When I found my way to the wool aisle in Spotlight, (In Australia), two older ladies were huddled over the display of knitting needles on offer.

`That’s a 10 there’ said the younger one; a short, dumply little woman with a round, pleasant face.

`I need a 10 and a 12.’  The older lady’s finger wavered between the 3’s and the 3.25’s.  Or would it be that one, do you think?’  she looked over at her friend, her finger now gravitating to the 3.5. The needles were all lined up neatly behind each other on the display.

I understood their predicament immediately. If you’re older than about 50, you grew up knitting with needles measured in the Imperial gauge.  Then, we went metric and needles were measured in millimetres. Soo… 3.5mm etc. The US have a different sizing again, just to add to the confusion.

The older lady was thin, with a slightly crouched frame and tightly permed hair. `It’s confusing, isn’t it’ I ventured.

`I need a size 10 for the basque and a size 12 for the rest.  I’m knitting a jacket for a new-born babe.’ I could picture the old pattern, probably English, possibly from the 50’s or 60’s or even older, comprising lacy jacket, booties, shawl and bonnet, in a pretty lacy pattern. My mother knitted them for my kids, but never in the impossibly thin wool which was like knitting with cobwebs. I admired the dear old lady’s determination, but then I bet she was knitting when Hitler was invading Poland;  and when our troops marched off to Korea to fight in snow and gave our wool industry a boost (think about it). I bet she was still knitting as she watched the moon landing and through Tricky Dickie’s crimes and cover-ups; through the Berlin wall coming down.  On and on through the decades until now.

`If you buy the wrong ones, I’m sure they’ll exchange.’ I offered helpfully.

`Oh no dear, we’re from Young.’

`Oh,’ says I, smiling, thinking of their journey down here. I bet they take a thermos then possibly treat themselves to lunch in a cosy café, like my friend and I do when we set out on a jolly jaunt to another town.

The two turned back to the task in hand, still prevaricating over which size was right.

`How about I google it?’

The pleasantly plump lady hesitated and I turned away, thinking perhaps they were sick of me interfering. But she looked over at me and said `Are you going to google it?’

I had it in a twinkling; the table showing the equivalent needles in millimetres, converted from the Imperial.

I finally left them to it and wandered about in the next aisle over where I got into a conversation with another lady, about losing loved ones and anxiety and depression…. and God. She introduced the subject, after she told me her brother had died 4 years before.  `I’m not religious,’ she said to me, `but I believe there’s Someone up there.’ These conversations are always negotiated carefully on my part, lest I intrude too far into someone’s private beliefs and cause offence.  I would absolutely hate to brow-beat someone about this subject, so I just let her talk. But I did tell her eventually, that God was my rock.

Into the fires

The reading this morning was from the Old Testament;  the book of Daniel;  the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (I thought it was Abendigo when I was a kid).

It’s one of the best stories in the OT Bible (for those “unversed” in the Bible, the Old Testament is the “Jewish” bit (especially the first 5 books where God sets down the rules he makes for His people). In all honesty, I struggle with a lot of the stuff it contains;  the bits about God going before and helping the Israelites plunder and enslave other nations, for example.  I guess that’s why we need the New Covenant of the forgiveness and sacrifice of Christ contained in the New Testament (this is the Christian bit of the Bible).

The OT also has themes, over and over, of penitence and forgiveness and reconciliation.  It also has stories of God’s immeasurable power and intent to stick up for the little bloke;  the oppressed;  the disempowered;  the put-upon.

The story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is one such a story.   Daniel Chapter 3.  It tells of these 3 men, who would not bow down to worship the golden calf, fashioned by human hands, and as ordered by the king of the land, Nebuchadnezzar. Instead, they declare their intention to be thrown into the fiery furnace and die, rather than denounce their faith in Yahweh; the great I AM; the God of Abraham;  the Alpha and the Omega.  So, they get thrown into the furnace.

As I read it this morning, I thought again of Rev Whorley (pronounced Whirley). He was the Methodist Minister at Forbes, NSW, in Australia, in the 50’s when I was a little girl. He would come to Eugowra to preach in the little Presbyterian Church on the banks of the Mandagery Creek (running a banker in recent days).

He was a little man; mild in character and gentle in nature. He was a man of the people, woven from common cloth.  He was a bit funny-looking as I remember, but Oh, he had found his vocation:  he had a genuine, fervent faith.

