Where Are They Now?

 

Texts: Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

To begin with here is a sad story about one of my earliest heroes.  When I was about 10 I became a fan of Bolton Wanderers football team.  I can't quite remember why now, but anyway they were my team; and they continued to be my team all through my youth until I went to Sheffield University and became a Sheffield Wednesday fan.  One of the star attractions of Bolton Wanderers in those early days – in fact, to be honest, the only star attraction – was their centre forward.  He was also centre forward for England, and he had the marvellous name of Nat Lofthouse.  Nat was the only soccer hero I have ever had who was not a goalkeeper.  That's how special he was for me back in those wonderful days when all games were played on a Saturday afternoon, and the results were broadcast on the BBC at the same time every Saturday evening.

Well, of course, the years passed and both Nat and I grew older.  He retired from playing, I went to university, and there our story might have ended.  But one day there was an item on the sports page of the Sheffield paper about Nat Lofthouse.  The writer thought there might be a few readers who remembered Nat, and if so, they would be pleased to know that he was coming to Sheffield soon.  It turned out that he was now coach of the Bolton Wanderers Second XI who were due to play the Sheffield United Second XI.  How exciting was that?  But it got better.  The first 10 people to send in a coupon with the year of the cup-final in which Nat Lofthouse scored the winning goals would get a free pass to see Bolton Wanderers Second XI play Sheffield United Second XI.  Easy-peasey!!!  I duly received my free pass and went to the match in high excitement – I even went early so as to secure a front row position near where the coaches sat during the game so as to get a good view of Nat Lofthouse.

You can guess the rest.  The entire crowd must have won free passes because there was only about 8 of us present; and when the teams came out, with their coaches, I took a while to recognise him.  The years had not been kind to him.  He looked much older than his years, and he was already beginning to roll a bit as he walked.  I tried to tell myself that none of that mattered; he was still Nat Lofthouse, childhood super-hero, scorer of the two goals that won the cup for Bolton against Manchester United in 1958.  I wanted to tell him that I had not forgotten, but I was too shy.  Besides, he looked as though he might have forgotten by then!

That's the problem with fame, I guess.  Whenever there is a magazine article, or a programme on T.V., called "Where are they now?" I brace myself.  And yet, I'm always curious, especially if it turns out to be about someone I once admired.  And in some ways, it doesn't matter if they have now run to fat, and are eking out a living in a fish-and-chips shop or something.  We all need heroes, especially heroes we share with others.  We remember the greats of our own past, and we are thankful for what they once did for us.  They may be sports heroes, or from the entertainment business, or national heroes.  Think of the great Ed Hillary, for instance.  Of course, he was past his best by the end, but that didn't matter one bit.  We rejoiced again over his triumphs on Everest and in Antarctica, when he was at the height of his powers; even if we had never met him, he had been a very special part of our lives for so long.

I remember when I first started visited homes for the Public Trust Office back in the 60's being struck by how often people still had pictures of Michael Joseph Savage on their wall.  The first time I saw it, I asked the owner who it was; and she went on about her hero for half-an-hour, and nearly made herself cry in the process.  Savage was and always would be a hero to her.

We all need heroes, and we all love sharing stories about our heroes.  Stories like those bind us together as members of our group, our family, our club, or our nation.  They incorporate our values.  We are as proud of what Ed Hillary said when he climbed Everest as we are of the climb itself: it was so Ed, it was so us!

Of course, we often remind ourselves when we're talking about our heroes that he/she was no saint; and we do that because, deep down, we don't like saints.  Saints are ridiculously good people, and they make us feel uncomfortable.  We want our heroes to be more human, more like us.  When one of the Hillary inner circle said Ed could be a bit irascible at times, we were pleased to hear it.  He's real, we thought, good old Ed!  He's no saint.

Which just goes to show that we've got a screwed up idea of saints!  One of the delights I find in flicking through books of saints is how irascible many of them were!  How human they were – how like us – how like Ed!  The saintly Francis often lost his temper, and tore strips off his fellow friars.  After all, he was Italian!  St Teresa of Avila was another with whom it didn't pay to tangle.  And it's not just that some of the saints lost their temper every now and again.  Some of them carried on personal vendettas against people they considered their rivals or even their enemies.  And some of the saints we are remembering today probably never existed.  Even that doesn't seem to matter too much.  What matters is what we say about them and what we learn from them.  St George is a great example of all this: a priest friend in Palmerston North once assured me that the evidence for the existence of St George was almost as strong as the evidence for the existence of his dragon!  What matters is his courage, his desire to protect and save others.

A clue to all this comes in the official title of the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.  The key word is "faithful".  We don't remember the "good" departed; we remember only the faithful ones, good and bad. That, after all, is what a saint really is according to Scripture – a person of faith, a Christian.  When the Church 'canonised' someone, it meant to indicate that they were the full measure of a Christian, they had reached the required standard of faithfulness, not that they were of impeccable moral standing.

Where are they now, these saints and faithful departed?  Ah, now there's a real question for us today of all days!  And we're supposed to know the answer, aren't we?  Look at our Sentence for the Day: Know the hope to which you have been called, and the glorious inheritance of the saints.  Think about those words for a minute.  Do they conjure up for you a picture of a paunchy, bald man rolling out of the players' tunnel onto a soccer pitch on a cold winter's day in Sheffield; or some faded pop idol trying to earn a few bob behind the bar in a takeaway outlet?

Hopefully, not!  We are assured that "inexpressible joys" await those who truly love the Lord.  Our hope is eternal life with God, a glimpse of which is given to us in our first reading today.  Our glorious inheritance is a future with Christ when he returns, here on a redeemed and transformed earth.  Our heroes of the faith, the faithful departed, are with God awaiting the final consummation of all things.  They shall return when he returns.

