On not being impotent

The readings for this week are those for 25th April 2010 the 4th Sunday in Easter. Acts 9:36-43 • Psalm 23 • Revelation 7:9-17 • John 10:22—30
Today is also observed as Commemoration of ANZAC, and it can be St Mark’s Day.

The resurrection stories tease out for Christians what it means to live life in the light of the resurrection.
What does it mean to see life through the lenses of the resurrection?
What they discovered is that things were rather different.


The promises of Jesus seemed to be becoming true.
What are these promises?
Well, there are many. Jesus promised, for example , to be with his disciples always.
What a mind blowing thought!
Jesus is with us all the time. This might mean that any situation we find ourselves in. Jesus is already there.
Whether it be sickness, difficulty, spiritual difficulty.
Or let’s face it when we rejoice at a new birth, walk into a new job, meet an old friend. Walk into Coromandel Primary School to spend an hour mentoring one of our children. Jesus is with us.
We need not fear, nor feel alone. We need not fear as though we do not have capacity to cope.
Because the disciples also discovered that Jesus’s promise to send the Holy Spirit to equip the disciples to do what needed to be done was also true. They could speak the Gospel and people would understand, they could pray and prayers were answered.
What do you believe Jesus has equipped you to do?’
Part of our problem is that we don’t seem to think that we can or need to do anything.
But we see in the lovely story in Acts 9:36-43 where Peter heals through prayer a young girl who is sick, perhaps dead, that the disciples discover another promise of Jesus.
You will do what I have done and greater
Do we have the courage to kneel down and trust that promise as Peter did?
New Learning
Where might Jesus be inviting you to live in the light of the promise?
To put aside the sense of living out of impotence and shallow convention, and rather to live out of the spirit of resurrexion

Sex food and prayer!!!

Readings for Sunday 26th July 2009 (8th Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 17) 2 Sam 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21
Sex, food and prayer
The title for this week may surprise some! But these are themes from these readings.
Though they don't neatly 'click' together, they speak of some really fundamental things that drive us.
David who we continue to read about, is at once both heroic and flawed
It was ever so!
Here we read about how the successful King
successful because he has been responsive to God's promise
can still get it wrong.
He commits adultery and fathers a child.
More than this, he weaves a web of intrigue and deceit
ultimately climaxing in the murder of the innocent man he has wronged.
For this he will come to know God's wrath
and he will live with this serious failure for the rest of his life.

I reflect that we should all be careful of being judgmental
There but for the grace of God go you and I?
But how does David lose the plot so fundamentally.
Like you and me he does it because he forgets that it is God who is is charge, not David!
David thinks that it is his life plan that he is implementing
and so that he is invincible.
It is the fall of the proud... hubris ... in classical terms

Paul's prayer this week is for his fellow Christians that they may freely acknowledge God's love and greatness
It is a mystery which lies outside our understanding
and is part of of our growth and learning as humans.
David's fault, like us so often,
is that when things are going well
we can easily be seduced into thinking it is we who are responsble.
And we can act as if we are God
and give ourselves permission to do anything.
Even sin.
This requires some subtlety and care
issues are not always, indeed never,
Black and white
and so Paul's prayer

"that (we) may have the
power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and
height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so
that (we) may be filled with all the fullness of God"

is a good and necessary prayer for caution and humility.

God's abundance
The wonderful story of the feeding of the 5000
reminds us that we have no need to panic (as David did)
and that God will always act with abundance in our lives.
At times we will even see Jesus walking on the water and inviting us to join him!

So today, our prayer is to remain faithful to the Spirit of God
who has blessed us time and time again
to not presume, as David did,
that God does and will sanction everything and anything we choose to do.
God requires more of us than that.
Pray, as Paul urges us, that we all may understand the mystery of God's love
ever deeper and deeper in our lives
And let this be our prayer for each other.

God pours out his abundant love,
spiritually and materially
we don't need to panic.
We can trust his control of our lives.
Can we trust ourselves.

Advent makes the heart grow fonder

Readings for the First week of Advent beginning Sunday December 3: Jer 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thess 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-38 (the 3 year cycle begins Year C this week, reading through Luke's Gospel as the year goes on)

Advent is heavy on themes.
Chief amongst these is preparation for Christmas.
Week by week we mark this passage (slow for children, but astonishingly fast for adults) with the lighting of candles on an Advent wreath.
It rather ticks the weeks off.
Though if we pay attention
it is not just about getting through the season
we are led carefully into the mystery of the life God has in store for us
the hope God has for you and me and for the world
and the sense of promise that is caught up in human life.
We 'intuit' a lot of this at Christmas time any way. With a strong sense of expectation at the great celebration, we need to also look for something more substantial
than a day of fun and feasting.
Advent tries to point us to go a little deeper so try and take time in this season
to absorb something of the ethos.

