Swallowsrest

Lent 4 – 2012
John 3:14-21
Marian Free

In the name of God who reaches out and draws us to himself. Amen.

Some time ago a member of this Parish helpfully gave me an extract of a book “because he knew I was always on the look out for sermon illustrations”. At the time, I read it and filed it, only to have it resurface as I prepared for today’s sermon. Let me share a little of it with you.

“The preacher’s voice sank. He paused, joined his palms for an instant, parted them. Then he resumed: Now let us try for a moment to realize as far as we can the nature of that abode of the damned which the justice of an offended God has called into existence for the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and dark and foul smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. There by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their aweful prison.

They lie in exterior darkness. For remember, the fire of hell gives forth no light. As at the command of God, the fire of the Babylonian furnace lost its heat but not its light, so, at the command of God, the fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns eternally in darkness. It is a never ending storm of darkness, dark flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone.”

I don’t know about you, but popular as they may be, I can’t reconcile these ideas of eternal torment with a God who came to earth as a new born child and held out his arms to be nailed to the cross. Images such as these are used to terrify people into obedience rather than loving them into faith.

It is this latter that the Gospel of John emphasises. Rather than threaten us with punishment, john suggests that God loves us into salvation.

As we have seen on previous occasions, John’s gospel is very dense – not a word is wasted. Every sentence is laden with meaning and words are chosen carefully sometimes because they can be understood in more than one way. If you look carefully at today’s passage, you will notice that a number of words recur, helping us to see the points that the author is trying to stress. “World” and “light” are repeated five times. In the Greek words for judging occur four times. “Believe” is used three times in one verse and the phrase “eternal life” occurs twice. It is clear that John is talking here about judgement, but he does so in a way that revises previous understandings of judgement and in a way that asks us to re-think what judgement might mean.

Let me try to unpack the passage a little. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). Two things are obvious from this sentence. First, the object of God’s interest is no longer a relatively small and select group of people but the whole world. God loved the whole world so much that he gave something that was absolutely precious – his only Son. Second, the criterion for judgement appears to have changed – eternal life or salvation relates to belief in Jesus rather than to what we do or don’t do.

When we read further, we can see that the primary purpose of God’s giving Jesus to the world is not judgement but so that the world can be saved through him. Gods’ intention is to save, not judge and to save everyone not just a select few. In fact, according to verse 18, God does not judge, rather judgement relates to the way in which the world responds to Jesus. In other words, by our reaction to Jesus we reveal whether or not we want to be part of what Jesus offers. In effect, we judge ourselves. We can choose to believe or choose not to believe. God does force our hand – we choose. Surprisingly, the choice is not what we have been led to expect. Judgement does not depend on whether or not we do good or do evil (though that may determine our choice), judgement relates to a life (and therefore eternity) that accepts Jesus or a life (therefore eternity) lived without Jesus. We have a choice to open our lives to God’s influence (and to never being separated) or close ourselves off from God and risk eternal separation.

We determine our future by the choice we make in the present.

John turns to different imagery to further illustrate this point. Jesus is the light of the world. Our response to Jesus reveals our preference for a new life in the light or a life and an eternity in the dark. Again, the choice is ours – we can open our lives to God’s love and scrutiny or we can choose to remain in darkness, living as we have always lived, unchanged by the presence of God in the world. Once again, John makes the point that judgement does not relate to what a person does or does not do, but to whether or not they trust in God’s love and allow that love to transform their lives. God does not shut us out but we can choose to shut God (the light) out of our lives.

God’s gift of Jesus is so generous and God’s love so powerful and overwhelming, that the writer of the Gospel finds it almost impossible to believe that anyone would choose not to be embraced by it. God’s love and the life that Jesus offers are so seductive that those who choose to turn away must do so because they do not trust God, because they are afraid of what God will see if they come into the light or because they do not want to live a life that will stand up to God’s gaze.

It is God’s desire to give us eternal life, but God will not force himself on us. God will not twist our arms or use coercion to make us love him or accept him. God want us to come to him through our own free choice, to offer our lives to him, not because we have to but because we want to. God’s love for the world is such that God has given and will continue to give everything in the hope that the world will accept God’s gift. Judgment in this sense is that which separates those who chose to be with God and those who choose to turn away. God will not make us love him – we have a choice but no matter what that choice we make God will not stop loving us in the hope that one day our choice will be for God.

Lent 3 2012

John 2:13-22 (Exodus 20:1-18)

Marian Free

Dressing for church

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Annie Dillard is an American writer who spent two years on an island off the western coast of the United States to reflect on “time, reality, sacrifice, death and the will of God.” Her reflections of this time are powerful and confronting as she faces the violence and capriciousness of life, and struggles to come to terms with a God who seems to stand back and simply allow tragedy and suffering to happen.  During her time on the island, Dillard attends the local church which is led by a Congregationalist pastor.  She discovers that she likes the occasional and therefore surprising spontaneity and the honesty of the pastor, who one morning during the intercessions simply “stopped, and burst out, ‘Lord, we bring you these same petitions week by week’ and after a shocked pause, continued reading the prayer.[1]”

She goes on to say:  “The higher Christian churches – where, if anywhere, I belong – come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without getting killed. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches, you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.”

Elsewhere Dillard states: “I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible, aware of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blindly invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children, playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we

should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” [2]

These are powerful words. They make you wonder. Do they describe us, our liturgy, our approach to Sunday morning?What is it then that we do when we come here Sunday by Sunday? What do we expect or hope for? Are we filled with anticipation and excitement, awe and trepidation – expecting to be surprised, delighted, or confronted? Do we really believe that we will leave here re-freshed and renewed filled with the Holy Spirit? Do we expect God to burst in on us, shattering our pre-conceptions, turning us upside down and inside out, making us uncomfortable with who and what we are and re-forming us in God’s image?

