Remember- Jesus’ resurrection body

April 26, 2025

Easter 2 – 2025

John 20:19-31

Marian Free

In the name of God who in Jesus touched and was touched. Amen.

During Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, his last week of being physically present on earth, his friend Mary anointed his feet with expensive ointment and wiped them with her hair – an act of touch so intimate that it is almost embarrassing to contemplate. A few days later the tables are reversed when (in the middle of a meal) Jesus gets up and washes and dries the feet of his disciples (another intimate, boundary breaking act). Having one’s feet cradled and smoothed by another creates a strong contrast with the way in which Jesus’ body was brutally flogged, cruelly crowned and horrifically nailed to the cross.  

These accounts, gentile and loving, cruel and hateful, tell us that Jesus inhabited a real body, that he had a physical, earthly presence that could be fed and starved, alone and pressed in upon, gently wiped andpitilessly hammered.  

It is interesting to note that many of the resurrection accounts continue this theme of Jesus’ physical presence.  Not only could Jesus be seen by the disciples, but he could eat, and he could touch and be touched. Apart from Mark whose ending is very abrupt, each gospel includes an account which emphasises the physicality of the risen Jesus. According to Matthew, the women hold Jesus’ feet, likewise in John, Magdalene reaches out to touch Jesus. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus sits down to a meal and breaks bread in front of the unsuspecting disciples. When Jesus returns to Jerusalem and appears to the disciples he not only invites them to touch (to prove that he is not a ghost), but he asks for something to eat and is given fish which he eats in their presence (Lk 24:42,3).  Here, in John, when Jesus breaks in to the locked room, he demands that the disciples look at the scars in his hands and feet. When Jesus appears a second time to appease Thomas, he not only shows scars, but invites JThomas to touch.

Of course, we have no idea of the nature of Jesus’ resurrection body. Even though it is reported that he could be touched and that he could eat, he could apparently appear out of nowhere and transport himself through time and space (Luke 24). Given that the stories were retold many times before the evangelists committed them to paper, we cannot be sure how much (or how little the stories) were embellished. However, we can be absolutely certain that in some way that is impossible to explain or even understand, Jesus, who was declared dead on a Friday afternoon, was very much alive from early Sunday morning.

The nature of Jesus’ resurrection body has been a matter for much scholarly debate, but I don’t want to focus on that today. This morning, I would like to reflect on the evangelists’ emphasis on Jesus’ physicality and the possibility that means something other than a need to prove that Jesus really did rise.

As I pondered on the texts that we have read over the past few weeks and as I considered the importance of the fleshly physical nature of Jesus’ earthly body, I wondered if one of the reasons for emphasising this in the post-resurrection appearances was to make sure that we didn’t forget, that we didn’t/don’t allow ourselves to spiritualise Jesus, that we don’t somehow put the earthly Jesus at one remove from us, that we don’t diminish his humanity and focus instead on his divinity. 

Do the gospels focus on touch in the week leading up to the resurrection and in the post-resurrection accounts to make sure that in the centuries following these events that we would never lose sight of the fleshly, physicality of Jesus’ earthly body? Is their emphasis on touch a way of ensuring that we do not make the risen Jesus remote and untouchable, unable to relate to our experiences of hunger and being fed, exhaustion and being rested, sorrow and joyfulness?

Is it even possible that Jesus himself emphasised the physical so that we would remember that he knew what it was like to suffer, to fear and to be abandoned. Did Jesus appear in a physical body to ensure that we would remember that he was once one of us and that just as he was real, so too we should be real. Jesus’ fleshly, physicality resurrection presence is a constant reminder that being human, having human needs and responding with human emotions is not something of which to be ashamed.

If we spiritualise Jesus, deny the physicality of his resurrection body, we are in danger of making him into someone with whom we cannot identify, someone other than us. We face the real danger that by spiritualising him we create a divine figure whose standards of perfection we can never reach.

Maybe, just maybe, Jesus’ resurrected body could touch and was touched, so that we would never lose sight of his earthly body.

Maybe Jesus is saying: “I was real, I was here, I was just like you.  Remember, remember, remember.”

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A matter of touch (or not) – Christ is risen

April 19, 2025

Easter Day – 2025

Luke 24:1-12

Marian Free

In the name of God whom death could not defeat and whom the tomb could not contain. Amen.

There is a beautiful movie made in Japan titled “Departures”. It is not, as I imagined, about a travel agency, but about a funeral company. A cellist, Daigo, is forced to take a job with a funeral company when his contract with an orchestra is terminated. At first he will not even share the news of his new job with his wife because those who handle the dead were considered “unclean” and by virtue of their “uncleanness” were prevented from mixing with other people. By association, the Daigo’s wife would also have been treated as a pariah. What Daigo learns by observation and practice, is that it is a privilege to prepare the bodies of the dead for burial. Through the film, we are given an insight into the gentleness, care and reverence that it taken with the deceased and with Daigo (and then his wife) understand that really it is an honourable profession – a gift to the provider of the service as well as to the beneficiary.

The practice of preparing bodies for death has become the province of funeral directors in Western nations, but there are still people who insist on performing this last intimate, and personal ritual for a loved one.

