gregoryjenks

Category: Sermons

  • Francis and the wolf

    Francis and the wolf

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Creation Sunday
    Blessing of the Animals
    7 October 2018

    [video]

    Francis_wolfLet’s begin with a story …

    The date is 1220 CE, about six years before the death of Francis of Assisi.

    The place is Gubbio, a medieval town in Umbria. It is about halfway up the Italian peninsula.

    The problem: a large wolf has been attacking animals and people, and everyone is afraid even to leave the walls of the town.

    Francis was living in the town at that time, and he decided to solve the problem posed by the ferocious wolf. The townspeople said he was crazy to do that, but he determined to do it in any case.

    Brother Francis goes outside the walls to meet Brother Wolf.

    Alone.

    With no weapons.

    When the wolf charged at Francis, the saint made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf Francis made the sign of the Cross and commanded the wolf to cease its attacks in the name of God, at which point the wolf trotted up to him docilely and lay at his feet, putting its head in his hands.

    The ancient legend tells the story this way:

    “Brother wolf, thou hast done much evil in this land, destroying and killing the creatures of God without his permission; yea, not animals only hast thou destroyed, but thou hast even dared to devour men, made after the image of God; for which thing thou art worthy of being hanged like a robber and a murderer. All men cry out against thee, the dogs pursue thee, and all the inhabitants of this city are thy enemies; but I will make peace between them and thee, O brother wolf, if so be thou no more offend them, and they shall forgive thee all thy past offences, and neither men nor dogs shall pursue thee any more.”

    The wolf bowed its head and submitted to Francis, completely at his mercy.

    “As thou art willing to make this peace, I promise thee that thou shalt be fed every day by the inhabitants of this land so long as thou shalt live among them; thou shalt no longer suffer hunger, as it is hunger which has made thee do so much evil; but if I obtain all this for thee, thou must promise, on thy side, never again to attack any animal or any human being; dost thou make this promise?”

    In agreement, the wolf placed one of its forepaws in Francis’ outstretched hand, and the oath was made. Francis then commanded the wolf to return with him to Gubbio. At this sight, the men who had followed him through the walls were utterly astonished and they spread the news; soon the whole city knew of the miracle. The townsfolk gathered in the city marketplace to await Francis and his companion, and were shocked to see the ferocious wolf behaving as though his pet. When Francis reached the marketplace, he offered the assembled crowd an impromptu sermon with the tame wolf at his feet. … With the sermon ended, Francis renewed his pact with the wolf publicly, assuring it that the people of Gubbio would feed it from their very doors if it ceased its depredations. Once more the wolf placed its paw in Francis’ hand.

     

    Such stories are common among the legends of the saints.

    Irrespective of their historicity, they point to a way of seeing the world that we seem to have lost.

    The people who told these stories lived in an enchanted world.

    We live in a world where nature, animals and birds have little intrinsic value.

    We appreciate them for the profit we can make by exploiting them, and not for their own sake as living creatures in the larger web of life.

    Today we pause and reconsider.

    In the past few centuries, we have become myopic, short-sighted, as we look around us.

    We look at the world and think it is all about us.

    We have reduced the meaning of “us” in two ways: first of all, “us” seems to mean “me” and maybe people like me; and secondly, “us” seems to mean “humans”, rather than all forms of life on this beautiful Earth.

    If we give other life forms any thought at all, we tend to think of them as existing for our sake and without any inherent rights.

    We fool ourselves into thinking that God only cares about humans.

    And we consistently act as if God does not care what we do to her creation.

    But that is not the case, even if our theology encourages us to think it is all about us.

    It is essential to rethink the meaning of “we” so that it embraces all life forms on this planet—and not simply humans.

    We especially need to rethink our attitude towards the wild things and the places where the wild things are.

    Domesticated animals and production animals are not the only ones that deserve our best efforts on their behalf. We need to value even those places and those creatures which seem not to offer us any benefit at all.

    Changing how we think about other creatures will also change the way we think about ourselves.

    Rather than imagine ourselves as the apex of creation, we see ourselves as part of the diverse web of life.