Do we take to heart the words of the Prayer of Preparation: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open?” and wonder that we should dare to be here? Does  the proclamation of  God’s word send a thrill through us? Do we feel a warmth on our hand or a tingle in our throat when we receive the body and blood of Christ?

Do we come anticipating some new insight into the nature of God or some astounding self revelation?

When we come to worship, do we really believe that we will come face-to-face with God, or do we as Dillard says, allow the “set pieces of liturgy” to enable us to keep our distance, to avoid any sort of meeting with God that might challenge or change us? Do we come to seek God’s will for us, or do we hope that our presence here will be enough to limit God’s interference in, or demands on, our time and on our lives?

We hope that God will change the world, and yet we approach God as if God were a kitten and not a lion, a beetle and not a behemoth. We want God to be strong and powerful, able to control the elements and protect us from harem yet, at the very same time we seem to want a God who keeps a certain amount of distance, a God who is within our power to tame and control.

The people of the Old Testament certainly knew what they were doing. They had a healthy respect and an appropriate sense of awe towards the presence of God in their midst. We might notice a sense of familiarity in the relationship at times, but we can see too that the Israelites had a deep respect for the power and might of God and understood that being in the presence of God was awesome and even dangerous. We see this when God calls Moses to the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. The people are instructed to wash their clothes and to keep themselves and even their flocks at a safe distance from the mountain. If they come too close to the presence of God they will die. Then: “When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”“

It is this power and this awesomeness to which Dillard draws our attention – not to make us afraid, but to try to raise our awareness, to help us to really think about what we are doing and to ask ourselves whether we really grasp the implications of worshiping the living God. Are we sensible enough of the risks that are entailed?

Take care when you come into the presence of God – for God, who cannot be controlled, may reach out and grab you, turn your life around, point you in new directions and take you places that you never expected to be. Take care when you come into the presence of God, you may never be the same again.

Lent 2, 2012

Mark 8:31-38

Marian Free

In the name of God who draws us out of darkness into light, from despair to hope and from death to life. Amen.

Some of you may have seen the movie or read the book “Chocolat”. It tells the story a quiet and conservative French village that lives life very seriously and rigidly.  As the narrator says at the beginning of the film: “If you lived in this village you understood what was expected of you. You knew your place in the scheme of things and if you happened to forget there was always someone to remind you. In this village if you saw something you weren’t supposed to see, you learned to look the other way or if by chance your hope had been disappointed you learned never to ask for more.“ Life was quiet and orderly if dull and constrained. There was certainly no room for joy or exuberance.

The mayor of the town took his role as the leader of that little village very seriously. “He modeled by example, hard work, modesty and discipline.” Part of his role as he understood it was to protect the moral fibre of the community. He not only attended church regularly but ensured that everyone else did as well. When the new young priest came to the village, the mayor edited all his sermons so that the views from the pulpit reinforced his, the mayor’s, moral precepts and helped maintain a certain standard of behaviour in the village.

It was therefore, a quiet, orderly village, but that did not make it a happy one. Beneath the apparently untroubled surface lay a turmoil of suppressed longings, hidden violence and broken dreams.

One year, during Lent, everything changes. Vivianne – an unmarried mother – arrives in the village with her daughter and upsets the finely tuned balance of this conservative community. Viviane is not only unmarried, she is different in other ways. She wears bright clothes and does not attend church. She supports and then shelters the woman who is regularly beaten by her husband. She befriends the gypsies who arrive on the riverbank and – perhaps worst of all – she opens a chocolaterie in the middle of Lent when the whole community is observing a period of fasting and abstinence.

It is not just the chocolaterie that is a problem. Somehow Vivianne’s warmth, her care for those who don’t fit the community’s rigid norms and her inclusiveness expose the coldness,meaness and unkindness that lie beneath the outward appearance of goodness and moral uprightness in the village. Because of Vivianne’s presence, even the mayor learns that his self-imposed ideals have not led to certainty and peace but rather to a sense of failure and confusion.

On Easter Day, the priest – freed from the editorial efforts of the mayor – speaks from his heart. “This is what I think: We can’t measure our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. We measure our goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.” A great burden is lifted from the shoulders of the people of the village as they come to understand that their imperfections do not need to be suppressed or hidden, but can be accepted as part of the wholeness of who and what they are.

Sadly, throughout history, the Christian message has been distorted and misrepresented. Christianity has been used as a means of control or to ensure conformity to a particular social code. Faith has been taught as obedience to a rigid set of rules, as a passive acceptance of life’s hardships, or as an austere existence that forgoes all but the most simple pleasures.  Chocolat  exposes the way in which faith has sometimes been confused with tradition and respectability and how easily Christianity can be used to limit and restrict an individual’s or even a whole community’s enjoyment of  life.

Today’s gospel provides an example of the way in which a single piece of scripture can be used to narrow rather than open up possibilities.  Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” At first glance the meaning seems obvious – in order to follow Jesus and be saved, we have to give up all our worldly pleasures and endure a joyless existence until finally we die and receive our reward. That is certainly how it is often used. I’m sure we have all heard, even if we haven’t used the expression: “We all have our crosses to bear.” As if we believe in a God who sends us hardships simply to test our fortitude and our willingness to suffer.

