Being Prepared …

by Liz Young

(Based on Mark 13:32-37; I Cor 1:3-9)
Take heed, watch for you do not know when the time will come so be prepared.

One of the things I like about ‘Local Shared Ministry’, and being one of seven different preachers, is that we all bring our different experiences to our sermons. So today you will have to listen to a homily with a paediatric perspective. 🙂

In the Old Testament, the watchmen were on the lookout for an attack from the inevitable foe. Here in New Zealand the dangers we and our children face are very different.
Most children, except the autistic, are inherently aware of danger and can read evil people’s body language. Even the subterfuges of sexual predators. If we make a point of trusting their judgement in little things, then they will have the self confidence to trust their own judgement when they face false blandishments. [Why do you think predators approach those children who feel unloved?]
Of course, there are real dangers we have to protect our children from: for example, before the age of eight they’re not able to accurately assess the speed of oncoming cars, and can easily be distracted, so adults need to supervise them crossing the road.
We need to alert them to real dangers, but not pass our anxieties on to them.

We all need to be prepared for the inevitable trials in life. Many of us dislike the over-protectiveness of the current educational system. If every little thing we do is praised, then praise becomes meaningless. If we fail at a Maths test, but get over it, then we start to build resilience and the ability to cope with other future failures.

Now, as many of us approach our deaths or dementia, we need to summon up the courage to be prepared. I want to thank Pam and Lyndsay for their recent ‘Dying Matters’ workshops. If we act on the advice we’ve been given there we should be prepared for the inevitable future.
I find I’m being prepared to say “Goodbye” as my body stiffens up and my brain starts to let me down. I have to shorten my walks, and allow others to help me when I become confused. Part of our preparation is acceptance, taking joy in the things we can still do, giving thanks, and not becoming irritable with our increasing failures and limitations.

In the epistle for today Paul gives thanks for the grace of God, enabling him to enrich the Corinthians’ lives with the knowledge of Jesus and His teachings. Today, we can give thanks for living in a peaceful country, far away from the wars in the Middle East, an area that has been fought over for thousands of years. But we mustn’t be smug: when I read about how much land was taken from Maori by the church in the nineteenth century, I can understand and accept that we need to redress that wrong; and be clear when we’re talking to others, that we of European descent were invited to share the riches of this land, and take care of it – not to grab it and potentially despoil it. 

We should also give thanks for the ways our life has been enriched by living here in the Coromandel. I give thanks for walking up the Kauaeranga, and for a tramp from Coroglen to the Pinnacles Hut, where we overnighted, and woke early, to climb to the top of the Pinnacles, where we saw the view from the Aldermens to Raglan. Unforgettable. I give thanks for being able to sail in the Louisiade Archipelago, islands south-west of Papua New Guinea, where we saw a five-year-old school classroom with not a single desk marked, because the furniture was valued. And a whole village had worked to provide the finance to send one of the children to secondary school . We were lucky to meet the Islanders before cell phones arrived, and people needed ready cash to top them up.
We did experience a petty theft of a purse, and when we told the local councillor, the purse was returned within two hours.
Such experiences make you think. Finding out that the local teacher had not been paid for a year; realizing that these children who had worked so hard at school had very little chance of paid employment …

These experiences made us value the opportunities we’d had. My mother died of breast cancer when I was 29, and I was horrified when I felt a lump in my left breast in the identical place that I’d felt her lump thirty years earlier.
But time had passed, treatment had improved, and forty years later I worry more about my vague brain than my surgical scars.

So, be prepared to enjoy each little moment of happiness to the full and share that joy with others when you can … as we look towards Christmas.

You Did it to Me

by Sharon Marr
(channelling Debie Thomas)

(Based on Matt 25:31-46)

This week the Church celebrates Christ the King, and we pause to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s reign over the Church, the world, and our lives. What kind of king is Jesus?  What does his rule look and feel like?  What does it mean to live and thrive under his kingship?