    We are distinct and different, but so is every other kind of creature, and all of us are expressions of God’s joie de vivre, God’s delight in abundance and diversity and variation.

    The neat lists of our limited outlook give way to the abundant messiness of God’s world.

    The messiness of our own lives reflects God’s delight in diversity.

    We erase the thick lines that place us in strict categories: humans/animals, men/women, insiders/outsiders, straight/gay, priests/people, rulers/governed.

    Today we pause to reflect with wonder and awe on the diversity of creation, and we give thanks for all that we share with other animals within the diversity of God’s good creation.

    We acknowledge our place with and among all God’s creatures.

    As we invoke God’s blessing on them, just as we seek it for ourselves, we pledge to think differently about them and about ourselves in the year ahead.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Capernaum’s child

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (B)
    23 September 2018

     

    [video]

    Mark the Gospel artist continues working with his palette this week.

    He has crafted two powerful scenes, neither of which we have heard as we follow the cycle of readings set for us in the weekly lectionary.

    In the first scene, we have Mark’s account of the Transfiguration, when Jesus lets those closest to him catch a glimpse of his divine glory.

    It is an evocative episode, with echoes of a famous scene in the Old Testament where Moses spends so much time up the mountain with God that his face shines, and people are freaked out. In keeping with Mark’s theme that Jesus is not simply like Moses but greater than Moses, in this example the glory of God shines forth from Jesus himself. Indeed, in the story as Mark tells it, both Moses and Elijah appear alongside Jesus on top of a mountain.

    Mark could hardly make it any clearer.

    The God who was at work in Moses and Elijah is also at work in Jesus. Maybe even more so.

    Then we have a second scene that seems designed almost to make us cringe. As they come back down from the mountain Jesus and the inner set of his followers find that the rest of the disciples have been trying—without success—to heal a sick boy. The failure of the disciples stands in marked contrast with the success, the power and the glory of Jesus. With one word from Jesus, the boy is made well and they move off before too big a crowd gathers.

    Again, Mark could hardly it any clearer.

    There is no stopping Jesus, but his disciples are lacklustre. Underwhelming.

    Then we come to today’s Gospel passage.

    We have three character sets as Mark develops his narrative.

     

    First of all, there is Jesus.

    Jesus is in a class of his own. We might describe him as “eyes wide open”, telling anyone who will listen—and even those who will not—that this project will cost him his life, but even death will not be the end of him.

    He senses where his own faithfulness to God’s call on him will lead, and he does not flinch. At least that is how Mark portrays Jesus. One imagines it may have been a bit more complex than that, but we are listening to Mark’s way of telling the story.

     

    Then we have the Twelve.

    As the group has circled back to Capernaum, the Twelve have been keeping their distance from Jesus, it seems. They have been engaged in arguments with each other. No, they were not seeking to understand the significance of the Transfiguration nor to improve their clinical skills at casting out demons! Nor had they asked Jesus to explain what he meant by talking about his mission coming only at the cost of his own life. According to Mark, they were afraid to ask him!

    As they reach the little stone house in Capernaum that Jesus has made his home base, Jesus is waiting for them. ‘So, guys, what were you arguing about back there on the road?’

    Silence.

    Embarrassment.

    An awkward shuffling of the feet.

    Eyes downcast.

    They had been haggling over their personal status, which of them was more important and what was the pecking order within the band of disciples.

    Maybe it started with the Nine wanting to know why the Three (Peter, James and John) had been invited up the mountain with Jesus? We can almost imagine the conversation: So why are you three guys so special? Who do you think you are anyway? Don’t forget how much each of us has given up to follow Jesus!

    Jesus sat down and called them over to him.

    “Listen up, guys! Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 

     

    Enter the third character set: a child.

    Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,  “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me …

    There was a child in the house where Jesus was staying.

    There is a child in the story that Mark is telling.

    The child has no name and we do not even know its gender. It was just a child.

    That is exactly the point Mark is seeking to make.

    Children were not highly regarded in the ancient world. Most of them died before reaching adulthood in any case, and they rarely feature in the stories about Jesus. Yet here Jesus takes a child and tells his followers to stop obsessing about themselves and to focus on the child.

