11 August 1024

The bread of humanity, the stuff of God.

The creators of the lectionary had me stumped this week. In the first lesson, we have the heart-wrenching story of King David learning that his son Absalom has died a grizzly death. The details are all printed in the pew sheet in graphic detail. It would be the sort of macabre demise that would delight the most voracious journalist and feed the daily news cycle for a good couple of days, pushing aside anything else that was purporting to be news in the local area.

The Cushite who brings this news to King David has no idea that Absalom is David’s son and actually thinks that Absalom is the king’s enemy. So it is with fierce glee that the Cushite reports.

“May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up to harm you, be like that young man.”

King David of course is crushed. ‘He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!’

You can almost hear the King’s sobs and words.  It rings disquietly and grimly authentic. Maybe you have heard something similar. Maybe you have said something similar.

Then in the gospel reading for today, we get a hefty wedge of John’s bread of life discourse with more to follow next week. The Jews are grumbling because The Master is saying some complex things. Jesus is misunderstood and all he really wants to do is feed his people with the gift of Himself.

So what common theme might these two readings have? Fr. David will have to try to connect the two together on the flimsiest of pretexts.

The death of Absalom has a few faint,… OK very faint, echoes of another death. Absalom dies upon a tree. He dies pierced and he dies at the hands of others. Sound familiar? Absalom, the departed is also the son of a King although this is not widely known at the time. It will be much later when this truth emerges.

But there is also another connection. The brokenness of Absalom and the brokenness of King David are part of the brokenness of the Eucharistic bread that John is referring to in his gospel where Jesus is playing a tough gig to a grumpy crowd.

Or let me try and put it another way. The only thing that begins to make sense of the shattering of Abaslom and David, and the times we are crushed, is the bread that is in pieces on the altar. It is there on the altar, on the paten and in the ciborium, that we glimpse the reality that His brokenness, is our brokenness, is His brokenness.

This does not take away King David’s pain, nor does it stop our tears, but the beginning of our healing is to realise that he is not a God who holds himself aloof when we need him most. He does not hold us at arm's distance but rather wraps his arms around us as we weep together. For as long as it takes, for as often it takes.

Perhaps the wounded and pierced Messiah is the one who can turn the grieving King David’s words “If only I had died instead of you” into victory, for the Master did die for us.

The bread which is Him on the altar does not somehow fix things and make it all better. The bread is still broken and once its broken you can’t somehow put it all back together again and magically make it as it was before.

King David's life cannot be as it was before he learned of his son's death.

At the altar, we understand again that our afflictions no matter our small or bewildering, are in fact sanctified. They are made holy, they are taken into that other dimension, His dimension. Our humanity is taken into his divinity and we are transformed, morphed and we can never be the same again.

One of the options when we bless holy water is to add salt as part of the ritual. Not just to remind us that salt is a cleansing agent, but also as a symbol of salty tears which are the most authentic form of prayer we can offer.

For the 30 years before today’s misunderstanding between the Jews and Jesus, the Master partook of the bread of humanity. In his daily meals, in the worship at the synagogue, in the meals of mourning, banquets of feasting and wedding receptions. In the hurdy gurdy dancing and in the laughter, in hidden weeping and the tedious grist of daily humdrum life. For 30 years he consumed our daily bread.

It is understandable to come to Him, wanting Him to turn back the clock and make things as they were. We come embarrassed by our scars and emptiness.

He comes to us, to show us that our scars are actually beautiful. Our tears are exquisite, and we have all we need and more. In Him we see what we are now and what we can be into the future.

The bread of Humanity / the stuff of God. The bread of God / the stuff of Humanity.

Mary Sumner

“It can’t have been easy”

Today I want to start with Mary Sumner's own Mum Mrs. Heywood. It is the culture and atmosphere of the home that we grow up in, that we silently absorb on a daily basis, which helps to form us as we mature. We don’t do this consciously or with deliberate acts. Rather we soak up more than we ever know from our family home. Sometimes we sense this only much later in life, especially when we find ourselves saying things just like our parents. Eerily it’s frequently word for word and in a tone that sounds just like Mum and Dad.

Mary Sumner was born Mary Heywood. Her Mother also had the name Mary. We are told that

“Mary Heywood was a woman of personal piety who held mothers’ meetings in her home in Herefordshire, England. She was a woman of great faith and quite wealthy” So you would have thought that it was all very grand and easy. But… there is a sad little footnote when we read that she suffered the loss of a six week old son.

It can’t have been easy.

Mary grew up a talented, educated lass learning 3 languages and travelling to Rome to complete her musical education. There she met her future husband George Sumner. So she began Rectory life with all its joys and privileges, together with its bumps and intrusions.

It can’t have been easy.

When Mary gave birth to her first born, a daughter, she wrote

” I shall never forget the awed sense of responsibility as I took her in my arms. It struck me how much I needed special training for so great a work and how little I knew. I felt that mothers had one of the greatest and most important professions in the world and yet there was none had so poor a training for its supreme duties.”

Being a parent and being in a family…

It can’t have been easy

The Mothers’ Union was still far off and yet it all stemmed from this time in Mary’s life.