Our readings for the past week have highlighted intimacy and touch. We began two weeks ago with the account of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with costly oil and then wiping his feet with her hair. Maundy Thursday recounts Jesus’ kneeling before the disciples and washing and drying their feet. Then in contrast to the gentle intimacy of these acts, Good Friday reminds us how Jesus’ body was handled roughly, and brutally by men who did not know him, whose touch was not a sign of intimacy, but of domination and indifference. Finally, the feet that were anointed by Mary and the hands that washed the feet of the disciples were fixed to a cross with nails. To add insult to injury Jesus’ broken, bloodied body was hurried wrapped and placed in a tomb – denied the reverent washing and anointing that was the custom[1].

In a culture in which the body is washed, anointed and wrapped shortly following death – a final act of love – it must have been awful for the women to watch Jesus’ torn and shattered body placed in a tomb without ceremony and to have known that it would be at least thirty-six hours before the ritual cleansing and anointing could begin – by which time the blood would have dried and the bones forever out of shape. For the women, women who had followed him all the way from Galilee and who had supported him from their own pockets, the grief experienced by Jesus’ death would have been compounded by the abruptness of his burial, a burial with no ceremony and little preparation. As he was torn away from them by his arrest and crucifixion, so now he is quickly removed from their reach.

It is no surprise that, at early dawn, as soon as the day of rest had ended, the women found themselves at the tomb, ready to say their final ‘goodbyes”, to do what had been denied them two nights ago. They have come to wash his body, to massage it with oils, and to touch Jesus one last time.

BUT in this week in which touch has been so important, touch is now denied the women who followed him to the cross and stood by while he died. The tomb is open and the body, the precious body gone; gone. The tomb is empty because Jesus is not dead, and not being dead, does not require the ministration of the women. Were they still bereft? Were they further traumatised? We do not know. We do not even know if the women ever see Jesus, let alone touch him again. Their part in the story ends here. 

The emphasis on touch in the weeks leading up to Jesus’ resurrection warns us not to lose sight of the fact that Jesus fully embodied our physical, fleshly form, that he was able to touch and be touched in ways that demonstrated his love for and his desire to be close to us. As we rejoice in the resurrection, and in the imperishability of Jesus’ risen body, let us not abandon the earthly reality of the Jesus that sought (and seeks) intimacy with us. The tension between the physical Jesus and the risen Christ reminds us that the risen Christ is not aloof and remote, but that the risen, ascended Jesus is the Jesus who was totally present, totally engaged and who wants to be in relationship with us.

We cannot touch, but we can remember that once he was touched and that he could touch.

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed!

[1] At least Jesus’ body was claimed for burial. Most victims of crucifixion were unceremoniously tossed into a pit.

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God is dead – Good Friday

April 19, 2025

God is dead – Good Friday 2025

Marian Free

In the name of God who, in Jesus, identified with humanity to the point of death.  Amen.

“Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” A core component of Christian faith is that Jesus actually dies. Taken to a literal end point, God dies with Jesus on the cross. From three in the afternoon on Friday to sometime during the night on Saturday evening there is an absence – an absence felt physically by Jesus’ friends and disciples. An absence that I believe we are meant to feel in our hearts and in our bones. From that moment on Good Friday when the gospel is read until that moment on Sunday morning when we declare: “Christ is risen”, we are confronted with the harsh reality that Jesus, God among us, was put to death and that for something like 36 hours, Jesus’ lifeless body lay in a tomb. Jesus/God was truly dead.

As we wait – in this time of emptiness – we have an opportunity to experience the absence of God –  in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the prisons where people are tortured and killed because they challenged the authority of the state, in the favelas of Brazil, the townships of South Africa and the slums of Mumbai and in the Congo and the countless other places in which war, civil strife, injustice and poverty shout out that God is dead, that God is impotent to bring about lasting change.

In the dramatization of the gospel on Good Friday we acknowledge our complicity in the death of Jesus. We take the part of the crowd demanding: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” In so doing, we acknowledge our complicity in the death of Jesus/God in the world today. Our collective unwillingness to pay the cost of change that would lead to peace, equity and justice makes us uncomfortable with “revolutionaries” like Jesus, such that we join the cry for their removal – condemning Jesus to his death. Our collective belief that somehow we can solve the dilemmas of the world, pushes God to margins, denies God the ability to act – sends Jesus to the cross. Our focus on our own needs and our belief that collectively we have the tools to solves the world’s problems proclaims that we do not need God – keeps Jesus in the tomb.

During the time between our Good Friday observances and our Easter Day celebrations, we acknowledge that God is powerless in the face of human greed, greed that leads to a desire for power and control, greed that demands an unfair share of the world’s resources, greed that ensures one’s own well-being before the needs of others. We recognise our complicity in the state of the world today and we grieve the ways in which we have disempowered and marginalised God through our action (or more likely through our inaction).

If God is dead, it is because we put God to death. It is a burden we need to carry especially today.

Thank God we know the end of the story. 

May we commit ourselves to resurrection life – ours and that of others – that God’s power and love may be effective in the world and God’s presence shine light into the darkness.

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Washing our dirty feet – Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2025

Maundy Thursday – 2025

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who breaks into our world, shatters our comfort zones and insists on intimacy with us. Amen.

I like to hold dinner parties. Inviting friends, poring over recipe books, getting out the good china and silver and then of course the meal itself – good company, good food and good wine. I hope that I am a good host and that I have given careful thought to the meal and that I have considered the tastes and the allergies of my guests. I also hope that I can enable them to feel relaxed and comfortable.