In the meantime we are one with them through the Holy Spirit.  We worship with them who surround us on every side, countless as heavens stars.  That's what we mean when we affirm our faith in the communion of saints.  They are "the faithful who rest in him, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven", and "the blessed company of all faithful people", to whom we will refer shortly.

Today of all days may we be aware of their presence with us, thankful for their example to us, and confident of sharing with them God's gift of eternal life.  Amen.

 

Your Ways are Not Our Ways

 

Texts: Jonah 3:10-4:11; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

We are now about three-quarters of the way through St Matthew's Gospel – another couple of months and we put him aside and start the Year of Mark.  One thing we should know by now is that according to Matthew the central idea of Jesus' teaching was the Kingdom of Heaven.  When Jesus first started his public ministry he started with the phrase that John the Baptist had been using: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."  And when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, one of the things he said we must pray for is that the Kingdom may come on earth as in heaven."  So whatever else Jesus' ministry was about, it was about this Kingdom of Heaven.

 Which raises the obvious question, what does he mean by that expression, the Kingdom of Heaven?  And that's the question we have been grappling with at Ministry School this week  On each of the three days we were there – Thursday to Saturday – we started with morning prayer, and then Kelvin Wright led us in a full hour of Bible Study.  So altogether we had three hours of Bible Study led by Kelvin Wright.

It got off to a rather alarming start.  Kelvin began the first session by saying, "I propose to spend our three hours or so over the next three days on one half of one verse of Scripture, and here is that one-half verse."  And at that point he wrote that half-verse on the whiteboard – in the original Greek!  Then he smiled his famous smile and said, "Now in twos and threes, discuss what that means, and where we might find it in the Scriptures."  [That's what passes for bi-culturalism in St Johns, Roslyn.]

Never have I been more pleased to be sitting next to The Reverend Tim Hurd as I was at that moment.  Tim knew enough Greek to translate that half-verse, and as soon as he did, I knew where it was in the Scriptures.  In fact, it was in a number of places.  The half-verse in English read, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."  Matthew 4:17 is one of the places where that occurs.  And over the time that Kelvin led us in our Bible studies, that was the focus of our study.  "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near."  What did Jesus mean when he said that?

Well, we started by looking at what it didn't mean.  In some ways, we have been misled by John the Baptist's take on it.  Because of him, we tend to think that this charge is all about cleaning up our act because God has come among us, and if we don't clean up our act in time, then God will wipe us out.  When John the Baptist is in full cry, that's the impression we get; because he doesn't leave it at those few simple words: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near."  He warms to the theme and we get bloodcurdling stuff about the axe being already at the trunk of the tree, and the winnowing fork already in the hand, and so on, plus a few "brood of vipers" greeting as well.

But Jesus doesn't go down that path.  Jesus says only, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near."  The idea of repenting is not coupled with a warning or threat as to what will happen if we do not repent; but with a reason for repenting.  Why should we repent, not, what happens if we don't?  So why should we repent?  Because, according to Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.

But where has all that got us?  Well, the first clue is that word translated as "repent".  It does not mean "confess", or acknowledge your sins and express remorse for them.  It means, literally, re-think, have second thoughts, think again.  Jesus is saying to the people of his time, what you have always thought until now needs to change.  Why does it need to change?  Because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.  In modern parlance, he is talking about a world-view, a mindset, a fundamental belief about how things are, the way of the world, and what is and what is not a sensible way to live in it.  That is what now has to change, according to Jesus, because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.

And Kelvin gave us a very simple but startling analogy to help us grasp what we are talking about here.  He said, if we look at St Paul's writings towards the end of his life, we will find that his fondest wish was not to finish his days in Rome, the centre of the imperial world at the time, but to finish his life and ministry in Tarshish, as the Bible calls it, or Spain as we call it today.  Why Spain?  Because at the time it was believed that Spain was literally at the end of the earth.  The earth was flat, and Spain was the furthest edge of it – go past Spain and you'd fall off the edge.  And for centuries no-one seriously questioned that idea.  It was taken for granted, and travellers and merchants and so on conducted their lives accordingly.

So when the scientific breakthroughs began in astronomy and so one – Copernicus and Galileo and all that stuff – a complete change of mindset was required.  Some scientific prophet could have cried out, "Repent, for the earth is round."  Think again, change your basic ideas, because the scientific revolution has drawn near.  So when Jesus cries out, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near," he is saying it is now time to abandon your old view of the world and how things work, and how we should live our lives in it, and substitute something radically new and different.

And one more thing before we go any further into that.  Kelvin stressed that too often in our various versions of the Scriptures, the translators have sanitised the original Greek.  In this half-verse in the NIV it says,  "From that time on, Jesus began to preach..."  And in the NRSV we read, "From that time, Jesus began to proclaim..."  "Preach" or "proclaim", take your pick: they are both, in Kelvin's word, "sanitised".  The original Greek should be translated something like "spill his guts".  At the very least it should be made clear that this message was terribly urgent and important for Jesus.  There was no time to waste.  The Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near, and everyone had to change their mindset immediately.

But why?  Because a new way of living was now upon us.  Because the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near – because God had fulfilled his ancient promise to come and live among his people – it was now time to change their way of life, to change their way of thinking, to change their ethics, to change all those things that that they had taken for granted up until then.

