The Incarnate Jesus is God’s ‘Yes’ to us

At the start of our readings, the disciples have been out-and-about healing, teaching, solving the world's problems, sorting out the Church of God and trying not to create any new issues.

They report to Jesus who can tell by their stories, probably the lines under their eyes and the pitch of the voice, that His little motley crew are weary. So he says ‘’Yes" to their need and tries to take them off for some compassionate leave.

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

And it seems that for the boat ride and possibly only the boat ride, they do have some space. But as soon as they land it’s all on again. The people recognise Jesus, round up the sick, the halt, the maimed, the blind and bring them to wherever Jesus will be.

And Jesus says ‘Yes’ to them all. He always says Yes to those who come in faith, hope and belief. And all it takes is to touch the edge of his cloak.

On a bigger and broader scale, from the perspective of history, this intriguing little man, the God made flesh, is God's Yes to the people of old. God sent a string of prophets, Moses, Abraham and Jacob to name just a few of the top-billing ones and even though people liked what they saw and heard and responded with a grin when it came to saying ‘Yes’ in their daily lives in the long haul then they were a bit iffy. In the wilderness, it was easier to gossip and whinge than to say Yes. They became a bit squishy around the edges, more inclined to say ‘err… maybe’ instead of an unequivocal, simple, uncomplicated and resounding  ‘Yes’.

I often wonder about the healed people in today’s gospel. I wonder what happened to them and I wonder where they were on Good Friday when the chips were at their lowest, in fact, to stretch the symbolism way too far there were no chips on the table at all, the cards were scattered all over the floor and the casino's front door had been boarded up.

If we are honest, there are times when we too are fickle, ambivalent, and wonder what on earth we are doing and why we are doing it anyway. We are hesitant to say our ‘Yes’ to Him; thus we are hesitant to say ‘Yes’ to ourselves and ‘Yes’ to others. So the whole thing can easily slide downwards in a slippery spiral of ambiguity at best, or negativity at worst.

The message of the compassionate leave and healing in the gospel is that God chooses to say ‘Yes’

He says ‘Yes’ to us in Jesus Christ. God says ‘Yes’  and consciously chose to send us His Son as his living, breathing, incarnate Yes. Our loving Master is God's Yes in a physical Body. And this same Jesus continues to say ‘Yes’ to us at every Eucharist when He chooses to feed us with His living bread and His living word. When He literally places His own vulnerable self into our hands. He says ‘Yes’ to us in and through the support we give each other.

What is it I wonder that makes us so slow to say our Yes and respond appropriately and accordingly? Is it perhaps that we know that there is a cost involved?

One of the things I hang onto is something I read literally decades ago and I can’t remember the exact words but it was something like…

‘Even when you don’t feel like praying then you can tell God that you want to pray and even when you can’t do that, then you can tell Him that you want to want to pray.’

The same principle applies here. Even when we are reluctant to say Yes, you can always say I want to say Yes and if that is honestly where you are up to and where your heart is at, then The Master will always say His own Yes to that your mustard seed of faith.

In absolutely everything that we are, like Mother Mary who said her own Yes, God is never embarrassed by us but is always saying a resounding Yes to us. He will consciously choose this because He can do no other and He can be nothing else.

Walter Brueggemann who we heard from last week captures this far more eloquently. I’ve put a little bit about him in today’s pew sheet and I leave it to him to have the last word.

You are the God who is simple, direct
clear with us and for us
You have committed yourself to us
You have said yes to us in creation
yes, to us in our birth
yes to us in our baptism
yes to us in our awakening this day

But we are of another kind
More accustomed to ¨perhaps, maybe,
we'll see
Left in wonderment and ambiguity

We live our lives not back to your yes
But out of our endless ¨perhaps¨

So we pray for your mercy this day
that we may live yes back to you
Yes with our time
Yes with our money
Yes with our sexuality
Yes with our strength and with our weakness
Yes to our neighbor
Yes and no longer ¨perhaps¨

In the name of your enfleshed yes to us
Even Jesus who is our yes into your future. Amen.

Rectories … A house or a home?

It is an undeserved privilege to live in a rectory, especially the one I happen to be in now. Someone thought carefully about the life we clerics live and set things out accordingly. I have lived in 8 rectories now and each one has been a joy.

On the surface of it, the rectories are just a building. Something else has to happen before they can legitimately be called home with a capital ‘H’.

