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Be prepared – Advent 1

November 29, 2025

Advent 1 – 2026

Matthew 24:26-44

Marian Free

In the name of God who always is, Christ who came and who is to come, and the Holy Spirit who enlivens and encourages. Amen.

Advent is one of my favourite times of the year.  Though I have never been particularly efficient at opening Advent Calendars, the sense of anticipation that such calendars engender remains with me to this day.  Calendar or not, every day of Advent brings me closer to the great mystery of the Incarnation – the coming of Emmanuel, God with us. 

Sadly, I have long since given up my habit of separating Advent and Christmas, of keeping the two seasons distinct in my practice and in my mind. The commercial world which fills our stores with Christmas decorations and gifts from September, and which removes all signs of Christmas on Boxing Day makes putting up a tree on Christmas Eve and waiting till January 6 to take it down feel a little bit hollow. Even singing carols on the first Sunday after Christmas can seem somewhat strange when you know that the rest of the world is already preparing for Easter!

Many years ago, I made the decision to stop resisting the tide of change. I no longer try to hold on to traditions that are meaningless to the rest of the world. Nor do I get frustrated that an increasingly secular world has no idea about what Christmas means and that the commercial world has capitalized on the Twelve Days of Christmas by putting them before and not after Christmas. The world may change but nothing can diminish my sense of anticipation and joy as Advent approaches, and I enter once again into the sense of wonder at the birth of Jesus, the mystery of God’s vulnerability and the astounding reality of God’s becoming one of us. 

Given that Christmas celebrates God’s quiet and gentle entry into the world it seems odd that our church year begins and ends with gospel readings that appear to be a series of threats – threats of destructive forces, lawlessness, and. persecution, threats of judgement, of the impending end of the world, and threats that God will catch us unprepared as a thief during the night. We are warned, as we are today, to “keep awake” so that we can catch the thief and not be surprised. These are hardly messages that are designed to fill us with joy and excitement, but rather with terror. They seem designed to keep us on our toes, with one eye watching our back and the other scanning the horizon for danger. The message seems to be: “Be afraid, be very afraid.” Be afraid if not of judgement, but of those terrible events which will precede Jesus’ coming again.

During Advent, these messages are thankfully paired with messages of hope and renewal from the prophets, such as that from Isaiah this morning. God’s coming is associated with putting things straight. This can look like judgement and terror especially to those who resist or deny God, but the prophets assure us that God’s coming is primarily to put the world to right, to bring peace where there is no peace, to make the desert bloom, to give sight to blind, healing to the sick and release to the prisoner and to draw all people to walk in the light of the Lord. In other words, God’s coming will restore the world to that which God intended from the beginning.

What then do we make of the dire warnings that begin at the start of this chapter and which, to be honest, populate the pages of the prophets? 

Themes of destruction and restoration usually arise at times when the nation of Israel is feeling particularly vulnerable and oppressed, or when the people have wandered so far from the faith that it seems that the only possible solution is to begin with a clean slate. This was almost certainly how many people in Palestine at the time of Jesus. It must have seemed that the only way Israel could be restored would be by a dramatic intervention of God who would destroy the forces of Rome, purify Temple practices and bring about healing and peace.  

In reality, as we know, this was not how God responded. 

Today’s gospel is part of Jesus’ response to a question about the signs that will indicate that the end is near. Jesus uses language familiar to the disciples to insist that it is impossible to read the signs. Turmoil in the world is not a sign that God is near, but sign that humanity is flawed and that we live on a fragile planet. Jesus warns that those who want signs are looking for the wrong thing, are asking the wrong question. That they have to ask already indicates their failure to understand. Certainly, they want to be ready, but on their terms. By asking for signs, they reveal that they want to be able to spread out their preparations, they want to be in control. After all this time with Jesus, they have failed to understand that discipleship means giving their lives completely to God, submitting entirely to God’s will and absolutely trusting God with their future. In other words, ceding all control to God.

Scenes of chaos and destruction, images of thieves who catch a home-owner unprepared are a reminder that planning such as the disciples envisage is impossible. No one can go without sleep forever. 

The only plan is to be ready NOW – to admit that our future is in God’s hands, to surrender our lives to God in the present, to trust that whatever life throws at us, God will be with us; and to know in our hearts that if God/Jesus were suddenly to come among us we would not need to be afraid because our hearts would already be God’s, we would already be confident of God’s unconditional love and we would not hide in fear but welcome God with open arms. 

Being ready, being watchful is not the same as being afraid. Being prepared doesn’t mean planning, it means being ready now – knowing that we already beloved, just as we are. It means waiting and watching with quiet anticipation for that time when God will come and when all things including ourselves will be gathered into God’s kingdom.

God has given Godself to us. This Advent let us make sure. That we have given ourselves to God.