And to explain the sort of changes that were now necessary, Jesus began to teach them through the Sermon on the Mount, and other "straight teaching", but also through his parables.  "The Kingdom of Heaven is like this...and it's like this....and it's like this?"  And we have a fine example of that in today's parable, don't we?  This is one of those parables that gets up our nose and sticks in our craw.  Because our sympathies rest with the complainants, don't they?  We take it for granted that, all other things being equal, those who work the most hours should get the most pay.  It's obvious to us, because we think in terms of practical economics, incentives, rewards, and all that sort of stuff. 

But the parable seems to suggest that we need to think again; because "the Kingdom of Heaven is like this."  All the workers need a denarius to meet their basic living costs; so all of them are given a denarius, those who have earned it and those who have earned most of it, and those who have earned very little of it.  They all get it because they all need it.  That's what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  Radically different.  To live in it, to accept and understand it, we must repent, we must re-think.

And what of Jonah?  Do we have any sympathy for Jonah?  He was looking forward to the destruction of Nineveh, a godless city and the enemy of Israel.  But God had a different plan.  He wanted Jonah to warn them, and when they heeded God's warning and repented, changed their mind and their lives, they were spared, and Jonah was furious.  And you know what this story reminds me of?  The desperate rush to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the Japanese could surrender – before they could think again or repent.  There were people in the inner circle of the American Administration who were praying that the Japanese would not surrender too soon, because they wanted to see the destruction of those cities.

Jonah speaks for the way of the world: destroy our enemies, O Lord.  But the Lord says, think again.  "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."  Why should we do that?  Because the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.  And the real searching, deep question for us is this: Do we want to live in such a Kingdom, in such a transformed world?  Do we, with all our hard-won competitive advantages, so useful to us in the world as it currently operates, really want to work for and pray for such a radical transformation as Jesus cried out for?

Who is This?

 

Texts: Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

If you've read the latest edition of Trinibas Times you may have noticed a short review I wrote of a book by Bishop Tom Wright, the present Bishop of Durham, called Surprised by Hope.  In that book he records a conversation he had with the BBC producer of a series of programmes on the Life of Jesus of Nazareth.  According to Bishop Tom, there was a lot to commend in the programmes, but there was one glaring omission. 

Although the series majored on Jesus' teaching, and was particularly strong on what we might call Jesus' ethical teaching, there was no mention at all of the Kingdom of God, which, of course, is the central core of Jesus' teaching.  The first thing he said, according to St Luke was, "Repent and believe for the Kingdom of God is at hand."  And in this year of St Matthew's gospel, we hardly need reminding that a whole cluster of Jesus' parables were concerned to tell us something of what the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it) is like.  So why the omission?

The producer explained to Bishop Tom that he had thought it best to omit Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God because on this subject Jesus had clearly got it wrong.  Two thousand years later we can see no evidence of any such kingdom coming on earth, the producer said, so it was kinder to Jesus to drop the subject, and concentrate on the significance of his ethical teaching which is still applicable today.  I suspect there are many, even inside the Church, who would have considerable sympathy for the producer's point of view, even though he is palpably wrong.  How could anyone suggest, looking back over the last two thousand years, that there is no evidence to support the view that the Kingdom of God has broken into our world?

Perhaps Bishop Tom was so stunned by such nonsense that he missed the obvious retort.  Surely he should have asked the producer, why, then, do you wish to spend so much time and money on making a television series about Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years after his execution?  If his only claim to fame is his ethical teaching, virtually none of which was original to him, why not a series on other ethical teachers like Socrates or Mandela?  And when Bishop Tom returned home, could he not have gone into the magnificent cathedral at Durham and asked again, "No evidence?"  Are not all the cathedrals and churches and monasteries and convents throughout the world concrete evidence of something more than a few pithy sayings about the ethical life?  The church schools and the seminaries, the hospitals and hospices, the art and music, the whole fabric of Christian culture of the last two thousand years – is none of all that evidence of something more than a good man who taught good things?

What about the changed lives, beginning with Peter and Paul and continuing down to the present day with people like Tuhoe Isaac, ex-Mongrel Mob president, who drew a crowd of 1,800 to the Dunedin Town Hall recently, precisely because Jesus of Nazareth turned his life upside-down and inside-out?  What about all the saints and martyrs, apostles and prophets we will remember shortly in our liturgy, including St Bartholomew whose feast day it is today?  And, yes, in all humility, what about us, gathered in this beautiful holy place in little Warrington offering our praise and thanksgiving to God through Jesus of Nazareth?  Are we not part of the evidence that Isaiah's vision of 700 years further back in history than Jesus is coming to reality, when he wrote that "the islands will look to [God] and wait in hope for [his]arm"?

Well, I could rave on for hours about the evidence of the last two thousand years to support the claim that the Kingdom of God has been breaking into this world during all that time.  But the point of this rave is to make the obvious comparison with the evidence available to Peter and the other disciples at the time of this episode in our gospel reading this morning.   And once again we should notice how brilliantly St Matthew has framed this passage.  What we now call chapter 16 of his gospel is all about evidence.  It begins with the Pharisees and the Sadducees (usually hostile to each other) ganging up on Jesus, demanding that he show them a sign from heaven.  They are in the same position as the BBC producer – they see no evidence.

Jesus, in effect, says they are too blind to see it, or, perhaps, too thick.  They can "read" the weather, but they can't interpret the sign of the times.  And he gives a veiled clue about his death, which goes straight past them, no doubt.  However, they don't have that problem alone.  There follows an episode between Jesus and his disciples where the latter fail to understand what he is talking about.  He reminds them of the feeding miracles – both the Five Thousand and the Four Thousand – clear signs from heaven – but they struggle to grasp that the bread is not the key point.  The key point is his identity.  What do those miracles say about who Jesus of Nazareth really is?

