gregoryjenks

Category: Sermons

  • Earthlings first and last

    Earthlings first and last

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Earth Sunday 2018
    22 April 2018
    [video]

    Today we have an opportunity to reflect on the significance of Earth for us as people of faith, and to reflect on the significance of faith—specifically Easter faith—for Earth.

    This is a huge topic and one with immense significance.

    I propose simply to offer you some lines of thought that may be worth further exploration, and then to invite you into that exploration in the months and years ahead.

     

    Eden

    I begin with the ancient Jewish creation myth now found in Genesis 2 and 3.

    We heard the opening paragraph of that story as our first reading today, and it is a familiar story for most of us.

    You may well be aware that this is the second creation story in the Bible and, very appropriately, it is more ‘down to Earth’ than the poetic version found in Genesis 1.

    It is also a story that is more familiar to us because it culminates with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden after they eat the forbidden fruit.

    We are, of course, not dealing with history here.

    Rather, we have a beautiful story of a God who rolls up her sleeves and get her hands dirty as she fashions a living being from Earth.

    I remind you that this is not something that ever happened, but it is a story that is fundamentally true.

    In this ancient story, the garden comes first. Earth comes before earthlings. We come to be as creatures in context, and the context is Earth whose well-being we are intended to serve.

    I could stop there, but I won’t!

    But please note how even that simple statement already invites us to rethink our usual focus on humanity as the apex of creation, and our individual convenience as of greater value than the health of the planet.

    Let’s dig deeper.

    At the heart of the opening scene of this ancient myth is a word play.

    The word we usually translate as Adam (or even ‘man’) is simply ‘adam (אדם) in the Hebrew text, and this ‘adam creature is fashioned by God out of the ‘adamah (אדמה), soil or ground.

    In this word play we see a profound truth that is obscured by the usual translations, so I invite you to hear this as “the Lord God created an Earthling out of the Earth.”

    The first Earthling is neither male nor female. Gender does not yet exist. Shortly the Earthling will be divided into two separate and gendered persons, but—in this story—when humanity first appears we are neither male nor female.

    This is actually one of the most significant differences between the two creation stories. We do not solve the puzzle by over writing one account with the content from the other. Rather, as the Bible itself does, we let the two contradictory accounts stand side by side and look to discern the deep truth that each offers us.

    Not only does gender not yet exist, but God presumes that our fundamental relationship with other Earth creatures will be sufficient for the well-being of the Earthling. As God discovers, in her own journey of learning and insight, that Earthlings need companionship with other creatures of identical character and equal worth, then the Earthling will be divided into male and female.

    For now, let’s just take on board the significance of our identity as Earthlings, irrespective of gender and before any gender identification exists.

    The first Earthling is us. All of us. Together. As one.

     

    Calvary

    The gruesome landscape of the crucifixion may seem an unlikely pair for the mythical Garden of Eden, but in the Gospel of John the location is described as a garden:

    Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. —John 19:41–42

    Indeed, in John’s Gospel, as Mary Magdalene lingers in the garden and encounters the risen Lord, she mistakes him for the gardener (John 20:15)!

    Who is this second gardener, tending the the overlooked garden of Golgotha?

    Paul seeks of Jesus as the ‘second Adam’, so I want to lay that suggestion alongside the idea that the first person is best described as the original Earthling.

    Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.—1Corinthians 15:45–49

    That is a rich and evocative passage in its own right, but for now I simply want to take permission from Paul to imagine Jesus as the ‘Second Adam’, or perhaps as the ‘Last Earthling’.

    The Church is well versed in speaking about Jesus as divine, and our creeds were fashioned in the fire of fierce controversy about the best set of words to express the eternal divinity of God the Son.

    We also (mostly) find it fairly easy to speak of Jesus’ humanity.

    But Paul is inviting us to think of Jesus as the New Earthling. Not just humanity 2.0, but Earthling 2.0!

    In the creation myth, the first Earthling incarnates God’s hopes and dreams for Earth to give rise to conscious life, life that understands its role as being to tend and nurture the well-being of Earth.

    In Paul’s theology of resurrection, the second Earthling incarnates God’s hopes and dreams for a renewed humanity: humans who engage in the divine project that was at the heart of Jesus’ own mission and message, the kingdom of God.

