The Inner Landscape

by Pat Lee

(Based on Luke 3:1-6)

“There’s a particular person in my life I sometimes just don’t want to be with. Sometimes I don’t like what I see in this person. Other times I am disappointed or angry with this person. Sometimes I don’t listen to this person. Sometimes we argue. A lot has happened between us. Judgements have been made, criticisms have exchanged, and wounds have been inflicted. I often don’t understand this person or our relationship. Some days I love this person, other days not so much.
Our relationship is often rough. Sometimes I feel I have descended with this person into a deep valley and make less of myself than I really am. Other times I climb a high mountain and make more of myself than I really am.
You know what I’m talking about, right? I suspect you know those feelings I described. I think we all have someone like that in our lives. But it might not be who you think it is.
In my case, the person I’m talking about is me. I’m talking about the relationship I have with myself. And I am talking about the relationship you might have with yourself.”
(Michael K Marsh)

When I read this, I felt that Marsh knew, when he wrote those words back in 2021, that I, and many others who have read them since, were feeling similar things about ourselves.

What does this have to do with John the Baptist and Advent in 2024?
Advent is the time for preparing ourselves for the coming of the Lord, isn’t it? Well, Marsh has a better way of explaining it than I have, so I’m going back to him. Not all of what he says will apply to each or any of us, but much of it might. He asks a lot of questions and gives us plenty to think about.

So he says, “I think that’s what John the Baptist is getting at in today’s gospel when he says, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.’”

He could be talking about the relationship we have with ourselves. He’s talking about the landscape of our lives. He’s asking us to risk confronting ourselves.

What if that confrontation with ourselves is what it means to ‘prepare the way of our Lord’? And what if it’s less about whether we’re wrong, bad, or sinful and more about our healing and wholeness?

The valleys, mountains and hills, the crooked paths, and rough ways of which John speaks can be descriptive of our interior landscape. They are conditions and states of being within us. They are ways we relate to ourselves and one another. So, for the next few moments I want us to consider the landscape of our lives.

Think about the low places in your life. What gets you there and what keeps you there? Maybe it’s the judgements and criticisms you make of yourself. Maybe it’s self-doubt, second guessing, lack of confidence or self-esteem.  In what ways do you diminish or put down yourself? Sometimes we live in the valley of grief and loss. Guilt, shame, embarrassment often take us to the valley. It might be regrets, disappointment, fear, failures. When have you betrayed or alienated yourself? When have you settled or given up? When have you lived less than you knew yourself truly to be?

Think about the time and ways you’ve got too big for your boots. Think about the ways in which you try to control or coerce your life, or another’s life. When have you been selfish, judgmental of others, or intellectually rigid? In what ways are you motivated by power, wealth or lack of it, success, reputation, the need for approval or to be right? When we live in excess of anything we’re on top of our mountain. When have you thought yourself better than or superior to others? When our ego is inflated and we’re full of ourselves we’re climbing a mountain.

I’m asking about those things that are out of kilter, out of sync. In what ways are your words and actions not aligned with the values you claim to hold? In what ways is your life twisted or deformed? When we are dishonest with ourselves or others, we’re on a crooked path. Is there integrity in your life, your words and actions? Every time you and I give another reason to doubt trustworthiness of our words or actions, we are living crooked. What’s the shape of your life these days? Is it shaping up the way you want it and, if not, what’s crooked?

Think about the ways your life is uneven, out of balance, or lacking harmony. What’s missing? What’s causing you to stumble and trip? What parts of your life are lacking order? What relationships need some care or repair? What beliefs, patterns, or habits are making your life bumpy? Are you sometimes more tolerant and gentle with others than yourself? Who are you roughest on and why?

Those landscapes are not just individual. They are also in churches; in New Zealand, and the world. Look at the topography of Covid, racism, immigration, economic inequality, and the political issues that divide us and you’ll see valleys, mountains and hills, crooked paths, and rough ways. In what ways are those also a part of your life’s landscape?