The pictures on the wall help and when you get the internet and TV to work that is a huge relief. A comfy bed to snore in is also essential.

But it is something more. Memories are to be created, looked back on and savoured. This sunny corner is where I read that amazing book. The dinner table where old so and so came and regaled us with hilarious, albeit slightly dubious stories. The veggie patch has given so generously and responded to attention and pruning. All are ingredients that are daily stirred into the fabric of the place. Over time, gradually, ever so slowly, without us realising it the address becomes a Home. It’s not something that you can rush or construe. It must happen organically of its own accord. Then one day you look back and you realise that something has shifted, altered and changed.

But the most important factor to enable this transformation is to be completely "at Home" within your own self. To be as relaxed with yourself as you are with the sofa and your surroundings. You can never be at home in any building if you are jarring and jangled. Being at home starts not with a view of the lounge room, but looking within yourself. What do you see there and what needs doing to make yourself Home?

Dear Sebastian,

Thank you very much for your letter enquiring about prayer. This is a rather fulsome topic and it sounds that you, like me, struggle with your prayers. So I hope these few lines might be of some help to you.

If I had to reduce prayer down to one sentence I would say that prayer is conversation with God. That in and of itself is a preposterous thing. Fancy the presumptuousness of conversing with the creator of everything. Who the heck do we think we are?

And yet, it is the Creator of everything that actually longs to have a conversation with us which is even more outlandish, surprising and stupefying.

Within prayer, there is the structured ordered prayer that the church offers us.

These are Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and they follow a basic pattern. An Opening prayer, psalms, readings, prayers for whatever you think needs praying about (check out the latest news feed if you’re at all stuck) the Lord’s prayer and a concluding prayer. It sounds a lot and terrifying, but it isn’t really. There are nifty apps they have these days which organise everything for you and all you have to do is open one up and read it through.

But it is not just a matter of reading the words whether they be in a book or on a screen. The aim I think is to read them slowly and soak in what you are reading so that it becomes a part of you.

Having said that some readings you will find unhelpful, particularly in the Old Testament where people seemed to spend a lot of time slaughtering each other and turning away from the God who was continuously reaching out to them. Perhaps we need to be reassured that God continues to be very interested in us even if sometimes the world does not seem to be very interested in God.

Likewise, the psalms are often puzzling. They capture the whole gamut of emotions. Psalm 35 is what I call a grumpy Psalm

“May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame; may those who plot my ruin be turned back in dismay. May they be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord driving them away; may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them.”

Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ is a reassuring  psalm while  Psalm 100 is a champagne psalm

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.”

It’s important I think to understand a little of the background when you are reading anything from the bible and one of the most helpful things anyone ever said to me about the bible was to think of it as a library. Lots of different books, by lots of different people, written in lots of different styles and for lots of different reasons. Some just to tell a story, some to inspire us, some to teach us and some are just letters.

It will take you a lifetime to BEGIN to understand it but better than that, try to just enjoy it. Over the years different things will reveal themselves that you never noticed before. This is actually good news and exciting. The gems that you dig out from scripture are inexhaustible.

There will be times when you are really not quite sure what you should be saying to God. There may be a lot of hurly-burly going on in your life or there may be nothing much going on. Your vocabulary will seem inadequate and fail you. This is very OK and very normal.

You do have options. I will frequently go back to the Lord's prayer. It’s the prayer The Master taught us for a very good reason. A lot is going on in this very little prayer and the first two words are an important reminder of the relationship God lovingly wants to have with you. ‘Our… Father.

You can also shake your fist at God either metaphorically and/or with a wild, physical gesticulation.  Countless people have done it before and I don’t know of anyone who has been struck down… yet. Its honest, it has integrity and God knows that you are sulky long before you ever get around to telling Him. So don’t be shy.

I mentioned that prayer is ‘A conversation with God’. This means that for at least 50% of the time we shouldn’t be saying anything at all. We should be listening and this will mean being silent and this is a very difficult and excruciating thing to do. Being silent in our noisy world when we have so much to say is not easy.

The most helpful thing anyone said to me about this listening bit of prayer is ‘Trust the Silence’. It will catch you and hold you, even though you might feel like you are in free fall a lot of the time, even when you think nothing much is happening. ‘Trust the Silence’.

One last word of encouragement.