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Elizabeth welcomes Mary

December 21, 2024

Advent 4 – 2024

Luke 1:39-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who alone can see into our hearts and who alone can judge between good and evil, right and wrong. Amen.

Many years ago, at church, I met a woman who worked as a prostitute. I’ll call her Jan. She was a remarkable person. After a powerful religious experience, she gave up drugs, alcohol and smoking! When Billy Graham came to Australia for what was to be his last visit, Jan attended a rally and was one of those who responded to the altar call. The team who were on hand to counsel and pray with those who had committed their lives to God recommended that she become a member of her nearest church. This happened to be the church where I was serving my curacy. As was the custom, the counsellor ran me to alert me to look out for Jan saying only that Jan had been at the rally and that she had made a confession of faith. 

There was no hint of judgement. No mention was made of her profession. This was something Jan shared over a meal after one of the services. She also felt safe enough to. tell the Parish Priest. You see, even though Jan had given up smoking, drinking and drugs, she was not in a position to stop working. Jan owed her drug dealers $5000 and no other way to repay them and, surprisingly, they were prepared to wait.

One day Jan rang me in tears. She was absolutely distraught. Her Christian psychologist had accused her of not being a true believer. Despite being a psychologist, he appears to have been a black and white thinker. In his mind, if Jan had truly given her life to Christ she would have given up prostitution. (He didn’t offer any advice with regard to the debt, nor did he offer to pay it for her.) Jan was made to feel worthless, worse, that she had been rejected by God.

Jan was a person of integrity. While she continued working, she refused to be baptised. (In her own mind prostitution and faith didn’t belong together.) That afternoon, it took me the best part of an hour to reassure Jan and to convince her that God knew her heart and that her faith was sincere[1].

I remember being astounded that the supporters of Billy Graham (usually from a more conservative tradition) accepted Jan just as she was and saw her as a child of God. They made no demands and withheld judgement. I was absolutely aghast that an educated, psychologist, a member of the ‘caring’ profession thought that it was in Jan’s best interest that he insinuate that she was not worthy of God’s love as long as she continued working. In so doing, this psychologist utterly undermined Jan’s confidence that she was a child of God, utterly beloved and accepted and instead left her completely bereft, uncertain of her place in the kingdom.

How different the encounter between Elizabeth and her young cousin! Mary unmarried and pregnant, a source of shame not only for Mary but for her whole family turns up unexpectedly. Elizabeth, caught up in her own untimely God-given pregnancy would have been justified in sending Mary away, or at the very least have greeted Mary with questions, cynicism and judgement. After all, if Elizabeth welcomes Mary into her home, Elizabeth is, by implication, indicating her support of Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Instead, led by the Spirit, Elizabeth is able to see God at work in Mary’s pregnancy and to rejoice that Mary’s role was to be more significant than her own. 

We take it for granted that Elizabeth should respond to Mary in this way because that is how Luke choses to tell the story. We forget that Mary has turned up unannounced, has made a difficult journey (on her own which in itself is shocking) over a considerable distance and that Elizabeth greets her before Mary has a chance to explain herself. It would not have been at all surprising had Elizabeth thought that Mary was trying to escape her situation and her shame, hoping that her cousin would provide refuge and allow her to hide away from the prying judgement eyes of her neighbours, but Elizabeth’s openness and receptivity to the presence of God allow her to see a different story.

We live in a world that is increasing quick to judge. We are drowning in social media that provides a platform for those who want to promote their own hardline views and those who find s a sense of self-worth in condemning others. 

The encounter between Elizabeth is a reminder of how important it is that we withhold our judgement of another unless and until we are sure that we know all the circumstances behind their behaviour, more important still is to err on the side of caution unless and until we are absolutely confident that we know the mind of God. To do less might be to reject and condemn something that is the work of God or to rebuff and judge harshly someone in whom God’s will is being enacted.  

Like so many biblical accounts, the lesson to take from the meeting between two cousins is not just the miracle of recognition, but the miracle of receptivity to the work of God – in the world and in each one of us.  When we are truly open to the presence of God in ourselves and in others and when we allow our judgement to be guided by the Holy Spirit, we are better able to see all people as children of God, to love and accept them as God does, and even to recognise that God just might be teaching us something through their presence in our lives. 

[1] A year or two later Jan rang to tell me that she had given up the work and was going to be baptised.

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Sheep or goat?

November 25, 2023

Pentecost 26 – 2023

Matthew 25:31-46

Marian Free

 

In the name of God to whom we must one day give an account. Amen.

