Sermon Easter Day 24 April 2011

In the name of God who dances “through the dullness of humanity.” 

Here is our hope:

in the mystery of suffering is the heartbeat of Love,

Love that will not let go.[1]

In Susan Hill’s novel The Service of Clouds, Flora has just attended the funeral of her teacher Miss Pinkney.  Much more than just a teacher, Miss Pinkney saved Flora’s life – nursing her back to health at a time when she was friendless and quite alone.   After the funeral, Flora finds herself returning to a local park, which has been a very special place for her in earlier years.  "Then, [Susan Hill writes] as with the rush of grief, so came the next thing, a devastating, split-second of presence, and awareness.

She was between the high, dark shrubs, out of the sunlight.  A blackbird scuttled in the soil at the holly root, after fallen berries.  The sky was bright, above her head.  Somewhere, on the other side of the water perhaps, a child laughed.  And in that second, Miss Pinkney was beside her, or just ahead, or at her shoulder, unseen but sensed and so absolutely that mere sight was quite unnecessary.  The sense of her, the simple presence, made Flora stop dead, her hand flying to her mouth, made her say aloud, "Oh.  Oh, so you are ..."  And then, for a time out of time, they stood together, speaking what was not spoken.  The vividness, the certainty and clarity of the moment which was less than a moment and was a lifetime, was absolute and imprinted on her heart and mind and memory forever, so that she never questioned or doubted it afterwards - nor spoke of it, save once.   She did not look for meaning, reason, explanation, and neither understood nor tried to understand.  That it had been was sufficient, then, and later.”[2]

“The stories of the resurrection appearances” Rebecca Lyman writes “are not philosophical arguments, but rather affirmations of unbroken relationships within divine reality.” There are times in our lives, when we, like Flora, discover a shimmering connection with the mystery of life that overcomes our fears, our denials, our betrayals – and even death itself.   These are the times that convince us that light is stronger than darkness, love is stronger than hate, life is stronger than death.  Today we celebrate this power of light, love and life.

“I like to think of creation and resurrection” Lyman says “as this immense energy that moves and illuminates our ordinary life rather than verbal propositions to be affirmed or denied. Doctrines do not satisfy us; life in God does….

Mary Magdalene goes to the garden seeking her teacher, and finds not a new revelation,” not a new teaching, not a new creed, “but the One she loves. Only something so ordinary as the sight and sound of your lost friend could be this holy.”  Today we approach the Easter story seeking that Holy Other.  “We have come looking for nothing else. Love in its incredible tenacity and mysterious appearances walks with us in our grief[s] and [our] skepticism.”[3]

All the way through Lent, we have acknowledged that this pathway is challenging.  It’s no easy Sunday afternoon stroll; it’s not easily achieved with an Easter Egg and a good holiday.   It’s about learning another way of relating – a costly way – but one which is life-changing, leading to heart-felt hallelujahs.   The Easter message is clear:  if we choose to embrace in our everyday lives reconciliation, forgiveness and non-violence, we will find the power of Love and Hope.   We’ve seen this marked so clearly on the faces and in the lives of people:  people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, people like Ghandi and Aung Sun Su Xi, people like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King – and of course, for Christians, supremely in Jesus of Nazareth – people who will not let the deathliness of vengeance, weaponry and abusive powers overcome them.    In the garden, early on that first Easter morning, the women, arrived with hearts full of grief and empty of hope – but they leave with hearts filled with joy, knowing that the Divine Presence has not left them alone - knowing that Hope, Healing and Love cannot be defeated by pain, sorrow and death.

Wendell Berry, in his poem Manifesto invites us into a practice of resurrection – throughout our lives – so that we too may know “the vividness, the certainty and clarity of the [Easter] moment.”[4]  Some excerpts from Berry’s poem:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
....So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it. ...

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
...Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts. ...

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
....As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.[5]

And so today, we practise resurrection so that we will know the full, abundant and flourishing life, which Jesus promises.  We will practise resurrection: forgiving and loving - dancing through our dullness, celebrating with signs of new life, baptizing a baby, remembering our own baptisms, singing Hallelujahs, seeing everywhere in “our bloody and blessed world” [6], the face of the divine mystery that is Love – Love that will not let us go.  Hallelujah!