In the Old Testament in the book of Numbers in chapter 22, there is a splendid story of a guy called Balaam, an angel and his donkey. I won’t spoil the story but Balaam doesn’t see the angel and yet the donkey does. And if the Donkey can see the angel …

In your backpack …

July 7th 2024

Mark is very clear about the where and when in today's gospel. The day is the sabbath, the place is Jesus home synagogue in Nazareth and He is guest superstar preacher for the day. Many are amazed at what he has to offer. It’s all going so very well and I’d love to have a copy of his homily so I could use it next Sunday. But we’re not told what he said, we‘re only told the people's reaction. After the initial excitement, however, something shifts. The folk begin to ask heckling questions.

“Where did this man get these things?” “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?  Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

It seems that The Master's teaching is almost too good to be true. A local lad could not possibly preach this well. Jesus slumps in the opinion polls as preferred rabbi and “they took offence at him”.

The Master is amazed at their lack of faith and because miracles always happen within the context of faith, Jesus could not do any miracles there. His ministry is limited to the laying on of hands and healing a few.

So what went wrong? The Master knows and explains

“A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home”

It would seem that the divine is hidden by the familiar. They know Jesus from days of yore, they know his background and his family. Indeed they accurately list His family tree. This common, everyday appearance is all that the locals can see. For them, this sabbath was a transactional event. They came expecting one thing and were offered something else. They felt cheated and disappointed. This is not what we came to synagogue for.

And there is a message here for the way we look at our global family, our national family, our state family, our nuclear family and our parish family. Is it not possible that miracle workers and healers are walking amongst us? As we trip to the altar we can so easily forget who it is that is with us and who it is that is there to meet us and give himself to us. This is my body, given for … you… With angels and arch angels. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. It's all there and real. And because we say it time after time we must continuously remind ourselves that it is not just a statement of belief, but a living reality that surrounds us, engulfs us, lives within us and is part of our daily lives. Inside and outside the church building. The familiar can very easily deceive us.

But the second part of the gospel also gives us a few clues about how to see more clearly.

Notice the meagre provisions that the Teacher of Nazareth asks his disciples to pack … or rather …not to pack.

“Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.”

It’s the barest, most minimalist list you could imagine and it invites the prospective disciple to carry a huge amount of trust, hope and faith.

But there is a certain delicious freedom in this paucity of property. What we do not take on the journey are things like the burdens of doubt, the rocks of prejudice, the bully of fear and the intolerable burden of sin which God has forgotten about but which we insist on lumbering around with us at every agonising step. And each morning the temptation is to load up our back pack with the baggage we carried around yesterday. And that can be difficult, especially when it is the hard rejection or hurt by our own ‘locals’.

This is not the itinerant preacher who has a fabulous marketing strategy and a 10-point plan for the business to grow exponentially illustrated on PowerPoint slides with colour-coded graphs and pie charts. No, there is something quite different going on here. Jesus is something else and he is someone else. It would have been so much easier if he revealed himself in the spectacular, the dazzling and the sparkling instead of the familiar and ordinary, the bread, the wine, the water, the oil,  the grey hair and large dollops of silence.

Walter Brueggemann captured this sense of the bewildering preacher who asks us to pack nothing but his freedom. We should let Walter have the last word today.

We would as soon you were stable and reliable.
We would as soon you were predictable
and always the same toward us.
We would like to take the hammer of doctrine
and take the nails of piety
and nail your feet to the floor
and have you stay in one place.

And then we find you moving,
always surprising us,
always coming at us from new directions.
Always planting us
and uprooting us
and tearing all things down
and making all things new.
You are not the God we would have chosen
had we done the choosing,
but we are your people
and you have chosen us in freedom.
We pray for the great gift of freedom
that we may be free toward you
as you are in your world.
Give us that gift of freedom
that we may move in new places
in obedience and in gratitude.

“Throwing bombs over my shoulder”

It was a little line that caught my attention. It slipped past very quickly but it made me stop and think; the words rattling around long after the words had finished making a sound.

I’ve known people who have left organisations and on their way  ‘out’ have thrown a bomb over their shoulder. It’s not a courteous thing to do and it leaves a mess for the next person and those who are trying to settle them in.

