the evidence of God’s love hard though it is to see it in each other most of the time.

And this evidence of passion – this passionate evidence – is what we’ve tidied up – tidied away – leaving only the familiar thoughts and feelings and the discomfort of embracing our faith in Christ passionately and inevitably uncomfortably. Keep looking at all the people we’re called on to love.

As Swinburne, the 19th century poet said – “for their comfort’s sake they served up only half a Christ”.

And how tempting that is – to serve up only half a Christ!

I want to think about passion today and I’m aware that faced with that it’s easy to become shy, reserved and embarrassed – to look for easy words and trite ideas that don’t take us over the top or too deep down – that sidestep the full demands of the Gospel and send us home with our sensible sensitivities in tact.

But that won’t do.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, talking about how we make meaning in our talking and in our living, said that ultimately the only thing that has meaning is what we are prepared to die for.

So what does it mean in our living out of our Christian faith to be prepared to die for what we believe.

Here I believe is the context of the passion – passion in all its varied and rich forms: passion from its root passio meaning pain and suffering, passion meaning the crucifixion of the Christ, passion meaning the orgasmic, ecstatic energy of loving abandon and sex.

Pain, death and sex have always sat close together and even embraced each other; it’s no accident that, in the Middle Ages in English and, still to this day, in French, the metaphor for orgasm is “the little death”!

Pain, sex and death then – passion’s trinity.

• Are we, when we try and hide our pain, rather than see it as giving us information about ourselves and our God, are we dumbing down our faith to nothing more than a harmless religious sit-com – an Anglican, Coronation Street – that helps us pass a pleasant hour or two each week but keeps the reality, that we tuck out of sight, from disturbing us?

• In turning the pain and suffering of the death of the Christ into hot cross buns and family services, who are we protecting from the passion, the children or ourselves?

• In keeping sexuality out of sight – when we ignore and repress the glorious sexiness that is part of Christian worship and Christian experience and history – when we ignore the sexuality that informs us and excites us whenever we get together intimately, closely, with each other – in doing all this are we shutting off a vital part of God’s incarnation at the very heart of each of us. After all we all have sex lives, whether it’s in our heads or our beds?

How easily, I reckon, that can happen – passion gets destroyed – without guile, without manipulation, in good faith, in so many ways, but destroyed none the less.

I know how much of a temptation this is in the work I do as a psychotherapist, the temptation to help people fit into a passionless world – the temptation to meet the desire of my patients for help to survive an unsatisfactory, dull, painful life – unsatisfactory, yes, but so familiar – rather than risk the unknown, the unfamiliar chance of a life of passionate intensity and creative living.

How easily we do that in the church as well – offering people an anodyne, safe, exorcised experience where people can belong because little is demanded of them and little is celebrated other than the sanctification of the normal – the passionless – where inclusive means anything safe – where acceptance means no one is ever challenged to tell their real story and be their real selves.

What I am suggesting is that we look for that place in ourselves, that part of us as a community and as individuals where passion lies hidden, where we can feel it tentatively, an echo of how things once were and still might be, and rather than hide the pain and the ecstasy, risk showing it, encouraging it, letting it live, letting it transform us into the passionate, ecstatic people we can be.

Amen.

May 3, 2015

Linda Murphy

Easter 5     John 15:1-8

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

As many of you know Peter and I have a large garden and since Easter I have been doing a lot of pruning. I have had experience pruning a garden before however this year I am pruning our newly planted orchard of olive and fruit trees. It’s no longer about getting rid of cross-over branches and letting the light In it’s about encouraging new season fruit. I have found this both challenging and scary, a cut with my secateurs in the wrong direction or on the wrong part of the branch will mean no fruit next year. John’s gospel today may resonate on a practical level, however this reading also provides us all with much more to think about.

Cynthia Bourgeault describes Eastertide as a time of continuing training for the disciples. This was a time of reassuring and gaining confidence. It was a time of learning to go out into the world with the message of the “Way”. In today’s vernacular the disciples were on an intensive training programme or more like a boot camp of the 1st century.

Given that all the gospels give the disciples bad press prior to Easter, we must admire how they found their courage and resolve with the assistance of Jesus’, through the unnerving but nevertheless reassuring appearance and presence of the Holy Spirit.

The text today has a political and social dimension. The way of Jesus has already begun. Fruit is being produced, which means that hierarchies are being challenged and all people are welcome and affirmed as they travel on the way. Producing fruit is the whole purpose of the community of faith. To produce fruit means to follow the way of Jesus.

John’s use of the vineyard metaphor has a great deal to do with the context in which he wrote between 90-95 CE. This was a time in the early followers’ community’s life, of painful separation from their Jewish roots to which many of its members belonged. The followers of the Way were being expelled from the synagogues. These were uncertain times with the loss of connection, loss of family, loss of homes and loss of land.

This metaphor of the vineyard relies on Hebrew Scripture’s images of God’s people being part of God’s vineyard, Israel. This image in John develops in a new direction. Together ‘believing’ and ‘abiding’ point both to the reality of “life in Christ” and to the characterisation of that life not in some hope of a future reunion in heaven, but to the promise of that abundant life in the here and now.

“I am the vine” in that promise we are transformed by a new reality in which we are empowered through our baptism where we are commissioned as disciples. Just as Jesus is intimately related to God, so the branches can do nothing unless they abide in relationship with Jesus. “I am the vine, you are the branches are not words of command or judgement they are words of invitation and promise.

Jesus envisions and promises a dynamic and changing life for the disciple community. The vines are pruned and cleansed. The branches that wither and die are removed. These actions all point to a constantly changing community that is called to be involved, energised and doing.

Everything that God does including his work of pruning and cleansing the branches is tempered and understood through the ‘word’ that Jesus is and has spoken to his disciples.

In our garden we have a grape vine which has been neglected for many years and it is an unruly tangled mess. It is so tangled and unruly any fruit is very small and generally uneatable although the wasps seem to like it. My grape vine reminds me that being a member of the Christian community is a vine-y, branch-y jumbled mess of us and Jesus and others. Being part of the Christian community means being involved and dealing with the messy bits and working towards cleansing and pruning which may involve challenging authority or just getting involved and making change happen for the better of our local community or our world. Nevertheless for change be achieved courage and vision for a better world needs faith and lots of it.

This image of course is contrary to our Western Individualism and consumer culture. We live in a world that upholds the false promise of the self. We can stave off the insult of sin and even aging with the right combination of exercise, self-care and a particular diet. But Christianity is different. Jesus reminds us that we are dependent on God and on one another.

To abide in Jesus means the how is more important than the where or even the why and when that happens you experience a kind of freedom. A freedom from the grips of targets, objectives, goals and everything else that stops us realising that the kingdom is here and now.

For many of us in this congregation St Matthew’s is our abiding place we feel at home and connected. The vine image is another way of talking about abiding places (places where one is deeply at home), and both the vine and the abiding places are ways of expressing love and connection.

This week we have seen more riots in the US expressing a divide between the black community and their police force. This situation is a far cry from Martin Luther King’s dream for racial equality in the United States. In New Zealand especially in Auckland we have many families living in garages or cars. At the Mission we have many on the Housing New Zealand waiting list who have been sleeping rough for months. This is not the image most of us want in our own community or country. The messy vineyard needs pruning and cleansing. This is the continuing message of this gospel for us.

The early church used the Greek term “mystagogy” that translates as mystery to refer to the period that we’re now in: these Great Fifty Days between Easter and Pentecost. For the early church this was a time for the newly baptised, along with the entire church community to become immersed in the mysteries of the Christian faith. This is the period of time in which we are all invited to intentionally reflect on the mysteries of God’s grace alive in the world and to respond to these mysteries with our full lives, to live abundantly.

Today in our first reading from the Book of Acts were heard of Philip the disciple and a deacon baptising the Ethiopian Eunuch. After our service This morning I will be baptising Evelyn and we welcome her parents and brother into our community of faith here at St Matthews. Amanda and Scott were married here some four years ago and I had the pleasure of verging their marriage ceremony. Today I have the double pleasure and honour of baptising their daughter and welcoming them all into our community of faith.

Our lives express our relationship with Christ as the vine for which we are the branches. Our fruit bearing comes from that relationship. Jesus’ promise to us is that he will be with us abide with us. He asks that we make the same promise to him and bear fruit for his loving kingdom.

Amen.

April 26, 2015

Wilf Holt

Easter 4

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

In our Gospel reading today we hear of the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. For some these passages can lead to images of atonement – how Jesus became the sacrificial lamb. We hear of the wolf and the hired hands, we hear of sheep that don't belong to the fold – again for some useful images.

There is another image – the image John paints of Jesus' being prepared to face danger and death for the sake of his disciples and on this ANZAC weekend it's that image I would like to explore a little.

In my last year at St Johns College I spent three months at Auckland hospital completing my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) training. I was given responsibility for 2 wards – a general surgical ward and a geriatric ward on the top floor. I remember initially being wary of the prospect of visiting and talking with the top floor "oldies". Whilst I'd had considerable experience in working with families, children and adults as a therapist and counselor – I hadn't ever worked with anyone older than their mid SO's. My only real experience with those of ancient years was hospital visiting with my mother or father as a child. Dad regularly visited in his roll as a RSA committee member or as the almoner of the local Masonic Lodge – handing out bars of chocolates and cigarettes – as was the practice in those days. Mum visited in her own capacity bourn out of a practical Christianity that saw no new family arrive in the town without a cake being quickly produced or anyone who was ill not receiving a visit – either at home or in hospital.

And it was hospital image that stayed with me. The rather intimidating matrons with their crisp demeanor only matched by the crispness of their starched cotton, the all pervading smell of J's Fluid (or something similar), the echoing dimly lit corridors and the hushed bedside conversation.

Resigned to my ward allocations, I quickly established myself in the general ward and then 2 days later walked up the stairs to the 10th floor. (I guess dragging my heels a little as I didn't take the lift.) I opened the ward door – scanning for the whereabouts of any crisp matrons and made for the nearest bed.

The bed was occupied by a clear eyed and rather well looking English lady. I introduced myself explaining that I was a student on CPE, had been ordained in the Anglican Church and that I would be visiting the ward on a regular basis.

Quick as a flash she replied in a strong and precise voice, "I've had nothing to do with the Church since the Bishop blessed the bombers".

Right – I thought – I knew wards like this could be dangerous places – especially theologically. What do I say now?

Hmm – Great I thought – I'd just recently handed in an assignment concerning the principles and conduct of Just War – perhaps I could explore that with her. You know the theory – perhaps to recap.

Just War – A body of Christian thinking that sought to answer the simple question "can a Christian ever justifiably take part in violence, in war"?

I could explain that much of what we today recognize as a Christian Just War tradition stems from the thinking and writing of people such as St Augustine of Hippo and Ambrose of Milan. And that as the needs of Christian states changed over time the church through Councils, cannon law and its own thinkers developed the tradition that we now know as a Doctrine or theory of Just War. A Doctrine that offers a starting point as to whether a war could be morally justified and if so how was it to be conducted.

The principles of the justice of war are commonly held to be:

1. Being a last resort. A just war can only be fought once all peaceful options have been discarded – war only as a last resort.

2. Being declared by a proper authority. Any just war can only be persecuted by a legitimate authority.

3. Having just cause. Self defense or defense of others less capable of defending them selves. Needs to be in response to a wrong suffered.

4. Possessing right intention. The primary objective of a just war is to re-establish peace. In particular, the peace after the war should exceed the peace that would have succeeded without the use of force. The aim of the use of force must be justice.

5. There must be serious and genuine prospects of success. A nation can not initiate a war for jingoistic or self serving political ends.

6. The end being proportional to the means used. The violence in a just war must be proportional to the casualties suffered. A nation cannot enter into a war with a hopeless cause. The nations involved in the war must avoid disproportionate military action and only use the amount of force absolutely necessary.

Then I thought – probably not a good idea – that's a bit dry given her situation, and Just War theory does seem to be honored more in its breach by even those nations that proclaim to be motivated by some Christian principles. And experience also suggests that Governments seem to be more motivated by political realism – rather than striving for moral decision making when contemplating the waging of war.

So how to respond?