I am of English heritage and, having grown up in Australia, when I think of  I envisage white (off white) balls of wool with short legs, so I was surprised when on a visit to Israel I saw a Bedouin shepherd leading what I thought was a flock of goats – brown, long ‘hair’, long legs. It turns out that they were in fact sheep – hence shepherd! I have since learnt that there are a number of breeds of sheep that the ignorant (me) mistake for goats. Knowing this adds a whole different layer of meaning to the parable of the sheep and the goats. Most of us approach parable with a visual image of sheep and goats that are easily distinguishable, but this is Palestine where, as I have observed, the sheep look very much like goats (and vice versa). In other words, the externals do not give a clear clue to the nature of the creature.

 

In this parable, all the nations are gathered before the Son of Man who, with a discerning eye, separates them into two groups as a shepherd would separate the sheep from the goats. It is clear from the responses to the judge that, until the shepherd makes the distinction, those gathered do not know into which group they will be placed. The ‘sheep’ do not believe that they have done anything out of the ordinary and the ‘goats’ do not believe that they have omitted to do anything that they could/should have done.

 

It is easy to read this parable with a certain amount of complacency, to be confident that our faith, our behaviour, our ‘goodness’ is a guarantee that we will find ourselves among the sheep. After all, we profess a belief in Jesus, we have done good works throughout our lives, and we have not broken the Ten Commandments. We believe ourselves to be ‘good’ in the sense that we are not bad. We obey the law of the land, we care for our families, we support our church and other community groups and try not to cause harm to others. The problem is (as the parable makes clear) we are no different from the majority of the communities in which we find ourselves – our faith alone does not distinguish us, on the surface we are like any other ‘good’ person, just as likely to be surprised to find ourselves among the goats as those in the parable.

 

If it is not our outward behaviour, what is it that would distinguish us as sheep? If faith in Jesus is not a ‘get out of jail free card’ what is?

 

In the parable what distinguishes the sheep from the goats is they way in which they have treated the hungry, the thirsty, the stronger, the naked, the sick and those in prison. In first century, where a culture of hospitality ruled and in which communities were sufficiently small that one might know one’s neighbour and the conditions under which they lived, it was relatively easy to identify the hungry, thirsty and sick. In a world in which there was no social welfare and in which prisons were hell holes and prisoners were totally reliant on family and friends it was evident who did and who did not need help.

 

In a more complex in a world in which our cities house more people than we could know in several lifetimes, in which prisons provide for at least the basic needs, in which social welfare supports the most vulnerable and in which there is a public health system, the ways

in which we can feed the hungry, heal the sick and visit the prisoner are less obvious. We can pay our taxes so that the state can support the poor and we can give to charities that assist those who fall through the cracks, but face-to-face help is increasingly difficult to give.

 

In this country and in this day and age, I suggest that it is attitude that differentiates the sheep from the goats. The sheep are those who don’t ask how someone got to be poor, an addict or a prisoner, but who see the person (the Christ) in the face of the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned. The sheep are those who give to the deserving and the undeserving alike and who make an effort to understand the forces – external or self-inflicted – that have led to their current situation. The sheep are those who live according to the example that Jesus set and the sheep are those who see the face of Jesus in the face of every person in need.

 

It’s not just what we do, but what we think. It is not just what we don’t do (keeping the law), but what we do do – standing for justice, caring for the more vulnerable – that matters. The Son of Man will judge us according to the state of our heart, the depth of our compassion and the level of our understanding of how people end up where they are, and what drives them to do what they do.

 

Over the past two weeks, I have challenged traditional interpretations of two of Matthew’s parables that are associated with the return of Jesus. In particular I have wondered whether Jesus is to be associated with the bridegroom who locks people out of the wedding, and whether the third slave – labelled lazy and wicked because he buries his talent – is actually the one who most models Jesus’ behaviour. If that has led you to think that we can relax and that there will no judgement, then I am about to disappoint you.

 

I may not think that the door will be locked against the foolish or that the cautious will be cast into outer darkness, but I do believe that there will come a time when we will have to stand before God and answer for our lives – for what we have done and what we have not done for others and, just importantly for what we have thought and how we have justified our lack of action.

 

We may not be thrown into outer darkness, but when we stand before the throne, we will see ourselves as God sees us and that may be punishment enough!

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Not our place to judge

July 22, 2023

Pentecost 8 – 2023
Matthew 13:24-30
Marian Free

In the name of God who loves us as we are. Amen.

Last week the preacher in the parish in which I worship pointed out the number of contrary positions that could be defended with reference to the Bible. Within its pages you can find support for the full inclusion of women in ministry and support for the exclusion of women. From the Bible you can justify both eating meat and an admonition not to eat meat. One can use the Bible to argue that God is a vengeful judge, but equally to demonstrate that God will never execute judgement. People have used the Bible to defend domestic violence and others can point to passages that condemn it. And so the list goes on.

Sadly, the current situation in the world-wide Anglican Church is evidence of the ways in which the Bible can be used to support opposing views and the lengths to which different sides of the debate will go to to protect their stance.

