Of Hiddenness

Today's Parables and the story of Jesus’ thwarted ministry are all about hiddenness.

• Parable 1 is all about the treasure which lies dormant and hidden in a field until the prospector finds it. Apparently by accident. The treasure is so fantastic that he hides it again, sells everything, absolutely everything, and buys the field. To everyone else, apart from the man, the treasure is hidden. No one else sees it or has any knowledge of it.
• Parable 2 is the Pearl merchant. Here we have someone just going about their daily business when all of a sudden he finds an absolute stonker of a pearl. He also sells everything in order to obtain this one solitary pearl. But for the first part of this little story it also is hidden from him. He hasn’t seen it until the right time.

Then we skip down to the part where Jesus is not honoured in his hometown.

And there is even more hiddenness going on here. In fact, there are lashings of concealment. The locals see the humanity bit, the familiar bit, the Jesus they knew from days of yore.

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us?

They are amazed at his wisdom but can’t work out how the familiar home lad got to be so clever. It just doesn’t make sense.

He began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed.
“Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?”
Where then did this man get all these things?”

How does the apprentice carpenter get to be so enlightened and powerful?

The memories and familiarity of the Jesus lad mask the divine son of God. And this is a tragedy. For they miss out on their life being changed in marvellous and beautiful ways.

And just as the lucky prospector and pearl merchant had their lives changed because they saw what was right before them, so the parishioners at Jesus’ home synagogue fail to see past the mask of the familiar and continue in their same old way.

I think that it wasn’t because Jesus was incapable of miracles, He just knew it would be ineffective, as their unbelief would not change and it would not make a difference in their lives.

The familiar not only masks what is right before them but also stomps all over their full potential as followers of the Master and also the joy with which he longs to fill their lives.

So it is, that the familiar, the humdrum, the boring, the tedious and the everyday camouflage and cloak the divine. It is in and through the menial and the monotonous that God reveals himself.

And it works this way in the consecrated bread and wine that we received week in, week out in this church building. And it certainly works in every encounter that we are privileged to enjoy throughout the week. We might think that we are just having another conversation with old so and so who can be a bit of a whinge-bag and we know exactly what they’re going to say because we have known them for umpteen years and we know their siblings and we knew their parents and… sound familiar?

But we are challenged to see beyond the veneer of the familiar. To unleash the potential joys and delights, the life-changing things that might happen to us if we saw the precious pearl the treasure right before us.

This would open up all sorts of life-changing possibilities?!

And it's not just in our physical, people encounters. Letters and emails also have the potential to change us. A phone call can be infinitely precious. A muttered prayer can alter us irreversibly without us even realising it.

The Master accomplished many great miracles in his little ministry here on earth. Part of it I am sure is that he let others know out loud and unashamedly, just how marvellous they are, how spectacular they are. How infinitely precious they are in the sight of God.

What would happen if we also did the same thing?

A true story to finish with.

We’re quietly robing for an ordination service, so there are lots of priestly people about. In bounded one fine fellow, happy and joyous. He smirks, looks around the room and without any hesitation or any planning says for everyone to hear

“Gosh, these are some of the loveliest faces I know”

It changed my life. I can still see his face and I can still hear him saying it.

He saw the treasure. He knew all about the precious pearl. It was right before him and he let everyone know about it.

And sometimes I think,  if he could see it and he could speak it… what stops me?

And what would happen if, at the end of this homily, I did not finish with

“In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit Amen.”

What might happen if I just simply looked around at you all and said

“These are some of the loveliest faces I know.”

It doesn’t matter what you believe… or does it?

The trailer for the film looked great. Lots of fast-moving action and ‘how are they ever going to get out of this’ type of agility. There were lashings of special effects, impossibly gorgeous people and the rugged strong jawline of a masculine hero. Hec, what’s not to like?

But it was none of this glitz that snagged my attention. Instead, it was the tagline from one of the heroes.

‘It doesn’t matter what you believe, but it’s how hard you believe it.’

Now spoken in a subtle, seductive voice, when you’re enthralled by the good guy overcoming the gruesome forces against him and winning the heart of the fair maiden at the end, this tagline actually sounds very plausible.

There is a part of you that wants to adopt it as your own life rule.

