Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19

Eventually, one of Jesus’ disciples asks his rabbi to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-13).

So far, Jesus has mostly been performing healing miracles and exorcisms, engaging in public debate about how to live a life that pleases God (in contrast to trying to live a life that does not offend God), with a handful of nature miracles and raising the dead thrown in for good measure.

Now one of his disciples asks, teach us to pray. This disciple reminds me of the boy in the film who asks the old man to teach him karate but becomes disappointed with waxing his car and painting his fence day after day.

Jesus tells them, pray that God’s wonderful sovereignty would be more fully manifest in the world around us; that everyone would have enough to live, a fair share of the earth’s resources; that our failings would not be held against us, but removed from the record, in the same way that (and so, and also that) we cancel every debt owed to us that cannot be paid back; and that God would not put us on probation, to ‘prove ourselves’ worthy, but move to rescue us from the pain-ridden experience of life labouring under hard-hearted indifference.

It is, in essence, a form of prayer lifted straight from the ancestors living in Egypt, whose cries reached heaven and moved God to send Moses.

Jesus continues, drawing on the dynamics of relationships, emphasizing persistence in prayer, as an active pursuit: keep on asking, until you receive an answer; keep on searching, until you find an answer; keep on knocking at a closed door, until it opens. The door might not open onto the room you expected, the answer might not look like the one you imagined—the persistence of prayer is in part about transformation of ourselves; the shaping of a people through whom God’s sovereignty is manifest—but God’s answer, when it comes, will certainly not disappoint.

Imagine a hungry child asking their parent for something to eat, a fish or an egg. Even if the parent did not have a fish or an egg at hand, even if they could not respond as requested, when requested, they would not give something harmful instead. Jesus continues, If you, then, who are evil (that is, whose existence is pain-ridden due to collective, systemic, and even personal hard-heartedness) know how to give gifts that are inherently good to your own children (to alleviate their pain, to acknowledge sheer goodness in the world) how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

How much more will the parent of all, who is not wearied by slavery to evil (and yet, who is not impervious to our pain, but who, in Jesus’ torture and execution at our hands will take into god-self the pain-ridden bodily existence, and, ultimately, transform it into something unexpected, into glory) breathe the Life of heaven into our earthly bodies.

Thinking back over your experience of prayer,

How has praying changed you? How has prayer, including ‘unanswered’ prayer, transformed what you prayer for, and how you, yourself, seek to be God’s answer to your prayer?

Where have you seen God’s sovereignty made manifest in your circumstances, in answer to persistent prayer?

What part of ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ do you find most challenging, and why?

What have you given up praying for?

 

Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2022 Hosea

 

Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19

What is the Bible for? Not for accepting, nor rejecting, but for engaging with, wrestling with, in community. And, often, for reaching pragmatic compromises over ideological purity, and finding strength to live those compromises.

One of the Old Testament passages set for this coming Sunday is the profoundly disturbing Hosea 1:2-10. Hosea’s story begins just as the northern kingdom of Israel is about to plunge into a relentless spiral of assassinations and coups that will only come to an end with invasion by a neighbouring superpower and total destruction. Against this backdrop, God (Yahweh) instructs Hosea to marry an adulterous wife and raise children born of adultery. Moreover, Hosea is instructed to name their firstborn son Jezreel, after the site of a bloodthirsty coup, the root of the unravelling to come. Gomer has two further children—it is implied that Hosea is not their biological father, or at least, cannot know for certain that he is—and he is instructed to call her daughter No Mercy and the younger son Not My People.

Here we are presented with a man whom subsequent generations will acknowledge as a prophet, convinced that Yahweh has instructed him to undermine at least two of the Ten Words, the Constitution of the People whom Yahweh had delivered out of their servitude to the Egyptians. For how can one uphold the commandment ‘You shall not commit adultery’ while taking, and taking back, an adulterous wife? And how can one uphold the commandment ‘Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the soil that the Lord your God has given you’ while burdening your children with such painful, literally godforsaken names (by extension, identities)? Though perhaps the point is that the Commandments have already been thoroughly abandoned, and the people are about to be uprooted from the soil in which they were planted.

This passage is disturbing for so many reasons, for so many people. Neither Gomer nor her children have a voice, and their existence, whether historical or parabolic, has been used—unacceptably—to justify all manner of abuse against women and children. Paradoxically, there are many men who have been cheated on, raising children a paternity test would not identify as theirs. Some are in deeply dysfunctional relationships, while others are doing a fantastic job, doing their best to provide stability, enabling fresh starts and new possibilities. Is it possible to love after betrayal? To forgive? Is such a stance commendable or weak?

