Posts Tagged ‘Jonah’

Don’t send me!

May 19, 2018

St Augustine – Pentecost, 2018

John 15:26-27

 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.  You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”

Marian Free

In the name of God who will empower and direct us and who has already gone before us into the world. Amen.

The English Historian the Venerable Bede has provided us with a history of the English church from about 100 BCE to 731 CE. Even though he himself did not travel he was able to get others to bring him relevant information and documents. Among these were the letters from Pope Gregory to Augustine that give us a reasonably comprehensive idea of Augustine’s mission and of the concerns that Augustine raised. Those of us who regularly worship at St Augustine’s are familiar with the story. Pope Gregory (the Great) was intrigued by some blonde slaves whom he saw in the market. On learning that they were Angles (he heard the words as angels) he determined to send someone to the British Isles to convert them.

To that end Augustine and several other Benedictine monks were commissioned with the task. On reaching England they received a welcome from the King of Kent Ethelbert whose wife was already a Christian. Ethelbert gave the monks land on which to build their church and allowed them liberty to preach the gospel in his kingdom. The site on which the church was built became Canterbury Cathedral, the center of the Anglican Communion to this day.

There are a number of interesting facets to the story but my favorite is this – after the team set out they got cold feet, to quote Bede: “Having undertaken this task in obedience to the Pope’s command and progressed a short distance on their journey, they became afraid, and began to consider returning home. For they were appalled at the idea of going to a barbarous, fierce, and pagan nation of whose very language they were ignorant. They unanimously agreed that this was the safest course, and sent back Augustine … that he might humbly request the holy Gregory to recall them from so dangerous, arduous and uncertain a journey.”[1]Gregory refused this request and so they continued.

Their anxiety is not uncommon among those called to serve God. Moses at first refused God’s call (even though God appears in a burning bush!). The reasons – he was certain that Pharaoh would not listen to him and that the Israelites would not believe that God had sent him. When these excuses did not dissuade God, Moses argued that he could not do the task because he was not eloquent enough[2]. Jeremiah likewise argued that he could not speak well and he added to that that he was only a boy.[3]Gideon made the point that his tribe was the weakest in Israel and when God insisted that Gideon wasthe one whom he had chosen, Gideon asked for a sign. When God gave him a sign, Gideon, still refusing to believe that God could use him, asked God to repeat the sign![4]Jonah’s reaction to God’s call was the most dramatic and the most selfish of all. Jonah was so reluctant to respond to God’s call that he ran away, presumably believing that he could escape God.  Worse, when he finally did what God had asked and God spared Nineveh, Jonah sat under a tree and sulked.

If we are anxious or lacking in confidence when it comes to sharing the gospel, we are in good company. However, that does not let us off the hook. In today’s gospel Jesus commissions us to testify on his behalf. Through our baptism we are all called and commissioned as disciples to be God’s presence in the world. And still we hesitate. The reasons for our hesitation may be as many and varied as those of us who are present. Like Jeremiah we might think that we are too young (or even too old). Like Moses and Jeremiah we might be afraid that we will be unable to find the right words to say or that people won’t believe what we do say. Like Gideon we might need to be convinced that God really canuse us. Like Jonah we might simply think that God can do it all on his own and that God doesn’t need us or, like Augustine and his fellow monks, we might be terrified of the reception that we imagine awaits us.

The worst fears of Augustine’s monks were not realised. The reality was quite different from that which they had expected. Instead of a hostile reception, they received a warm welcome and were given freedom to pursue their mission and the resources to establish themselves and their community. Their obedience to the call of God resulted in blessings far more than they could have imagined because God had not asked them to do the impossible. God had gone before them to prepare the way, remained with them as their help and support and empowered them with the Holy Spirit so that they could do what needed to be done.

Almost certainly, wewill not be called to lead a company of people out of slavery to the Promised Land. Wewill not be asked to lead an army in battle or to call an entire city to repentance. We won’t be asked to go to an unknown land to people whose language we do not know. All that we are asked to do is to testify to the risen Christ and to Christ’s presence in the world, to share with others the comfort, strength and assurance that we experience because Christ is present in our lives. We are to trust that the Holy Spirit will equip us for that task and to remember that God will not ask us to do more than we can do, nor will God send us out on a mission that has no chance of success.