     

    God becomes Earthling

    It is sound Christian theology to affirm that God took human flesh and not simply human form. The Christ among us is not a phantom, but God as a real authentic human person.

    Jesus is not a divine smoke and mirrors trick, but God enfleshed in humanity.

    We can therefore affirm that God herself becomes—and remains for all eternity as—Earthling.

    Perhaps not ‘an Earthling’ but possibly ‘the ultimate Earthling’: the Second Adam.

    We are children of Earth, fashioned from the Earth by the creative invitation of God.

    More than that, God has assumed Earthliness through the incarnation.

    If we affirm that God was present in Jesus, then we must also affirm that God has entered into Earth, and not simply into humanity.

    Some of our most creative theologians in the past few decades have encouraged us to think of Earth as the Body of God.

    We easily speak of the God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’.

    As Earthlings all of us, we can also affirm that in Earth we encounter a continuing (eternal) expression of Emmanuel, God with us; indeed, God as one of us.

    God as Earthling.

     

    Let me reiterate that these are thoughts to explore, not doctrines to embrace.

    On this Earth Sunday, I invite you to rethink the place of Earth in our faith, and also the significance of our Easter faith for Earth.

    If you are willing and able to do that, I dare say that your view of God will be transformed, as will your view of Earth—and of your own self.

    I finish with these evocative words from Saint Paul:

    For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.—Romans 8:19–23

  • Better than silver or gold

    Christ Church Cathedral Grafton
    Third Sunday of Easter
    15 April 2018

    [video]

    During these great fifty days after Easter the first reading in Church most Sundays comes from the Book of Acts rather than the Old Testament.

    Normally we take time to check in with the wisdom of our spiritual ancestors (and indeed our spiritual cousins still) in the Jewish faith, but during Easter we are invited to listen to episodes from the account of the early church that we find in the Acts of the Apostles.

    We can talk more about Acts some day in one of the Dean’s Forum sessions, but it is a fascinating book and the only one of its kind in the New Testament. It does not offer us stories about Jesus, but stories about his first followers in Jerusalem, then stories about other early leaders, and especially stories about St Paul.

    One of my favourite stories from Acts is the passage just heard read this morning. Let’s start by unpacking it a little bit.

    Peter and John at the Temple

    Peter and John were from a couple of guys from two small villages on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 100km north of Jerusalem.

    We do not know how many times they had ever been to Jerusalem, but they have been here for a couple of week according the the Gospels and Acts.

    Every time these two fishermen from Bethsaida and Capernaum walk into the temple they were supposed to be in awe of the scale and beauty of the place. It was many many times bigger than this Cathedral.

    So imagine them in this story, entering into the vast Temple plaza via the highly decorated Beautiful Gate (aka Golden Gate).

    Just like the holy places in Palestine today, there were beggars lying around the entrance hoping for a gift to help them meet their living expenses.

    One of the beggars catches Peter’s eye, and Peter (that’s a nickname meaning, Rocky), says to him: “Hey, look over here!”

    The beggar does not need a second invitation. He is hoping for a nice big bag of coins. But then Rocky says, “I have no silver or gold , but I do have something for you!”

    In the story, Rocky (Peter) heals the lame man who then goes into the temple with them: “walking, and leaping and praising God.”

     

    Look at us … what are you seeking?

    I want to hit the pause button on the story, and use that line from Peter as the anchor for our reflections today.

    What are we looking for when we come to church?

    What are we looking for when we bring a baby for Baptism?

    What is Willy looking for when he pesters his parents to get Baptised?

    Despite the fact that some churches promise it, we are not offering prosperity, happy marriages, or good health. I wish were able to do that. Imagine how we would pack them in every Sunday! Imagine how much happier our community would be.

    Sometimes our prayers are answered in the way we want, and the simple fact that I am here—alive and in such good health—may be a sign of that. So, sincerely on my part, thank you for all those prayers and all that love that has washed around me these past six months.

    But other times those prayers are not answered. The money problems persist. The family breaks up. The disease gets worse and the person dies.

    So I need to say, along with Peter and John, we are not promising you silver and good. We are not even promising you an easy life, good health or a happy family.

    So what is it that we offer?

    Have we got something as good as silver and gold, or maybe even better than silver and gold?