But that is not what this person was referring to. They were talking about the process where they tried to obliterate their past and …I get that. I do. To chuck a bomb over your shoulder and eliminate what has gone before. There are things in all of our lives that we wish had never occurred. Errors of judgement, the unexpected illness or death, the unravelling of a relationship. Sometimes it’s a combo of all of the above.

And while the past is the past, it can never be completely extinguished. We are all products of our past no matter how shady or scarred or icky. The trick I think is to learn from what has gone before and to use that as jet propulsion fuel for the future. To hopefully not make the same mistakes again. To be shinier, wiser, smarter, gentler and maybe even smile more. To reach out a hand to those who have fallen in the same pothole that we fell into. To be able to say … ‘This is what I found helped me when the wheels fell off.’

The past is the past, is the past and far from demolishing it we can actually learn from it, put our anger and bombs away and look forward to the future.

Of Faith and Doubt.

When we think about the faithful worshipper we swiftly jump to the conclusion that they never have questions, doubts or dry prayer days. Their book of life is all sorted and has been read, digested and enjoyed with no tricky bits to negotiate.

But to claim that we have all the answers, to swear assuredly that we are right and you are wrong is breathtaking in its audacity, inappropriate in its rudeness and just downright dangerous in its self-entitlement.

Any honest God botherer will tell you that there are always doubts, questions and wrestling. Frequently there are days when our prayers are nothing more than authentic tears and passionate fist-shaking.

So if we have given the impression of being smug “know-it-alls” then we have done ourselves a disservice and have cheated others of a wild adventure. A perilous, risky, thrilling ride where we are always learning new things and continuously confessing that we think differently now.  Surely when we admit that we haven’t got the answer, we create a void, an opportunity to grow and an experience to relish and enjoy.

Faith and doubt are one package and they need each other. They are on the same single continuum and not at war with each other. The two sides to the single coin. They are forever calling to one another, confronting each other complementing each other.

Nick Cave captured this exquisitely when he said “The tragedy with easy Christianity is that it takes away the adventure we are called to have with God. When all risk and courage are eliminated, so too is the passion and the mystery.”

So give me the adventure and the questions. Give me the colour, the sparkle and the surprises. Give me the doubts and give me the faith.

“Hope is optimism with a broken heart”. Nick Cave

Today's story is about several different people from every parish I have been in. It is about all of them in general and none in particular. I have watched this drama play out frequently, always trying to tread gently and listen to their words rather than speak my own.

I’ll call them Matilda and Rupert because to the best of my very dodgy memory, I don’t think I have ever had the privilege of ministering to a Matilda and
Rupert, although I would dearly like to of course.

Matilda is Rupert's mum. She was given a confronting medical diagnosis and a very grim prognosis. Such was the relationship between the two and the faith of both of them, that not even a poker-faced doctor could take away their faith and their hope. In 99% of the cases, the sombre doctors were right and Matilda did die. But something else happened in the process. Something very difficult to articulate. It cannot be measured in a laboratory or grasped in our hands. It is something far more miraculous and lovely than a brief respite from the inevitable demise that our hard-wired mortality demands.

When all seemed lost, forlorn and hopeless, not once did the ‘Ruperts’ and ‘Matildas’ of this world give up. Their faith and courage remained unflinching in the face of the stethoscopes and machines that go bing. Even when there was blood and vomit and drugs and tears their hope was not taken away or vanquished.

It remained supreme and triumphant even when and perhaps especially when, the last breath had been taken and the undertakers phoned.

And that I think is part of the message of today’s two healing stories. Yep, it's great that the dead girl got up and lived.  It would be nice to think that she lived a happy long life, married, had babies of her own and was a faithful, practising Jew going along to the synagogue where her dad was head server and vestryman.

It’s splendid that the woman who had had the bleed for  12 years (coincidentally the same number of years as the young girl had been alive) was restored to her family, to her community and in good health.

Whilst none of these healings could have happened without The Master's help, it is the faith and hope of these ladies that smacks you between the eyes. The woman who believes with everything that she is, that if she just touches the hem of Jesus’ garment then that will be enough and she will be healed.

That takes real grit, passionate hope and faith that I hope that I might have one day if I ever grow up.

Jarius of course is just as tenacious. Let’s call it for what it is.  His daughter is dying. She is in the last stages of palliative care but this does not stop him. He is undaunted in his mission.

A few things about Jarius, his daughter, Matilda and the woman.

