Radical Discipleship

Well, you will be pleased to know that the Warden didn't call me up in the week to talk about my sermon.  But it’s there again, isn't it – in that Leviticus reading.  Being a neighbour to those who live around us is not optional, is it?

The question I want to begin with today is “Do you consider yourself to be a radical?  To be living a counter-cultural lifestyle?  Or maybe in even simpler terms do you sometimes feel that your being a Christian makes you a bit of an odd-bod?” 

I know – that was three questions.

It seems that again and again, the descriptions we have in Scripture of how God wants us to behave in relation to each other expect us to do pretty much the opposite of what the rest of the world thinks is the way it stands.

The idea of leaving your gleanings around the field so that the poor and have a share was not good business to the Canaanites – but it save Ruth and Naomi’s life when they were otherwise destitute.

I am guessing that every clause that follows these words in the Leviticus passage is a call to the people of God to do just the opposite of what everyone else would normally do.  Now that is pretty radical.

The whole of Psalm 119 is a cycle of 8 line verses carefully crafted so that each line in a verse began with the same letter of the alphabet, and each verse with varying imagery extolling the merits of allowing our lives to be guided by the Law of God.  The Statutes of the LORD were the supreme guide for life.  Keeping them, rather than doing what felt good, was also pretty radical.

And Paul gets the radical bit, too.  He reminds us that as god’s creatures we should have a special regard for our bodies, in which the Spirit of God lives, thus making our own bodies effectively the TEMPLE of God and therefore something to be cared for rather than abused.  Now that is very radical in our time and place, isn’t it?

But perhaps the most radical thing for us to consider today comes from the mouth of Jesus in our Gospel reading.

Twice Jesus begins some teaching with the words “You have heard it said:…”  He is appealing to the conventional wisdom of the day, and perhaps even the general consensus of the meaning of God’s Law, and then he turns it upside down.  As I have said before this is part of Matthew’s clear message to the Hebrew Christians he was writing the Gospel for that Jesus stands in the tradition of Moses, but goes even further.

Jesus says that if we are to become his followers we will have to forgo our “right” to have just recompense – an eye for an eye – from those who would injure us.  Rather we show up their bad behaviour by radically inviting them to do it again – in front of everyone who knows they have done something wrong.

Jesus says we have to beyond the ordinary obligation of loving those we have an obligation to love.  We are to love the unlovely, and even those who are actively working to hurt us – our enemies.  Indeed we are to pray for them.

These things are a call to live differently from everyone else – and we as Christians should live with the tension of this all the time; because it is so easy for us to want to just fit in.

I went to see a film last weekend called “Occupy Love” which was a reflection on the OCCUPY movement of a few years ago that grew out of our dismay over the aftermath of the GFC and the way the banks got away with wrecking the place.  This revealed their utter selfishness and determination to win for themselves no matter what the cost to the people was.

If you listened to what the people involved with the Occupy Wall Street were on about, they wanted to move away from a self-centred approach to life that was fundamentally destructive of society and towards a communitarian approach in which love and the well-being of the other was at the heart of the value system.

Their occupation was peaceful, not violent.  The violence was created by those who wanted to remove them – city officials or the Police.  Their purpose was not to harm others.  Rather to call others to work together for the common good.

This sounds pretty close to what Jesus was talking about there in the Sermon on the Mount.  There is indeed some deep wisdom there – but living this way makes you as radical as all those OCCUPY people were, perhaps without the dreadies.

Many of you might have been struck by the abruptness of the final sentence in the Gospel:  Be PERFECT therefore as your Heavenly Father is PERFECT. 

At first glance this seems to be an impossible goal for all Christians because of our contemporary understanding of PERFECT.  But in the etymology and cultural context in which Jesus said this, this is not so much about keeping all the rules perfectly, as it is about trying to be consistent in thought and deed, living with integrity of word and action.  This word is about wholeness and living in authentic relationships that show these radical ways of living we have been talking about.  God really does want us to turn the world upside down in so many ways.

Putting this all together with what Jesus said before, we are called to live in ways that make extravagant moves towards reconciliation, new attitudes towards men and women, simple truth-telling, outrageous expressions of generosity and that totally unexpected care for one’s enemies.

These are to be the essential signs of the rule of God in our lives.  It is these that will make the light of Christ within us shine ever more brightly as I said a week or two ago.  This is the Perfect will of God for us all.

Did you get it yet?

The new vicar of St Swithans had just finished his seminary studies and had been ordained two weeks before he started in the parish.

Parishioners were very excited.  They had waited over a year to secure a new priest.  Now he was here.

On his first Sunday he preached well – a rather moving sermon about the Good Samaritan.  People thanked him warmly at the door and he was rather pleased with himself.

 The next week he preached the same sermon – about the Good Samaritan.  He seemed a little more earnest about it, but it was the same sermon.  People still greeted him at the door with some warmth, although he did notice a few people who made their way out through a side entrance, avoiding him.