What I have never, ever done, or even considered doing, is leaving the table, getting towel and water and washing the feet of my guests. I cannot imagine anything better designed to cause acute discomfort and embarrassment.  In fact, I am confident that many of my friends might decline future invitations for fear of what socially inappropriate and mortifying behaviour I might indulge in next.

Yet, we read tonight’s gospel and don’t even blink.  None of us sit up in horror and wonder what on earth Jesus is doing by embarrassing his friends and humiliating himself in this way. None of us condemn Jesus for his social faux pas, none of us consider how we would feel if, should we be fortunate enough to sit at table, we found Jesus at our feet – touching us, washing us! No, we save all our criticism for the hapless Peter who is simply trying to save Jesus from further embarrassment. Peter, who understands the social cost to Jesus of his actions. Peter who is behaving, dare I say, in the way that most of us would have behaved. 

In this, possibly the most confronting of Jesus’ actions, Jesus ignores social niceties and the disapprobation of his peers. There is no other way that he can demonstrate his love for and his desire for closeness with his disciples. 

John differs from the other gospel writers in that he records the timing of Jesus’ last meal as the night before Passover, meaning that the meal was probably an informal occasion – Jesus and his disciples.  Whether or not it was a formal occasion, certain protocol would still have been observed – where people sat, who was served first and so on. In some households (or so we believe) servants or slaves would have washed the dirty feet of the guests as they came in. We do not know where this dinner was held but it was certainly not in the home of one of the twelve. They, like Jesus, came from Galilee and this night they are in Jerusalem as they have presumably been for most of the previous week. 

What the customs were in settings other than a home is not clear. In any case, feet have not been washed when the group of friends gathered, and Jesus has waited till mid-meal to wash the feet of his disciples – making it even more shocking, and making it clear that this a symbolic not a cultural act as Jesus goes on to explain. Jesus tells the disciples that he is setting the example for how they are to live together – not as servants and masters but as servants of one another. 

Jesus’ action is also symbolic of intimacy, the intimacy that he desires with his disciples, the intimacy that he seeks with us.  

Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet also serves as a metaphor for the incarnation. God, in Jesus, breaks into our world, invades our personal space, claims intimacy with us, ignores our discomfort and insists on our attention. 

Despite that, it is often the case that we try to keep God at arm’s length, either because we see God as aloof and ourselves unworthy of God’s notice OR because we seek to keep God one step removed from the messiness of our lives. We kid ourselves that if we keep a certain amount of distance between ourselves and God that maybe God won’t see our dirty laundry – our dirty feet. BUT of course, God does see, and despite our sense of unworthiness and all our efforts to build barriers, God does want to be intimately involved with our dirty, messy lives, and God, in Jesus kneels at our feet to wash the dirt away.

Tomorrow we come face-to-face with Jesus’ humanity, Jesus’ willingness to be engaged with every part of human existence – including the ugly, and the messy. In facing the cross, Jesus let down all his defences – between his divinity and his humanity, between himself and us. He was vulnerable, weak and human.

Tonight, as we contemplate Jesus’ great love for us, Jesus’ willingness to show that love by becoming one of us and by enduring the cross for us, can we also contemplate letting down our defences and let Jesus into our lives as one who seeks such an intimacy with us that he would place himself at our feet, our dirty feet, take them in his hands and wash them?

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Humble and riding on a donkey – Palm Sunday

April 14, 2025

Palm Sunday – 2025

Luke 22:14 – 23:56, Phil 2:5-11

Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us and empowers us and who shows us our true worth. Amen.

Paul writes: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 

                  who, though he was in the form of God,

                                    did not regard equality with God

                                    as something to be exploited, 

                  but emptied himself,

                                    taking the form of a slave,

                                    being born in human likeness.

                  And being found in human form, 

                                    he humbled himself

                                    and became obedient to the point of death—

                                    even death on a cross.

To conclude from this that Jesus had no agency, or that he allowed himself to be put upon would be a mistake.

Humility can one of the most difficult virtues to grasp and to practice. It requires a great deal of balance. Humility is often mistaken for weakness[1], submission or meekness whereas it is in humility that true strength lies. One of the problems in coming to grips with humility is that it can appear to be contradictory in nature, and it is often easier to define in terms of what it is not rather than what it is. So, for example while humility involves not thinking more highly of oneself than is warranted, it also means not thinking less of oneself than one deserves. Misunderstanding humility leads to false modesty and to self-deprecation, both of which suggest a focus on oneself which leads of pride, the opposite of humility. Worse, false modesty is a denial of the unique gifts and talents bestowed on us by God. 

To be humble is to have a realistic view of oneself – one’s weaknesses and one’s strengths. Humility means having a willingness to learn, from others and from one’s mistakes but it does not mean underestimating or denying our gifts, hiding our light under bushel, being silent in the face of injustice, or allowing ourselves to be treated as a door mat.