He took Scripture at Eugowra Central School and I’m sure he told this story because my memory of him arose from the page as I read it this morning.  I’m pretty sure, too, it was covered in the Salvation Army Home for Girls at Canowindra.  What a happy place it was for me;  child-sized Sunday School chairs painted all different pastel colours;  little basket to take up the collection (“hear the pennies dropping; listen as they fall…);  a sense of open, airy space in the big room, with shiny lino and big windows.

These all impacted my life, in a mainly positive way.  They set me on a faith journey which I’m still following to-day. I wonder what I’d be like now if I had never heard this most profound of gospels, passed on by these kindly, gentle people?

Back to our 3 saints:  The story has it that when the 3 are thrown into the furnace, God (in the form of Jesus) enters the furnace with them and they are seen;  the 4 figures, walking around unburned, unconsumed, as God protects them.  I have not doubt God could do this;  I also know He often doesn’t intervene and many Christians over the millennia have died, rather than deny their faith.

One thing I do know and understand deep into my very soul, is that when we go through our own fires in life, whether they be the death of a loved one, or illness or relationship conflict, or whatever else ails the human soul, God will be there, figuratively, in the fire, with those who invite Him to be there with them.  The same God who got into the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, is the same God who said ”Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.

In an increasingly unstable and scary world, the one who promises “I will never leave you or forsake you”, is becoming increasingly meaningful, not just to me, but surely, to the rest of the world. 

The winsomeness of passion

5. LThe Winsomeness of Passion

One of the things I enjoy most as the varied tide of humanity streams through my life, is the particular colour, people who are passionate about something, bring.  It might be gardening, or golf, or good grief, it might be football!

Let me share with you a gentleman of my acquaintance who has enriched my life with the expression of his particular fixation.  The name has been changed to protect the innocent.  I’ve called him Bill.

Bill is a man who calls a spade a spade. Some might say he is bombastic;  his firmly-held opinions are delivered with force and finality. But this barge-like manner is tempered by a deeply ingrained cheerfulness and goodwill.  I prefer to call his personality robust.

This rather large personality is housed in a short, rotund little physique, which has a very round face, black hair and  glasses.  When Bill smiles, it makes beguiling dimples in his rosy cheeks. Bill is rather fond of his homemade brew (another of his passions), which gives him a large tummy, or,  as my father called it, a “brewer’s goitre”. Over this are stretched cute, black braces,  the better to hold up his pants.

Bill’s passion is pigeon racing. I find myself, after the service one Sunday morning, standing next to him in the queue for morning tea.  So, there we are shuffling towards the morning tea table.  “How are your pigeons going Bill”  I ask.  Bill’s response is immediate.  (His language occasionally veers away from the straight and narrow of the ladies-coffee-morning standard, and sets foot in the boys-at-the-pub-on-a-Saturday-arvo level) “Well bugger me if I didn’t loose one to a hawk yesterdee”.  This is delivered at full forte volume and those around blink and turn their heads, as they are also bombarded with this disappointing news.  “No sooner out of the box, she was, and a blanky hawk came from no-where and got ‘er”.  “What a shame”  says I, all concern and nodding sympathy.  With a little more gentle inquiry from me, his voice takes on a more instructional  tone.  He shifts his weight on to both his feet, spacing them slightly apart as he does so. His hands come out of his pockets and he folds them across his body, head slightly dropped, he becomes the tutor, the teacher, the expert caught up in a subject he loves. “You’ve got you’re racing stock,  then you’ve got your breeding cocks and broody hens.  Then I’ve got a few youngsters still getting used to flying with the mob”  (shouldn’t that be ‘flock’, but I didn’t say it!). His little black eyes, inscribed with intensity, bore into mine  as he launches into the finer points on housing, diet, breeding and of course, racing.  I am as much transfixed by his passion for it, as I am by the actual facts.

After a while, I asked him how many birds he had, thinking of perhaps a dozen or so at the most. 

“I’ve got about 500 at the moment”, he says.

 I was astounded.  “Good grief, that many!”

 “But where do you put them all?” I asked with a touch of amazement.  He lives on a corner block in town, and I couldn’t see how his back yard would be much bigger than a cricket pitch.

“Well, I’ve got double tiers of cages.....”  