First, notice that in each case physical touch is involved. The woman touches Jesus’ garment and Jesus takes the little girl by the hand. And I wonder how many times you also have brought healing, comfort and consolation by your touch to those who are in need. I am sure that you have done more than you realise. It’s always the way. We go away feeling futile and impotent, but what we leave behind is always remembered and so deeply appreciated.

Secondly, both the woman with the bleed and the little girl are ritually impure. In both instances, Jesus places the needs of the afflicted person above purity laws. Jesus allows himself to be touched by the woman who has been unclean because of her bleeding, and, as a result, socially and religiously marginalised; ‘outside’ the chosen people of God. If Jairus’ daughter is dead, then the touch of her body would render Our Lord impure. In the context of this story, the two women are equals: both need healing which he can give.

Finally, the woman approaches her Lord on her behalf. Jarius on behalf of his daughter. It matters not whether we approach HIM for ourselves or on behalf of someone else. The faith, the hope, the courage, the unstoppable, unconquerable love and just the act of asking, are all that count, no matter who is approaching Jesus and why.

For my Matildas and Ruperts wherever you are and whoever you are, please know that even when your countenance was contorted by grief and your eyes were blotchy and reddened, in my eyes and in the eyes of The Master you were amazing and you are magnificent. To touch and anoint was a humbling and undeserved privilege.

So where to now?

A couple of simple phrases for you to take home. I hope you will find them helpful. They are not the last word, for the last word has not been written yet and Him who is THE spoken word, is always the Living word.

“Hope is optimism with a broken heart.” Nick Cave

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”. Hebrews 11:1-3

“Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Mark 5:36

The Manual for World Peace.

I’ve been trying to work out why the sharing of food is so powerful. Think about all our life milestones and you will discover that there is often a sharing of sustenance as part of the package.

After a funeral… The cuppa, the sausage roll, the lamington and that tomato sandwich are just as important as the eulogy and the pictorial display. The conversation and chatter that the fare facilitates is vital to everyone who is in the early stages of their grief.

Think of a wedding. After the vows, rings and the smooch, there are always some beverages and food to share and enjoy.

Think of the couple who are just in the early stages of trying to work out if their relationship is platonic or may lead to something more. The venue for the discerning process is often a table with some food on it along with a glass of something fabulous and if we’re lucky a red rose and a lit candle.

When I toddle off to the Clergy Retreat we always begin with a very noisy BBQ on Monday night before plunging into the delicious depths of silence on Tuesday morning.

Something quite special happens when we share food. It enables conversation, and can engender camaraderie; it becomes a shared experience to look back upon, hopefully with fondness and the desire to do it all again.

Naive as this might be, I reckon that if those who disagree so publicly sat down privately and shared a scrumptious lamb roast with a fine bottle of red ned with some crispy potatoes then there might be more grins and less angst.

Hec ... For a meal like that, I’d be willing to try.  Maybe the manual for world peace is actually a first-rate recipe book.

23 June 2024

Four stormy questions

The usual path for the preacher today is to point to the reassuring reality that the Master is always with us in the storms of life. ‘The boat’ can be interpreted as our parish, community, nation or life.

And it is true... The master is always with us. Often he indeed seems to be snoring when we need him most and it is true that sometimes he seems to stir from his slumber and put things right, bringing stillness and calm in the most unlikely way. It is also true that Jesus’ slumber is a sign of his confidence in us. But amid today’s weather forecast, there are 4 stormy questions.

Each one of them is a rhetorical question. IE | A question that is asked for effect and to make a point. It does not seek an answer. Kind of like ‘Do you think it’s wise Father David, to drink a bottle of your finest before a funeral?’ Notice also that there are no answers to any of the 4 questions. It is left up to us to discover the answers for ourselves in the storms of our asking.

So let’s take each question one by one and see where this little boat ride might finish up.

Question 1

“Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

That Jesus cares has never been in question and it's not what the disciples are asking. What the disciples want to know is what, if anything, is the Master going to do about this life-threatening situation.

Further, there is the slightest tinge of manipulation in this question.

“If you cared, you will do something about this.” Or worse. “If you cared, you would have made sure that this storm would never have occurred in the first place and we would have had an uneventful passage across the lake.”

It’s not an uncommon way of thinking. ‘If the God we worship is so loving and caring how come … The television tells me that A, B, C and Q.4 happen daily.

