It’s All True!

 

 

Texts: Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28: 1-10

 

If a person is born blind, then he or she may never have an experience of sight.  If a person is born profoundly deaf, then he or she may never have an experience of sound.  Such a person may tell us that he or she has never had such an experience; but what he or she could not do is to go on to say, "and no one else has had such an experience either.  There is no such thing as sight or sound."

 

But that is precisely the error that atheists make.  An atheist may well make the claim that he or she has never had an experience for which the word "God" would be appropriate as that word is usually understood within the Christian tradition.  Or has never had an experience of meeting the Risen Christ.  So far as he or she is simply reporting on his or her own experience – or lack of such an experience – it is not for any of us to argue.  What he or she cannot do is to go on to say, "and no one else has had such an experience either.  There is no God: Christ has not risen."

 

To assert that there is no God – or that Christ has not been raised from the dead – is just as dogmatic as to assert the opposite.  Atheists are as dogmatic as any other breed of fundamentalists.  What they have or have not experienced becomes, in their minds, a universal truth to be held by all.

 

That necessarily means that all those millions of people today who believe in God, Christian, Jew or Muslim, are wrong.  They may genuinely believe that they have experienced the reality of God, but they are mistaken – and with them, all the millions of other people who for the last four or five thousand years have believed in God.  All of us are mistaken, according to the atheists, because they have never had such an experience.  Those who are blind are denying the reality of sight; those who are deaf are denying the reality of sound.

 

Or faith in God – our faith in Christ – our faith in the Holy Spirit – is rooted in our experience, and in the experience of our fellow Christians.  Sometimes we seem a little worried about that.  Experience sounds a rather weak basis for something as important as our faith.  It sounds a bit subjective – rather too open to wishful thinking, perhaps, or self-delusion.  And there are dangers there, of course.  That's why we need to check with the experience of others.  That's why we need the Church.  We need a measuring rod, sometimes, to make sense of our own experiences.  When we find that other believers have experienced something similar, then we can be reassured that we are not imagining things.  Self-delusion tends to be personal – not a shared experience across many cultures and many centuries.

 

Besides, what other evidence could there be apart from experience?  How do we know love exists?  We can't bottle it, or look at it under a microscope, or weigh it.  We know there is such a thing as love only because we experience it.  But once we experience it – and once we hear of others who have experienced it, too – we can never deny its reality.  The same is true of beauty, for example, or delight.  They cannot be verified – they are outside the purview of science – but look at the harbour, or a perfect carnation, or listen to the Moonlight Sonata, and no one on earth will be able to convince you there is no such thing as beauty or delight.

Our faith is rooted in personal experience.  And it begins, of course, with the experience of those who first discovered that the tomb was empty.  Of course, the knockers and the doubters have always tried to pour scorn on the reports of the empty tomb.  They have rightly pointed out that the accounts in the four gospels vary widely.  Follow any court case for any length of time and you will note something similar.

 

It's not the details that matter.  It's the fact that the tomb is empty that matters.  That's what first unnerves everyone and sets them running in all directions.  Clearly, this was completely unexpected.  If this was a carefully thought out scam by some of Jesus' followers, we can rule out a lot of people from any list of suspects!  The women were not in on the plot, for a kick off.  They are scared witless.  Earthquakes are scary enough at the best of times.  And early in the morning while it is still dark is not one of the best of times to have an earthquake!

 

Nor outside a tomb that is supposed to contain a corpse but is in fact empty!  Throw in a dazzling white angel and the old nerves are going to get a trifle frayed before it is all over.  The tough guards were so terrified, says St Matthew, that they shook, and became like dead men.  They fainted, presumably – collapsed in a heap.  The angel gave the women a message for the disciples, and off they went "afraid yet filled with joy'.  Then they met the Risen Christ, and prostrated themselves at his feet.  He gave them the same message for the disciples.

 

What we have here is their account of what they experienced – terror, fear, joy – and an encounter with an angel and with the Risen Christ.  Why should we believe part of what they say, but not the other part?  Why do we accept that they ran away in both fear and joy, but refuse to accept their account of whom they who they were running away from?

 

And St Matthew emphasises that this is not some weird episode in fairyland – this is rooted in the history and geography of the Holy Land.  For he alone deals with the pragmatic attempt of the chief priests and the guards to cover up the incident.  Does that ring true?  Would guards be embarrassed to have to confess that a dead body disappeared from a tomb they were supposed to be guarding?  Sounds about right to me.  And would the chief priests want to hush it up to the point of bribing the guards and offering them immunity from prosecution?  That sounds about right, too.

 

In other words, whatever actually happened to Christ's body, the accounts we have of the reaction of the people caught up in the drama ring true.  They are clearly based on eye-witness accounts – accounts of personal experiences.

 

And when we turn to our first lesson today an eye-witness account is exactly what we seem to have.  It is sometimes alleged by critics of the Christian faith that the story of the resurrection was a much later invention; but that simply doesn't wash.  Even those who argue that St Peter did not utter the words attributed to him in this passage from Acts acknowledge that what we have here is an extract from a sermon, a sermon that was certainly preached in the first century, and probably no later than 80AD.  It is therefore a window into the core beliefs of the very early Christian communities.