Given the power and pomp we typically associate with kings, we might expect the Anglican lectionary to give us readings that sound … well, kingly.  Something gorgeous from the Book of Revelation, perhaps, about Jesus decked out in splendid robes and a jewelled crown.  Or something majestic from Isaiah: “A son will be given to us, and the government will rest upon his shoulders.”  Or at least a shiny moment from the Gospels: say, Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop. 

But, no.  The royalty Jesus describes in Matthew’s Gospel is of another order entirely.  It is homeless Jesus.  Sick Jesus.  Imprisoned Jesus.  Hungry Jesus.  Naked Jesus.  It is, in the words of theologian Fleming Rutledge, the “royalty that stoops”.

I learned that “Reign of Christ” Sunday is a fairly recent addition our church calendar.  Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925, in the hope that a world ravaged by World War might find in Jesus’s humble kingship a needed alternative to empire, nationalism, consumerism, and secularism.
I love the Pope’s vision but, sadly, we know it has not been realized.  At present there are wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia and Columbia (to name just some of the 28 countries listed as having conflicts at present).
I am afraid that instead of embracing the countercultural possibility of a humble, wounded king, we have given ourselves over to a version of kingship that is all about domination, supremacy, triumphalism, and greatness.  We don’t need to look far – we as New Zealanders must surely acknowledge this fact: it has taken a long, long time of negotiations back and forth, flying from this city to that city to form our present government coalition. Just who would have their demands met and just who would be deputy prime minister, even though it was said to be “largely a ceremonial job”?
We have fallen in love with the loud, the muscular, and the aggressive … and forgotten that the only power Jesus wielded on earth was the power to give himself away.  He’s the king who entered humanity red-faced and crying, a king whose greatest displays of power included riding on a donkey, washing dirty feet, hanging on a cross, and frying fish on a beach for his friends.  How did we go from the God who empties himself of all privilege, the God who perpetually pours himself out and surrenders his own life for his loved ones — to God as Iron Man?

So many of us long to ‘see Jesus’.  And rightly so.  We pray for an experience of Jesus’s presence.  We yearn to feel him close.  We sing hymns, recite creeds, hear sermons, and attend Bible studies — all in the hope of seeing and knowing Jesus in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with these practices — unless they keep us at a comfortable arm’s length from where Jesus actually is, unless they lead us to believe that the work of justice and compassion is somehow secondary to the real business of Christianity.  The real business of Christianity is bending the knee to Jesus.  And where is Jesus?  Jesus is in ‘the least and the lost and the broken and the wounded’.  Jesus is in the un-pretty places.  In the bodies we don’t discuss in polite company.  In the faces we don’t smile at.  In the parts of towns we speed by.

It’s not that we have to earn our way to majestic King Jesus by caring for the vulnerable.  It is that majestic King Jesus, by his own choice and will, has stooped and surrendered in such a way that he is the vulnerable.  There’s no other way to get to him.  That’s it!  As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “Each one of them, that is, each vulnerable person, is Jesus in disguise.”

So what is it in us that turns away when Jesus offers us his whole self in such provocative, unbearable simplicity?  This is a real question — one I wrestle with all the time.  What am I afraid of?  My inadequacy?  My vulnerability?  My reputation?  Mercy has been described as “the willingness to enter into the chaos of others”.  Is that what we’re afraid of?  Other people’s chaos?

It’s okay to be afraid.  It’s okay to have questions.  It’s okay to see the huddled figure on the bench, in a doorway or living in their car, and not know exactly what to do.  But at some point, our fears must come face to face with reality: “Whatever you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  There is simply no way around it.  Not if we take Jesus’s kingship seriously.

Likewise, there is no way around the perplexing fact that our reading — a reading that describes the final judgment of all humanity — says nothing about ‘belief’. Think about that.  Matthew 25 depicts a scene from the heavenly throne room.  It’s a scene describing the culmination of history, when all nations will gather before Christ, and he will separate his people as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.  Notice the criterion he’ll use for the separation.  What will it be?
Not our confessions of faith.  Not our beliefs, not our doctrinal commitments, not our ‘personal relationships’ with Jesus.  The criterion will be compassion, and compassion alone.