Is she saying that she disregards the use of any violence as an option for humans to solve their disagreements or problems? Or is she saying that to bless a bomber was going too far – that the church had somehow gone a bridge to far by associating inappropriately with weapons of war. Perhaps blessing just the pilots might have been ok. No-No a bit provocative perhaps.

What else – yes I thought what did the early church fathers have to say on the matter – those who were closest in time to the life of Jesus?

Well initially they didn't have much to say- but as the new church began to mature we know the Patristic writers had objections to participation in war.

1. Rome's persecution of Christians

2. Fear of idolatry and divided loyalties in military service

3. Immorality amongst soldiers

4. Aversion to bloodshed

5. Anticipation of the immanent end of earthly society and suspicion of the world.

Perhaps I could talk about the struggles Christian in adjusting to living within the Roman Empire – an imaginary dinner table conversation perhaps involving a young 18 year old Christian beseeching his family to be allowed to join the fire brigade. The anguish of the parents at the thought of their son joining the army – for it was the army in those days that provided roman fire brigades.

Then I thought a quick biblical exegesis covering the main arguments for or against the use of violence might be appropriate. Perhaps I could outline some of those biblical passages indicating that participation in war was not necessarily forbidden to Christians.

Luke 7:9 The healing of the centurions servant.

The manner in which Jesus spoke to the centurion at Capernaum "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." Lets remember that the Centurion makes it plain that he is someway up the military hierarchy – "For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go, ' and he goes; and that one, 'Come, ' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." Not just a soldier – an officer.

Romans 13:1-7

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

Pay to all what is due them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Peter 2:14

For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors.

No I thought – better not – I'm not sure if this lady still regards the scriptures as of any value. If I am to assist this woman as a chaplain then I need to respond to her in her own situation,

Then I thought – I'm not sure if this lady still regards the scriptures as of any value. If I am to assist this woman as a chaplain then I need to respond to her appropriately.

Perhaps I could encourage her to talk about her response to the bishop's actions.

As it turned out we had many conversations. She talked about being brought up 'in the faith' and regularly attending and enjoying church – until that moment when she heard of the bomber blessings.

SHE REMEMBERED BEING SHOCKED AND NOT QUITE KNOWING WHAT SHE WAS SHOCKED ABOUT.

She talked about the awfulness of what was happening in her country and in Europe. She spoke in a manner that initially indicated confusion as to what she should think. I very quickly realized however that this wasn't confusion – she was very clear on many things.

She spoke quietly about the evilness of war, the awfulness of losing family and friends, the fear of losing the war and what that might mean. She talked about knowing that someone had to stop Hitler that someone had to fight. She knew that her people needed to apply every energy to waging and winning this war.

She also spoke of how her village vicar had been part of her and her family's life since her birth, of the same bishop who had confirmed her and of the church that had appeared to abhor violence – and here it was blessing the bombers – would they be blessing individual bombs next – the very people who spoke of love, forgiveness and peace. She spoke of the turmoil that that these conflicting emotions and observations had for her.

This seemed to be a deep metaphysical turmoil – how to reconcile the message of peace and love to the reality of what was happening around her and her family.

But these were conversations yet to come.

Then I thought that perhaps I could talk about my own thoughts and feelings concerning participation in war. About how I had joined the army as an 18 year old and how I remembered being disappointed at missing out on Vietnam – the last draft headed out to Vietnam a week after I arrived at Waiouru to begin my basic training. I could tell her about my gratefulness years later at not going to Vietnam. I could talk about the awful things that happened in that war – on both sides.

I could talk about my sons who I hoped would never have to fight and yet knowing that I would be immensely proud of any of them if they did join the military. I could talk about how difficult it would be to balance pride and fear at the same time.

As it turned out one of my sons did join up and trained as a mortar man and as a peace keeper, subsequently serving in that capacity in the Solomon Islands. I know from a fellow St Johns student how grateful the Solomon Islanders were at the presence of our soldiers. The real difference the peacekeeping force made in their lives.

I could talk about the traditional blessing of the Colors – the regimental flags and Guidons of military units. How those Colors helped develop and maintain esprit de corps of the members of that unit – especially important when feelings of loyalty and responsibility to a common group is so important.

I could talk about how I would struggle to bless personal weapons but how I could and have blessed individual items such a pounamu. Perhaps I could explore the conversation I might have if asked to bless a pounamu mere.

I could explain that bombers or aircraft were in fact like regimental colors to the air force – as guns are to the artillery.

In the end I said none of these things.

"I've had nothing to do with the Church since the Bishop blessed the bombers" she said.

I didn't really say anything – I just said a ah – not the condemning sort of Aha, more the collegial questioning aah ha.

She replied with a "hmm" sort of sound – not a condemning sort of "hmmp" more a "hmm" lets take this a little further.

And we did for the next few days – talking much about the stuff we've just talked about and more.

Talking about how important it was to talk of these things – to agree to disagree, and despite differing points of view we knew we held common hopes and could pray as one about the same things. We didn't talk too much about what might be – only how over the years she had tried to encourage the ways of peace in her own small way – peace in the village, peace in her family – perhaps more strongly because the Bishop had blessed the bombers.

We chatted about all this and more.

Then one day she was gone.

Amen.

April 12, 2015

Susan Adams

Low Sunday     Acts 2:14a, 22-32     1 John 1:1-2:2     John 20:19-31

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Did you enjoy all the Easter celebrations – the music, the rituals and the liturgies?

Beautiful, awesome, very moving...

Did any of it raise any questions for you?

Any 'why are we doing this', or 'what does this mean', or 'do I believe that?'

Well, today is Low Sunday, a great day to be in church because we get to say "whew, what was all that about?" we can be honest...

It's a bit like the morning after the night before ... when we are all a bit bemused and tired, and wondering if it was worth the effort, or if we had got caught up in the enthusiasms of others.

The gospel reading set for this Sunday tells the same story each year ... that could be because everyone is too tired after the Easter hype to think of anything new ... but that's not it. The reading we hear is from John's Gospel, the gospel that is read at significant liturgical events during the year.

• It is the gospel that intervenes in the ongoing flow of the narrative the other three gospels tell week by week in their respective years.

• It is the, primarily, theological gospel and as such less concerned with history-telling than with theological meaning.

• The writer was not an eye-witness to the events, but writing 50 or more years after the crucifixion.

The reading from John's Gospel about Thomas, that we have heard this morning, is not a reading about an historical event: it is not history it is theology. It is asking "what was all that about?", it is trying to make sense of experience (that is what theology does) – it is part of the 'after-party-debrief'. It opens the way for the question "What have we got ourselves caught up in?"

The disciples try to tell Thomas what they had experienced last time they met together, when he was not present, and he – in parallel to the other disciples own response to Mary's story of meeting Jesus in the garden – says as it were, "yeah right!" or " I doubt it." Then we hear the "don't tell me show me" cliché arising from his doubt about the veracity of his friends fantastical story. He seems to be a 'seeing is believing' sort of person.

• What we have in this story-telling by John, is on the one hand, a contextual insight: a clear indication that secrecy and deception are prevalent in the Mediterranean culture of that time. This was a way of protecting oneself and family and of getting ahead of the pack as it were – we still say "information is power" and in some places you don't share everything you know or your sources! Thomas was challenging what he thought was an attempt to deceive. Secret knowledge was big, it could give you an edge!

• And on the other hand, the story portrays the all too human predilection to scepticism, to doubt when we are faced with strange and unlikely stories. This is what we hear today – Thomas's doubt about the interpretation his friends were putting on their experience and his suspicion they were covering something up, not telling the whole story plainly – he wants proof.

Doubt gets such bad press in Christian circles. It is something most of don't want to own up to. We mostly feel we should be persuaded, certain, convinced about the 'truth' of it all – 'believe' the fantasmogorical, metaphysical, supra-natural – 'dead-man-walking' and all.

I want to remind us that it is doubt, not certainty that is the key to it all!

Doubt is the key to faith, and it is faith, not belief, or certainty, that will help us to be resilient followers of Christ into new life in our time.

This is the theological conundrum the writer of John's gospel is exploring!

The most robust faith comes out of a struggle with doubt – witness some our most revered spiritual writers and thinkers ... (Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Fredrick Buechner, JK Baxter ...) None were 100% certain about it all, this Christian faith stuff, they had a corner for the 'yeah, right!'

Further, it is important to acknowledge that without the questions that doubt gives rise to: the "Why?" "What?", "Who says" – without the capacity to doubt, there could have been no progress in our knowledge and understanding of our world and all we know about today. We would have had only a docile, unquestioning acceptance of the status quo – including unquestioning acceptance of what our old, established theologian/scientists who explained the world and all there is, in light of what they knew and understood in their time.

Galileo, one of the famous scientist/theologians, said "Doubt is the father of discovery." It is the courage to say "I doubt", that has led to great discoveries, including Galileo's own sun / earth role reversal.

It seems to me, that when we have the courage to voice our doubts, without buying into the churches guilt, then we are nudging toward the robust faith that encourages us to question; that enables us to doubt while continuing in faith!

There is liberty, freedom, life, for us in this as we engage our imaginations in exploring our world and our faith. The theologian and gospel-writer 'John' is (as the last verse of the first ending of the Gospel makes clear), concerned that though we have not seen with our own eyes the wounds of death in the body of Jesus, we have heard about them. We have heard too, of the different life, the vibrant edgy life, that Jesus offered to those who followed in the way he was teaching about and shaping amongst those who gathered around him. 'John' is inviting all who hear to have faith in the death and new life stories we hear handed down. He invites us to consider the experiences of others alongside our own, and to engage our imagination as to the possibilities of living in a world renewed and revitalised.

Jesus was embracing a risky lifestyle, aimed at social change through challenge to the status quo – to those of the state and the temple who held in place discrimination, corruption and all other practices and judgements that limited the fullness of life for the people of the general population.

If we are to continue lives of faith in the manner of Jesus, lives that demonstrate acceptance, kindness, compassion and concern for others; lives willing to take a risk, then we must find the courage to point out and to name the places where change is required. It's not too difficult to name low wages, lack of affordable housing, senior citizen vulnerability, places of discrimination, the narrowing of educational options, the reduction of news and social analysis, all of which lead to a more vulnerable and risk adverse community; to a more malleable, biddable population, that play into the hands of those who hold power – in church and state.

Jesus was convinced there was a way of life that was more hopeful, kinder, respectful of those who were different and caring of those who were struggling, a way of life that Jesus was calling people of his day to live. It is this life the writer of John's Gospel was convinced was available to everyone whether or not they had seen or touched the death wounds of Jesus. This is the new life, the resurrection life, that we are invited to embrace – even if from time to time we doubt the stories we hear, doubt the vision, despair of a world restored to harmony, and doubt our capacity to participate. Wherever we are on the spectrum of faith, we are – with all our doubt and despair – invited to live in faith that life will overcome death, and that we can be part of it.

So we might pray with many who have gone before us: "God, through my doubt, strengthen my faith."

April 5, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Easter Day     Acts 10:34-43     Mark 16:1-8

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Imagine you are a cricket fan 200 years from now and you are reviewing ancient digital footage; it is the 2015 World Cup cricket semi final between NZ and South Africa; 2 balls to go; and the footage runs out. Technology has not preserved Grant Elliott’s 6. You know about it because the story has become legend and has been passed down through generations of cricket lovers.

But frustratingly there is no ending for the game. The footage stops before the game is finished.

Today’s gospel reading from Mark does just that. It stops in the middle of a sentence. "The women went out from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, they were afraid for..."

That’s how it reads in Greek, ending the sentence and the Gospel with a preposition – “for”. The most important story of the Christian faith just stops and the end just hangs out there.

And we are left waiting for that 6. We know how it ends; the disciples see the risen Jesus – right? he eats fish with them on the beach; they talk. Well, not in Mark’s gospel. Lamar Williamson says "When is an ending not an end? When a dead man rises from the tomb, and when a Gospel ends in the middle of a sentence." [1]

Several ancient versions of the Gospel attempted to fix this anomaly by adding another ending. Most Bibles print 3 different endings for Mark. The so called longer ending of Mark has an appearance to Mary Magdalene, like John’s gospel; then a short description of the Emmaus story which is from Luke; and a command to go into all the world – like the ending of Matthew’s gospel. But the style of writing is so different that you can tell, even in English, that these were added by another hand, by someone who wanted to make Mark’s Gospel sound like the others, by someone who wanted an ending.