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[1] Shirley Murray, “Christ is Alive” Alleluia Aotearoa 15

[2] Susan Hill, The service of clouds, 1998 p.147.

[3] Rebecca Lyman, “Ours the Cross, the Grave, the Skies” in http://www.journeywithjesus.net/  Easter Day 2011

[4] Susan Hill

[5] Wendell Berry (b. 1934) Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/675

[6] Rebecca Lyman

Sermon Palm Sunday 17 April 2011

What would you do, if you knew there was just one week left?   Just a week to say goodbye to your nearest and dearest; just a week before your world comes crashing down; just a week before all that you have known and loved is changed forever.  What would you do?

I wonder what our friends in Haiti, Christchurch and Japan might have done had they known, what they know now, about the way their world would be shaken so disastrously in recent times.  Would they have prepared themselves differently?  

For as long as I can remember, Civil Defence has urged New Zealanders to develop survival kits in our homes.  Water and food, transistor radio, torch, batteries – get ready, so you can get through – we have been urged.   How many of us have done that?   My guess is, not many – although I do believe that in recent months, throughout this country, there has been a more intentional effort to become better prepared.  Our apathetic and ignorant confidence that natural disasters happen in other places – not here – and our laissez-faire dependency that, if they do happen, someone else will take care of us; all this, since the 22^nd of February, has been shaken to the core.  For those of us outside the earthquake zone, our aftershocks have been practical rather than geological. We’ve been jolted into the realisation that personal preparation and community action are essential for survival.  We’ve filled our bottles of water, built up a stash of candles and know where the matches have been stored; we’ve started to re-connect, getting to know neighbours, valuing cooperation and sharing.  Should disaster hit, we just might get through.

I don’t know if Jesus knew he had only a week left – but the storm clouds were gathering; the signs were there; his time was certainly limited. Let’s clear the mists of interpretative fog for a minute – let’s sweep away all the fulfilment of prophecy, all the murky mist that smothers a human being with a story about a God-man-puppet being led to the scaffold to fulfil the vengeful plans of a manipulative God.  Let’s cast all that aside and see, for a moment, this very human man – just 33 years old – facing up to hatred, scheming, lies and betrayal of seismic proportion – and imagine, what must it have been like?  How could he possibly be ready – how could he possibly see the week through?  

So, back to the question:  what would you do, if you knew you had only one week left for life, as you know it at the moment?  Would you quickly assemble your ‘bucket list’ and try to fit into that week all the things you had not bothered with over the years, but still had a hankering for – or would your direction be more focussed, drawing on a spiritual survival kit that you had been developing intentionally over many years – a kit that would bring about, even in the toughest of times, a blossoming into unbelievable flourishing life? 

Should you want to go the way of the ‘bucket list’ – that is, the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket – there’s plenty of help at hand:  just Google ‘bucket list’ to find over 7 million hits in just 0.12 of a second – movies, books, web sites and social networks abound – all encouraging you to ‘kick start your life goals’.   The American based social networking site Bucketlist is “where you go to keep track of” ... “all those things you swear you're going to do before you die” such as “Climb a volcano ... Get the other guy elected ... Perfect your chili recipe ... Learn to play oboe ... Visit New Zealand ...”[1]  All interesting  achievements; but it seems to me a bucket list on its own doesn’t help much when you are facing your own death, minus one week, one month, or one year. Sure, having climbed a volcano or been to New Zealand – or Alaska – might be nice to look back on, but, life offers much much more than the ticking off of achievements.  Don’t we need something behind the list; some meaning that takes us deeper into a more expansive way of being?