It is possible to say that these contradictions come about because our scriptures were written by humans with human failings – and that would be true. It is equally possible that we hold a faith that is able to hold contradictions in tension, that refuses to be starkly black and white and refuses the sort of dualism that neatly defines good and bad but acknowledges the grey areas that are part and parcel of being human.

Today’s parable goes some way to addressing this situation. A householder sows a field with wheat only to have enemies come in the night and plant weeds in the field. (We are told that the weed is darnel – a plant that is remarkably like wheat, but which is poisonous and which among other things causes hallucinations if eaten.) When the slaves ask if they should pull up the weeds they are astounded that the householder tells them to allow the plants to grow together until harvest – only then he says will the weeds be gathered and burned.

The wheat and the weeds are an illustration of the contradictions of this life. Just as the wheat is almost indistinguishable from the darnel, so too, the difference between good and evil is not always easy to discern. Good intentions can have unintended consequences that lead to harm . Apparently good people can limit the growth of others through criticism and disapproval and most of us contain within us the good and the bad and most of us will spend a lifetime living with the tension.

The good news of this parable is that God can hold the ambiguities and paradoxes of human existence in tension. God does not intend to violently and preemptively reach into our individual and collective lives to destroy all that is bad. God understands that ‘fixing’ one area of our collective and individual lives can cause harm in other areas of our lives. God can see the good that we intend and patiently forgive the harm that we do (to ourselves and others). God recognises that no one is wholly good and that no one is wholly bad and God is prepared to patiently go the distance with us, to support us uncritically as we struggle with the weeds that make up our lives. Finally, it God (not us) who will ensure that that only what is good in us will be gathered into the kingdom.

God our creator is only too aware of our shortcomings. If God can allow the weeds to grow with the wheat perhaps we should learn to be more gentle with ourselves and more forgiving of others. If God can live with the contradictions within and among us, perhaps we should be less willing to define what is right and wrong, good and bad, less sure that we know what exactly it is God wants. If God can withhold judgement until the end, perhaps it is time for us to suspend judgement of others and of ourselves.

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Outward appearances

July 3, 2021

Pentecost 6 – 2021
Mark 6:1-13
Marian Free

In the name of God who, in Jesus, confronts and shatters our certainties and our prejudices. Amen.

During the week, a memory came back to me that was as vivid as if it occurred yesterday. I was 12 years old and was in the school grounds with a friend. I’m not sure what led to the revelation, but I can clearly remember June leaning into me and whispering: “We’re not supposed to tell anyone, but mum and dad are divorced.” Young as I was, I was shocked – not that her parents were divorced – but that my friend and her family obviously felt that divorce was so socially unacceptable and shameful that it had to be kept a secret. They obviously expected censure at the least and exclusion at the worst if their situation became widely known. I was shocked because I was being raised by parents who were tolerant and worldly and who understood that not everyone was perfect, and that people made mistakes.

The world was a different place in my childhood. I grew up in a culture in which single mothers – whether the victims of rape or not – were considered by society to be morally bankrupt. (That another person was required for a pregnancy to take place seems to have been overlooked.) No fault divorce was a thing of the future, and the shame of divorce was often borne by the wife, who lost social standing, income and even her friends. I belonged to a world that was and is very good at creating unrealistic expectations and condemning those who are unable to meet them.

Sadly, very often the church finds itself embedded in the zeitgeist of the age. In the 1960’s and 70’s women who were divorced were excluded from Mother’s Union (as were single mothers) and divorcees were prevented from re-marrying in the church. It is difficult in these more enlightened times to believe that we, as a society and as church, imagined that a person’s character could be judged by their success (or not) in marriage.

The reality is that we have sometimes been a church that has placed undue attention on outward appearances. Collectively, we have worried what others might think of us, if we welcome those who are clearly less than perfect into our midst.

Outward appearances seem to be at the heart of today’s account of Jesus in his home village. That this is the case is made clearer in the Greek in which the word that is translated “astounded” is better understood as “perplexed” or “perturbed”. Jesus’ neighbours knew his background. He was a worker in stone or wood which not a respectable vocation. To us an artisan is a skilled worker, but in the first century a tradesperson would have to travel to find work. This would mean leaving wife and family at home with no one to defend them or to protect the family’s honour. What his listeners initially took to be wisdom and power were, in their minds simply incompatible with what they knew to be his profession.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also the issue of his parentage. Jesus is referred to as the ‘son of Mary’ not as the ‘son of Joseph’ which would have been the norm – think Simon bar Jonah, or the sons of Zebedee. The implication is that Jesus’ father is unknown. His unusual birth, questionable parentage and his dubious profession create doubts around his teaching and his actions . Rather than being impressed by him, Jesus’ fellow villagers are scandalised. Such a disreputable person cannot be trusted, let alone be a prophet or a miracle worker. What would it say about Jesus’ listeners if they allowed themselves to be taken in by someone who did not fit the mould of respectability? How would it look to outsiders if they took pride in him as one of their own?

