Evensong : Trinity 7

Deuteronomy 30:1-10 and 1 Peter 3:8-18

Recurring themes running through our readings today:

blessings and curses;

being scattered and gathered,

(or, turning from and turning to);

deep and mysterious matters of the heart...

and the overarching theme of Covenant, one of the great structural themes of the Bible.

What is a blessing? Anything in your life that is good, anything – be it a skill or a relationship – that by practice bears fruit. Whatever is life-giving to you, and through you life-giving to others, bears witness to your response to God’s invitation to enter into fullness of life. And when we bless others, we speak that same invitation to them: ‘Be fruitful!’ Something within them will always respond, however complicated that response might be, because it is the nature of creation to do so.

What is a curse? A curse is not the opposite of a blessing, or even the absence of a blessing, but a particular form of blessing that places temporary constraint* on fruitfulness, creating room for others. Let me illustrate it like this: if you hold out your hands in front of you – palm facing palm, like a fisherman recounting the size of his catch – to represent a blessing, and then widen them to represent further blessing, and widen them again to represent yet more blessing, by now you are hitting the person sat next to you in the face. Sometimes blessings need boundaries – boundaries that help us re-examine our blessings in the light of the blessing of, and for, others – and that is how curses function. They humble us in our pride, in order that, in due time, God might lift us up again. When we hit up against such boundaries, they are an invitation to turn back to God.**

The images of being scattered and gathered are another way of describing curses and blessings. What feels like being abandoned by God, and being reconciled with God, are both expressions of God’s fidelity towards us – and reveal the fidelity he longs for from us in return. You see, the overarching theme here is covenant fidelity.

In the Ancient Near Eastern world, tribal chieftains would make life more secure for their people by entering into covenant agreement with the heads of other tribes. They would cut animals in two, creating a corridor of blood between them, and stand at either end. Then they would pass each other, taking one another’s place, symbolically identifying themselves as the chief of the other tribe, before returning to their own place, their own tribe. And they would often mark themselves with a cut that would leave a scar, as a permanent reminder of the covenant they had made: becoming blood brothers.

From then on, if either tribe was attacked, the other would come to their aid. This is the covenant that God – as chief of the heavenly beings – and Abraham – as chief of a nomadic group of herdsmen – entered into. It was the covenant restated when the people of Israel created a door of blood, as God passed by them into Egypt to fight for them and they passed out of Egypt to Sinai to meet with God and to travel together through the wilderness and to the Land of Promise. This is the covenant restated when Jesus came into the world, smeared in blood, and gave up his life, again smeared in blood. And even though death could not hold him, Jesus bears his covenant scars on his wrists and ankles for ever.

So, where is our covenant scar? It is not on our body, but on our heart. In the symbolic language of the Bible, the heart is the seat of our will, our decision-making. And that is where God has marked us with a scar, a tender place, a permanent reminder. If you have a significant scar, you can feel it long after the sharp pain of the initial wound is a distant memory. Not all of the time, but at certain predictable times, such as when there is a change in the weather. In a similar way, at turning-points we feel our covenant scar. When we face a decision, a choice that will move us closer to Jesus or further away from Jesus, our scars are a reminder of our covenant – as his scars are to him.

So, where do you see evidence of blessing in your life? Remember to give thanks. Remember to include God in the circumstances, so that you share the fruit together: Jesus loves a celebration! Remember to include others, so they might benefit too. Remember to tell others, so they can learn what it looks like to have God as our covenant partner in an uncertain world.

And, where do you experience curse, constraint? What isn’t flourishing as you might hope? In what part of life does it feel like you keep hitting a brick wall? Here is an opportunity to ask God, as Jesus did from the cross,

‘Where, O Lord, are You to be found in this place, this circumstance?

When will you come and rescue me?

And what unseen work are You up to, in my heart, in the meantime?’

*In the symbolic language of the Bible, curses stretch for 3 generations, while blessings stretch for 1000 generations.

**Even when people malign others – when we curse others or are cursed by others, with no intention of blessing – God works to bring good out of the circumstances, ensuring that curses are a particular form of blessing even where blessing was never the intention of the one who curses. Jesus’ covenant scars exemplify this.

Trinity 6

Amos 7:7-15 and Ephesians 1:3-14 and Mark 6:14-29

This week, I have been at the Durham Diocese Clergy Summer Gathering, where our theme was children and young people. Among other things, we reflected on biblical images of children. In our readings this morning, we are referred to as God’s adopted children; but we also heard the story of a young girl who was exploited, by men for whom she was brought in as a sexualised fantasy object and by her mother who manipulated her to manipulate her step-father in order to bring about a murder. That seems very contemporary to me. The Bible never shies away from holding a mirror to ourselves, in our beauty and our brokenness. And in some of the free time around the margins of our time away, I reflected on today’s readings in the light of all we were considering.

I was struck, reading Amos, by the question, who does God speak through? It is clear that there is an expectation that God speaks through those in power – the priest, and the king – and that they mediate God’s word in such a way that their interests are protected – the king’s sanctuary, and the temple. If they were to look at the vision God showed Amos, they would have seen an impressive wall, a sign of strength. But Amos sees a plumb-line, which reveals that the wall has been built without necessary care, and has become precarious.

Amos’ voice is dismissed. He is not qualified to speak here. He does not have the right background, the right training. And yet, he replies, the Lord had spoken to him and sent him.

We need to listen to the voice of those on the margin of our worshipping community, the ‘untrained’ who speak from a different experience, from everyday life – and who may bring the word that brings us life by putting to death our self-importance. And those on the margin include our children.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul repeats the words ‘us’ and ‘our’ and ‘we’ and ‘you/your’ [plural] again and again. At the heart of the passage Paul states that ‘With all wisdom and insight he [the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ] has made known to us the mystery of his will’ which is ‘to gather up all things in him [Christ]’. But this is not made known just through the few: God speaks to us through us. We need to listen to what God is saying through one another – again, including our children.

Our Gospel reading stands as a warning, of what it looks like when those with power seek to silence the voice of one speaking from the margins – and even exploit others, vulnerable others, in order to achieve this. It is a desperate situation – and one that, ultimately, does not achieve its aim. But it is easily done when we believe that the role of the priest is to speak rather than to enable each to find a voice.

We discern what God might be saying to us – as a community and personally – as we listen to one another. So that is what we are going to do. First, take a moment to reflect: was there anything in particular that stood out for you as the lessons were being read out today?

... Now take a couple of moments to share that thing with the people sat next to you. Don’t worry if you have nothing to say: the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak through everybody on every occasion; but the Holy Spirit does speak through everybody over time, if we create the space for that to happen.

... If someone shared something, they have already acted in response to the Holy Spirit’s question ‘What do you see?’ and prompt to, ‘Go and tell’. But it may be that there is a further response that is necessary, either for them personally or for us as a community. Let me encourage you to discuss that further over coffee after the service; and if you feel that there is something that we need to hear as a community, to write it down and/or share that with myself or Fiona or Sheila. Thank you.