    It is always about the child, about the ‘little ones’ …

    Sometimes the child is indeed an infant or a toddler. Sometimes the child is a school student. Sometimes the child is a vulnerable adult, unemployed perhaps, or homeless. Sometimes the child is a frail older person.

    But the mission of God is always about the little ones, youth who are at risk, older folks who are being overlooked.

    The mission of God is never about the status or the privilege of the church leaders, the clergy, members of Parish Council or the Dean of the Cathedral. It is always about the child. The little one.

    Jesus saw past his own survival but his disciples could not see past their own privilege.

    He takes a little child and places her in our midst. It is all about the children, he says. It is never about us.

    We have seen what happens when the church overlooks that simple truth.

    May we never forget the child who Jesus places on our midst.

    As we treat the child, so we have treated Jesus.

     

     

  • The turning point

    The turning point

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (B)
    16 September 2018

    [video]

    In today’s gospel reading we reach the mid-point of Mark’s Gospel.

    I am not counting words, but describing the turning point in Mark’s overall story.

    More on that shortly, but first and very briefly, let’s talk about the location of this episode.

     

    Location

    Mark sets this story right up in the far north corner of ancient Palestine.

    Today we call the place Banias and 200 years before the time of Jesus it was known as Paneas, which gives us a clue to the significance of this piece of real estate.

    We are on the southern slopes of Mt Hermon, the highest peak in the Lebanese mountains.  From a spring near the base of Mt Hermon flows a sparkling clean and extremely chilly stream, that will eventually become the Jordan River.

    Mt Hermon appears often in the Old Testament, as it was believed to be the address of the gods. It was the local equivalent of Mt Olympus in Greece.

    This is sacred turf and a large cave not far from the Hermon Stream was believed to be the entrance to the underworld. A temple to the Greek god, Pan, had been here for centuries prior to the time of Jesus. Hence it ancient and modern names: Paneas or Banias.

    Herod the Great realised the political significance of this holy place, and erected a temple to Augustus at the entrance to the great cave. The Augusteum appears on coins minted by Herod’s son and partial successor, Philip. Philip went one better than Herod, renaming the site Caesarea Philippi, which means ‘the city Philip built for Caesar’!

    In the time of Jesus this was the capital of the small kingdom ruled by Philip.

    Perhaps even more importantly for Mark, this was also the seat of the surviving Jewish government led by King Agrippa II after the disaster of the Jewish-Roman War that saw Jerusalem captured and the temple destroyed. This is the same King Agrippa who appears in the Acts of the Apostles and meets St Paul.

    Today when we take students and pilgrims to the site, we walk through the remains of Agrippa’s palace. Even after 2,000 years you can see the quality of the building and sense that no cost was spared.

    The main street of ancient Caesarea Philippi directs people to the Augusteum in front of the Cave of Pan and the foot of Mt Hermon, the home of the gods.

    This is a holy place.

    This is a place of power.

     

    The story so far

    Up until this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been active in the north of the country: across Galilee, around the lake and even as far as the coastal areas near Tyre and Sidon. From this point onwards Jesus begins his journey south to Jerusalem, a journey from which he never returns.

    Mark has been choosing the episodes to include in his story like an artist selecting colours and textures for a painting.

    A lot of the time Mark makes Jesus seem like Moses 2.0.

    At other times Mark makes Jesus look like Elijah 2.0.

    It seems as if the ancient Bible stories are coming to life in front of their eyes!

    Some people like what they see, and Jesus is attracting huge crowds everywhere that he goes. Other people are confused and hostile. Especially the leaders and the religious experts: the Pharisees and the Scribes.

    Now comes the turning point in the story.

    Jesus heads north with his closest followers and takes them to the villages around the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi.

    They are in dangerous territory. The rich and powerful who live here destroy people like Jesus. Mark chooses his setting well. Jesus does not go inside the city that represents the highest levels of Jewish political power and the place of its ongoing compromise with the Roman Empire.

    Jesus is an outsider to that world and he stays outside the city with its pagan gods.