Mark’s gospel was the first one to be written and the original writer was obviously happy with his ending, but scribes in the second century added the other endings. Even back then, there was some editor who was saying: "We can’t have this. We need a conclusion! We need to wrap this up so that, we can bring up the background music, roll the credits and let people leave with a good feeling about this. We can’t have: "they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid!" [2] We have to see that 6 cross the boundary.

On an Easter morning 2000 years on, it is hard to relate back to the fear and uncertainty of the first Easter Day. We have centuries of theology, of paintings, of music, of films, which somewhat sanitise the picture and make it full of happy images, even with a few fluffy chicks creeping in.

But the gospel we read today clearly shows us the stark fresh story. And it is a story which begins in fear and silence. The feminist theologians always remind us in the other versions that it was the women who first spread the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. But here even the women are silenced, or have not yet found their voice.

This in a way is typical of Mark’s gospel, the disciples are no heroes, they don’t understand who Jesus is. Nobody gets it really. And earlier in the gospel the disciples are told not to say who Jesus is for fear of the Romans, and for fear of being misunderstood.

Mark’s account is very real – of course the women would have been terrified. Most of the disciples were already hidden, their teacher and leader had been brutally killed, for all they knew they could be next. The Roman rule was very oppressive and their hopes for a revolution had been dashed.

And yet out of love for Jesus the women went to the tomb, to tend the body as was their custom. It had not been bathed and anointed as was fitting. And they wanted to complete their tasks. But to their horror, even this last dignity was taken away from them. The body was gone. There was an angel there, but seeing an angel doesn’t really help – just one more thing to make you scared.

I said in my sermon on Good Friday that our only response when confronted with the crucifixion of Jesus is one of silence. We are left wordless in the face of the pain and forsaken-ness of it all. But on Easter Day we come expecting joy and song, not silence. Today we have silence again; even from those women.

How often I wonder do we find ourselves silent? Silent when we have good news to share, or silent when we have fears to share. Silent about the things we really want to do or say; silent about our dreams because we are worried we will seem silly, or silent about our hopes because no one else might share them. Or silent about someone we love in case they don’t feel the same.

Or are we silenced – silenced by a bully at work or school, silenced by lack of money or skills, silenced by poverty, or illness, silenced by an abuse of power.

As we look at our world this Easter Day we know there are thousands, millions who are silenced. Refugees in Syria; the kidnapped girls of Nigeria, the Palestinians of the Gaza strip; slaves of ISIS; political prisoners in so many countries; journalists who cannot write; singers who cannot sing. Some of these causes get a voice for a day or two on social media; the favourite hashtag goes viral and then is quiet again.

The lack of an ending to Mark’s gospel could also be political – Mark is writing in about the year 70, around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; Jews are being massacred; life is full of terror. So “they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid” is still very real for Mark’s community. And like all political movements know – stuff that is written down can be held against you. A written copy of the gospel with a resurrected Jesus in it was most definitely seditious. Better not to write it down. The first century version of Wikileaks is sure to leak it.

So we don’t know how the women of Mark’s gospel found their voice. But I’m guessing it was something to do with remembering how much Jesus loved them and they him. And thinking again about the angel’s instructions to go and tell. And remembering many of the confusing things he had taught them about the first being last; and losing your life to find it; and the poor being blessed. And then finding within themselves a seed of hope which said – maybe – maybe – he has come back to us. Finding our voice in a world rather too dominated by bad news stories is about finding hope and love and good news in those around us; we all have seeds of hope, sparks of love.

Mark’s gospel ends abruptly but I think the editor knew that was where everyone else’s story would pick up and continue. And by not giving us the script, the next part of the story is so much more our own; for our time; and our own context. Your story and mine is the next chapter. What we do with the Jesus story is the next chapter.

When you find your voice this Easter day what story will you choose to tell? Grant Elliott hit a 6. That we know. The women eventually told what they had seen that first Easter Day. An empty tomb. The hope Jesus had brought them in life was real in death also. What hope do you add to the story today? Claim it; claim life and love and hope, find your voice, for it is your voice which continues the story.

[1] Mark: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching p283, 2009

[2] http://www.csec.org/index.php/archives/23-member-archives/264-cynthia-campbell-program-4427

April 3, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Good Friday     Mark 15:16-47

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“Good Friday presents us with a stark duality – human power revealed as hostile to meaning and hope, and divine meaning and hope exposed as completely vulnerable to human power.” [1] (Rowan Williams)

The Mark version of the crucifixion story is stark.

It is the first version to be recorded.

It has Mark’s signature style of simplicity and focus.

No words wasted.

No analysis and theologizing.

Yet the clash of worlds and power is there for all to see.

On one side human power – represented by the palace, the governor’s headquarters; the whole cohort of soldiers; the purple cloak which is a sign of royalty, and the crown of thorns; Jesus is labelled King of the Jews and the soldiers pay homage to him.

Mark’s community are to be in no doubt that this was a political execution.

Jesus is crucified between two bandits, not “robbers” as is sometimes translated.

These are not thieves who break into your house; these are bandits – armed rebels who steal and plunder from those in power. [2] 

This is the same word Jesus uses when he throws the moneychangers out of the Temple – “you have made it into a den of robbers”; you are just like the bandits roaming our roads. (Mark 11:17).

Then there is religious power – those who pass by mock him and remind him that he said he would destroy the temple and build it in three days; the chief priests have the upper hand now. They will protect their Temple.

After Jesus dies the curtain of the Temple is torn in two.

This was the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple.

Only the high priest was allowed to go behind the curtain which was where the ark of the covenant was kept – God himself was thought to dwell there.

The curtain is torn from top to bottom – not by human hands.

And the account finishes with Joseph of Arimathea going to Pilate to ask for the body – just to remind us about Pilate again – and political power.

Political and religious power triumph.

“human power revealed as hostile to meaning and hope” [3]

In the middle of Mark’s account the political language pauses and we hear that complete and utter vulnerability: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark has darkness cover the land to emphasise this darkest of hours.

There is nothing left.

The politics don’t matter.

The religious debates don’t matter.

All is lost.

Jesus is alone and forsaken.

Like a mother holding her dying child;

like a refugee in Syria with no food, a father who cannot feed his children;

like a slave held by ISIS;

like people in a plane crashing into a mountain;

like a child fearing their abuser.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”

“divine meaning and hope exposed as completely vulnerable to human power.” [4]

Gospel writers Matthew and Mark include the words “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”; Luke and John do not – edited out maybe because they are too stark; too alone.

And yet I think these words are the heart of today, Good Friday.

They tell us that God does not flinch from pain, our pain, it is real, it is not pretend.

One of the early heresies of the church was that Jesus did not really die – he somehow slipped away.

Mark has Pilate double check with the centurion that Jesus is really dead – yes he is dead.

“divine meaning and hope exposed as completely vulnerable to human power.” [5]

Rowan Williams says all we can then do is to keep silent before the cross. He says all there is “is our own stillness, learning to look death in the face” [6].

We look at death, and because we find God there then we are not afraid.

It is not that we do not suffer, we do.

It is not that we do not feel our pain and the pain of others, we do.

But we are not afraid.

Rowan Williams again – the cross “is the darkness in which God is allowed to be God, in which the world descending into inner chaos, returns to the very moment of creation, when God speaks into the darkness. Our silence, our acceptance of the death of creation in the death of Jesus, makes room for the word that recreates the broken world.” [7]

Silence with the bell.

[1] Rowan Williams “The Shadow of the Crucifix” in Darkness Yielding ed Jim Cotter et al

[2] Greek word is lestes/ lestai “Bandit was the generic term for any rebel or insurrectionist who employed armed violence against Rome or the Jewish collaborators.” Reza Aslan Zealot p18

[3] Rowan Williams “The Shadow of the Crucifix” in Darkness Yielding ed Jim Cotter et al

[4] op cit

[5] op cit

[6] op cit

[7] op cit

March 22, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Lent 5     Jeremiah 31:31-34     Psalm 119:9-16     Hebrews 5:5-10     John 12:20-33

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They were a group of Greeks, foreigners; they come to Philip, one of the disciples and say “we wish to see Jesus”. Philip is not sure what to do – Greeks?! really? are we going to waste the Master’s time with more foreigners? So he goes to consult Andrew and together they go to ask Jesus. Safety in numbers.

If a foreign tourist came up to you as you were walking into the church and said “we wish to see Jesus” what would you say? You might be a bit perplexed but you would probably invite them into church?

But if they came up to you on the street away from here, or at your workplace, or across your neighbour’s fence and said “we wish to see Jesus”; first of all you might think they were a little crazy. But if they insisted – They wish to see, to know, to experience Jesus. [1]

You might say

• when I look after my grandchildren and see their delight in playing on the beach I know the joy of Jesus

• when I sit with someone as a volunteer at the hospice I know the courage of Jesus

• when I serve one of the street people who come to the City Mission for dinner I experience Jesus as the one who is serving

• when I rage in grief at the loss of someone who died too young. I hear the words of Jesus – my God why have you forsaken me

• when I have achieved something at work or school that was complicated, and took all my focus, I hear the parables of Jesus from everyday work situations – the farmer, the vinegrower, the merchant, the woman at the well

• when after all the years of protest apartheid ended in South Africa I saw the justice Jesus preached about becoming real

• and you might say – I wish to see Jesus too, who seems elusive often, and other times so present. And so I come to worship, to be in community, and to seek nourishment, to know him.

You might talk about the sermons we have heard over the last month as we have journeyed through Lent. How Carolyn Kelly spoke about the wilderness, how sometimes we need to be lost to be found. And how the city around us can be a wilderness where we are lost; or it can be a wilderness where we find life and energy.

How George Armstrong showed us how to see Jesus as a prophet and how we can see him in the prophetic actions of others; naming things as they are.

How Stephen Jacobi described Jesus the zealot calling out the actions of the powerful, and challenging the less powerful in our assumptions and beliefs.

How Michael Bell shows us that we can see and hear and feel Jesus in our music as we gather for worship. Michael said there is a change in quality which is difficult to explain between a love song and a song about God as love.

We wish to see Jesus – what would you say?

A couple of weeks ago some of us went to hear Lillian Daniells, a speaker from the US, at St John’s College. She writes and speaks about the SBNRs – spiritual but not religious – SBNR.

She said in trying to accommodate the SBNRs and many others who do not come to church we have developed a script that goes like this: “you can just come, nothing is required of you; you don’t have to do or think anything” “and so we thought of you”. And because that sounds really underwhelming we add “our church has great music” – as if there is nowhere else people can find great music. “Our church has great people” – as if there is nowhere else people can meet great people – and then she pointed out, we are lying because we don’t think all the people at church are great!

And we are not answering the question – which is – where can we see Jesus?

What is it about our life and experience of faith which draws us here; what is it that we value in our own faith which makes us want to share that faith with others. I know in our very secular A/NZ context we find it hard to talk openly about our faith. Faith is ridiculed and belittled all the time in the media and in the public domain. We feel awkward.

But new people show up here every Sunday and in my office during the week looking for something, looking for Jesus.

How do we answer; what do we offer? Going back to the original story with the Greeks and Philip and Andrew buddying up for support; what answer does Jesus give? Well we don’t know if the Greeks actually ever got to see Jesus. But Jesus says to Philip and Andrew – “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Which doesn’t really seem to be an answer to the question. “Those who lose their life will save it.” That’s not an answer either. Or is it?

Jesus’ answers are about himself and those who will follow. Jesus will lose his life and find it;

in baptism we are called to “die to our sins” and to be born anew; over and over again each year in our liturgical cycle at the beginning of Lent we are marked with ash; then we walk this road to the cross and come through to the other side; like a grain that dies in order to bear fruit.

In our answers to the person who says – we wish to see Jesus – you might say

• I see Jesus best when I have decluttered my life of too many possessions

• when I give a decent donation to the Vanuatu appeal even when I think I really can’t afford it; and cut back on dinners out instead

• when I sacrifice some time to help a neighbour who most of the time I find really annoying

• when I lose myself in the music on a Sunday morning

And then what about us as a faith community together; what image do we project?

