stfrancischurchtairuanz

Appreciating Mary, Mother of Jesus

by Bruce Gilberd

(Based on Luke 2:1-7)

Today we give thanks for the part Mary played in the story of God, bringing new life and redemption into this world, through Jesus, God, and Mary’s son.
I also, this morning, wish to probe what might have been going on in that Nazareth home as Jesus and his siblings grew up there.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has had a place of honour in the church from the beginning. In some parts of the church this has taken rather extreme forms – which diminish her humanity.

We are well informed that both Mary and Joseph were descended from David, King of Israel – a flawed, penitent, blessed King and ancestor.
We read, each Christmas, the birth narrative, which is preceded by the annunciation narrative, and Mary’s consent to God’s purpose for her. There have been periods in the church’s history when the divinity of Jesus has been so emphasised that his humanity – his weeping, sweating, bleeding humanity – his identification with us – was almost lost. Admittedly, it can be difficult to get to grips with this divinely human brother who is also our “Lord and our God” (as Thomas put it).

We are told his mother, Mary herself, “pondered all these things in her heart”.

Jesus grew up with nurturing parents and younger siblings – attending the local synagogue, and probably a school there. He watched Joseph, and picked up carpentry.
Then, except for the incident in the Temple as a twelve-year-old, there are eighteen years of silence. We can assume Jesus was still at home. Some say he joined the Essene monastic community near the Dead Sea. The evidence is slight. So, as many young Jewish men did, he stayed at home, close to his mother – who we give thanks for today.

When Jesus began his ministry at about thirty years of age, it is abundantly evident from his teaching, parables, dialogue and deeds he had used the hidden years being an acute observer, learning from all that was going on around him. He had carefully noted and was deeply aware of:

the hypocrisy of many in religious leadership;
the brutality that underlay the Pax Romana – the peace of the Roman occupation and empire;
the wisdom, depth, ethics and prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures;
the minutiae of family and village life;
how to run a small carpentry business;
the working life of surrounding farms, and nearby fishermen – also wine makers;
what goes on behind closed doors between masters and servants;
how to listen accurately and question probingly;
the side-lining of children and women; of tax gatherers and prostitutes;
the burdens of the sick, and the excluded: Samaritans and Gentiles;
the changing of the seasons, and the world of nature;
the jostling for political and religious power.

Jesus then used all this accumulated knowledge and wisdom in his ministry, enriching those who had ears to hear, and us today.

But even in that hectic three years, his beloved mother was still at his elbow:

at the marriage at Cana, broadly hinting he could solve the lack of wine problem;
wanting him to join her away from the throng, and rest from the stress.

And Mary was there, probably in her mid-forties, at the foot of the cross, and was taken in to the care of John the apostle, at Jesus’s bidding.

So, thank you, Mary, mother of Jesus, for your loyalty, your obedience, your nurture, your mothering. Your pain and joy of childbirth, your wondering heart as your boy grew up and grew in stature and wisdom. Your heartbreak at the cross; and yet joy beyond understanding at his rising.

The lives of these two – human Mary and her divinely human son Jesus – are inextricably bound together.

I want to conclude by inviting you to use your hidden, quiet times, all your times, discerningly, by being as aware as possible, as Jesus was, of what is going on around you, and in you, and:

in nature,
in relationships,
in the local and wider community and their issues,
in politics, and in other nations,
in local, national and global church life,
what is going on? what am I learning …?

Let us be aware, observant, alert – and make our findings the subject of our conversations and prayers and, at times, our actions. We all need to keep equipping ourselves for our life-long ministries.

Amen

Geniuses 1

Here begins a short series on geniuses. Prompted by the fact that, in my subjective and opinionated opinion, there have only been four true geniuses, plus a motley tag-team.
[Can you think who they are? Who would you include?]
There may have been other geniuses, for sure, but I can’t include geniuses I’ve never heard of, can I; and of the ones I’ve heard of, only four (and that tag-team) impress me as true geniuses.

Where to start?

The status “genius” defies definition, really, and it’s even more vacuous trying to compare one genius with another. They are incomparable. And it depends on context. Albert Einstein, arguably one, said, “… if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The explorer Kupe would have failed an English exam, yet was a brilliant ocean navigator. Genius?