The readings for this morning highlight the contradictory nature of humility – or the balance between what appears to be pride and the total trust in and reliance on God. In Isaiah, the speaker boasts of his strengths at the same time as acknowledging that these come from the Lord. The Christ hymn of Philippians celebrates Jesus’ humble self-emptying, and his giving up his divinity to fully inhabit his humanity. Yet Jesus’ behaviour as he enters Jerusalem – his willingness to accept the adulation and praise of the people and their acknowledgement of his kingship, his overturning of the tables in the temple and his confident responses to the challenges of the leaders and teachers of the church suggest a Jesus who is anything but humble in the usual sense of the word. 

In the account of the Passion, Jesus’ insistence that God has given him a kingdom, his allowing his disciples to be armed, his composure when faced with Judas’ betrayal and the secrecy which surrounded his arrest and his refusal to be drawn into a defence of his messiahship indicate his clear understanding of who he is – not a weak submission to fate. Jesus’ insistence that the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of God, his insistence that the women not feel sorry for him, his offering of forgiveness from the cross and his assurance to the contrite criminal that he would enter Paradise all demonstrate a healthy ego, a quiet strength, and a confidence in his role which could be mistaken for pride.

It is these apparent contradictions that give us a sense of what it truly means to be humble. Jesus’ determination, self-belief and self-awareness are anything but the weakness and mildness that are often associated with humility. Jesus accepted his God-given role, which was to submit to God’s will for his life, but he absolutely refused to deny the gifts that came with the role. He didn’t exploit his divinity, but neither did he deny the strengths associated with it. He allowed the soldiers to demean and torture him, but he maintained a steely resolve to see his task through to the end[2].

Jesus’ humility was born out of a confidence in himself, his clear understanding of his role and his place before God, and a determination to follow the path set before him wherever it led. Jesus’ certainty with regard to his role and his assurance that he was following God’s will, gave him the courage to stay true to himself rather than be tempted to use his godliness to avoid what lay ahead.

As we enter into Holy Week and walk with Jesus to the cross may we have a true sense of our own worth, recognise our strengths and our limitations and know our place in God’s plan for the world and have the courage to be true to our God-given selves.

[1] One of the on-line dictionary definitions suggested that submissiveness, meekness and lowliness are synonyms which surely is misleading. and leads to an understanding of humility as self-abnegation, rather than a true sense of one’s worth.

[2] In the desert Jesus had already demonstrated an ability to withstand temptation to grasp power, or to use the power that he did have to gain followers, wealth and governance of the world.  At any point could have, as he could in the wilderness, laid claim to his godliness – called down angels to fight for him, spoken in his defence (not that that would have worked), shown anger or given in to despair.

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Wild, extravagant love – Mary anoints Jesus

April 7, 2025

Lent 5 – 2025

John 12:1-8

Marian Free

In the name of God who draws us into relationship and who does not pull back when we demonstrate affection wildly, extravagantly and passionately. Amen.

In the 1960’s Harry Harlow carried out a number of experiments in to determine if the mother-child relationship was solely a consequence of the role a mother played in providing food and protection or whether affection and touch played a role.  Of these the most well-known (if unethical) experiment involved removing young monkeys from their mothers just a few hours after birth. The young monkeys were placed in cages with two “mothers” one of which was made of wire and dispensed milk through a baby bottle. The other was made of soft cloth but provided no food. What Harlow discovered was that the monkeys spent a majority of their time clinging to the relative comfort of the cloth mother and went to the wire “mother’ only for food.  In other words, the babies drew more comfort from physical contact than nourishment.  

Thank goodness experiments such as this could not be carried out today but this, and other research demonstrates how important touch is to human development and well-being.  

We don’t need experiments with monkeys to prove this. In recent decades we have come face-to-face with the long-term trauma experienced by those who were removed from their families and placed into orphanages, group homes or foster care in which many experienced abuse and neglect. Many victims of such actions will tell of their continuing inability to feel secure, to form relationships and to trust anyone. 

We live in a society in which touch is carefully regulated – by law, but also by social norms. Touch can be used to demonstrate care, support and intimacy, but it can also be used to abuse, to control and to isolate. Touch is important but it can be misused and misunderstood. The appropriate use of touch differs from country to country and changes over time.  It is only recently (in my lifetime) that it has become widely acceptable for women to shake hands. And it is important to note that while many people welcome a comforting hand on the arm, but there are some who will recoil from physical contact.

While it has proven necessary to legally regulate the use of touch, this in itself has problems. Children and the elderly can often be starved of physical signs of affection. Children who experience neglect at home, can no longer hope for a quick hug from a teacher or sports coach. Older persons in aged care facilities likewise miss out on daily, or even occasional hugs.

Social norms around touch is one of the things that makes today’s reading so extraordinary. In the culture of Jesus’ time and place, the behaviour of women and men was tightly regulated. Women were the property of their father and then their husband. In public a woman would have been forbidden from speaking to a male who was not a member of her family. A woman who physically touched a man to whom she was not related would not only have been seriously castigated, but her behaviour would have sent shock waves through her community. In any other circumstance she would have been labelled as a harlot, as a woman with no morals and no self-respect.

Yet here, as if it were something completely ordinary, we have a scene in which Mary does a number of things which are socially inappropriate – she lets down her hair, she places herself at Jesus’ feet, and using extravagantly costly ointment, proceeds to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair. It is a wonder that it is only Judas who expresses horror at the events unfolding before him.  In a room which is presumably filled with men, in which Mary’s role would have been to join Martha in serving the meal, Mary breaks not one but several social conventions and Jesus instead of condemning her, commends her!