How do we present ourselves to the city, to our neighbours? When the city comes calling and wants to know what we are about? Do we know? Can we answer that question?

As we gather for our AGM this morning we have some written reports which tell us something of what we are about. They are an important record of our activities over the last year. Are they any help to us in the conversation that begins – we wish to see Jesus? Let’s find out as we talk together after the service.

[1] The word the Greeks use is “eido” which means to see, and to know, and to experience.

March 15, 2015

Michael CW Bell

Lent 4

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When Helen first approached me about presenting a talk on Lenten Music in place of a sermon, my first thought was, “Are you for real?” Then my second thought was, “Oh boy.” And then after starting my research into the topic – again: “Is she for real?”. The reason for the latter was that it quickly became clear that to make a talk on music in Lent is amusing because historically it is the very season when music was quite often cancelled! Well, it is true where, for example, in Baroque Leipzig “quiet time" was observed between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Only the feast of Annunciation was celebrated with a cantata, even if it fell in that time. Of course, however, this was not the case everywhere, where music was heard it was performed mostly a cappella or unaccompanied.

Just as a reminder of where we come from there are actually six Catholic “no-no’s” during the season:

1. no instrumental music unless accompanying voices

2. no singing or saying the gloria

3. no singing or saying the alleluia before the Gospel

4. no flowers on the altar

5. no emptying holy water fonts

6. no veiling crosses before the 6th Sunday of Lent

Despite the restrictions placed on composers, there has been an abundance of beautiful music composed and performed for Lent when we are trying to find ourselves in relation to Christ. So Helen is for real and understands that there is much I could call upon to discuss today.

The beauty of the character of this season might be lost on people in the modern world because the idea of penance is not so very popular today. But just as we need desperately the season of winter – as we say at St Matthew’s “for the heart”, we need the season of Lent as an introverted preparation for Holy Week and its glorious finale. For composers who are quite often introverted people, Lent offers great inspiration. Take for example, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, Palestrina’s Stabat Mater and Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) that is often heard in the requiem mass like that of Mozart. Then there are works that offer comfort amid the torment, music like the reflection piece today God So Loved the World by Stainer.

Eric Johnston states that “In a way, Lenten music began before the Church did. Jesus and the apostles sang Passover hymns on the first Holy Thursday, as testified by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The earliest Christians often sang of the passion and death of Christ, although their music is mostly lost.” [1] What we do know, however is that these early hymns were monophonic and sung in unison. These chants are widely agreed to be most penitential type of music and thus are heard frequently during Lent, as are the psalms. These chants prevailed right through the middle ages, growing in complexity until they finally blossomed in the Renaissance into musical structures that began to match the grandeur of the buildings and cathedrals housing their singers. We think of composers such as Josquin Des Prez and Dufay in the 15th century who began to set a tenor cantus firmus with treble descants and fauxbourdon lines mostly a sixth interval harmony beneath.

Thomas Tallis working under various English monarchs in the 1500s saw much conflict within the church. Yet he also left us beautiful consoling music appropriate for Lent such as The Lamentations of Jeremiah. An even greater work is his huge 40-part motet Spem in Alium that fully captures the sorrowful character of the season. The journey from Ash Wednesday through until Easter Sunday is perhaps the most important Christian journey of the year and musically it reflects light coming out of darkness. Out of the Deep by Tallis that will be heard at communion reflects this idea in its rising upper voice and by modulating up by means of a sharp at the end of its first phrase.

There is some argument as to when Lent concludes. Some argue Palm Sunday while others state that the season ends at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. For me to label Bach’s St Matthew and St John Passions as Lenten, some may dispute although they serve in text and music as worthy meditations before Easter. One cantata Bach wrote that is certainly written for Lent is #54 (BWV 54). The opening aria states:

Stand firm against sin,

otherwise its poison seizes hold of you.

Do not let Satan blind you

for to desecrate the honour of God

meets with a curse, which leads to death. 

These words are typical of much of the libretto Bach used for his weekly cantatas – austere and patronising. But what I find wonderful is how such text is married to its exact opposite – the most serene and beautiful music one could ever find anywhere.

The voluntary for today is Bach’s Komm susser Tod (Come Sweet Death). Pablo Casals the famous cellist was in awe of this solemn sacred song and recorded it many times. For me it is a profound essay on the reality of death and even without its text the music paints the deep and conflicting emotions at play upon contemplation of the final act in our lives.

Whatever season we look at in the Christian calendar – Advent, Epiphany, Trinity – the evidence in my own passion is that the music written to convey Divine love as we find in the Christ story – this music reaches depths that I have not ever found in what we label as “secular”. When composers seemed to look “up” rather than “sideways”, they achieved an ecstatic beauty. Excitement and joy, true sorrow, pathos and comfort, I will always come back to it. But what creates this difference? Countless composers have been inspired to write music on the basis of everyday human love – opera, madrigals, symphonies and thousands of love songs. But for me there is always a change in its quality that is difficult to explain. At St Matthews we try to merge or at least marry these traditionally separate worlds – that is, the sacred and secular. For me anyway, human love is divine. The conclusion I must make is that it should not matter. Whatever inspires us in art or music to carry ourselves in the everyday world with better patience, compassion, kindness and love must be worthy of God.

[1] Arlington Catholic Herald 2003

March 8, 2015

Stephen Jacobi

Lent 3     Colossians 1:3-5, 15-20     John 2:13-22

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It’s a long walk from the pew to the pulpit! Now I stand before you mindful of those who have preceded me in speaking words of love and grace, to both powerful and powerless.

“In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:14-16)

This is not Jesus meek and mild. The babe has left the stable and an angry young man displays – at last! – the zealotry his followers hoped he would show but which for three long years he had kept under control. This is the Jesus, the revolutionary, the activist, the protester.

Last year’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar by the Auckland Theatre Company portrayed this scene particularly well. We in the audience were given temple money and as the chorus sang and danced they paraded pictures of the temple authorities and we dutifully filled up their offertory plates.

“Roll on up – for my price is down; Come on in – for the best in town; Take your pick of the finest wine; Lay your bets on this bird of mine”

Jesus had come up from Galilee to Jerusalem, the centre of Jewish political and spiritual identity, and was at the Great Temple, the place where Yahweh dwelled in the Holy of Holies. This was the place Jesus had come as a child with his parents, where he had been recognised as the Messiah by Simeon and Anna, where even as a child he had become engrossed in conversation with the temple teachers. Some thirty years later those pleasant conversations in the temple shade now give way to a different kind of speech. Jesus throughout his ministry always reserved his harshest judgment for the religious authorities, as in St Matthew’s Gospel: “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”. (Matthew 12:34)

And certainly their hypocrisy is on full display at the Temple. There were businesses established in the Temple courts – doves and sacrificial animals were sold to the faithful and money had to be changed since Roman coins with Caesar’s head on them could not be used in the Temple precinct. What seems to rile Jesus is that the religious observance at the Temple had taken second, or even third, place to these commercial endeavours and worse that these had eclipsed the practice of justice, especially to the ‘alien, the orphan and the widow’ [1] that was central to the Jewish belief system.

But Jesus’ protest is not simply about religion. John Dominic Crossan in God and Empire puts it like this. Jesus’ protest “was not against the Temple as such and not against the High Priest as such. It was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism against Jewish religious co-operation with Roman imperial control” [2]

Crossan says that Jesus’ protest was carefully timed and staged for the maximum impact. And Jesus’ target was not just Jerusalem, it was also Rome. It is impossible to understand Jesus of the Gospels without understanding the country and time in which he lived. Jesus was born in extraordinarily violent times. Jesus’ home-town of Nazareth is not far from Sephoris, a city completely destroyed by the Romans and its 30,000 inhabitants either killed or sold into slavery around the time of Jesus’ birth.

As Reza Aslan describes in his book Zealot Jesus must have known about this as he grew up. [3] The Palestine of Jesus was occupied by the Romans and the “pax Romana” which settled over the country was very much a double-edged sword. The Romans’ political power over the country was enforced by the harsh military discipline of Roman legions, a military force quite unlike anything that had preceded it. At the same time the Romans’ ideological power derived from the cult of Caesar and the practice of imperial religion. The cult of Caesar required subjugated peoples to acknowledge that the Roman emperor was a god whose many titles sound familiar to us – “Divine”, “Son of God”, “God from God”, “Lord”, “Redeemer” and “Saviour of the World” [4]. The Romans didn’t require much observance beyond the construction of temples and occasional sacrifices – they didn't themselves have much truck with religion – but this obedience and submission was central to imperial control.

Of course this was anathema to religious Jews for whom even to name the name of God was a blasphemy but the religious authorities had found the means to engage in uneasy but idolatrous co-existence with the Roman occupying power. And this made Jesus really, really angry.

Earlier, as recounted in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had addressed the religious basis of this co-existence when some Pharisees and Herodians, with all the obsequiousness they could muster, asked him the question: “is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?” The question was a trap because taxes were paid with those coins with the God-Emperor’s head on them, which were exchanged at the Temple. Jesus’ response was to ask for one of those coins, a denarius, and to give an answer which while ambiguous is also full of implication: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17)

Marcus Borg in his very last book Convictions interprets Jesus’s words in this way: “And what belongs to God? The text does not answer this question but the answer is obvious: everything belongs to God. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’ as Psalm 24 puts it. And if everything belongs to God, nothing belongs to Caesar” [5]

These words of Jesus are sometimes misinterpreted to assume that Christians need not be concerned about politics. In fact they point to quite the opposite. In Jesus’ time these words were seditious and the belief behind them is ultimately what put Jesus on a collision path with the imperial power and religious authorities of the time.

We see the same issues at play in the reading we heard from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Paul is writing to the early Christian community at Colossae in modern day Turkey, still living under pax Romana.

His words describing Jesus need to be decoded to reveal the extent of the challenge they posed to Rome: “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Colossians 1:15-17)

When Paul refers here to “thrones, dominions or rulers or powers” he is referring in particular to Caesar who is seen as subject to Christ whose power and authority flow from God. And when he talks of Christ as having “the first place in everything” he is directly challenging Caesar. This is not just religion, this is politics. And like Jesus it is what ultimately leads Paul to execution.

Jesus was an enemy of Rome not simply because he challenged the Jewish leaders and certainly not because he could in any way threaten the Romans’ military occupation, but because his words – and he claimed these as the word of God – struck at the very heart of pax Romana and the imperial ideology.

Later St Paul and the followers of what became to known as “the way” spread across Israel-Palestine and to the Gentile communities around the Mediterranean and ultimately even to Rome itself. When they proclaimed in their baptism service as we do today that “Jesus is Lord” they could easily have re-worded it to “Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t”.

For us the Prayer Book even puts the response in capital letters to highlight the point. I know here at St Matthew’s we prefer not to use the “Lord” language – it has overtones of patriarchy and a notion of feudal supremacy, which makes us uncomfortable. I hope though we don't forget the underlying point: Jesus is Sovereign over all things and Caesar isn’t.

And indeed what of us, we modern day followers of Jesus? What does this radical notion of the sovereignty of God, of the rejection of competing ideologies and the embracing of a new kind of power mean for us? What does it say in particular to the powerful amongst us?

I’m sure the Vicar asked me to speak to you today because I am someone who spends most of my time with the power-wielders and the power-hungry. She has to be admired for her sense of humour, although, might I say, the ordained do not get a free pass either when it comes to Jesus’ criticism of those in authority!

Jesus’ words to the powerful of our day are no different from Jesus’ words the powerful of his time. Everything belongs to God – the whole word and our lives within it. This is something that needs to be constantly borne in mind by those who hold power, whether politicians, business or community leaders.

As Micah reminds us: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:6-8)

The Gospels do not provide us with a simple model to follow in terms of a political manifesto or a set of policies which can be applied in this post-enlightenment, post-modern, globalized world of the 21st century. What Jesus does is lay out some eternal truth: this is the ultimate big picture. It is tempting both for those in power and for those desperate to overturn the powerful to seek to co-opt Jesus to support their particular system of beliefs or courses of action.