The examples of Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, Jonah and Augustine assure us that it doesn’t matter how old (or how young we are), how articulate we are, how wise and clever or how strong or brave we are. God can and will use us to make known God’s presence in the world.

[1]The Venerable Bede, Chapter 23.

[2]Exodus 3,4

[3]Jeremiah 1:4

[4]Read the story for yourself (Judges 6)

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God’s insistent call

January 25, 2014

Epiphany 3

Paul’s Conversion – Galatians 1:11-24

Marian Free

In the name of God whose insistent call draws us out of ourselves and into God’s service. Amen.

Throughout history there have been numerous accounts of people coming to faith, or coming to what they believe is a deeper and truer understanding of their faith. Many such accounts are dramatic and powerful of the sort that turn a person’s life around and lead them to serve God in ways that are risky and demanding, or that have a profound effect on the world around them and on the church in particular.

One such person was Augustine of Hippo whose spiritual quest had so far failed to satisfy him when his heart was touched by God. His own account goes like this: “As I was weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting and repeating over and over again. “Pick it up and read, pick it up and read.” 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 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).

Much later in Germany, Martin Luther, a monk of the Augustinian Order had been going through “hell” obsessed with his own sinfulness and the impossibility of remembering all his sins in order to confess them. He tried all kinds of self-abasement to atone for his perceived sinfulness – sleeping in the snow, lying almost naked in the belfry tower at night – nothing seemed to work.

Part of his struggle was: “ to understand Paul’s expression, ‘the justice of God’ because I took it to mean that God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk I had no confidence that my merit would assuage God. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Night and day I pondered this until I grasped that the justice of God is that the righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into Paradise. The whole of scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in great love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven ….” (Bainton, R. Here I Stand – The Classic Biography of Martin Luther. Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1978, 65.)

An encounter with God not only gives relief from anxiety or opens a gate to heaven, it gives new insights, a different perspective of God and the world. An encounter with God can draw people out of their comfort zone and compel them to respond to a call on their lives that they would not have thought possible and of which they would not have believed themselves capable. The Bible is full of such figures. Abraham and Sarah who responded to a God whom they did not know and set off to a place they had never heard of. Moses who protested that he could not speak, liberated God’s people from slavery and led them to the promised land. Isaiah and Jeremiah who likewise did not believe that they were capable of the task God was asking them to fulfill challenged Kings to change their ways. Jonah who ran away, before he did what God required. Mary and Joseph who said “yes” and enabled Jesus to enter the world. Then there was the rag-tag bunch of unlikely people who left all they had to follow Jesus. People from all walks of life drawn out of their comfort zone to serve a God or a Christ whom they did or did not know who might take them who know where.

Among this great crowd of people we find Paul – that passionate, self-assured servant of God whose life radically changed direction after a “revelation of Jesus Christ”. Unlike Augustine and Luther Paul was not troubled by a search for faith or a fear that he could not please God. By all accounts Paul was a proud and confident Jew, absolutely convinced of his righteousness, his place in the world and before God. He was so sure of himself and his beliefs that he set out to persecute the misguided Jews who believed that Jesus was the Christ. He says of himself: “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil 3:4-6). Nothing, so far as Paul could tell, was lacking in his life or faith – his credentials were impeccable, his behaviour exemplary and his actions a clear demonstration of his commitment to the faith of his fathers.

Then all this changed: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ” (Phil 3:7). Those things of which he was so proud now count for nothing, the beliefs that led him to persecute Jesus-followers have been overturned. Now he proclaims the faith that “he once tried to destroy.” What happened? The truth is that we do not really know. Paul provides no more details than those in today’s reading from Galatians. He says only that he received a “revelation of Jesus Christ”, that “God called him through his grace and was pleased  to reveal his Son to him, so that he might proclaim him among the Gentiles,.”

