Author: Gregory C. Jenks

Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
Pentecost 8A
26 July 2020

[ video ]

Another Sunday and another text that portrays women as reproductive pawns in the game of life played by men.

In this case we have a powerful old man (Laban) trading his daughters like chips in a card game.

“Yes, I know you wanted the younger one. She is pretty. But I need to marry off the older one first. Hey, son, spend a week with her and then you can have the other one as well. But you will need to work as my unpaid farming assistant for an additional seven years.”

Not quite two for the price of one, but two women being traded away by their father as part of a deal with the man they will share as husband.

And no one thought to ask the women? Either of them!

And at the end of the reading we said:

Hear the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

This week at least our hermeneutical bacon is saved by a disclaimer tucked away in the Gospel reading:

… every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.

Matthew 13:52

That is a little word picture that has always resonated with me.

It is unique to Matthew and is probably not something that Jesus ever said.

But I wish he had.

And I am glad that Matthew did.

As people who are trained (schooled, educated, equipped) for the reign of God, what do we do with a story such as today’s OT passage in the storehouse of faith? Do we hide it away in the back of the shed, or do we bring it out as a model for life today?

Let’s think for a moment about the two sisters trapped in this love triangle.

Assuming it is a love triangle, and not a power pyramid.

Leah

Leah – senior sister, overlooked wife, matriarch. 

What we know best about that Leah is that Jacob preferred her younger sister, Rachel. Always.

Yet Leah was a survivor in a male-dominated world. She played her part in their father’s scheme to outfox the schemer himself, Jacob. 

She was living in the shadow of her younger sibling’s beauty, but flourished in a family system where her husband had to be shared with a young sister, who he clearly preferred.

 It was complicated. Life sometimes is. Often, actually.

Check out Genesis 30 for a snapshot of family worthy of a TV drama series. 

Perhaps we can rescue this text by hearing it as a call for us to honour women trapped in unhealthy relationships, not all of whom have the resilience of Leah to manage their circumstances to their own advantage. 

Let’s also pray for anyone enmeshed in society’s powerful messages about what constitutes beauty and who wish they looked different, spoke differently or had a different body shape.

Rachel

Rachel, the beloved, the beautiful. 

A man would happily work 14 years just to gain her as his wife. 

In the end, Rachel was the mother of both Joseph and Benjamin, the two favourite sons among Jacob’s many children. 

Tragically, she died in childbirth. 

A tomb in Bethlehem remembers her but has itself become a place of violence and oppression. 

I am left wondering …

Did Rachel love Jacob as much as he loved her? 

What value do we put on passionate romance? And what makes the beloved other so beautiful in our eyes? They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder …

Householders all

Week after week, day by day, it is our task to bring out from the storehouse of faith some treasure—some piece of wisdom—that is just right for the challenges we face in everyday life.

Sometimes the Scriptures tell us what to think or how to act.

More often than not, they invite us to judge (to discern), like Solomon of old.

What is wisdom?

How shall we act?

How do we life justly?

What does salvation look this like in this particular situation?

Yes, it is complicated.

But the core principles are simple:

Do no harm.
Love our neighbour as ourselves.
Choose life.
Stay humble.

Feast of St Peter & St Paul
Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton (28 June 2020)
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich (30 June 2024)

 

Fresco from the Cave Church of SS Peter & Paul at Rsovci, Serbia (Wikimedia)

 

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 [ video from 2020 ] [ video from 2024 ]

Around the year 55 CE Paul wrote the following words near the start of his letter to the rather ‘high maintenance’ Christian community in the port city of Corinth:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1Corinthians 1:10–13 NRSV)

Back then Peter and Paul were leaders of different factions in the early Church and at least once they went head to head in a very public argument, as Paul himself describes:

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:11–14 NRSV)

According to tradition, they both ended up in Rome and both died there as martyrs. For decades after their deaths the early Christian community was divided over their respective legacies, with Paul being “on the nose”’” in many circles although his side eventually carried the day as we get to around the middle of the second century.