That landscape is a mirror that confronts us with ourselves.  Not a final judgment or conclusion – it’s a diagnosis. It’s naming the places in our lives and world where it hurts. Where does it hurt today? Healing starts where it hurts. Before there can be treatment there has to be a diagnosis. And sometimes the most difficult and scariest part of healing is going to the doctor to find out what is wrong.
But I want you to know, whatever the terrain of your life and world might be today, wherever it hurts: “every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.” That’s the good news John brings from the wilderness.
It’s the hope that you and I will one day live on level ground and walk a smooth, straight path together. That’s what I want, don’t you? That’s what I want for you, or church … our nation, the world, and myself. Hope is a call asking something of us – a repentance, a change.

Imagine what your life would look like if you lived on level ground and walked a smooth straight path. That’s what John is offering each one of us. To “see the salvation of God” begins with looking at the landscape of our lives.

What do you see when you look at the landscape of your life today?”

Let us pray: Testing God, refine us with the fire of your love and justice. Make whatever is crooked or broken within us into a straight path that leads to you. May we be as your fertile valleys and plains, producing a harvest of grace within the wilderness of our world. Amen.

Horizon

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Luke 21:25-36)

Advent is here.

We might be wondering why Advent begins with such an apocalyptic proclamation. Many generations have speculated on this over the centuries. Surely, it’s the beginning of our new church year now, as well as the lead in to Christmas?

Well, yes, it is, but Advent has a special place on our faith journey, reminders of the reason for the season, why God needs to come and be with us and among us. “Emmanuel.”

Advent, from the Latin adventus, means ‘coming or arrival’, a word full of expectation and challenge as we wait.

It’s not entirely certain when Christians began to observe the season of Advent – but it does seem to have been a practice by the fifth century. Back then the focus was similar to the season of Lent, a season marked by regular fasting and penitence.

These days many most often think of what’s coming: Christmas Day and the birth of Jesus. And it is, but in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the “Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”. So, we are reminded of the much bigger story; reminded by Advent about the coming of our future, and a time when we prepare, as best we can, if we can, for that future. 

It’s a season, then, marked by themes like waiting, watching, longing and hope – and, to be honest, not a lot of fasting and penitence. Each week, on one of the Sundays of Advent, we focus on one aspect – this week it’s Hope. Candles are lit to symbolise the light that shines, even in the darkness, and the Gospel readings call us to think of God’s way of justice and love in our world today. This is surely the fulfilment of that part of the Lord’s prayer when we pray together, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

How, then, do we prepare for our future? We all have a future and we all deal with it in our lives. Some look toward the future with fear, anxiety and worry. We heard in the reading from Luke’s Gospel, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”  Have you ever felt like that?
Others look to the future with hope, eagerness and optimism. They “stand up and raise [their] heads” with anticipation and expectancy.

Every generation has lived through times of great change and, thanks to our connection to mass media, we could indeed join in feeling despair for the future of our world. The resources sent from Christian World Service this month have shared a story of hope from the Solomon Islands involving life-affecting change of coastal erosion and inundation of small islands there – the term used locally from the local people’s observation is “restless seas”.
A positive response in the Solomons involves citizen scientists being recruited to record rainfall data and weather observations, to be used in long term analysis by government and international organisations. Many of the rainfall stations are monitored by the clergy and a team from the local church community, as part of their faith life pattern.  Every island has a church, and this is one way of ‘keeping watch and praying’. Reliable data over many years will be valuable to climate scientists and hopefully lead to better outcomes for small island dwellers.

In our lives, where and how do we keep watch and pray?
Many of us feel that our life is a journey of past, present and future in a straight line.  Over the years it’s not been uncommon to hear a religious leader or celebrity spokesman pop up and attribute maybe an earthquake, a pandemic, a war as pointing to a ‘sign’ that this generation is near to the end of time, trying to second guess the words in Luke’s gospel.