His third Sunday came around and he preached the same sermon again.  He changed his introductory illustration, and he turned up the level of passion in his speech, but it was the same sermon.  The people who shook his hand on the way out seemed a bit lost for words, and seemed relieved to let go of his hand and move on.

It was time for the Wardens to say something.  They were very kind about it and began by saying that they understood that he was fresh out of seminary and might not have had time to write many sermons, but they just wondered if there was a reason why he had preached the same sermon for three Sundays in a row.

Without the slightest hint of defensiveness he replied:  “When I feel like this sermon has changed the way you are living, then I might move on to a new one.”

I am wondering if, after today, I met be asked to meet with the Warden, because it seems to me that we have been confronted with the same old story these past three weeks – at least from the Old Testament readings.

We began three weeks ago with Micah saying that what God really wanted from us was that we should do JUSTICE, love MERCY, and walk HUMBLY WITH GOD.

Then, last week, Isaiah expanded on that with:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?” … and a whole string of other social justice things that God expects of us.

Now, this week, we have the same old story all over again.  Despite Deuteronomy being regarded as one of the five books of Moses and therefore part of the Torah – the first Hebrew Canon of Scripture, it was clearly written in the 7^th Century BC during the reign of King Josiah, not many years fore the Exile into Babylon.  So it seems written somewhere between the passages we referred to over the past two weeks.  Listen again:

¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.  ¹⁸ He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.  ¹⁹ And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.  ²⁰ Fear the Lord your God and serve him.

So it seems to me that there is a common theme here and it will be very useful as we prepare for our Parish Consultation over the next couple of weekends.

These Old Testament prophets are in complete harmony with the teaching of Jesus when they remind us that God wants action, not self-righteousness.  God wants us to do stuff rather than show that we have orthodox beliefs.

I am not sure if any of you have come across people who are Quakers before.  They prefer to call themselves The Society of Friends.  I know that some Christians are unwilling to accept that they are Christian because they are a bit vague on their doctrines.

They are members of the Council of Churches of WA and one of them once said to my wife when she was the General Secretary of CCWA that generally Quakers do not care if you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, but they do care about how you live your life – embodying the things Jesus called us to do. 

I suspect that some of you would like to think that what you believe is important too – I won’t disagree with you on that – but I do hope you also agree that what you do, how you live is important.  This certainly seems to be the message for us today – and last week – and the week before.

What better preparation could we have for our Parish Consultation than this? 

As we consider our situation I am sure that much of our thinking will be directed towards the question “How can we get more people involved with us at Holy Cross?”  That, I think we will find, is a secondary question.

The first question that we will need to consider is what things would we be doing in Hamersley that is an expression of us “defending the cause of the fatherless and the widows, and loving the foreigner residing among us, giving them food and clothing?” 

What would we have to do that showed we loved those who were foreigners among us?

Now I don’t mean literally the fatherless and the widow or the aliens who live among us.  These are examples that are leading us into lives in which we

         DO JUSTICE

         LOVE COMPASSION and

         WALK HUMBLY WITH OUR GOD.

These are examples of ways in which we might be loosening the chains of injustice for someone or untying the ropes of oppression for them.

Jesus makes it very clear that as we love one another, as we express our commitment to him by doing these things, his LIGHT will shine from within us and make it clear to everyone who is our LORD.

So, one of our fundamental tasks will be to find a way of understanding what the needs of people are in our area and which ones we might be able to do something about.

Now some of that might involve quiet specific activities with our Nuba people that will help them overcome some of the things that are holding them back – language, qualifications, steady work, etc.  But it will need to be them who tell us what they need help in, not us saying “this or this will be great” and then find they won’t come.

But there are people who actually live here in Hamersley and Warwick whose needs are not being addressed by any community services and this failure to have those needs met leaves them with a poorer life than they should have.

I trust that as we discuss these things together, we will have sufficient information to inform us, and an abundance of faith in the leading and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we will be able to see a fantastic future ahead of us doing everything we can to brighten up that light of Christ that will be shining out of us.

Jesus & The Law

The story is told a long time ago of a man who wanted to give his wife a very special present – one she had dreamed of having since she was a little girl – a beautiful Music Box.  You know the kind – you lift up the lid and a tune plays, and maybe even a ballerina dances.

He found an exquisite one in a shop one day when he was shopping alone and knew this was it.  It was extra special because it also glowed in the dark.

Her birthday came around and after they had had a lovely dinner together he said he had a little extra surprise for her.  He turned all the lights out, and he got this precious gift from his wardrobe and gave it to her.  She carefully unwrapped it in the dark and when uncovered all she could see was a dark kind of box thingy.  The husband was really disappointed.  He was sure it would be glowing and give her such a thrill.  In clear disappointment he went and turned the lights on and said he was very sorry.  It must be broken.

Undeterred, his wife opened it up and just loved the music and the little ballerina, and as she was looking it all over she saw a little sign on the bottom.  It said “If you want me to shine all night, keep me in the sun all day.”

