The Gospels are full of stories of God’s extravagant, generous, overflowing gifts, love and mercy: the open-armed welcome for the prodigal child, a catch of fish so great that it overwhelms the boats, the feeding of a multitude of people, with so much leftover; signs of abundance and celebration. Good heavens! More miracles! We can almost hear Jesus saying “what part of abundant life don’t you understand?”
And in our heart of hearts, we might reply – “get
real Jesus – there’s not much to sing about in this world of shortages. Don’t you realise we have to live with limits,
that we have to protect our patch? There’s
only so much food, so much water and so much oil – and it’s being used up at a
great rate. There’s only
so much rain forest, and we’re cutting it down. There are only so many fish in
the sea, and we are fighting over quotas. There are only so many jobs, and
we’re struggling to keep them in our own country. There’s only so much to go
around, and if others get more, it means I get less. Signs of overflowing generosity just aren’t
the way of the world.”
That’s right; the way of the gospel is not the way
of the world. The signs to which John
calls our attention point to the way of the Gospel, which is about over-the-top,
extravagant love. In God, there are always surpluses. It may be worth asking ourselves: are we
thinking too small? Are we doling out the
wine by the teaspoon, while Jesus is pouring it out by the 50 litre flagon?
We catch a glimpse of how God’s surpluses emerge, in
today’s reading from the letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth. Here Paul reminds the people of the various
spiritual gifts they have been given – gifts perhaps unrecognised, but gifts,
which shared together amongst a community, bring about abundance. Paul writes: “there are varieties of gifts,
but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord;
and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all
of them in everyone. To each is given
the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
Some of you will have noticed that, for some weeks
now, I have included in each order of service, a spiritual practice for the week. The reason for doing this is to help each of us
to identify and develop this variety of gifts which we all have, and which, in
God’s abundance, can be activated for the common good – for the common good of
you and your friendship/family circle, for the common good of this faith
community and the Dunedin community, and for the common good of the cosmos.
The practice for this week is ‘Hope”. To live within a context of hope is to live
within a mind-set of abundance. “Hope is a positive and potent
spiritual practice with the power to pull us through difficult times. It is
usually described with light metaphors — a ray, a beam, a glimmer of hope; the
break in the clouds; the light at the end of the dark tunnel. It is often discovered
in unexpected places.” One way of
developing this practice is to close your eyes, let one breath out, and then see
yourself in a long tunnel with nothing but darkness behind and ahead of you.
Moving forward, see a dot of light in the distance, which is getting larger and
larger the closer you move toward it. Walk out of the tunnel into the light. [3] Then open your eyes to the
miracles you will see – for living in hope opens us to God’s surprise of
abundance and enables us to offer that abundance to others.
Many of you will know the story of CS Lewis; as told
in the movie Shadowlands. For a very long time Lewis’s life had followed
the same comfortable patterns as a teacher and writer, a pipe-smoking bachelor,
living in his book-lined Oxford home with his brother. Shadowlands
tells about the wonderfully surprising, late blooming romance involving this
lay theologian, writer of children’s books, an older settled man, and American
poet, Joy Gresham, a young divorced mother. Turning water into wine might seem
simple in comparison to the ways of this developing relationship. They meet
after Joy wrote Lewis an admiring letter; their correspondence led to her
visiting England with her son Douglas. Lewis received Joy with courtesy, but
was so totally settled in his lifelong professional routine, he hardly knew
what to do with her – especially as it became clear, even to himself, that he
was falling in love.
Their courtship was an odd one. He issued invitations
lamely, as if sure she would not accept. Then Joy had difficulties with
immigration – and it was likely she would have to return to America. And so Lewis
offers marriage to cover the technicalities of immigration – a secret
arrangement which allows Joy to remain living in London, while Lewis continues
his life style in Oxford. But then, when expectations are at their lowest, when
life appears predictable, when the wine is running out – a surprise transforms
their lives. Joy becomes terminally ill
with cancer and in his hospital visiting of Joy, Lewis suddenly awakens to the
reality of the abundant love they have for each other. The best is surely kept
until last. There in the hospital, another wedding
ceremony is performed – a religious and public occasion; a celebration of deep and
abundant love. On being discharged from
the hospital, Joy and her son Douglas are welcomed into Lewis’s home in Oxford
where they live as a married couple and a family. It is there that Lewis learns how to nurse
his wife and to become a father to Douglas.
In Joy’s dying days, the water is indeed turned into
abundantly flowing and gold medal winning wine.
While their time as a married couple was short, this newly formed family
found in those brief days an intense and extremely happy time together. CS
Lewis was later to write a book entitled “Surprised by Joy”.
Good heavens!
Another miracle! Will they ever
end? I hope not....
[2] Rubem Alves
suggests “When things awaken longing remembrance and cause the memory of love
and the desire for return to grow in the heart, we say that they are sacraments. This is a sacrament: visible signs of an
absence, symbols which make us think about return.”[2]
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