Perhaps it comes back to the snoring Jesus in the stern. Maybe the onus is on us to be active when the storms get tempestuous.

Notice the salutation with which Jesus is addressed. The disciples call him ‘Teacher’. This will be important later on when we get to question four.

So Jesus stills the storm and turns to his disciples for questions 2 and 3

Question 2

Why are you so afraid?

Question 3

Do you still have no faith?

I don’t think Jesus is looking for an answer here, rather he wants the disciples to ask the question of themselves. So it becomes not  ‘Why are you afraid?’ But rather the disciples need to ask themselves ‘Why am I afraid?’ And this is a very pertinent question to all of Jesus’ disciples including ourselves. Why am I afraid? or What am I afraid of? Why are we panicking instead of having faith?

Which brings us to Jesus’ second question.

Do you still have no faith?

Almost as if to say ….After everything I have said and everything I have done…. how come you guys still have no faith? What is it that is stopping you or rather stopping us, from having the faith to snore through the storms of life? These are really good questions to ask ourselves in a quiet setting. What is it that hinders, thwarts and stops me from having the faith that I know I should have and certainly the faith that the Master has given me? What is the self-imposed roadblock that stands in the way of becoming the person I am called to be?

Like those disciples in the leaky boat, part of it is fear. Fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of becoming vulnerable, fear of …

Fear can thwart you, drown you, render you ineffectual and impotent. It is a bully. It needs to be confronted and told off for what it is.

So exactly what is it that we are afraid of? I think we need to be brutally honest here and say that one of our most popular fears is death. Not necessarily what is on the other side, but the process of physically dying. The storm we encounter to get to the other side. The fear of dying is an understandable and almost respectful fear to have. But mixed through this fear there is always hope because of who it is that is really with us in the boat and what He has done. Which brings us to the fourth question.

Question 4

“Who is this?”

The disciples start by calling Jesus ‘teacher.’ As I pointed out, no answer is given to any of the questions. We must decide for ourselves who it is that is with us. That is part of Mark’s cleverness and charm. He poses the questions and then just hands over his manuscript to us. He sets us off into the storm of thinking and wrestling and only when we have found our answers does the silence and peace begin.

A question for your homework. At this point in your life are you…

The snoring Jesus?

The frightened disciples?

The boat carrying others through the storm?

The storm itself.?

Of Regrets.

Regrets are something that we tend to accumulate along the way as we journey through life. It’s just part of the stuff we put in our suitcase of experience. I don’t think many of us sit down over our assorted breakfast fare and plot our day deliberately in order to make a mistake that morphs pretty quickly into a regret.

Regrets seem pretty much unavoidable and inevitable and they have this wicked habit of surreptitiously sneaking up on you from behind and smacking you around the head with a large cooking pot. They then take out a serrated-edged knife and slice deeply into your heart, twisting as they go.

But… and this is the good bit. The moving on a bit. Nick Cave reckons that they can also help us lead improved lives. They can accompany us on the incremental bettering of our lives.’

Make no mistake, regrets will find you. They will seek you out and hunt you down. ‘They are forever floating to the surface. They require our attention. You have to do something with them. One way is to seek forgiveness by making what we call living amends, by using whatever gifts you may have in order to help rehabilitate the world’.

So next time one of these pesky little critters sneaks up on you from behind, lurking in your memory, turn around, confront it, look lovingly at it and see what you can learn from it. What lessons does it have to offer you and how can you use the experience to transform your life, your community and world… one regret at a time?

You will also find that if you challenge your regret, face off against it… the frequency of their attack will be lessened and the pain they inflict will be dulled. It won’t be easy …. but…

16 June 2024

Freddy; the incompetent Gardner.

In today’s gospel, we are given two short parables for the price of one. Please don’t feel cheated, a lot is going on here within just a few short verses.

I have to say that I am not much taken with our friendly gardener who for privacy reasons I will call Freddy. I wish Freddy had met Costa (shave for a cure) Georgiadis from Gardening Australia.

Let me explain

In the first parable, the theological gurus tell me that the word used to describe Freddy’s sowing technique is a word for ‘throw’ or ‘toss’. So our hapless gardener Freddy just seems to chuck it out there willy-nilly. There is no forward planning or thinking. The seed will fall where it will and you would think that some thought and care might make for a better harvest.