But Jesus defied co-option in his own time, refusing to be drawn into becoming the sort of revolutionary leader, the sort of zealot, that his own followers expected of him, someone who would free them from Roman rule and the bondage of imperial servitude. Rather Jesus seeks to give back to God what is God’s.

Jesus reminds all followers of the way, whether powerful or powerless, that this is the measure, the yardstick, the performance indicator by which their actions will be judged. Those who acknowledge Jesus as the one who “is before all things and who holds all things together”, as St Paul says, need always to remember this in whatever roles they are called to play in society, on whichever side of the barricades they stand.

In his own day, as here and now, against the politics of power, Jesus sets the power of God’s eternal word. Against the requirements of a religious code, Jesus offers a new kind of sacrifice. Against the idolatry of Caesar’s rule, Jesus represents a new kind of sovereignty. Ahead of all political objectives, business plans and campaign strategies, Jesus holds out the promise of a new way, one firmly based on love of God and love of humankind.

[1] See Jeremiah 7:5-6 and Crossan, p 133

[2] Crossan, p 132

[3] Aslan, pp 44-45

[4] Crossan, p 28

[5] Borg, p 164

March 1, 2015

Rev Dr George Armstrong

Lent 2

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A prophet is one who tells something forth rather than literally predicting something before it happens. Jesus in today’s gospel (Mark 8:31-38) tells his disciples what is going to happen in Jerusalem in the next few days. He is only telling them what they should already see for themselves - nothing mysterious or supernatural about it. Jesus tells them that he is going up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem spells big trouble!! Why? Because Jesus is a big-time troubler of everything the Jerusalem stands for in Jesus’ time.

The Son of man [that’s himself – Jesus] must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed [“accomplish his exodus”], and after three days rise again.

Jesus has increasingly attacked the Temple, its priests and the political economy that it supports and fattens itself off. It’s all part of the oppressive apparatus of government and economy – all bound together by a religion gone badly astray.

Jesus has only just congratulated Peter for his insight into the fact that Jesus is the true Messiah. Now Peter freaks out at the Jerusalem prospect. Jesus rounds on him: “Get behind me you Satan you”. It has become more and more clear that Jesus and his disciples, when push comes to shove, live in different worlds. And it’s the world of Jesus that is the real world, the world where injustice and evil triumph and good people are put down and out and where anyone who tries to do something about it gets snuffed out by homeland security and The Empire beyond.

Jesus was only one of many Messiahs who tried to remedy things. Many of these were religious terrorists, violent Messiah Saviours. Almost all of them ended up crucified or murdered. The temple archbishops eventually concluded that Jesus’ style of loving Messiahship was even more dangerous than the violent type. Specially when he publicly condemned the temple leadership, started a riot around the money changers, and seemed to be setting up a sort of very popular half mocking counter-kingdom of his own. His carefully staged triumphal entry into Jerusalem was a kind of mockery of an Augustus Caesar or King Herod the Great entering a city with motorcades and sirens blaring.

So Jesus the prophet tells it like it is and like it is about to be – all in one breath. He did it for his own death. And he did it elsewhere for the death of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple also which happened 35 years later. That didn’t require supernatural foresight either. Jesus, like any decent prophet, had unerring antennae for the signs of the times. He could interpret the historical, political, economic and sacral events and activities that were going on around him. And he did it in religious as well as material terms – sub specie aeternitatis (“seen in the mirror of eternity”).

St Matthew’s preachers have for several years now been happily stripping away the old supernaturalist wallpaper to try to get back to the basics that that supernatural lingo was trying to bear witness to. So my rendering here this morning of Jesus the prophet will come as no surprise.

Jesus’ cousin, John Baptist, munching his locust-and-honey muesli in the desert, said that he himself was no messiah - no more than a voice crying in the wilderness. For Elijah that voice in his desert mountain was not in an earthquake or firestorm but in a still small voice telling him to go back and converse with his significant other, the formidable Queen Jezebel who was thirsting for the prophet’s blood.

Just after this little bruising conversation with Peter, Jesus took his quaking disciples up a prophetic mountain too – to get away from it all so they thought, mistakenly as usual. It is transfiguration time. There Elijah and Moses, champion desert-survivors, talk things over with Jesus. There was only one item on their agenda: the so called “exodus” that Jesus was about to “accomplish” in Jerusalem. All three of these prophetic giants had exoduses – liberation – freedom – in their bones, spiritually as well as politically. The three disciples got their spirits back up. But when Jesus said time to go they wanted to stay. No way, said Jesus.

Let me now come to the second part of this sermon, from the sublime you could say to the ridiculous. 1975 years have past since Jesus. It’s now Auckland. Another far from holy trio assembles. I became part of that trio. Ted Buckle had just arrived from Australia to be Vicar of St Matthew’s. John Mullane (later also a vicar of this illustrious parish) and I were already in New Zealand, having been students together earlier. I had just come from four quick fire parish assignments to become a lecturer in systematic theology at St John’s College. We three young patriarchs were expected to turn the church upside down and inside out. We were respected after a fashion though not always exactly popular. I learned a huge amount from having to fit in with them. About the only thing we ended up agreeing on was a revelation to me. After a transfigurative day together at the Clevedon vicarage, we concluded that it was not actually our job as clergy to do the prophetic work of the church but to help the whole church to do its own prophetic work itself as a community. There’s a big difference and its not as easy as it sounds. For myself I went on to extend that idea radically. We three had agreed that it was the whole church that had to be a priest to humanity. But after much theological wrestling I concluded that our job as total church not actually to be prophet and priest to the world but to help the whole of humanity be prophet and priest to the world and with the world.

What I have just said is monstrously shorthand. I must turn to the experience of the 1960’s-1970’s and to poets and artists, sacred and profane, to explain.

In the nineteen sixties reality and divine reality seems to have deserted an unreal and failing church and to be reappearing in very different garb in totally worldly situations. From the Beatles on, out of anyone’s control, the words of the prophets turned up written on the subway walls. Curiously the Churches started to realise that their Jesus was deserting the sanctuaries as the people were departing from the pews. The Catholic Church’s Vatican 2 Council strove mightily to lay out what might be the mode of a new kind of church in the modern world. Missionary Leader Max Warren told the world Anglican Congress that you needed to have the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Teilhard de Chardin declared that when the two realities God and the World met together, everything burst into flame. Bonhoeffer said we had to stop expecting Christ to come to us as a powerful rescuer. Christ, said Bonhoeffer, was in the world struggling to preserve it and Christians had to get in there with him. Bonhoeffer would have known. He was jailed by Hitler and executed by Hitler’s express order in the last days of the 1939-1945 war.

And now for me another magical trio appeared – with me this time on its periphery. At St John’s College another young trio – students – emerged. A wondrous group of young patriarchs allowed no longer by their womenfolk to remain patriarchs. They endured the College educational regime for six months then declared direct action in shaping their own education: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, credentialing the lot. They were not rebels. They just set out on a road less travelled. With my shiny new Princeton PhD I was put in charge of them – ha ha! At the moment of their decision I felt almost a transfiguring light around the three of them. I kid you not.

I’m writing my book around the sixties and I think that that period still has to fulfil itself. It was a prophetic 20 years for New Zealand. There were hot-button issues everywhere. I had my fumbling finger on several of these buttons and more than my finger got burnt: the Vietnam War, Theological and other Education, nuclear warships in NZ, the Springbok Tour. Still today, underneath all the neoliberal lingo, we are struggling with the same underlying issues. Prophecy is not about the future only but binds the past and present into the future. John Mullane and Ted Buckle are dead now but they are with me every Sunday here. And I’ve been discussing this sermon with them. The Congregation can join in this discussion after a cup of tea. There’s so much more.

Amen (for now).

February 22, 2015

Dr Carolyn Kelly, Auckland University Chaplain                                                                

Lent 1

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Sometimes we need to ‘get lost’ to be found. One way to do that is head for the wilderness. There is something about entering a great wild place where human beings are relatively unimportant, that helps to clear the mind. The physical challenges can effect a deeper sense of displacement, a loss of ‘self’ in some important way, like the shedding of a skin. Venturing into the mountains, tramping in thick native bush or negotiating a great desert can open the way to gaining fresh perspective. The disorientation that happens when familiar landmarks and quotidian rhythms are absent is itself a kind of absence and can be very unsettling. Time away from the rigours of home in the city, can be deeply restorative.

‘Wilderness has for a long time figured as an escape from civilization, and a judgment upon it’ suggests the American novelist Marilynne Robinson. Western culture is populated with the paintings of awe-inspiring views and the stories of personal restoration in great wild places abound: from Robinson Crusoe to Wordsworth’s trek over the Alps in the Prelude, to Antoine St Exupery’s, Le Petit Prince, and even The Swiss Family Robinson. I recently viewed the movie Wild, a more contemporary version of the healing power of wilderness for a troubled soul. A young woman who became locked into destructive patterns of drug use and promiscuity decided to walk the Pacific Coast Trail of the western USA. She seemed to embark on this challenging trip without much preparation or experience, but with a good deal of resolve; she just had to go, on her own. As the film unfolds the challenges of her physical journey are beautifully interspersed with scenes of past events and sad memories: as she stumbled along, even losing her boots at one point, so she began to find footholds. As she buckled under the weight of carrying her heavy rucksack, so she began to shed emotional baggage. As she doggedly followed the path of the Trail, so she gradually became aware of her own sense of direction - her inner compass.

I need to lose myself sometimes. I wonder if you do too.

Our reading from the Gospel of Mark mentions Jesus’ venture to the wilderness in a couple of brief verses. Mark’s version of this story is very economical and the narrative moves with great urgency. So we are not given the content of Jesus’ temptations, nor does this writer dwell on his psychological trials in preparation for ministry. Although there is something for listeners and readers to learn, this is not primarily an example of wilderness wanderings for his disciples to emulate. No, the narrative is sparse and unrelenting like the landscape itself. It is unsettling. It clarifies the mind and invites active response, a new direction.

It might help if we round out one or two details. Jesus’ time in the wilderness is one part of a journey: from his familiar territory of Nazareth in Galilee, via the waters of baptism at Jordan, to the margins toward the lower Jordan valley before he returns to engage with society and proclaim the gospel of justice and peace. In each part of that journey the Holy Spirit is present, another player or actor in the drama. So when it is said the Spirit ‘drove Jesus out’ to be in the desert for forty days or six long weeks, we know this is important; it is something that needed to happen. Jesus heads to a stony and waterless area: barren, uninhabited, unpredictable. The Greek word eremos for ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ is not just a physical description, but evokes a sense of isolation, of loneliness. This place was deserted, therefore dangerous or threatening. It was the place of demons, where taunting voices were un-moderated, where one’s inner doubts and fears could overwhelm. It was a place you did not choose to go. A person, even a strong person, could be unmade there. No phone coverage, no rangers’ huts, no passers-by. One could get seriously lost. Unhinged.

Yet Mark’s audience would also have recognised his clues linking Jesus’ time in the wilderness to that of earlier prophets and leaders: the features of epiphany (voices from heaven, dramatic signs, angelic beings), the backdrop of opposition, the number 40 reminding them of Moses, and Elijah. Each detail of the sparse narrative is carefully chosen to make it very clear that something important is going on: at this place, in this moment – in this person – reality has shifted. It is a time between times; here is a ‘before’ and there will be an ‘after’ to these particular events, to this particular life in first century Palestine. Jesus’ baptism was in the Jordan, the dividing waters, that troubling River the Israelites crossed so long ago and is still so divisive; those waters invite a choosing and force a reckoning of priorities: ‘choose this day whom you will serve’. As so many African-American spirituals acknowledge, going down to the river is a risky business; rarely do you come back the same. When Jesus does so, a ‘voice from heaven’ joins the action and he is called ‘the beloved one’ in whom God takes particular delight. This is a disclosure where the heavens are rendered or ‘torn open’; something – someone – extraordinary is being revealed. It is a full moment, replete with signs and action. Yet it is also what TS Eliot would call a ‘still point’; much is condensed, even more at stake. So Mark’s invitation is to ‘Stop. Look. Listen’. Take notice.

