Friday, March 16, 2007

Knowing Our Place

Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

According to our Church Calendar, today marks the 147th anniversary of the start of the land wars at Waitara. It is also Gospel Day in French Polynesia. And if we were to take a moment to ponder those two memorials, we could find ourselves getting into some very deep issues. Both of them are about land, about ownership and belonging in a particular place. They’re about migration, or colonisation, or imperialism, or conquest, or bringing the gift of civilisation, or spreading the gospel – depending on our own views and interpretations of those particular histories. If nothing else they remind us of the complexities of human history, and of the simple fact that history does not take place in a vacuum or in thin air. History takes place on the ground, on particular ground. History takes place in a particular place.

And history can never be objective. It is always somebody’s history – the history of a particular person, group of persons, or a people or nation. Somebody’s story, told by the owners of that story, for their own purposes and from their own point of view. Maori history will record the events at Waitara in a different way from the Pakeha version. The French will tell the story of the bringing of the gospel to Polynesia in a different way from the Polynesian version.

And so it is when we recount stories from our faith history. When we tell our story we do so as Christians; and sometimes our version will clash with Jewish versions, and with the versions of other people caught up in that story. Clashes will occur, and when they do they will almost always clash in a particular place. Faith history includes faith geography. We not only interpret events, we interpret places too. Egypt is a symbol of slavery in our faith history, but not in Egyptian history; Babylon is a place of exile, but not for Babylonians.

Places, then, have a physical reality for us, but they often have a symbolic reality as well; and we see ample evidence of this in today’s readings.

At the very beginning of our faith history we find the saga of Abraham, and at the very heart of that saga is the issue of place, of land. God identifies himself in today’s reading from Genesis as the one who called Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans. We take this saga as being about the beginning of the idea of a personal relationship between God and an individual. God has chosen to call this one person and to create a people for himself through the descendants of this one man.

But why should that necessarily involve that man leaving the land of his fathers and setting out for a distant place of God’s own choosing? Why couldn’t this new relationship that God has decided to have with this man be lived out there in the land of the Chaldeans? Well, scholars have long believed that one of the themes running through the Abraham saga is a move from the nomadic life to a settled agrarian life – a stage in the development in the history of many different peoples.

And there may also be a second theme here. In the land of the Chaldeans – and just about every other land at the time – the people believed in a multiplicity of gods. Good ones and evil ones, powerful ones and crafty ones, on earth and in the heavens.

Could it be that the Abraham saga is, in part, about the birth of the new idea of monotheism? Could it be that the departure from the land of his fathers symbolises the rejection of all those petty gods and a journey towards the one true God?

Certainly as we follow the history of the people through the Old Testament that theory seems to gain support. The Promised Land is the place where the people are to live in covenantal faithfulness with the one true God. And we know that they were constantly tempted to revert back to the old pagan ideas of other gods. The many references to high places and asherah poles and all the rest of it tells us that paganism was never completely eradicated, despite periodic campaigns to wipe it out.

In the fullness of time the idea of a special place for the people and their one true God becomes focussed on the City of Jerusalem; and within that city the Temple becomes the great place where true worship is to be given to this one true God. The Temple becomes the place where God’s Name finds a dwelling place. It becomes the symbolic centre of the world – the place where God is. The place from which the divine light is to shine into the world. The place from which God’s Law – God’s will – is to be proclaimed to the world. And the place to which all people will one day come to praise the one true God.

But it also comes to be the symbol of humanity’s unfaithfulness to God, not once but many times. Prophet after prophet call the people back to faithfulness to God, only for the people to reject the prophet and the call. And so today in the gospel reading Jesus comes to this very city. He comes, not to destroy it or punish it, but to make one last appeal for it to turn back to God.

Earlier the people have asked him for a sign, and he has reminded them of the story of Jonah. We have tended to emphasise the connection between Jonah being in the belly of the fish for three days with Jesus lying in the tomb. But equally important is the connection between Jonah’s mission to Nineveh and Christ’s mission here to Jerusalem. God wanted the people of Nineveh to be saved from the consequences of their wickedness; so he sent the reluctant Jonah to give them one last chance to repent.