I wonder how they feel about having to share a feast day on 29 June each year?

Our task today is not to trace their personal stories or reconcile the differences between, but rather to seek spiritual wisdom for our own lives today.

They were very different characters, and that little observation may actually be the major piece of wisdom we take away from this reflection. We each have to be our own selves, rather than seeking to fit in with how other people expect us to think, act or worship.

Their life experiences were about as different as two Jewish men could be during the time of the Roman Empire.

Peter

Peter was a Galilean Jew from the village of Bethsaida, but may have already relocated to Capernaum when he encountered Jesus.

Like many others in the area, he was fisher. It was a major economic activity in the NW corner of the Sea of Galilee at the time. And Jesus seems to have targeted the fishing workers. But that is a whole other sermon for some other day.

Peter was uneducated and of low social status.

Yet Jesus identified him as a leader, and he is always named first in list of the apostles.

We tend to call him Peter, but that was a nickname given him by Jesus. His original name was Simeon. His nickname means “Rocky” and it seems to have stuck, as even Paul refers to him by an Aramaic form of that name: Cephas.

Peter, of course, is among the first witnesses of the resurrection; one of those to whom Jesus first appears in the Easter tradition.

He had never been to school, but he knew more about Jesus than we shall ever understand.

Peter was there. He was the leader of pack in Jesus’ eyes.

We just heard a beautiful legend about a beachside chat between Jesus and Peter after Easter.

 

Paul

Paul was a very different kind of person.

He was not a Galilean, but a Jew from the Diaspora with a highly developed religious identity:

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. (Philippians 3:4–6 NRSV)

Paul had a first-class Jewish pedigree and may even have enjoyed Roman citizenship.

He was an outsider, and seems never to have seen, heard or met Jesus.

He became an insider—and in many ways the greatest Christian leader of all time—because of a religious experience in which he believed that he had encountered the risen Jesus. That turned his life around.

Paul considered himself just as much an apostle as Peter, James and John.

The faith we have is greatly indebted to Paul and bears hardly a trace of Peter.

 

Peter & Paul

Peter’s great asset was that he knew Jesus from before Easter. He could say things like, “When Jesus and I discussed this …” or “That time when Jesus and I went …”

Paul, on the other hand, appealed to Scripture and to his own religious experience of Jesus as a spiritual presence after Easter.

Peter was more likely to stay within the ancient Jewish traditions, while Paul was prepared to throw away the traditions; even though he was deeply trained in them as a Pharisee.

Peter tells us what Jesus was like, where Paul tells us what difference Jesus made.

We need both those voices, and—I suggest—we especially need the voice of Peter to keep Paul a little more grounded in reality.

One of the fault lines in contemporary Christianity is between those who prefer to shape their lives around Jesus in the Gospels, and those who say that it is the voice of Paul which we most need to hear.

Perhaps what we need most is to stay engaged with both those conversations.

We need to be exploring the meaning of God in Christ, actively reconciling the world (kosmos) to himself (2 Cor 5:19). Without that edge, our faith becomes a historical society devoted to an interesting person from 2,000 years ago.

But as we go deep into the mystery of what Jesus means, we must never lose sight of the real human being who proclaimed the presence of God’s rule in everyday life, and did so in ways that made sense to fishermen, housewives, farmers and homeless beggars.

We need a bit of Peter and a bit of Paul in each of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
Second Sunday after Pentecost
14 June 2020

 

[ video ]

It is so hard to pass by the iconic story from Genesis 18, when Abraham and Sarah offered hospitality to three strangers only to discover—with hindsight, as always—that it had been God who was at their table all the time.

Actually, perhaps we do not have to entirely pass that story by.

Maybe we can park that idea to one side as we reflect on the theme of the bountiful harvest and the need for more workers if the harvest is to be finished. Hold that thought for a bit.

 

A plentiful harvest

How many sermons have we heard over the years about the potential harvest out there, if only we had enough people and enough resources to go fetch it?

