Readings

Isaiah 1, 1, 10-20

The reading begins with the opening verse of the book which introduces the prophet and then skips to the particular passage to focus on.  Isaiah is regarded as a collection of writings rather than the work of one prophet at one time so there are a series of introductions throughout the book and a number of time frames involved.

Maurice Andrew says that verses 10-15 came from a time when Jerusalem enjoyed prosperity and, although it is common to see this reading as a condemnation of sacrificial worship, we need to note that the people’s prayer is also condemned.  Therefore, it is more likely that the prophet is condemning the lifestyle of the people that makes their worship hypocritical rather than the particular form of the worship.^[1]

Indeed the section goes on to expose the guilt for not having done what Yahweh wants, notably to defend the orphan and plead for the widow.

Luke 12:32-40

The opening verse of our reading concludes the previous section on possessions and anxiety by suggesting that anxiety is counterproductive.  Jesus’ advice is that we should seek God’s realm in the firm belief that it is God’s desire to bring it into reality.

This discussion on possessions is then closed off in a positive note by turning from warnings about covetousness and anxiety to a call for liberation through acts of generosity.

Fred Craddock writes that in both Jewish and Gentile early Christianity, concern for the poor was a priority and totally consistent with the value system that Jesus and the disciples lived under. ^[2]

Sermon

We have recently had a wonderful week in Tekapo and Timaru with my youngest granddaughter and her parents.  Now her older sister has visited us.  All this family excitement has caused me to reflect on the time several years ago when we spent ten days at their family home in Auckland.

Our task was to be the adults in the house while our son and daughter in law supervised a school history trip around Europe.  On the day they were due to return Raewyn put a lot of energy into removing the evidence of school holidays and two dogs from the house.  Of particular note she washed the floor of the very recently refurbished kitchen.

Like many international flights Geoff and Carla’s plane was due late at night.  Then they had to get through customs and disperse the 28 St Kentigern’s students to their correct parents.  Furthermore, we were unsure if the school provided a taxi chit to get them home from the airport so we might have needed to go and collect them.

We were very much like the slaves waiting for the bridegroom in our reading.

Because the estimated time of arrival was late we were not too perturbed that Nicola phoned up around tea time to be picked up from her boyfriend’s.  But when she got home, she mucked around then wanted grandma to take her to the gym.  Nicola was eventually retrieved from there and after some further procrastination decided that 10.30 was the ideal time to cook herself dinner.  In so doing she left a mess  on the kitchen bench and splashed cooking oil on the spotlessly clean kitchen floor.

At that point her parents arrived.  Very like the bridegroom coming at an unexpected hour due to strong following winds from Singapore.

When they commented that the house was beautifully tidy I couldn’t resist telling my son that his mother had even washed the kitchen floor but Nicola had splashed oil on it.  His response was simply, ‘So everything is normal then, that’s good!’

At an unexpected time the household returned to normal, returned to the way the parents expected it to be and that is one of the messages in our Gospel reading.

Despite what we do ‘The son of man’ the Risen Christ, our image of God comes at an unexpected time.  That should not preclude us preparing, cleaning the house, washing the floor and vacuuming up the stuffing from the soft toy the dogs in their excitement had dissected.  The gospel reading assures us that, in amongst the chaos of our normal life, the realm of Christ arrives.  Arrives in unexpected places through unexpected people.

Towards the end of my secondary education, I decided that I couldn’t fulfil my mother’s expectation of going to University and I needed to find a job.  I was an orphan at that point but was proud of my father’s work as a portrait photographer so decided that was what I wanted to do.  Therefore, I wrote letters and in the school holidays went door knocking around the lower part of the North Island.  Unfortunately, my car rolled over and needed considerable repairs that seemed to take forever.  On one of my pestering visits to the panel beater I mentioned that I needed the car because I was trying to find a job.  The panel beater not only finished repairing my car but put me in touch with a photographer friend of his in Whanganui who was looking for a young bloke to work for him.  So, I have always said that my 30 year career in photography began by accident.  It was also an unexpected event that I was if not fully prepared for.

Little did I know there were other surprises ahead.

Transformation happens to unexpected people through unexpected people at unexpected times.  Growing the Church is not the only manifestation of the movement of the spirit or in today’s metaphor the arrival of the bridegroom.

But preparation is always part of expecting the unexpected. That is the reality of Jesus’ repeated saying that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand.’  The divine realm exists within the world of chaos and injustice.  Our calling is to recognise the divine realm and live it into reality.