But take away the raw emotion of the film and look at it in the cool light of day and you will discover that the motto is fundamentally flawed.

‘It doesn’t matter what you believe’… Really?! If I believed that it was OK to take a sledgehammer to my neighbour's mower because they insisted on using it at unsociable hours… or if I believed that it was OK to pilfer the odd Turkish delight from the supermarket, or I believed that it was OK to have 8 1/2 cheeky chardonnays and then drive down the main street on a crowded Friday afternoon…

What we believe inevitably spills over into our actions, which must affect ourselves and others. We are all responsible for each other and it does matter what we believe. It matters very much. However, that didn’t stop me from enjoying the film and having a large fix of escapism just for the afternoon.

The less said the better

These words are an echo from a childhood memory that I can barely recall. Certainly, the context and place are lost to me now. But, I can still hear my mother saying, rather firmly as I recall… ‘And as for that other matter, the less said the better’! At the time it made no sense to me at all but then as a child, these adult ‘sayings’ probably weren’t meant to. But this phrase and a few others have stayed with me over the years. I wish now that I could recall the salacious story that went with the words of wisdom.

Many years later, my training Rector echoed my mother's words when we had been to a rather weighty pastoral encounter. It was a cautionary reminder that sometimes it’s best to ‘forget’ what you have heard and not say anything unless asked. In those days I had the luxury of a training rector and I could always kick it upstairs to him. ‘You better go and talk to the rector about that. He’s in charge’

Sometimes you do truly, honestly forget. Other times you try to tuck it away and try really hard to not remember.

Now I don’t have that advantage of a training Rector and I’ve learnt to mutter things like ‘Would you mind if I didn’t say anything?’. Or… ‘Now isn’t that interesting? I don’t seem to remember exactly what Great Uncle Kafoops said’.

Just as you can’t ‘unsee’ the things you see.. so you can’t ‘unsay’ things you hear. Once you say something audibly, out loud, for someone else to hear,… it’s out there. I relearn this all the time in this close-knit and caring community. You can always tell later, but sometimes … a lot of the time ‘The less said the better’.

A different voice. Satara Uthayakumaran

Since childhood, my liberal parents taught me that the pursuit of justice, human rights and compassion for the marginalised were all integrated with a loving divine being who created everyone equally. However, as I came to study analytical subjects such as English, history and ethics, and involved myself in human rights campaigns that dealt with real-life suffering rather than theoretical teachings, I started to question accepted truths, and scrutinise my understanding of “God”.

Despite the lockdown, I wasn’t alone. Rates of worship have been declining since the 1960s, with a reduction of more than a million Christians since the 2016 Census. Suddenly, I was one of them.

I’m not sure why, at such a stressful time in my life, I went from passive Anglican with 18 years of worship in the bag, to someone who tripped over the lack of logic in it all, increasingly smelling the stench of hypocrisy in light of more claims of abuse in the church

So, rather than bothering with English essays on whether a blue curtain was a metaphor for the downfall of humanity, I did what I thought made sense at the time and went to the highest order in the land to settle both my internal debate and the dinner-table squabbles with my family – which took place almost always after a long day of work. When your parents ask you to set the table for a cordial family dinner, they don’t suddenly expect to hear: “Sure, but does God really exist?”

I contacted two of the greatest referees on the question of God: the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Head of the Episcopalian Church, Bishop Michael Curry – the latter best known for his riveting sermon at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Wedding.

Contacting two of the greatest theological thinkers seemed inconsequential at the time. After all, I had already contacted the Pope when I was 12 to ask why there were no female popes, given it was my dream job to head up the Vatican someday. Weirdly, I never received a response.

However, I did receive a reply from Bishop Curry, just a week after emailing him. He personally thanked me for my letter and for voicing my concerns. I could almost hear him, like a reassuring father figure, empathising that these questions afflicted most people of faith at some point in their life.

His advice was to ask myself: “What is the invitation God might be offering in the midst of this?” Although God doesn’t create the crisis, it doesn’t mean he is not reaching out in an unconventional way. He also sent me a copy of his book, all the way from New York to Sydney, which wrestles with some of the questions I asked. He then told me he would be praying for me and bestowed a blessing as I kept reflecting, thinking and discerning.

