Innocent

Imagine being jailed for something you didn’t do.  Not just an objective, academic ‘that’s-a-bit-unfair’ injustice, but the stomach-churning anguish of not being believed, of knowing you’re innocent but, with no advocate and no redress, you sit in your cell with little to think about but the irrational injustice of it all. 

Or worse, on death row.  The American justice system abounds with such stories (not to mention China’s or Iran’s or Guatemala’s or …).

In 1989, twenty six year old Carlos DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in Texas for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez.  The evidence against him was scant, the police investigation was incompetent, and numerous leads which would have exonerated him were ignored.  DeLuna himself claimed he knew who’d done the crime – someone else also called “Carlos”, an excuse ridiculed by the police and prosecution at trial.  But in 1994 a Columbia University law professor easily identified a notoriously violent Texan criminal called Carlos Hernandez, who had a long list of convictions and who had bragged of Lopez’s murder to a number of different people.  Carlos DeLuna was posthumously exonerated.  Not guilty. Innocent, but very dead!
[Refer https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/15/carlos-texas-innocent-man-death]

Or Walter McMillian, a poor African-American pulpwood worker from Alabama, who was convicted of a 1986 murder and sentenced to death: his conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury.  (At the time of the murder, McMillian was at a church ‘fish fry’ with dozens of witnesses, one of whom was a police officer.)  From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Appeals turned down four appeals before, in 1993, having served six years on death row, and after dogged championing by ‘innocence campaigner’ Bryan Stevenson, the Court of Appeals finally ruled that McMillan had been wrongfully convicted.  Dramatised in the 2019 movie Just Mercy. 
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_McMillian]

In 1989 the same Bryan Stevenson established the Equal Justice Initiative, an organisation that has since exonerated dozens of death row prisoners, plus people convicted of lesser crimes, and has documented the summary lynchings of 4,384 African-Americans in the years 1877 to 1950.  All innocent.
[https://eji.org/]

Not to trivialise the topic, but I recently experienced a personal case of being falsely accused and misjudged; of not being believed, of knowing I was innocent.  Certainly not death row stuff, or even judicial, but horrific to me.  It felt desperately unfair, yet there was no recourse to a higher court, no way to clear my name.  Despite my outrage, though, it served to deepen my empathy and compassion towards those who fall victim to really serious misjudgement, with life-crushing consequences.

One of the compelling aspects of the Christ’s crucifixion, in about 36CE, was his arrant innocence.  He was betrayed and falsely accused; his mockery of a trial earned him a terrible death at only 33 years of age.
[Mark 14:55-56: Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimonies did not agree.]

The moral from all this?  I can’t think of one.  Just confessing a newfound dismay at what countless human beings have had to endure, and endure today; and a determination to call out examples of real injustice wherever it is identified.  There is no justice where there is injustice, but at least we can name it.

Ken F

The Mystery of the Trinity

by Auriol Farquhar

(Based on John 3:1-17)

Trinity Sunday – my first sermon. I couldn’t help but overhear Joan when she was saying – with some glee – though a nice sort of glee – that I was giving my first sermon, and it was going to be on Trinity Sunday. I asked, ‘Well, what’s the problem with that?’ She then explained that it was a difficult concept for people to get their head around, and I thought, Oh, great!

So I set out to research.
I was rather puzzled when I looked at the Gospel reading – it didn’t seem to refer to the Trinity at all – but more of that later.

Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar; it celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the ‘three Persons of God’: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I read that ‘the Trinity is one of the most fascinating – and controversial – Christian teachings. The Trinity is described as a “mystery.” By mystery the Church does not mean a riddle, but rather the Trinity is a reality above our human comprehension, that we may begin to grasp, but ultimately must know through worship, symbol, and faith. It has been said that mystery is not a wall to run up against, but an ocean in which to swim.’
Well, don’t know about you – but I am floundering already!