And in that state of confusion and misunderstanding they come to the region of Caesarea Philippi, where we catch up with them today.  And we know enough of St Matthew's approach to story-telling by now to pause and ask ourselves, why is that location important.  Why does he want us to know where the following question-and-answer session took place?  Because it had two previous claims to fame.  First, it was an important site for the ancient worship of the nature god, Pan.  Secondly, and more importantly, it was a centre of Roman imperial power.  Herod built a large temple there dedicated to the worship of the Emperor Augustus Caesar, and then Philip the tetrarch enlarged and adorned the town, and renamed it Caesarea in honour of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar.  At the time of Jesus it was also a garrison town, with many imperial troops based there.

Now we have the picture.  In a town dedicated to the Roman Emperor, the venue of a huge and impressive temple dedicated to worshipping the Emperor, Jesus stands with a motley collection of ex-fishermen and the like, and asks them who people think he is.  So the conversation is still about evidence, and signs, and what people are making of him so far.  And before we get to Peter's famous reply, it's worth noting what the talk on the street was.  Remember, this whole sequence, according to St Matthew, starts with a delegation of Pharisees, who believed in the general resurrection at the end of the age, and Sadducees who didn't believe in resurrection at all.

It seems that neither position appealed to the general populace.  They believed that certain individuals, people especially blessed by God such as the prophets, could return from the dead (a belief apparently shared by King Herod!).  According to the disciples this is the talk on the street: "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  It's not simply that Jesus is another prophet in his own right, standing in a long line of great prophets; they apparently believe that he is one of the great prophets reincarnated and returned to them.  So that's not bad – Jesus has, in worldly terms, pretty good name recognition, and a pretty good reputation as a spokesperson for God.  But no one, it seems, had yet identified Jesus with the long-awaited Messiah.

Until now.  With none of the evidence of the last two thousand years to draw on, in a city reeking of paganism and imperial power, Peter identifies Jesus as "the Messiah, the Son of the living God".  How on earth could he have arrived at that conclusion at that time and in those unlikely circumstances?  Jesus tells us: this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.  There was no evidence, nothing that Peter could have seen or heard, as a witness in the ordinary sense of the word, nothing that he could have deduced or worked out using his intelligence, that could have led him to that point.  He got there by the gift of faith – it was revealed to him by the Father, by God.

And on that insight – on that confession of faith in the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth – that Jesus says he will build his Church.  Everything else that we associate with the Church, the Christian faith, follows from that statement by Peter.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  Through him the Kingdom of God has drawn near and is growing among us.  That's why we're here today.

And that's why the BBC producer, however well-intentioned, got it completely wrong.

 

Owner of All Things

 

Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

I don't usually preach on the Sentence of the Day – in fact, I'm not sure I have ever done so.  But it's a good place to start today: The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.  [Psalm 24:1].  It ought to sound very familiar to us because we repeat it in our liturgy – the form we're using today.  The priest says: To you, Lord, belongs the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty; and the people respond, All that is in the heavens and the earth is yours, and of your own we give you.  That's what we say regularly, and that's what we say in our Sentence for the Day.  But do we ever take time to ponder those clear, simple but oh so radical words?

Our news media today are full of the world financial crisis.  That's what they call it – they say it's a "financial" crisis.  Credit has dried up; banks have extreme liquidity problems – they no longer trust each other enough to lend to each other.  We hear about a mammoth plan to bail out Wall Street; and in slightly more poetic language we have a new term to savour.  We no longer have debts, or even bad debts – now we have toxic debts, so-called, I think because they are poisoning the whole financial system.  It won't be long, I suspect, before we have pandemic debts, because the toxic debts are spreading their poison around the globe.  With due respect to Iceland, I never realised that it had it's own banks and stock exchange until it was mentioned on the news this week as one of those countries that has had to pump vast sums of money into its major bank to keep it afloat.

So the whole world is talking about the financial crisis; but very few of the commentators are calling it what it really is – a spiritual crisis, a crisis brought about in large part through the dark side of our human nature.  In a word, the root cause of this so-called financial crisis is greed.   It's not very fashionable today – even in the Church – to use the word "sin", but that doesn't mean we have stopped sinning; it just means we can't bring ourselves to talk about it, to recognise it for what it is.  In essence, sin is taking the goodness of God too far.  Sin is wanting more than enough, more than we are given, more than we need.  Sin is refusing to be satisfied with the free gift of the garden's beauty and bounty, and taking the one fruit we are told we can't have.

Sin is forgetting that we are tenants, not owners.  Sin is forgetting our Sentence for the Day: sin is forgetting our prayer over the gifts we offer in Communion.  Sin is abandoning thanksgiving (Eucharist) and replacing it with a demand for more.  Enough is never enough for the sinful heart.  And sin is putting me first.  Last week's reading from Philippians should still be ringing in our ears: St Paul wrote: Each of you should look, not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Is that the teaching we see in the world financial system – will we see it now?  Even now, when we have learned the hard way how inter-connected the world has become, will we seek a way out that is fair to everyone, or will we hunker down, as individuals and as separate nations, to protect our own interests first?  It is not only the American politicians and the American electorate who are having to make hard decisions in the middle of an election campaign.  We're in the same boat, too.  Will our politicians have the guts to take the right but hard options, and, if they do, will we the voters support them in that?

The signs are not promising at the moment.  I saw on TV this week a reporter doing a survey of people about their voting intentions.  One guy summed it up for me: he said he would see what each lot was offering and make his choice accordingly.  In other words, his vote was for sale.  And he wouldn't be alone in that.  Every Budget we see the same, from individuals and pressure groups; there wasn't much in it for me or for us.  And I'm not sure that members of the Church are very different in this regard from other people.