    But in that location, close to all the symbols of divine and human power, he asks his closest followers what they think of him.

    Can he bring down this empire that seems so powerful and pervasive?

    And how will he do it?

    By force, or by seeming to be a victim of the system he has come to destroy?

    No wonder Peter could not understand.

     

    To be a disciple

    How does someone follow a person like Jesus?

    The answer may surprise, but it is highly relevant this morning as we baptise Lilly and as we welcome other children who are beginning their journey to the Eucharist.

    Jesus does not ask people to sign up to a creed.

    Jesus does not ask them to go through some ritual or make a pilgrimage.

    Jesus does not ask them to hand over money for the church to use.

    All of those things the church has done, but none of those things were done by Jesus.

    He simply said: Come and follow me; do what I am doing, go where I am going.

    The secret is how we choose to spend our lives.

    Not looking after ourselves, but seeking to make the world a better place, a place more like God wants it to be.

    Lilly starts that journey today.

    Those of us who come to the Table of Jesus seek food for the same journey.

    Make us like you, Jesus!

     

     

     

     

  • Crumbs of compassion

    Christ Church Cathedral Grafton
    Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (B)
    9 September 2018

    [video]

    All three readings today revolve around the theme of practical religion.

    • Proverbs 22 promotes compassion and integrity
    • James 2 encourages generosity that pays no attention to the status of the other person
    • Mark 7 has a foreign woman giving Jesus a master class in compassion

    In these ancient sacred texts, religion is about what we do rather than what we believe. And the doing which matters in these readings is not religious actions, but treating other people properly.

    Let’s focus on the classic and surprising story from Mark’s gospel.

    Jesus has gone to the coast for a break from his public routine. It seems that he wants some time off as he does not want people to know he is there. He has gone to the region around Tyre, a major city on the coast and, as it happens, the mint that supplied to the priests in Jerusalem with high-quality silver coins that every Jew coming to the Temple needed to purchase from the exchange booth, because ordinary coins were not acceptable to the priests.

    Since Jesus would later cause an incident in the temple when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers, I wonder whether this trip was entirely recreational or whether he had planned some kind of prophetic action at the imperial mint in Tyre. We shall never know, but whatever Jesus had planned for his few days by the coast were overturned by the persistence of a local woman with a sick daughter.

    It is critical to this story to recognise that the woman was not Jewish. From the perspective of Jesus and his disciples, she was an outsider.

    Prior to this point in Mark’s story, Jesus has broken numerous Jewish religious taboos and even treated the occasional outsider well. Remember the story of the demoniac and the pigs!

    But this woman was not getting even a halfway decent response from Jesus:

    Woman: I am begging you to cast the demon out of my daughter.

    Jesus: Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’

    Woman: Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.

    Jesus: For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.

    We always need to remember that episodes in the Gospel are not there simply because they happened. If that were the case, our Gospels would be much longer documents!

    These are selected stories. They have chosen and arranged to make a point. In Luke’s case, this story was left out because it did not fit the point he was seeking to make.

    So we can assume that Mark chose to use this story because it addressed something that he felt his audience needed to hear.

    Up until this point in the Gospel of Mark Jesus has been working mostly in Jewish communities, but in the middle chapters of the Gospel we see Jesus beginning to extend his focus beyond the Jews.

    Indeed today’s reading is followed a second account of Jesus feeding a multitude, and this version happens out in pagan territory. In that story, the gentiles get more than crumbs as Jesus feeds them with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.

    The transition from the feeding of 5,000 Jewish people to the feeding of 4,000 Gentile people involves this feisty mum with the sick daughter. Mark has chosen to tell the story this way. It is not simply an extract from Jesus’ travel itinerary. Mark wants his readers to get the point.

    For Jesus and for his earliest followers such as Mark’s readers, crossing the boundary between Jew and Gentile was serious business.

    It could be a hard step to make.

    But in the end, it was about enlarging our imagination to embrace the idea that God cares about people who are different from us.

    There were good religious grounds and no shortage of biblical texts to validate fear, discrimination and prejudice.

    But compassion for a mum with a sick girl opened Jesus’ eyes. He saw things differently after that.