No wonder Jesus finds it difficult to perform any miracles for them – they have judged him and found him wanting. They have closed their hearts and minds to him and to what he can do for them. Even if it is true that he can heal – who would dare to allow such a disreputable person to heal them? How would they hold their heads up among their friends if they gave any indication that they thought that Jesus had transcended his position or his birth? How could Jesus heal those who reacted with scepticism and who had rejected him?

I wonder how often we close ourselves off from people who have something to teach or to share with us? How often do we judge a person on outward appearances rather than on what they say and do? Do we close our hearts and minds to those who do not fit our image of teacher, healer, or prophet? Are we more likely to reject the life lessons of those whose experiences and/or backgrounds are vastly different from our own? Do we base our reaction to people or ideas based on what those around us might think?

The thing is, as Jesus’ experience in Nazareth reminds us, our rejection of a person’s talents and ideas may say more about ourselves than it does about them. It may reveal our pettiness, our conformity, our small mindedness, or the narrowness of our thinking. We should exercise caution before making judgements, lest, in rejecting someone simply because they don’t conform to our idea of respectability or because we consider their background to be somewhat dubious, we may, to our regret, discover that we have rejected Jesus himself.

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Living with the tension

November 28, 2020

Advent 1 – 2020

 Mark 13:24-37

Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

What is it that keeps you awake at night? Is it a fear that someone is going to break in? Or perhaps you are tossing and turning because you have so much to do? Maybe you are anxious about a future event and are lying awake going through a variety of possible scenarios. Pain or ill -health may be robbing you of sleep or was it just something you ate?

I once met someone who was afraid to sleep in case he died during the night. Jim had been raised by his very conservative, Evangelical grandmother who had literally put the fear of hell into him. Whether she had done this as a means to control him or because she was genuinely concerned for his salvation is irrelevant. The end result was that Jim, though he believed in God and was in church every week, lived in terror. This beautiful, faithful man felt that he had done something that was so unpardonable that God would condemn him for all eternity.[1]

Jim’s grandmother came from a particular tradition – one that emphasized condemnation over love, judgement over compassion and control over freedom.

To be fair, while I don’t hold that view of faith, I can see how the Bible can be used to support it. As we have seen over the past three weeks, the parables of the wise and foolish maidens, of the talents and of the sheep and the goats, could all be used to paint a picture of a harsh and exacting God – who will shut the door in our face, throw us into outer darkness or send us to eternal punishment if we don’t conform to God’s exacting standards or if we are simply inattentive. Those parables, today’s gospel and much of the Old Testament can be used to present God as a terrifying being whose high standards are impossible for us to reach.

The problem with this view is that it emphasizes the negative at the expense of the positive and views the Bible through a particular lens that allows the reader to ignore or to discount any other way of looking at scripture. It fails to take note of the fact that, despite the fact that God (through the prophets) expresses frustration and anger God invariably relents and God never, ever stops believing in God’s people. This is why Jonah sits and sulks under a tree – God didn’t destroy Nineveh. It is why God pleads with the people to return to God. It is why God persists with a recalcitrant people and it is why God, through Hosea says, “How can I give you up O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger. (Hos 11 1:9)

A God whose sole focus (and pleasure?) is to try to catch us out in wrong doing is not a God who would expose Godself to the malevolence of this world or who would risk everything to save us. God didn’t enter this world by tearing apart the heavens and creating cosmic and earthly disruption. God didn’t sit in judgement on the evil, the ignorance and complacency that characterized the first century. God in Jesus didn’t use punitive means to ensure our conformity or to command our respect. God in Jesus came in love in the hope that love would inspire love. God in Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate what love looked like.

Today’s gospel looks forward in time to Jesus’ return and uses Old Testament imagery to envisage upheaval and terror. The parable exhorts us to ‘keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’ and to ‘keep awake’. It could be used to feed our anxieties about judgement or but I suggest, especially in light of the the reflections of the last three weeks that we see it as a warning not to become complacent, not to take God (or salvation) for granted and as an encouragement to strengthen our relationship with God such that nothing could could come between us.

Advent is a time of contrast. We are called to prepare ourselves both to look back in awe that God should deign to become one of us and forward in expectation that God will come at the end of time and will call us to account. During Advent, we are reminded that, as Christians, we are called to live in creative tension – holding together the knowledge that God loves us unconditionally and the awareness that with that love comes responsibility to live up to that love.  We are to be over awed by the might and power of God and filled with awe that God should lay all that aside to become one of, one with us. We are to strive to be one with God while remembering that God understands and forgives all our shortcomings.