But another suggestion, that came in the CWS resources, worth thinking about is that we could consider viewing time as ‘horizoned’. If you can imagine being on a boat well out on the ocean, no land in sight. Is the horizon past? Is it behind us? Or is the horizon future – ahead of us? Well, both. The horizon is actually all around us, 360 degrees.

In the reading it says, “… raise your heads, for redemption is drawing near.” So, if time is ‘horizoned’, then redemption is drawing in – behind, ahead and all around us.

In the past, 360 degrees behind us, are the redeeming acts of God in Scripture and the redeeming way of Christ in the Gospels. Let’s get a feel of that Past horizon – and listen to a carol that links us to the time of exile for the Jewish nation, almost 600 years before the birth of Jesus:

O come O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

In the future – 360 degrees ahead of us – drawing near in God’s redemption in all of life, God’s will for love and justice being done on earth as in heaven. We will sing about this as we go out from here today:

From this Holy time, from this sacred space
we go now to serve our own day and place
committed to follow the way Jesus trod:
do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God.

All around us – 360 degrees either side as we watch and pray for God’s redeeming drawing near in the lives of people we meet and in the communities we serve.

Again in one of today’s Advent song’s words:

“Look around, Christ is found, far beyond our sacred ground”.

So in the events and times that cause us unease, God’s people are urged not to flee, fight or freeze, but to watch, to pray, and in a ‘horizoned’ way: look about to see where love and justice are needed so that all are included to live their best possible lives.

Mary Oliver, my favourite American Poet, sums it up:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it.

In that way we can, as Paul encourages the church in Thessalonians, “truly feel strengthened in our hearts to come blameless before our God at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” ( 1 Thessalonians 3:13)

What is Truth?

by Rev Megan Means

(Based on John 18:33-37)

The Anglican lectionary guides our theme today towards the climactic end to the church year, proposing we concentrate on Christ the King and The Reign of Christ. This is a time for us to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s reign over the church, over the world, and over our lives. What kind of ‘king’ was and is Jesus?  What did and does his rule look and feel like? What does it mean to live under his kingship today?

The lectionary has given us a rather odd Gospel reading. Do we read about Jesus in his kingly glory, transfigured and dazzling on a mountaintop?  Did we hear about him rise from the waters of baptism with the heavens thundering? Do we hear about one of his more spectacular miracles? No, Jesus is not described in any majestic outfit. Instead, the Gospel of John offers us a picture of Jesus at his physical and emotional worst: arrested, hungry, abandoned, sleep-deprived and standing before Pontius Pilate for questioning. If we were going to write Jesus into a kingly scene, most of us would not have chosen this reading, would we?  So, where did this title of ‘king’ come from?

I think that it came from Jesus thinking that he was the King of the Jews or, at the least, a ‘King’ in a kingdom ‘not of this world’. Was Pilate’s approach just a political charge, as anyone who claimed to be a king was seen to be a threat that had to be dealt with?

Did we pick up that Pilate does not ask Jesus whether he was claiming to be a divine man, or whether he thought he was the ‘Son of Man’, or whether he was opposed to the Jewish leadership, or whether he disagreed with the teachings of the Pharisees or Sadducees, or anything else. He is only recorded here as asking Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Did Jesus considered himself to be the Jewish messiah, a king? Possibly, yes. But back in this story’s context, Jesus may have meant something very different and more specific than what we may read and link into it today. There were various views of what a messiah would be like among Jews of Jesus’s day. The messiah was expected to be a political ruler over Israel. He was to be a great priest who ruled God’s people through God’s law. And he was to be a cosmic judge of the earth who would destroy God’s enemies in an act of judgment.  The common thread here is that the future messiah would be a figure of grandeur and might, who would come with the authority and with the power of God.

But this Jesus was just the opposite. An itinerant Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who challenged the law and religious sects. He lived out teachings of love, mercy, forgiveness and serving one another and who died for these efforts. I think that Jesus was only really considered the messiah by his followers after his death, as that is when the term ‘Christ’ became the most common designation for him.