 

It is set in the house of Cornelius in the city of Caesarea – probably an early "house church" – and Peter is invited to speak.  Notice how many times the emphasises that what he is talking about is already well known among them: You know the message God sent…you know what has happened throughout Judea.  He is not telling them anything they haven't known already – he is summarising it and helping them to understand it's significance.  Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit, went around healing the sick, etc.  How do we know?  We are witnesses of everything he did, says Peter.  We were there – we saw it all.

 

What else?  They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day, and caused him to be seen.  By whom?  …by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  Again, we are confronted with what purports to be an eye-witness account.  And the question arises again – why should we believe Peter's eye-witness account of the life and death of Jesus, but not his account of his experience of the Risen Christ?

 

I want to finish today with our theme.  It is very short – just one word, in fact.  That word is YES!  The Resurrection is God's yes to everything Jesus offered on our behalf on the cross.  It is God's Yes to Jesus' supreme act of faith to suffer an agonising death on trust that God would vindicate him.  That Yes means, love does reign in the universe.  That life is stronger than death.  That Yes means that our faith is real – that our experiences of God and of the Risen Christ are true.

 

God's Easter Yes is addressed to the whole world, for it was to the whole world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  He asks only that we say Yes to him.

 

 

Peter and Paul – Leaders in the Faith

Texts:  Acts 12:1-11; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19

"Take me to your Leader."  If you ever spent part of your youth watching early science fiction films, or horror films, those words should sound familiar to you.  Although invading aliens tended to have quite strong accents they all seemed to have a remarkable ability to speak English; and they all took it for granted that we would have a leader.  Perhaps they studied such useful subjects as sociology and anthropology as part of their training to be space travellers, along with such insignificant trifles as engineering, aeronautics and navigation over long distances.

And they were quite right, of course.  Our own experience tells us that with any group, from a small house-group up to a nation state, some sort of leadership is essential.  Groups that start of with the clear intention of having no leader usually follow one of two trajectories: either a leader emerges and is recognised and accepted, at least tacitly, by the other members; or the group slowly but surely falls apart.  I was once a member of a small Christian group who tried to meet without a leader.  The first half of the meeting was usually taken up with discussing who would take the minutes for that meeting; and then for the rest of the time we would try to fix a place, time and date for the next meeting.  That's only a slight exaggeration: I promised myself when I extricated myself from that group that never again would I become involved in a group that did not have a leader.

This being election year, we will hear a lot about leadership.  We will be told that at a time like this we need experienced leadership (by those parties who have experienced leaders), or fresh, innovative leadership (by those parties whose leaders are still a bit new to the role).  Much will undoubtedly be made about "strong leadership".  This is a bit trickier than experience, because there is, apparently, strength and strength.  Many of you will remember the ill-fated Bill Rowling, who suddenly found himself Prime Minister following the unexpected death of Norman Kirk.  One of the ablest and most pleasant men ever to hold that office, in my humble opinion, but he was mercilessly portrayed as weak by his political opponents (which included most of the newspapers of the time), and he was thrown out of office in a landslide.

So began the Muldoon years.  He was certainly not weak: famous for attacking anyone who dared to criticise or even question him, inside the party or outside, he terrorised his own colleagues as much as the Opposition.  For a time the electorate loved him for it, but then there was a mood change.  His strength became seen in a different light; he was arrogant and power-mad.  David Lange came preaching consensus and consultation, and we threw Muldoon out with the same sort of landslide we had given Rowling.

So what are we looking for in a leader?  We have a few months left to answer that question in the political realm.  But what ofleadership in the Church?  What qualities should we look for in a church leader?  Well, I have been involved in three electoral colleges in my time, the first two to elect an Assistant Bishop and then a Bishop in the Diocese of Wellington, and then to elect our Bishop in this diocese.  What qualities were we looking for on those occasions – what qualities was I looking for?  Now I am involved in the process of finding a new Dean.  Do we look for the same qualities in a dean as we do in a bishop?  Are there qualities of Christian leadership that apply at all levels of the Church, and, if so, what might they be?

Bishop George upset some people in the Diocese by saying that he did not see his role as setting out a vision for the Diocese; he thought the diocese should tell him as our new bishop what our vision was.  Was that a sign of a good leader seeking to draw out the wisdom of the people and refusing to impose his ideas on them, or was it an abdication of the sort of leadership we rightly expect from our bishop?  Part of the great difficulty of leadership arises from the fact that on questions of that kind opinion is likely to be divided in any group, inside or outside the Church.

And so often, the answer lies somewhere in-between.  I remember in one of those electoral colleges a priest saying several times in the course of his address, "the question is, do we want a bishop who listens, or a bishop who leads?"  It seemed to be beyond his comprehension that we might want a bishop who listens, consults, takes advice, and then leads.  We were told the other night that we are seeking a dean "who will lead us forward".  Of course – why didn't I think of that?