‘Keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’, ‘keep awake’. It would be awful if Jesus were to return and we failed to notice, or if we had paid so little attention to our relationship God that we were uncomfortable in God’s presence or if by our indifference we had forgotten the importance of God’s presence in our lives.

Advent provides an opportunity for us to set things straight, to restore the balance in our lives and in our relationship with God and to learn once again what it is to live with the tension of a God who is utterly beyond comprehension and who, at the same time is completely familiar.

[1] Fortunately, I was able to dismantle his negative view of himself and God and for his last few years he was at peace.

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Leaving it up to God

July 18, 2020

Pentecost 7 – 2020

Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

Marian Free

In the name of God who sends rain on the just and the unjust and causes the sun to shine on both the evil and the good. Amen.

The events of recent times – Covid 19 and “Black Lives Matter” – have brought out both the best and the worst in human nature and have revealed deep divisions in our society and more particularly in that of the United States. To give one example, the legislated wearing of face masks seems to have touched a deep chord in the people who are objecting to the ruling. In Florida, an enquiry into the legislation heard the most extraordinary, and emotive reasons as to why the wearing of masks was, among other things, satanic. Passions are running so high on this subject that in the United States people have been spat on, a man has been charged with making terrorist threats and woman who was asked to wear a mask in a store began throwing her groceries everywhere. In Gosford in Australia, friends of mine were rudely told to remove their face masks by a young passer-by. These reactions, though unpleasant, pale into insignificance compared with the young bus driver in France who was hauled from his bus and kicked to death simply for asking four passengers to comply with the requirement to wear masks.

The pandemic has exposed vastly different attitudes to authority, competing interests with regard to health and to the economy and opposing views about the nature of freedom. At the extremes of some of these positions are people who are so convinced that they alone are right, so threatened by change, so worried about the impact on their personal freedom that they are taking matters into their own hands with, as we have seen, tragic results. 

In these difficult times, differences and divisions between different elements of society are highlighted and exaggerated leading to parochialism and partisanship. People are divided into them and us with “them” being everyone who holds a different view or behaves differently from ourselves. 

Parables such as the one I have just read play right into this tendency to divide society into those who agree with us and those who do not, those who hold our faith and those who don’t, those who are rigid adherents of the law and those who are not. The way that this parable is usually understood  – thanks to Matthew’s addition of an interpretation – can lead to self-satisfaction on the one hand and condemnation of the other on the other hand. If we are wheat (which of course we are!) then those who are different from ourselves must be weeds and by definition must be destined for destruction.

However, as Rosemary reminded us last week, Jesus’ parables are primarily about the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven). They are not about us. 

I have said on many occasions that parables are not neat and self-explanatory (as Matthew’s interpretations suggest). Jesus doesn’t tell parables to affirm the way we see the world but rather to challenge our preconceptions, to shake us up and to move us to a new way of thinking. In other words, rather than confirm our world view, Jesus tries to help us to view the world from another, completely different perspective – that of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Take today’s parable for example – the sower is not, as might be expected, a poor share farmer, a day-laborer or a slave but a householder. We learn that the sower owns both land and slaves. Jesus’ audience would have pricked up their ears. Why, they would have thought, didn’t the householder delegate the task of sowing to his slaves? This is not the only aspect of the story that would have jarred with common practice or experience. Jesus listeners might have wondered why an enemy would plant darnel – a weed so commonplace that it would most likely have sprung up by itself and why would the householder instruct the slaves to leave it to grow when good agricultural practice would have been to weed the crop? You certainly wouldn’t allow these weeds to grow – the seeds of darnel are poisonous. Harvesting the plants together would have risked mixing the two thereby making the wheat worthless.

What to us, who are so far removed from first century Palestine, seems like a possible scenario, would, to Jesus’ listeners, have been a reversal of normal practice – slaves plant the seeds and crops are weeded as necessary. In the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus suggests, the good and bad exist together – separated only at the harvest.

Left to stand alone the parable exemplifies the complexity of human existence and the fact that Christians and non-Christians alike comprise the good and the bad, the saintly and the unsaintly, those with open and receptive hearts and those who are narrow and mean-spirited. Discerning who belongs in which camp can be as difficult as determining which is wheat and which is weed. As individuals and as community, we represent the breadth and depth of human experience and of human behaviour – the best and the worst together. 

The point of the parable seems to be this – that the world and its people are full of complexities, and it is not up to us to make distinctions based on our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. Only God can truly discern the purposes of our heart. Only God can recognize what has made us who and what we are. Only God is in a position to determine who is good and who is not. Judgement will happen in its own time and without our intervention. 

If the wheat and the tares are left to grow together, if the good and the bad in ourselves and others are part of the reality of our existence and if rooting out the bad has the potential to damage the good, then perhaps the lesson is that we should be more gentle with ourselves and more understanding and compassionate of others.

