Tag: Casino

This sermon is the final in the ON THE WAY series at Casino Anglican Church, July/October 2022

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In the Old Testament, Moses led the tribes of Israel through a period of transition that lasted 40 years. During that time a community was fashioned and a covenant with God was formed.

In the Gospel of Luke, as we have seen, Jesus had an extended journey south from Galilee to Jerusalem. Another community was being fashioned: the community of disciples. They were many more people than the twelve we typically consider when we say those words.

As they crossed into the promised land, the people discovered that Moses had been used by God to prepare them for what lay ahead as they lived into the terms of their covenant—their relationship with God—in the place where their they were now going to live.

After Easter, as the growing company of disciples, the first Jesus people, reflected on their slow walk south with Jesus, they discovered that he had been shaping them as agents of the kingdom of God, so they could transform the world in which they lived.

On Thursday night we cross an invisible line between the past and the future.

You will continue to live into the terms of your covenant with God right here in Casino, and as Jesus people you will continue the task of transforming the households, the streets, and the town where you live.

It has been my privilege to share something of the work of both Moses and Jesus here in this church for the past thirteen weeks.

There were no walking sticks turned into snakes, and no wine turned into water. But there has been some good work done. By us all.

Three months (90 days) is a brief time and far too short for sustained change, but some changes have been made. I hope they can be sustained.

There is a different atmosphere around the parish and—perhaps even more importantly—in the wider community there is also a different narrative about the parish.

I would urge you to remain generous, hopeful, courageous and open-minded. 

Our generosity derives from a confidence that there are good things to be done and that we are not just keeping the lights on until the last of our regular members dies. There are churches with that sense of their (non-existent) future, including some right here in Casino; but that is not our situation. 

I hope that our 13 weeks of walking towards Jerusalem with Jesus has given us all some fresh insights into how we can be Jesus-people here in Casino. 

We are never going to rebuild the Anglican Church of the 1950s, but then we do not live in the 1950s ourselves! We are called into the task of building God’s kingdom in the 2020s—and beyond. That is where we live and that is the future we need to shape with the faith that has shaped us.

There is good work to be done, and we have some sense of where to begin.

As we move further ahead under Sally’s leadership, we shall discern what comes next and God will supply the resources we need to do whatever it is that God wants to achieve.

For sure that involves and requires a church community that is generous, compassionate, future-oriented and gentle with one another. 

The gossip has reduced, but now it needs to cease. Completely. For ever.

The goodwill has increased, and now it needs to be embedded in our collective DNA. 

When there are differences over things that actually matter—as there must be from time to time if we are doing work that actually matters to us—then we can handle those disagreements with grace and mutual care. 

Looking after each other in the process is more important than winning a vote or getting our way.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that people will know we are his followers by the love that we have for each other:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:34–35

People in Casino have been watching with dismay as this parish has torn itself apart, and they have been watching with delight as we have begun to work more happily together these past three months. 

They are continuing to watch. 

The downtown Ministry Centre in Walker Street gives them some hope that we are changing. What they see, and whether we offer them a safe place to find spiritual wisdom for their everyday lives, depends very much on how we treat each other in the next 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and more.

They want us to succeed and I think they need us to do so.

This town—like every community in Australia—needs compassionate, courageous, engaged and safe Christian faith communities where the spirit of Jesus is expressed in the way that we do the “Jesus thing” amongst them.

They may never feel drawn to become a follower of Jesus themselves, but their lives will be better if we are authentic Jesus people.

We are not collecting souls, but transforming communities in the name of Jesus.

We have some wonderful allies in that task, with our friends at St Mary’s Church and in the local Uniting Church. Together, here in Casino where all three churches already work so well together, we can offer a place at the table of Jesus and transform our town.

I especially urge you to embrace to ecumenical challenge expressed so clearly by my colleague and friend, Michael Putney, the late Catholic Bishop of Townsville, who put these words into practice:

We shall only do separately what we cannot in conscience do together.

Bishop Michael Putney

As a parish and as a community of churches here in Casino, imagine how this community could be transformed if we did the hard work to make those words come true!

IMAGE: Rich man and Lazarus. Illustration from the eleventh-century Codex Aureus Epternacensis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_man_and_Lazarus

This post is part of the ON THE WAY sermon series at St Mark’s Anglican Church, Casino: July/October 2022

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Last week we heard that the manager facing dismissal felt that he was too weak to dig and too proud to beg.

As we unpacked that story and tried to read it through first-century eyes, we noted the entrenched wealth discrepancy between the top 15% of the population and the other 85%, including those reduced to begging or forced labour.

In today’s Gospel we zero in on that wealth gap.

However, before we can really hear what Jesus was trying to say, we need to set aside some common misconceptions.