His unique sense of humour also displays this bombastic quality.  Bill is never content with a little twitter or a giggle.  Not for him the polite, gentle chuckle. When he finds something funny, and he frequently does, he twinkles up at me over his glasses, his face splits into an endearing grin (he also has a dieresis) , then he applies himself to a sonorous, booming belly laugh, during which his tummy shakes gently.  

He has a round, man-in-the moon sort of face;  it's honest and ingenuous. His eyes twinkled with pleasure as he told me about his birds, but this is nothing compared to when he talks about his home brew!  He can give you the low down on the best brands for different flavour or keeping quality.  His knowledge  about ingredients, bottling techniques, storage time, is extensive.  He can tell you which brand most tastes like Victoria Bitter…. And that’s something I was dying to know.   His laundry is full of the paraphernalia of home brewing, and he loves it.  Once, at a Parish Council meeting, we were discussing the family camp and Anne was giving a run down on the facilities of the venue.  Bill asks, with just a hint of anxiety, “What are the refrigeration facilities like Anne?”  “Oh, quite adequate”  she replies breezily.  “Oh good” says Bill, relieved, “because…  you know” (his voice takes on quite a wistful quality) “I was thinking about how I’d get the home brew chilled”. 

But you know, for all his rampaging, bombastic personality, I cannot find it in my heart to censor him.  He is an unfailingly honest man in every way.  No pretense;  no shuttered secrets or veiled malice. There is nothing snide or sneaky about Bill. What you see is what he is.  And goodness knows, the world needs more of that. 

In conclusion then, what a joy it is for me to run across these people.  Could I encourage you to keep an eye out for them too.  Look with fresh eyes on the people of your circle.  You might just find an enriching and delightful example of all the complex, eccentric, wonderful tapestry which is essence of the common man.

 d of all being, I give you my all;
if I should disown you, I'd stumble and fall;
but, sworn in your service your word I'll obey,
and walk in your freedom to the end of the way

How do we recognise Jesus?

Luke 24:13-35. The familiar story of the walk to Emmaus. When it comes to the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, the gospel writers record very few of his appearances.  In fact, Mark records none at all.

Luke's gospel is a summary account of the women's visit to the tomb, followed by Peter's visit, Jesus appearance with the disciples in the upper room at which he provides evidence that he is actually alive, opens their minds to the scriptures and then commissions them, and finally they all go off to Bethany for the ascension.

In the middle of this summary account we have a detailed account of the Emmaus walk.  What then do we have in the story? We have two disciples, not apostles, just ordinary followers of Jesus, like you and me. When Jesus walks with them they don't recognize him, and when they do recognize him, after he breaks the bread, he disappears!  How very odd!.

Why didn’t the disciples recognise him?  Were they kept from recognising him? Was there something about his resurrected body that made him unidentifiable? The stories tell us that he was appearing in locked rooms and vanishing before the disciples’ eyes. Clearly, there was something different about Jesus’ flesh and blood. Does the fact that the disciples did not recognize Jesus point to the nature of the revelation of God? Could it be that God does not always make himself known to us in ways we think he will?

On the way to Emmaus those sad, deflated disciples mistook their Lord for a stranger, someone who wasn’t of their country. How did they make such a mistake? Maybe because he seemed to know nothing of what had happened recently. Who knows?

Is it something to do with the mystery of God.  Can we only really recognise Christ when he reveals himself to us?  Could it be, that he waits until the time is right.  They were grieving when they encounter Jesus on the road.  They were expecting Him to be the leader of the Jews;  they thought He was a political leader, a charismatic victor who would overthrow the Romans. Instead, he died an ignominious criminal’s death.  He was gone, and they were shattered.  I know one thing; if he’d come in pomp and splendour, they may have kept on believing, mistakenly, that He was a mere earthly figure.  They may never have grasped that he was the Messiah, the Saviour, the one whose death suddenly made sense, as he explained the scripture and the prophesies to them.  If he had come to them bedecked with jewels and trappings of an earthly King, the penny never would have dropped.

Did they fail to recognise him because they were looking for someone else; a political King. They lost an intellectual Jesus… he wasn’t who they thought he was, so they were downcast when he was taken away.  But when they finally realized He was the Messiah, their faith was transferred from a head knowledge of Christ, which was all out of whack, to a heart knowledge of who he really was, and what he had done for them and for us. They learned to see and hear with their souls.