So daunted and yet so enthralled Mary Sumner

was passionate about transforming the home–lives of Parish families, by helping the women to support one another in raising their children. Her husband was very supportive: ‘just share your heart – God will do the rest’. She was so nervous at the first meeting of the parish women, that she refused to speak, and asked George to take her place. It was very unusual for a woman to be a public speaker.

However, George encouraged her to speak from the heart and it went so well that she found the courage to speak at future meetings. Hoorah! Her talks were inspired by her faith – it was practical and down to earth – ‘Remember, Ladies, to be yourselves what you would have your children be’. After groups with women became well established, she was asked to speak to the men of the Parish. Now that can’t have been easy!

She was apprehensive, but agreed, and helped them to be more aware of what their wives did for them, to show more respect and love. The meetings grew, and included women – old and young, rich and poor. Others heard about her work, and started groups in their own areas.

In 1885, at a time when it was still unheard of for women to speak to large audiences, Mary Sumner was invited by the Presiding Bishop to speak to a packed church congress session for women in Portsmouth.

Now the whole “it can’t have been easy” thing has just been ratcheted up to its highest gear.

From 1900 onwards, she and the members started to advocate on issues of key importance to families and children – she campaigned to stop children collecting alcohol from public houses for their families, and for the age of marriage for girls to be raised from 12 to 16. She was not afraid to speak up on difficult issues, despite resistance from members of the establishment. When she died in August 1921, 4,000 women attended her funeral. She could not have conceived how the seeds which she planted would grow into a movement 4 million strong today, of members in 83 countries putting their faith into action to nurture healthy relationships in families and communities and to fight for social justice.

She was also not afraid to act outside the social norms, to do what she believed to be right. At a time when unmarried girls with children were condemned and cast out, she cared for and protected her niece and her illegitimate son.

Hey, hang on a minute. This would have been really quite something. An unwed Mum in the 19th century would have been looked down upon and besmirched. Thankfully to the likes of Mary Sumner instead of broadcasting  disparaging remarks to anyone who will listen today we say
‘Welcome. You are a part of our family. How can we best support and encourage you? Our next MU meeting is…’

And there is a little backstory here that we can only guess at. What happened to the niece’s parents? Where were they? How come it was left to Aunty Mary Sumner to protect and look after this young lass and her child?

It can’t have been easy…and when things are not easy then prayer is the only place to start. So the prayer that Mary Sumner herself wrote will be a good place to end … err begin…as we continue Mary Sumner’s work.

“All this day, O Lord, Let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch, Do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the words I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen”

Battery Low”

I can get around the lake about 5 mornings out of the seven. Sometimes the weather is calm, crisp and delicious. Other days it’s rough and tumble. Sometimes I get around swiftly, particularly when it's Parkrun on a Saturday morning and other times it's a plodding shuffle.

One of the things that helps is music that I play into my ears from a shuffle. The songs are familiar. Some are jouncy and others melodic.

When I turn the shuffle off, I occasionally get a little voice that simply says ’Battery low’. That’s it. Just two simple little words. We ignore this phrase at our peril and the peril of those who are close to us. When I hear this warning I know that I have to recharge the shuffle to help me shuffle.

I couldn’t honestly tell you how frequently this little voice whispers into my ear. It’s just sort of there when I least expect it.  I can’t actually see or discern how low the battery is. It's not like a phone. I rely completely and utterly on this little voice.

I reflect that I am often like this with my own ‘inner battery’. I have only the flimsiest of signals to let me know that my own ‘battery’ is running low and I need recharging. i.e. Take some gardening/cardigan leave. When was the last time I had a proper day off, some of my annual holiday? Kept a ‘sabbath’.

“To do things to the very best, you often have to do things differently”

I forget where I got this intriguing little quote from. Someone wise and profound no doubt. It’s one of those one-liners that draws you in and makes you think. But the more you think about it, the more challenging it becomes. Let me explain.

“To do things to the very best” This sounds terrific and something we should aspire to. We all want to do things as effectively, efficiently and as smoothly as possible. All jolly good.

But the second part of the quote is the bit that smacks you over the head with an iron skillet.

“You often have to do things differently”. And here’s the uncomfortable bit. It begs the question … am I really prepared to do things differently? Am I willing to sacrifice my comfortable routines to learn a different way of doing things? You see the problem.

Learning to do things differently means letting go of things that are snug and embracing the unfamiliar, trusting that this is going to be better. And learning new things is challenging and you make mistakes. The so-called ‘learning curve’ is often drawn at an angle of no less than 45%. Do I really want to try and scale that?

But there’s something else going on here as well. To do things differently means that you have to admit, maybe even publicly, that you weren’t doing things the right way or the best way. You confess that you are fallible and not perfect. The good news is that doing things differently and hopefully better, is a dazzling sign of always being willing to grow, develop and flourish. And that is worth all the angst and the hard slog of doing things differently and therefore better.

‘One pizza with four different toppings.’