In my experience as a child raised within the life of the church, this theme was developed especially with reference to missionary work (“the great harvest” to be found in faraway lands). To a lesser extent, it was applied to local evangelism as well, with our neighbours and friends imagined as a field ripe for harvest.

Both those common ways of using this theme, at least in my own experience, have tended to be about finding ways to persuade other people to see things our way.

When used in a more appropriate manner, it becomes a sense that there is so much good to be achieved for God, for our human community and for the earth herself that it would be tragic were it left undone or incomplete.

Too often, I fear, it becomes a passion to “save souls” from something terrible rather than a desire to achieve wonderful things for the benefit of everyone.

How big do we draw the circle of blessing?

Is it a tight circle enclosing a small group of rescued sinners, or do we have a sense that we exist to be a blessing for others? Not just for some, but for everyone?

Now that would be a bountiful harvest!

 

Only a few workers

As the preacher describes the size of the harvest, they usually lament the lack of people to go gather it in.

As church membership shrinks and participation rates collapse, this sounds familiar.

The workers are not just clergy, but people willing to serve on Parish Council, school boards, cleaning rosters, serve in the OpShop, teach Sunday School, lead youth groups, etc, etc

But today’s Gospel reading subverts that response, based as it is on fear for the future; and a sense of loss when we compare things now with the past.

Interestingly, having spoken about the need for more workers to be sent by the master of the harvest, Jesus sends out just 12 people. That’s right: 12!

The truth is, of course, that even a small group of passionate people can achieve amazing results.

Twelve uneducated men from Galilee. Maybe Matthew (Levi) was able to read and write. None of them was well-connected or had any kind of serious social status. No physicians, engineers or artists in this group.

Only Peter was to make an impression on the memory of the church, and almost everything we know about him is legend.

The others all disappear from the stage of history and leave no trace of their efforts.

But almost exactly 300 years later (in 325 CE) a Roman emperor called Constantine would convene the first Church Council in the city of Nicea to approve the first draft of the creed we say in this Cathedral most Sundays. The emperor had become a follower of Jesus a few years earlier and before long Christianity would become the official religion of the Roman Empire.

That may not actually have been a good thing, but it still demonstrates what an amazing result can be achieved by a handful of ordinary people whose hearts have been possessed by a big idea.

Maybe we do not need to ask for more workers, just a few workers with bold dreams.

 

The lord of the harvest

Who is the lord of the harvest? and what are his instructions for the workers gathering the harvest?

In the Gospels it is God, but for us—in a sense—it is Jesus himself.

Our gospel reading began with Jesus active in the work to which God had called him, and later sending out his twelve disciples to keep doing the same stuff.

What was Jesus doing and what did he send the others out to do?

CONNECT – went about from village to village, engaging with people where they were. He did not try to persuade them to come to him. He went to them

TEACHING – Jesus offered practical wisdom, spiritual wisdom for everyday life. It was not arcane religious knowledge or philosophical speculations. It was wisdom to live by. Daily bread indeed.

HOPE – Jesus gave people hope with his talk about the coming kingdom of God and he encouraged people to start acting as if the reign of God was already here.

HEALING – as Jesus did all that people were finding healing, they were being saved, their broken lives were being put back together.

COMPASSION – Jesus embodied (literally) the compassion of God

 

That is the work of the harvest as understood and practised by the lord of the harvest.

 

Conclusion

If we are struggling to recruit people to help us could it be that we are working in the wrong paddock, seeking to gather the wrong harvest?

Are we driven by compassion for them or by our need for their assistance to keep the church going?

If it is not the former then there will be no blessing s from the lord of the harvest.

Jesus did not send the twelve out to repair, maintain or expand the synagogues.

Jesus did not ask for money: “You received with payment, give without payment!”

Jesus transformed lives, communities, society and the world.

That is our mission as well.

If we focus on that mission, we will find we have all the people we need to achieve the most remarkable results.