Surprised?  I am.  But, yes, this is our king, and, yes, we are meant to be provoked and bewildered by his priorities.  As Fleming Rutledge puts it, “The Son who ‘sits upon his glorious throne with all the nations gathered before him’ is the same one who, at the very top of his cosmic power, reveals that the universe turns … upon a cup of water given to the littlest ones in his name.”
If we’re not at least a little bit unnerved, then we’re not paying enough attention.
My mother paid attention, and as her health declined over the years she said to my sister Bronny and me, “My one fear is that when I join that queue in heaven I find myself behind Mother Teresa!”

Soon we will enter into Advent, a season of waiting, longing, and listening.  Soon we will walk into the expectant darkness, waiting for the light to dawn, for the first cries of a vulnerable baby to redefine kingship, authority and power forever.  But on this Sunday, here and now, we are asked to see Jesus in places we’d rather not look.  We are asked to remember that every encounter we have with “the least of these” is an actual encounter with Jesus.  It’s not a metaphor.  It’s not wordplay.  It’s not optional.  The person huddled beneath the blanket,  sheltering in a doorway, sleeping in a car, is our king. Let’s see Him.

Will you have a “cup of water” for the king.

Three Churches

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Matt 25:14-30; I Thess 5:1-11)

Every year at this time, based on our liturgical year on the church calendar, the theme of our worship and teaching focuses on the Kingdom of Heaven and the anticipation of the return of the Lord. Today we have heard another parable from Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus tells this story to his disciples to prepare them for the days ahead when their faith will be tested. Last week there was a warning to be prepared. This week, maybe faithfulness.

In a time of waiting what does faithfulness look like? Reading Matthew’s gospel this year has led us along a path showing that true faithfulness is found in imitating Jesus’s ministry and teaching. Jesus proclaims the coming of God’s kingdom by feeding the hungry, curing the sick, blessing the meek and serving the least important in society. For Matthew, all those who would be Jesus followers are to share the Good News of the Kingdom to all the world, by going about this work that Jesus has called them to do.
Those who are faithful may hear their Master say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

So, back with the story we have just heard – my job is to try and link what Matthew is saying to his congregation of Christian Jews in a time of increasing persecution – and make that message relevant to us hearing it in a very different world today.

This ‘parable of the talents’, as it is widely known, where the man going away calls in his slaves and entrusts a small fortune to the three in differing amounts, is possibly the most misconstrued parable of all parables. Or at least the most differently interpreted: just ask me how many commentaries I have read these past weeks! And how many preachers chose to preach on one of the other Scriptures down for today.

Something I’ve learned along the way is that our word ‘talent’ comes  directly from the Greek word used in this parable – in Jesus’s day it meant a certain very hefty weight of gold or silver, but by the Middle Ages the meaning shifting to mean a natural ability, quite likely derived from this parable. A re-interpretation of the parable may have emerged then.
This version implies God is the master who endows and rewards the clever use of talents, then casts out the fearful and so called worthless one to a fate worse than death. The version is quite familiar to me and often associated with church stewardship campaigns; but now I’m having trouble putting that persona on God. Can this be the God who Jesus called “Abba”, who blesses the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful?

How does this match your own heartfelt image of God in today’s world?
Something to ponder this week.

I have another take on this parable – a story told by a Lutheran pastor in Wisconsin that really appealed to me:

God Takes a Vacation
Once there were three churches. They were modest churches that were formed by modest people living in modest communities. Each of these modest churches had modest councils who were made up of modestly faithful men and women who oversaw the modest ministries like the modest Sunday School, the modest music program, and the modest property surrounding the modest church.
One Sunday, the modest pastors of these modest churches stood up to preach modest sermons. No one knew it, but the Holy Spirit, who is anything but modest, had been imprisoned in the beautiful but modest hand-tooled, leather-covered, gilt-edged Bibles. When the modest pastors opened the modest Bibles that Sunday, the Holy Spirit was set free. The Spirit entered into these three modest pastors, and then these three modest pastors said something quite immodest:

“God loves you!” they shouted to the modest people sitting in the pews. And every modest person jumped. “God loves you so much that while you have been living your modest lives, sleeping in your modest homes, God extravagantly filled your hearts and minds with love. God did this because, after five thousand years, God is tired of hearing all the complaining and grumbling and discontent about the work that he is doing. So, God has decided to take a vacation and has left you in charge of his kingdom!
“Don’t panic! God has arranged for the Holy Spirit to continue to inspire and support you in these coming days, so that you can learn to use the amazing gift of love he has given you for the life and ministry of his world.