We all say that we believe in the Trinity when we affirm our faith. I can remember reciting the Creed as a child when we talked about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. I wasn’t too happy about the Holy Ghost – ghosts are scary things, aren’t they? Holy Spirit is a much more fitting term; after all, ghosts are something that ‘appear’ – a spirit is something that is within you – that animates and inspires you.
Then I thought, if I don’t really comprehend the mystery of the Trinity – does it mean that my faith is weakened? The discussion of theology and debate about the meaning of scriptural text is fascinating – well I find it fascinating – but does it really make me a better Christian to spend time puzzling over the meaning of individual verses or words in the Bible?
We can tie ourselves up in knots in trying to understand how God can be equally three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are many analogies that people have made to try to help us – but often they leave us more confused, because they are human analogies and don’t really explain the reality of God. My thoughts are – is our faith supposed to be difficult to understand? Did Jesus want us to spend so much time in trying to work out the complexity of our beliefs – or, and I quote: ‘perhaps, instead of trying to work out how God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we should concentrate on the wonderful fact that this is how we experience God.’

  • .In the first place we experience ‘God-above’; God is our heavenly Father; loving us, holding us, guarding our lives.
  • Then we experience ‘God-with-us’; Jesus the Son of God; forgiving us, praying for us, leaving an example for us to follow.
  • And then there is ‘God within-us’; the Holy Spirit; empowering us to live for him and to live for others, when we invite the Spirit to enter our lives.

At the end of the day, it is not the doctrine or mystery of the Holy Trinity that is important. What is important is how we experience God in our lives and how we share that with other people so that they can experience God for themselves.

Trinity Sunday is a day to celebrate our experience of God in our everyday lives: God the lover, God the forgiver, God the empowerer.

And so we come to the text, to Nicodemus arriving to visit Jesus. Who was Nicodemus and why did he come to see Jesus under the cover of darkness? Well he was a Pharisee, a Jewish leader who knew the Mosaic laws that governed the Jews, backwards and forwards, and followed them strictly. Nicodemus was also a member of the Sanhedrin court, an elite group of Jewish leaders who taught and enforced the Mosaic laws. He was an expert and a rule-enforcing judge, and when someone broke any of these stringent rules or threatened the religious legal system, Nicodemus was one of the few who would get to determine the rule-breaker’s punishment. (Which – as we know in Jesus’s case – could be quite merciless.) Later on in John’s Gospel he tells the other Jewish leaders to give Jesus a fair hearing; he also comes with Joseph of Arimathea to collect Jesus’s body for burial. So quite a good bloke in some ways!

Now, Nicodemus probably chose to go to see Jesus at night because nobody would be able to see where he was going and find out what he was up to. Jesus was getting a reputation as a rule breaker – and the Sanhedrin were getting worried about the stir that he was causing – so they would not have been too happy with Nicodemus going to see him – and calling Jesus ‘Rabbi’, or teacher.

Nicodemus tells Jesus that he knows that he is a teacher come from God. He was struggling to comprehend the exact nature of Jesus and his relationship to God the Father; he wanted to have a clearer understanding of Jesus’s ministry. But Jesus turns the conversation into one about how Nicodemus can experience God, which is far more important. Jesus tells him that the rational approach is not enough – you can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born from above and, later, that you can’t enter the Kingdom of God without being ‘born of water and Spirit’.
Jesus’s words in this passage have been interpreted by some Christians as meaning that we need to be ‘born again’, something that puzzled Nicodemus. The idea has been interpreted as someone having to undergo a sudden moment of conversion, usually accompanied by an intense emotional experience, which is the sign of having truly accepted Christ as Saviour; this is a very real experience and has happened to many Christians. But in some church traditions, being ‘born again’ is the mark of being a true Christian; there are Christians and there are ‘born-again Christians’. It is treated by some as if it were a command from Christ: “What must I do to be saved? Or, what must I do to go to Heaven when I die?” “You must be born again!”

[Auriol tells briefly of her experience as a young person at a Pathfinder camp.]
I may not have had that sudden ‘conversion’, like Saul on the road to Damascus, but I have always believed and always felt blessed by God, and that I know that I want to live my life being guided by Him. I don’t believe that I am not a Christian because I have not had that sudden realisation.
For Jesus doesn’t actually say you must be born again. He says, ‘Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’ What does he mean?
I think that it means that we must be born into a life or start to live an existence where we love God and live out his ways on earth. It’s not a bargain – be born again and get eternal life. The Kingdom of God is not just something for the future it is for the now if we work for it.

We can go to as many church services as we like, we can attend as many Bible Studies as can be crammed into a week: we can do all that, but still not see the Kingdom of God. And the reason, quite simply, is because Christianity is not an observer-event. It is a way of living, a way of being with, of experiencing, God – of believing that you are blessed, and sharing that with others. The Kingdom of God is not a phenomenon to be observed: it is a gift to be received, experienced and then lived.