That, for me, was enough to reaffirm my faith – at least in humanity, if not theology. But then, the day after my graduation, I was having coffee with a friend in a local patisserie when I opened my emails and almost dropped my phone to see a reply from Rowan Williams. He also thanked me for my letter and reassured me these were the kinds of questions one should grapple with if they want to be both a person of faith and a contemporary thinker.

Among many, many other profound explanations, Dr Williams suggested that in an increasingly secular world, although churches are emptier, people continue to be baffled by natural phenomena, stopped in their tracks by something so strange, and exhilarated at unknown prospects. In his words, this was God continuing to make Himself known to humankind, albeit in subtler ways – or unconventional ways, as Bishop Curry put it. Further, people’s experiences of joy at a deeper level always have something to do with some letting go of our sense of self, or that sense of self that is important and in charge. For me, there was something quite euphoric in thinking about just letting go to become part of the magnitude of the universe, regardless of who had created it and who was in charge of it.

Just over three years ago, I never would have thought that a high school student from Sydney would be able to converse with two of the greatest theologians from the other side of the globe – nor would I have guessed the comfort their responses provided to a child on the cusp of adulthood, trying to make sense of her place in the world.

Even for those of us who don’t identify with religion, there are complexities within the universe that we all think about and struggle with. If those like Bishop Curry and Dr Williams are willing to engage with a 17-year-old from Sydney, then we should normalise having these conversations across age and profession, to enrich our understanding of our role in this vast expanse of space and magic.

So, I continue to believe. But I will also continue to question.

Three cheers for the Farmer.

I was trying to explain to our very patient confirmation candidates the significance of the different colours that we use in church.

Purple is our getting-ready colour. We use it to show that we are preparing for something special. So we wear purple for the 6 weeks of Lent when we are getting ready for Easter and the 4 weeks of Advent when we are getting ready for Christmass.

White is party time. We wear white for feast days; Christmass, Easter, Saint's Days, Trinity Sunday, and Christ the King.

Red is for the flames of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it is for the blood that was spilt when we ask for the martyrs' prayers, it is for the royalty of a King riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday and for the Master’s blood shed on Good Friday.

Black is seldom worn but may be worn for Ash Wednesday, All Souls Day and for the odd very tragic and appalling funeral, where there only seems to be darkness.

‘Green’ I cheekily enthused ‘Green, is when none of those other things are happening. We wear green for most of the Church’s year to remind us that all the time we are supposed to be growing into the sort of people God wants us to be.’

Which is a very nice dance step into the parable of the sower in today's gospel. And in this parable, we might be one of three things.

First, we are the seeds. Our vocation is to grow and flourish. And yes, sometimes we are stifled, sometimes the weather seems inclement and gale-force winds threaten to destabilise us and uproot us all together.

Some of us have been around for a long time and some of us have only just begun to sprout and grow. There are times when we shoot up and we think it’s easy. A lot of the time not much seems to happen, but actually, just by being around, just by hanging in there, just by letting the sun and the rain do its thing, then we are actually achieving quite a bit. Not many of us finish up as tall as corn stalks or as colourful as sun flowers, but when we do happen to encounter such a person, it's inspiring and humbling.

Something else about seeds.
When they first start off they might not look like much but we must always try to see the potential in them. This isn’t the finished product, it was never intended to be the finished product. It is only the start and we are asked to have a lot of faith, that the tiny little gnarly something will grow into something quite magnificent.

Our planting, our burying if you like, occurs when we are submerged into the waters of baptism. That’s when it all begins and starts and imperceptibly, over a long period of time… well you know how it goes.

We are all a bit like the soil in the parable. Sometimes we are a bit thin on the surface and blown away. Sometimes we are drenched by cares and worries and we feel like we are drowning.  Sometimes we are tempted to think that the soil down the road has it so much better than us. It’s well irrigated, it’s on a gentle slope and catches the right amount of sunlight… but the reality is something quite different and an honest conversation with the person we think is a spiritual giant, will often reveal that they have had their own struggles, their own spectacular failures, their own craziness. In fact, those people are often magnanimous because they have integrated their hurts into their very selves. They have not shunned their wounds away as something to be ashamed of.

But it’s the farmer that I am drawn to most in this parable. It is the farmer that has my admiration, the farmer who I want to stand and applaud wildly for.