Most importantly, this parable is not a lesson about the afterlife.

It teaches us nothing about the structure of the afterlife, but only about how some Jewish people in the time of Jesus imagined it to be. This is rather like a modern preacher using the metaphor of the “pearly gates” or “streets paved with gold.”

On the contrary, it is very much a parable about obscene wealth and abject poverty.

Our final hymn today [Together in Song, 473] has been selected as a call for us all to take this aspect of the Gospel seriously. I will just cite verse 2 at this stage, but the whole hymn (video) is worth reading several times this week:

Community of Christ,
look past the Church’s door
and see the refugee, the hungry,
and the poor.
Take hands with the oppressed,
the jobless in your street,
take towel and water, that you wash
your neighbour’s feet.

[Shirley Erena Murray, 1931–2020]

In this Gospel story—and in this song—we find the spiritual wisdom that underlies our St Mark’s Downtown project.

We meet Christ in the people who enter the OpShop, and they meet Christ in us.

As we discern what the Spirit of Jesus might be saying to the church through this passage this morning, I want to focus on two often overlooked parts of the Gospel: the dogs, and Abraham.

That may sound like an odd selection, but stay with me. 

They are linked. 

At least in my little brain!

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The dogs

And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. [Luke 16:20–21]

The dogs are the only creatures that display any compassion towards Lazarus.

Like our own dogs, they tended his wounds and tried their best to heal his sores. In the end, their efforts failed and the man died. But at least the dogs cared.

Again, we need to go back in time to hear this element of the story with first-century ears.

For this I am indebted to a colleague and friend, Kenneth Bailey, who immersed himself in Middle Eastern culture over several decades and has helped so many of us to see the Gospel through peasant eyes.

In the Middle East, dogs are not household pets or personal companions. We will miss the significance of the dogs, if we think of them as being like our “fur babies.”

The dogs were strays and scavengers.

The dogs were even more outcasts than the beggar.

But the dogs reflect more of God’s compassion than any human being in this parable.

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Father Abraham

He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus … (v 24)

He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house … (v 27)

He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ (v 30)

This heartless rich man turns out to have some religion (not that it ever made him compassionate) and it seems that he even knows the name of the beggar who had died outside his mansion after years of seeking some assistance without any success.

At least in the story, and it is only a story.

How quickly we forget that!

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Father Abraham, … send Lazarus …

Abraham is a hugely significant character in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Indeed all three faith communities are sometimes described as the Abrahamic tradition.

Compassion is a core virtue in all three religions.

Compassion is seen as a central attribute of God’s own self.

Compassion is the ultimate test of our faith.

Not creeds

Not our alms (financial contributions)

Not even our prayers.

None of those good things count for anything if we are not first and last compassionate people.

Compassion is assumed to be in the heart of Abraham by the rich man’s questions.

He appeals to Abraham’s compassion.

If not for himself, then at least for his family who have not yet died.

Even the rich man discovers a vein of compassion, at the end of the story.

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As children of Abraham our hallmark is compassion.

As followers of Jesus, compassion is our core virtue.

As we pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, compassion is the pathway we walk.

Along with the dogs.

IMAGE: Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1490–1546. Parable of the Unjust Steward. Wikimedia Commons.

This post is part of the ON THE WAY sermon series at St Mark’s Anglican Church, Casino July/October 2022

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Gospel: Luke 16:1–9

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and [false/hostile] charges* were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 

Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 

So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 

And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. 

[Vss 10–13: Later commentary and additions by the tradition:

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”]

* διαβάλλω 1 aor. pass. διεβλήθην; pf. pass. 3 sg. διαβέβληται (Just., D. 10, 1) (s. βάλλω, διάβολος; trag., Hdt. et al.; pap, LXX, Joseph.) to make a complaint about a pers. to a third party, bring charges, inform either justly or falsely. [BDG]

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Another week. 
Another Sunday.

Another excerpt from the Good News according to Luke.
Another slap in the face for respectable religion.

What exactly are we supposed to do with a Gospel like that?
How is it good news?
Who would ever employ a Christian bookkeeper or sales manager, if this is how they operate?

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It is rare that a lectionary passage sends me to my books, but this one did.

Fortunately, I remembered that a colleague and friend (Brandon Scott) had written a brief commentary on this parable in his delightful little book: Re-Imagine the World: An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus.

At the start of his brief commentary, Brandon raises two really fundamental points for us to keep in mind:

1. The master in this story is not a metaphor for God. (Indeed, God is never mentioned in this story as Jesus first told it.)
2. The economic system presumed by the parable is not capitalism.

Those are both very important insights.