This scene tells us a great deal about Mary’s relationship with Jesus. She obviously felt a very deep affection for him, but it is perhaps more significant to note that she had complete trust in him. She did not feel that she had to stint in her outpouring of love or to keep a distance (physical or emotional) between them. She had no fear that Jesus would reject her expression of the depth of her care and affection. She was confident not only that he would not recoil from her or from her outpouring of love, but that he would protect her from the censure and negativity that her actions would almost certainly engender.

It is too easy to focus on the extravagance of Mary’s gesture (and the meanness of Judas’ response) and to avoid focussing on an action that might make us feel deeply uncomfortable. But Mary’s action is clearly a description of intimacy, service and abundant and extravagant love, the love of a woman for one whom her sister only days before had identified as the Christ. It is an account of intimacy between a believer and God.

By weeks end, Jesus will have been touched by strange and cruel hands. He will have been arrested, roughly handled, whipped and crucified. During these moments of humiliation and torment, will he have remembered the gentle hands of Mary, the caress of her hair and the smoothness of the ointment? Will her wild and extravagant outpouring of love be one of the things that sustains him?

Mary’s actions throw into sharp relief our own elationship with God. How many of us respond to God’s love for us with such wild, extravagant abandon? How many of us truly believe that all God seeks from us is not – as we would believe – mindless obedience, but a selfless, humbling outpouring of our love for God, a love that reveals our understanding of how much God loves us, a love that is utterly confident that God will accept our expression of love, no matter how wild, extravagant and unconventional it may be? God’s love for us is boundless, and unconditional, yet many of us find it hard to trust that God loves us that much, and equally as hard to love God in kind. Many of us portion out our love, tentatively offering God some but not all of us, anxious perhaps that God may not welcome our gift. 

Mary has no such hesitation but throws herself (literally) at God’s (Jesus’) feet, lavishly and liberally covering them with an ointment worth a year’s wages and wiping up the excess with her own hair.

What proof do we need of God’s love for us? What will it take for us to love God in return?

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A son who brings shame and dishonour and a father who couldn’t care less

March 29, 2025

Lent 4 – 2025

Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free

In the name of God who, on our part endures humiliation and shame in order to show love to and to welcome home the worst of us. Amen.

(You might like to watch the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane’s one minute reflection on today’s gospel.)

There are two parables (only found in Luke) that have become part of common parlance.  These are known as the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, our over familiarisation with these parables (and with parables in general) is that they have lost their capacity to shock, to pull us up short. In the first instance, Jesus’ parable about the Samaritan is not a call to do good works, but a critique of those – good Christians all– who think that in some way superior to those whom they consider as somehow lesser than themselves. In the second instance, Jesus is challenging the view of those who thought that Jesus should only eat with/associate with those who kept the law and those who observed the niceties of social expectations (Luke 15:1).

In the case of the Prodigal son, as the name suggests, the focus tends to be on the son. When we read the parable, we put ourselves in the place of the son and feel immense gratitude that God overlooks our faults when and if we repent. What we fail to see, is what the parable tells us about the Father – by implication what it tells us about God and Jesus. In fact, scholars today call the parable the forgiving father, because that more accurately represents Jesus’ meaning.

The focus in this parable is not the repentance (if it was repentance) of the son, but on the father, who, ignoring ridicule and having no regard to his position in society, not only indulges the son, but who watches day and night for the son’s return and who runs to greet him on the road. In this parable, Jesus turns the honour/shame culture of the Middle East on its head. 

At that time (and in some places today) the concept of honour/shame was central to all relationships in the Middle East. There were complex protocols governing all human behaviour because honour was a finite resource and if you wanted to increase your own honour you could only do it at the expense of someone else’s honour. In an interaction between people of differing status, there were quite specific codes to follow so that each person, whether of higher or lower status, was not in danger of threatening the honour of the other.  

A loss of honour was equally the loss of respect and status in the community. This is the reason why Herod felt that he had to honour the request of his step daughter to behead John the Baptist. To have failed to do so would have meant that he would have lost face (respect, status) before his guests.  If a person lost their honour, it was lost for good. Had Herod not fulfilled his promise, he might have been able to maintain his power by force, but not through his status in the community. (He would have become an object of ridicule, someone who could not be expected to keep his word.)

In a collective (not individualistic) society, honour was collective. A man’s honour was dependent on the behaviour of his family – so much so that homes were often open to the street to demonstrate that the head of the household had nothing to fear. In this case the actions of the son reflect badly on and diminish the father’s honour.

This is what makes Jesus’ parable of the forgiving father all the more surprising, even shocking to his audience. From beginning to end the story is about a father whose honour is challenged and diminished and about a father who doesn’t care less about honour, his dignity or the regard in which he is held by his neighbours.  He cares only for the well-being of the son.

According to the parable the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance. Not only is this son greedy, selfish and impatient he is, by asking for his inheritance, implying that wished his father dead. Jesus’ audience would have understood that the son’s request was in clear violation of the fourth commandment to honour your father and mother. Further, anyone dependent on making a living from the land would be well aware of the financial burden that paying out the son would put on the father (and the remaining brother). The son has brought shame on the family, possibly impoverished the family and has thought only of himself and his short-term pleasure.