    I think we have, and that is why we are baptising Sienna and Willy this morning.

     

    So what can be better than silver and gold?

    Let me try a 3 minute promo for the Good News that Jesus brought, and the Good News that involves Jesus.

    Hey, Willy, why not come down here and help men with the next bit?

    OK Willy, here is why I am going to be baptising you here in this Cathedral in a few minutes time. Are you ready? No need to take notes because it is the job of your mum and dad and your godparents to remember all this and help it come true for you. No pressure, folks.

    I am going to give you three words (that’s not too hard, eh?) and a sentence or two to go with each of them:

     

    FAITH

    We have learned about about God from our own lives, from the Bible, and from thousands of years of lived experience by people of faith. We want to share that stuff with you, because knowing it helps you make sense of life. We want to share our faith with you, so you can make it your own as you get older and keep on learning about God.

     

    HOPE

    Sometimes the world can be a scary and sad place. But our faith gives us hope. Not a pretend happy face even when bad stuff is happening, but a deep confidence (hope) that even when the bad stuff is happening it is OK because God will make it all work out just fine. When we stop and think about it, that is one of the ways to think about Easter. Things looked bad for Jesus on Good Friday and really no better the next day, but by Easter Day God had turned everything around: for Jesus and for us.

     

    LOVE

    The last of our special three words is love. I am not talking about how you feel about someone else, but how you treat them. When we have faith and hope, then we can be there for others and create the kind of world God wants this place to be. We cannot do that without faith and hope, but with God we can help make the world a better place.

     

    So that, young man, is why I am going to baptise you now. And each time you come to visit us here in Grafton you can have a quick word with me to ket me know how that project is going.

    Sometimes it will be easy to have faith and sometimes it will be hard. Sometimes it will be easy to be hopeful, and other times everything will feel hopeless. Sometimes it will be easy to care about others and to care about the world. and sometimes … well, sometimes we all need the encouragement of other people’s faith and other people’s hope to keep us on the track.

    And that is why we come to church.

    Not for the silver and gold, but to find other people who can help us have faith, hope and love so we can all help each other make the world. a better place. People like that are better than silver or gold, and you find them in church.

    So, if you are ready for the adventure to begin, let’s go and get the water ready …

     

     

     

     

  • Witnesses to transformation

    Easter Day
    Christ Church Cathedral
    1 April 2018

    [video]

    Our second reading for this liturgy is from Paul’s first letter to the troublesome Christian community at Corinth.

    They were a tough parish for Paul to serve as their pastor, but we can be grateful for that since their issues repeatedly drove to Paul to put in writing information that he had previously told them orally, but which otherwise we may never have known about.

    That is certainly the case with the list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 1 to 11.

    Paul is probably writing this letter in the year 53/54 CE.

    That makes this letter one of the earliest Christian documents to survive, and it is within 25 years of Easter. I hope that little fact gives you goose bumps.

    The information Paul is repeating in the letter was previously given to the Corinthians, according to Paul, as part of his oral instruction when they were first converted. This was material from their Baptism preparation program!

    Since Paul explicitly says that he passed on to them what others had passed on to him, we can assume that this list of Easter appearances goes back even earlier: most likely to the vibrant Christian community in the strategic city of Antioch, where Paul had strong pastoral connections.

    We cannot be sure of the dates, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that Paul learned this information at Antioch about 10 years before his letter to the Corinthians.

    So now we can date the list to 15 years after Easter, and probably a few years earlier.

    That makes this list one of the oldest Christian documents that we have. More goose bumps!

    This list mattered to the first generation of Christians because only those on the list were considered to have authority as leaders.

    That, by the way, is Paul’s problem: he was not on the list!

    Notice how he deals with that awkward problem.

    Paul does not argue about the list. He repeats it, exactly as he had received it from the tradition before him, and then he adds his own name like a kind of postscript:

    Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe. (1 Cor 15:8–11 NRSV)

    The list of appearances

    he appeared to Cephas,
    then to the twelve.
    Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time,
    most of whom are still alive, though some have died.
    Then he appeared to James,
    then to all the apostles.

    Most of the appearances in that list are not known to us, while it seems that most of the appearances in the Gospels are not included in the list that Paul inherited from Antioch.