The season of Lent invites us to take notice, to step aside from routines and compulsions and regain perspective; to see ourselves with new eyes. ‘Lent’ refers to a ‘lengthening’ of time, which is what happens in the northern hemisphere as winter gives way to spring It is also a season to consider our life and values, as the psalmist writes: ‘teach us to lengthen our days that we may apply ourselves to wisdom’. Lent is an opportunity to measure and truly value our time, our relationships, even our place. It is not so much an opportunity to deny, as affirm our humanity. In that respect we might enter a ‘wilderness’ of forty days, to stop, look and listen; to step aside and see our routines or habits of mind with fresh perspective.

Jesus’ wilderness time can thus be seen as a renunciation rather than a rejection of human comforts and company. This is also how we might understand the strange practices of early desert mystics, those monks and nuns who left bustling towns and cities in the later years of the Roman Empire to live in the great deserts of Syria, Egypt and Palestine. They too were ‘numbering’ their days, getting the measure of their life. They left compulsive habits to form new ones. They left dysfunctional monasteries to begin afresh as ‘monokoi’, the alone ones (from which we get the word monk). They knew that a physical challenge could help to clear the mind; it could help them take notice, for ‘only the body saves the soul’. (Rowan Williams in Silence and Honey Cakes) We might pause to consider whether this season invites us to enact some new freedom, to take some long neglected action, to see a troubling aspect of our lives with fresh insight or detachment.

Jesus’ time in the desert was part of a whole journey that led to him re-engaging with his society and people. Likewise, the desert fathers and mothers were not only doing battle with their own inner demons to save themselves. They left the cities because their churches were failing to love the cities. St Jerome reflected on 4th century Christian life, which has some troubling resonance for our times: ‘We Christians are supposed to live as though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceiling also, and the capitols of our pillars... Parchments are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering; manuscripts are decked with jewels... Yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the persons of his poor.’ The monokoi left society to learn a new love for people. They left ‘service’ and ‘love’ and ‘spirituality’ which had become calcified as abstract values, to embody practices, routines of work, daily rhythms of prayer and learning that prompted them to love and freed them to serve. (St Benedict would learn from this tradition in the 6th century).

‘Nudos amat eremos’: ‘the desert loves to strip bare’ wrote St Jerome. These ancient writers knew that the future of a city, the ‘good of society’ and the human individual, is intricately connected to the wilderness. That is affirmed in most religious traditions. There is something very important to human flourishing that is only learnt in, or in relation to, wild places. So if we ignore them, or exploit them without just cause, what will that mean for civilisation itself?

At this point it is worth noting an interesting detail about Jesus in the desert. In addition to his encounters with demons and the master accuser, in addition to his being ‘waited on’ by angels, Mark also says Jesus is ‘with the wild beasts’. So he is not only in a battle with non-human creatures, he is alongside the animals. As the ‘second Adam’ it is as if he has suspended the rights of dominion, opening up possibilities for our co-existence with other creatures in the world we both inhabit. This is also suggested by the Genesis story: the human relation to the wilderness need not only reflect the distortions of the fall when we can choose to destroy other creatures and the world God made. Surely this speaks powerfully in our time of environmental uncertainty.

Marilynne Robinson, the American author, has written a series of essays on Western thought. In her piece ‘Wilderness’ she opens with the following:

“We late-modern city-dwellers are reminded that we need the wilderness. We need it to remind us of ways of being alongside other creatures. We need to inhabit the silences of great spaces to help us hear another Voice above the clamour of our own making.”

So may we, in this time of Lent, regain perspective on our lives and have something of abiding value, to offer our city.

February 15, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Year B     Ordinary Sunday 6     2 Kings 5:1-14     Psalm 30     1 Corinthians 9:24-27     Mark 1:40-45

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Our story begins with Naaman, commander of the army of the king, a great man in high favor with his master. This is an important man, a four-star general, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decorated for military victories, in favor with the king, one of the inner circle. Naaman, though a mighty warrior, suffered from a skin disease. A mighty warrior but infected with a disease so devastating that his skin seemed to be rotting on his bones. Next in the story is a slave, carried off in a raid into Israel. Mighty warriors were accustomed to such booty-gold, silver, chariots, horses, and slaves. They could have what they wanted. This particular slave girl (nameless, of course) had been carried from her home and now served Naaman's wife. She is as small as Naaman is big. The power he has is the power she lacks. Yet, she is not silent. "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria," she told her mistress, "he would cure him of his leprosy."

Now why did this young girl care about this man whose army had carried her away from her own people? That's one question, but here's another. Why did Naaman and the king listen to what this slave girl said? The text doesn't tell us such things - only that the king gave Naaman permission to go. So Naaman departs with lots of gifts and a letter of introduction from his king. But when the king of Israel reads the letter, he's distressed to the core. "Am I God," he asks, "to give life or death that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?" It doesn't occur to the king that he wasn't in the center of things. "This is between kings," he thought. "The king of Aram is trying to trick me!"

Enter Elisha, the prophet. "Stop tearing your clothes," he tells the king. "You're not the only one around here, you know. Send the man to me so that he may learn there's a prophet in Israel." With that, the king drops out of the picture, his clothes ripped to shreds. The mighty warrior and his chariots and horses and gifts of gold and silver head to Elisha's house.

Oh, this is a great scene! Elisha doesn't even come out of his house! He sends his servant out with a message for Naaman. "Go, wash seven times in the Jordan and you will be clean." Well, Naaman isn't used to this. He's a man with authority. He's accustomed to speaking with kings, his own king and the kings of other nations. Who does Elisha think he is? Naaman has no intention of washing in the muddy Jordan. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" If Israel's prophet is going to insult Naaman by not even coming out to meet him, then Naaman is going to insult Israel's river. With that outburst, the mighty warrior turns toward home. And that would have been the end of it. Except for the servants (also nameless). Naaman's servants are horrified with their master's behavior. "Father," they said, "if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean?" Ahh, they know how to get to their master. Of course, he'd do something difficult. He had done many difficult things before. He was, after all, a mighty warrior. So he's surely brave enough to wash in a muddy river. With that, Naaman turned around, went down to the Jordan, and immersed himself seven times. When he came out of the water that last time, he looked down at his hands and his feet. His flesh was like the flesh of a young boy. But none of the servants said, "I told you so." [1]

That version of the Naaman story is by Rev Barbara Lundblad, USA. It is a tale of the powerful and the powerless. The military commander and the kings in the end turn out to be the powerless; and the slave girl, the servants and Elisha the prophet, whose power is in the way they speak the truth in simplicity and humility. The powerful, the ones in control had trouble listening and talked past each other. The powerless offered their service and their advice despite owing their masters no loyalty. They modelled humility and simplicity as they way to healing and grace.

Naaman was a commander in Syria around 850BC. 2800 years later we read his story alongside TV clips of other commanders in Syria and Iraq bringing violence and destruction on their people. Namaan’s slave girl taken as the booty of war even has a modern day equivalent in American Kayla Mueller taken captive and perhaps “married” off as the booty of war; and sadly killed in Iraq. Her heartfelt letter to her parents from last year she says “I have learnt that even in prison one can be free”. [2] This was the attitude of our unnamed slave girl as well – she chose to be free – she chose to offer help to Naaman her captor. The way to healing, the way to peace, is never through violence and more violence; but through humility and simplicity.

We come on Wednesday to the season of Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter. The 40 days hold within them a tradition of fasting, prayer, self-reflection and almsgiving. We begin on Ash Wednesday with an ancient ritual of marking our foreheads with ash. A sign of sorrow and mourning; a symbol Naaman and Elisha would have been familiar with. We use our ash to make the sign of the cross, reminding us of the sign marked on our foreheads at baptism, and reminding us of our mortality “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”. It is an earthy, grounded beginning for the forty days.

Then we are encouraged to spend more time than usual in listening, prayer and reflection – hence our Lenten programme of preachers and discussions; we are encouraged to “fast” – some people give up coffee or alcohol or chocolate or watch their spending and consumption levels – as a way of saying – these things do not have control over me. Like Namaan who could control a whole army but not his health – I am not controlled by my consumption of goods; and every time I crave that coffee or drink, I remember those who have much less than me and could not dream of buying a coffee every day; and I pray for them or put my coffee money aside to donate to the needs of refugees from Iraq. And we give “alms”; give to those in need – we can double our groceries for the City Mission; the Anglican Missions Board has provided envelopes for their Lenten Appeal; many other places could benefit from our Lenten discipline.

And why in particular for these 40 days? because we always have; because it is healthy to take stock, to reflect in a focussed way but we don’t feel we have to keep it up all year; and because it prepares us for Holy Week, slows us down, quietens our hearts and minds, so we can be ready for the journey to the cross. And then when we come to Easter Day our celebration is all the more joyful.

Faced with our media headlines, how do we get that Lenten personal level of focus and humility to have any influence on the global level where our modern day Naamans are wreaking havoc across the Middle East? How do we bring what we know to be simple and true to the table, like the slave girl did. There are voices speaking out, saying at least we in NZ should not be involved (CWS) [3] in military action again in Iraq. And they point out we could spend that money on humanitarian aid, which we should. But when we see such violence and destruction it is hard to hold back and not respond with more military might.

And so we need a conversation in our political realm which is not “political” but really looking at our options. And a conversation which has within it the humility and simplicity of Lent. It has been shown many times to be the only way to healing and grace.

We are invited this Lent to live with humility and simplicity as we seek healing and grace.

[1] http://day1.org/530-what_the_mighty_might_learn Sermon by Rev Dr Barbara Lundblad 16 Feb 2003 adapted

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/10/world/kayla-mueller-letter/index.html

[3] http://www.cws.org.nz/newsroom/media-releases/open-letter-military-deployment-iraq

February 8, 2015

Jeremy Jounger

Year B     Ordinary Sunday 5

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February 1, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Year B     Feast of the Presentation     Malachi 3:1-20     Psalm 24     Hebrews 2:14-18     Luke 2:22-40

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Jesus, a 40 day old baby being presented at the Temple in Jerusalem. This feast day of the church’s calendar is like a cross roads. We have travelled quite a way since Christmas and for the last 3 Sundays we had left Jesus’ childhood well behind. And now we take one last look back down that road, with one sign pointing back to Christmas, while we turn and head in the direction of Lent and the cross. [1]

Luke, the gospel writer brings Mary and Joseph and Jesus to the Temple. Luke’s knowledge of Jewish custom was a bit hazy and so he doesn’t get all the details right, but that is not relevant to his purposes. It would have been Mary who came to the temple, 40 days after the birth of her son, in order for her to be purified from the uncleanness of childbirth. If Jesus had been a girl, she would have waited 80 days, you got a double dose of impurity for giving birth to a girl. That would have played havoc with our church calendar! And don’t forget there are still women amongst us who to remember the service of the “churching of women” after childbirth from the Book of Common Prayer,

Old customs die hard it seems (although it is a service no longer authorized for use in the church!)

Luke, rather than focusing on Mary and her ritual, chooses to model this story of the presentation of Jesus on that of Hannah and her son Samuel. Samuel whom she dedicated to God’s service in the Temple, and he became the first of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.  So in a similar pattern Jesus is brought to the temple. And as Eli had waited for Samuel so Simeon and Anna have waited for Jesus. Simeon is the one to confirm for Luke that Jesus has come for the Gentiles as well as the Jews “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (v32). His words soon became a hymn of the church, known to many as the “nunc dimittis” or the Song of Simeon; said and sung at the beds of the dying and at their funerals. Words also prayed at the end of each day in evening prayer “Lord now let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled” [2].

Then as Simeon finishes his prayer of thanks that he has lived to see the One who was promised, he turns to Mary and says rather ominously “a sword will pierce your own soul too”, words of dread and fear for this new mother. Words that are our signpost at these crossroads showing that the cross and Lent is this way.

Anna’s words are not recorded but Luke describes her as praising God and proclaiming / preaching about this child. In Luke’s gospel women are not unclean, they preach and proclaim the word of God.

Revelation is what the season of Epiphany has been about, the revealing of the nature of Jesus to the world. Simeon’s revelation closes the season of Epiphany and then reveals a glimpse of the cross as we turn towards Lent which is only 2 ½ weeks away.

In our southern hemisphere calendar today’s feast of the presentation also falls at the beginning of our year. School goes back this week; the long hot summer days are still with us but most people are back from holiday and gearing up for the year. Diaries fill up, meetings get underway. 2015 has begun.