Further, There is no mention of fertiliser (as in the parable of the fig tree Luke13;8,9) nor is there any mention of doing any weeding or watering. Nope, none of that… Freddy simply chucks it out there and seemingly there is no follow-up or care. Almost a cowboy attitude.

Our suspicion of Freddy’s incompetence is backed up when we read

“the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

Freddy simply goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning leaving the field to grow on its own.

In the second parable we have another horticultural bungle.

We often think of the mustard seed as growing into a large tree which is in fact how Luke tells the story. (Luke 13:18-19) But Mark uses a word which translates to more of a shrub than a large tree.

Now when the gardener plants his mustard seeds he no doubt intends to have a nice addition to his herb garden just in case he wants to make some hot english mustard. Yet in this parable the mustard seed’s value is not because of its flavour, but rather because it provides shade for the birds. Surely this is not what our tragic gardener Freddy intended! Imagine planting a mustard seed or a tomato seedling or a pumpkin plant hoping for some delicious fruit and all you get is a semi aviary type structure that provides shelter for the birds. Birds that are pests, birds that peck and eat at our yummy produce well before we get a chance to protect our fruit and enjoy it. We are the ones who are supposed to eat the fruit of our labours, not those feathered pesky critters.

But the parables offer some encouragement and some warning.

First, the gospel has its own inherent power. It doesn’t require us to be highly skilled planters or attentive horticulturist’s or even to join the Costa fan club. All the gospel needs to grow is for us to scatter it out into the world. We don’t even have to sow it carefully. We just toss it out there as best we can. And keep on being faithful in this vocation. The innate power of the gospel will do the rest.

A Warning. We as the Church often like to think that we know what we’re doing as planters of the gospel. We think we know how to plant the gospel in the world and it's so easy to fret and strategise about how to spread the gospel, that we forget to toss the seed out into the world which is in fact, the only thing we are required to do.

And in the parable of the mustard seed  we need to be mindful of trying to control the outcomes. We may plant a seed with one intention only to discover when it comes to fruition, that its usefulness is entirely different from that which we anticipated. We might think that we are growing a spice garden, when in actual fact we are in the throes of building an aviary or even a menagerie.

But be encouraged brothers and sisters. Taken together our two little parables tell us that the incompetence of Freddy  is not important to the outcome. Freddy’s lack of understanding, our lack of understanding, does not undermine the capacity of the gospel to grow into a bountiful harvest. Nor does our intention to harvest one thing prevent God from doing something completely different. Thank Goodness.

Our task is simply to be faithful. To go on being faithful . Not to fret about the outcomes and the bottom lines and how big the marrow will be. We ought not be too invested in what we think is our lack of expertise and we dare not take credit for whatever may be produced by our flimsy and chaotic efforts.

The kingdom of heaven grows not because of us but in spite of us. It flourishes where it will and how it will. It comes to fruition in its own time. Not when we say it should. And it will and must shelter those we think are a pesky nuisance and who irritate us the most. So here’s to Freddy the Gardener and Peter Cundell who join me in saying

“And that’s your blooming lot for the week”.

Of winners, losers and antagonism

And so we came to Budget night. There were many images on different size screens. Smartly dressed people, exquisitely manicured, tenderly holding microphones. Countless people spoke a lot of words and wrote even more. Somewhere an unnoticed tree gasped and fell writhing to the ground. Ink was sprayed upon it in the form of many numerals.

The detail and hyperbole left me needing a warm shower and a glass of medicine. My grey hairs tell me that all this hoopla happened last year and will inevitably be repeated next year. I have never been blessed with strong numeracy skills and somehow just could not get enthralled.

What did pique my interest was this whole “winners and losers business”.  If you were of this demographic or had this particular interest or were at this particular stage of life, then you were a winner or a loser. Depending upon a couple of other variables over which you had little or no control you were a grinner or a weeper.

Now I don’t mind who you write the number 1 (one) next to on the ballot paper. It’s your business and we are blessed that we can vote freely in this splendid democracy of ours.

My question rather is why do such documents and political jamborees always have to be ‘Us versus them’ or ‘Winners versus losers’? Does the dish of the budget / the election / political hot potato really have to be served up to us with such an adversarial sauce?

Would it be such a devastating thing if some of us went without a little (became losers) for the sake of those who truly need more? (became winners) Are we so addicted to antagonism? It would seem so, but I would be thrilled to be proven wrong.