    When we put the two sets of traditions together, three names stand out:

    Peter
    Mary Magdalene
    Paul

    Let’s take each of them in turn, even if very briefly.

     

    Peter

    This one is very easy, since we have no description of the appearance to Peter by the risen Jesus. It is mentioned in Luke 24, but not described. We have no idea what it involved, although there is a later tradition of Jesus speaking with Peter by the Sea of Galilee and restoring him to his leadership role after his triple denial of Jesus.

     

    Mary Magdalene

    All of the Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was present at the crucifixion and was one of the women who went to the tomb early on the Sunday morning to anoint Jesus for burial. In fact, Mary is the only women mentioned in all 4 Gospels, and she is always listed first.

    The Gospel of John preserved a beautiful story of an encounter between Mary Magdalene and the risen but unrecognised Jesus in the garden close by his tomb. According to the Gospels, Mary is the first person to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection.

    She is sometimes called the ‘apostle to the apostles’ because of her role as the first witness to the resurrection.

    But the list that Paul got from Antioch fails to mention Mary Magdalene.

    She has been cut from the list by the male gatekeepers. And this within the first 10-15 years! How quickly we abandoned the way of Jesus.

    Happily, we can now restore her to her proper place as the first witness to the resurrection.

     

    Paul

    With Paul we are on firmer ground, but his encounter with the risen Lord was not in Jerusalem and had nothing to do with an empty tomb.

    In an even earlier letter than 1 Corinthians, Paul describes very briefly his encounter with the risen Jesus:

    For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. … But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. (Galatians 1:11–12, 15–17 NRSV)

    Paul refers to—but does not describe—a moment when God revealed the reality of the risen Christ to him, and he claims that as being the same kind of experience as the apostles, and this something that gave him the same authority as them.

     

    The Easter transformation

    If these are the earliest witnesses to the resurrection, what is it that they proclaim?

    Here we really are reliant on Mary Magdalene and Paul, since we have no description of the appearance that Jesus is said to have made to Peter: nor to “the twelve”, nor to the “more than 500”, nor to James the brother of Jesus, nor to “all the apostles”.

    As an aside, let me just observe that if I were seeking to create a fake story about the resurrection I would be sure to have a better set of eyewitnesses. The fact that our chain of witnesses is so flimsy may actually be something that counts in favour of the historicity of this tradition.

    Despite the gaps and inconsistences in their stories our witnesses agree on a simple, yet amazing discovery: Jesus is alive.

    Neither Mary Magdalene or Paul of Tarsus expected to discover that.

    Mary had come to the tomb of Jesus to finish the burial preparations for her beloved prophet. She is so immersed in her grief, and so disinclined to discover a living Jesus, that she does not even recognise him when she encounters him in the garden.

    Paul, on the other hand, knows all about the rumours of Jesus having been raised to life and is determined to stamp out this nonsense, and arrest anyone who believes it. By his own account in 1 Corinthians 15 and Galatians 1, Paul was trying to eradicate this nonsense from the face of the earth.

    Even now, some  2,000 years later, we are still coming to terms with the implications of the amazing truth they each discovered, and which lies at the heart of our Easter celebrations.

    That is our essential work as people of faith: making sense of Easter, and working it out in our own everyday lives.

    Death was not the end of Jesus.

    God raised Jesus up and took him deep into God’s own life.

    And that same transformation is available to us, right now, even before we die.

    I cannot prove that to anyone, but this is what we celebrate today, and that is the message of the church across the millennia—and here in Grafton right now.

    Christ is risen. Alleluia!
    He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

  • Rethinking the cross of Jesus

    Good Friday
    Christ Church Cathedral
    30 March 2018

    [video | Letter to my critics | Making meaning out of the cross]

    This morning I want to speak briefly about the death of Jesus, about the cross.

    It is a most familiar topic, as our churches are littered with crosses. From the roof top to the decorations carved into our woodwork, we have crosses everywhere. We wear them around our neck, put them on the wall above our bed, and we make the sign of a cross at sacred moments.

    The cross is everywhere.

    But most of what people will be told about the cross today in churches around the world and across our Diocese and around this city is nonsense at best, and truly bad theology at worst.

