There

 

 

A bomb has exploded

in a popular tourist market in Cairo,

killing four people.

The radio voice glass-smooth,

she has no daughter in Cairo.

 

There are fifteen million people

in Cairo, he says,

gliding marmalade to each edge

of his toast.

 

(But does it help to know the odds

if you are the one ?)

 

I cannot go there.

Cannot place her lovely face

in a Time photo-essay of

debrised stalls, red-sodden alleys, body bits.

She's probably already left, I say.

 

Her email last night spoke of dancing,

buying a fabulous outfit

   in the market.

Yet she dislikes Cairo.

A swell of male street harassment

has sent her back to the hotel alone,

   in tears.

 

Alone I check her itinerary.

She leaves Cairo on the 10^th – their time.

Today is the 8^th – our time.

 

I am here.   You are there.

And there are those who desire you  -

   dead.

 

The Shadow of the Cross

Texts: Jeremiah 15:15-21; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

For the last two or three weeks now we have been at the turning-point – the midway point - of Jesus' ministry as we have it narrated for us in St Matthew's gospel.  First we had the Lebanese woman, apparently persuading Jesus to broaden his view of his mission: he was not sent only for the House of Israel, but for the Gentiles as well.  His mission is to the world.  Then we had Peter suddenly proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  And it seems today that Jesus has taken those two events as signs that it is time to start his journey to the Cross.

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

And this comes as a major dislocation in the whole story.  Up until this point all had been wonderful.  In fact, it had been miraculous.  Wherever he had gone, Jesus was treated like a modern day celebrity – the Barak Obama of his day.  Huge crowds flocked to see and hear him; they were astonished at his wisdom and his oratory: they wondered how the son of a carpenter could have become such a skilled orator.  And they were blown away by his miracles.  So were his own hand-picked disciples, of course; even when he was scaring them witless by walking on the water or calming the storm.

And if we only had this first part of the story what a different picture we would have had of God!  What a different faith we would have had from true Christianity!  How different our prayer-life would have been!  We would have had the sort of God, and the sort of faith, and the sort of prayer-life that some people in the Church try to persuade us we do have.  A god on tap, ready to leap in and do our bidding anywhere and at any time.  No job too big, too small, or too difficult.  A god very much of our own making, or at least our own fantasising.

Which gets me to a fascinating book I'm reading, which had the rare distinction a year or two ago of becoming something of a bestseller, even though it's about theology.  It's by a woman called Karen Armstrong, and the title is A History of God.  It's not suitable for a quick read on the bus or plane – it's fairly heavy going in places, but I'm finding it worth the effort.  It's really about the history of human understandings of God, primarily in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, although it refers frequently to Buddhism and Hinduism by way of contrast.

One of the key points that emerges from this study is that there are two basic approaches to the question, who is God?  The traditional view is that God is the eternal creator and originator of all things, a Being separate from everything else, who has chosen to reveal himself to humankind and to call us into a relationship with him.  The modern view is that humankind has created this god to meet our various deep-seated needs for love and security.  The weakness in the traditional view, it is said, is that there is no conclusive proof that such a God exists.  The weakness in the second view is that if we were going to create a god for ourselves to meet these deep-seated needs for love and security, we would not have created one even remotely like the One we find in the Bible.

Which gets us back to this turning-point in St Matthew's gospel.  Up until this point in his story we seem to have in Jesus just the sort of God we would construct for ourselves, at least if we watched what he did and ignored what he said.  Are we worried about ill-health?  Well, here is Jesus going all over the region healing every form of illness you can think of.  Are we worried about the forces of evil?  Here is Jesus healing the demon-possessed.  Are we worried about world hunger?  Jesus can feed thousands with virtually no material resources.  Are we worried about the forces of Nature?  Jesus can quell the storms and walk on the sea.  All sorts of people only have to ask and their needs are met.

And all without any obligation, it seems.  Jesus doesn't say to any of them, "Now that I have healed you the least you can do is to join our envelope scheme, or go on the cleaning roster."  When the screaming demoniac was healed, he volunteered to join Jesus' team, but Jesus sent him home.  By and large, Jesus ministered to people according to their need and required nothing in return.  That's the sort of god we would create for ourselves.