Then, again, there are pertinent questions concerning the breakdown of a society and the detrimental impact on its children, the loss of opportunity, of hope—and whether hope, once lost, can be restored? There are questions concerning which episodes in our history we choose to memorialise (or which celebrities we name children after)? The role of mercy in a society without mercy? The commitments necessary to hold together as a people, and how we might agree on them, how far they can be abandoned before a society collapses, the limits of inclusion?

There are questions concerning God, what God is like, and whether God can be trusted? Whether God is good, or a harmful presence (or absence) in our lives? And the same questions can be asked of human beings. How do we live together—whether at the level of intimate relationships, or as a society—when people don’t intervene as we would like, or act in ways we do not like? Are we able to enter-into one another’s deepest, darkest, pain and shame? Is that what makes us truly human (in the likeness of God?), or does our refusal to do this (denying our own shame, while exposing the shame of others) make us less-than human?

This text is not an abstract text. It was a story told into a context, and it remains a story read aloud in countless other contexts, at personal, local, regional, and global levels. If it were less disturbing, we would likely have abandoned it long ago. And what we make of it will have to vary, from context to context, as we make space to see our lives brought into focus, and, for Christians, to ask, where do we see Jesus: the king whose throne of peace God has established for ever; the Compassion of God, embodied; the One in whom a new people of God are constituted? Where will we meet Jesus?

As we wrestle with the text, let us be gentle with one another, honouring each other’s scars and aching limbs. Lord, have mercy.

 

Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19

Genesis 18:1-10a and Colossians 1:15-28 and Luke 10:38-42

Writing to ‘the saints in Colossae,’ Paul says: if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. For everything of God has delighted in making Jesus its permanent resting place. Who God is, is fully revealed to us in who Jesus is. What God is like is fully revealed to us in what Jesus is like. And, moreover, this Jesus has chosen to make his resting place the church: being among his sisters and brothers.

In his account of Jesus, Luke tells us that Jesus had sent out seventy (or seventy-two) disciples ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. They had returned to him, and they appear to be travelling onward together as one group. The implication is that Martha has recently welcomed two disciples into her home and is now welcoming more than seventy guests! No wonder she is ‘worried and distracted by many things’…

In the record of Abraham, we hear of a time when God, walking with two companions, appeared to be about to pass by Abraham’s tent, on his way. Abraham approaches and says, ‘My Lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant.’ Abraham wishes to minister rest and refreshment to the Lord, washing their feet and breaking bread together, and after that he may pass on his way. The Lord receives Abraham’s hospitality, and promises to return, and that his return will be to celebrate with Abraham and Sarah the birth of her son. This is the son already promised to them by God, a promise that had remained unfulfilled until now, a promise on which all the other promises of God hung.

In other words, Abraham’s salvation depends on these ‘others’ (who are a manifestation of God and God’s companions) to whom he shows hospitality.

Two-thousand years later, Martha is acting as a daughter of Abraham. She comes out of her home and asks Jesus and his companions to turn aside from their way, their journey, and experience rest and relaxation in her home. And yet she herself experiences anxiety: will her hospitality be acceptable? Will it stretch to meeting the needs of so many?

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

God moves at human walking pace. You might think that is a concession to our limitations, but if we are created in the likeness of God, it is not a concession but a revelation. God moves at an average pace of three miles an hour. Interestingly, for the average height human, the horizon is never more than around three miles away, wherever you are on earth. Wherever you are, the span of what you can take in is bounded by divine pace.

God never walks alone. God walks with friends. This was God’s intention from the beginning, when God walked with the human in the garden in the cool of the evening. God is not always where we expect God to be, nor with whom, but God is never alone. And those friends might seem unlikely fellows to onlookers: God visits Abraham accompanied by a counsel for the defence and a counsel for the prosecution, natural opponents to one another; Jesus travels with a ragtag crew. The purpose of this walking together—ultimately to the cross, and beyond—is reconciliation.

God comes in hope of hospitality. Indeed, God prepares the way for this very thing, and moves among us with this very intention in mind. To be with those who will welcome God, and every possibility that comes with God, is not a set-back in God’s schedule; time that must be made up elsewhere. It is the schedule: the mystery by which peacemakers are shown to be children of God.