Dear Margarita,

Thank you very much for your kind letter of July 21st. I’m sorry that you find some of the homilies rather tedious. You are quite right. Some of them are spectacular duds and it's no wonder your mind wanders to the four images carved into the pulpit and the brass eagle in Christchurch Hamilton. Well spotted and bless you for asking. I wish more people would ask these sorts of questions as it would be one way of keeping the parish priest up to the mark and helping turn the creaky wheels in his skull.

The four things you spied with your little eye are a man, an eagle, an ox and a lion.

Each of these is a symbol of the four gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

So let’s take a look and I hope that what I have to offer will be helpful for you and maybe a few others.

These four creatures first appear way back in the Old Testament in the book of Ezekiel. He writes in a very colourful and descriptive language so you have to be patient and wade through his language.

“Within it were figures. Their faces were like this: each of the four had the face of a man, but on the right side was the face of a lion, and on the left side the face of an ox, and finally each had the face of an eagle….”

Curiously these 4 creatures pop up again in the Book of Revelation. Again the language is florid and a bit over the cliff, but it's uncanny that these two pieces of literature which were written centuries apart, can align so closely.

“At the very centre, around the throne itself, stood four living creatures covered with eyes front and back. The first creature resembled a lion; the second, an ox; the third had the face of a man; while the fourth looked like an eagle in flight.”

These images in the Old Testament and the New Testament prompted St. Irenaeus (140-202) to liken them to the four Gospel writers because of their particular focus on Christ.

“The first living creature was like a lion” so in St. Mark we have a Jesus who is an effective and persistent worker. Like a lion he is always bounding onto the next miracle or the next parable with great speed. It’s almost embarrassing the way that he leaves the chaos he has created behind to sort itself out.

“The second was like a calf,” which is St. Luke’s gospel. The ‘Jesus’ in Luke’s gospel is the sacrificial Jesus. The one who marches on to Jerusalem whilst all the time spelling out the grizzly details of what is going to happen to him to his disciples. They seem oblivious to the shadow of the cross. The readers and listeners of this gospel would have well understood that an ox was the beast that would be sacrificed in the worship of the temple to benefit the spiritual needs of the people. Remember also how Luke’s gospel begins? Zechariah, John the Baptist’s dad is in the temple offering worship and Luke is the only writer who has the parable of the prodigal son who returns home to a party where the family fattened beast is slaughtered to celebrate.

This brings us to Matthew who is depicted as a man. It’s no accident then that Matthew begins his gospel with Jesus’ family tree. It's all rather tedious on the first reading but if you look closely there are a few ‘none do wells’ in some of the branches. Something I actually find rather encouraging. You know how it goes.. If they can make it across the line there’s hope for me also.

Matthew is the only one to give us the birth narratives with the shepherds, the angels and the grumpy publican whose pockets are jingling because of the census.

If you like Matthew's Gospel, it is the gospel of Jesus humanity, our flesh, blood and bone. It is the human Jesus who places his feet in the dusty streets of Palestine.

Last, we have St. John who is represented as a flying Eagle. The brass Eagle in Christchurch Hamilton has its wings spread wide almost as if to show that the gospel has taken off and we are called to the heights to pursue it. The eagle's talons are clasped around an orb or sphere, to show that the gospel has gone out to all the world.

Why does St. John get an Eagle? Well, John’s Gospel is a pretty lofty one. St. John’s Jesus engages in long, meaty, sublime conversations with several characters. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, Mary and Martha to name but a few. He’s not as straightforward as Mark, but the effort you put in to ponder John’s gospel is always well worth it.

A phrase to take away Margarita. ‘One pizza with four different toppings.’ … The Gospel, is the gospel, is the gospel. Always the same, always nourishing, always enjoyable. The four corners each have their own flavours. Each has something to offer in their own unique way.

It’s tempting to favour one gospel over another but you need a balance of all four to have the most complementary diet.

I hope this has been helpful Margarita and might give you something to reflect on next time the homily is tedious and your vision wanders to the pulpit or the brass eagle.

The Cement Ingot of Guilt

I wrote last week about making a house a home and how I had had the privilege of living in no fewer than 8 (eight) rectories.

What is hidden in that swift little sentence is the process of moving. There have been no fewer than 8 moves in my life and more if you count the moves before married life.

Each of those changes involved packing up our goods and chattels, cleaning, polishing, organisation and tossing out what is now redundant. Those are things that we are pretty sure we won’t need in the next chapter. It’s always a risk and some decisions are tougher than others.

That plant that never really flourished over the past 30 years but just might be in a new spot and new soil. That tattered book that was tenderly inscribed by someone I can’t quite remember.

This packing away and chucking out is a very cathartic process. It helps with the whole psychological ‘moving on process’. Leaving behind one place and looking forward to the next.

These are the material, tangible, touchable packable things.

But there are also other things that are hidden, intangible and not so easily discerned. The sweet memory of the conversation that you weren’t expecting to have came as a luscious surprise. The story that Martha told you, that made you raucously laugh out loud. You take these with you and like a good bottle of red ned they sweeten and mature. They can be savoured and relished.

There are other things that are invisible that should be left behind. The regrets. I should have, could have. If only… the missed opportunities that can’t be snatched back and what could have been is now a mirage.

But the very first thing to chuck in the skip is that cement ingot of guilt.

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.