Of course, there is always some clever Charley who will suggest that we are not looking for certain qualities at all; what we are looking for is evidence that this particular person is being called by God to this particular position at this particular time.  I remember a suggestion in the Welling case by a priest who told our large gathering that we had got the whole process for choosing a new bishop completely wrong.  We should not be having a fierce debate about the relative merits of the candidates, followed by a democratic vote to determine the winner.  We should leave that sort of thing to political parties and other secular organisations.

We should remember that we are not to be like that.  Among us there is to be no worldly ambition, power games, or eye-gouging.  Instead, we should seek the will of God.  This, he frankly admitted, was not always easy, and he thought it would be impossible in a body such as Synod because not every member of Synod had the necessary gifts of discernment.  We were just on the point of taking him out and stoning him when he hastened to assure us that he himself lacked those very gifts.

Could he therefore suggest that we set aside, say, ten or twelve people known to us to be leading a life of serious and deep prayer, and ask them to wait upon the Lord until it became clear to them whom God was calling to be the next Bishop of Wellington?  There was some support for this radical idea, if only from those who saw it as their only hope of getting home in time to watch the rugby test on TV that night.  But of course it was hopelessly impractical:  the chances of the House of Clergy agreeing on which of their colleagues were more gifted in prayer and discernment than themselves were virtually nil.

But in principle, surely, my brave colleague was quite right.  And today of all days we ought to see that.  Who among us would choose as a leader one who has denied ever knowing Jesus in order to save his own skin?  Who among us would choose as a leader in the Christian Church one who had thrown himself energetically into persecuting Christian believers and having them killed for their faith?  If we had been on an interviewing panel, would we have been impressed by either of them?  Or would we have dismissed Peter as a blusterer, lacking in substance and stability, ever likely to put his foot in it and say the wrong thing?  And what of Paul?  If we judge by appearances he wouldn't interview too well.  Short, bald with rheumy eyes, apparently, and altogether far too fond of his own opinion on everything.  A classic bigot, we might think.

Oh, dear – how wrong history would have proved us to be!  With the benefit of hindsight we can see that these two men rank as the greatest of all the leaders the Church has been blessed with in its long history.  So what was it that made them so great – what do they show us we should look for in a leader?

Above all, surely, absolute conviction that they have experienced the Risen Lord in their life.  Only from that conviction comes the power to convince others of the truth of the Gospel.  Only from that conviction comes the strength to persevere no matter what the response, what the criticisms that may be hurled at them.  And only that conviction confirms that they were filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

So what am I looking for in the next Dean of St Paul's  Cathedral, Dunedin?  Someone who relates well to the city?  Desirable, but not essential.  Someone who understands and supports our three-tikanga constitution?  Desirable, but not essential.    A good liturgist, teacher, preacher, or pastor?  Someone who relates well to the young?  Someone who sings well and appreciates the Cathedral choral tradition?  In each case, I would say, desirable but not essential.

I am looking for a person who, from his or her own experience, is convinced that Jesus Christ is risen and that that one fact makes all the difference in the world.  A man or woman who, in that respect, at least, reminds me very much of Peter and Paul.

 

 

Finding the Right Logo

 

Texts: Jeremiah 20:7-13; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

I've been thinking about the advertising industry recently.  It fascinates me in a rather macabre way.  How would I feel, I wonder, if one of my daughters rang to say she'd got a job in advertising.  Would I admit it to anyone, or would I dissemble a bit.  "Oh, she works for some outfit or other – not too sure what she does really."  Which, I suppose, is just the sort of evasiveness I accuse the advertising industry of.

Generally I like to think I'm fairly immune to advertising.  I've trained myself to screen out adverts as I work my way through a newspaper; and when I do find a TV ad I enjoy I usually have to admit afterwards that I'm not sure what product it was advertising.  For example, I like the one featuring a rather gormless, chubby guy, who loses the key to his brand new red car.  The search takes on epic proportions as ground, air and sea searches are launched, metal detectors are brought in, refuse and grass clippings are sifted, and goodness knows what else.  Then he sits down and discovers the key in his back pocket.  I like that ad – I've seen it several times – but I still can't tell you what make of car it is advertising.

Which, of course, somewhat defeats the purpose from the point of view of the advertiser, and even more, the client.  It's all about branding these days, or so we're told.  Even the All Blacks have ceased to be a national rugby team – they are a global brand, and the Rugby Union will do all it can to protect that brand and maintain its commercial value.  Think of David Beckham – no longer good enough to command a regular place in a rather indifferent England side, he commands huge fees for a side in that great soccer nation, the USA, because his name sells merchandise around the world to the tune of millions of dollars.  He can miss virtually the whole season through injury and it will make no difference to his commercial value.  The same is about to be proved in the case of Tiger Woods – his income will hardly dip even though he cannot play golf for many months.