You might say, “yes, but he did come to his senses’. But did he? Was he really repentant or was he still putting his own needs first. Peter Hawkins (among others) observes that there is something quite calculating in the son’s thought process[1]. His speech is even rehearsed: “I will say to him.” There is no mention in the account that he is sorry, only that returning home would be a solution to his state of starvation. 

If anyone has/had any doubt that God was not a God of judgement and condemnation, but a God of compassion and second chances, this parable (and the two that precede it) puts paid to any questions on that score.

The father (probably representing God) has asked nothing of the son but has freely given him what he wanted, released him from all responsibility and let him go. Then, day after day, it appears, he has kept a lookout for this lost boy – forgoing pride and any sense of social respectability (the son has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be part of the family and has brought dishonour on his family name). 

Finally, the father sees the son and, without thought for his personal dignity and paying no regard to the diminished esteem in which he will be held by his neighbours, he runs (runs not walks) to take his son in his arms before son has any opportunity to give his well-thought out and well-rehearsed speech. If that were not enough to indicate to his neighbours his lack of self-respect, he then calls for the best robe, a ring for the finger, sandals for his feet AND a feast with the fatted calf, any one of which would be shocking and incomprehensible to his community.  A member of the family who had brought them into such disrepute and brought such shame upon them, should at the very least be shunned if not severely punished.

By turning upside down the social conventions of the time, Jesus wants his audience to let go of an idea that God only welcomes those self-righteous people who keep the law and set themselves apart from the sinner and tax-collector. Just the opposite, God’s primary concern is for the sheep who has wandered from the fold, the coin that has found its way into a hidden corner, and the son or daughter who has cut themselves off from God’s love. 

God of the lost, giver of second chances – is not a God who wants to condemn and exclude, but a God whose open embrace welcomes all who would turn to him – without question, without recrimination and certainly without judgement.

[1] Christian Century. Sunday’s Coming. 25/3/25

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The word of the Lord? Luke 13:1-9

March 24, 2025

Lent 3 -2025

Luke 13:1-9

Marian Free

In the name of God who alone is perfect and who overlooks our imperfections. Amen.

If you are like me, there will be times during a service, whether it be the Daily Office or the Eucharist, when a reader concludes the lesson with the words: “Hear the Word of the Lord” and you think to yourself, “No!  not really!” Many of our biblical stories, particularly those in the Old Testament are unedifying, and yet, following the rubric, we dutifully affirm them as the word of the Lord. On occasions it might be more truthful to assert: “Here we see an example of human frailty” or even for the reader to say: “This is the word of the Lord???” Have you ever hesitated to respond: “Thanks be to God”?  Are you, for example, anxious that you are affirming the rape of Bathsheba when you thank God for that story? 

While the Old Testament has many stories that seem to tell us more about the nature of humanity than of God, the New Testament has its share of apparently shocking and unedifying passages. Take this morning’s gospel for example. It is difficult to understand why Luke would feel a need to refer to such a violent and gruesome event as the killing of Galileans and mixing their blood with sacrifices. It is even more difficult to understand this account when not even Josephus can point to a specific event to which this might be referring.

Even more confusing is Luke’s change of tone. As Luke has recorded the story Jesus, has until now, been focused on healing and wholeness, but in this passage Jesus’ attitude appears to change from encouraging to threatening, from healing to judging. At first glance Jesus seems to be justifying the bloody death of the Galileans and those crushed by a tower. as a warning to his listeners. “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Are we all to suffer an unexpected and gruesome fate “unless we repent”?

The reality is just the opposite. Using these examples of unexpected and violent death, Jesus is making it clear that the external circumstances of a person’s life (success or failure, wealth or poverty) and the circumstances of their deaths (violent or peaceful) are not evidence of their sinfulness or not. Indeed, making comparisons is futile, because not only does it pit people against each other, but comparisons of this kind allow one to feel superior, self-righteous and proud which are themselves sin.

In the end, sin, is sin is sin. There is no scale against which sin is measured – a little bit of sin, or a vast quantity of sin. A person has either sinned or they have not, and few, if any could claim to never have sinned. Everyone of us needs to turn our lives toward God and godliness over and over again. It is the honest acknowledgement of who we are that establishes a right relationship with God, not a belief that because we are better than Sarah Jane or Billy Joe, we will get off more lightly or that we will scale an imaginary ladder of righteousness OR that our good deeds are in some way balanced against our bad deeds.

Pilate’s violent suppression of opposition was well-known, and the Galileans had a reputation for being rebellious. We only have a snippet of what was certainly a much longer conversation, but Jesus has clearly discerned that what lies behind the report is a desire on the part of ‘those present’ to be reassured that the suffering of the Galileans was not meaningless but was in some way a consequence of their behaviour – that God allowed it, or worse orchestrated their death because their sin warranted it.

Jesus is challenging a widely held contemporary view that a person’s situation in life was a sign of their righteousness (or lack of it). He is pointing to the reality that life is unpredictable, and that suffering is random – good people are just as prone to die in road accidents as are sinners, good people are just as likely to lose homes and livelihoods in natural disasters as are bad, good and evil people alike may be struck down with life-threatening diseases.  Life’s circumstances are not external signs of God’s approval.