Life already has its share of sorrow and disillusionment – we don’t have to add to them by burdening ourselves. Taking up our cross is not a metaphor for subduing our passions or for mortifying our flesh. We are followers of the one whose death on the cross opened the door to resurrection life. When we take up our cross we do so because we know that not only does it hold the key to resurrection life, but that it will also lead to a deeper and richer experience of life in the present.

God who gave us life does not ask us to live a half-life, hiding in the shadows fearful of putting a foot wrong, or putting on a brave face, keeping up appearances and separating ourselves from the less worthy. If we make our standards too high or try to too hard to be what we are not, eventually cracks will begin to appear and selves that we are trying to hide will be exposed. To be truly Christian is to live in a way that is true to ourselves, not by pretending to be something that we are not. When we take up our cross, we do so in order to be more authentic, not less so.

As the priest says in the movie: “We can’t measure our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. We measure our goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include.”  This Lent, may you take up your cross, joyfully and expectantly knowing that you will lose only those things that you did not need and that you will gain more than you could ever imagine!

Lent 1 – 2012

Mark 1:9-15

Marian Free

In the name of God who never says: “You owe me[1].” Amen.

Some of you will know that I am a member of the Diocesan Council, the Standing Committee that administers the Diocese between Synod meetings. For a long time, there has been a tradition of serving a meal at the close of the meeting – possibly because in the past the meeting could drag on till nearly mid-night and the members needed to be fed. We met last Thursday night. During the meal I noticed something very striking. Wine was available as it is every month, but on Thursday night, in contrast to other similar occasions, the majority of people were drinking fruit juice or mineral water.

It was a quite unself-conscious action. Lent had not been mentioned during the meeting and no one announced that they weren’t drinking because it was Lent.  Here we were, a group of Christians unconsciously engaging in the same spiritual discipline – giving something up for the period of Lent. I found the experience all the more powerful because it wasn’t spoken and I felt a sense of solidarity – people of a common faith observing a common practice, a practice that has in many places fallen into disuse and that is barely noticed by the secular world.

I found myself wondering what it would be like if every member of every church gave up something – a treat, a luxury – for the forty days of Lent. Would the world wonder what crazy thing we were up to? Would our friends and neighbours admire our discipline and ask us questions about our faith? Would the newspapers and magazines once again print recipes for Lent? Would our practice be as much a reason for curiosity as the Muslim practice of Ramadan?

Has the world changed or have we changed? Did the practice of Lent lose its meaning or have the Christians of the world stopped practicing?

So what is Lent and why would we bother giving up something for forty days?

It’s easier to begin with what Lent is not. The first thing to notice is that “giving up” is not some sort of punishment or form of self-abasement. It is not the intention that Lent should be forty days of misery. (Giving up smoking is not a good idea if it will make your life and the lives of those around you miserable for the whole of Lent. In the end you will go back to smoking and all that you will have achieved will be to have made yourself and everyone else unhappy.) Nor should Lent be about striving for some sort of perfection – setting ourselves a task that we are bound to fail. (There is no point in deciding to pray for ten minutes every day if we are not used to praying daily – we will only get disheartened and give up.) One Lent is not going to make us perfect prayers, but it may just get us started. Remember that discipline comes from the same root as disciples – learners.

Lent is not about will power. Of course if we have decided, for example, to give up chocolate, it may take some strength of will to carry through our intention, but if we make the giving up a battle of wills, the practice becomes less about God and more about ourselves.  Lent is not about doing things – joining groups, creating a programme of reading, going to church. All of these things are good so long as we are not so busy filling our time up that we lock God out instead of letting God in.

So what is Lent all about? The season of Lent is about paying attention, it is about self awareness, about discovering what is really necessary for a life that is content and it is about learning to rely not on ourselves, but on God.

After his baptism, Jesus felt impelled to go into the wilderness. There in the silence and the barrenness he was able to focus entirely on his relationship with God. Without distraction he could pay attention to the presence of God and to what God might be saying to and asking of him. In a place without supermarkets, fields or kitchens, he could determine what he really needed to survive and what he could do without. In the emptiness he was able to recognise the temptation to prove himself. Finally, having no occupation, no friends, no other means of support, Jesus learned to rely entirely on God.

Few of us will feel driven to take ourselves off to the desert for forty days of self imposed isolation and starvation but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take this opportunity to find ways that will help us to pay attention, be more self-aware, learn what we really need to have to be happy and to develop a reliance on God.

A traditional Lenten discipline is that of fasting or of giving up some luxury in our lives. “Abstinence helps us to learn whether what we consume is consuming us, or whether what we possess possesses us.”[2] Choosing to go without something is a way of learning what we can do without or of learning that a simpler, less extravagant life-style is not only possible but that it helps us to focus our attention on what is really important. (We don’t need to have wine or chocolate to be content, but most of us do need family and friend.)

In the silence of the desert, Jesus was able to pay attention to God. We might do this through prayer or meditation, by joining a study group or by reading a book on spirituality. In today’s busy world, just stopping for a moment, turning off the phone, the computer, the TV will create a space which will provide some time to become more aware of the presence of God.

Times of silence and/or abstinence can have the effect of bringing us face-to-face with ourselves. In the quiet and discomfort of our figurative desert, we may be confronted with some ugly truths.  The silence and emptiness may reveal restlessness and dissatisfaction, or expose anger, resentment, disappointment or bitterness. If we trust God’s love and have the courage to face our shadows, we can begin to let them go and emerge stronger and better for the experience.