All of this has not escaped the notice of some in the Church.  Parishes are now urged to sell themselves – or to market themselves, which sounds marginally better, perhaps.  How might we do that?  Well, appropriately enough there are ways and means both ancient and modern: we can have ever more clever websites, for instance, that are ever so interactive.  I haven't heard of one that can actually dispense Communion yet, but it'll come.  Soon there will be (if there isn't already) a virtual Lourdes, with testimonies from people who had only just connected to the website and they experienced a complete healing.  Before long the site will be clogged with virtual crutches thrown away by people who previously had difficulty even getting to their computers.

At the other end of the scale, of course, there are still the old- fashioned staples of church advertising, a notice in the newspapers, a widely distributed leaflet, or a huge notice board outside the church.  Of course, some cynics question whether these things actually tap into the spiritual hunger that is said to be out there; but then we will never know because the Church has never been very keen on evaluating its past practices – only repeating them year after year.  Do you know of anyone who has come to this church because they saw it advertised in the ODT?  It's possible, I guess, but I don't think I have met one myself.

I have to say that most church advertising I have seen has been dully informative.  Take, for example, our Cathedral.  On Saturdays it usually has an advertisement in the ODT listing all its services for the next day.  It tells us which Sunday it is, so if Septuagesima has a special appeal to you, you'll be sure to queue up for that one.  It tells you who the preacher is: that may be a draw card, or it may be a way of alerting us that some parental discretion is advised.  And for music fans, it tells us which choral mass will be used.  Despite all this helpful advertising, there is always a seat or two left for the latecomers.

Advertising doesn't thrive on facts.  It needs catchy slogans, clever images, something that makes your church stand out in the crowded market-place, something to give your church brand a competitive edge over its rivals.  One good example comes to mind in the main road through North East Valley.  There's a hoarding that looks rather similar to "Placemakers", but it actually says "The Maker's Place".   That's quite good, I think.  But good enough to want to make a sinner repent and turn to Christ?

I've probably told you before about the young keen Vicar in a parish in the U.K. who went for both impact and theological rigour: he had erected a large board saying "Only Sinners Are Welcome Here".  Naturally, the regulars tore it down and reported him to the Bishop.  The other danger is the ever-lurking graffiti artist.  The story has been told many times of the Cathedral in Liverpool who, as Advent approached, put up a huge poster that asked passersby, "What will you do when Jesus comes again?"  Now at that time Liverpool football team had a very good centre-forward called Ian St John.  So it wasn't long before some wit had answered the question "What will you do when Jesus returns?" by scrawling underneath, "Move St John to inside-right!"

It's not easy, is it?  For instance, if we were going to advertise ourselves – this congregation – on a big board in the hope of attracting new clients (as we call worshippers these days), what would we say?  "All welcome"?  Would that be true?  Even the rough, the smelly, the drunk, the crazed and the downright objectionable?  The sort of "sinners" Jesus spent time with?  Gang members wearing patches, paedophiles, the ostentatiously rich and superior?  Do we really welcome all?  Should we really welcome all?

What about "family church"?  A lot of churches call themselves "family churches", but what does that mean?  Does it mean, children of all ages are welcome, and if it does mean that, are they really welcome?  I've come across the odd child in a service before that I certainly wouldn't have welcomed back.  And what about single people – do family churches exclude them?  Or does it mean, the members of this church are one big family?  Would you want to belong to a church that behaved like your family?

Truth and advertising are never going to have an easy relationship, in the church or otherwise.  Are we any better at recognising and telling the truth about ourselves than any other organisation?

But the Church has a far more difficult problem than all this.  The Church has a product that, by its very nature, is hard to sell.  Just ask Jeremiah.  The prophets were in the advertising business, after all.  They were the original sandwich-board men – or perhaps I should say, the original fairground barkers.  They were God's P.R. men –his publicists.  Their job was to tell God's story.  And the better they were at it, the worse fate they suffered.  Jeremiah knew all about that.  This is how he sums up a typical working day in the advertising and publicity department of God's enterprise: I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me...So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. 

Why?  What was so awful about the message he was required to proclaim?  Well, he was to tell the people of his time that the nation was going to hell in a basket, or, more accurately, going to Babylonia in captivity.  That's a hard message to make appealing – that's a real hard sell, as we say in the advertising business.

And, of course, like Father like Son.  People are looking for peace in a troubled world, aren't they?  Okay, try selling them this: Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  In the time of the great anti-nuclear rallies of the 1970's and 1980's, a number of churches proudly advertised themselves as "Peace Churches".  It's a fair bet that none of them put that verse on their notice boards or other advertising material.

And it's a fair bet that those churches that advertise themselves as family churches don't use the next bit either: For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – your enemies will be the members of your own household.  And he doesn't stop there: Anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

That would tax the skills of the very best spin doctors in the world.  And they would fail.  Because there is no way of selling the Gospel in the absence of faith.  It makes no sense in the absence of faith.  Only if we can say with Jeremiah, despite everything, the Lord is with me does any of it make sense.  And no amount of advertising can convince us of that; only faith can convince us of that.