    The woman did not argue about whether or not God still loved the Jews. She simply claimed a few crumbs of that eternal love for her daughter.

    In doing that her girl was healed and Jesus was blessed as well.

    The rest of the Gospel reading today describes Jesus going deeper into Gentile territory and not hesitating to heal a foreigner who came to him for help. In the episode that follows this healing of the man with a speech impediment, Jesus repeats the miracle of the loaves for a Gentile crowd.

    May the courage of the feisty mum and the openness of Jesus to new insights, inspire us to ‘cross the double lines’ and go where God is calling us, rather than stay where God has been in the past.

  • The secret of the grain that falls

    The secret of the grain that falls

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    The Martyrs of PNG
    2 September 2018

    [video]

    In today’s Gospel—chosen for the festival of the PNG Martyrs—we have a classic piece of spiritual wisdom from Jesus:

    “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24–25 NRSV)

    This saying happens to be one of my favourite biblical texts. It has always touched me profoundly.

    These words take us deep into the mystery of the truth that Jesus lived, and the truth that we are called to live as well.

    To be a solitary and self-sufficient figure—even if we could do that, which mostly we cannot—is to be lonely and pointless. To survive at all costs, might mean that we die without any meaning to our existence at all.

    The point of being alive is not to survive, but to serve.

    This was a theme to which Jesus and his first followers returned time and again.

    Here in John 12 the saying about the grain of wheat is followed by the aphorism about losing life in order to find it. Those who cling to their own existence, who prize it above all else, find that they lose what they most value. Those who dismiss their own importance and live for others, will find they have saved their own life and—in the process—fashioned a life that is worth having lived.

    In the Synoptic tradition, Jesus calls on his followers to take up their cross. This metaphor does not refer to personal hardships, aching backs or broken hearts. It proclaims a terrible truth: that the path to life is only open to those who are willing to die for something bigger and greater than themselves.

    In Philippians 2 we find an early Christian hymn that celebrates Jesus as the one who understands that true divinity is not about snatching power and grasping for privilege.

    Each time we gather at the Table of Jesus this profound spiritual truth is acted out for us: the broken bread, the wine poured out, Jesus’ own life given to us, and through us to others.

    It is not hard to see why the lectionary committee chose this passage for the feast of the PNG Martyrs, those seeds that fell into the rich soil of PNG and became a vast number of people claiming their own identity as people of God.

    And here we are still in the shadow of the recent political upheavals, as people have snatched at power and privilege in our national parliament, seeking to have it all for themselves and those who think like they do. The wisdom of Jesus seems to find few ears that are willing to hear in the halls of power.

    It was ever thus, of course.

    Those who killed Jesus and those who demanded the death of the PNG martyrs, were powerful and privileged in their own contexts.

    This counter-cultural wisdom that Jesus both lived and taught intersects with our local celebrations of Fathers’ Day here in this part of the world.

    That wisdom is central to our aspirations as fathers and our expectations of our fathers.

    The fathers we most admire, are men who understand this principle.

    The fathers we most aspire to be, are men who live out this spiritual principle.

    As it happens, I first became a father on this day in 1974. It was not Fathers’ Day that year, but my eldest daughter’s birthday and the feast of the PNG martyrs are forever tied together in my mind.

    In our prayers today we shall remember the PNG martyrs but we also pray for the fathers in our community. We pray that God will grant wisdom and strength to every man who is a father to someone else: fathers and grandfathers, husbands and friends, brothers and uncles.

    We are at our best as fathers when we forget our own needs for the sake of our children.

    We are at our best as people of faith when we learn the secret of the grain that falls.

    As a generous faith community in the heart of Grafton since 1842, we are at our best when we forget about our own survival and spend ourselves for the sake of others.

    This morning as we come to the Table of Jesus to receive the life that he gives away for the sake of the world, let’s seek the grace to live for others and not for ourselves.