But Merriam-Webster gives (amongst several alternatives), “extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity.” I can live with that.
It is not enough just to be intelligent. Very intelligent people can be useless! And some geniuses might not score well on an IQ test. In fact, in some quarters IQ tests carry no credibility at all. How would Kupe’s IQ be calculated?

There are some common qualities though. Oxbridge Learning [https://oxbridgehomelearning.uk/blog/characteristics-of-a-genius] proposes that all geniuses, so-called, share at least four characteristics: a curious mind, a capability for ‘abstract thought’, a tendency to push boundaries, and a tendency to live and work to their own rhythms.

There are some interesting genius lists on the internet. See, for example, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-40-smartest-people-of-all-time-2015-2 and https://thebestschools.org/features/50-greatest-living-geniuses/. These both use IQs and, because IQ tests were not known until 1904, deduce IQs of the historical people on their lists.
Some of my choices are on those lists, so my picks are not completely rogue.

Ok, I’ve strung this out far enough. Who are the four? And the tag-team?

I’ll start with the latter, because I’m running out of words. In thinking this through, I decided the person who invented the internet must have been a true genius. Just think about it … the entire world and history of knowledge and information, plus dazzling communication possibilities, captured in zillions of electronic storehouses around the world and accessed interactively within fractions of a second by almost anyone on the planet. Wondrous. There must be a genius mind behind it.

Well, turns out that there were several minds behind it (in the 1970s and 80s) – not just one genius but a whole tag-team, and many refiners since, and none of them, taken by themselves, would be considered a genius. But, while it’s beyond my scope here to show what each player contributed, Tim Berners-Lee was the man, a Brit, who first created the World Wide Web so far-flung scientists and academics could share their ideas more easily; and Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf were the two Californian professors who developed the underlying code (or ‘protocols’) that Burners-Lee used. Kahn and Cerf provided the electronic wherewithal – Berners-Lee turned it into a living, interactive organism. These three semi-geniuses, and numerous other contributors, a veritable tag-team. 😊

More to come.

Ken F

Against all Odds

For every medal celebrated there are dozens who didn’t make the podium.
If the medallists were winners, were the others losers?
The obvious, if superficial, response is, “Of course not.” Many have overcome great challenges and deterrents just to be there, and are therefore winners in their own right. In fact, before the question is answered, the definition of winning (and losing) needs to be spelled out. What is winning? It’s by no means standard, even at the Olympics: some win by being first across the line or to the end of the pool. For other sports, you need to hammer the other guy, or bullseye the arrow, or dance your horse the best, or be the best kickflipper, or maximise air time and minimise horizontal travel (as in the trampoline)!
Et cetera.
Golds come in all sorts of packages.

One commentator made a telling comment (although was probably just trying to mitigate disappointment at a poor result) by saying, “You actually learn a lot more from failing than you can by succeeding.” Which is probably true, but no real consolation for the loser.

An aphorism of my dad was influential in my thinking (and so I used it often on my own kids): “It’s far better to have played and lost, than not to have played at all.” Very true.
And my old school motto was Per Angusta, ad Augusta. Google Translate it.

Perseverance against the odds surely counts. Emma Twigg deserves a shout. She came ninth in her first Olympics, fourth in the next two, and, deciding she’d reached her Everest, retired. But she reconsidered. Reckoned she had more to give. So started training again in 2018 and, at 34 years of age, has just won gold at Tokyo.

Through the years, much has been written about winning and losing. And persevering against the odds. But here’s a fictional story that has always inspired me. Put it into your own context, and be inspired.

True winning performances are seldom rewarded, or even recognised as such. But you know when you’ve done one. And God knows. Winning is really about overcoming. And you just never know who else might be watching.

Ken F

The Bread of Life

by Sue Collins

(Based on John 6:24-35, 2 Sam 11:26 – 12:13, Ephesians 4:1-16)

Here we have a crowd of people living a simple and hard life in a tiered and harsh society; a crowd who is following this man Jesus – this carpenter from Nazareth. They are so excited because they have seen him make sick people well. They say he walked on water and he calmed a storm. What will he do next? He is worth following!

Let’s look at what has happened in this sequence of events leading up to this reading from the gospel. Jesus had miraculously fed the crowd who had followed him, more than five thousand hungry people on a hillside near the Sea of Galilee, at Bethsaida. They wanted to see more; it was exciting and if he was going to fill their bellies and do great and exciting things for them then why not make the most of this opportunity. There was even talk of making Jesus an earthly king! – the sort of king he would never agree to being.