 

We started with a brief reference to Abraham and Sarah welcoming three strangers to their tent. They shared what they had with these strangers who had walked into their lives. They did not ask for anything in return. But they later discovered that God had been among them.

May that be our story and the story this town as well.

 

 

Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
Pentecost. Sunday
31 May 2020

[ video ]

 

Everything begins in chaos
Darkness

Tohu vabohu, writes the ancient Hebrew poet

Formless
Empty
Immense swirling oceans (the Deep)
No light at all from any source

Then something happens:
ruach elohim

 

Christians like to translate that phrase: ‘Spirit of God’
Jews prefer to say: ‘a wind from God’
I suggest we read it as: ‘a powerful wind’
In everyday terms we might say “a hell of a storm”

All that we are today has its origins and its explanation in those ancient words that open the Bible we share with our Jewish friends.

To paraphrase:

God was there at the start
God created everything
It was a mess
An amazing storm came through
Hovering above the formless empty chaos
Then there was light!
God had spoken.

 

That is not just a description of our origins.
It also describes our present reality
And it indicates our destiny

TODAY is Pentecost, sometimes called the Eighth Day of Creation
TODAY we celebrate the disturbing and renewing presence of the Spirit
TODAY we pray for the Spirit to hover over our chaos until the light appears

As we observe this Great and Fiftieth Day of Easter, let me offer a simple paradigm for understanding the meaning of Pentecost:

The presence of the spirit of Jesus among us
is the proof of the resurrection
Equally, our commitment to compassionate action
is the proof that the Spirit is among us.

 

The spirit of Jesus among us

This was a major theme in the way that Paul understood the gospel.

He hardly ever refers to the life of Jesus and almost never quotes any teachings from Jesus, but he repeatedly refers to the Spirit as the real, lived experience of the risen Jesus active in the church.

One familiar example, often used in services today, is this:

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13)

However, I think my personal favourite, might be this line from a little later in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

For Paul and for us, the Spirit present among us is the proof that Jesus has been raised and has gone ahead of us into God, into the future, into eternal love.

Indeed, Paul never mentions an empty tomb. Rather, we find that in the Gospels, all of which were written long after Paul is dead.

For Paul what matters is to have been drawn into the Easter life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, which has been given to us.

For that reason, Pentecost is indeed the Great and Fiftieth Day of Easter.

Easter does not end with the discovery of an empty tomb nor an ascension into heaven.

Easter has really only fully happened when we have a community of people where the Spirit is found: hovering over our chaos, absorbing our darkness, shaping our formlessness, illuminating our darkness, filling our emptiness.

Today, on the festival of the Spirit,  we know the meaning of Easter; and in our experience of the Spirit of Jesus among us we know the reality of his resurrection.

 

Acting with compassion

In our mission statement on the Cathedral website, we speak of ourselves as “acting with compassion in the heart of Grafton since 1842”

When that description is true, then we have proof that the Spirit of Jesus is indeed active among us.

Jesus was, first of all, a person of compassion: he healed the sick, he cast out demons, he made the blind see, he fed the hungry, he proclaimed a time of liberty and salvation, he had time and compassion for those on the margins of their own communities.

As Jesus people, his Spirit of compassion will be evident among us as well.

Paul one time described this as the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23)

This does not mean that we always get it right.

Nor does it mean that when we mess up we should beat up on ourselves.

But it does suggest that when we get it right, this is what the presence of the Spirit of Jesus among us looks like: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”

We should expect to see evidence of the Spirit of Jesus at work among us.

And we do.

We saw it during the fires during summer.

We have seen it in the care and support during the pandemic.

We see it in the OpShop volunteers.

We see it in the Cathedral Pantry.

We see it in every act of compassion and care.

 

May the disturbing and renewing presence of the Spirit continue to be our experience so that we never doubt the resurrection of Jesus and never lose sight of what it means for us to be Jesus people here and now.

God was there at the start
God is here now
God will be here in the future
It may be a mess
But an amazing spirit-storm is around us
Hovering above the formless empty chaos
There will be light!
God has spoken.
Alleluia!