Now Jesus has come to Jerusalem for the same purpose – to save the city from the destruction their wickedness will bring upon them if they don’t repent. As always St Luke tells the story brilliantly. The city of God has become too dangerous for the Son of God to enter. Political intrigue is everywhere. Somewhat surprisingly, some Pharisees come to Jesus to warn him to leave the city immediately as Herod, the puppet king put in place by the Romans, is planning to kill him.

We notice how, in rejecting that advice, Jesus refers to Herod as “that fox”; which takes on more power when he goes on to talk of his desire to gather the children of Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wins”. We know what foxes do to chickens, particularly young chicks who do not avail themselves of their mother’s protection.

And we know how this stage of our faith history ends. It is precisely in the city of Jerusalem, the place of God’s Name, that Jesus is rejected. He is taken outside the city walls and crucified. God is evicted from the City of God. Ever since, different cities have sought pre-eminence –Rome, Constantinople, even Canterbury

But one of the great differences between the Old Testament and the New, is that nowhere in the New does any particular place gain any special significance after the death and resurrection of Christ. Indeed, Christian teaching seems to go out of the way to avoid such a thing happening again.

Christians are sojourners, not residents – we are strangers and even aliens in the world. And this new idea is summed up in today’s epistle reading with this short but profound statement by St Paul: our citizenship is in heaven. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Christians go around with our heads in the clouds, disconnected from the earthly realities around us. We can only live our lives in particular places.

What it means is that those particular places can never be of ultimate significance to us. They are venues in which we are to live out our lives of faith in the one true God – places from which we may be called at any moment. We belong here only temporarily. Regardless of our ethnicity or nationality, we are citizens of heaven.

As we grow more and more into that truth, so may we be kept from repeating the tragedies of the past, whether at Waitara or elsewhere. Amen.

The Many and the Few

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

The more time I have spent this week pondering this story from St Luke, the more strongly two things have struck me about it. First, it is clearly structured along the same lines as St John’s story of the Wedding at Cana, which we had a three weeks ago. Secondly, the story tells us something very important about the mission of the Church, particularly what we call evangelism.

First, then, the structure of the story and its similarity to St John’s account of the wedding. A large crowd is present in each case, but in both cases they play no part in the real action in the story. Remember how clear St John was that it was Jesus’ disciples who, as a result of Jesus’ turning water into wine, put their faith in him. The other guests were oblivious to what had happened. Even the servants, who knew what had happened, do not seem to have committed themselves to Christ. In this morning’s story, the crowd had dispersed and gone home before the real action began.

Then Jesus performs a sign or miracle. He changed water into wine at the wedding; here he tells expert fishermen where to catch fish, even though they had fished all night and hadn’t caught anything. In both cases, the sign or miracle proves life-changing for those few disciples present with him. And each account concludes by making that point clear. St John, the lover of words, spells it out: St Luke, the lover of the dramatic, shows us.

That’s the first point then – these stories have a set format, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. But let’s now look at what these stories are telling us about evangelism. I once rather shocked one of my Wellington colleagues by saying that I didn’t have an evangelistic bone in my body. That was just a colourful way of saying that I do not attend – I do not believe in the usefulness of – evangelism conferences. I know that is offensive to some people. But I see little if any evidence that such conferences do anything more than make the attendees feel good about themselves.

The same is true about evangelistic programmes, schemes, crusades and consultants on evangelism. We have as a church had periodic outbursts of evangelistic fervour. But has anyone done a follow-up assessment further down the track – after 1 year, or after 5? I recall an ecumenical crusade that it was held over an entire week in Otaki many years ago. Our own church put an enormous amount of time and energy and other resources into it. For months nothing else was on the radar, as we say. And when it was all over, not one new member of the church was to be found.

And this morning’s gospel passage, and others like it, can explain to us why that was so. Jesus does not produce mass conversions. The happy couple at Cana, the bridal party, the guests – all of them went home unconverted, as fas as we know. The vast crowd at water’s edge this morning, who heard Jesus preach to them, went home unconverted, as far as we know. Only the chosen few, only the disciples, heard and saw and were convinced.