The farmer never gives up. Each day, day after day and every year…as the seasons roll by, off he goes, still having a go. And all the time, he knows that sometimes, in fact quite often, he knows that there will be a failure. Do the maths brothers and sisters. There is only 1 paddock out of four that brings an abundant harvest. It’s not very good odds. And notice too that even though paddock x which has never really done much, still gets the good seed. The farmer never gives up just because there has been crop failure in the past. In fact, the farmer will never give up on paddock x,  that has thistles and rocks. Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps… this will be the year, this will be the season, perhaps this time …

And from our perspective, as we are all farmers,

loving people and growing relationships and feeding and nurturing is often tiring and it is always so very risky.

And sometimes, in fact most of the time, it takes a long time for the seed to become visible, it seems to take eons before tentatively emerging and can be seen, grow and enjoyed. Often we do not get to see the growth, the reward of our persistence. Sometimes it is the one who comes after us who will delight in what we started decades earlier. And that’s OK. That’s the way it should be.  It keeps us humble. It was never about us. It was always about Him. THE farmer who tends us and loves us still, even if we are shrivelled and choked and forgetful and scared.

Embracing Our Imperfections

It is a well-known fact that I am not articulate at tricky meetings. I always think of the diplomatic and soothing words many hours later. If only I had said this instead of that, then everything would have turned out far better. If we are honest, when we look in the mirror and search our lives and souls, we will all discover that we have the odd blemish. We look at ‘old so and so’ or even ‘young so and so’, and wish that we had their flair for fixing a flat tyre, painting a bathroom or even creating a new garden shed!

When our imperfections bubble to the surface and are on view in 3-D colour for all to see, then you have at least two options.

One is to try and squelch and suppress them and keep them down. To hide them away. Pretend that it was someone else, or that actually, I am rather good at knocking up some bookshelves but I was just having an off day; when the reality is that the last lot of bookshelves I tried to construct we left in another parish long ago and far away because we were pretty sure they would not survive the moving process.

The other option is to embrace our imperfections. To ask the local handyperson to give us a hand, maybe have a congenial cuppa and form a friendship over the project. The local gifted guru would probably enjoy knocking up a coffee table and imparting some of their hard won wisdom and experience.

It’s taken me a long time not to be embarrassed by my imperfections, a longer time to embrace them and an eternity to laugh at them.

Maybe this is why the Master showed his colleagues his hands and his feet!?

When you’re weary…

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

I have always loved this piece from Matthew’s gospel.

I use it frequently at funerals especially when the deceased person has been through a lengthy illness. But I realised only recently that it’s not just the deceased who is weary. Surely this reading applies to everyone in the Church. Do not those who have come to mourn and pray also have their own weariness?

Absolutely they do. And when you begin to explore this phenomenon of weariness you realise that there are in fact lots of different ways of being drained.

There is physical weariness; like when you do a park run and you’re aware that the clock is ticking away in the background and you're trying really hard and the rain is chucking it down and the wind is pushing you backwards.

There is a psychological weariness like the sort of tiredness the Bishop must have after chairing a bothersome Synod magnanimously for a couple of days. There is a spiritual weariness where we just seemed to have tried so hard for so long seemingly for so little in results. For all our searching and praying and reading and endlessly offering our psalms, readings and interminable homilies, He is frequently a God who is hidden and elusive.

Sometimes I think we make our own selves tired.

Later on, Matthew will tell us that Jesus had an unveiled swipe at the scribes and Pharisees in these words.

 “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”

So in other words the scribes and the Pharisees had become so obsessed with the letter of the law and its interpretation that they had completely forgotten the spirit of the law. The spirit of love, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing in brokenness and life in the midst of death. The ways of gentleness and rest.

And part of the trick is this… I think.

The Master invites us to take HIS yoke upon us. Not our own yoke. Not our yokes we mercilessly put on ourselves. The unrealistic expectations of ourselves, our pride, our ego, the things we can’t forgive ourselves, the desire to be more sparkling and noticeable than any other. These are very heavy and cumbersome weights that we drape around our necks and it is a waste of our hard-won energy to cart them around. They are fruitless and we should cast them off and try very hard not to pick them up again.