Without the props that we use to give our lives meaning, we are forced to rely on God and not on ourselves. Then we discover that in the power of God we can ignore distractions identify what is truly important and resist the temptation to go it alone.

Finally, when Lent is over, we discover that paradoxically it is not over. What we have learned changes us and the disciplines that we have practiced may be practices that we continue to use, so that by Lent next year we are looking for another challenge, another way to deepen our relationship with, and dependence on, God. By next year we will be ready to face other aspects of our lives that could be changed and transformed.

If the practice of Lent is new to you, or if you have found the practice dry and unfulfilling, try something this year that is achievable, something that fits with your life and your lifestyle. A simple practice is to make the sign of the cross before you get out of bed each day – it’s easy, it takes very little time and it is a reminder of the faith that you profess. Alternately you could begin or end the day with a short prayer, or choose to go without something that is a luxury. You may not be ready to try meditation, but perhaps you could try to turn off phones, television and computers for a period of time each day. Instead of feeling bad on those days when you don’t achieve your goal, be grateful for the times when you do. Instead of giving up when you fail, remind yourself that you are engaged in a learning process and try again the next day.

The fruit of spiritual discipline is a life that is deeply fulfilling, immensely satisfying and overflowing with joy and peace no matter what the external circumstances. Lent is not a burden but a gift, not a chore but a choice. During this Lent, may you find a way to pay attention to God, to discover what is really important in your life, to try to be open to the flaws that you uncover so that you may confront and overcome them and may you learn to let go and let God.

Epiphany 7

Mark 2:1-12

Marian Free

 In the name of God who sets us free from all our doubts and fears so that we may truly live. Amen.

 Just recently Michael and I watched an amazing movie – “Get Low”. Even though the movie centred on one character and there was little violence, no crime and only a modicum of sexual tension, the suspense was agonising. The story is set in Tennessee in the 1930’s and centres on Felix, a hermit who aggressively protects his privacy and about whom very little is known. Mystery surrounds him and as a result a number of legends have grown up – most notably that he murdered at least one person and that he was just as likely to do so again.

The story begins when a priest arrives at Felix’s hide-away to announce the death of one of Felix’s mates. For reasons unknown to the audience, this causes Felix to plan his own funeral which he intends to hold while he is still alive. He knows that rumours are being spread about him and he invites people to come and tell their stories in order for the truth to come out. Needless to say, his plans are met with disbelief, surprise and not a little anxiety – who would dare tell their stories to a man who was such an unknown quantity?

Felix manages to persuade a funeral director that he is serious about the plan and he even devises some sort of lottery to encourage people to attend – the prize being his three hundred acres of land. Flyers and invitations are sent out and plans are made for the event – stage, band, catering and so on.  Then, apparently not convinced that his true story will be told, Felix visits an old friend – the Rev’d Charlie Jackson.  The tension builds – Charlie will not come to the funeral unless Felix asks for forgiveness, something that Felix refuses to do.

By now, the audience is convinced that whatever Felix has done, it must have been absolutely terrible, unforgiveable even. Felix shouts at the priest that he won’t ask for forgiveness: “They keep talking about forgiveness. “Ask Jesus for forgiveness.” I never did nothing to him.” Continuing, he says: “I built myself a jail and lived in it for 40 years. I’ve had no wife, no family, no companionship, isn’t that enough!” When the priest remains resolute, and will not come, Felix storms off and cancels the funeral.

After considerable persuasion from the funeral director who stands to lose a lot of money, the event goes ahead with Charlie Jackson who tells those present that most people think that good and evil are poles apart, but that more often they are side by side. He tells the crowd that this tormented man, Felix, built the most beautiful church he had ever seen and then imprisoned himself on these three hundred acres for the past forty years.

The suspense is unbearable as Felix himself gets up to speak. As no one else will tell his story, he must tell it himself. His story is sad, but his crime, while serious, does not match our expectations. His crime was this: He fell in love with a married woman, the result of which was that she died at the hands of her husband. He has never forgiven himself for his part in her death.

For forty years Felix has carried the burden of guilt. For forty years he has locked himself away from the world as a form of self-imprisonment. For forty years he has kept his secret from everyone – including Mattie his one-time girlfriend and the sister of the woman he loved. For forty years Felix was unable to forgive himself and therefore unable to seek forgiveness. As a result his life was seriously curtailed.  He was, if you like, paralysed unable to move forward, unable to build relationships locked in the prison of his past which clung to him like an albatross – holding him back and preventing him from being truly alive. For forty years guilt and grief stood between him and happiness and fulfilment. Only when his friend died and Felix recognised his own mortality, did he finally come to recognise that he needed to find peace.

In today’s gospel, a group of people bring to Jesus a man who is paralysed. Instead of touching the man and uttering words of healing, Jesus tells him that his sins are forgiven. The reaction of the scribes is one of shock – only God can forgive sins! Jesus is unperturbed. “Which is easier to say: “Your sins are forgiven” or to say: “Stand up and take your mat and walk”? The gospel canvasses the significant issue as to Jesus’ ability to forgive sins, but an underlying theme is Jesus’ recognition of the paralytic’s real need – to be forgiven.

Jesus doesn’t associate disease with sin, but he does seem to recognise that physical healing alone is not the answer for the paralytic, something else is holding him back, something else is preventing him from living life to the full. Only if the paralytic hears the words of forgiveness will he truly be healed.

Forgiveness is powerfully liberating. It sets us free from guilt and regret and allows us to leave the past, whatever it is, behind us. If we accept that we are forgiven and if we have the grace to forgive ourselves we can move on from anxiety, doubt and fear, live in the present and look forward to the future.

