Precious Water

by Liz Young

(Based on Luke 1:39-55; Hebrews 10:5-10)

The Hebrews reading reminded the Jews that God did not welcome animal sacrifices, but had allowed Jesus, his son, to make the ultimate sacrifice for us.  The Gospel gave us Mary’s Song of Praise to God, accepting that she has been chosen to nurture the Son of God, who will stand and feed his flock in the majesty of the Name of the Lord his God, and the poor and humble may live secure now, because of Jesus.

The word peace echoes in our hearts today, as we think of the people of Ukraine, standing up to the might of Russia, the people of Taiwan and Hong Kong threatened by mainland China, and the ordinary people in Sudan and other countries in Africa threatened by renegades; and the never ending battle for power in Syria.

This month our book group read a book on ‘Humankindness’, the theme being that ordinary groups of thirty to a hundred people tend to be kind to each other: we look after each other, both everyday, and in times of natural disaster: even if the media prefers to broadcast stories of how unkind we can be to each other. So one New Year’s resolution I recommend is – give up listening to the news! Just take a local newspaper, like our Local Advertiser.
The other New Year’s resolution is to keep an eye out for lonely neighbours, or those burdened with the care of looking after a partner with dementia.
Does Tairua need a second ‘Garden Estate’, where people live in safe surroundings, with an easy walk to the shops, and neighbours who keep an eye out for each other? Does Nina at Matapaia (our local rest home) need help in achieving her dream of having a dementia unit? And, do we need to point out to the Regional Health Authority that it is inappropriate for them to fill the beds at Matapaia with out-of-towners when we’ve unmet need here?
No room in our inn for our mentally frail elderly …

I’ve been inundated this week with phone call requests from charities. At least they’ve got the message that I will not respond if they phone at dinner time. I’m fortunate that because I have a good pension from the national health system, I can often respond; but I prefer to support those charities that have clients with high expenses and a small donor base, such as Muscular Dystrophy. All charities in New Zealand have had a lower income this year, as most of us put charities in our disposable income bracket, rather than a necessary expense. Do we need to turn that around, somehow?

This Advent at St Francis we’ve been lighting candles for Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, and Christian World Service are requesting our help in providing water for those who need it. So I thought I’d lighten the mood of this sermon by relating two of our family’s water experiences: In the eighties, we had two tanks storing water collected from the roof. A total of two thousand gallons of water. I’d worked out that our local annual rainfall is 53 inches per year, and with careful household use this would last us at least three weeks of drought, so we should be okay But one January we were almost out of water. John was at sea, so he couldn’t stop me, and I ordered a fill-up from the local fire brigade … and it rained the next day.
I find it amusing that our local Council now make it obligatory to put in water tanks with new builds, having told us when we built that we didn’t need to have tanks (when they first connected up the mains water supply).
As some of you know, John and I, in 2007, returned to New Zealand from Europe, via the Panama Canal and the Galapagos Islands. The longest ocean crossing was from Galapagos to the Marquesas, three thousand nautical miles. We had two hundred litres of drinking water in our tanks. We kept clean by swimming daily, and we allowed ourselves three litres of drinking water per day, each – cooking veges in one third sea water and two thirds fresh.
We were so pleased to be able to wash our hair when we got to the Marquesas.

Another book club book we read this year was on how Israel manages its water. Did you know that our drip feed hoses were invented in Israel, and that Israel gives Jordan water, generated at their desalination plant?  I am glad that our Pat Lee has encouraged us to fund-raise for water tanks in Fiji.
On our first trip back from Panama to NZ we stopped at Penrhyn, the northernmost island of the Cooks, near the equator; and they allowed us to restock our water tanks from their huge store of rain water, collected from the roof of their very large A-frame church. We had to wait for our first ice cream in a month, though, to get to the next island south.

Anyway … have a happy Festive Season conserving water!

Thanks be to God.

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.