If we must have a notice board let it simply say this: We believe the Lord is here.  I guarantee that it will be no less successful than any other church notice board, and it will have the advantage of being true.

Faith in the World

 

Texts:  Exodus 19:2-8a; Romans 5:1-8; Mathew 9:35-10:8

Of all the many seminars I have been to in the last 20 years or so one of the few that has stuck in my mind was one led by Richard Randerson in Palmerston North in 1992, or thereabouts.  It was on the subject of faith in the workplace; and we participants were encouraged by Richard to carry out an audit of our working life from the perspective of our Christian faith.

As I remember it, the audit had 4 steps to it.  The first step was to define the purpose of the enterprise for which we were working.  What does your employer do, and what is the connection (if any) between that and the Gospel?  That's step one.  Step two was to assess how that employer carried out that purpose.  How did he, she or it conduct business, in other words – ethically or otherwise?  How were staff treated?  How were customers treated?  How were suppliers treated?  How were competitors treated?  Was the law scrupulously followed, including the tax law?  So the first two steps were concerned with the nature of the business, and the manner in which the business was conducted.

The third and fourth steps formed a similar pair.  They focused on our own role in the business, and the manner in which we performed that role.  What in a sentence was your job in that undertaking, and how ethically (or otherwise) did you perform it?

Well, some of the participants didn't have too much difficulty with the first step, identifying the core business of the enterprise and relating it to the Gospel.  For instance, one of the participants was a medical practitioner, in a practice she shared with three other doctors.  She identified the purpose of the practice as being to give good medical care to their patients, and she felt sure that the practice was conducted ethically.

But there was one guy there who was a very quiet, shy, reserved sort of person, someone I knew by name and sight from the local church, but knew nothing about him, and I was surprised to see him there.  When it came to his turn, he told us that he was a soil scientist based at Massey University (although I think he was employed by DSIR in one of its many incarnations).  I don't think for a moment that he was ashamed about it – but his manner suggested that he was sorry to be spoiling the party.  He was quite sure that not even Richard could find any connection between what he did as a scientist and what he believed as a Christian. 

Which, of course, was wrong.  Richard rose to the challenge.  "So your outfit is concerned with the improvement of our soils?"  "Yes."  "Improvement from what point of view?"  "Productivity."  "Measured in food production?"  "Yes."  "You are seeking to increase crop yields?"  "Yes – and their quality."  "So you're in the business of feeding the hungry with more and better food?"

Sixteen years later I can still remember the look on that man's face at that point.  For what seemed a long time he just stared at Richard; then very slowly he broke into a wonderful smile as the penny dropped.  It was one of those encouraging moments when it seems that teaching does sometimes make a difference.  It certainly made a difference in that man's case.  He suddenly saw that his work was also his ministry.  But Richard wasn't quite finished with him.  He asked him why he had become a soil scientist; and by this time the guy had become quite voluble.  He talked about his passion for science, the intellectual challenges of research, and his pleasure in seeing the practical application of his work on the research farm at the site.  When he finished, Richard said, "It sounds to me that you have found your true calling", and the guy readily agreed.  I'm not sure whether he thought about the religious weighting of that word, but Richard was surely right to use it.

That guy did not need to be a lay minister on a Sunday morning, or a pastoral visitor, or a member of Vestry to have a ministry.  He already had been called into a marvellous ministry, harnessing his passion and his gifts, to help feed the hungry with good quality food.

And I wanted to talk about that guy this morning before I talked about the gospel (or the other readings) because there is something rather churchy about them.  They are all rather in-house.  Even in the gospel reading, where Jesus is talking about the Lord's harvest, and sends the disciples out into the world with a mandate to minister in the world, it is still a fairly narrow view of ministry.  First of all, they are not to minister to the Gentiles, who, of course, constitute the vast majority of the world's population.  They are to minister only to their own kind, their fellow Jews.

Think about that for a moment.  Imagine what we would think if we heard about a fellow Anglican Church who set up a food bank but insisted only Anglicans could receive assistance from it.  Or only those who lived in the parish.  We would find that very strange, to put it mildly.  And yet here is Jesus carefully instructing his disciples to minister only to Jews.

Clearly, the primary purpose of this ministry at this stage of Jesus' campaign is not what we would call social care or social outreach – it is about calling the Jews back to the fold of faith.  First, restore Israel, and then gather in the Gentiles.  That seems to be the pattern here.  So Jesus says to them: Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.  Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.  As you go preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.'  The aim is to restore the people of God – the people of the first covenant – before entering into the new covenant through his death and resurrection.

In effect, Jesus is repeating what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai.  The people of Israel have a special calling, they are a chosen people, whether they like it or not.  There is a covenant of faithfulness between God and his people, and there has been since the time of Abraham.  God had already demonstrated his faithfulness to his people by rescuing them out of Egypt, not because they deserved to be rescued, but because they were his people.  Now he expects some reciprocity, in the form of obedience to his will.

Out of all the nations of the world, if they are faithful to the covenant they will be God's treasured possession.  They will be set aside as a holy nation, a nation of priests, with a ministry to all the other nations of the world.  A working model, as it were, of a nation, a people, dedicated to God.