    So today I want to talk briefly concerning three really bad ideas that people have about the crucifixion, and I want to suggest one really good way to understand what the cross was all about.

     

    As the ideas were taking shape in my mind, I went back to read again what I said on Good Friday at Byron Bay last April. I did that for a few different reasons.

    First of all, because it helps me to clarify my thoughts now if I review what I have said about the same topic at an earlier time.

    I also wanted to make sure that I was not just going to repeat unwittingly material from last year.

    And I needed to check if I had anything new to say today. And I think I do!

    Generally speaking I do not like to read what I said in a sermon a year or more ago. I rarely agree with myself!

    As I have reflected on that I realise that this may because I am no longer the same person who gave that sermon. At the time it may have been the right thing for the person I was then to say in that context. But time has passed. Other stuff has happened in my life and yours since this time last year. I am a different person, and I am speaking to a different community of faith. Even if I was still in Byron Bay, we would all have moved on—I hope—in the meantime, and each of us will be at least a little bit different than we were twelve months ago.

    It makes me wonder what we shall all be like in twelve months’ time from now!

    What will God have been doing in and through us during the year ahead, and how shall we have changed —individually and collectively — in that time?

    So back to the task before us here this morning …

     

    Bad Idea #1

    Crucifixion was a violent and cruel way to kill someone.

    The story of the cross is a story of extreme violence.

    Worse still, it is a story of sacred violence and it reinforces all those times when we have experienced or observed violence and hatred being inflicted on others in the name of religion.

    This is a dark thread that runs through the Bible and through the wider spiritual tradition of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

    Instead of our faith giving us the wisdom and courage to address religious violence, sacred violence has repeatedly been excused, validated and justified by religion.

    Some parts of the Bible are frankly unable to be used in public worship or in a religious education curriculum at our local Anglican school because of the violence and hatred that those texts celebrate and reinforce.

    We may make this issue a topic for as Dean’s Forum in the next few months, as it is a very nasty element of our faith which we rarely address and which we rarely admit.

    It is therefore very important—despite all the sermons and all the Sunday School lessons you may have heard to the contrary—that we reject any notion that God wanted Jesus to die as a human sacrifice.

    The cross is not about divine wrath or sacred violence.

    It was violent, but God was the victim of the violence and not the perpetrator.

    How could we ever have gotten that so wrong?

    This is a really bad idea, and I hope you never again allow a priest or any other person tell you that God approves of violence for the sake of dealing with evil or sin.

    That is simply not true.

    Worse still, it is a tragic betrayal of the true nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

     

    Bad Idea #2

    The second bad idea that you will find lots of Christian people spruiking, and especially their pastors, is that the suffering of Jesus was so deep that it is without parallel in human history.

    This is a variant of the God likes violence theme, but sounds more like: God can be moved to action if the suffering is especially intense.

    Fortunately this second bad idea can be disposed of very easily.

    The simple fact is that the suffering experienced by Jesus was neither remarkable nor unique.

    Many people have suffered as badly as Jesus did, including the several thousand Jewish rebels crucified by Roman forces during the siege of Jerusalem about 40 years after Easter.

    Countless human beings have experienced torture and cruel deaths with levels of suffering much worse than Jesus would have experienced.

    Christian women living with violent husbands who abuse their spouses and claim it is their prerogative as the spiritual head of the woman are probably suffering worse than Jesus did, because their suffering goes on week after week with no sign of ending.

    Assylum seekers consigned to cruel and inhumane conditions by our own Government are probably suffering more than Jesus ever did.

    I could go on, but all such calculations miss the point.

    It is not how much Jesus suffered that matters, but who he was and how he acted. More on that shortly when we get to a good idea for thinking about the cross.

     

    Bad idea #3

    The last of these really bad ideas about the Cross that I want to mention is one that is especially popular among people planning—or attending—Good Friday services.

    This is the idea that my sins—or yours, or both yours and mine together—are what caused Jesus to die.

    This is an idea that is especially common in Christian hymns.

    It is nonsense.

    We know what caused Jesus to be crucified, and it was not your sins or my sins, or the sins of anyone else we know.

    All such twisted theology does is generate guilt. It makes us feel bad, and encourages us to be compliant participants in a church forgiveness racket. It is misdirected.