It is a mistake to think that guilt is meant to be part of the Christian experience. Living with guilt, nursing our regrets and holding on to past sin demonstrate not faith or humility, but their complete opposite – arrogance and faithlessness.  If, like Felix, we close ourselves away and punish ourselves day after day believing that we do not deserve forgiveness we place ourselves in competition with God who alone is judge. Worse than that, we show a complete failure to trust in God’s love and in the saving grace of the cross and we deny the presence of the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit which continually transforms and renews us.

Felix’ story reminds us that it can be so much harder to ask for and accept forgiveness than it is to hold on to regret. But it is only by accepting our imperfections and by trusting in God’s unconditional love that we are able to be fully alive and it is only by being fully alive that we can show our gratitude for God’s gift of life to us.

Epiphany 6 2012

Mark 1:40-48

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose mind is not our mind and whose ways are not our ways. Amen.

When I was in my late teens I took part in a healing service. A member of our congregation was ill with cancer and a small group of us met to pray with her. She was in her forties I imagine and had three children, one of whom was my age. This woman had two goals in asking for healing prayer. One was the obvious one – to be cured of the cancer and the other – perhaps for her the more important – was that the miracle of her restoration to health would bring her son to faith. Sadly, our prayers failed to bring about the results she had hoped for and she died not long afterwards.

I may be confusing two memories, but I have a feeling that at the time we worked around the failure of the prayer in a number of ways. One that comes to mind is the belief that the prayer worked, but not in the way we expected – that is, that the woman, while not healed made peace with God and with her situation. In retrospect that is no sort of answer, what the woman really wanted was for her son to believe and at that time at least, he did not.

Why, when we are told that those who ask will receive and that those who have faith can move mountains do some people not receive what they ask for? Is it, as some suggest, something to do with the quantity of their faith? And what about the father of the epileptic child who says: “I believe, help my unbelief.” In that instance the amount of faith seems not to matter. Even if the amount of faith did matter, how does one measure it? Should we all be competing with each other, striving to prove that we have the most faith?

When I read this morning’s gospel, it seemed straight forward enough but then I began to ponder the conversation between the leper and Jesus. The leper says: “If you choose you can make me clean.” Jesus replies: “I do choose. Be made clean!” It seemed like a good place to begin a sermon. Jesus chooses and the leper is healed. However, the more I thought about it, the more fraught the conversation seemed. The leper’s approach demonstrates a mature understanding of the relationship between God and creation. He knows that he can’t make God heal him, that God/Jesus is not a puppet to be manipulated into doing what he, the leper wants. In fact, the leper’s request is not unlike Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. Jesus knowing the fate that awaits him asks that God spare him, then concludes the prayer: “Not my will but yours.”

The leper seems to have a grasp of prayer akin to that of Jesus. He comes to Jesus hoping, not expecting, to be made clean. He knows that Jesus can heal him, but he also knows that just because Jesus can it doesn’t mean that he will. Equally, Jesus praying to God at the moment of his greatest need, knows that God can save him from his fate, but he also knows that that does not mean that because God can save him, that God will. Both men pray. The leper is healed. Jesus is nailed to the cross.

How does one make sense of this? Why does God choose to answer some prayers and not others? When Jesus responds to the leper by saying: “I do choose”, does that mean that there are times when he doesn’t choose?

This apparently simple story of healing demands that we think deeply about prayer and about the way in which we relate to God. For many people, ourselves included, prayer is a one way street. We ask God to do something for us and expect to receive what we have asked for. This kind of prayer treats God as a creature that can be manipulated or worked on until we get what we want. It has no concern for the well being of others, but simply focuses on the self and asks: what can God do for me?

Prayer can also be a means of evading responsibility. When we pray for the end to war or poverty, we are often asking God to do what we are not prepared to do. We make God responsible for ending all the wrongs in the world thereby excusing ourselves from any role in challenging injustice, combating oppression, curing disease or alleviating suffering. Some tasks are just too great for us, so instead of trying to make a difference, we hand them over to God and believe that we have played our part.

Our attitude to prayer is, in part, determined by our understanding of God. The God of the Christian faith is constant and unchanging, unlike the volatile, inconsistent gods of Greek mythology. It is this that allows us to trust in God, that informs us that God is reliable and not capricious, that God does not act on a whim and will not be bought by the highest bidder or be forced into change by our persistence.

It is God’s unchangeable nature that makes it so hard for us to really understand how it is that prayer does or doesn’t work. God’s constancy assures us that God is trustworthy, but it also reminds us that God is not easily manipulated or swayed. The very characteristic that enables us to trust in God is the one trait that means that God may not be able to respond exactly when and how we would like God to respond.  When Jesus and the leper say to God: “You choose”, they are accepting that the unchangeable God is beyond their understanding. They are placing themselves and their future in God’s hands confident that whatever the outcome, God will be with them. For the leper that future was one without the skin disease that had separated him from the world and for Jesus it was the road to resurrection victory.

In his first encyclical Pope Benedict wrote: “The Christian who prays does not claim to be able to change God’s plans or correct what he has foreseen. Rather he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the Spirit to himself and to his work.”[1]

When we do not have all the answers, the best we can do is to trust in God who never changes and say: “we know you love us, you choose”.

Epiphany 5

Mark 1:29-39

Marian Free

In the name of God who knows all our stories . Amen.

I’d like to begin with a poem that was read on Radio National’s Poetica in January.