St Paul, in teaching about the new covenant, sees a similar pattern.  God has rescued us from the slavery of sin through his Son (in that sense, the new Moses).  Why did God do that?  Not because we deserved to be rescued, but because it was God's will to rescue us, so that we might become a new people, consecrated to God, this time based not on nationality or ethnic identity, but on faith in Christ alone.  Just as the Israelites were assured of God's love for them (they are his treasured possession), so we can be assured by the gift to us of the Holy Spirit through whom God's love has been poured into our hearts.

At Pentecost God's mission – Christ's mission – moved beyond the borders of Israel; it ceased to be primarily a mission to the lost sheep of Israel and became a mission to the whole world.  One consequence of that is that we need to broaden our understanding of ministry; we must not confine it to the walls of the church, but take it into every aspect of the world, including our places of business and employment – or, to pinch a term from the Cursillo movement, into every environment we find ourselves in.

Our friend the soil scientist is but one example.  There are many others.  I can think of two men in our parish in Wellington who had marvellous ministries.  Neither of them were ordained or licensed as lay ministers.  One was a plumber, the other a funeral director.  Both exemplified Christian ministry in the manner in which they conducted their businesses, and related to their clients.  No doubt there are many thousands of others, many of whom, like the soil scientist have never thought about their work in this way.

And, of course, all that I've said about a place of employment can be translated to apply to our homes, our clubs, the places where we gather with others.  The whole world and every aspect of it is the Lord's harvest field: he calls us all to be labourers in it.

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When Forgiveness Comes First

 

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

 

Do you remember the good old days when parents brought up their children according to traditional values?  I do.  I had one of those upbringings myself.  And one part of that was about the importance of owning up when I did something wrong.  You probably had that lesson drummed into you, too.  If you've done something wrong, the thing to do is to own up, tell the truth, say sorry, and move on.  That's the message that my parents gave me, and it was reinforced at school.

 

Or was it?  Were we praised for our honesty when we confessed our wrongdoing – held up as a good example to others?  No, we were not.  We were punished for the wrongdoing.  And what did that teach us?  That honesty doesn't pay.  Say nothing – and if that doesn't work, try lying your way out of it.  That was the lesson that we soon learned from those who believed that the proper response to a confession was punishment for the crime confessed.

 

The turning-point for me came in Mr Chapman's class, form 4 in the Crantock Street Primary School.  Mr Chapman was a huge man – at least, he looked huge to a small 10-year-old.  And Duggie Dishman was certainly one of those.  One day Mr Chapman came back into the classroom and was about to sit down behind hid desk when he noticed something unpleasant on the seat – something brown, smelly and produced by a dog.  Having a naturally suspicious mind, Mr Chapman did not jump to the obvious conclusion that a dog had somehow managed to get into the classroom, climbed up on the chair, and let nature take its course.  Mr Chapman strongly suspected that one of us was responsible for putting the stuff there.

 

He demanded to know who was responsible for this outrage.  And to the astonishment of us all Duggie Dishman put up his hand and confessed.  Judging from his expression, for a split second  Mr Chapman was as surprised as the rest of us that anyone would own up and tell the truth, but he recovered quickly.  My guess is that Duggie Dishman took a week or two longer to recover.  But the lesson was very clear.  If you follow the teaching of your parents and teachers, don't expect to be praised for your honesty: rather, expect to be very uncomfortable for the next few days.

 

Something rather similar turned up in our news media this week.  Look at the response to the report on mishaps in our hospitals.  The medical professionals owned up collectively to a number of serious mistakes made in our hospitals, some of which resulted in death, some in serious injury.  Why did they do that?  So that they can learn from these instances, and make our hospitals even safer than they are now.  And they are very safe.  As horrible as the cases were, they represented 2 in every 10,000 hospital admissions.  I like those odds; I'll gladly take them if I need surgery at some stage.  And I applaud the decision to make this information available.

 

But what thanks did they get?  Headlines in our media about "killer hospitals".  Demands for further inquiry, disciplinary action, and naming and shaming.  Would it be too surprising if the Duggie Dishman principle came into play here?  Isn't the lesson for our health professionals, don't own up to anything, don't acknowledge your mistakes; if you do you will be slammed in the media, and quite possibly sued in the courts?  We say we want the truth – we say we want to learn from our mistakes – but all too often, what we really want is to punish those who have done wrong, or to sue them for every penny we can get out of them – or their employer, or their insurer or anyone else.  We might call it justice.  What we can't call it is godly.  What we can't call it is merciful.  What we can't call it is truth-promoting.  What we can't call it is forgiveness.

 

And so to the reading from the Book of Exodus this morning (not Genesis, as it says in the notes!).  Here we have a very vivid demonstration of the difference between the human and the divine approach to wrongdoing.  As human beings we can sympathise with Moses' feelings here.  It's not easy leading these people.  They are born grumblers – with, it must be said, something to grumble about.  They, too, are all too human.  When they were slaves in Egypt, they had a terrible life.  Then God, working through Moses, rescued them, led them out of Egypt and called upon them to follow his and he would give them a land of their own.