Then he begins to expound the scriptures to them. He says to them vse 25 “How foolish you are and how slow to believe the prophets.  He tells them the Messiah had to suffer these things.  And then he explains all the intricacies and the fulfilling of the Scripture;  probably from the line of David and Isaiah through to John the Baptist.  So they’ve had the testimony of the women and then Jesus himself tells them “the Messiah will rise on the 3^rd day”.  They themselves have already told him at the start of the journey that “it’s now 3 days since he was killed. Nope. Still nothing.  They still don’t recognise him.  The lights are on, but nobody’s home. You can imagine if it was one of us, by now, we’d have a very smug look on our faces and we’d be saying “Hello, it’s me. I told you so!”

But he just keeps on, walking with them, patiently explaining to them.  I think he’s like this with us.  We live out our lives, so close sometimes to opportunities to see so much more of the Spirit things, the really important things, but we can’t quite see them.  We always see through a glass darkly;  we’re so taken up with earthly things – what holiday we’re going to take, what we’re going to cook for tea – what on earth is that silly driver going to do next!  And all the while, the Risen Saviour walks beside us. 

And that’s OK really;  if we were living in terrible circumstances, where day after day we had to throw ourselves on the power of God for strength to get through it, even the most stoic amongst us would long for a change to a more comfortable existence.

He came silently, gently. There were no recriminations.  He didn’t say “well a fine lot of disciples and followers you turned out to be!”.  He came to ordinary people – on the road – where they were.  But they didn’t recognise him.  Why didn’t they recognise him?  Was his body so different?  I think they were immersed in their own blindness.  They had failed to really grasp his mission and purpose when he was alive, and they weren’t expecting him to rise from the dead, even though he had told them, and explained the scriptures to them. 

We don’t see Jesus because we are looking for someone else.  We look for him as the one to solve all our problems and answer our prayers in the way we think , we don’t always see him as the tortured, dying Jesus who walks with us all the time.

Was it because he appeared as an alien?  Apparently the Greek word used to describe the appearance of Jesus in this passage is paroikos, which can be variously translated as stranger, exile or alien.

He came as an outsider to the disciples on the road, and sometimes he appears to us in this guise too.  He comes in the form of an alien;  an outsider;  an unlovely one  and an undeserving one. We don’t always recognise him in this form.  American singer/songwriter Paul Simon’s wrote a song called “Trailways Bus”.  It tells the story of a Spanish boy, riding silent and scared, on the bus to America from Mexico to what he hopes will be a more prosperous life.  It describes the countryside the bus passes through….over the crest of the mountains, the moon begins it’s climb and he wakes to find he’s in rolling farmland…the farmer and his wife sleep and he wonders what their life must be like.  A couple with a young baby….the bus is heading into Washington DC, and his heart is racing with the urge to freedom. The father motionless as a stone;  a shepherd resting with this flock;  the trailways bus is turning west.. Dallas via little rock. He’s leaving his family who mourn for him but he has to find a way to help them live.  The border patrol outside of Tucson boards the bus… “any aliens here?  You better check with us.  How about you son? You look like you got Spanish blood.  You mind yourself, you understand?” The boy says in his head “Yes, I am an alien from Mars;  I come to earth from outer space and if I travelled my whole life through, you guys would still be on my case”.    

On the walk to Emmaus, Jesus is first recognized as an alien. Jesus was always an alien;  someone not accepted by his own;  he is a true child of Israel; living in exile was in his blood, so to speak. His ancestors -- Abraham, Jacob, Jeremiah -- all lived as aliens at one time or another.  He was present when the world was created, yet was a stranger to his own people when he came to live in that world.  It seems fitting somehow that when he came back to life after the crucifixion, he would still seem like an alien. He is not bound by one country or culture – he is available to all people.  Perhaps this is why he comes in such an “un-Jewish” guise; an alien who was never really at home on earth.

Do WE sometimes not recognise him?  Is he just the one-dimensional cardboard Jesus we think about sometimes when we come to church or do we walk with him daily as we journey through our lives?

He’s sometimes comes to us in a guise we don’t expect;  as a tiny helpless baby;  as a tortured criminal;  as the Risen Victor, yet walking in the humble apparel of the ordinary man;  a paradox - with the knowledge of all things in his head;  the power of the whole universe at his fingertips;  but empathy with the grief of the common man. Perhaps this is the real essence of the presence of Christ.  He walks with us even when we don’t realize it;  even when we don’t listen to Him. 