First of all, like many other parables told by Jesus, this is not a religious story. It is simply a story that draws its material from the way that stuff happens in everyday life. Systems are crooked. People are corrupt. Bad stuff happens. Life goes on. God is in there. Somewhere. So are we.

Secondly, this was an ancient agrarian society where traditional patterns of land ownership were being displaced by large-scale commercial farms owned by wealthy absentee landlords (what an interesting word that is). In that system, the rich got richer and the regular folk were squeezed. (To use a polite term.)

This is the world of the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts …

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In that world, things look like this, according to an influential piece of social modelling by Gerhard Lenski:

ELITE 15%

Ruler
Governing class (3%)
Retainers (5%)
Merchants (5%)
Priests (2%–but 15% of the land)

MAJORITY 85%

Peasants (65%)
Artisans (5%)
Unclean (5%)
Expendables (10%)

The only movement is downwards. No-one ever goes up in this system.

As Brandon Scott observed, “to dig” was to work in the mines – and be dead within the year. While to beg, was a fate worse than death.

So all that may help us get inside the story with first-century eyes.

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But then what do we see?

Everyone in this story is from the elite.
They are all wealthy, educated, literate and have some agency.

Someone has given the master a bad report about the manager.
The master decides to commission an audit.

A performance review!
But what are the KPIs?

The manager sets about his plan.
He is quite clever. In the circumstances.
He gives all the major customers a HUGE discount on their bills.

He had the discretion to do this.
None of the customers questioned the process.

Eventually the master hears.
And he is impressed!

Not outraged, but impressed:
“This guy is a freaking good manager”

He has been making a very nice profit for the master.
He has even secured the long-term goodwill of the major clients with a massive discount.
The audit report suggests the manager is doing just fine!

The master cannot cancel the discounts without losing face—and major accounts

Perhaps (just perhaps) the manager has saved his job.

Of course, we are never told.
Such is life.

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And we are left wondering why exactly Jesus told that story to those with him on the way

Verses 9–13 give us at least 3 failed attempts to make this story respectable
None of them succeeds

Sometimes life is complicated

It is rarely black and white
Or male and female
Or right and wrong

None of us are pure
We are all implicated in past evils
And in present privilege

God is at work even in that complexity

Her ways may be invisible to us
We just have to do what we can 

We trust that as Mary’s Song proclaims

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty. [Luke 1:51–53]

This post is part of the ON THE WAY sermon series at St Mark’s Anglican Church, Casino July/October 2022

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Once again we are served a smorgasbord of classic texts in today’s lectionary:

Jeremiah visits the potter
A whole NT book (Philemon) in one go!
Jesus seeking to turn away his wannabe followers

THE SCENE

We are still on the road (the way) to Jerusalem,
to the cross, 
to the future

Large crowds were travelling with him.
Success looks like this!
As Jesus heads south he attracts additional disciples
A few from each village

More and more people are joining every week
Things are on a roll
All the spots in the OpShop roster have been filled
There is a waiting list for volunteers

Everyone wants to be part of this exciting new thing

HOW (NOT) TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE

Jesus seems not to have read the 1936 best-seller by Dale Carnegie
He is not collecting Facebook friends
Not gathering followers on Twitter

In this week’s confronting “Good News” there are 2 affronting statements
Two slaps in the face (to pick up a meme from this week in US politics)
We might summarise them together as: COUNT THE COST

COSTLY DISCIPLESHIP

Discipleship is not a diversion for people who have everything
Discipleship demands everything we have and all that we are

Let’s take those hard words in reverse order

We begin with the last of his put-downs for wannabe followers:

Question: Have you got what it takes?
Hint: everything!
Clarification: you will lose everything (that you think you possess)

“none of you can become my disciple 
if you do not give up all your possessions …”

We have heard those words so many times

But have we ever once taken them seriously?

How much are we prepared to lose for this Jesus project?

In the first of his challenges

Jesus raised the ante

His remarks are so extreme that they surely have to be metaphors

And he was a master of hyperbole

To be my disciple, you need to …
hate your parents
and your spouse
and your children
as well as your siblings
and even your own life.

Jesus calls that set of radical choices,
“carry your cross and follow me …”

There is no alternative model of discipleship
Everyone who follows Jesus walks this path

This is how Jesus did it
If we want to walk his way, then is how it goes

Radical grace
Demands radical faith
Expressed in radical discipleship

Authentic discipleship shapes lives that are different
Where “cheap grace” is rejected as a scam
Where the cross (God’s unique call on our faithfulness) is embraced

It will take different forms
Not every follower of Jesus sold their property & abandoned families

It is the task of a lifetime
Not a sudden act to impress others with our spiritual character
But rather a sustained decision to love others
In the name and in the spirit of Jesus

It may cost us everything
And it may transform others as well as ourselves

We are forming community and transforming lives