I know it’s rather an anachronistic thought, but I do wonder what kind of bucket-list Jesus might have drawn up.  Without his deep spiritual preparation, it might have read something like “get baptised, do some miracles, teach some stuff, participate in a parade, go see the sights of Jerusalem.”  All ticked off, all completed one week before death.  But, somehow, I can’t see him getting through this next week on such trivial achievements.    Rather, I think his list is much more that of building a spiritual survival kit over a life time (even a very short life-time) and expressed in much more disturbing terms:   hang out with the losers, be wasteful in love and passionate about justice, get rid of religious hypocrisy, provide provocative alternatives to governments ... ongoing life-style choices, all based on a deepening relationship with God and about which it’s not very easy to say ‘been there, done that – got the t-shirt’.

Over recent weeks some of us have been meeting in study groups, developing an integrated sense of self; others of us have journeyed in a weekly pilgrimage, focussing on our thirst for living water; and as we have all come together in worship each Sunday during Lent, we have been invited into building a Jesus-focussed spiritual survival kit - built not on things but on relationship.  In all these explorations, we’ve been preparing for something important.  We have learnt to take risks, to venture into the unknown with wasteful generosity, justice and love, to encounter the strange and the stranger and to be radically transformed.

 And now here we are, with Jesus, poised at the beginning of a week that could change our lives forever.  It’s crunch time.  After all our weeks of preparation, the tectonic plate of our spiritual lives crashes against that other tectonic plate of holidays, travel, easter bunnies and chocolate. 

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem acts as our shake-up call.  It’s an earthquake off the Richter scale – reminding us of our deep need for our survival kits. 

So, how will this next week be for you? 

There’s just one week left .......

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[1] http://bucketlist.org/

Sermon etc. April 3 2011, 10am

Children’s Story: Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young

The seven differently coloured blind mice go out one by one to investigate the strange Something (an elephant) by the pond, but each comes back with a different idea of what it is.

Introduction to the Gospel

At first sight, you might think this morning’s gospel story is about a healing – the healing of a blind man.  But a closer look seems to point us into a much more expansive view – perhaps even to a totally different vista.    It’s a long reading.  Out of the forty-one verses, only two describe the actual healing.  By far the majority of the chapter is about conflicting views – disputes, arguments and misunderstandings.  The scene is set, right from the very first verse, where Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who had never been able to see; a man who had been born blind – someone to whom Jesus was able to bring sight – not just physical sight, but a breadth of view, much greater than what others around him could see.  As we are taken through these forty-one verses of questions, heated discussion and differences of opinion, which are as relevant today as they were two-thousand years ago, a picture unfolds – a picture of one considered of no account entering into a life-changing relationship with Jesus.  As we listen and watch the unfolding scene, we too are invited into an encounter with the living God, where our eyes might also be opened.

So let’s approach this gospel reading with the acknowledgement that our way of seeing may not be all that it might be – that we too may need healing.

Dramatic Reading of John 9:1-41 

Hymn: “Teach us, O loving heart of Christ” words Shirley Murray Alleluia Aotearoa

Sermon/Reflection

As we all know, the Gospel of John is a sophisticated theological reflection on the life of Jesus.  While it is likely that the reading, as we now have it, could be based on an actual healing story, there are many more layers to be uncovered and explored.  Seeing this reading as a simple healing story is like a blue mouse encountering an elephant’s tail and assuming the elephant is a rope.[1]   The tail/tale is there – but, if we do not expand our sight/site, we will see only distortion.

And so, as the writer, whom we know as John, reflects on the life and ministry of Jesus, he invites us into a theological exploration that takes us – we who are disciples, teachers, relatives and religious leaders – taking all of us into a place where our eyes might be opened, so that we too can see in a radically new way. 

The scene is set with a simple encounter between Jesus and a man born blind.  And the disciples, the eager students and followers of Jesus turn to their teacher, seeking to bring what they have learned to their ongoing education.  So, they ask Jesus, “who sinned?”  There had to be a reason - someone had to have caused the blindness – was it the man himself, or his parents? Who was at fault?  Somehow the pain of disability, disease or death has to be someone’s fault – doesn’t it – or does it?  Isn’t this the question lying beneath so much stumbling in the darkness of our lives?  Who can we blame?  Whose fault is it?  And, the unspoken question, often underlying the fault seeking, is the question of divine punishment.  For, who caused that fault?  If the man’s – or his parents’ – sin had caused his blindness, then it was God who punished.