The young Alexander conquered India.     Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.     Did he not have even a cook with him?
Phillip of Spain wept when his Armada went down. Was he the only one who wept?
Frederick the second won the seven year’s war.     Who else won it?
Every page a victory.     Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.     Who paid the bill?
So many reports.     So many questions.

Who cooked Caesar’s food? Did Frederick win the seven year’s war on his own? Who else featured in the great events of history? Could battles have been won without the thousands of foot soldiers conscripted to fight or the cooks to fill their bellies?

Gill Scott-Heron raises different questions in his poem Black History. He illustrates the way in which history is recorded can be very one-sided. Speaking about the way in which he was taught about the colonization of Africa he writes:

“ And another way they knew the folks were backwards

well at least this is how we were taught

is that unlike the very civilized people of Europe,

these black groups actually fought!”

These two poems illustrate the well-known point that history is mostly written from the point of view of the victors. Those who have studied ancient history may know the story of Alexander the Great, who though young achieved great military victories. The stories of those who fought for him and those whom he conquered – their lives and loves are less likely to make it to the history books.

History has, by and large, been written by those with the leisure and education to be able to research and write.  History is also written from the point of view of the writer which is one reason why for example accounts of war can be so different – each side sees the atrocities committed by the other, but is less like to see the harm which they deliberately or carelessly inflicted.

In recent times, many different groups of people are reclaiming their histories and sharing their own stories. Women are looking for their voice in the past, minority groups are ensuring that we learn history from their point of view, those who have been colonised or oppressed seek to tell the story from their side. People whose past has been filled with trauma are overcoming the shame they have felt in order that the rest of us can learn about a past that has been buried or forgotten. I think for example of the brave women who told their stories of being forced to be “comfort women” during the second world war and of the adults who have finally found the courage to name the abuse they experienced at the hands of those who should have protected them.

In our own nation, history has been re-written over the past two decades. The momentous Mabo decision in 1992 put right the notion of Terra Nullius, that obvious fiction which suggested that Australia was uninhabited when our forebears settled here. As a nation and as a church, we are getting better at acknowledging that our past behaviour does not always stand up to scrutiny. At the same time movies and documentaries are unearthing and sharing some of the horror stories of our past: Leaving Liverpool and Oranges and Sunshine remind us that our history is not consistently one of which we can be proud.

The Bible has not escaped this tendency to write history from a particular point of view. It is not, nor was it ever intended to be an impartial record. The Gospel writers, as we have seen, write the story of Jesus for a particular situation and time and so tell it in a way that is meaningful for those for whom they write.

Beginning with the feminist movement various sub-cultures and people who are marginalised have begun to look beyond the biblical text to see if, in what is not being said, they can find their own stories.  In this way, women, refugees, the disabled and other disadvantaged groups have found their own stories and drawn conclusions about the way in which their stories have been suppressed or included.

Over the last century we have re-discovered the voices of women among the disciples and the leaders of the early church. From the records that we do have it is possible to chart the way in which the early gradually silenced and excluded the voices of such leaders. In the past decades we have been able to take Martha out of the kitchen and Mary off the floor and to place them among those who held places of authority in the Johannine community.

All of which brings me to Simon’s mother-in-law. This little snippet is fascinating.  Jesus goes to the home of Simon whose mother-in-law is sick. He heals her and she gets up and serves them.  It is such a small story and yet it is sufficiently significant to be included in all three synoptic gospels. The language used in telling the story is tantalizing and intriguing – the word “to serve” is the same language that is used in Acts 6 which describes the setting apart of the first deacons – diakonew from which our word deacon comes.  The inclusion of the story in the gospels begs a number of questions: Why is it included? What are we meant to learn from it? Did Jesus heal Simon’s mother-in-law simply so that she could get dinner for them or is she in fact a Deacon of the early church – one who served?

It is impossible to give definitive answers to any of those questions.

Perhaps today the most important thing for us to take away, is that Jesus frees us all from fear and doubt, indecision and lack of confidence, so that we may rise up and serve him, by serving the world around us?

Epiphany 4

Mark 1:21-28

Marian Free 

In the name of God who welcomes us into his embrace no matter what our faults or our weaknesses. Amen.

I’d like to begin this week with a poem by George Herbert – the same George Herbert – who authored a number of hymns including three in Together in Song – “Let all the world in every corner sing”, “King of Glory, King of Peace” and “Come my way, my truth, my life”.

This poem is titled “Love”.

Love

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’

Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.’

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

So I did sit and eat.                                                                         George Herbert

It is difficult to really understand what people in the first century meant by an unclean spirit. In a culture without the sort of medical knowledge that is available to us today all kinds of explanations were provided for a person’s ills. Unclean spirits bore the brunt of the responsibility. They – whatever they were – were responsible for what we might now call epilepsy, for mental illness and other inexplicable medical phenomena. It is no surprise then, that Jesus, like many other healers of his time, exercised his ministry of healing, by casting out the unclean spirit or spirits from a person who suffered from an affliction. This view presumes of course, that there is an entity separate from the person, which resides in and causes harm to the person – something that, with our advanced medical knowledge, we would reject today.

The simple matter of Jesus’ healing the sick, while miraculous, is not too difficult to come to grips with. What is intriguing in many of the accounts of exorcism is the negative reaction of the unclean spirits to Jesus’ presence such as that recorded in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel. Even before anyone has asked for or even suggested healing, the unclean spirit within the person recognises Jesus and calls out in terror: “What have you to do with us?”