 When we are baptised, ‘by water and the Spirit’, we are baptised into the family of the church. And just as each family member has something to offer their family, each of us must find our place through participating in the family of the church. We don’t go to church asking, “What can I get out of this?” but rather, “What do I have to offer?” When we meet together in God’s name, we encourage and support each other in our faith. The greatest gift we have to offer one another … is just being here: to celebrate together the love of God for us as a family; and to go out into the world to spread that love. We need to consider tangible ways in which we can do that.

 We are not to be observers – we are to be participants: to participate in the life of the Church, to participate in the resurrection of Jesus, who died for us, to give our lives to God, who fills us with his Spirit and gave his Son so that we might live in an intimate relationship with him and serve him better in the world. Being born from above means that our lives are radically transformed; being born from above brings newness to how we live.
And that newness of life is what we celebrate today, this Trinity Sunday.  What we are sharing together is our lived experience of God, in which we participate every day of our lives and through regular worship together. We feel loved by God the Father; we try to live our lives based on the teachings of Jesus, God the Son, which is not an easy thing to do, and we experience God the Holy Spirit, guiding us and empowering us to live our lives as children of God.

As we leave this Church today let us consider how we share this with others as we go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Amen

Pentecost!

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on John 15:26-27 and 16:7-15)

The culmination of the Christian season of Easter was originally a Jewish festival, which is why the Jewish followers of Jesus were gathered together in Jerusalem for this religious observance. Still recovering from their grief at the crucifixion, joy at the resurrection, and confusion at Jesus’s brief stay with them prior to the Ascension.

Pentecost! This is the day when the original disciples, and every generation of disciples since, have been reminded that God still moves among us, and our calling is to follow the guidance of the Spirit.

We might say Happy Birthday today! Sometimes we do emphasise that and why not celebrate – this is a special day for us – I think it’s right up there and I like having a church feast day celebration that doesn’t have the pressure of Christmas or Easter.

Unlike Christmas and Easter, Pentecost is little known outside the Church. The plus in that is it hasn’t been commercialised and there are no distracting side stories of bunnies and chocolate, or bears or sacks full of presents expected.
This Pentecost story is uniquely our story; our Christian tradition grew from here and we celebrate this amazing narrative of wind, fire and the gift of languages each year at this time. Words that breathed life and inspiration into Jesus followers, giving them the power of language. Words that could be understood by all the people gathered. The disciples able to tell about God’s love, grace and mercy for all people – many there from far off parts of the known world.

They heard what the Spirit was saying.

Pentecost! Fifty days. In even more ancient times, the Festival of Weeks, measured from the Passover and still celebrated by Jewish people in the festival known now as Shavuot (meaning ‘Weeks’), and celebrating a time of harvest and thanksgiving.
Because the world is less focussed on marking times by agricultural references, this has evolved over time in being a commemoration of the giving of the Torah, but one of the customs remains in that the book of Ruth is always read at this time.

Don’t be mistaken though in thinking that this wonderful manifestation of inspiration for the disciples was the first time the Holy Spirit had made an appearance to God’s people. There are many references to God’s spirit in the Hebrew scriptures. Most memorably of course at the beginning of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Powerful stuff!

And while we are back in that very beginning part of the story, God’s relationship with the Israelites – when many of the laws around worship, holy days, moral laws, harvest offerings, etc, were laid down by Moses – we find reference to the early celebration of Pentecost in Leviticus, marking that important harvest time.
In Leviticus 23:15-22 we read: “And from the day after the Sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation-offering, you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete. You shall count until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord.“
Then follow details of the types of offering required to be presented, concluding:

This is a statute for ever in all your settlements throughout your generations.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God. 

Notice how the Leviticus passage moves directly from thankfulness to justice, by following the long discussion of what kind of harvest offering to bring, with the ethical demand not to harvest the fields to their fullest extent, but to leave the edges for the poor.
(Hence the relevance of the book of Ruth, in which this custom is realised.)

It’s good that we remember these roots – that Pentecost was essentially a celebration for those who had been lifted out of poverty and slavery – to remember that abundance and freedom obligate us to support those who continue to live in poverty and chains.