St John the Baptist, it would appear, was far more ‘successful’ as an evangelist than Jesus. He pulled in vast crowds, and many of them were baptised. We can imagine how good his parish stats would have looked, in the short term. In the very short term. Because what happened to those vast crowds of ‘converts’? Only one or two of them took John’s teaching to heart and followed Jesus. And when Jesus died after three years of ministry of word and miracle, he left behind about 120 believers. Mass evangelism does not bear fruit that will last. It doesn’t work.

What does work? First of all, before we can be convincing about anyone or anything, we must first be convinced. If someone sings the praises of a breed of dog he’s never owned, or a make of car she’s never driven, or a particular sport he’s never played or watched, or a play she’s never seen or read, we’re not likely to be won over. Conviction must be rooted in personal experience if it is to be convincing to others.

And I stress the word ‘personal’. Peter in this morning’s story was convinced in a way that may not have convinced others. He was an experienced fisherman. He had been out fishing all night and had been unsuccessful. He was tired and ready for home. Jesus the carpenter told him to go out again; reluctantly he did so, and caught a huge haul.

What does that say about Jesus? That he had keen eyesight – that he had just seen a dark shadow moving across the lake – or the surface of the water disturbed in a particular way – that suggested fish present? Or that he took a gamble and guessed right? It was just an extraordinary coincidence? That’s how many would interpret such an event today. But not Peter; to him it was a sign of the divine – the power of God present in this man called Jesus.

He responded as men and women do when suddenly finding themselves in the presence of the divine – in fear and awe. That’s why we have this passage from Isaiah today to accompany this story. Peter’s reaction is very similar to Isaiah’s. Isaiah was a priest in the Temple, no doubt going about his priestly ministry in a conscientious manner. Then suddenly he experiences the glory of God filling the entire building, and he is terrified. Like Peter, his first response is to be all too aware of his sinful nature and his complete unworthiness to be in the presence of the all-holy God.

But he experiences forgiveness – cleansing – the grace of God – and that fits him for his new ministry as a prophet. In the same way, Jesus reassures Peter, and empowers him to take up his new ministry as an apostle.

St Luke gives us some further clues in this story. The crowd meet Jesus at the shoreline. They are on safe ground. They are free to turn around and leave at any time. But Peter and Jesus are in the boat, and the first thing that Jesus says to him is, ‘Put out into deeper water’. We have some interesting expressions today that might hint at the point St Luke is making. We might say, ‘we’re getting into deep water’ or ‘we’re out of our depth here’, when we mean we are in a difficult or challenging situation. We also say ‘ we are all in the same boat’!

All these sayings were applicable to Peter and Co on that day. Jesus is inviting him to go deeper – to take more risk – to leave the safety of firm ground – to be in the same boat as Jesus, and so on. To leave certainty – represented by all he has known up to that time – and to venture into the uncertain future of faith.

Like Isaiah and St Peter, St Paul also had a life-changing encounter with the divine. and the three of them together illustrate a line of development, as it were. Isaiah met God in the Temple. St Peter met God in the flesh of Jesus. St Paul met God in the Rien Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. But the effect in each case was the same. Each became convincing because each was first convinced.

And each was first convinced because God took the initiative to convince him. None of them got there by reason or intellectual effort. In each case, he was taken by surprises. In each case it was a personal, individual experience. One on one, so to speak, God and one other.

Were they then wildly successful? In worldly terms, no. Far less successful than the Emperor Constantine, who converted the whole Roman Empire by the stroke of a pen. And there are still those who dream of the same approach today. We ask Parliament to legislate to enforce God’s laws, because not enough people will obey them willingly. Not enough people are convinced. Our crusades and programmes, our conferences and seminars and consultants, are not getting us anywhere; so in desperation we try evangelism by legislation.

It won’t work because that is not God’s way. When evangelists remind us of the so-called Great Commission, they tend to overlook what Jesus actually said. He did not tell us to convert the nations of the world, or to make believers of all peoples. He told us to make disciples in every nation. A few people who are convincing because they are convinced.

Isaiah, not every priest. St Peter, not every fisherman. St Paul, not every persecutor of the Church. you and me, not everyone in Port Chalmers and Warrington. Let the crowds go home - and let Peter’s boat, the Church, continue into the ever deeper waters of faith crewed by those whom Christ has called..