 

But they had to get there first, and that involved the difficult matter of getting through the wilderness.  And so the grumbling started.  And very soon they were convincing themselves that they were better off in Egypt.  Far from being rescued they had been dragged away against their better judgment by this madcap Moses, and brought out to die in the desert.  What are we going to eat?  What are we going to drink?  At the very least, they have lost their trust in God.  When they were escaping, when they saw the waters part for them, and then close back and drown their Egyptian enemies, it had been easy to believe in God.  It always is when things are going well for us.  But now the difficulties have come, and their faith is gone.

 

Now they turn on Moses.  This wasn't God's idea, this was his.  He has conned them.  They were quarrelling among themselves and asking, "Is the Lord among us or not?"  And notice that the author describes this as 'testing the Lord'.  That expression ought to ring loud bells for us, because not so long ago we had the Temptation of Christ; and one of the Scriptures Jesus quoted to Satan was, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."

 

So the case against the Israelites at this point is pretty strong.  What they should do is own up, confess their wrongdoing, be honest, and apologise.  That's probably what Moses – the Mr Chapman figure in all this – wants them to do; and when there's no sign of that happening, he turns in despair to God.  What am I to do with these people?  They are almost ready to stone me?

 

And the God in whom they have lost faith, the God against whom they have offended, does what?  Demands confession, demands an apology?  No – he doesn't.  He meets their need, as he has been doing all along the way.  He demonstrates yet again that he is their, God, that he is among them, and that Moses is his instrument.  In other words, he reminds them that they are his people, that he loves and accepts them, despite their failures and their sins.

 

St Paul famously puts the same thought this way in his Letter to the Romans: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 

God forgiveness, embodied in Jesus Christ, came to us while were still offending against God.  We didn't have to clean up our act, confess our sins, or anything else first – God's forgives precedes our confession.

 

St John illustrates this same principle in his lovely story of the encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well.  Culturally, humanly, this woman is a nobody, the lowest of the low.  She is a woman, not a man; she is a Samaritan, not a Jew.  Worst of all, she is a Samaritan woman of low reputation.  She has, shall we say, an interesting marital and domestic history.  She doesn't even begin to admit any of that stuff until after Jesus has demonstrated his complete acceptance of her.  And, anyway, Jesus already knew all that stuff.  It makes no difference to him: he accepts her as and who she is.

 

All of this doesn't, of course, mean that we should not confess our sins.  What it does mean is that confession is for us, not for God.  To confess our sins is to off-load those things that make us feel separated from God: it is not a way of seeking to win back God's love, which we have lost through sinning.

 

And all this means that we can confess our sins – we can be honest and tell the truth – in the certain assurance that we are not going to be beaten up as Duggie Dishman was, or vilified in the press as out hospital staff have been, or sued or whatever.  We are going to be assured that God is and always has been among us.  That we have already been forgiven, cleansed, and reconciled to God through the cross of Christ.  That God already knows of our sins before we confess them, and that nothing we can do will ever make any difference to his love for us.

 

That's not justice.  That's forgiveness.  That's mercy.  That's God's way, whatever we put on his seat, and however many mistakes we make.

Repentance is for Radicals

 

Texts: Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; Romans 3:1-17

 

If ever we wanted an illustration of the power of repentance we surely saw it in the remarkable events in Canberra this week, and, in fact, throughout Australia.  No doubt, there are a few cynics around who will dismiss that "saying-sorry" ceremony as pure political theatre, but that's not how those huge crowds we saw on the TV News felt about it.  Something historic, something of fundamental importance to all the people of that country, was taking place, and hardly a man, woman or child was unaffected by it.

 

It was as if the whole dominant class in Australia was collectively repenting – not just acknowledging the specific wrongs of the past, - but changing their mindset.  They were turning away from their past attitude to adopt a new one.  They were rejecting the idea of one type of humanity – their own – being superior to another, the Aborigine peoples.  Perhaps they are not yet ready to go a step further to acknowledge that there is, in fact, only one type of human being, but it was certainly a huge step that they took this week.  No doubt difficult times lie ahead as they work through the implications of this dramatic act of national repentance, but at least now they are facing in the right direction.

 

And that's really what repentance is – a turning to face in the right direction.  It's not only Dick Whittington – and the Australian people! – who need to turn again and again – it is all of us.  All of us can become distracted – all of us can find new things to look at in place of God – all of us are capable of building our own golden calves and worshipping them instead of God.  Where do we look to for our fundamental sense of security, and for our hope for a better future?  To our families, to our careers, to our own hard work, to our country?  All of those are good in themselves, but all of them can become alternatives to God.  When they do it is time for repentance – for turning back to God.