     

     

     

     

  • Building strong families

    Building strong families

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Pentecost 12 (B)
    12 August 2018

     

    BuildingStrongFamilies

     

    [video]

    RMW-MMSPOS6RThe great lectionary diversion

    As basic pattern, each year over a three-year cycle, we focus on the witness of one Gospel to Jesus:

    Matthew in Year A
    Mark in Year B
    Luke in Year C

    Mark is much shorter than Matthew and Luke, so round about this time we have a lectionary diversion as we spend a month in John 6. Right now we are at the mid-point of a 5 week series of readings from John 6.

    For preachers, 5 weeks in John 6 can feel a bit like the 40 years in the wilderness. It just seems to go on forever.

    There are many points of interest in these continuous excerpts from John 6, but not much that I feel drawn to preach about.

    I might have preached from the Old Testament, but there we are in another series of readings as the lectionary walks us through the destructive dynamics of the Davidic dynasty. We have abuse of power, sexual abuse, assassination, rebellion, and murder. So much for the Bible teaching good family values!

    There is always the NT reading, and sometimes I would choose that option. These five weeks could have been a good time for a sermon series on Ephesians!

    However, today I want to reflect on some aspects of our life together as a faith community.

    Bread from heaven?

    Let me start, oddly enough, with the Gospel for today.

    You will have noticed there was a tone of conflict in the passage we heard.

    Jesus is portrayed by John as claiming to have come down from heaven, and also to have been around in the times of Abraham and Moses. Naturally, the religious leaders of the day find this to be some kind of weird mix: part nonsense, and part scandal.

    For sure Jesus did not walk around telling people he was 2,000 years old, and then some. He does not do that in Mathew, Mark or Luke. It is a feature of John’s Gospel, and not a memory of how Jesus himself actually spoke.

    Let’s leave aside for now the question of why John will have created this scene. Maybe we can look at this in a Dean’s Forum at some stage. For now, let me pick up the core idea at the heart of the passage: in Jesus we find a wisdom that transforms our life.

    So the first question is whether we really believe that? Is this something we take seriously?

    I am not asking if we take this bread of heaven language literally, but whether we take it seriously?

    If we do take it seriously, then that means we actually believe that we have something of immense value for people’s lives. In Jesus, and in our faith more generally, we find the spiritual wisdom that we need to live as people of hope and compassion.

    Is this wisdom some kind of secret knowledge we hope to keep for ourselves, or are we wanting to share it with anyone who might be interesting in knowing about it?

    If we are wanting to share our faith and see more people joining us in the life of the church, then we are going to have to change how we do church.

    Focus on families and children

    One of the major changes we will need to make is to get the faith out, rather than trying to get the people in.

    This is true for people of all ages, but it is especially so for families with children.

    We are making ministry with families and children a major focus for our work in the next couple of years, and hopefully much longer.

    As I say in this week’s bulletin, this can be done with a mix of gathered events and dispersed experiences, with the objective of increasing people’s involvement in personal religious practices and home-based spirituality.

    In other words, if we can take the faith to them (using our digital technologies) then—in time—some of them will gather for occasional events to celebrate the things they have been learning and doing at home, and some of them will become more active in the life of the parish.

    This will also require us to be genuinely inclusive and to modify our Sunday morning church services to be more accessible to people with very little background in the ways of the church. We have already made a start on this with the 9.00am service time, but will need to keep looking for ways to make our Sunday worship more

    Providing resources for lifelong faith practices in the home and in people’s lives outside of church is a key element of this strategy. If we can develop religious practice in the home and help people to develop their own personal spiritual practices, then we become partners in their lives rather than an institution seeking their time, their energy, and their money.

    The Cathedral website now provides links to selected resources to support parents in shaping the faith dimension of their families as well assisting them in the critical role of effective parenting.

    building-strong-families

     

    Conclusion

    Making our “bread from heaven” available and relevant to people in their everyday busy lives is going to take time, wisdom and patience.

    It will be the major focus of the Associate Priest (Children, Families and Youth) that we hope to appoint from January. But it starts now, because right now there are families and children and youth and adults and older people who need this “bread that comes down from heaven”.

    We are starting right now with small baby steps, but with high hopes for the future.

    Come with us on the journey, support us with your gifts and your prayers, and by making this Cathedral the friendliest and most welcoming place it can be.