What is more as Jesus goes on to suggest, there is no one who is perfect. Everyone has to repent; everyone is called to turn their hearts and lives over to God. We may smugly think that we do not break the 10 commandments, but that very smugness is a demonstration of a pride that indicates dependence on our self, not on God. We may pat ourselves on the back because we have never told a lie, but that very fact may hide a failure to have been truly honest about how we really feel and think. Sin is usually much more subtle than we give it credit for and whether we own it or not, we are all sinners, in that our lives do not fully reflect the divinity that lies within.

BUT – do not despair. Jesus, having brought his listeners back to reality, tells a parable reminding them of God’s forbearance and of second chances. A non-productive fig tree is taking up space in the garden that could be used for a fruit-bearing tree. It serves no other purpose. It should be cut down and replaced. But no, it is given another chance. The gardener will do all that is possible to ensure that it bears fruit.  Only if, after the tree has been given every opportunity to bear fruit, it remains barren, will it be chopped down.

So it is with us, God is endlessly patient, forever giving us a second chance, always believing in the goodness in us and overlooking the rottenness and God will keep on giving us a second chance unless we absolutely refuse to take advantage of it.

The Season of Lent provides an opportunity for us to acknowledge the frailty of our human nature (which we share with all humanity), to submit ourselves to the gardener’s care and to allow ourselves to be transformed.

********************************

This quote doesn’t quite speak to the point, but it does serve as a reminder that sin can be more dangerous when it is subtle than when it if blatant.

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Of foxes and hens – Luke 13:31-35

March 15, 2025

Lent 2 -2025

Luke 13:31-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who has “yet more light and truth to break forth from God’s word[1].” Amen.

As part of my Lenten discipline, I am reading Healing Wounds: the 2025 Lent Book by Norwegian Bishop and author Erik Varden. Varden is a Trappist monk, so I should not have been surprised that his approach to the study is that of a Roman Catholic.  While I understand his imagery, I find some of it jarring. That said, the book is providing much food for thought. Varden takes as his starting point an ancient poem authored by one Arnulf of Leuven (1200-48), a Cistercian and an author. The poem is a meditation on the cross, specifically on Christ’s body on the cross – his feet, his knees, his hands. Varden suggests that the poem asks the question: “How do I appropriate the passion narrative with due proportion and without presumption?” or “How do I experience Christ’s wounds as the living source of a remedy by which sin is cured and humanity’s wounds, my wounds are healed?”[2]

It is not only Varden’s theology that is somewhat different from my own, but his use of scripture. In particular, given this week’s gospel, I have found my self pondering his reference to Luke 13:34b. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Varden is commenting on the poet’s reflection on Jesus’ hands – “your sacred hands extended”.  The poet continues: “You show yourself broad, ready to receive both good and bad; attracting the indolent, calling the devout, holding them in your embrace, freely open to all.” Influenced by the language of the poet Varden writes: “He (Jesus) desired to gather Jerusalem’s children ‘together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.’”

I will leave you to ponder what to make of the image. It may be that you, like Arnulf and Varden, see Christ’s outstretched arms on the cross as a welcoming embrace, and that for you too Jesus’ arms nailed to the cross recall to mind Jesus’ words as he contemplates Jerusalem in today’s gospel.

Varden has, it seems to me, used scripture quite creatively, and this is just one example. That said, it is only in the last few hundred years that we have expected scripture to make literal sense. Until quite recently scholars and preachers alike understood that scripture was to be understood allegorically and that it did not have to be entirely logical or linear.

This historical understanding of scripture comes in handy when we examine today’s gospel which, read as a piece, does not seem to be particularly coherent. (In fact, as I am discovering during Morning Prayer, much of Luke’s gospel reads as a list of unrelated sayings or comments.)

In the five verses that comprise this morning’s gospel there appear to be at least four unconnected themes – warnings, determination, concern and prediction – each of which warrant more than the one or two lines allotted.  There are foxes and hens, Pharisees who warn rather than attack Jesus, a city that kills prophets, a Saviour who is also a mother hen, and a saying that could refer to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem or to his post-resurrection return. 

In these verses we see Jesus at his most discerning, his most assertive and his most maternal.

Trying to construct a sermon on any one of those themes means neglecting the others. There is a temptation, into which I may have fallen, to speak of foxes and hens, even though there is no direct connection between them in the text. 

Sometimes, I believe, it is important not to try to make literal sense of the text but allow it to speak to us in whatever way is appropriate for the time – ours or the world’s. It is important not to force the text into some form of coherence – to make the Pharisees’ warning relate to Jesus’ passionate outburst of love, to conflate Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisees with his reflection on Jerusalem.  Likewise, as familiar and heart-warming as they are, we should not take Jesus’ words about gathering the chicks out of context.

It is important to try to make sense of our scriptures, to place them in their context, and to understand the author’s literary skills and intention.  There are times though when sitting with the complexities and contradictions that we find in scripture, accepting that no amount of research, no amount of manipulation of the text will translate into something that makes absolute sense is just what is needed. 

Sometimes, as I have certainly said before, there seems to be some wisdom, if not intention here – the very incoherence of a text serves a purpose. Texts that seem to make little sense serve as a warning that we are not to rely on an earthly capacity for understanding, or to believe that earthly values are a reflection of heavenly values. Complex, contradictory scriptures force us to accept that we can never truly know the mind of God and that we must let go of our desire for certainty, simply sit with the text, and retain an openness to the movement of the Spirit – in the text, in ourselves and in others.