According to our earliest Gospels and their sources, Jesus did not publicly proclaim that this was his self-understanding. He does not preach about himself as the future messiah or king – in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Q, M, or the L sources. He only seems to tell his disciples, in private. They know who he thinks he is and they know who he thinks they are. Namely, Jesus is the future king and they will be serving under him. Jesus is recorded in Matthew and Luke (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:28-30) as telling his twelve disciples that in the future kingdom of God, they would themselves be seated on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel.

So, Jesus did think that he would be a future king and messiah of the coming kingdom of God in some way. Did his followers ever called him king and messiah? Nathanael declared, “Rabbi you are the Son of God, you are king of Israel.” (John 1:49) And after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him ‘king’ by force, Jesus withdrew again to a mountain by himself (John 6:15). In John 12:13, the crowd took palm branches and went out to meet Jesus, shouting, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!”

So, this must have also been what those in the public arena heard and thought as well, and why Pilate used this as a political charge against him. Any talk of another king, in any sense, in the Roman empire was enough to order ultimate punishment. Could this be why Jesus really died?


In his time, was Jesus an apocalyptic-ist (?)? One who believed that God would soon intervene in the course of history, overthrow the forces of evil, and establish a good, and very real, political kingdom here on earth. Therefore, his listeners had to turn to God immediately and repent in preparation for this imminent end.
But when Jesus ended up being arrested and crucified, did this completely and utterly destroy the disciples’ vision of what was to happen in the near physical future? Had they thought that they were going to be physically seated on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel, with Jesus as the King?

When Jesus was raised from the dead, and returned, it was the disciples who were the witnesses, so, did this make them change, adapt and shift how they understood who Jesus was and how the future kingdom may arrive? Is this why the term ‘messiah’ gained strength after Jesus’s resurrection?

Back at the Pilate scene, Jesus went on to say that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice”. He implied to Pilate that he, Pilate, was looking at the truth.  “I am the truth.” To unpack this, I would say that Jesus understood his power as different because he believed he was truth and was established in truth. What does it mean, in our post-truth era, then, to worship the King of Truth? What does it mean to ‘belong to the Truth’ in a culture that increasingly denies Truth’s validity? Perhaps most importantly, how can we bear witness to a complex truth, a truth like the incarnation story of birth, life, death and resurrection, in a world that prefers Instagram, Facebook, and Tweets, etc, or internet games and action hero movies?

One of the most urgent tasks facing the Church on this Christ-the-King Sunday is forging a robust and gracious, urgent and respectful, relationship to the Truth. If Jesus came to testify to the Truth, if he is the Truth, if he is the King of Truth, then what does our loyalty to Truth look like, here and now?  I’m painfully aware of the Church’s long and miserable tradition of using ‘the truth’ to consolidate and abuse its own power. Religious institutions have excelled at using ‘truth’ to colonize, enslave, reject, abuse, and dehumanize those we conveniently call “Others”.
And, who displayed more truth this week: the Treaty Principles Bill before parliament or the hīkoi mō te Tiriti? [A heated local constitutional issue – Ed]

Jesus calls us to belong to the Truth that he embodied in his life, death, and resurrection. His Truth was not self-centred in any way. It did not serve to bolster his own power and authority. His Truth was not and is not an instrument, a weapon, or a slogan. The Truth is Jesus. 

Today we acknowledge the Reign of Christ the King. Can we stand for the Truth as Jesus did?  Can we belong to the Truth as he did? Can we tell and keep telling the joy-filled, pain-filled and powerfully undeniable stories that we know to be the truth about Jesus? Next week, we will enter into Advent, a season of waiting, longing, and listening. A time for waiting for the Truth to reveal itself, in the first cries of a vulnerable baby that grew to redefined kingship. The Truth lives and we belong to the Truth. The Truth is Jesus.