    Jesus was killed because the powerful elites of his day wanted to eliminate him since he was a serious threat to their power and their privilege.

    And they were right.

    They were not right to kill Jesus, but they were right to discern that if his way of thinking about God took hold in the minds of the people over whom they ruled, the people they exploited, then their own days were numbered.

    This is not about my sins or your sins.

    It is about a clash between Jesus the prophet of the empire of God, and the elites in Jerusalem who prospered under the empire of Caesar and could not tolerate someone like Jesus.

    They knew that when he said, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God”, Jesus was not describing an even split of our loyalties. Rather, Jesus was inviting people to give Caesar what he deserves (nothing) and to give God what God deserves (our all).

    People who talk like that, who act like that, and who encourage other people to think like that will always be taken out by the powers that be.

     

    A better idea

    As I have already hinted, what matters about the crucifixion is not that it was a violent death or that Jesus himself suffered great distress, shame and pain. For sure it was violent, and involved suffering of many different kinds for Jesus.

    But that is not why his death matters to God or to us.

    Nor did his death have anything to do with us or our sins. It was all about the power games of the rich and powerful in first-century Jerusalem.

    Instead of thinking about what happened to Jesus, how bad it was, and who is to blame; we can approach this from another direction.

    We can focus on Jesus himself.

    The redemptive element of the crucifixion is the faithfulness of Jesus himself, who never let go of his vision of God as the only power deserving of his loyalty.

    Jesus was a martyr, not a sacrifice.

    Paul teases this out in the early chapters of Romans when he compares the faithfulness of Abraham—who trusted God even when asked (in the story if not in real life) to sacrifice his only son—with the faithfulness of Jesus, who was willing to put his own life on the line because of his deep trust in God.

    This is what the early church meant when it spoke of being saved by the faith of Jesus: not that we have faith in Jesus, but that Jesus was faithful to God, even to the point of death.

    The faithfulness Jesus by which lived and died is the basis for our reconciliation with God.

    Our sins did not cause the death of Jesus, but his faithfulness to God eliminates the impact of our sins on our own relationship with God.

    Again this is something we may want to tease out in a Dean’s Forum some day. It is too big an idea to unpack in a single sermon on Good Friday, but it is essentially a simple idea:

    What matters about the cross is that Jesus trusted God.

    What matters about the cross is that Jesus was faithful to God.

    What matters about the cross is that God honoured the faith of Jesus, and God did not allow violent political forces to stamp out his life even though they had killed him.

    More on that when we get to Easter Day!

     

    What we celebrate today, and in every Eucharist, is the offer of life, eternal life:

    Our liturgy today is not excusing violence, or valorising suffering.

    Our liturgy today is not asking us to accept the blame for Jesus having to die.

    Our liturgy today is celebrating the faithfulness of Jesus, even to death, death on a cross.

    Our liturgy today is inviting us to embrace that same faithfulness to God.

    Our liturgy today is offering us the grace we need to be faithful people, just like Jesus.

  • When words fail …

    Christ Church Cathedral Grafton
    Lent 5 (B)
    18 March 2018

    [video]

    This week the Sunday lectionary offers us three serves of text, each of which centres around a particular—but different—metaphor.

    At first glance I wondered what exactly I would do with those texts for the sermon this morning, but on reflection I want to suggest that the readings invite us to embrace metaphor as the most valid way of speaking about God and faith.

    All of our speaking about God is necessarily poetic and metaphorical. After all, human language developed for communication between persons about events, places, relationships and feelings in our world and in our lives.

    When we attempt to speak about God using human language it is as if we are pushing our human language up to the red line, and even beyond the red line. We should not be surprised if words fail us when we seek to speak about realities which are beyond everyday human experience.

    So let’s get into the metaphors!

     

    Melchizedek

    My first reaction during the week, when I saw that Hebrews 5 was providing our second reading this morning, was to comment to Roger about the occurrence of the word Melchizedek in that passage.

    It is an odd word to our ears, and for many people to our tongues, but to Jewish ears it is not such a strange word at all.

    This ancient Hebrew word is built from two other words: the word for king (melek) and the word for righteousness (zedek). When put together these two terms create a name which simply means king of righteousness.