Of course there was nothing wrong with the box, and once it had spent a day in the sun it fairly glowed in the dark.

Light is a bit of a theme for the readings today.  In the Isaiah reading we heard these words:

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

There is an echo here of the Prophet Micah’s words, that we hear last week about doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.  It is clear that we are called to reach out and share what we have with those who do not.  But Isaiah goes further.  He says:

                ⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

By doing these things our lives take on the quality of light – they shine for all to see; and they challenge others to praise God and to do likewise.

In our Gospel reading Jesus declares that we ARE the LIGHT of the WORLD.  Not that we WILL be.  Not that we CAN be.  We ARE the Light of the World.  And he makes the observation that this is about taking on his ministry of service and compassion and so making those who observe us doing this aware that God is good and worthy of our praise.

In the ancient world you had to keep a light burning all the time – it wasn’t always easy to get it started again; there were no safety strike matches.  If your light went out you would have to go find a neighbour to borrow some light from.  The flame for your light had to come from the flame of another’s light.  Light was always being passed on and around.

Another way of looking at it is that the light that shows when we are engaged in this ministry of good works is a REFLECTION of the light of Jesus that is within us – just like the moon’s light is a reflection of the light of the Sun.

And, of course, we need to realise that this kind of light was never intended to be hidden away.  When there is just a single light in a room, it has to be put on a stand so that everyone can receive the light.

Years ago, when I was in teacher’s college, I was involved in a geology excursion to the caves in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste region.  We were privileged to gain permission to explore the Devil’s Lair cave.  This cave is not open to the public and which has no electrical lighting in it.  We came to a huge cavern area and were all told to douse our lights.  After our eyes had adjusted to the most absolute darkness I have ever experienced one of the crew lit a single candle.  It was amazing how much light came from that one candle.  In time we could make out all the basic features within the cavern just from that single light source.

The light of Christ within us is so needed in our day.  There is so much darkness around us.  There are many many dark places but they will never overcome the light of Christ.

Light is also used to warn us of danger and lead the way – especially on the oceans.  Lighthouses and navigation lights keep people safe – that is part of our calling, too, if we are to be the light of the world.

To me, this is a call to action.  We are called on to undertake these same acts of mercy and kindness to those around us. 

But there are two other images in our selection of Gospel that I thought I would mention in passing – just worth a thought.

Jesus actually says that we are the Salt of the earth.  He says this before he says that we are the light of the world and its an image full of meaning.

In Jesus’ day salt was a very precious commodity.  You may be familiar with the term “Off to the salt mine” as a reference to going off to work.  Work is where we earn our salary and the etymology of salary lies with the word for salt – saline, for example is similar to salary.  How did this happen?

In Roman times it was not uncommon to actually use salt to pay wages.  Salt was very useful, and according to the Romans it was the purest of all things because it was made of two very pure things – the sea and the sun.

There are two wonderful dimensions to this image if we are to understand what it means for us to be the salt of the earth.

Firstly, salt makes things tasty, it brings out flavours and without it many foods are insipid.  As we live out the mission and ministry of Christ in our world we are adding that same zest and flavour to the world.  We are changing what would otherwise be an insipid experience of life into something rather vibrant.

But salt is also a preservative and cleanser.  Many things, when treated with salt or brine are able to be kept for long periods of time without refrigeration.  We, too, can have that same life-preserving effect in our society, the same cleansing effect id we live out the mission of Christ.

I think I have told you before that many of the things we have in the Gospel stood alone as stories or what they call aphorisms – little sayings of Jesus – that people remembered and passed down orally for many years before the Gospel writers created a text. 

In writing the Gospel, each author has created their own sort of “string of beads”.  By stringing the stories and aphorisms together in their particular way they end up with a string of beads that looks a bit different from the string the other gospel writers made.

There are three beads in this week’s selection from Matthew – the salt aphorism, the light aphorism, and the teaching about the law.  We have considered the salt and light aphorisms.  Why do we have this teaching about the Law just here?

The first thing to say is that we have already seen that for Matthew, the story of Jesus needs to run parallel to the story of Moses.  So it should not be a surprise for us to hear Matthew giving Jesus an opportunity to say he was not doing away with all the Law stuff – rather he was fulfilling it.

But if we are to take this too far in a particular direction we will end up failing to understand the importance of God’s amazing grace.  Like Seventh Day Adventists we would be trying to keep all the LAW as our pathway to salvation and I am sure that’s not the way it should be.

Perhaps the salt and light aphorisms will give us a way through this conundrum.  

The two aphorisms seem to point us to a way of being and doing that is an expression of the life of Christ within us.  It is Christ in us that inspires the good works that we do – not the demands of the Law by which we are working out our salvation. 

It is in this way that our righteousness will exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, not by us being even more meticulous than they were in keeping the whole law.  To me that is the absolute fulfilment of the law that Jesus was talking about. 

Someone asked the question are we saved by works or grace – I think in truth that the answer is both, but the works are not driven by the burden of the law.  Rather they are the outworking of grace.