But that, according to St Matthew, is only half the story, and the rest of his gospel is about the other half.  Of course, if we had been listening to Jesus' teaching from the beginning, instead of being bamboozled by his miracles, we would already know that the God we see revealed in him is very far from being the god of our own fantasies.  If we had really listened to his Sermon on the Mount, or to some of his parables, we would not be so shocked at St Paul's teaching this morning.  And we would already know that any simplistic picture of God as some sort of superhero ever ready to rescue us in our hour of need is not the picture of God that the Bible paints.

That picture has a large black cross at the centre of it – the symbol of pain, suffering and death, AND THE SYMBOL of the love of the living God, the real God, the true eternal God.  Who among us would have created a God of the Cross?

Jeremiah sets the tone for us this morning.  Many of us over the period of the Games would have experienced times of empathy and fellow-feeling with our athletes.  We felt the agony of Mahe Driesdale, the tension and elation of the twins; the tears of joy as Valerie watched our flag going up the pole and heard our anthem played in salute to her.  Times like that take us out of ourselves and we truly become one with others.  Similar things happen in times of tragedy.  We feel for those who are suffering, even though they are not personally known to us.

Jeremiah was like that.  He felt the agony of his people as they suffered national humiliation and deportation.  He begged them to change their ways, and when that failed he turned to the real living God for mercy.  To no avail, or so it seemed.  They were carted off into exile, where they remained for 70 years.  And yet...was it not for the best?  It was in exile that their Scriptures came to be written and edited in the form we have them today.  It was in exile that the synagogue was first developed; it was in exile that they learned how to survive as a people even while scatted all over the place, without a homeland of their own.  When the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were taken off into exile in Assyria they were assimilated and disappeared from history as a separate people.  But the people of Judah survived, and some of their descendants are living in their homeland today.  The question is, how are they living there, in a way that is pleasing to God or in a way of their own choosing?  Their history tells them that they better get it right this time.

And St Paul tells us the same thing.  And in case we are still tempted to swallow the line about St Paul taking the simple, loving teaching of Jesus and turning it into another legal code, here's the homework for this week.  Find anything in today's passage from St Paul that doesn't coincide with Jesus' own teaching.  But don't waste too much time trying, because you won't succeed.

Last week Jesus lauded Peter and told him that he was speaking the truth by revelation from God; Paul would have said he was speaking through the Spirit.  This week Jesus castigates Peter and tells him that he is speaking the words of Satan.  Peter, says Jesus, does not have in mind the concerns of God, but human concerns.  Peter is appalled at the thought of Jesus suffering and dying, so appalled that he doesn't seem to hear the words "and on the third day be raised again".

It's not surprising really.  Who would have imagined a god who could do such a thing as that?  In the second half of his story St Matthew shows us that we don't need to imagine one.  We already have One.

The Kingdom of Heaven

Texts: 1 Kings 3:5-12; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

I have to say that I struggle with some of the so-called kingdom parables, such as the ones we have in our gospel reading this morning.  Some of the difficulties they give me are cultural; no doubt, they made connections for the people of their time, but not all of them translate very well into our modern times and culture.  We can cope with the example of a small seed growing into a big tree (although, I'm not sure that "mustard" is a good example of this!); and we can cope with bread-making, the image of a small amount of yeast affecting the whole dough.  And I think I follow the point about the sorting out of various fish all caught in the same net.

But the recovering lawyer in me has difficulty with the fellow who finds treasure in a field, hides it, and then goes away to buy the field.  How come he is digging up things in the field if it isn't his in the first place?  Admittedly, a legal friend of mine pointed out that he could have been a tenant, in which case he was, perhaps, lawfully in the field when he found the treasure.  But this in turn raises the moral or ethical question: is he not ethically obliged to reveal the find to the owner/landlord?

And then there's an economic problem that this parable shares with the next one, the one about the merchant who sells everything to buy that glorious pearl.  This guy, and the one who sells everything to buy the field, are destined for hungry times, aren't they?  Try getting credit at the supermarket, guys!  Try nibbling your pearl!