Both this gospel reading and our reading from Isaiah talk about what is needed.

Following on from the section about the folly of accumulation of wealth today’s gospel continues that theme.

But the reading from Isaiah is much more straight forward in what it takes to live the way God intends people to live.  That point is stressed vigorously by reflecting on a variety of elaborate and extravagant worship stiles.

We live in a world of extravagant wealth and extreme poverty.  But Isiah suggests we should Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;  remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1, 16,17)

Those are the verses where the prophet brings in the worship that is truly acceptable to God and that is simply treating other people justly.  Micah puts it much more succinctly:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Yahweh require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?  (Micah 6:8)

Robin Meyers suggests that we need to follow Jesus rather than worship Christ and these passages from Isaiah and Micah tend to back him up.  The Rev. Dr Robin Meyers is author of The Underground Church and Saving Jesus from the Church among a number of other books

At the moment of Jesus’ death Mark’s Gospel tells us that. ‘The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom’. (Mark 15:38)  That was the curtain that separated the people from the priest who interceded on their behalf.  That sentence in Mark’s Gospel is symbolically suggesting that the power of the religious institution was destroyed by Jesus’ ministry that gave people direct access to God.  Furthermore, Jesus’ death enabled people to grasp that reality and finally understand Jesus’ teaching.  The resurrection took Jesus’ ideas into the future through the network of people the spirit weaves together.  That weaving becomes the kingdom of God, that is always at hand but not always noticed, as it transforms lives that transform communities.

However, it did not take long for the organisation that arose from the Jesus movement to get back to the bad old days of controlling people’s lives.  Meyers blames Constantine but I suspect that the process was well under way by the time of Paul, and his letters to churches tend to support that hypothesis.  Throughout its history the church has built massive organisational structures and created magnificent buildings by exploiting the vulnerable.  Even rivalling the wealth and power of the Roman Empire that oppressed Jesus’ first followers.

Religious practice quickly became more important than the practicality of Jesus’ message.  At the time of the reformation the Bible had become a religious icon rather that what its name suggests, a library of books.  The Bible was considered far too sacred to be trusted in the hands of ordinary people.

There was some legitimacy in that fear of course because, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into the language of the ordinary German people, there was a peasant revolt.  People read the Bible and realised that Christ was alive in the lives of ordinary people and what God required of all people, both rich and poor, was to do justice, to love kindness and walk humbly with God.

However, the peasant’s pitchforks could not succeed against well-armed professional solders and the revolt failed with great loss of life.

Jesus was not involved in armed rebellion although he was crucified because he was seen as a threat to empire.  The transformation that Jesus encouraged involved people helping people and lovingkindness spreading through the networks of people that bind us together. However, we are not always aware that those actions bring God’s realm into reality.

When we think of such a mammoth task as changing the world it is easy be discouraged and to imagine that only divine intervention will make a difference.  It is therefore understandable that humanity evolved the sort of extravagant worship that Isaiah is condemning in the hope of invoking divine favour.  In view of the massive forces, both natural and human that threaten our world, something as soft and gentle as lovingkindness seems pretty ineffectual.

As for justice isn’t it a fact that if you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs, surely the ends sometimes justify the means.  So, we use big words like collateral damage to cover the truth that in bombing terrorists, children are killed.  Latter-day prophet Michael Leunig drew a very telling cartoon of a plane dropping a huge bomb labelled the mother of all bombs.  Underneath he drew some small people labelled ‘the mother of two daughters and a small boy’.

True worship, according to Isaiah, involves ‘learning to do good, to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  (Isaiah 1:17)

Small stuff compared to the fearful world we face.  But they are the values that Jesus and his disciples lived by and modelled for us to follow.

It is as we follow that model of caring for others in ways that transform our lives and so transform others that the divine household returns to normal.

It’s a long time since we spent 10 days trying to keep some measure of order in the Pakuranga Perrys’ household.  Nicola lives at home and still has the same boyfriend.  She works for the Auckland City Council and her sister Anna is a nurse in the Emergency Department in Timaru.

As they, and the rest of us, all endeavour to treat others justly, reach out to the oppressed and plead for the disadvantaged our lovingkindness ripples through the human community.

Quite unexpectedly we each in our own way will find the Risen Christ sharing our journey with us.

[1] Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: DEFT 1999), pp398,399.

[2] Fred B. Craddock Luke. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 2009), p. 164.