God is not worried or distracted. Jesus is the calming, non-anxious presence, the still-point at the centre of all the activity undertaken, and directed by, Martha. God does not judge her performance, nor fret that she will disappoint expectations, nor lose patience. Not with Martha, nor with Mary. God draws them—first Mary, then Martha—to Jesus, and, in Jesus, to one another. To what really matters. To being present to one another in the present moment.

God reconciles all that has fallen into division. This is the fruit of all that Jesus is the first fruit of, for all creation.

God’s commitment to us is permanent. The home of Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus, becomes a home-from-home for Jesus; they become sisters and brother to him; which neither the death of Lazarus nor the death of Jesus can break apart. This is what God has done: has made a permanent home among us, as one of us, in Jesus, and us in him. Despite all our urgency, our restlessness, our resentments, he remains true: moving at walking pace, never alone, in hope of hospitality, without worry or distraction, reconciling all things to God, with us forever.

If you believe that, if God exists, he, she or it is too busy with more urgent or important matters to take an interest in you, think again. God is not a politician on the election campaign trail, nor a president in the war room trying to second-guess and pre-empt rivals and enemies. God has all the time in the world for you and wants to spend that time with you. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

 

Evensong, Third Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Lectionary: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

It is a standing joke that vicars drink a lot of tea, so much so that the question “More tea, vicar?” is a recognised standard phrase or saying in the English language. The practice of clergy, and indeed lay members of a local congregation, to pay home visits to their parishioners derives, at least in part, from Jesus’ instruction to some of his earliest followers, sent out ahead of him, to enter a house and eat and drink whatever is set before them. In my case, almost always, chocolate biscuits washed down with tea.

‘After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”’ (Luke 10:1-9)

‘Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to his house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.’ This is Jesus the Jew, upholding the Jewish welcome: ‘Shalom aleichem’ ‘Aleichem shalom,’ ‘Peace unto you’ ‘Unto you, peace,’ a blessing also expressed by the Islamic ‘Salaam alaykum’ ‘Alaykum salaam’ and, in a weaker construction, the Christian ‘Peace be with you’ ‘And also with you’. The person who speaks expresses their readiness to make unity between themselves and the other: ‘Peace unto you.’ By responding in the mirrored form, ‘Unto you, peace,’ the one who responds does not merely acknowledge the first speaker’s desire, but affirms that they, too, want this peace: they, too, are ready. And in their agreement, that unity, which is of God and found in heaven, is brought into the physical world. Or, as Jesus expresses it, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

This nearness is to be found when people sit down together over food and drink, take time to be together, to get to know one another. In the home, but, by extension, wherever people might do this: wherever the community gathers, socially.

And with this, Jesus says, ‘kai therapeuete tous en autē astheneis,’ ‘and cure the sick who are there.’

The word ‘therapeuó,’ the root of our English word ‘therapy,’ means ‘I care for, attend, serve, treat, especially of a physician; hence, I heal’ while ‘astheneis’ refers to those who are ‘without strength, weak, infirm, sick’. Jesus is instructing those he sends to care for the infirm, which in our context would include those who experience chronic social isolation, those who have become permanently housebound on account of age or physical frailty, and those who are temporarily without strength due to the devastating impact of bereavement. When I sit and listen to a family tell the life-story of their loved one who has died, or an elderly parishioner tell me stories of their childhood, I am curing the sick, one cup of tea at a time. (Indeed, I share in the ‘cure of souls’—that is, the care of persons—which is both my bishop’s and mine.)

But we are not called to be patrons to our neighbours. Jesus sends out his followers in vulnerability, ‘like lambs into the midst of wolves,’ without means or resource, dependent on welcome and the hospitality of strangers. In other words, there is a mutuality to this; one that requires of us that we let go of power, that we relinquish being in control. The guest enables the cure of the host as the host cares for—cures—the guest. We do not bring peace, wholeness, to a household. We bring our desire to be at peace, to live in wholeness, with our neighbour; and peace is made manifest between us when they agree, and together we sit under the blessing of peace. We do not bring the kingdom of God to our neighbours; we discover its nearness in their welcome. And if the kingdom of heaven feels far off, perhaps it is because we have not taken our sent-ness seriously, have put the onus on others to come to us instead.

There is nothing trivial about sitting with our neighbours, at their table. In fact, there is almost nothing more important, which is why the lupine world will throw everything it can at you to ensure you are simply too distracted or afraid to do so. But your visiting, of even just one household (it is the commitment to relationship that matters, not relentless superficial socialising), is making a torn-apart world whole again. Go in peace…