I think why these parables don't work for me so well as many of the others is that they are rather abstract.  They try to paint a picture of the kingdom of God as a thing, something to grasp and hold onto – like treasure found in a field or a pearl of great beauty.  My interest is more readily engaged with actions, not things; to see the kingdom of God in action is easier than to see it as if it could be shown to me in a painting or a photo.

And this was brought home to me this week in some reading I have been doing for a friend.  I've mentioned before that he is writing a book on theology – thinking and talking about God – after the Holocaust; and he has asked a few of us to read his drafts as he writes them and give him feedback.  The latest instalment is particularly interesting, because it looks at Jewish, rather than Christian, thought on the subject.  For any of us to think about the Holocaust at all is pretty awful, but for Jews it must be even more agonising, particularly for believing Jews.  At a distance of several hundred years, it may be easy to explain the exile in terms of the infidelity of God's people; God tired of them, turned his face from them, and allowed the Babylonians to cart them off to exile in captivity.

That is the characteristically Jewish view of God revealed in history.  If God is in charge of history, and if Israel is God's beloved people, then somehow God must be responsible for the exile, and for any other national disaster to befall his people.  But is that how we are to think of the Holocaust?  That God turned his face away from his people, and allowed Hitler to punish them for their sins?  Well, believe it or not, some Jewish theologians have taken that position – as horrible as it seems to us.  But others have tried to find other ways of "explaining" what happened, in theological terms.

To me the most helpful approach comes from a teacher and thinker called Rabbi Halvini.  Taking Auschwitz as the epitome of the Holocaust, he asks an interesting question: he asks, what would be an appropriate prayer for a faithful Jew to have prayed to the God of Israel in Auschwitz?  His answer is very short and simple: O God, may your sovereignty be extended over us.  May your sovereignty be extended over us.

What I like about that prayer is that it does two things that often seem irreconcilable.  First it acknowledges that God is sovereign; and secondly, it acknowledges that that sovereignty is not yet in force everywhere.  It was obviously not in force in Auschwitz; and yet, while Auschwitz was going on in all its terrible evil, God was sovereign.  I'll explore that a bit more in a moment, but here's a question for us who are Christians rather than Jews.  Halvini's prayer was for Jews; what would be an appropriate prayer for we Christians?

And the answer is in the Lord's Prayer, isn't it?  "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven?"  That's our equivalent of Rabbi Halvini's prayer.  Every time we pray that prayer we are asking that God's sovereignty be extended over us.  But how could that happen except by all those of us who pray that prayer answering it for ourselves?  The more we submit ourselves to God's will, so his will is done on earth as in heaven, so his kingdom comes.

One of the most moving sections in my friend's draft chapter addresses the issue of God's presence or absence in Auschwitz.  Was there any evidence of God's presence in that terrible place?  That's the question, and the tentative answer he offers is yes.  He says that whenever any person in Auschwitz chose to go on believing in God, and chose to act ethically in accordance with that belief, to the extent possible in those dreadful circumstances, God was present in that person.  We might think of some of the giants of the faith at this point.  An obvious example would be the Franciscan priest, Fr Maximilian Kolbe, who swapped places with a condemned inmate and died a terrible death in his place.

But perhaps even more moving for me were the stories of "ordinary" women who did their best to comfort the terrified children as they were being shepherded into the gas chambers.  Those women knew what was going on; yet many of them were able to suppress their own fears to comfort the children – not their own, but strangers – and do whatever they could to comfort the children, to hold their hands, to hug them, to wipe their faces, even in that horrible and hopeless situation.  Those little acts of selfless love were, it is argued, signs of God's presence even in Auschwitz.  In those little ways, where those women refused to surrender to the sheer evil and hopelessness of their personal situation, God's sovereignty was displayed in their lives.  Those children still died, those women still died, but evil did not triumph over love.

So if we want a modern parable to help us see what the kingdom of heaven is like we might say: the kingdom of heaven is like a woman who, seeing a stranger's child distressed, comforts that child even though she knows she is about to die with the child.  And if we want to get some sort of handle on St Paul's astonishing thought this morning, this may be the place to get it.  "In all these things (and he's talking about persecution, suffering, and so on), we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."  There's a real sense, it seems to me, in which those amazing words apply to those amazing women.  Nothing, not even Auschwitz, could separate them from the love of God.

