Third Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

I have been sitting with this verse over the past week:

‘Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’

Jesus (Matthew 10:39)

It seems to me that this verse is key to understanding the gift of life, the purpose of life, and the redemption of life.

Life, here, is the vital breath. That gift both given to you, and that you are to the world; a gift never given before, or again. The God who created the universe, who holds all of time and space, did not want a universe that you were not part of.

The first invitation of life is to find your life, to discover the unique nature of the gift you have been given. This takes time, learning, searching. Trial and error. Having a go. Missteps, and retracing our steps.

We discover that we are good at cricket. Or that we are terrible at cricket, but good at playing the cello. One member of our congregation found something of his life crawling through potholes. Not for me. We are all unique.

Perhaps we get married. Perhaps we have children. Perhaps we are the first person in our family to go to university or join the army and see the world. Perhaps we move from one workplace to another.

It is tempting to think that the invitation to find our life is an invitation for youth, but no. If you are still alive, life is still holding out that invitation. Indeed, it is essential, for life to be renewed, just as the seasons and cycles of nature renew the earth. It is never too late to discover a love for something new, something life-giving, revealing, or sustaining. The invitation to find life is not time-limited (indeed, I have a hunch we will carry on finding our life for all eternity). But the things we find are time limited.

If to find means to learn or discover, especially after searching, to lose means to utterly destroy. And this, too, is part of the experience of life. A time to search and find, and a time to lose; a time to be born and a time to die. Both/and. Neither one without the other.

Everything we find, we shall lose. Perhaps all of our peers have married, and we are not married. Perhaps all our peers have children, and we have not had children. Or we have had a child with profound medical needs. Or we had a child who died. Perhaps we went for a promotion or another job and didn’t get it. Perhaps we were good at sport, but injury forced us to stop playing. Perhaps we have retired, and who are we now, without the structure and status of work? Perhaps our children have left the nest. Perhaps we have been widowed. The life we had, or the life we had hoped to have, utterly destroyed.

Just yesterday someone said to me, ‘Life can feel very unfair at times.’ And I suppose that it can. Though I wonder whether our sense of un/fairness is skewed, towards those we know personally, or by a sense of entitlement, or by God’s refusal to conform to our expectations of what a god should be and do. In any case, I know it to be true that the more firmly we try to grasp what we can never hold on to, the more pain we inflict upon ourselves, and others.

Jesus says, those who lose their life for my sake shall find it. What does that mean? ‘For Jesus’ sake’ means that we set Jesus as the end of our life, not the means to some other end. Not the ticket to heaven so we can be reunited with our family. Not the escape from fear of hell. Not the guarantee that God will spare us the suffering common to all life. Not the means to any other end. Jesus, the all-in-all, with us and for us, sharing our joys and our sorrows.

Jesus meets us where we are. This is good news for those who are finding their life, because finding your life is difficult. It takes effort, commitment to searching. Steps, missteps, repentance (turning around, retracing steps, trying again) and forgiveness (of ourselves, of others). Finding life can be hard work, and sometimes it is tempting to give up, to settle for less, for existing but not living, to breathing but not the vital breath. But Jesus draws near, and in his presence there is healing, rest, a lifting of those burdens that can be lifted and a sharing of those burdens that cannot. In his presence there is power to keep going, and someone to share the joy with.

And this is good news for those who are losing their life, too, which is all of us. Jesus does not shy away from suffering but embraces our humanity—and in so doing saves us from our inhumanity—drawing us to God and neighbour, so we can say, with the apostle Paul, ‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38)

Where are you finding your life today? Take a moment to give thanks, and share the joy, with Jesus.

Where are you losing life today? Take courage. Bring your fears to Jesus, and love will rescue you, bring you to well-being. Glory follows suffering, resurrection life follows the surrendering of our life. Those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.

First Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Have you ever felt ‘really alive’? Or do you have days when you feel you are merely existing? Of course, in a material sense this doesn’t make any sense: the very fact that you can feel more, or less, alive is because you are alive, not dead. And yet, we can probably all relate. There is more to the world God made than what can be seen or understood logically.

Again and again in the Bible, we are implored to choose life. Jesus said that he was sent into the world that people might experience fulness of life. Another word for life is holiness, or union with God, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible.

For Jesus’ people, the material world that God has created points beyond, to the invisible dimension of the world. So, certain things were considered more holy—fuller of life, and the potential for life—than other things. For example, the Sabbath is more holy than the other days God as made: the week flows from it and builds towards it again. Conversely, certain conditions, that spoke of absence of life, made a person ritually impure (not morally evil) and thus temporarily excluded them from holiness, considered unable to receive or transmit the divine presence. For example, a woman is ritually impure following menstruation or childbirth, not because these things are ‘unclean’ or defiling, physically or morally, but because women are like God in the ability to create life, and the empty womb points to the potential of absence of life—of holiness—as the contrast. Anyone who touched her, or anything she had touched while ritually impure, became ritually impure themselves.

In the Gospel set for today we see Jesus in three situations where people are ritually impure. The first is Matthew and his syndicate of tax gatherers, who would at least be suspected of breaking the ritual pure/impure dietary regulations on account of their partnership with gentiles. The second is a man who is temporarily excluded from the synagogue where he has responsibilities as an elder of the community by the death of his daughter, and of course the daughter herself, for a corpse and whoever touched a corpse (and he would have both held her and overseen her being washed) was ritually impure. The third was a woman who had bled, not on a monthly cycle but continuously, for twelve years—as such she would have been excluded from the life of the community for that entire time—and the crowd she moved through—for anyone who had any physical contact with her would have been excluded, temporarily, on each occasion.

Three situations where the received wisdom, where the way in which the material world pointed to greater invisible realities—the choice between life and death; holiness, and separation from God—meant it was understood that the blessing of God’s presence could not be received or passed on to others.

And in these three situations, Jesus—the embodied Word of God, having become human, one of us, the very epitome of the material pointing to the invisible—does something that is both ordinary and incredible. He willingly takes on ritual impurity in touching, and being touched by, those who are ritually impure. This is ordinary, he is not unique in the story in this regard, for humans know that it is impossible to keep ritually pure while having any kind of relationship or interaction, while being human. But in the very place where God’s presence had previously withdrawn—as the days of the week withdraw from the Sabbath, only to return; as the full moon wanes away, only to wax again—God’s presence returns with life in all its fullness. Jesus is the Sabbath. Jesus is the full moon.

Jesus is the life that pays life forward (in contrast to the tax gatherers who levied a retrospective charge).

Fully human, Jesus is routinely ritually impure. Fully God, he is life, and health, and community; he is wholeness.

In the days when I feel temporarily excluded from being alive—for we may have set aside ritual practices, but our bodies keep time with eternity, the material with the invisible—on such days Jesus draws near, bringing healing. And on the days when I feel fully alive—for life is not observed from the stands but played out on the pitch—on those days Jesus rejoices with me.

Either way, he is to be found and followed, leading us from death to life, always and everywhere.

Where will you encounter him today?