Meanwhile Jesus had disappeared up into the mountains. Even his disciples couldn’t find him. After waiting by the shore until darkness for Jesus to come back, the disciples eventually got into their boat without him to go across the Sea of Galilee, to Capernaum. Then a terrible storm blew up and they were fearful for their lives. Jesus came to them walking over the water and calmed the storm, and they were immediately there at Capernaum.

The next morning the crowd set out to find Jesus, who had disappeared, and went across to Capernaum to look for him. When they found him they said in wonder, “How did he get here?”

All through this time, the crowd’s preoccupation with the benefits of immediate, short lived solutions has diverted them from seeing what really matters. We can understand this. It mirrors what happens here in our world today:
– so much endless pursuit for the reward that immediate satisfaction gives,
– but a reward which has no ultimate lasting significance.

At the same time it completely overlooks the life being offered by the ‘Son of Man’.

When the crowd picks up on this, they ask, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”

They have understood enough to ask for more information.

So, how to get beyond the temporal solutions to open the way to the eternal offer? The answer comes, “that they must believe in the one God has sent”. They must have faith in what he says and in what he shows himself to be. That is the work God wants of them – Belief.
Jesus says, “The truth of the matter is you want me because I fed you, not because you believe in me!” He is telling them they are making a profound mistake, and he is bringing to them a new way of thinking and of being: to realise that life is more than eating!

And it is here we come close to the heart of the message of John’s gospel.
This chapter is to be understood on two levels. Jesus’s miracles are extraordinary deeds that rectify the situations of needy people – the sick, the hungry, the dying. But the results are not lasting unless the miracles are seen as signs pointing to the eternal gift of God in his son, Jesus Christ.
People in the crowd ask, “What do we need to do? And the answer is, “Belief is what matters, not works!” Trust in the one God has sent. Have faith in what he says and what he shows himself to be.

[Examples of this imperative: John 3:14-18, 36; 4:39-42; 5:24, 38, 44-47]

Of course, this is not as simple as it sounds. Even the disciples find it difficult. [6:60-69] But Jesus speaks of it as the “work of God”, meaning not only what God desires but also what God gives.
The miracle that really matters is the miracle of faith, when God breaks through the misconceptions we have held about life, our pursuit of unsatisfying answers, our self-centred worlds, to reveal the radical new age embodied in and taught by Jesus.

A third question comes. The crowds compare ‘the feeding’ to the manna their ancestors ate in the wilderness, which came daily, quoting, “Moses gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Jesus replied that the giver is not Moses but “my Father”. And we note the present tense of the verb: God gives freely, now and forever, and without limit.
The crowds are still confused until Jesus reveals that he is the “Bread of Life”. The true bread is not manna from heaven but Jesus himself.

This statement of course upsets the Jews. And this underlines the difficulties of ‘faith’: the intellectual, cultural and religious barriers that stand in the way of believing, both then, and through to and including our day here and now.
And it is here we do well to remember that these difficulties are overcome by God’s grace – gifted to us by the Work of God, which makes our faith possible (v29).

When we look at today’s world we see that so much remains the same, has done throughout the ages. David, in the today’s Samuel reading, makes huge ghastly mistakes as he lives life selfishly. Then in Psalm 51 he repents, asks for and receives mercy and turns to live under God’s guidance.

In the Ephesians reading Paul gives guidelines to the church on how to live in unity; guidelines which apply as well to the church of today, being the fellowship of believers, ideally a family of one body with different gifts, working together for the good of all.

And for us, here today, in this time and place? I would say we work together with a belief and trust in Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, whom God has sent us. We step out in his name, within the community, to give help and comfort and service to others.
However I would say, too, that we who live in our little bubble of life here in Tairua are not stretched, we never go without, we are never deprived of the necessities of life in our giving. I wonder how people outside of our church see us?

Look around you, you who are here today. Take a deeper look. I wonder how you who are part of our church see us? Do you feel supported within our church family? If not, I think we need to know.

To finish, let me re-iterate. The true bread is not manna from heaven but Jesus himself, who said “I am the Bread of Life”.

Yes. We have been given Jesus, the Bread of Life!