Some pointers
The prophets point us to a sense of political fulfilment.
For the people of Israel it was about peace and stability.
These things do not come without cost and without work,
there is not the suggestion that osme how God will come and wave a magic wand
and all will eb made well.
There is always a sense that if we are to enjoy peace
then God's people are to lead the way
so when we hear Jeremiah say:

The Lord will raise up a righteous branch who
shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

We can also ask ourselves what this calls us to do
how do we, the righteous branch, grafted into Christ
work for justice and righteousness here in Australia.
We are often very passive when it comes to politics
but where do we feel there is more need for justice
where can we stive for peace and stability.
This is of course part of the motivation
behind our Parish Project to help support families
involved in the Juvenile Justice System.
This project is about fulfilling our Advent call.
for justice and righteousness
for peace and community
and not just sitting on the sidelines expecting something to happen.

Rocket science?
In a way this is not rocket science.
Jesus reminds us with the examnple of the trees changing and growing
that there is a continuous cycle of growth, expectation, and fulfillment
and his reminder is that we should

‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

We should take the opportunity that we are given.
It is a recurring theme of his teaching
Be watchful and take the opportunity

So some Advent questions are
Am I in touch with what God is promising me?
Can I speak to God about what I hope for at this time in my life?
Is there some thing that I am called to do in this season
which furthers God's cause of justice, peace and righteousness?
What do I need to do to put that into action, or if I can't easily latch on to this idea
can I ask God for some direction.

The time is short...but the time is enough

And companions on the way

Ruth 1:1-8; Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:11-15, Mark 12:13-17, 28-34 Readings for Sunday 5th November, Pentecost 22 (Proper 31)

I always find this season both encouraging and challenging
As the year draws towards its close
we move in the Church's year from thinking about day to day life
to the fulfillment of the promises of God's kingdom.
In the Church of England this season is called Kingdom Time
It is, I think, a good name.
In my mind it begins around the end of October
with the feast of St Simon and St Jude (28th October)
So far as we know they are two of the apostles listed in the Gospels
but we know very little about them.
Jude is traditionally called "The Obscure" meaning that whoever he is we don't actually have any detail.

[Indeed that's why Thomas Hardy reminds us in his dark novel of failed ambition and thwarted hope which is entitled Jude the Obscure(full text here) of a man who fails to make it because he is unknown, unrecognised, unappreciated...he is indeed Obscure]

This feast is a prelude to the great feast day that we encounter on November 1st....All Saints Day...and which is followed the day after by All Soul's Day, when the dead are commemorated
We are here in a world which transcends the grave
what the Apostle's Creed calls the communion of saints
This is heady stuff! Too much for some!

But we may be prompted to ask what this is all about
Isn't it just religious mumbo-jumbo?
Of course it could be, that may indeed be the point.
If we get to the guts of it
the saints point us to how faith might be lived with authenticity and integrity
We are constantly tempted to whitewash the saints (like any heroes) and romanticise them.
Indeed we do this to Jesus!
But as we begin to scratch their stories we soon realise that their lives are anything but pristine.
Let me just reflect briefly on three saints.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is arguably the most influential Christian thinker of the 21st century.
His call to radical discipleship and to see the gospel as the challenge to freely decide to follow Christ in every aspect of life is now almost taken for granted.
It does not seem too radical, and yet for Bonhoeffer
his life was lived with a total commitment
to community, to prayer and to human action.
This latter ultimatley saw him caught up in the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Germany, he laid his life on the line by being one of those who sought to assassinate Hitler.
This cost him his life, he was arrested and ultimately imprisoned. Executed only weeks before the war ended
we see in his life
the Cost of Discipleship ( a title of one of his books) played out in reality in his own life.
Such a saint sets us before us the reality of Christian life,
of the possibility of being faithful in life to all that Christ sets before us.
Mother Teresa too, that amazing little Eastern European nun who ended up in India looking after the poorest of the poor
she did it because she felt called to do Something Beautiful for God (a book about her made popular by Malcolm Muggeridge in the 70s)
She too set before the world the possibility of being faithful
not just in word but in deed.
Francis catches the popular imagination for the same reason
Although an incurable idealist, he was a fundamental pragmatist
selling everything he worked to care for poor people
and those who no one else loved
He witnesses to the fact that it is possible to be faithful to Christ
in life, in word and in deed

THIS WEEK
Do you hear the call of the saints? The reality of the call to be faithful.
How is God calling you to practise your sainthood in your life?
What one thing can you do to be a saint this week...it will be loving, it will be faithful, it will be possible. So do it!