I want to finish this morning with one comment on our first lesson.  It is a very common reading, and it is one that I must have read and heard many times.  Yet this time, one little line jumped out at me.  You remember that Solomon had emerged from the intrigues and bloodletting that followed David's death to be the new king.  God asks Solomon what he wants and Solomon famously asks for wisdom.  God is so pleased with Solomon's choice that he throws in riches and honour as well.  Great stuff!  Then comes this line: Then Solomon awoke – and he realised it had all been a dream.

What would we mean by that if we said it today?  We would mean that it was all fantasy, that it hadn't really happened; that God had not really appeared or spoken to Solomon; that it was time to stop dreaming and get back to the real world.  But that isn't how Solomon behaved, is it?  Solomon chose to believe in it, even though he knew it was a dream.

And that is perhaps another way in which we can think about the kingdom of God.  God has put before us his dream of what the world could be like if only we would let it be.  We have to decide if we will believe in this dream and help to bring it about.  Next time we pray the Lord's prayer perhaps we could change it slightly: Your dream come true, on earth as in heaven.

St Stephen, First Christian Martyr

Texts: Acts 7:51-60; Galatians 2:16b-20; Matthew 23:34-39

As I've said in the notes today, we're taking a rare opportunity to honour the memory of St Stephen today, who is said to have been the first Christian martyr.  If we have got the dates relating to St Paul about right, then it seems that St Stephen was martyred around 35A.D, perhaps little more than 2-5 years after the Crucifixion.

So what do we know about him?  On a personal level, very little.  He was almost certainly a Hellenist Jew, rather than a 'Jewish Jew'; that is, he belonged to a Jewish community from outside of Israel, and spoke Greek.  Because he is not mentioned in Scripture outside of the Book of Acts, it is not clear how well he was known in the Jerusalem community of the very early Church.  A good bet is that he was a friend of St Luke, but even that is little better than an educated guess.  It may simply be that St Luke came across St Stephen's story, and used it for his own theological purposes.

All that we know about St Stephen we get from chapters 6-8 of the Book of Acts.  In chapter 6 we already see tensions in the Christian community between Jewish and Hellenist converts.  These tensions will raise serious theological divisions soon which will have to be thrashed out at the Council of Jerusalem; but those battles still lay in the future.  The immediate issue concerned the care of widows in the Church.

Like the Temple, and like synagogues, the Christian community took it for granted that they should give financial support to the widows among them, and it seems that some felt the community was looking after their Jewish widows better than their Hellenist ones.  The Apostles, still the leaders of the Christian community, didn't want to get involved – they had more than enough on their plates trying to preach the gospel and teach the new converts.  So they suggested that the Hellenist members should chose men from among their own number to be responsible for this ministry of pastoral care to widows, which they did.  They chose seven, all of them named in Acts 6:5, including Stephen.  He is named first, and we are told that he was a "man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit".  This comment may be a case of the benefit of hindsight – in this case, the hindsight enlightened by the manner of Stephen's death – or it may be that Stephen already had a good reputation in the Christian community.

There is a third possibility.  As we go through St Luke's story of St Stephen, it becomes clear that St Luke is giving a carefully constructed story which parallels the passion and death of Jesus himself.  So this reference to St Stephen as being full of the Holy Spirit may be the start of that process – Jesus is described by St Luke, on his return from baptism in the Jordan and temptation in the wilderness, as being "filled with the Holy Spirit".   This may also help to explain a fundamental difficulty in St Luke's story.  It seems that Stephen and the other six were to conduct the pastoral ministry leaving the Apostles free to concentrate on "prayer and the ministry of the word".  How is it, then, that Stephen "did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people", and became a pretty good preacher and teacher, as we can see from his address to the Sanhedrin?

Again, the parallels with St Luke's description of Jesus in his gospel are striking.  Jesus was a great teacher; Jesus was a great miracle worker; Jesus had a huge reputation among the crowds.  St Luke is surely showing us that, before Stephen emulated Christ in his death, he also emulated him in his life and ministry.  Stephen is not only an archetypal martyr; he is also an archetypal disciple.