So what does His yoke, the yoke of Christ look like? What is it that he wants us to learn? My guess is that the yoke of Christ is just a plain simple cross. A giving of self to others in uninhibited love. And when we shoulder his yoke, not our own, we will discover that it is surprisingly much lighter than the ones we want to lug around.

There is one other tiredness that is very difficult to articulate but which affects us all.

We tread this earth and it is rich and beautiful and exquisite and we enjoy our lives and the people that God sends our way and we revel in the relationships that enhance our lives and the undeserved but thrilling privilege of enhancing other people's lives. While all that is authentic and true we know somehow, somewhere, deep within us, that this is not all there is. Occasionally we are given a sense of a distant land, another shore, that is our true home.  And we know that somehow, while things are pretty jolly good on this side of the grave, they will be sublimely perfect in unimaginable ways and dimensions on the other side of the grave. When we shuck this mortal coil when the bell rings and we know that it is finally home time.   Yes, if we are brutally honest, there is a part in all of us that is fatigued and weary. The world is a fickle place and from time to time it must inevitably disappoint and frustrate us. And while we have given it a really good shot, a great shot, our best shot and will continue to do so, our sense of longing for our true home can sometimes surprise us. With its yearning and familiar but disquieting ache, we long to be complete and fulfilled in ways that we cannot hope to be on this side of the grave.

Perhaps subconsciously, this is also why I have chosen Matthew’s words to read at a funeral because the person who has died has finally come to that homeland where there is no more pain or suffering, but only lasting peace and joy.

A prayer to finish off with that might be of some help.

O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublesome life until the shades lengthen, the evening comes, the busy world is hushed,  the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then Lord in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest and peace at the last. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Meet Bellabot

It was a convivial evening at a restaurant. You scanned in the QR code and ordered the food on your phone. Then, in a very short time, Bellabot came and delivered your food, right to your table. Bellabot is of course a robot. It has big charming eye’s, glides easily around and is sensitive to the movements of other patrons, so there are no unfortunate incidents.

The downside with Bellabot is that it has limited conversation skills. You miss out on the charm, wit and sparkle of conversation.

The upside is that Bellabot seldom gets sick and you don’t have to pay Long service leave or payroll tax. In fact, you don’t have to pay Bellabot anything nor do you have to tip ‘it’. Bellabot always delivers the food to exactly the right table.

I spotted two of these new-fangled waiters and the rest of the staff were all the human being variety.

There was a part of me that was surprised and thought ‘Phooey and fiddlesticks! What's the world coming to?’

But it’s not that simple... the restaurant profit margin and the catering industry is that tight, so it is better to stay open with 2 Bellabots and say 10 other staff. The alternative is not open at all and 10 staff would have to look for a job elsewhere.

It’s not as straightforward as me being an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy and being disconcerted by the latest trend. In effect, Bellabot is actually enabling other people to have a job and I think that is the most important thing about them.

I don’t think Bellabots translate easily into every industry. For example, I don’t think there will ever be ‘Bella-priesty’ people or ‘Bella-bishop’ people, but the AI world arrived while I slumbered.

Who did you help today?

It was just a line from a novel. Hidden there, waiting for me to extricate it from page 256. Asking me to wrench it out of the paragraph and to exploit it mercilessly. To offer it to you dear reader for your consumption and enjoyment. Hoping that it might give us just enough indigestion to make us uncomfortable and try a little harder to become the people we are called to be. It all went something like this.

“So we’d come home from school, sling bags into the corner of our room and enjoy the Ovaltine and Anzac biscuits. At dinner we would sit around the table, Dad would look at each of us in turn and ask in a measured tone. ‘So who did you help today?’

We all knew the question was coming, we had heard it every day of our school life and yet somehow it still made us squirm, especially when we had to confess that we couldn’t think of a single person we had helped.”

The follow-on questions which were not spelt out in the novel were .. ‘How did you help them?’ And… ‘Was your helping effective and fruitful into the future?’ Ie Did your actions have lasting consequences for the person and the school community?

It didn’t matter if the ‘helping’ was unnoticed, unheralded, unrewarded or if we were thanked. The important bit was that it simply happened. That an effort had been made. And just as importantly, another effort was made the next day, and the next, and the next, until this pattern of serving others was integrated into our daily life.

They are not bad questions to ask ourselves at the end of each day.