What is going on here? Are we observing a power struggle between good and evil or a fierce desire for independence on the part of the person who is sick? Are there really such things as unclean spirits who, having taken up residence in a person do not want to lose their comfortable abode? Is it possible that the person who is suffering from the illness resists Jesus’ compassion because they have become dependent on the income that they receive from begging – an income they will lose if they become well?

According to our gospel writers, this reaction is not unusual. In Jesus’ presence, the unclean spirit/s often express fear and a wish for Jesus to go away and leave them alone.

I’ve spent some time contemplating the reaction of the evil spirits. Why would anyone resist or refuse healing? Why would anyone shrink from Jesus’ love and compassion? Why would anyone demand that Jesus go away? I imagine that there are many answers to such questions. The poem with which I began provides me with one solution. The author of the poem, George Herbert, was one of six children raised by their widowed mother. He was very bright. He achieved distinctions in his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and was appointed a Reader and then an orator at Cambridge University. These positions could have led to even greater things, but Herbert gave up all ambition to become a priest in the Anglican Church. He served in a Parish church for the remainder of his life, helping to repair the parish church with money from his own pocket. He was not someone whom you would associate with the guilt and sin of the first line of the poem, with the “unkind and ungrateful person” of the second verse or with the “shame” of the third verse.

Why then does he feel the need to draw back? Why does he feel that he has to refuse the welcome offered by Love?  There was surely no evil spirit to hold the poet back or to reject the advances of Love.

In the modern world, the reluctance to accept Jesus’ invitation has nothing to do with what those in the first century called evil spirits. The hesitancy, the drawing back, the sense of unworthiness comes instead from an awareness of our weaknesses and inadequacies compared with the absolute goodness of Jesus.

It’s a difficult concept, but I am sure that many of us have had the experience of feeling that we do not deserve the affection or attention of someone whom we love or admire. Or, having done something that we know we shouldn’t have done, want to hide ourselves away so that our misdeed not be discovered an ourselves be rejected as a result.  Like the child who has broken a valued possession and who cannot make eye contact with the adult who has discovered her, or the pupil who has disappointed a favourite teacher and who drops his eyes to the ground rather than look the teacher in the face – none of us like to be found out, least of all by those whom we respect and whom we hope will love and respect us.

There is a kind of wisdom in this sort of self-knowledge that makes embarrassed and ashamed and leads us to want to shield our sins from God. It is a recognition that God is goodness itself and that despite all our striving, we will never attain a standard that makes us worthy of God. It means that with the Psalmist we have “the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom”. The difference between the person in Herbert’s poem and the evil spirits, is that having at first withdrawn, filled with shame, that person opens themselves to Jesus’ love and forgiveness and allows themselves to be drawn in instead of pushing Jesus away.

On our own, none of us is perfect; none of us is worthy to stand in the presence of God. Knowing this enables us to retain an honest view of ourselves and a healthy awe of God. However, it is important always to remember that God’s love is unconditional and that as the poem says: “Jesus’ bore the blame.” When at last we come face to face with God, we may cast our eyes to our feet when we think of all that we have done, but let us be sure not to ask God to go away or to ever turn our backs to God’s  welcoming embrace.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Mark 1:14-20

Marian Free

 In the name of God who grabs us when we least expect and asks us to follow to the end. Amen.

Some of you will have read, in yesterday’s Courier Mail, the story of Sister Mary Angela – the Administrator of Mater public hospitals for 21 years[1]. Sister Mary Angela – then Kathleen Doyle – was born in Ireland. “She was working the family farm, aged 15 when God called. ‘That’s a strange thing that happened,’ she says. ‘I can’t really describe it by saying anything other than it came into my mind.’ She felt God was near to her. As she worked away in the field, she says, she would converse with God the way she conversed with teenage friends. Somewhere in these conversations was raised the possibility that she might make herself – her whole life – available to whatever God would decide for her.

She says: ‘People ask me, ‘Did you feel compelled to do that?’ Not really. I felt that it was an option. It just came into my mind as if somebody had spoken it to me. That’s the way I heard it. I wasn’t compelled. I could do it or not do it.”

When Sister Angela Mary was sent to Australia she wrote in her diary: “How could I have left home for good? What can I do? What have I do offer? At this moment, I feel very miserable. Where did I think I could possibly be useful?’” Her misgivings were unfounded. Despite the fact that she had no experience in management, she was asked to administer the three Mater public hospitals. During her time there she established a new adult hospital, developed a world class service for mothers and babies, drove the development of a family clinic to treat children with mental illness and much more.

C.S. Lewis heard the call of God in quite a different way. As you might imagine, the young Lewis was a serious child. In his teenage years he worried that his prayer was not genuine and set himself very high and rigid standards. It is no wonder that he abandoned this dry and harsh experience of faith. He came to the conclusion that all religion was false so it came as a surprise when at university he began to discover that while Christianity might be no good, there were in fact many Christians who were good.

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy he describes in detail the way in which God broke down his defenses[2]. “I was sitting on the top of a bus. Without words a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door would lead to something that he would not be able to control. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, “I chose”, yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. Then came the consequence. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. For Lewis, that was the beginning of the end.

He continues: “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.” “I had wanted ‘to call my soul my own’.” “Yet, there I was, alone, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, ad admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Kathleen and Lewis are modern parallels of the stories we have heard this morning. Jonah, like C. S. Lewis, tried unsuccessfully to ignore or avoid the call of God. Like Kathleen, Peter and Andrew, James and John were working at the family business, when a voice stirred their imagination and caused them to abandon their trade, their boats and their families and to follow Jesus wherever he would lead.