Thoughts Around an Apocalypse

by Dr Liz Young

(Based on Mark 13:1-8; Dan 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Heb 10:19-25)

The readings for today are all about ‘the end of the world as we know it’, and after I’ve shared the thoughts of others on the apocalypse I will add some thoughts on our current threat of climate change, one of the many changes threatening our lives. In Daniel, the archangel Gabriel announces that some will live and some will die in the apocalypse. In Psalm 16 the psalmist sings, “You, O Lord, are all I have and you give me all I need, and my future is in your hands.” And in Hebrews, the writer says, “Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can trust God to keep His promises.”

Then we come to the Gospel: “As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said ‘look teacher, what wonderful stones and buildings.’”
Jesus answered, “You see these great buildings. Not a single stone will be left in place, everyone of them will be thrown down.”
Which reminded me of how my John admired all the majestic mediaeval cathedrals we visited when we went to Europe, my two favourites being Wells and Vézelay.

And Jesus’s statement was prophetic. On the day of his crucifixion an earthquake caused the veil of the temple to be broken into two.

Later in this reading, Jesus was sitting at the Mount of Olives when Peter, James, John and Andrew came to him in private and asked, “Tell us when this will be. And tell us what will happen to warn us, that the time will come for all these things to take place.” Jesus replied, “Watch out’, don’t let anyone deceive you. Many men claiming to speak for me will come and say ‘I am He’, and they will deceive many people.”
This was very true for the early church in 200-400 AD, and we have watched bemused in the past few weeks, as Donald Trump, a congenital liar, gets voted in as President of the USA. When I moaned to my John that Trump got in because of poor school education in the Midwest, he reminded me that my sister got her PhD in Kansas, and I always use Harvard for my medical cross checking.
Politicians have always twisted the truth to their own advantage, and I was reminded of Disraeli’s words, that “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”.

But the readings also emphasize hope: there is always hope amongst the gloom and doom.

When this is over,
May we never again
Take for granted
A handshake with a stranger;
Full shelves at the store;:
Conversations with neighbours;
A crowded theatre;
Friday night out;
A routine check up;
The school rush each morning;
Coffee with a friend;
The stadium roaring;
Each deep breath;
A boring Tuesday;
Life itself.

When this ends,
May we find
That we have become
More like the people
We wanted to be,
We were called to be,
We hoped to be.
And may we stay
That way – better
For each other,
Because of the worst.

(Laura Kelly Fanucci)

To return to the Mark Gospel, what a mix of topics in this chapter: the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, linked with the announcement of Jesus’s second coming. Jesus warning us of false prophets and that the disciples will be handed over to the authorities …

The last words of the reading are “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs”, and my optimistic self immediately thought of what do birth pangs lead to? The joy of the arrival of a new child, with the attendant responsibilities, the interrupted nights, and the challenge of caring for a vulnerable child who in spite of having obviously inherited similar characteristics, has their own individual personality, that you have to learn to adapt to and accept.

To revisit the apocalypse theme,
from Steve Garnaas-Holmes, …

People will never turn on each other
And, golly, we have the utmost care for pregnant women, we’re safe.
I’m glad.
Imagine living in that type of upheaval;
In that world justice isn’t abstract, but a daily commitment.
In that world it’s necessary and hard to care for each other.
Christians can’t stand by and see how it turns out.
They have to be part of how it turns out.
They have to bear witness daily – not by saying the right stuff,
But by living lives of radical kindness and courage.
They have to sacrifice for the sake of love,
And dare to be kind to the wrong sort of people.
They have to risk rejection, even persecution,
For their unconditional kindness.
They have to resist injustice and stand up against the Emperor.
I mean, in that world they have no security but God.
They have no defender but Jesus, no hope but Grace.
They have to live lives of death and resurrection.
And we might not want that, perhaps.

Our own current anxieties centre around climate change and I was pleased to read evidence in the New Scientist that corals can adapt to warmer seas: and elsewhere to read of community efforts to help others to minimize its impact, so …

Let us create a community that trusts both in God and in one another, and go out today with Hope in our hearts, planning to share more of ourselves with each other.   Amen