Who did you help today?

How did you help them?

Was your helping effective and fruitful into the future?

The Righteous, The Prophets and the Children.

While we are called to welcome absolutely everyone, in today’s gospel there are three groups of people that we are specifically asked to look out for.

They are prophets, the righteous and little ones. In this day and age these words aren’t familiar to us and I wonder if we would recognise these people if they walked through the door. So perhaps it might be helpful if I played around with these terms and offered my guesses as to who our modern-day prophets, righteous and little ones might be.

The prophets. Whenever I hear the word prophet I can’t help thinking of Nathan the prophet who called King David to account for his disgraceful behaviour with the beautiful bathing Bathsheba. Nathan didn’t go ballistic at David although he had every right to and it would have been understandable. Instead, Nathan the prophet quietly, and with great restraint, tells David a story about a wealthy guy stealing a poor man's sheep and hopes that David will understand that he is the wealthy guy who has nicked the lamb that is so precious to his neighbour. But no, David doesn't get it and Nathan has to very clearly spell it out.

So I am guessing that our modern-day prophets are those who without hesitation, call out wrong where they see it. Moreover, they do so by leading the naughty to arrive at the point of repentance by their own volition. It’s quite an art form. To say the hard things graciously without blowing your top or thumping your fist is a gift. But,.. we ought always to be listening because sooner or later a prophet will speak to us and we ought to not only welcome them, not only listen but also be prepared to act on their advice. Their words will make us squirm because we know deep down, at our very deepest level, that they are quite right and that we should have seen our errors a long time ago. Prophets are our friendly irritants.

And the righteous. The righteous are those who are right with God, right with others and therefore right within themselves. It is not a matter of outward observance but righteousness is a continuous striving for what is right often without knowing it. So Matthew will tell us in his powerful Beatitudes that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled or satisfied. And in his parable of the sheep and the goats, the righteous are not even aware that they are the ones doing good things.

Remember this bit…Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?”

The righteous are those who have striven for righteousness for such a long time that it is just a part of their daily lives. It is simply what they do and most importantly, it is who they are. The righteous.

And the little ones.

The little ones probably can refer to the small in physical stature like children, but it should also include those who, like children, are vulnerable, those who are not heard in our society and have no voice. They are those who cannot repay us for any kindness we offer.

And the cup of cold water business…

The Teacher is not giving a literal command to give a cup of cold water so much as He is describing a type of action that will be rewarded by God. The fact that Jesus uses such a routine action, such as providing a drink of water reminds us that this principle applies to any action of service, no matter how unremarkable. So it is in the little, ordinary, everyday actions that we find ourselves and we find Him. The seemingly dull and unimportant things are really sacramental by nature for they convey the grace of God. It is in the dull and the boring, the commonplace and the conventional, that God is working out his purpose and his salvation. In the pots and the pans, in the vacuuming and mowing, in the grimy dishes and the hot sudsy water. In the listening and the silence and maybe even, goodness gracious, in tedious homilies. We miss glimpsing Him because we see and do the everyday and commonplace things and actions all the time. Little ones, prophets and the righteous are those who do not hold themselves aloof with some sort of pious air of superiority. They are our everyday brothers and sisters, people that we rub shoulders with and shake hands with. They are in the grit and grime of our everyday stuff. They are the ones who say the hard things graciously and who call us back, not to gloat or because they are grumpy with us,  but because they love us and want the very best for us. They are the ones who will gently tell us a story and patiently sit back and wait for us to finally get it. And when we do, then we will find that we are the thirsty and the hungry, that we are the poor who can never repay the abundance of His magnanimous grace.

And far from us arrogantly thinking that it is us welcoming others, perhaps it is us who need to be welcomed back.

“The quieter you pray, the further you go.”

It happened on the show ‘The antiques roadshow. Someone had proudly brought in a chair, a family heirloom. It had a few knocks and scratches but it was clearly loved and had been enjoyed by many bottoms over the decades.

The chair had an inscription carved across its back in a different language. Loosely translated it meant. “The quieter you pray, the further you go.”

Now there's an interesting thought. Usually, we think that the faster, the noisier, the more out there, and the more highly politicised and noticed we are, the better for everyone. Especially the economy and for matters of our public profile.