What then is the Spirit saying to God’s people today?  
Do you hear it as a call to people of privilege, who have benefited from today’s world systems, to recognise this age-old obligation to support those who struggle to have a life because of the chains of poverty?
It is no small thing that the Holy Spirit loosened tongues on the birthday of the Church.  In the face of difference, God compelled his people to engage.  From Day One the call was to get closer, linger, listen, and listen some more. To bring the good news of God’s grace and love and work to bring justice and mercy in practical ways.

We seem to live in a world where words have become toxic, so easily put out into the world on electronic media platforms. Labels and ‘isms’ categorising us, half-truths and misinformation broadcasts causing suspicion and division.
How can we speak the language that means something to people who need to hear a message of the promise of fullness of life?

Debie Thomas from Journey with Jesus shared this thought:
“No matter how much I might disagree with your opinions and beliefs, having taken the step to engage, I cannot disagree with your experience. Once I have learned to hear and speak your story in the words that matter most to you, then I have stakes I never had before.  I can no longer flourish at your expense.  I can no longer ignore or abandon you.”

Can we hear what the Spirit is saying to us, his people, this Pentecost?  
God is doing something new, and we can be a part of it.  We can be the One and the Many.  We can be on fire for the healing of what needs to be healed in this country and even the world.

Veni Spiritus Sanctus
Come Holy Spirit.
Amen

Waiting Time

by Liz Young

(Based on John 17:6-19)

The disciples had to wait between Jesus’s ascension and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes we wait in happy expectation, such as waiting for Christmas; at other times, waiting can be a very precious time, such as when we share the journey with some one dying. I wonder how the disciples felt while they waited.

When my mother was dying of breast cancer, I spent the whole time grieving: I didn’t talk to her about how she was feeling. But my regret for doing that was the spur to me, to later say to children dying from leukaemia, and their death waited for by grieving parents: OK it’s your choice, shall we stop treatment now, and do what we can to help you die a good death? They were always prepared to stop treatment. They knew they were dying, the children, but they needed those around them to also know and accept the inevitable and talk about it.

Between his death on the cross and his ascension, Jesus met with His disciples over forty days. He walked with them, talked with them and broke bread with them: he prepared them for his ascension, his final departure. During this time he asked them to wait together in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit, which they did.

In the reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus  prayed to God the Father, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me. They know everything you have given me, is from you.” Ie, the disciples knew that the words that Jesus used when he was teaching, and shared with them, came from God.
Their experience of his resurrection was unexpected by them. The two on the journey to Emmaus took time to recognize Him, and I must say Thomas’s reaction is the one that rings most true to me. But they all accepted that he had risen from the dead.

Jesus will finally leave his disciples at the ascension: and he has left them prepared. He had sent them out practising healing and preaching during his ministry. He has warned them again that he is leaving them. But they have trust and faith in him, they know he will be there for them in Spirit. He has given them the knowledge and understanding to pass on his teaching to others. The gift of the Holy Spirit would inspire the disciples to preach, to repeat the parables Jesus had told them and discussed their meaning with them. The disciples knew Jesus, they had lived with him for three years. He’d taught them how they should live their daily lives. They wanted to share their experiences of him, Jesus, with others.

Waiting time: those of us born into a Christian family, attending Sunday School and church, we have to wait to develop our own personal faith, we have to mature. We have to experience temptation, doubts and mistakes before we can develop a personal relationship with Christ. Those whose parents aren’t Christians or whose parents’ practice of Christianity doesn’t fit in with a child’s natural sense of justice, will be introduced to a personal relationship with Christ at varying stages of their lives, and develop a relationship with Christ for different reasons.

All over the world Christians have different daily experiences. Here in New Zealand we are rarely challenged, as those Christians in Pakistan and other places of religious conflict are. But we need to be on the alert for racism and challenge it when it’s implied, as well as when it’s obvious. We need to value difference as part of life’s rich tapestry instead of devaluing or criticizing it. To explore what we have in common. We need to value the humanity in everyone we meet, and be open to altering our opinions, to aim for empathy and warmth.
We need to be generous of Spirit, looking for opportunities to help rather than criticize those who are poor or unsuccessful. How much time do two parents who are working full time have to care for their children? Those of us who are retired have time: are there ways in which we can share it more?

For many years the early Christians expected Jesus to return in Glory, soon. Now, two thousand years later, I don’t expect that to happen physically, but I reason and believe that if I, and we, follow his teachings, which were based on everyday life experiences, and apply them to our lives; and we believe in his resurrection, we will know that he will be here alongside us as we make our daily choices, and live our daily lives.