And if we want one image to sum up what all this is about before we look more closely at these readings I would suggest an item I found in the ODT recently.  Their business editor, Dean McKenzie, had some very helpful articles explaining in layman's terms what was going on in the financial market; and in one of these articles he talked about the different markets that investors will now look to if they have lost all confidence in real estate and the share market.  His tips were the commodity markets, and the futures markets.  I was curious about these so I read on.

Some of them were pretty obvious; gold, silver, oil, and steel.  But then we got to the "pork bellies" futures market.  Investors would agree to purchase a certain quantity of pork bellies on a certain date – say, in three months time – at a certain price.  If by that date the price has gone down, the investor loses; if it has gone up the investor wins.  That's how futures markets work, apparently.  Now, that sort of thing may be relatively harmless if we talking jewellery prices, or precious metals that we can well do without if we have to.  But some of these markets – including the somewhat unlikely one of pork bellies -  are speculating in food.  Various cereals also have their own futures market.  Has no one thought for a moment about the ethical implications of speculating on food prices in a world of a billion hungry people?

We come to Jesus' powerful parable in St Matthew's gospel passage.  As I have said in the notes this morning, this story operates at a number of different levels, but let's just consider it at its surface level for a moment.  It seems to be a case of share-cropping, as we would call it in this country.  One person owns the land, and a tenant uses it to grow crops.  There is an agreement between the parties as to how the harvest is to be divided up between them; but when the time comes the tenants want to keep the lot for themselves and are prepared to resort to murder to achieve their ends.

It seems pretty clear that Jesus has based this story on this morning's passage from Isaiah, where the owner of a vineyard has done everything necessary to ensure a good crop of grapes, but the harvest fails.  So, we are told, the owner will cut his losses and walk off the land.  That is, of course, a warning of the coming judgment that Israel would suffer in the form of national defeat and exile.  Similarly, the parable finishes with a warning of judgment: the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who will produce its fruit.  The sin of the tenants is to want more than they are given: the sin of the tenants is to deny that the vineyard belongs to someone else.

Already some scientists are predicting the end of the Age of Humankind and are speculating as to which species will become dominant after us.  In terms of the parable we could say that the kingdom of God will be taken from us and given to another species that will produce good fruit.  And it won't much matter whether we call that the judgment of God or the natural ecological consequences of the way we have misused the earth for so long. 

And something very similar applies in respect of the so-called world financial crisis.  This is not about a failure of policy in Washington; and it's not about bad decisions by individual executives.  It is about human nature – it's about human sin – human greed.  It's about trying to turn God's bounty into private and selfish gain.  It's about turning everything into saleable commodities out of which excessive profits can be made.  And we are all implicated in that to a greater or lesser extent.  A recent statistic made the point succinctly: it is estimated that the number of obese people in the developed world is now roughly equal to the number of people who do not have enough to eat in the rest of the world.

As we head for our election, may we take time to meditate on the Sentence for the Day, ponder its implications for the way we live our own lives, and for the way our country is heading at present.  To steal a great line from President Kennedy, we should be considering what more we have to offer, not what more we seek to receive.  And we should be looking for politicians who will do the right thing, however unpopular that might be.

God has given us a beautiful vineyard.  What sort of fruit will we produce for him?  And with whom shall we share it?  As the psalmist said:

The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.

Thinking inside the Circle

 

Texts: Isaiah 1-7; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

If like me you are sick and tired of people insisting that we must think outside the square, you may be pleased to know that I have been encouraging people to think inside the circle; and to show you what I mean I am going, for the first time in my entire preaching career, to use a visual aid.  It's not quite up to the minute, and it doesn't require any electronic or other equipment, but it is complex so you'll have to concentrate pretty hard to grasp it.  Here it is.  (Unveil paper with circle drawn on it.)

The more discerning among you may be able to work out what it is, but in case you're stuck I'll spare your blushes and tell you what it is.  It's a circle.  And strange to say, that simple circle has provoked strong and prolonged debate during the two meetings I have so far addressed on diocesan finances.  I started each of those meeting with a circle just like this one.  Then I wrote in the centre of the circle, two words – "The Bishop"; and I asked the participants what they now thought that circle represented.  They were on to it right away.  It must represent the Diocese – there's the Bishop at the centre of it; and, after all, we're here to talk about diocesan finances.  Roger's circle must be intended to represent the Diocese.

They began to relax.  It's always a good feeling to get the first question out of the way, especially if you get the right answer.  It was time for the second question.  "Where is your parish in relation to that circle?"  It was fascinating watching their expressions change.  Smiles were changing into frowns all around the room.  They were worried.  They suspected a trap, but they weren't quite sure where it was.  In both meetings they remained silent for quite a time.  So, ever helpful, I gave them a clue.  "Can I suggest that there are only two logical possibilities – either your parish is inside the circle or your parish is outside the circle.  Where do you say your parish is?"

Well, soon we will have the reading from St Matthew's gospel about the sheep and the goats; and that came to mind in watching the drama of this circle unfold at these meeting.  This circle separated – not sheep and goats – but those who are most guided by logic from those who are most guided by their feelings, the "head people" from the "heart people", we might say.  Logic says, the diocese covers the whole of Otago and Southland, and therefore it must include every parish in Otago or Southland.  That stands to reason, doesn't it?