We may not know what form the revelation took but we can see that the results are astounding – the one who persecuted believers is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. More than that, he is so convinced that there is no other way to understand God’s action in Christ that he will brook no other interpretation or accept any other view. “As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (Gal 1:9). Paul preaches as though his life depends on it, and in fact, he does believe that his eternal salvation is intimately bound to that of the communities who have come to faith through him.

Paul’s encounter with God sharpens and refines the faith that he has held from birth. His new, God-revealed perspective allows him to see that God always intended that Gentiles can be included in the Abrahamic faith, that believers be led by the Spirit (not determined by the law) and that God’s grace is not something to be earned, but something that is freely given. Empowered by his experience of God, driven by the conviction that he was called to share what he hd received and enabled by his passion and his great intellect, Paul became a potent force for change in the world. Some twenty years before the Gospels were written, Paul was making sense of Jesus’ life death and resurrection and finding ways in which emerging communities, made of of people who had come from different faiths and different social groupings could worship together.

Paul’s impact on the church is demonstrated by his place in the New Testament – one-fourth of which consists of letters written by or attributed to Paul. Half of the Book of Acts deals with the life and ministry of Paul which means that he accounts for one-third of the New Testament. Paul’s letters are the earliest written documents of the church and provide us with valuable information about the struggles to build community and to come to some consensus as to what faith in Jesus meant for Jew and Gentile alike.

God has ways of getting ours attention, often when we least expect it.  Whether it is a thunder-clap or a whisper, a blinding light or a moment of insight, a call to change the world or a call to change ourselves, a demand to protest against injustice or an insistence to maintain our integrity, empowerment to do something heroic for others or strength to face a personal battle. God’s insistent call will not be denied. We can run, but we cannot hide. God will find us and take us where we do not want or did to expect to go. But whatever it is, whatever God asks of us, we can be sure that God will equip us, support and sustain us and that God will never abandon us until our task is done.

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Who is in and who is out?

January 4, 2014

Epiphany 2014

Matthew 2:1-12

Marian Free

In the name of God, whose love knows no bounds and creates no boundaries for those who would love God in return. Amen.

I imagine that many of you have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It is a wonderful, light-hearted look at a family of Greek migrants in the United States. Like many migrants, they have formed their own sub-community and have done what they can to maintain their culture in a new and strange land. One of the ways in which this extended family can ensure that their traditions are maintained is to insist that their offspring marry someone of Greek descent who will be like them. The movie follows a young woman, her desire to build her own life and to marry the American man with whom she has fallen in love. We watch in agony as her Father parades a number of less-than-attractive but suitable Greek men before he is persuaded to give in and allow her to marry the man of her choice. Along the way we observe the difficulties of two different cultures coming to grips with each other and the migrants letting go of their rigid insistence on remaining apart.

 Of course, the movie is an exaggeration but I grew up in a Brisbane in which recent Mediterranean migrants mostly lived in West End with others who shared their language and ate their food. The supermarket in that suburb was stocked with huge tins of olive oil and the fruit shops introduced us to exotic vegetables like zucchini (which as a child I could have well done without)!

It is human nature to seek out those who support and encourage us, to find those with whom we have something in common, to mix with those who share our background, language and history. Migrants in particular often form communities in the new countries in which they find themselves. Living close to those who have shared their past and their journey to another world provides a sense of continuity, makes the present less strange and makes it easier to practice one’s faith, to cook the foods one is used to and to speak a familiar language and be understood. 

From what we can glean from the New Testament Judaism, in the first century at least, had very clear boundaries and cultural identifiers. According to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus claimed to have come for “the lost sheep of Israel”, and all the Gospels make a clear distinction between those who are Jews and those who are not. Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians indicate just how strong Jewish ethnic boundaries were and how effective they had been in keeping others out. These included adherence to the law – including dietary regulations and purity laws – the circumcision of every male and belief in the one God.

These borders appear to have been fiercely guarded. Outsiders who admired and practiced the faith usually only obtained the status of “God-fearers” and were never fully included as members of “God’s chosen people”.