“So, I come to you today telling you that you now have all of the faith and love that you need to thrive. What do you think of that?”

Then, the modest pastors immodestly sat down. Each one looked a little confused or dazed, not quite sure of what had just happened.

In the first church, people started talking to their neighbours quietly and then more loudly as they prepared to leave worship that day. Someone stood up and said, “I think we need to talk about our faith in God’s kingdom of love and consider how we are best able to share it.”

And they did. They discovered that their greatest gift of love was a gift of generosity. They decided to give God’s kingdom away. And so, they gathered everything they had and prepared to give it away — they even mortgaged the modest church building and the modest property.

But then, challenged to find the best way to give God’s kingdom away, they went out into the community, and they met people at the bus stops and in the cafés. They asked them what they needed because … they were giving God’s kingdom away. They built playground equipment in the parks and gave their time away cleaning up the messy parts of town. They gave food away at pot-lucks, and they opened their building as a shelter for people who were abused and forgotten. Each week they gathered together and encouraged each other about how they could give more of God’s kingdom away to the modest community in which they lived.

~ ~ ~ ~

In the second church, people started talking to their neighbours quietly and then more loudly as they prepared to leave worship that day. Someone stood up and said, “I think we need to think about what we have just heard and each come back with an idea for how we should respond to the message.”

The following week they gathered in small groups and discussed some of their ideas. They discovered that each idea involved singing. They were a little surprised to discover that they loved singing so much. So, they decided that they needed to do something about making sure that anyone who loved music and who loved to sing should feel welcome in their church. They told their church council to find a way to help them get more people who liked to sing.
And so, they advertised in the papers, and they talked with their friends. They organised musical performances of stories from the Bible. They invited people to come and share their musical gifts, and encouraged people to just come and enjoy the music and the stories – and they sang hymns and songs and celebrated life.

~ ~ ~ ~

In the third church, people started talking to their neighbours quietly and then more loudly as they prepared to leave worship that day. Someone stood up and sarcastically said, “Well, that was something.”

Embarrassed, and fearful, other people in the congregation modestly looked down at the floor, then at one another, and went home. During the following week people met each other in stores and shops. They called each other on the phone. They talked about how shocking the Sunday message had been.
One person was overheard to say, “I’m really not sure that the message was from God at all. I think that the pastor should be ashamed for trying to rev us up like that. We need to call the church council to do something about it. The sermons need to be the way they’ve always been. God gave me this modest life, and I like my modest life in my modest home in our modest community. Who does the pastor think she is? What she is proposing could upset our community.”

~ ~ ~ ~

On vacation, God talked with people at the bus stops and ate in cafés – where the people from the first church were gathered. God was there at the playground; he laughed most of all at the thought of trying to give the kingdom away.

God sang with the people gathered to share music in harmony with one another in the second church. Indeed, God had a great time, singing the old songs and the new, and they drank wine together and shared their life stories.

But in the third church God quietly walked among them in sadness because they could not find a way to use the amazing gift of love found in his Kingdom, come to earth. In their fear and their self-consciousness, they felt lost, like they were cast into the outer darkness. They ground their teeth and fearfully looked at the sinful world around them and withdrew further and further until they finally just disappeared.

Friends – as Paul wrote to the people in Thessalonica, let us continue to “encourage one another and build each other up … as indeed you are doing”.
Joan

Taxing

by Liz Young

(Based on Matt 22:15-22)

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that belong to Him.