The other group, the intuitive or "feelings" people didn't want to follow that route.  They "felt" or "intuited" (to use another very chic word) that this was where the trap lay; and so they felt safer in opting for the other possibility.  They felt their parish was outside the circle but in relationship with it; and, of course, being "feeling people" they wanted to add that they had great respect for those who held the other point of view, and had no wish to hurt anyone's feelings.  Indeed, they felt that both answers were valid in their own way.

I am, of course, teasing a bit; and it would be fairer to say that in both meetings, after we had worked through this little exercise with the circle, there was a general consensus that our parishes, all of them, are inside the circle; or to put it the other way around, the diocese comprises the parishes.  And if that's right, of course, then we were no longer talking about the diocese having financial difficulties, or the diocese facing a large budget deficit, or the diocese having to find more income.  We were no longer talking about "they", "them" or "it"; we were now talking about "we" and "us".  We are having financial difficulties; we are facing a large budget deficit; we are having to find more income.

Our whole mindset had changed, by reflecting on this simple circle.  But, despite the fact that I left this circle in full view for the rest of the meeting, our mindset very quickly reverted to type when we got into the details of the financial strife we're in.  We all said that we thought the collective costs of the Diocese should be met, in part, by contributions from all the parishes on a fair-share basis.  We all accepted that as a general principle, in the same way that people of goodwill accept in principle that we should all contribute to the national budget through taxation on a fair-share basis.

And then we all disagreed on what is a fair-share basis; and you won't be surprised to know that most of the participants argued for a basis that was most favourable to their own parish.  In other words, they started to think outside the circle.  Having agreed in the first part of the exercise that the diocese is us, when the rubber hits the road we mentally shift our parish out of the diocese, and argue our case against the presumed case of the diocese.  And virtually all of us do that, don't we?  Just as we all agree that as citizens it is fair and right that we contribute to the national budget, and then seek all lawful means to minimise the size of our contribution.

You see, the magic of this circle, is that it can equally well represent our country instead of our diocese.  So the question would then be, if this circle represents New Zealand, where do we place ourselves in relation to the circle?  Are we inside the circle or outside it?  And even "feelings people" would surely have to accept the logic of the view that we all belong inside the circle.  So the national budget is our budget; if New Zealand is facing years of deficits, we are facing years of deficits.  Do you see now why I suggest that, instead of thinking outside the square, we need to start thinking inside the circle?

Now, this is where the mystery of the circle takes on another dimension; we might say, it takes on a spiritual dimension.  For as people of faith, we not only live in New Zealand – we also live in the Kingdom of God.  And for us, they are not separate circles – one is, as it were, super-inscribed on the other.  And as people living in those two circles at the same time, we find that we have shared responsibilities in both circles.  That's not too difficult if there is no conflict between the two sets of responsibilities, but what happens when there is  History tells us that in extreme cases what can happen is martyrdom.  Fortunately, that is unlikely to be our lot in this country in the foreseeable future.  But conflicts can arise.  It's is time for a quick look at our Scriptures.

Think, for a moment, about the situation described in Isaiah this morning.   According to him, God has decided to use the King of Persia to fulfil his promise to rescue his people from Babylon, from exile.  But the fact is that while exile in enemy country sounds terrible, it wasn't.  The Babylonians, by and large, had allowed the Jewish people to settle in Babylonia, and live out ordinary lives, and practise their own faith.  Many had done very well for themselves; and, of course, the exile had lasted about 70 years, so a majority of the Jews in Babylon were natives of the country, children and grandchildren of those who had been forcibly removed from Judah, but without any actual experience of living in Judah.

So how should a person in that situation respond to news from the prophet Isaiah that it is God's will for Cyrus to conquer their adopted homeland of Babylon?  Should they rise up and welcome the invading Persian forces, or should they fight alongside their fellow citizens of Babylon and attempt to resist the invaders?  And as we ponder that issue, let's remember (as I've said in the notes) that in modern terms we are talking about Iran, Iraq and Israel.  See how challenging thinking inside the circle can be!

And those who came to Jesus thought they could outplay Jesus in this game of circles.  They lived in two circles at once, the Jewish circle (equivalent to the Kingdom of God), and the Roman Circle (equivalent to New Zealand).  And they asked Jesus whether or not it was lawful (that is, God's will) for faithful Jews to pay Roman taxes.  And Jesus' answer is very clear; it is God's will that we pay our debts, and that applies to all our creditors.  If we owe taxes, we should pay them, not simply because the law of the State says so, but because it is God's will that we pay our debts.  If we owe something to Caesar (the taxman), we give it to him as Christians.

And one way of picturing this is a circle, with God at the centre, and everybody and everything inside the circle with him.

Ideologies and Leaders

 

Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:33-46

The former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr Alan Greenspan, said something very interesting this week.  He had been called before a Congressional committee in Washington to talk about the present financial crisis, and in particular the role of the banks in the whole fiasco.  This is the man who held the position equivalent to the Governor of the Reserve Bank for over 20 years, so his views carried considerable weight, and it was expected that he would say something reassuring to boost investor confidence.

He didn't.  Instead, he did something almost unheard of in Washington.  He admitted he had been wrong – profoundly wrong.  He didn't mean that he had made particular mistakes from time to time; he meant that his ideology had been wrong.  The basic philosophy that had guided his entire career had, he said, with the benefit of hindsight, had a serious flaw in it.  And he prefaced his confession by saying that we all need an ideology of some sort to make sense of our lives, to guide us in the day-to-day decisions we make.