The parallels continue with his arrest.  The crowds are stirred up in opposition; he is brought before the Sanhedrin, as Jesus was, and false witnesses testify against him on trumped up charges.  The charges are remarkably similar; Stephen is accused of speaking against the Temple and the Law of Moses ("words of blasphemy").  It is even said that Stephen has talked of Jesus destroying the Temple.  And so the trial begins, but not before we are told that everyone "looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel" (although we're not told how they knew what the face of an angel looked like!).  After the charges are presented, Stephen is asked if they are true.

Then follows his lengthy address, long thought by scholars to be taken from a sermon preached in the early Church.  Once more the parallel with Jesus is striking.  If we think for a moment about St Luke's account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we recall that the stranger (who, of course, was the Risen Christ), took the same approach now attributed to St Stephen: And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

In short, Stephen makes no real attempt to defend himself, or address the actual charges against him: he takes the opportunity to explain to the Sanhedrin how Jesus as the Messiah fits into their history as set out in the Scriptures.  And, like St Peter on the Day of Pentecost, Stephen lays a few charges of his own: and now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.

Not surprisingly, that brought an abrupt and stormy end to the proceedings.  Disregarding the formal requirements of the law (as the Council had with Jesus), they dragged him outside the city limits (as with Jesus), and began stoning him.  The parallels continue:  according to St Luke's gospel Jesus called out with a loud voice, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.  In the Book of Acts we are told: While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit'.  And, of course, Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.'  Stephen cries out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them".

After Jesus' death, Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body; St Luke describes him as a good and upright man".  Why was it left to him to do the decent thing?  Well, Jesus' disciples had run away, hadn't they?  And what happens after Stephen's death?  A persecution breaks out, and all except the apostles are scattered.  Then St Luke adds: Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

There is, of course, one more detail in this story that is of momentous importance to our faith history.  St Luke, in one of his masterly little details, tells us of the moment Stephen died, and then says: And Saul (Paul) was there, giving approval to his death.  What a detail that is!  Why on earth would St Luke have included that in his account if it were not true?  Saul who became Paul, companion of Luke, great evangelist and apostle to the Gentiles, was complicit in the murder of our first Christian martyr.  And in the economy of God, that was surely the first move in his conversion from fanatical opponent to fanatical proponent of the good news of the Gospel.

I want to finish by drawing your attention to the theme for today – "The Sure and Certain Hope".  Those magnificent words come, of course, from our funeral liturgy, from the words of committal.  They are the gift of the Church to all those who are devastated by the death of a loved one; and I will never take a funeral service without those words.  Think for a moment what Stephen's funeral service would be like today; for a start, it wouldn't be called a funeral, but "a ceremony to celebrate his life".  There would be no reference to the horrific manner of his death – perhaps even no reference to the fact that he was dead.  Or perhaps we would be assured that he wasn't really dead, that death was nothing at all, that Stephen had just popped into the next room.

In other words, we would have a quasi-party that would completely deny the reality of his death and of his vision of the Risen Christ.  My hope this morning is that as churches around the world remember St Stephen today we will honour him in his life of ministry, we will honour him in his martyr's death, and we will give thanks to God for the sure and certain hope that Stephen is with the Risen Christ today and for ever.  Amen.

One of Us?

 

Texts: Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 39-32; Matthew 15:21-28

When my Father was particularly exasperated about something he would cast his eyes to the ceiling (what one of my sisters called "doing a splat"), shake his head, and mutter, "For crying out loud!"  Well, we've had rather a lot of crying out loud in our Scriptures recently.   For Lois' service of commissioning we had the beggar at the roadside crying out loud as Jesus was passing by; last week we had poor old Peter crying out loud as he was sinking into Lake Galilee; and now this week we have this Syro-Phoenician (Lebanese) woman crying out loud again. 

In each case, the person concerned was crying out loud to Jesus.  They all wanted something from him.  Bartimaeus wanted the restoration of his sight; Peter wanted to be saved from drowning; this woman this morning wants her daughter healed.  There is, we would have thought, a pattern here: three parallel cases, three people in need, three urgent requests to Jesus, three people crying out for help.  And that being so we might have expected three similar responses from Jesus.