Lewis was not looking for God, nor would he have identified any lack in himself or have said that he was searching for meaning. If anything, he was completely self-contained and self-assured. The last thing he was expecting was some irrational belief to overturn his intellectual assurance. Kathleen Doyle was an unlikely candidate for the convent. When she told her mother that she thought she might become a nun, her mother responded: “You a nun? You’d never stay. You like going to dances too much.”

The bible is filled with stories of call, of the variety of ways in which people respond and of the amazing things that – empowered by God – they are able to do. Abraham is asked by an unknown God to leave everything and take his family to an unknown land. Moses sees God in the burning bush and protests that he does not have the skills to lead the people of Israel. Jonah hears the voice of God and runs away. Peter, Andrew, James and John leave everything and follow Jesus.

Obedience, protest, skepticism, reluctance, joy, relief and surprise are just some of the ways that people respond when God tugs at their hearts and asks them to give their all and serve. God calls farm girls, merchants, anglers and intellectuals. Their response is often one of surprise or even denial:  “I can’t (don’t want to) do that”. “What do I have to offer?” Few begin the journey fully equipped with the skills, the wisdom and insight needed to do what is required but this does not matter. Those whom God calls, God equips.

God’s insistent call persists in every generation. Jesus may not be walking by our lakesides or wandering through our towns, but his call to follow echoes through the centuries. For two thousand years the wise and the foolish, the brave and the cowardly, the talented and the not so talented have stepped up to God’s call and we are here today only because they had the courage or the foolhardiness to say: “yes”.

Are we listening for the voice of God and will our “yes” ensure that the gospel is shared with the generation that follows?

(Alternate ending)

The voice of Jesus may be heard in many and varied ways and by people who differ considerably from each, but however God calls, and whatever God asks us to do, if we have the audacity to respond God will do the rest.

Second Sunday after Epiphany

John 1:43-53

Marian Free

 In the name of God who knows us better than we know ourselves. Amen.

Today I’d like to share with you a little of the story of another Augustine – the great scholar and theologian – Augustine of Hippo.

This Augustine was born in Numidia in North Africa in 354. His father was a pagan and his mother Monica a Christian. As a child he was educated in the traditional classical manner typical for a young pagan of that age. Later he became a teacher of rhetoric in North Africa and then he moved to Milan where he held the most important academic position in the world.  It appears that his academic success was not completely fulfilling. While in Milan he explored the teachings of the Persian religion. After nine years trying to understand the religion he still had not found the answer to his search for religious meaning.

He began to explore philosophy and skepticism. At the time his mother tried to point him in the direction of Christianity, but it was only when a friend read about the life of St Anthony of the Desert that Augustine seriously became to examine the Christian faith.

One afternoon Augustine was sitting in a friends’ garden drinking the best of Italian wine, feeling very depressed by the state of his life and feeling that he was full of iniquity. He cast himself down under a fig tree, burst into tears and implored God not to remember his sins.

He describes what happened that afternoon: “How long, how long, “to-morrow, and tomorrow?” Why not now? why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness? As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl (I do not know which) saying and repeating over and over again. “Pick it up and read, pick it up and read.”

At once my countenance changed, and I began to think intently whether there might be some sort of children’s game in which such a chant is used. But I could not remember having heard of one. I checked the flood of tears and stood up. I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find. So I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit. “Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts.” (Rom 13:13-14) I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of the sentence, it was as if a light relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All shadows of doubt were dispelled (Chadwick, St Augustine’s Confessions, 152).

Shortly after his conversion, Augustine became a priest and he was later made a Bishop. His writings continue to be influential in the Christian world today.

Augustine under the fig tree. Nathaniel under the fig tree. This week and next, the readings recount the call of the first disciples – those people who joined Jesus in his mission. According to John the first to follow Jesus were disciples of John the Baptist. On hearing John the Baptist identify Jesus as the Lamb of God Andrew and one other left John and went to find out more about Jesus. Andrew then called his brother Peter. The following day Jesus called Philip who in turn found the skeptical Nathaniel. Nathaniel is astounded that Jesus already knows so much about him and comes to faith in the one whom he recognises as both Son of God AND King of Israel.

It seems that people come to Jesus and to discipleship through a variety of means. Augustine is sitting pondering his situation and finds the answer in scripture. Andrew is curious and seeks out Jesus to find out more about him. Phillip responds when Jesus calls him to follow and Nathaniel is impressed by Jesus’ insight into his character. Some seek Jesus out, some come because they hear Jesus’ call, others are introduced to Jesus by their family and friends and still others stumble on Jesus almost by accident.

We can see from even this non-representative selection of people that there are a wide variety of ways in which people come to faith or in which they experience a call to follow Jesus. For some it is a sudden and dramatic moment of conversion. For others coming to faith is a gradual process of deepening understanding. A great many people would say that they have never known a moment when they did not believe – faith was transferred as it were through the umbilical cord and that faith has remained with them throughout their whole life. Some come to faith through an intellectual process of testing, questioning and reading whereas for others their journey to faith is more a matter of the heart.

God is not remote, indifferent and disengaged from the world, but is longing for connection with us, those whom God created. As Jesus sought out the disciples, so the Trinity continues to seek us out, to bring us deeper into relationship. God knows who we are, how to approach us and how we will respond. Whether we are minding our business under a fig tree, mending our fishing nets, studying the scriptures or meeting with friends, God seeks us out, calls us by name and asks that we follow, that we join God in the great task of saving the world.

We have said “yes” to faith, that “yes” is also a “yes” to discipleship, a commitment to serve God in the world?