    Until a few decades ago we had no idea why this mysterious character with the odd name was so significant the author of Hebrews. But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls we now know that Melchizedek was one of two symbolic characters with great significance in those ancient scrolls.

    The opposite character to Melchizedek was an evil and dark character with the delightful name Melchiresha, which means king of evil. So Melchizedek and Melchiresha were to Jews in the time of Jesus, what Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are to fans of the Star Wars series today.

    These two poetic and symbolic characters reflect the deep underlying tensions in human experience: we know ourselves to be called to the light, but we find ourselves drawn to the darkness.

    This is metaphor.
    Powerful truth.
    Wrapped up in poetry and symbol.

     

    New heart, new covenant

    Our first reading from the book of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah has its origins in the years just after 600 BCE. Jerusalem was surrounded by the armies of Babylon who were about to capture and destroy the city. That much was politics and history, and archeologists have even picked up the arrowheads on the grounds outside the ancient city walls to verify the reality of those hard times.

    But Jeremiah seeks a deeper truth for people in dark times, and he imagines a new covenant, a new relationship between God and the people of Jerusalem. He imagines a new covenant written not on blocks of stone, but etched on the human heart.

    This is a powerful invitation for us as we prepare the rituals of Holy Week and Easter, to remember what matters most is what is happening in our hearts and not the ceremonies the rituals we may be performing.

    This is metaphor.
    Powerful truth.
    Wrapped up in poetry and symbol.

     

    A grain of wheat

    The gospel of John offers us a third poetic image, and this is one of my personal favourites: the grain of wheat which falls into the earth and seems to have died, but in fact gives rise to an abundance of new life.

    This metaphor penetrates deeply into the mystery of life and faith and it is especially relevant in these final two weeks of Lent.

    This is the wisdom by which Jesus lived.

    This is the wisdom we are invited to embrace.

    This is the wisdom into which we will baptise Lachlan later this morning.

    This is the spiritual wisdom our city and our nation needs to hear.

    This is the wisdom of life that we need to share with our children and grandchildren.

    This is metaphor.
    Powerful truth.
    Wrapped up in poetry and symbol.

     

    Metaphors abound

    Life is full of metaphor—and so is the church and especially our rituals.

    The life of faith is a life informed by the wisdom we discern in metaphor, poetry and symbol.

    We miss the point – and we totally miss the deep spiritual wisdom available to us — if we argue about the historicity of the metaphor. This is an essential lesson as we approach Easter.

    Instead, today and during these next two weeks as we turn towards the cross, we are invited to embrace the deep wisdom that is available to us if only we will open our hearts to poetic truth in metaphor and symbol.

     

  • The cleansing of the church

    Lent 3 (B)
    Christ Church Cathedral Grafton
    4 March 2018
    [video]

    The lectionary today switches us across to a series of readings from the Gospel of John. For the next three Sundays our gospel readings will come from John even though we are in the year of Mark.

    The Gospel of John offers us a different take on Jesus.

    John sees Jesus very differently from the three synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

    One of the differences concerns the identity of Jesus’ opponents.

    In the synoptic gospels the opponents are various political and religious groups within Second Temple Judaism: Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes. But in the Gospel of John the opponents of Jesus are routinely described as “the Jews”.

    We see that very easily in today’s gospel message, which begins with the statement that “the Passover of the Jews” was happening followed by repeated references to the Jews as the opponents of Jesus.

    Quite apart from this explicit labelling of the opponents of Jesus as being the Jews, a story such as this week’s text represents Jesus in profound conflict with the Temple hierarchy, and thus in conflict with the central institution of Jewish life at the time.

    This is exacerbated by the way the story is moved from later in the life of Jesus and placed by John directly after the miracle of the water being turned into wine at Kfar Kana, Cana.

    It is of the very essence of that story—as told by the gospel of John—that the ‘water’ of the Jewish religion is being replaced by the ‘wine’ the Jesus religion.

    This is a clear and unambiguous anti-Semitic statement.

     

    Anti-Semitism

    Anti-Semitism is one of the worst stains on the conscience of Christianity. It ranks right up there with child abuse and cover-up, but is even worse; hard though it is these days to imagine anything worse child abuse and cover-up.

    Anti-Semitism has been a feature of Christian life from the time that Christians first gained political power after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. However, its roots run much deeper into the text of the New Testament itself as we can clearly see in the Gospel of John.