And so as Jesus was presented, offered at the Temple, what might we offer at the beginning of this new year? Every week as we gather for the eucharist we offer ourselves in God’s service. That is what eucharist is – giving thanks and offering.

The eucharist is not just about the church parts of our life, but about all of it. Our work, our play, our housework, our children, our community service, our joys, our fears, our anger, our hurts and our loves. All of it bundled up like a 40 day old baby and offered up at the Temple.

Think about what is in your bundle today. And see Simeon, old and wise, take up your bundle, and look at it and say, “I see salvation and light in this offering” “and I see suffering and sadness”; “for all of this I give thanks to God, for it is the stuff of life and faith.”

And then see Anna, watching from the side, and pointing and saying to all who pass by – this life offered here brings faith and hope to those who know him or her. Pay attention!

Can you imagine someone saying that about your bundle, your life, in all its ordinariness and messiness? On this feast day I am here to tell you that God gladly receives your offering, your presentation of your life, and mixes it in with the messiness and ordinariness and extra–ordinariness of creation and makes it new. Makes your life new, makes my life new, makes your life worthy of such praise and mine as well.

Then what – well we don’t get to stay in the temple making our offering, listening to beautiful music and feeling blessed. We get sent out as Mary was – to endure the suffering of a mother, and to endure and to return once again, week after week to the altar; to this table where we offer our lives and offer the bread and wine of Jesus’ life.

This pattern of offering and being renewed and strengthened is the pattern of our Christian life. We come each week to practice the patterns of our faith so we can live our faith in the days in between.

So we can offer help to those who need it; so we can offer our skills in our work; so we can offer love in our families; so we can be strong in times of trial; so we can be weak and depend on the offering of others when we have no strength. We gather each week not as disparate individuals but as a community of faith to support each other in our practice of offering ourselves at this altar.

Mary and Joseph belonged to a community of faith. Simeon and Anna waited and prayed at the Temple for long years. The gospel writer we call Luke wrote for a particular community who wanted to know where did the hymn come from that they had always sung at the end of the day – Lord now let your servant depart in peace? They wanted to know about Anna whose proclamation had been passed down.

And so like them we offer our individual lives on this feast of the presentation and we offer our lives into this community. We commit to each other, to gathering, to support, to learning and listening from each other. We have a Lenten programme coming up; other ideas for groups and worship seem to be bubbling up all over the place at the moment!

I am thrilled to see ideas and offerings coming from all directions. Offerings that will build our common life as a community and build our individual lives of faith. Offer your bundle today and see what might unfold.

Lord now you let your servant go in peace: your word has been fulfilled.

My own eyes have seen the salvation: which you have prepared in the sight of every people,

a light to reveal you to the nations: and the glory of your people Israel. [3]

[1] Martyn Percy “Candlemas” p 99 in Darkness Yielding 3rd edn 2009

[2] ANZPB p 47

[3] ANZPB p 47

January 25, 2015

Linda Murphy 

Epiphany 3     Jonah 3:1-5, 10     Mark 1:14-20

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”

This was is essentially Jesus’ first recorded sermon and typical of Mark’s Jesus, it is concise and there is no explanation or elaboration as to what this means. Nevertheless this is an impassioned call to personal decision and reorientation of one’s whole being. It means a radical change in one’s mind and heart. 

Galilee needed to hear the good news of God. Caesar Augustus was being hailed as the good news for the Mediterranean World of the first century because he brought unity and peace to a divided Roman Empire and a warring world. Conquered nations under Rome were able to conduct their national, cultural and religious life as they pleased as long as their leaders paid taxes to Rome and kept the peace in their territories.

However there were various groups in Palestine that refused to submit to Rome because for them only God had legitimate claim to their land and nation. They conducted uprisings and guerrilla warfare. The so-called Roman peace in Palestine was an uneasy truce at best.

Within this uneasy political environment an itinerant preacher from Nazareth talks about the Kingdom of God coming near and he calls to two local fishermen “Follow me and I will make you fish for people”.

How many of us would leave our homes, our careers and follow such a man? These fishermen left the only life they knew and followed, into an unknown, risky future, reliant on the generosity of strangers for food and shelter.

Let’s look a little more closely at what this Kingdom of God is. It is not referring to an afterlife but a transformed life on earth. The social and political implications of such an understanding are immense. One’s attitude and relationship to the world; nation; family; possessions and occupation are radically impacted when one’s life is opened up to the kingdom of God. One’s social world is no longer defined primarily by one’s biological family but by a community of people who have been shaped by the narrative of the kingdom of God.

To “repent and believe” requires a fundamental reorientation and embracing of a whole new set of values and norms. It will change forever the way in which those who respond – the disciples – will view the world and live in it. It is a call to take up the Struggle against the Strong and all their powers that hold the world and its people captive – sickness, hatred, poverty, discrimination, political and religious authorities.

The call of the disciples to become ‘fishers of people’ has a clear connection to the story of Jonah and his missionary exploits to Nineveh. Both, in their different times and contexts reflect the urgency of making known the boundless and transforming love of God.

Jonah was not that happy about God’s mission for him to go and preach in Nineveh. After all it was a three day walk and they were Assyrians, outsiders. He had been called to expand the membership of believers in God. He had previously refused God and that had ended rather badly, so off he went to Nineveh and the people believed and God decided to forgive them.

The New Year has opened with hideous violence in Paris and there is continued violence in Nigeria and its neighbouring states from Boko Haram while Isis maintains its programme of destruction.

Last week Helen mentioned that she had enrolled in a Continuing Education course to understand Islam. I decided to relook at some books I had read a number of years ago written by Karen Armstrong, Holy War and A History of God, to reacquaint myself with Islamic beliefs.

The Holy War; the crusades and their impact on today’s world, epilogue speaks of the crusades as a developed response to a long period of humiliation and impotence for Christianity during the Dark Ages.” It was a radical new departure, having nothing whatever to do with the pacifist religion of Jesus, but it provided the people of Europe with an ideology that restored their self-respect and made the West a world power.” Karen goes on to say, “Feeling against us runs high in the [Middle East]; it sometimes assumes horrible forms. Nevertheless we have a responsibility to remain calm and perhaps to be more careful of attitudes of prejudice or carelessness…we can no longer afford.”

Karen Armstrong has written a new book – “Fields of Blood”, and while I am yet to read it I read a review that she spoke of our secularisation having been applied by force in many regions by Western occupation has provoked a fundamentalist reaction – and history shows that fundamentalist movements which come under attack invariably grow even more extreme.

Reflecting on these words from Karen written over a period of sixteen years, Mark’s gospel resonates.

Jesus’ message of the kingdom gave hope to a disenfranchised Palestine and the fishermen Simon, Andrew, James and John followed as the alternative was not living life as the Torah instructed.

Are the followers of Isis, Boko Haram and other insurgent groups not exhibiting similar desperate behaviour?

How do we respond to these act of violence? Some respond with grace and mercy while others have respond with vile assumptions and hateful rhetoric.

We in our democratic nations have the right to freedom of speech. None of us however have the right to attack others for their beliefs with violence or hatred.

I think this is a unique opportunity to look at our behaviour towards others and this is something we can consider now in the time of Epiphany and its divine revealing.

This week we have lost the theologian Marcus Borg. Many of you will have read his work or heard him quoted from this pulpit and I would like to read one of his quotations.

“To be Christian means to find decisive revelation of God in Jesus. To be Muslim means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Koran. To be Jewish means to find the decisive revelation of God in the Torah, and so forth… To be Christian in this kind of context means to be deeply committed to one’s own tradition, even as one recognizes the validity of other traditions.”

The Kingdom of God comes with repentance and that repentance requires change and transformation. Cynthia Bourgeault in her book “The Wisdom Jesus” suggests that to achieve the kingdom, requires a whole new way of looking at the world. It requires a transformation of awareness that literally turns the world into a different place.

We may have some exploring and transforming ahead of us this year.

January 18, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Year B     Epiphany 2     1 Samuel 3:1-10     Psalm 139     1 Corinthians 6:12-20     John 1:43-51

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Come and see Philip said to Nathanael. Go back and listen Eli said to Samuel. Samuel heard a voice calling, he thought it was his teacher Eli, a logical conclusion. Samuel was a boy born of the deep prayer and commitment of his mother Hannah, and so in a sense he was already attuned to the voice of God. She had brought him up in prayer and devotion. Yet here, while he was still young, God speaks to him and with a message he doesn’t really understand. And it is not even a message for him but for Eli, and for Eli’s family. And yet Eli confirms for Samuel he had heard God speaking. And so Samuel was known to be “a trustworthy prophet of the Lord” (v20).

We know much less about Philip and Nathanael. In fact Nathanael only appears in this account of the gospel of John, and he is not in any other list of the disciples. And the conversation between him and Jesus seems to be missing a few lines. But whatever goes on in the conversation, Nathanael is invited to come and see, and it is Jesus who “sees” him. Sees who he is as a person, and who he might be. And in turn Nathanael sees who Jesus is, the Son of God.

In your life who invites you to come and see, who says to you go back and listen. Who are the people in your life who have guided you as you have waited or longed for something? A teacher, a parent, a friend. When you haven’t been able to see what is going on around you, or couldn’t see what was really right in front of you, who has helped you find your way, discover a skill, or acknowledge a desire. Who has helped you have some insight into yourself, and who has helped you see Jesus for who he really is. They are your Eli and your Philip. Our Eli’s and Philip’s might not just help us understand ourselves but help us understand God’s world as well. Sometimes it is not a person who helps you see but maybe a movie or an article.

We watched a wonderful French movie this week called “Of Gods and Men” directed in 2010 by Xavier Beauvois. Some of you will have seen it – I know the Interfaith Council in Auckland showed it a few years ago. It is the story of French Cistercian monks in Algeria in 1996. Their monastery has been established there for generations and live to serve the local village, Tibhirine, offering a medical clinic and support. There is no sense that they are there to “convert” the locals, simply to serve. During the Algerian Civil War which had been going since 1991 they are increasingly under threat and debate whether to leave or stay. The movie has very little dialogue, reflecting the prayerful silence of much of their day. They go back and listen often and eventually decide to stay, knowing they are likely to be killed. And indeed they are.

In a letter left behind by the Abbot Christian he says

If it should happen one day – and it could be today – that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. To accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would like them to pray for me: how worthy would I be found of such an offering?

I would like them to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a space of lucidity which would enable me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down… [1]

He invites his readers to come and see and to go back and listen. Not to jump to conclusions and rush to judgment.

This week there has been an outpouring of commentary and opinion since the killings in Paris. There has been less commentary on other parts of the world such as Nigeria. We get so easily saturated and numbed to the reality of each of the stories of each of the tragedies. And that is ok, we can’t take it all in. But we can do something in our community, in our place. Come and see Philip said to Nathanael. Go back and listen Eli said to Samuel.

Aotearoa/NZ is a multi faith land now just as it is a multi cultural land. And we need to see and to listen to our sisters and brothers of other faiths more now than ever. The way to peace can only be though dialogue and mutual concern. Simply getting to know each other. We do not have to deal with the hostilities of many places in the world; we do not have the Wall of separation like in Israel/Palestine; we do not feel under threat. And yet these events across the world heighten our awareness of those who live along side us and who follow customs of worship different (and yet not so different) from our own.

This year I want us as a faith community and as individuals to seek ways we can intentionally be in conversation with our brothers and sisters of other faiths. I know this has been a part of the tradition of St Matthew’s and I want us to revive that spirit and expand on it. Jocelyn Armstrong is a member of the Auckland Interfaith Council and will be able to guide us. But I am also interested in the person to person contact. How many of you know someone who is Moslem, or Jewish, or Buddhist… That is where we start in conversation. Listening. Being intentional, making an effort to have new and fresh conversations and seeing where they may lead. We can organize some kind of “official” dialogue with leaders but it is the person to person contact where we learn and make a difference. Stephen and I have enrolled for an “Understanding Islam” course at Continuing Education at Auckland University. [2] It is 4 evenings in March – Who would like to join us?