Even in our so-called secular world, this kind of question emerges time and again.  Sometimes hidden within assumptions and sometimes blatantly spelt out.  I heard it at the meeting of our church General Assembly last year in Christchurch.  It was only a matter of weeks after the first earthquake. In prayer as well as public and private comment, the language of God’s protection of Christchurch featured.  “No people died in Christchurch because God particularly blesses us” people were heard to say.  When challenged about the thousands of deaths in the Haiti earthquake, the one who was speaking was quick to explain that the people of Haiti were wicked – the infidel – and God had punished them.  (Since more recent events in Christchurch, his mind may have been changed).  What an appalling interpretation and aberration of a loving God!

“Who sinned?” Jesus’ disciples asked.   “Wrong question” Jesus replies.  “Rather, look to see how God’s light is shining.

Whether we ask “Who sinned?” or the question lying beneath: “how could God take the lives of innocent people?” we too are asking the wrong question.

Wrong questions and limited perspectives pile one on top of the other.  Neighbours – and even parents of the blind man – can’t quite get their minds around his transformation that is of elephant-like-proportions!   Their scepticism and suspicion assume people can’t change – that miracles never happen – that rational explanations are the only way to understand the totality of life.  How blind they are!  

Have you been there?  I know I have ....

Of course, the best is kept till last.  It’s the professional clergy – the religious leaders – who are completely on the wrong foot.  Again, as is so often the case in Jesus’ stories, those who come from the religious establishment, those who one might reasonably expect to provide healing and wholeness, are the ones who cause the most harm.   It’s enough to make any minister stop in her tracks!  For it’s the clergy who refuse to believe what others tell them of miracles.  They’re more concerned about correct belief and ritual “than to love a human being and rejoice in his wholeness.  They blabbered pious clichés.”  And, just as they will to Jesus in the days leading to crucifixion, “they scapegoated the victim and ‘hurled insults’ at him.  They condescendingly claim a spiritual elitism that intentionally humiliates.  They demonize him as a ‘sinner’.  As they throw him out of the synagogue their rage explodes, ‘How dare you lecture us!’  [And] With that, their own tragic blindness is confirmed.”[2]

So often we get things terribly wrong ... so often we are blinded by our own self-righteousness ... so often our understanding of God is mouse-like in its perspective – so often we forget to see others – and ourselves – as God does.  How difficult it is to perceive the wider vision of God’s kin-dom, about which Jesus taught and the psalmist speaks – where there are righteous paths, genuine comfort, and abundant hospitality for all.   But surely, the first step in being able to do this is to acknowledge we don’t have all the answers – that we could be wrong.  From this perspective, we might be open to learn from each other– each of us with our limited viewpoint – filtered by who we are, whether we come from a red, blue, green, yellow or purple perspective – seeking a bigger picture – a more expansive understanding of what it means to be the people of God.  And above all, may it be that as we ask our questions, debate our understandings, we may experience the transforming miraculous vision of the true Light of the world and so participate in bringing about the amazing possibilities of God’s kin-dom here on Earth. 

Affirmation of Faith

The hymn after the affirmation of faith is an invitation to conversation, as we seek a broader vision in the midst of overwhelming pain.  We sing it today particularly in memory of 16 year old Chloe Anson, who died a week ago.  We are tempted to ask why such a vital young woman should die so suddenly – but we hear the echoes of Jesus’ voice and vision and recognise this is not the question to ask.  So we sing from another perspective, one which might shed light on a bigger picture.  In this hymn, we hold Chloe and all who loved her, in the holy mystery of Love – that which we call God.

But, first, we affirm

We are not alone – I invite those who are able to stand.

Hymn: Nothing is lost on the breath of God;

 words and music by Colin Gibson Faith forever singing

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[1] Reference to the story read to the children earlier in the service Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young

[2] Daniel B. Clendenin www.journeywithjesus.net – tense changed