    In case we missed his point, John moves the episode of Jesus creating a scene in the temple from the end of the story back to the beginning of his account of Jesus’ public activity.

    For the author of John’s gospel, this scene sets the tone for the ministry of Jesus. For John, that tone is deeply anti-Semitic.

    It would have been comfortable for me this morning to focus on the first reading from the book of Exodus or even second reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, but it is impossible to remain silent when such an anti-Semitic text read out loud in the Cathedral.

    Silence suggests consent.

    Worse still, silence allows hateful attitudes towards Jews to become embedded in our spiritual DNA as Christians.

    This animus is even found in First Corinthians 1, although it is not quite as virulent as we see in John’s gospel. Paul is writing to the Corinthians and “the Jews” are listed as one of the groups of opponents of the gospel who persist in asking wrong questions because they do not wish to believe.

    Although Paul — like all the early Christian leaders — was Jewish, his letter betrays a profound level of antagonism between his mission and the religious leadership of Jewish society.

     

    The Decalogue

    Such a nasty turn in the rhetoric between the followers of Jesus and the adherents of Moses is all the more remarkable today when our first reading is from the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.

    These ancient laws are Jewish laws.

    They summarise our fundamental duties in human life:

    duties to God
    duties to parents/family
    duties to other people

     These laws derive from the heart of the foundational Jewish story: the account of the exodus as God rescues the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. This is not a marginal Jewish tradition, but something which is very close to the very heart of Jewish identity.

     

    Wisdom for faithful living

    This insidious poison of Christian anti-Semitism which we find in the new Testament and throughout church history, must be opposed and denounced at every turn.

    This is also true of its modern twin Islamophobia.

    Fear of the other has no place in the Christian faith.

    Hatred towards those who are different has no place in the Christian faith.

    Arrogance which assumes we are better than others has no place in the Christian faith.

    So where is the heart of the gospel in all this and what are we to make of the memory of that scene in the Temple all these years ago?

    It seems best to understand the incident in the Temple as a symbolic prophetic act by Jesus.

    He was not seeking to storm the Temple or to make it the base for a revolt. That would happen around 40 years later, but had nothing to do with Jesus.

    Rather, acting in typical Jewish fashion—and in perfect consistency with the examples of the Jewish prophets in the Scriptures that we still share with Judaism—Jesus was making a vivid prophetic denunciation of the way that the Temple was serving the interests of the rich and powerful.

    This is not an anti-Semitic act.

    Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and so was this act.

    He was calling the Temple hierarchy to account for their failure to live by the covenant for which the Ten Commandments constitute a summary of basic principles.

    We should recall that Jesus himself summarised the law in a similar way to other Jewish teachers in his own time: love God, and love your neighbour.

    This is the heart of the covenant with God: for Jews, and Christians, and Muslims.

    On this spiritual wisdom we all agree.

    As Jesus saw it, the corruption at the Temple was failing to honour God and was also exploiting the poor.

    No love of God here, and no compassion for other people.

    By the time the Gospel of John is composed, a bitter divide has happened between followers of Jesus and their Torah-observant Jewish peers.

    The vitriol was extreme, as we see consistently through the Gospel of John.

    John and his first readers had no extremist agenda to attack Jews. But his language would feed later generations of anti-Semitic thinking and actions within the Church at times when Christians had both the capacity and the desire to harm Jews.

    For this we hang our heads in shame.

    What must we give up this Lent?

    Anti-Semitism for sure!

    So we stand alongside Jesus, the Jewish prophet from Galilee as we call on our religious institutions to walk the talk, to serve always the mission of God in the world (rather than their own self-preservation), and to protect the vulnerable and the weak.

    In this Cathedral there can be no anti-Semitism. Ever.

    Passionate as I am about Palestinian rights to justice and self-determination, there is no excuse for anti-Semitism as we stand in solidarity with people who have lost land, family, homes and hope.

    Similarly, there is no place for Islamophobia here.

    This Cathedral—like the Temple in Jerusalem—is a house of prayer for all God’s children, and we welcome our Jewish and Muslim friends to find here a place of pilgrimage and prayer.

    If you love God, you are welcome here.

    If you love your neighbour, you are welcome here.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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