But here's the problem.  Jesus does not respond in the same manner in each case, although the differences between the first two cases are not large.  When Bartimaeus cries out to him, there is a formal process to go through.  Jesus has the man brought to him, and then asks him what he wants.  Only when Bartimaeus specifies what he wants does Jesus heal him.  Things were a little more urgent in Peter's case: if Jesus had insisted on following the same procedure in that case Peter may have drowned before it was completed!  Besides, as Corporal Wipiata said recently, "when it's your mate in trouble, you don't hesitate – you do what it takes."  Peter, for all his bumbling ways, was one of Jesus' closest mates.  Jesus did what it took.

But now we come to this strange episode with this woman.  She's not one of Jesus' mates; as far as we know she is a complete stranger to Jesus; the only clues we are given about her identity concern her gender (she's a woman), her ethnic identity (she's Syro-Phoenician), and her family status (she's a mother). And there is no getting away from the fact that, as Matthew presents the story to us this morning, Jesus treats her badly.  He ignores her, and then he insults her.  There is none of the generosity of spirit he shows towards Bartimaeus, and none of the instant help he gives to Peter.  Why?  Because she's a woman?  Because she's a foreigner?  Because she's a mother?

In the space of this short narrative Jesus is asked to do something four times, before he grants her request.  She calls out to him, using almost exactly the same words that Bartimaeus uses to him, and he completely ignores her.  So the disciples come to him and ask him to send her on her way because she iss getting on their nerves; and we're reminded of their response when Bartimaeus cried out.  They told him to shut up.

But there is some difference of opinion between commentators on this passage about what the disciples wanted Jesus to do on this occasion.  If they just wanted to get rid of her, why didn't they shoo her away themselves, particularly when it appeared that Jesus did not want anything to do with her?  And why did Jesus answer (them), "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel"?  Because of these difficulties in the traditional interpretation some scholars have suggested that the disciples thought the quickest way for Jesus to get rid of this woman was to grant her request.  So perhaps they said to Jesus, "Oh, give her what she wants, then we can all get some peace!"

Be that as it may, the woman persists.  She comes before Jesus, kneels at his feet, and cries out again, "Lord, help me."  This time her words are almost exactly the same as Peter's.  This time Jesus is rude to her; he insults her: "it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs".  Translation: it is not right to take what belongs to the Jews and give it to you Gentiles.  When we reflect on this we feel uncomfortable, to say the very least, don't we?  And we're not alone in that.  Over the centuries all sort of attempts have been made to soften Jesus' words and actions in this case.

Some have suggested that Jesus was testing the woman to see how strong her faith in him was.  Others have gone the opposite way: they have seen this as a turning-point – or, perhaps, a learning-point – in Jesus' own understanding of his mission.  They say that Jesus was a Jew of his time, and saw his mission entirely in terms of restoring Israel.  This woman, in challenging that understanding, helped him to see that his mission was to the Gentiles as well as the Jews.  A third possibility is that the whole story is to be understood as an allegory of God's unfolding plan: salvation is for the Jews first and, through them, to the Gentiles also, which is pretty close to St Paul's argument in chapters 9-11 of Romans.

Perhaps all the above have a certain element of truth in them.  But one guide to St Matthew's Gospel, in particular, that I have always found helpful is to look at the structure of each passage, reading the bit before and the bit that comes afterwards.  When we look at chapter 15 as a whole, we can see that it has three broad pieces.  It opens with a long tedious argument about the Jewish purity laws, in particular, those relating to ceremonial hand-washing before eating.  One of the chief effects of these and similar laws, of course, was to separate Jews from Gentiles.  So the issue on the table, as it were, is the separation of Jews and Gentiles, at least in the context of sharing food.

The chapter closes with the Feeding of the Four Thousand; not as famous as the Feeding of the Five Thousand, perhaps, but quite possibly of far greater significance.  The trick here is to note where it is taking place – on the other side of the Lake, that is, in Gentile country.  So most of the 4,000 fed that day were Gentiles, but not all of them.  And, it seems, nobody raised any objection about "mixed" eating.