It is difficult to know if this was always the case, but almost certainly the experience of the exile (500 years before Jesus), would have served to define and harden national identity. It would make sense that those living in exile in Babylon would have placed an emphasis on those characteristics that distinguished them from the culture around them. (We see in the Book of Daniel a description of how some people responded to living in a culture vastly different from their own. In the face of great opposition, and at the risk of his life, Daniel holds fast to his identity and refuses to compromise his beliefs and the practices associated with his faith.)

When the exiles return home they have a clearer vision of who they are, but it is not long before they are again under foreign rule – this time in their own land. By the time that Jesus is born, Palestine has been ruled by foreign powers for over three hundred years. It would be reasonable to suppose that this too created a need for them to preserve their unique identity, to stress their distinctiveness and so claim their place in the world. Those who had left Palestine and settled in other parts of the Empire may (like today’s migrants) have drawn in on themselves and stressed the importance of the things that made them different from the world around them.

For Christians reading the Old Testament, the exclusiveness of first century Judaism is harder to understand. Books like the book of Ruth and Jonah tell, in different ways, the story of God’s concern for and desire to include every nation in the covenant that God made with Abraham. Ruth is a Moabite (non-Jewish) woman who becomes the forebear of David and therefore of the expected Saviour. Jonah’s task is to warn the Ninevites (non-Jews) of God’s wrath and to urge them to repent. According to the Book of Kings, the Queen of Sheba travels to meet King Solomon, to pay homage and to listen to his wisdom and according to the prophet Isaiah, Cyrus, the Persian King is God’s anointed or Messiah. In more than one Psalm, the author sees a time when the whole world will stream to Jerusalem. As we read the Old Testament, it seems clear that God’s intention was always to include the Gentiles.

 By the first century, possibly because the Jewish people were feeling so embattled, they had not only drawn clear lines around themselves but, from what we can tell, they had come to the conclusion that a Jewish Saviour would only save the Jews – or those who were prepared to become Jews. This created a dilemma for the early believers. Many Gentiles had come to faith in Jesus just as they had and what is more, they too had received the gift of the Holy Spirit as a result of that faith. Could they be excluded from membership in this new community simply because they were not Jews by birth? The answer was “no”. Both Acts and the letter to the Galatians tell us that the issue was resolved at a council held in Jerusalem. Rather than be compelled to become Jews, Gentile converts were required only to observe a minimum number of practices in order to belong.

A different dilemma faced the Gospel writers who, some twenty years later, had to confront the reality that Jesus, the Jewish Saviour, had made a greater impact on the Gentiles than he had on the Jews. In order to resolve this puzzle, it was important that they discover and record the evidence that Jesus’ ministry clearly demonstrated an intention to include the Gentiles. In the Gospels there are accounts of Jesus commending Gentiles who exhibit more faith than the Jews, of a Canaanite woman who argues that her daughter deserves to be healed, Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations and his promise that the disciples will receive the Holy Spirit and be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.

It is in this context that we are to understand Matthew’s account of the coming of the Magi. The author of Matthew, whom we believe was writing for a primarily Jewish community, needed to make it clear that right from the very beginning of the story, Jesus was recognised and worshipped by Gentiles. Furthermore, these magicians – astrologers or scholars – were no ordinary people, but, like the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon, they were people of significance and wealth who come to pay homage to a Jewish Saviour. In this way the author of Matthew establishes that, from his infancy, Jesus was identified as the Saviour not only of the Jews but of the whole world. The implication being that if Jesus is the Saviour of the world, then those who are not Jews by birth or practice can and should be included in the worshipping community. Anyone who has faith in Jesus can belong.

It is always a mistake to try to second-guess God, to believe that we can determine who is in and who is out, who to include and who to exclude. If we are rigid and exclusive, if we insist that only those who behave in a certain way can belong, we are in danger of drawing our boundaries too close and of failing to see what God is doing in the world.

Who do we exclude and why? If anyone who has faith can belong, who are we to decide who is in and who is out?

 

 

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