Above all, in today’s turbulent times, perhaps we should humbly mind our own business and leave to God the matter of judgement. 

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Love unearned

January 19, 2019

Epiphany 2 – 2019

John 2:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God whose generosity is poured out freely and abundantly on the deserving and the undeserving. Amen.

Tony Campolo a psychologist, pastor, public speaker and author travelled a lot in the course of his work. Changes in time zones would mean that there were times when he was wide awake when the rest of the world was asleep. On one such occasion he was looking for somewhere to have breakfast at 3:30am. After wandering around he found a rather seedy diner and ordered a coffee and something to eat. While he was eating, the door opened and in came several noisy and provocative prostitutes who made Campolo feel very uncomfortable and out of place. When the women had sat down one announced to the others: “Tomorrow’s my birthday!” To which the response was something to the effect of: “ Bully for you. What do you expect us to do about it?” After a while the first woman responded: “I don’t expect anything but, you know, I have never had a birthday party.”

After they had left, Campolo asked the man behind the counter whether the women came there every night – particularly whether the one whose birthday it was came every night. “That’s Agnes,” the man responded. “Why do you want to know.” Campolo explained that he wanted to throw a party. The man was so impressed with the idea that he insisted that he, not Campolo, provide the cake and his wife offered to do the cooking for the party. Somehow word got around the streets and at 3:15am the next day the diner was crowded with prostitutes. When Agnes walked in everyone shouted: “Happy Birthday!” Agnes, whose life had never been celebrated, burst into tears .”

Compare that story with a true story from my own experience. “Sarah”, also a prostitute, came to faith at a Billy Graham crusade in 1994. The counselors at the crusade put Sarah in touch with her local church which is where I met her. Sarah was open both with the Rector and myself about her profession. She was also honest about the fact that she felt that she couldn’t give up the work until she had paid off a drug debt of $5,000. Interestingly, her conversion experience had enabled her to give up drinking, smoking and drug-taking, but $5,000 does not come from thin air. Such was Sarah’s integrity that she would not be baptized until she had given up the work.

One afternoon Sarah rang me in deep distress. Her psychologist – himself a Christian and a pastor – had accused Sarah of not being committed to Christ because she had not stopped working. I was completely floored. This beautiful, honest person whose personal background had been one of neglect and abuse, was being told that she hadn’t really turned her life around, that she was not sincere in her faith because she was still working. Her psychologist hadn’t offered to pay her drug debt or promised to protect her when the enforcers turned up for payment nor had he validated what she had already given up or affirmed her integrity in delaying baptism.

Sarah was in a state of utter despair and it took the best part of an hour for me to begin to undo the damage this man had done and for her to feel reassured that she was on the right path and that God had not rejected her.

Two Christian psychologists, who were also pastors, responded to the prostitutes in two completely different ways revealing two completely different understandings of the gospel. Campolo saw past Agnes’ profession and recognized her loneliness and alienation. He responded to her with generosity and love. The second man could not see beyond Sarah’s profession and so responded with meanness and condemnation.

These two men represent the different attitudes and responses of the church to those who do not fit the mould of a ‘good’ Christian. Both may feel that they have the love of God in their hearts but one doles out that love sparingly and only to people whom he considers deserving of that love. He believes that compassion and forgiveness must be earned and that a person must achieve a particular standard in order to be acceptable to God. His view of God’s kingdom is that it only includes the worthy and that he is in a position to determine who is and who is not worthy to belong. The other, who is from what is perhaps a more conservative Christian tradition obviously reads the Bible in such a way as to understand that God’s love is expansive and inclusive, that it cannot be earned but is poured out in equal measure on the deserving and the undeserving alike. The first demanded that Sarah change in order to earn God’s love, the latter showed God’s love to Agnes without condition.

Over and over again, in his teaching and in his actions, Jesus demonstrates that God’s love is poured out on those who do nothing to deserve it and that God delights in showing that love. The lost sheep is not reprimanded, the lost son is not castigated. When the lost are found they are not made to do penance. God doesn’t wait until they have redeemed themselves, instead from the moment they are found there is a celebration, a party – not only on earth, but also in heaven.

When Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector, he doesn’t say, “Go and make reparation, then come follow me.” He doesn’t demand that Zacchaeus stop collecting taxes. He simply says: “Come down. I’m going to have dinner with you.” The thief on the cross was not asked to repent but assured of his place in paradise.

God’s love is not doled out sparingly or meanly in response to what we (and others) do or do not do. God’s love is lavishly bestowed on those who have not done, or cannot do, anything to deserve it including ourselves. God does not wait till we are good enough and God holds nothing back – there is more than enough bread for those who need to be fed and more than enough wine to ensure that the wedding party does not come to an abrupt end.