So what Matthew has chosen to do in this chapter is to give us this strange story in between an intellectual debate about Jewish law and a public picnic open to all-comers, Jew or Gentile.  Could it be, therefore, that in this story we are to understand Jesus taking this opportunity to show his disciples that the consequences of separating Jews and Gentiles at the table is that he would have to withdraw his ministry of healing from the Gentiles, and even his teaching?  But if they thought that was going too far, then they could have no difficulty with open feasts of the kind we see at the conclusion of this chapter.

I want to close this morning by suggesting that this is a very good story to ponder on in election year.  We don't, of course, argue for barriers between people on grounds of religion, but we do nevertheless take it for granted that there are other barriers.  The obvious one is nationalism.  We take it for granted that we our entitled to put our own national interests first.  Think what would happen to a party that advocated open immigration to New Zealand, for example; or suggested that our overseas aid budget should be equal to the amount we spend on health, education and welfare in this country.  I don't think such a party would do too well.  We may be shocked at the way Jesus dealt with this Lebanese woman this morning, but no matter how loudly the people of Lebanon cry out to us today for assistance, we are more likely to ignore them, or tell them to go away, than we are to insist that our Government should do whatever it takes.

And we have far more subtle barriers within our own country.  As the campaign gets under way listen for the barriers our politicians will try to get us to erect in our minds.  While the Olympics games are on we're all Kiwis, aren't we?  And if one of OUR team wins a gold medal – even if it's in a sport we know nothing about – we will celebrate and feel great about it because he or she is one of us, a Kiwi.  And you can bet every politician will be looking for a photo-op with the winner.

But what we won't be hearing during the campaign is any reference to coming down hard on Kiwis who commit crimes, or Kiwis in gangs, or Kiwis bludging on the social welfare system.  In political dialog Kiwis are people like us – they don't commit crimes, they don't join gangs and they don't bludge – only criminals, mongrels and solo mothers do those things and we Kiwis want them sent away so we can all get some peace.

Maybe we are so shocked by Jesus' behaviour this morning because it is too much like our own.  He should have known better.

A Word of Warning

Texts: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

As I have indicated in the pewsheet this morning, the Diocese has made a very interesting little DVD about various initiatives taken around the Diocese to reach out to the wider community.  It is the brainchild of Kate Nichol, the lay member of Diocesan Council with special responsibility for evangelism; and the DVD features Kate talking to various members of the Diocese from different parishes about outreach ventures they have going in their parishes.  One in particular caught my eye as I was thinking about today's readings.

One of the questions Kate asked the participants was: Have you run something that did not work; if so, why did it not work and what in hindsight do you think you could have done better?"  Something like that.  And Kelvin Wright's answer to that question was particularly interesting to me.  He said they had tried a Friday evening group, which met together for a shared meal, and would then look at a DVD together and discuss it.  And it went well for a short while, before folding.  Why did it fold?

Well, said Kelvin in his gentle way, when a parish like St John's begins to attract new people, included in those it attracts can be some difficult people, and included among those difficult people there can be one or two very difficult people.  He said in a large congregation on a Sunday morning one or two even very difficult people is not too great a problem – they can be absorbed.  But in a small group of 8-10, even one very difficult person can be ruinous.  And that's what had happened to the Friday group.  The other members of the group finally had enough and left.  End of group.

He didn't spell out the exact nature of the problem, but those of us who have ever been in small groups will have little difficulty in filling in the gaps for ourselves.  There is the person who is completely focussed on himself or herself, and every week brings his or her problems to the meeting and shares them liberally with the other members of the group.  And then there's the know-all who has not come to learn anything, but to show how much he or she knows about anything and everything, and how little everybody else in the group (including the leader/teacher, if there is one) knows about anything.  Such people can close down groups quicker than the norovirus.

And so to the second part of Kate's question.  What in hindsight could Kelvin have done about it to solve the problem?  As usual, Kelvin was refreshingly candid.  "I have no idea," he said.  "I have yet to find a solution."  And then he added this: "Obviously, you cannot tell someone not to come to church."  That's the bit I want to reflect on this morning, particularly in the light of our gospel passage.  Kelvin's comment sounds right, doesn't it?  As he says himself, it is obvious – we cannot tell someone not to come to church.  I found myself nodding as he said it.

