Rev Hugh Perry

Readings

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

This passage moves to the end of the story of Joshua and in particular his second farewell speech.  Joshua gathers all the people together and challenges them to choose their God—Yahweh or the other gods they have worshiped in the past.  The people choose Yahweh and Joshua reminds them of the implications of that choice, it is a choice of total commitment without any extra gods for good measure or even extra gods to keep up past family or tribal traditions.

Historian Judith Binney writes

In the nineteenth century, faced with loss of land and an inexplicably high mortality among their people, many Maori leaders had turned to the story of the Israelites, desolate, and lost in their land.  The essence of their identification with them was the pain they shared: ‘O God. If our hearts arise from the land in which we now dwell as slaves…Do not cause us to be wholly destroyed’.^[1]

Maurice Andrew suggests that if Israel could face a challenge for the future through earlier times, it may be possible for New Zealanders to do the same by looking back.^[2]

Matthew 25: 1-13

Warren Carter writes that this parable contains allegory that ‘variously scares and bullies the disciples into obedience, persuades them to live for this desired future, or provides models of faithfulness which they imitate so as to participate in God’s future.^[3]

Robert Funk sees the message hammered home unsubtly, like a commercial—there are no surprises, the wise who take extra oil are rewarded and the foolish are punished and we know that will happen right from the start.^[4]

Robert Capon takes a different tack and analyses the parable from a contemporary perspective commenting on this and the following parables, under the heading ‘the talents’ and ‘the great judgement’.

He says ‘they base the judgement solely on faith or unfaith in the mystery of the age-long presence in absence—the abiding parousia, or second coming.’^[5]. Of the parable of the bridesmaids, he says ‘But the point of the story—the point that ultimately makes wisdom of the apparent folly—is that, in this world, something always does go wrong.^[6],  It is a parable of the world where the unexpected does happen, the bridegroom comes late.

This is the Gospel of Christ.

Sermon

The Gospels continually stand, as Joshua stood, and asks us if we will choose the gods of our world or the God we image in Christ.

Of course, Joshua didn’t know about Jesus.  He was comparing Yahweh, who brought them out of slavery, with the idols worshiped by various peoples they had interacted with on their wilderness journey.  It might well be reassuring to have a crafted image for people to centre their identity on.  But if they choose to base their community ethos on the creative force that led them from slavery to the point of nationhood then they had better behave accordingly.

The Gospels tell us the same story. But in imaging the creative force in the Risen Christ of the Gospels we have our behaviour mapped out for us in the deeds, saying and parables of Jesus.

In his book Honest to God John A. T. Robinson , notes ‘In the pagan world it was–and still is–a matter in the main of metal images’,

That is what Joshua is talking about.  Robinson goes on to say, ‘For us it is a question much more of mental images—as one after another serves its purpose and has to go.[7]

Robinson was explaining how the mental image of God changes as society and knowledge changes.  But there is also a warning in that statement that he may or may not have meant.  After all Honest to God was published in 1949, when I was about to start my introduction to Christian Education at an Anglican primary school, and I didn’t buy a copy and read it till I left high school.

By that time many other scholars had written about Robinson and the theological stream I fitted into was looking for even more controversial scholars.

What I have read into Robinson’s wise statement is that, without an image of the divine in the Gospel image of the risen Christ, we very easily start to imagine some very unhelpful mental images.  We certainly don’t need to be weighed down by metal images when social media can disperse misinformation and conspiracy at the speed of light. Continue reading Sunday 12th November →

Rev Barbara Peddie

The dead city. Matthew 23. Proper 26A 2023

Sometimes there are readings set down in the Lectionary that I can’t easily find my way into. It happens most often with Matthew, and it happens to me particularly in the readings we get in these last months of the Church’s year. There are the parables where so many are left out – where is the Jesus who said: “All are welcome”. All! As we will say in a few minutes – all are welcome to the table.

So, I came to this Sunday wondering where I would go. I almost took the easy option of celebrating our saints. After all, we’re only 4 days out from that festival. And I have slipped some of them into the order of service anyway, because, after all, that’s the whole point of the saints of the church. They’re always with us, whether or not we recognise them. But at the same time, we’re living in a time where there’s war and disaster all round us. Today is the anniversary of Parihaka – a black day in the story of Aotearoa New Zealand. On November 11 this country sets apart remembers the dead from all the wars that have affected us. Our city has a Ukrainian community that is living through daily tragedies affecting the families here. All round the country people are protesting the war in Gaza. And at the same time, our young people are distraught about the disasters brought about by climate change. I very nearly decided that today we would have a Peace Sunday service. Except that prayers for peace must be part of our daily faith journey.

And, in the end, just because it’s important that we keep the candles burning every day, not just on the occasional Sunday, I went back to our reading from Matthew. But first, I went a little further afield. Who was Matthew writing to? What sort of community were they? They probably lived in Antioch, the third-largest city of the Roman Empire. The sociologist Robert Stark tells us that any accurate picture of Antioch in New Testament times “must depict a city filled with misery, danger, despair, fear and hatred; a city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half the children died at birth or during infancy, and where most children who lived lost at least one parent”. Stark goes on to say that the city was filled “with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers.” Antioch lacked stable networks, and was repeatedly smashed by disastrous catastrophes, which meant a “resident could expect to be homeless from time to time, providing he or she was among the survivors”.

I can think of more than one city in our time which would fit this description. Continue reading Sunday 5th November →

Rev Don Reekie

New Age
New Challenges

Ad Lib:
The chapter of Matthew that we focus on today begins with Jesus and
his disciples in Jerusalem – the previous chapter has the driving money
changers from the Court of the Gentiles where the Other people could
pray. The neighbours given a place then treated as though they don’t
matter. But Jesus is furious. But this chapter 22 of parables and
discernments opens with a story of a wedding feast that is cruel. It
paints God as wrathful. The king sends troops to kill those who failed to
attend the feast. I am glad I can pick and choose a little. Well long ago
in Theological College I recall the writer of the book of Matthew writing
a hundred years later and aimed to bring in the Israelites and accepting
their concepts of purity and wrath. Anyway there are other texts more
helpful.
[As I am conscious of the All Black’s in Paris. I have just returned from
holiday in Niue. One Sunday in July 1969 I led worship in the village of
Avatele and every parishioner worshipping had and active – thus sized –
radio in their pocket ear piece in place. Through out the service the
landing module sent a clear beep to reassure the people at Cape
Canaveral.]
Probably the next 27 years will have the greatest change in a quarter
of century that has the earth has seen in human’s history.
Possibly half the worlds population displaced and seeking new land or
new lands with borders being defended against refugees as never
before. The ice caps gone or diminished. Animals, fish and birds
shifting from traditional homes to find new sources of support and feed
in unfamiliar places. AI being experimented with and attempts to control
it on the edge of human ingenuity. New government choices needed to
meet new employment factors and to end differentials of wealth and
poverty.
Tendencies of protectionism, with pressures for Trump and Putin and
Fascist leader, governments protecting borders and national privileges
rather than taking masses of refugees.
As work changes old measures of settling disputes will need to change
and working week shortened productivity improved. Continue reading Sunday 29th October →