At the centre of his personal ideology, all his working life, had been what economists call the principle of laissez-faire.  In our terms it's the sort of opposite of what, until very recently, was damned as the Nanny State, but which is now called sensible regulation.  Mr Greenspan was speaking specifically about banks, and how he had favoured the lowest possible government intervention in the activities of banks.  According to his ideology, banks would act sensibly, without government regulation, because it was in the best interests of their shareholders to do so.  In other words, banks would act prudently out of self-interest.

We now know that banks, even huge, experienced banks, in the USA and elsewhere, did not act prudently; and this has been a terrible shock to Mr Greenspan.  His ideological belief system has been shown to have "a serious flaw" in it.  In the excerpt I heard from his testimony there was no explanation of this serious flaw, but it's pretty obvious what it is.  Banks, like any other institution, act through their officers and employees, who are human beings, just like you and me; and just like you and me, those people can also be motivated by self-interest.  It may well have been in the best interests of the banks (their shareholders) to act prudently, but it wasn't in the best interests of the officers and employees.

Suddenly, people like Mr Greenspan have been reminded of an old truth that was spelt out to me by one of our lay ministers in a sermon a few years ago in the Parish of Ngaio.  This guy was a highly trained economist, had worked in a senior position in Treasury for many years, and, when I knew him, was working with Roger Kerr for the Business Round Table.  He intrigued me because he also had a first-class degree in theology.  So I invited him to speak to the congregation about his faith in relation to his economic views.  And the thing that he said that has stuck in my mind ever since was this: capitalism needs Christianity, or some other equally strong ethical code, in order to work properly.

In his view, capitalism does not produce its own ethical standards, and without some ethical restraint, capitalism ends up devouring itself.  Unbridled competition results eventually in the eradication of all players except one monopolistic giant.  For capitalism to work properly it needs ethical restraints; without them it is self-defeating.

Isn't that exactly what we have seen around the world in recent times?  And this is not so much a commentary on capitalism as it is a commentary on human nature.  Human nature needs ethical restraints; left to ourselves we soon become self-defeating.  William Golding was right; the innocence of children is a complete myth; and the innocence of adults is even more so.  Another person who got it right recently was Garth George, whose columns appear in the ODT.  In his latest rant against what he still calls "the Nanny State" he says that we are inherently selfish or self-centred.  However, his conclusion is that we should be left to it; the government should not attempt to curb our selfish instincts.  As Philip Temple pointed out in a Letter to the Editor, that's a rather strange position to be taken by the former editor of a Christian weekly newspaper.

Perhaps he is one of those Christians who prefer not to read the Old Testament, including this morning's passage from the Book of Leviticus.  No one knows our human nature better than God, and God knows that we need ethical restraints.  That's why he gave the Jews five books of them, what the Jews call the Torah.  If you think we're over-regulated, read through the Book of Leviticus sometime!  But if you do, ask yourself this question: was the freedom of the people restricted or promoted by these legal codes?  Just think for a moment of a few of the rules we have before us in this first lesson: Do not defraud your neighbours or rob them...Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind...Do not pervert justice..Do not spread slander among your people...Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour's life.

Who among us would like those rules revoked?  And who among us believes that those rules are unnecessary because we human beings are to be trusted to act appropriately without such laws?  Our Creator obviously believed otherwise.

St Paul also had good reason to share those doubts.  He had been subjected to insults in Philippae, and has faced strong opposition in Thessalonica.  Why?  Because he has been preaching the Gospel, and it hasn't gone over all that well in some quarters.  Hardly surprising, given that the gospel is a direct challenge to our innate selfishness.  The gospel challenges our natural ideology – it demands a whole new mindset – a whole new attitude to life and to our fellow human beings.  Naturally, St Paul has come under suspicion.  What's in it for him?  Who's funding him?  He has to remind his own converts that he has been completely open with them – transparent, in the modern terminology.  He has worn no mask to hide deceit or greed.

Our gospel passage has two challenges to Jesus' teaching.  First, his opponents ask him which is the most important commandment.  What a stupid question!  Could we answer that sort of question in respect of our own criminal law?  What is worse, blackmail, kidnapping, or the theft of medals from the Army Museum?  Jesus deals very shortly with that question.  He sums up the whole law in two commandments and says that's what's important – the whole lot!

Then comes an examination of his credentials; and here it must be admitted that the New Testament as we have it does get itself in a bit of a muddle.  This debate only makes sense if Jesus is being hailed as the Messiah even though he is not descended from the House of David.  Jesus' remarks only make sense if the Messiah is not a descendant of David.  And yet the early Church went to great lengths to insist that Jesus was in fact a descendant of David, to support its claim that he is the Messiah.

The question for them and for us remains the same: to whom should we listen?  Who has the words of eternal life?  Who knows our human nature and who can lead us into a new creation?  The choice as always is ours.

Or perhaps I should say, the election is ours.  Do we elect Christ who challenges our selfish nature, or do we prefer the false prophets who have always been ready to tell us what we want to hear?

Authority Figures

 

Texts: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

Last Wednesday Trish and I went to the University to attend a lecture given by our Archbishop, David Moxon, on the Millennium Development Goals, sustainable development, and the role of the Church and other faith-based groups in all that. [All of which, you may be surprised to know, was discussed at the Lambeth Conference. ] It was an inter-disciplinary event, the academic equivalent of ecumenism; the lecture was sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and the Department of Political Science.  But, more interestingly, there were staff from other disciplines present, as became clear when we got to the time for questions.

Two of the questioners were academic staff from the Science Faculty.  Both of them were very courteous in the way in which they spoke to the Archbishop, but each of them, as I heard it, were saying something between the lines.  The first hinted that perhaps the Church should confine its interest to the private realm – that it was not really the role of the Church to get involved in public issues of this kind.  The other, with equal tact, hinted that perhaps the issues were a little more complex than the Archbishop had recognised, and that the Church really should leave these issues to experts who could understand and deal with them – in shorthand, scientists like the questioner himself.