And yet, he's wrong, isn't he?  At least, we have to conclude that either he's wrong or St Matthew is wrong.  And please notice how I have put that last bit: I said St Matthew, not Jesus.  And I'm not just being coy here.  I usually get a little tense when people argue that Jesus didn't say this or that attributed to him in the Scriptures.  But I think they must be right here, at least in the direct sense.  Jesus could not have said this during his lifetime for the simple reason that there was no church during his lifetime.  If any matter of dispute arose among the disciples he dealt with it himself.

So if these words came from Jesus it must have been from the Risen Christ in prayer – which is what St Paul means on the frequent occasions when he tells us something he has got from the Lord himself.  So maybe Jesus spoke these words through the Spirit; or maybe St Matthew is simply recording the practice of the church in his area.  Whatever the case, we can assume that this highly sophisticated disciplinary procedure was already being used in the Church by the time St Matthew was writing – say around 80AD.  And if nothing else, this tells us that Kelvin's experience in St Johns is not unprecedented!  Very difficult people were already turning up in the community of faith that produced St Matthew's gospel.  Once again we have to say that those who wish the present-day Church could be more like the early Church have already had their wish granted!

But there is one very important difference.  What is obvious to Kelvin was not at all obvious to St Matthew's community, and that reflects a very different mindset.  If we follow St Matthew's disciplinary process through to the end, we find exactly the final step that Kelvin ruled out.  St Matthew says we should treat the recalcitrant offender as we would "a pagan or a tax collector".  And if we cut to the chase that means ex-communication, or in Kelvin's words, we tell them not to come to church again.  Why the difference?

Because in St Matthew's day the community of faith had priority over the individual member.  St Paul's theology leads to the same conclusion.  So does Jesus' teaching.  Remember his rather gruesome remarks about plucking out our eyes if it offends us or causes us to sin.  What matters is the health of the community of faith; and if one member of that community is harming the community, the leaders must act to protect the community.

Our passage in Ezekiel this morning is a good backdrop for this teaching.  He talks about the responsibilities of a watchman.  In the days of military attacks and all the rest, the city's well-being could well depend on its watchmen remaining vigilant at all times and warning of the advent of enemy forces.  Today we might think of the lifeguards on our beaches, or those who are (hopefully!) constantly on the lookout for the possibility of tsunamis heading this way.  If these people warn us they have fulfilled their responsibilities: if we choose to ignore their warnings, be it on our own heads.  But if they forget their responsibilities, if they decide it really doesn't matter, or it's best not to say anything, then they should be held to account if anything goes wrong.  A failure to warn people who are in danger is a terrible thing.

Another analogy might be the health check.  If a doctor notices something that might be of concern but decides not to say anything in case it upsets the patient, he or she will have some explaining to do if problems arise later on.  And if we are warned and take no action, then we bear the consequences.

Back to Kelvin's problem.  According to St Matthew, Kelvin should have gone to see the offender in private.  That's the first step, and there are two important points there.  The offended party should make the first move; and the first move is to take the issue up with the offender privately, "just between the two of you", as St Matthew puts it.  Is that what we usually do in the Church?  No, it isn't.  We are far more likely to talk to everybody else in the parish than to the person concerned.  We prefer to complain to others about someone, rather than complain to that person.  And, of course, if we do think we would like to take it to the person concerned, we take it for granted that each side should be entitled to have a support person with them, if not a lawyers.  Why?  Because that's what happens in the outside world, and so that's what should happen in the Church.  Whatever St Matthew says.

If that doesn't work, says St Matthew, then bring one or two others into the discussion; and if that doesn't work then take it to the whole congregation.  And there we see the great wisdom in this approach, born out of an understanding that ultimately it is the health of the community of faith that is at stake.  Because the difficult person was not dealt with in this biblically-authorised way Kelvin's group folded; we might say, because the tumour was not removed, the body died.  Because the warning was not heeded the group was washed out of existence.

And, of course, the difficult person has not been shown the error of his or her ways.  Perhaps we need another DVD?