I’m sure you are all aware of John F Kennedy, the second son of Joe and Rose Kennedy, who became the US President in 1961.  But JFK was not his father’s first choice for a son in politics.  We have perhaps forgotten Joe Kennedy and his story is as tragic as is his younger brother.  The V-3 “supergun” was meant to win the war for Germany. In 1943, for the first time since World War II began, Hitler was on the back foot. Allied bombs were devastating German cities and the Fuhrer was rattled. His proposed V-3 cannon would be the biggest gun the world had seen.

The V-3 was built in a truly enormous bunker buried deep in a chalk hill in northern France. Millions of tonnes of rock were excavated by hand and among the workers were hundreds of slave labourers. In its original conception, 25 barrels were to point at London – about 100 miles away – delivering up to one bomb per minute and to create an environment of fear that would turn the course of the war back in Hitler’s favour.

American Engineers were working on a secret “drone” mission to destroy the V-3.  Joe Kennedy Junior was piloting a B-24 Liberator on August 12 1944. He and co-pilot Wilford Willy were supposed to take the plane up to cruising altitude, arm the drone bomb,  set the correct course and bail out. The drone would then carry on and drop it’s bomb on the launch pad of the huge German rocket. But an electronics officer named Earl Olsen had discovered that there was an error in the arming mechanism;  a small solenoid in the contraption was faulty and would burn out too quickly, setting the bomb off prematurely.  He tried to tell his superiors of the terrible outcome but was not listened too.  The man in charge of the mission was the top Engineer;  the big brass.  He failed to listen to the younger man of much lower rank.  Olsen even ran to the airfield and begged Joe Kennedy not to take off, but Joe didn’t listen either.  Olsen was right;  there was a fault in the arming mechanism and so, completely without warning, the bomb exploded over Blythburgh in Suffolk only 20 minutes after the ‘plane had taken off. Kennedy and Willy were killed and their bodies never found.

We can be like this;  Jesus tries to tell us of the power which can be ours;  a road-less-travelled way of living;  a path of blessing and enrichment, with Him at the helm of our lives.  But we don’t listen;  we are too caught up in other things. We don’t recognise what He’s telling us.

How then, DO we recognise him? How did the disciples recognise him? He explained the scriptures to them. The word made sense, because he came as “The Word” to them.  He came to them as the word-became-flesh, not as a political King. He does the same with us. It is one of the ministries of the risen Christ to open scripture to us. When the scriptures become meaningful for us, it is because the risen Christ has met us in that word, has engaged with us through Scripture, through our life’s journey via the Holy Spirit.  I’m not asking for a show of hands, but I wonder how many of us actually read the Bible, at home, every day?

The disciples were downcast and low.  It was then, in the midst of their weakness that the risen Christ became real to them. This is absolutely at the heart of an authentic life in Christ.  He will always walk with us;  it might be at some hour of crisis, or at the behest of some awful news, or illness, or an anxious time;  the fog of the mundane clears away and the Christ walks with us, in the midst of our grief or bewilderment.  He explains the Scriptures to us;  he expounds the word to us, because He himself IS the word. He always wants us to enter a deeper recognition of Him but He will never intrude; He will never make us give him his proper recognition as the Lord of All. (pause) He never imposes where he isn’t wanted.  He waits until the time is right as he did with Cleopas and his friends.

The bible says that when we help the most unlovely, the lowest, dirtiest, poorest scrap of humanity, we are helping Him. There’s a pattern of Him appearing as something so unlike what we expect.  If He knocks on the door of our hearts as the delightful rich host who showers us with honour and gifts, it would be too easy to follow Him and we’d be led away by the glitter of the world.  A Jesus like this would be a fake Jesus. I believe this is at the heart of why His earthly appearances were in such humble guises.

This Jesus is so much more than the political hero the disciples thought he was.  This Jesus shares not just the gift of his immortality with us, but his presence with us on our journey to get there as well. Listen for His still small voice;  hear it through our own personal reading of the Bible. Amen.