Come and see Philip said to Nathanael. Go back and listen Eli said to Samuel. At the time Samuel was a boy we are told “the word of the Lord was rare, visions were not widespread”. The people were waiting to hear from God and Samuel was the first prophet (one who spoke God’s word) in a long time. The people in Jesus’ time were waiting too, waiting for God. Waiting and longing for hope, for peace, for justice, waiting to be in a deeper relationship with God. Come and see, Philip said; go back and listen, Eli said.

The psalmist (139) says “Lord you have searched me and known me … you knit me together in my mother’s womb”. God knows us from the beginning and in our hearts and at the same time God reaches from there to the rest of the world “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” God calls us to see and to hear God within our own lives, and we can see and hear with God, to the rest of the world.

In many countries the children of Yahweh, and Allah, and Jesus are born into a world where they cannot be in relationship together. Just like apartheid in South Africa, just like segregation in the US. We can sit down together and meet and listen and see. God calls us into relationship with each other and with God. God invites us to come and see and to listen. God invites us to be loved and to be part of God’s reconciling love for the world.

[1] http://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/scriptorium/testament-christian-de-cherge-ocso

[2] http://lifelonglearning.co.nz/introduction-to-islam/

January 11, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Genesis 1:1-5     Psalm 29     Acts 19:1-7     Mark 1:4-11

Sermon notes:

• enjoying a magical beach holiday – sun, sea, views, lazy days

• reverie broken by the terrible shootings of the staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine

• drew the attention of the world

• more so as we have twice lived in Paris and Miryam is there for a few days

• found ourselves more than usually a bit glued to our phones checking news updates

• no longer in the magical world of holiday

• as we come to worship today, a mere 3 Sundays after Christmas we are no longer in the magical world of the baby, the shepherds, the angels and the magi

• we are back with John the Baptist, with whom we have already spent time two of the four Sundays of Advent. And he’ll be back at the beginning of Lent which is not that far away

• our attention today is drawn not so much to John the Baptist but to Jesus himself and his experience of baptism

• by giving us the opening words from Genesis the lectionary gives us two beginnings – the beginnings of creation and the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry.

• God at the beginning of time breathed life in to the world; The wind from God swept over the face of the waters

• The wind – “ruach” – or breath, or spirit, or mauri ora, God’s creative breath at the beginning followed by light; light breaking into the darkness of the void.

• then that day by the Jordan river the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove; the spirit – pneuma – ruach – the wind, the breath of God.

• The dove makes the scene sound gentle and quiet but the sky was torn apart and a voice came also You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. Tihei mauri ora !

• the heavens were torn apart, not like the violence in Paris, but torn apart more in the sense of a new thing happening, a birth maybe.

• This scene is paralleled at the end of Mark’s Gospel, at the crucifixion: (Mark 15:37-39)

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

• The curtain in the Temple hides the sanctuary, the holy of holies, where in Jewish belief God himself was thought to dwell;

• it is torn from top to bottom;

• in the same way as the heavens were torn at Jesus’ baptism, to show God breaking though into our lives, into creation; there is no longer any separation. And it is a human, the centurion, a Roman and a sinner, who this time declares that Jesus is God’s son; not a voice from heaven but a voice from earth.

Rev Barbara Lundblad, a Lutheran preacher says:

 “From the day he saw the heavens torn apart, Jesus began tearing apart the pictures of whom Messiah was supposed to be –

Tearing apart the social fabric that separated rich from poor. 


Breaking through hardness of heart to bring forth compassion. 


Breaking through rituals that had grown rigid or routine. 


Tearing apart the chains that bound some in the demon's power. 


Tearing apart the notions of what it means to be God's Beloved Son.

Nothing would ever be the same, for the heavens would never again close so tightly.” [1]

• and yet the world is not “fixed”; the demons of violence and terror still carry on

• people have rallied across the world to defend the freedom of the cartoonists and writers to speak

• people have tweeted and facebooked #jesuischarlie

• social media allows us to feel connected to events across the world; to feel like we are doing something

• yet what difference have our tweets made to the Nigerian schoolgirls; to the Sydney shooting victims; N for Nazarene still appears on twitter as the slaughter of Christians continues in Iraq

• some of the commentary does help us to think and reflect on the issues bound up in these events

• the cartoons of the Charlie Hebdo magazine make our St Matthew’s billboards seem very tame; Charlie Hebdo stands in a long French tradition of satire which calls to account leaders of all religions; all politicians; French satire is a whole cultural world – clever and biting all at the same time

• as people of faith we have to be able to laugh at ourselves; not take ourselves too seriously; and many Moslem leaders have said that while they find the cartoons deeply offensive, they defend the right of people to draw them. In fact in France there are limits on free speech; you cannot incite hatred of an ethnic group or religion; there is a specific law forbidding the denial of the Holocaust, a favourite tenet of the French far right. There are often cases testing these laws and the limits of free speech.

• although in France on the other hand a girl cannot wear a headscarf to a public school; a freedom the French haven’t managed to allow

• nor can a Christian wear a cross

• But nothing like in northern Iraq you do not have the right to be a Christian, let alone to speak publicly about your faith

• freedom of speech is fundamental to freedom of religion

• and those of us with the freedom to speak need to continue to do so

• Robert Darden writing for the Huffington Post

If you are a believer and you believe that the God Who created the universe loves you, then I believe that you can probably conceive of a God who can handle humor, laughter, teasing, and – yes – satire. That's the description of a Big God. A little God gets easily offended by the chattering of minuscule bipeds on a backwater planet at the edge of an insignificant solar system in the quiet suburbs of a very, very big universe.

The ability to understand and appreciate satire, religious or political, is one of the defining, distinctive qualities of an actualized, fully functioning human being, one who is big enough to occasionally laugh at himself or herself, and one who knows that occasionally his or her sacred cow is going to get gored.

Anne Lamott calls laughter "carbonated holiness." There is such a thing as holy laughter, thank goodness. [2]

• so at the beginning of this year; with the words of creation and the description of Jesus’ baptism what are we called to do?

• if the heavens were to be torn apart what might we hear?

• we would hear the breath of God from creation

• at the beginning of this year we can hear the voice of God saying every child is beloved; every child has a place

• we can hear the laughter of God above the tears of God

• as people of faith we are called to reach out to our Moslem brothers and sisters and create a world where hatred cannot win

• where we can get to know each other and learn from each other

• and laugh together

[1] http://day1.org/535-torn_apart_forever Barbara Lundblad, sermon 2003

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-darden/in-the-wake-of-charlie-he_b_6431010.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000055

January 4, 2015

Revd Carolin Telford

The Epiphany

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Now that your annual emotional audit of New Year’s resolutions is out of the way, do you fancy living a Second Life? A new life… is this one not quite cutting it? Not a second life in some far – off pie-in-the sky religious kind of way, but one you can begin right now. A life that will involve your creativity, energy, fantasy, some but not too much of your money-more an investment in yourself, you could say – and a helpful amount of your spare time? Well, help is at hand... All you have to do is invest in the hardware and software and sit yourself down in front of the console! You can play out your fantasies, design a more interesting, physically alluring, successful version of yourself, and live a Second Life through him/her. Maybe you’d like a new career as well: you might want to sell real estate to other players of the game, or hire yourself out as a designer of apartments. Such earning opportunities do exist – all is possible in the parallel world of Second Life.

It is hard being a human being, isn’t it? And now that we are at the end of the festive season, has Christmas really helped? Maybe you have concluded once again that all the presents and baked hams in the world are not offering any real comfort, or the possibility of life changing for the better. Maybe you have actually started playing Second Life, because the particular constellation of circumstances which define this one make living every day a tough call. As we journey through Christmas and into Epiphany, we are offered the gift of many gestures toward what life lived fully and well might be like. The familiar stories all involve risky journeys and change – Mary accepting the risk of an unplanned and unconventional pregnancy, Joseph and Mary on the move for the census, the shepherds leaving their fields and following the advice of the angels to go and see why that star is shining so brightly over Bethlehem. Lots of dreams, and lots of attending to them. And then we come to the story particularly for us, here, on this day, at this turn in our lectionary wheel of retelling and re-imagining. The story of those who journeyed the farthest – the Story of the Magi.

The magi were perhaps members of an ancient priestly caste, astrologers, astronomers, practitioners of arcane arts, skilled in magic. Maybe they came from Persia-modern-day Iran. These wise men appear only in the Gospel of Matthew, and he proclaims in their coming the fulfilment of prophecy. Precise biographical details are few. Their number has been extrapolated from the number of gifts they brought: there could have been two of them, or many more than three. They laid down enigmatically significant offerings – gold fit for the king they had discerned they would be welcoming, incense-burnt as a religious offering, in honour of a life to be offered up in service, and myrrh, a herb used in the anointing of bodies of the dead.

Many artists have found their story an engaging one to envisage, and the Homage of the Magi, or the Adoration of the Kings, as it is also known, the Flight to Egypt of Jesus, Mary and Joseph , and what became called the Slaughter of the Innocents of Bethlehem, ordered by Herod, are common themes in Western artistic tradition. Images of the three magi even appear painted on walls of the catacombs in Rome. Over many centuries through, or at least in parallel with, the elaboration of their visual identities, the sparse biblical account became garlanded in the popular imagination with significant new details. It seems a bit like a medieval game of Second Life played out by artists – or maybe more accurately by artists acting on the instruction of the patrons and commissioners of the art works. The paucity of biblical detail gave them and gives us licence to tease out the story. ‘Epiphany’ derives from Epiphaneia – a Greek verb meaning ‘to appear’ – used to refer to the manifestation – the appearance – of dawn, or an enemy in war, and especially of a deity to a worshipper. I read once that over thirty different sites in our brain are engaged when we look at something – when we see something. So central is our sense of vision to our comprehension of reality that we say ‘I see’ when really we mean ‘I understand.’ What did the magi see and understand? What did all those artists see in this story, and what does their vision offer us on this day of our Epiphany?

The wise men evolved into recognisably kingly figures themselves, first wearing special pointed caps (interestingly later adopted as symbols of authority by the Doges of Venice), and later on wearing crowns. They were given names and habitually shown with differing skin colours, and can be identified as having begun their journeys in different places: Caspar-from Arabia, the Oriental Melchior and dark Balthazar from Africa. One is a youth, one a mature man, and one is much older. They gradually came to represent every seeker, Everyman willing to go on a quest and follow a star and look and risk radical change. They were usefully pressed into service as a convenient but non-confrontational motif of temporal power bowing low before religious authority at various times in history when Church/State tensions ran high. Their presence perhaps came to endorse wisdom seeking truth, obedience to a call, willingness to follow the light and having the courage to journey on from one place, one way of seeing, to another. Evelyn Waugh wrote of them (quoted in ‘Approaching Christmas’ – Jane Williams) ‘You are patrons of all latecomers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.’

We do not know what Herod the Great looked like. Almost uniquely among ancient rulers of his time, he commissioned no busts of himself, his likeness appears on no coin. Whether out of personal conviction or in calculated political deference to his Jewish subjects, Herod took seriously the Commandment prohibiting graven images. There is no incontrovertible evidence that he ordered the massacre of the children two and under in Bethlehem, but he certainly did arrange for the murder of several close relatives, including three of his sons. There is a historical basis for believing that in the last decade or so of his long reign, Herod suffered from a medical condition which caused increasing paranoia. Perhaps paranoia over which he had no control clouded his vision so that he couldn’t respond with anything other than denial to the evidence standing in front of his eyes that the locus of power was shifting. In his informative book ‘The Life and Times of Herod the Great’, Stewart Perowne offers his judgement that Herod suffered from the defect the Greeks knew as anaesthesia, a lack of perception. The story we retell today is an invitation to us to avoid that same defect. The wise men devoted themselves to following what light they saw in the passionate hope of that light brightening to illuminate their understanding of who they were and how they were to live. They had the courage to journey on from one way of looking and understanding, to another. Jesus, just a baby in a stable, was a life-changing revelation to them. After their journey to the crib, informed in a dream not to retrace their steps and return to Herod, the wise men changed their plans. Their dogged persistence had re-formed them and made them wiser.

The gift they lay at our feet is their Epiphany, their willingness to perceive this world with eyes wide open to new, different, risky ways of being and understanding and living. It is the gift of every day, this day, living fully this life that is ours.