As well as proposing the readings for today, the lectionary reminds us to honour, well, Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia (now Iran), and Alfred the Great who burnt the cakes – leaders who were also great thinkers. Tuesday is the day set down for praying for the United Nations. So, let us pray that our newly elected leaders have the grace and wisdom to govern wisely.
We each of us will have our own heroes of this age – Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu spring to mind – but we may also have unsung heroes; let’s each honour and thank God for the unsung heroes in our lives.

But back to the Gospel reading. Why did the Romans collect taxes? To pay their army that kept their huge empire, that covered Europe, the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa, at peace. An army whose legionnaires came from all corners of Europe, including the blond Angles whose cheeks were painted blue with woad. And for those legionnaires, the army was their family. Those Roman legionnaires, in Jesus’s time, may have found keeping the peace in Israel a little irritating: the Jews tended to be argumentative. They were a ‘stiff necked’ people who wanted their independence, the echoes of those times resonating now as Jews and Mohammedan Arabs fight over that same narrow strip of land today.

The whole of Matt Chap 22 is devoted to instances where the Pharisees were hoping to catch Jesus out for false teaching. They were the honoured teachers of the Law, and he’d criticized them for honouring the text but not necessarily the Spirit of the Law. Think of the implied criticism of the Pharisee in the story of the Good Samaritan.  In Jesus’s day tax collectors were unwelcome among the general populace, but Jesus enjoyed their company, as he enjoyed all peoples.  Taxes were paid in coin and when presented with a coin with the Emperor Tiberius’s head on it, Jesus disconcerted the Pharisees with His words, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and the things that belong to God to Him”. He didn’t counsel acceptance of political authority; but neither did he incite rebellion.
How should we as Christians respond to authoritarian political systems?
[Remembering the rise of the Nazi party from 1932, surely we should condemn authoritarian regimes from the moment they emerge.]

Returning to our times, very little of our tax money goes to pay our army, or to protect our borders – though we do have to protect our fishing grounds and those of the islands in the South Pacific. A much higher percentage of our taxes is spent on health and education, and support for the poor. I’d like us to make it clear to our politicians that most of us would like even more spent in these areas. And I, like many others, would be happy to pay death duties, though I haven’t asked my children about this!
Being a retired paediatrician, I know that money spent on our children’s future pays off in the long term. I may be wrong, but I feel we have invested far too little on education, and many New Zealand parents do not value good education enough. Why are many Asian children top of their classes? Is it because their parents push them? I and my children were of an era when you decried swotting for intellectual success, attributing it to luck. Today our teachers are paid the minimum; we need to pay them more, and let them know we value them. How many of us would like to spend the day controlling thirty kids, many of whom feel they have the right to act individually? How much easier it would be to be a teacher of a class of NZ Asian children who want to learn, and want to fit in with the group, than to teach thirty unruly individuals, who just want to be outside.

What else do we need to spend our taxes and our rates on?
Our roads, our infra structure, our water quality … there’s quite a list. I do acknowledge that the rich, those who can pay for the best legal and investment advice, pay less tax than they should do. But we baby boomers have enough financial support in our retirement, mostly because we had free education and a friendly job market.
Let us encourage our politicians to spend more on our youth and the socially disadvantaged. Most people want paid employment, and most of our social support comes from those we work with. Yes, perhaps five per cent of our population are unemployable and we need to accept our responsibility to support them, but let’s also make a pathway to employment achievable for those who want to work, whether they’ve been in prison or made a foolish mistake, or not.

To move on, I’m a great believer in giving ten per cent of my disposable income to charity. Although I do have a standard reply to those annoying 5pm phone calls: that my charitable budget is 90% fixed, so please don’t interrupt my relaxation time!

So, I encourage you, when you pay your taxes, to think of who will benefit from our well earned money. It may make you feel better.

Jesus was being condemned by the Pharisees for upsetting the status quo. (Are we ourselves prepared do that?)
But how do we recognize what belongs to God and what we should give Him? Perhaps through a thankful heart. How should we spend our energy, how should we live as Christians? Quoting Marcus Borg (American New Testament scholar and theologian), “We should pay absolute allegiance to our ultimate God, rendering our entire selves to him without preconditions or limits, without hedging our bets. This is a higher and harder calling, that will take us a lifetime.”