 

We saw another example of turning back a little closer to home this week, when one of our local M.P.'s announced she was quitting Parliament at the next election.  It was time for her, she had decided, to turn back to her family and leave behind, at least for now, her all-consuming political career.  That sort of radical re-prioritising is a form of non-religious repentance; it is not a confession of past wrongdoing but a radical break from the past and present to open up a new future.  Perhaps one day we will hear of an M.P. who is quitting Parliament to spend more time with God.  Wouldn't that be something!  Wouldn't that cause a sensation!

 

I imagine that Abram's radical decision caused something similar among his people.  He was well on in years – perhaps even a bit older than me.  He had a large extended family.  His father had died and he was now the patriarch of the clan.  They were well off, with many livestock, living a comfortable existence, not in Ur as we're often told, but in a place called Haran, to which Abram's father had brought the family some years earlier.  [Genesis 11:31]

 

That probable doesn't matter too much either way.  The point is that there is nothing in the text so far to tell us whether or not Abram or the family were religious – or were even aware of God before his call.    There is no suggestion in the text, for example, that God had called Abram's father, Terah, to leave Ur – the decision seems to have been his own.

 

But nor is there any suggestion that Abram had previously been a wicked man, leading an irreligious life.  Rather, we may assume that he was a fine, upright, middle-class family man, well-off and comfortable – inwardly sad that he had no son of his own – but otherwise untroubled.

 

Then God spoke to him.  God told him to give up all sense of security based on familiarity – leave his own country, his home, the land of his fathers – and journey to a new land.  If he will do that, God promises to make him into a great nation.  I wander if we can grasp how crazy it must have seemed to everyone else besides Abram – or perhaps even to Abram himself when he first heard it.  Who is this God he claims to have heard?  It's not uncommon for older people to hear voices.  Perhaps he's beginning to lose the plot?  Why risk it?  What if it is all a silly delusion?  Where is this new land – what's it like?  Does it even exist?

 

And yet, says, our text, "Abram left, as the Lord had told him".  At one level, of course, this is all about obedience.  But when we look at St Paul's reflections on this episode in his Letter to the Romans, we can see that it is something much more than that.  St Paul makes much of the fact that all this took place before the Law was given.  He says that where there is no law there is no transgression.  In other words, there is no issue of disobedience.

 

And this is surely right.  Look again at this short passage from Genesis and we see that there is no threat of consequence if Abram declines to go.  God does not threaten to strike him down, or take away his livestock, or hurl a few plagues in his direction.  If he declines to leave, then he stays and his life goes on as before.  There is no stick, but there is a great carrot!  Go, and you will be made into a great nation.  Go, and you will be richly blessed.  Go, and your name will be great.  Go, and all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.

 

That's some remuneration package he's been offered there!   But you know what they say, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  What trust could be put in such huge promises?  What trust could be put in the One who was making them?  That was the question for Abram to consider.  He was not being told what to do and threatened with harm if he disobeyed.  He was being told what to do and assured of great blessing if he did.  His response, his decision to leave as the Lord had told him, was one of trust in God, much more than it was a simple act of obedience. 

 

He turned from his past to face a brand new future.  He turned from all worldly considerations and opened himself to God.  That's repentance – real, radical, life-changing repentance.

 

Something similar is put before Nicodemus in his encounter with Jesus in our gospel passage.  Again, we are dealing here with a fundamentally good man.  A faithful Jewish leader, a teacher of the faith.  He must have heard of Jesus, or even heard Jesus himself, somewhere and formed a respectful opinion of him.  He seeks him out, and he addresses him with the courtesy title of Rabbi, even though he must have known that under Jewish law and custom Jesus was not qualified as a rabbi.  Probably he is genuinely interested in finding out more about Jesus.  He knows of Jesus' reputation for extraordinary miracles, and perhaps he is intrigued by this.  How does Jesus do them?  Or, perhaps, he really does accept them as evidence that Jesus must have a special relationship with God.

 

But before he can ask his first question, Jesus takes over the conversation.  He turns the focus away from him and back to Nicodemus.  No one can understand the ways of God unless they are first born again.  He catches Nicodemus completely off-guard, causes him to make a bit of a fool of himself.  Of course, Jesus is not talking about a second biological birth.

 

Then what is he talking about?   He is talking about that radical re-orientation of life that we have been calling repentance.  That turning to God in openness, that turning away from false certainty, even false certainty based on the painstaking study of the Scriptures that Nicodemus would have been doing for years, and simply trusting God to lead us in his ways. That is not something we can achieve by our own efforts.  That requires the gift of grace, that requires the gift of the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, Jesus says, but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit.

 

That whole encounter must have shaken Nicodemus to the roots of his being.  In his own way he was being challenged as Abram was: could he leave all that he was familiar with in his learning, could he risk his position in the community, and walk a new path, following this mysterious man who seems in some new way to have come from God?  In the end, he seems to have made that leap of faith, for it was he who helped Joseph of Arimethea to bury Jesus.  (John 19:39)

 

Radical repentance – a radical change of direction – for Australia, for Katherine Rich, for Abram, for Nicodemus.  May it be for us also as we continue our journey through Lent.  Amen.