When I was reflecting on the event afterwards it was these two questions that came to the fore for me, because I realised that they had raised the very issue that is before us today in our gospel reading.  The issue is authority; and the first useful insight these two scientific gentlemen had given me is that we use that word in at least two rather different ways.  In one sense authority is about a legal right to do something.  A police officer is authorised to do certain things in the execution of his or her duty that we could not do.  The officer may have a specific warrant to search a property, for instance; that warrant confers legal authority.  So that's one sense of the word "authority" – the legal power or right to do something.

Another sense in which we use that word is expertise – we say someone is an authority on a particular topic or in a particular field.  I have never forgotten a wonderfully serious and learned science programme they had on BBC television when I was in my teens.  Each week someone like John Freeman or Huw Wheldon, someone of that ilk, would interview a learned scientist; and the one I have never forgotten is the professor who was solemnly introduced to the television audience as "undoubtedly the world's leading authority on bird nits".  That rather extraordinary example is a good illustration of the second use of the word "authority", meaning expert.

It seems to me that both those meanings were implicit in the questions put to our Archbishop by those scientists.  First of all, they were questioning the Archbishop's right to stand there and presume to lecture them.  This was their territory, and they were the resident teachers, the resident authority figures.  Who was this intruder from the Waikato?  What authority did he have to teach in their university?  And, of course, as David was there in his official capacity, the challenge was not just to him but to the Church as a whole.  And the second part of the challenge was to the Archbishop's expertise.  Who made you an authority (an expert) on these very difficult and complex issues? 

How should the Archbishop have answered these challenges?  First of all, he could have tried to justify himself as a fellow academic.  After all, he holds two master's degrees from two universities, one of which happens to be Oxford.  So his academic qualifications are pretty good.  Or he could have gone for the straight theological answer: we believe that God is the Creator of all things seen and unseen; the world is sacred, and therefore the Church's calling is to do all that we can to protect it and cherish it as God's gift to humanity.  Something along those lines would have been good theology, but it would not have been convincing to those who had asked the questions.

A third option, I guess, would have been to say simply, "Well, I'm here by invitation.  Two of the departments of your university have invited me here, so raspberries to you!"  Needless to say, he didn't take that option; and he didn't take the other two either.  Instead, he went back to the experience of the Lambeth Conference, and to an address given to that Conference by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, himself a man of deep faith and of personal commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr Brown, with all the authority of his office as Prime Minister, came to the Anglican Bishops in their Lambeth Conference, and asked for their help.  Not for their advice and expertise, but for their commitment to motivate and educate their followers on these issues.  Mr Brown said that it is precisely the democratic governments that have the most difficulty in doing the right thing in issues of world justice, assistance and aid, because their electorates will not tolerate too much taxpayers' money going abroad.  Sound familiar?  As I have said before, how many of our electorate would vote for a party whose main policy plank is to treble the amount of overseas aid?

So the Archbishop's answer to his scientific questioners went like this.  You are quite right: we do not claim any special expertise; we leave that to you and other specialists who can work out the answers to the very complex issues before us.  Our job, calling on the wisdom of our religious tradition and teaching and understanding, is to help our people accept the need for policies that will help the poorest of the poor, will reduce unnecessary deaths of infants, will raise the educational standards particularly of women and children, and will stop damaging the environment to the point where it could no longer sustain life worth living.  That is the authority we have, and in part it comes from the democratically elected leaders of the people in countries such as our own.

 

When Jesus comes to the Temple and begins teaching his authority is questioned, and it is questioned by the resident experts, the resident authority figures.  According to St Matthew: Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him.  "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked.  And who gave you this authority?"  Jesus was an outsider, coming onto their territory; he had no official credentials to teach; he held no position in the Temple.  So what gave him the right to stand in the place of a teacher? And how could he claim to be an authority on anything?

Now, of course, it must be conceded that this is not an exact parallel with the Archbishop's visit to our university last Wednesday.  Among "these things" for which Jesus is challenged was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem closely followed by the so-called "cleansing of the temple".  So far as I know, the Archbishop's entry into Dunedin was a little more low-key; and I saw no evidence that he had upturned the desks or chased anyone out of the lecture room with or without a whip!

But that issue of authority is there for Jesus as it was for the Archbishop.  Jesus answers his interlocutors by asking a question of his own.  In effect, he is saying, "my authority comes from the same source as John the Baptist's; so where do you say his authority came from?"  And St Matthew makes it clear that this posed a real dilemma for those authority figures; if they admitted that John's authority came from God they would have to admit the same of Jesus; if they denied John's authority came from God, they would infuriate the crowd who still believed that John was a prophet.

Underneath all these questions about authority is the issue of power.  That was so in the Temple for Jesus, and as Gordon Brown made clear at Lambeth, it's still about power today.  The Church stands with the powerless, or it ceases to be the Church of Jesus Christ.  We are called to challenge the powerful, inside as well as outside the Church, not instead of preaching the Gospel, but as part of preaching the Gospel.  The Gospel is good news for the poor: the Magnificat is a song of praise entirely consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.

That is all the authority we need to work for their attainment.  And when better to start than seven weeks before our election?  For us, as our Archbishop made clear, sustainable development on a global basis for the benefit of all human beings should be the number 1 election issue.  And if the politicians ask us by what authority we are doing these things we can refer them to one of their own.  His address is Number 10, Downing Street, London.