In the words of the hymn:

We limit not the truth of God

to our poor reach of mind,

by notion of our day and sect,

crude, partial and confined:

no let a new and better hope

within our hearts be stirred:

                  the Lord has yet more truth and life

to break forth from his word

O Father, Son, and Spirit, send

us increase from above;

enlarge expand all living souls

to comprehend your love;

and make us all go on to know

 with nobler power conferred:

                  that you have yet more light and truth

to break forth from your word.[3]

Sometimes all we can do is to let the words wash over us and make such sense as they will.

[1] George Rawson, hymn writer,1807-89.

[2] Varden,  p20. The book is available on Kindle as well as in hard copy.

[3] George Rawson, Togetther in Song, 453.

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Lent 1 – Not what we can do for God but what God can do for us.

March 8, 2025

Lent 1 – 2025

Luke 4:1-13

Marian Free

In the name of God, who asks only that we seek and serve God alone. Amen.

Over the past week the following meme has been posted several times on Facebook.

“This Lent keep the chocolate and give up bigotry, judgement, legalism and hatred in all forms.”

I find it helpful as it serves as a reminder that Lent is less about willpower and more about facing our humanity in all its ugliness. If, for example, we spend the entirety of Lent battling to go without chocolate, wine or some other pleasure, and emerge triumphant at Easter because we have resisted the temptation to indulge in the forbidden treat, but if in the process we have in essence remained unchanged, then we have missed the point. Worse, in giving up something superficial like chocolate, we have only made Lent self-focussed, rather than God focussed. In fact, rather than learning how much we need to depend on God, we have, by our dependence on willpower, demonstrated that we don’t need God – we can overcome temptation all on our own! Instead of learning to trust in God, all we have done is proven how little we trust in God!

It is useful to look at Jesus’ time in the wilderness which mirrors that of the Israelites who, having been delivered by God from their Egyptian oppressors spent 40 years in the wilderness. Both the Israelites and Jesus are named as God’s Son before they are thrust into the wilderness, but whereas the desert experience only revealed the Israelites complete lack of faith in God, Jesus time in the wilderness demonstrated his complete and utter trust – this despite facing many of the same obstacles as faced by the Israelites – testing in the form of hunger, thirst, and the apparent absence of God. Whereas the Israelites complained, put God to the test and worshipped other gods, Jesus steadfastly refuses to do anything that would compromise his integrity, demonstrate self-reliance or evidence a lack of trust in God. 

Each of the tests that Jesus faces mirrors one that the Israelites faced (and failed). 

For generations the Israelites had suffered increasing privations under the Egyptians. They had been enslaved, made to work increasingly hard and the latest Pharoah had demanded that their male children be killed at birth. Finally, God intervened to set them free. God not only delivered them from the hands of Pharoah, God also ensured that they did not leave Egypt empty-handed. (They were able to take with them all their flocks (Exodus 12:38) and they left enriched having demanded and received from their neighbours silver and gold jewellery and clothes (Exodus 12:35,36). Yet despite all the evidence that their escape from Egypt was God’s doing (plagues, crossing of the Red Sea), the people had barely left their oppressors behind when they began to complain.  First it was the lack water, then, within two months of leaving Egypt they were complaining again: “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:3)

In response, God provided the manna and the quail. Deuteronomy interprets this 

as a lesson that will help them to understand “that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (8;3).

Later when water is short, the Israelites again complain: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” and Moses accuses them of putting God to the test (Exodus 17:2,3). This event is referred to in Deuteronomy which teaches: “Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah” (6:16).

Worst of all, when Moses was communing with God on Mount Sinai, the Israelites felt abandoned – by him, but most of all by God.  They gathered all their gold, fashioned a golden calf – a god that was no god – and worshipped it – breaking the first and most significant commandment. When the Israelites prepare to enter the promised land Moses warns them: “you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them. You shall worship the LORD your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you (6:24, 13).

Both the Israelites and Jesus face other tests (Luke 4:13), but these are the those that the evangelists see fit to record. Jesus responds: One shall not live by bread alone, worship the Lord your God and serve only him, and do not put the Lord your God to the test. By his reactions to the tests he faced in the desert, Jesus models that there is a different way to respond to testing situations, a way that demonstrates confidence in God and an understanding that it is through trust in God, not trust in humankind or in one’s own power that one finds true strength.

The season of Lent is not an opportunity to test our own strength, but a time to test the strength of our confidence in God, to show our willingness to let God direct our way and to determine not to be governed by possessions, by a desire for comfort or by a need for security. 

If we give something during Lent it is to see how we react when we are denied some of life’s comforts, to observe our weaknesses and to learn to trust that God will see us through.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that Jesus’ time in the wilderness is not of his own choosing. He is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. We observe the season of Lent as a reminder of Jesus’ experience, but that does not mean that our practice at this time should be of our choosing, but rather it should be our response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit revealing what we should give up, what aspects of our behaviour most need examining and what aspects of our relationship with God most need improving.

Perhaps we should emerge at Easter – not stronger but weaker, more vulnerable, more aware of our shortcomings, and more willing to rely on God (not ourselves) to put things right.  

We should ask ourselves is our Lenten practice about what we can do for God or what God can do for us?

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