Like the bread on the mountainside or the wine at the wedding, God’s love is not measured and limited but vast and abundant. It is withheld from no one, ourselves included.

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The end is nigh

December 1, 2018

Advent 1 – 2018

Luke 21:25-38

Marian Free

In the name of God whose love for us knows no bounds. Amen.

Many years ago, long before I was ordained, I met Leanne. Leanne was about 20 years older than I, worshipped at the same church and was a member of the Bible Study group. Sadly, Leanne suffered from depression. Despite treatment and medication, she could never shake the feeling that she was worthless and unlovable. One day Leanne told us the following story. On one particular day Leanne’s mother was coming to visit. Leanne was excited, but she knew that her mother had exacting standards. She spent the whole day ensuring that the house was spotless and baking delicious things for her mother to eat. The hour arrived and knowing that everything was ready, Leanne ran out to greet her mother. Imagine how deflated she felt when, instead of reciprocating her excitement and joy, her mother simply said: “What on earth are you doing outside with your apron on?”

No wonder Leanne struggled to believe that she had value. Throughout her life she had been made to feel that she had failed to meet her mother’s expectations. This left her feeling that no matter how hard she tried she was never going to be good enough. When I heard the story, I wanted to hold Leanne for as long as it took for all that negativity to be erased. I imagined the child, the growing girl, the young woman and the now middle-aged person before me, always trying and never succeeding, to be the person whom her mother expected her to be. No wonder she suffered from depression. No wonder Leanne struggled to believe in herself. All her life she had been held in the balance and found wanting.

For some Christians, this is how it is with God. They have been brought up to believe that God is watching and judging everything that they do; that God is somewhere with a set of scales measuring them against an impossibly high ideal. Sadly, a great number of people who claim to be Christians cannot believe that they are lovable, and they certainly cannot believe either that God is love or that God loves them. 

I know that on another occasion I told you the story of a beautiful, gentle man who, in his eighties, could not sleep at night because he was so afraid of dying. He was sure that something he had done in the distant past meant that God had withdrawn God’s approval and love. When he was a child, his well-meaning grandmother had drummed in to him the eternal consequences of bad behaviour. As he drew nearer to his death, he was certain that whatever it was that he had done in the distant past would send him to the fires of hell.   

Can you imagine going through your whole life not knowing how much God loved you? Can you imagine living in terror of God, believing that it was God’s desire and intention to destroy you if you failed to meet God’s expectations? Can you imagine spending a life-time trying to achieve some unrealistic standard of perfection in order to be loved, or to avoid being punished? I can’t. I can’t think why you would bring a child into the world in order to berate and belittle that child. And I can’t conceive of God the creator bringing humankind into being simply to satisfy some egotistical need to dominate or to be feared.

Ideas about an all-powerful, all-demanding God do not emerge from a vacuum. They are developed from imagery of the end-time such as that in today’s gospel, especially verse 34: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly”. And in 1 Thessalonians 3:13: “May you be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

It is all too easy, for those who are so inclined, to build a picture in which God is relentlessly demanding, unyielding and unforgiving. To do that, one also has to ignore the texts in which God is endlessly compassionate, accommodating and forbearing. One has to close one’s mind to the story of creation in which God declares humankind to be “very good”. Above all, one has to forget that in Jesus God gave Godself completely and unreservedly to and for those who had done nothing to deserve such a gift and who continue to be undeserving.

Not that I would suggest for one moment that we ignore or gloss over the vivid descriptions of Jesus’ return, or of the time of judgement. Those of us who know ourselves to be secure in God’s love must be warned from time to time that we should not take that love for granted. Those of us who have long since stopped expecting Jesus’ return need to be reminded that God will come and at a time when God is least expected. Those of us who have fallen into a cosy, comfortable relationship with God have to be pulled up short so that we do not forget that the Creator of the Universe is all-powerful, almighty and awe-inspiring. 

Today’s readings are not necessarily meant to stun us into shocked terror or to keep us in a state of heightened alertness and anxiety. But they do serve a purpose. They prevent us from falling into error, they stop us from having a narrow view of the God of the universe and they challenge us to respond with gratitude to God’s overwhelming goodness and love.

This Advent let the promise of Jesus’ return pierce the numbness and the complacency born out of centuries of Jesus’ non-appearance. 

Let it increase the anticipation, the confidence that Jesus’ coming willshatter the peace, explode the norms and reveal the world for what it really is.

Let Jesus’ coming shake us out of our comfort zones and remind us that God is so much more than our limited minds will ever be able to imagine.

God, the God who loves us so much more than we can ever desire or deserve, is an awesome, terrifying God in whose presence we will fall to our knees in holy fear. 

God willcome. Let us not be lulled into a false sense of security, but make sure that we are ready for an event that might just disturb the whole cosmos and at the very least will shake us to our core.

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