But what if we were quieter when we prayed? What if we actually said less and did not burble our prayers as quickly as possible, as if our life depended on the words per minute that were uttered? What if we listened more? Wouldn’t that open up the possibility that we might go further in our prayers? Surely our prayers would be a richer, more exotic experience. Something to be gently savoured and simply enjoyed. When you are in the presence of someone who enjoys you and you enjoy them, surely there's no rush to just simply prattle away and be done with it just because chatting with them is a bothersome duty. Something else to tick off the daily list before moving rapidly onto the next thing and the next and…

And I reckon this works in our everyday relationships with human beings as well, especially our dearest and our best. They would understandably be crotchety if our conversation was just ‘something we had to do’. Why should it be different when we are in the presence of … Him?

The quieter you pray, the further you go.

Fear … our new opiate

Mr Marx used to say that ‘Religion was the opiate of the people.’ That is, religion is a facile drug used to calm and placate us when the going got a bit boisterous. He would argue that Religion gave us illusory happiness, a bit like smoking something you shouldn’t or a couple of glasses of red cordial. His point was that religion didn’t actually confront the cause of the angst, but rather it was like some happy gas that just soothed our symptoms and helped us forget that we had a problem.

I never actually subscribed to this theory. After all, what was calming about the Garden of Gethsemane? What is soothing about being nailed to a cross? What is illusory about being a single, teenage, peasant, unwed mother? Surely one of the benefits of worshipping the Master is that he is right here in the midst of the yuckiest times in our lives and doesn’t slink away from us pretending that there is nothing to see here. What’s more, Our Lord takes to himself our ghastly experiences and makes them his own. He makes them Holy. So the experience of dying and death is God’s experience as well.

But can I put it to you that there is a new opiate that we in our privileged 21st century, just can’t seem to get enough of and that opiate is fear. The briefest glance at any screen, or any device, will feed us with lashings of fear.

Everything from the fear that our footy team might lose to the fear of higher taxes, the fear of being homeless to the fear of how the homeless might impinge on our lives. The fear of sudden, macabre and grizzly death, the fear of death itself or the process of dying. The fear of the rich and powerful and the fear of having our identity stolen. The fear of being assaulted or the fear of being embezzled. The fear of change, the fear of the unknown.

Fear is a bully and it seems that we can’t get enough of him.

Counter to all of this are Jesus’ words from this morning's gospel. Do not fear

And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

And this is not an isolated text. From as far back as Abraham in the book of Genesis to Revelation when John falls at the feet of an angel, we get the mantra ‘Do not be afraid’.

In all, there are a minimum of 76 times when God says to someone “Do not be afraid”. It seems that we need to be continuously reminded that the Good guy is actually on our side and that fear is one of the bad guys’ most subtle and powerful tricks.

Fear leads to a muddled head and a bewildered heart. Without us realising it, our faith can find itself a little shaken and stirred.

Now we do need to be honest and say that it is normal to be afraid sometimes. It’s part of our whole survival technique. The whole fight for flight thing. And for your reflection, you might want to spend a bit of quiet time thinking about who you are afraid of, what you are afraid of and why you are we afraid. If we can work out why we are afraid of this, that, or the other person… then we might learn to our blessed relief that our fears are not woolly mammoth size at all and there might be some strategies we can put in place so that at the very least our fear is manageable.

Something else that might help is a little mantra that I shamelessly pinched from that internet thing they have nowadays.

God first. Others second. Me last.

So when we are confronted by something that unsettles us we should have no hesitation in kicking it upstairs. God first, others second, and me last.

God first. What does the Master ask of me in this situation?

Others second. How can I best serve them?

Me last. I find my fulfilment, my deepest and most lasting sense of satisfaction and joy when I get my priorities right. When all is placed safely in the pierced hands of the Master who loves me, fear is diminished and we see everything in its rightful perspective. Fear is something transitory with the really big battle already won.

And this makes sense for the rest of our very tricky and confronting gospel reading.

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me”.

He’s not saying you should loathe your pesky parents and your siblings, but rather start with God’s love and let everything else flow out from there. It’s all about getting the priorities right. Then everything else tumbles down into its rightful place.

“God first. Others second. Me last.” The antidote to fear. (Jesus - Others - Yourself = JOY)