Lord of Safe Harbours

It’s a very familiar story, the one where Christ goes to sleep in the boat in the midst of a terrible storm.  (Mk. 4:38) It is evening and the disciples are in the boat with Jesus. They are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. The boat is beaten by the wind and the waves; it is filling with water and ready to sink. All the while, Jesus is asleep in the stern untroubled by the storm, indifferent to their peril and unperturbed by their fear. We wonder why this story was included in the Bible, because it shows Jesus in almost an uncaring way.  But I think it’s a little deeper than that:  There are two significant things we could notice about the story.

One is the nature of the call.  Let us go to the other side, he says, in the boat. He calls them, off the solid land onto the storm-prone sea, at evening.  And he calls them to go to the other side, as though there is a purpose.  There are many images in this narrative about what following Jesus might mean.  He calls them out of their comfort zone, into peril, to an unknown place, for an unknown purpose.

And then he goes to sleep.  That’s the second significant thing.

Apparently, the Sea of Galilee is prone to these storms, because it’s shallow, is below sea level and is surrounded by hills, which act as a funnel, through which the wind whips up storms.  These storms are more likely to occur at twilight, because of the cool night air blowing down onto the relatively heated surface of the water.

Why did he do this at such a precarious time?  He must have had some idea that the storm would blow up. Why was the storm permitted to arise in the first place? He knew about all the mechanisms of nature (because he was there at its creation).  Did he do this on purpose?  It doesn’t seem to equate with a loving, caring Shepherd. Yet, he did seem to call them knowingly into perilous possibilities.  Humanly, we might even ask “If he really loved them, why would he put them at risk?”.  We believe that God loves each of us.  The Bible says he holds our tears in a bottle;  that he knows us completely – he knows us by name; he will provide for our needs.   But when storms strike, it’s sometimes hard to reconcile what we believe about God in our heads, with the emotional and practical reality of our existence.

In his book, A Restless Faith, Keith Mascord explains his journey to come to peace with this enigma. He tells of a terrible accident what prompted him to search outside his Moore-College trained, fundamentalist faith.  He was a Minister in the Sydney Anglican tradition at Wee Waa, and during his time there, one of his churchmen, a farmer, backed over his little toddler son and killed him, then 11 months later, his daughter was killed in a car accident, because she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.  The reason she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, was because she’d had a previous accident and would have been killed, if she’d been wearing her belt.  Keith Mascord questioned his fundamentalist faith, in the face of the unimaginable suffering of these parents, and pondered all the whys and the hows of God letting this happen.  He eventually came to re-evaluate his faith, from a very black-and-white Sunday school understanding of God, to one which embraced much more of the mystery of God, and a less rigid explanation of the suffering in the world. When we consider the personal tragedies that people face every day and the global crises that plague our world, we may also wonder if Jesus is asleep on the job. The cries of the disciples are our cries too: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"

The verses in Job have wisdom to add here. Job was a man who seemed to be picked on by God;  it was as though God took bets with the devil over Job.  The devil said “I bet I can do this or that terrible thing to Job, and he will abandon his faith in you”.  And God said “you’re on”.  And when the terrible things happened, Job felt abandoned by God, just like the disciples in the boat. Yet, in the end Job came to realize that he was just part of a bigger picture… he was not the Centre of the Universe and he had no right to tell God what to do.  This seems harsh to us. It is harsh, but there is great victory and strength in it too.  When confronted by his Creator, Job, in spite of everything that has happened to him, grasps the greatness, the mystery, the goodness and the inscrutable wisdom of God.  He learns about God’s sovereign grasp on our world. In the midst of his suffering, Job declares, "I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth...then from my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:25). Job has found his way home the hard way--through the path of being reduced to nothing but his bare skin and wretched bones...he is raised by God's spirit to the soaring conviction that no matter what happens to him, he belongs to God, and God will bring him to the divine presence in glory”  We too, discover that when our Universe collapses, there is still God. We are humbled to discover that we are not the Centre of God’s universe;  at the same time, we experience the mercy and peace of the Christ who is willing to become like us and get into the boat with us.

It’s the involvement of God with us that is the great overcoming mystery.  Not the head knowledge;  not the doctrine, but the absolute certainty of knowing God is there.  And sometimes, we only really understand that fact, when the great billows rise and the wind howls. This is the wisdom of the Storm story. This is why Jesus calls them out in the boat, at evening.. He knows what storms will blow up in our lives and still bids US follow him into the boat. Otherwise, we’d stand alone, marooned on the rocky shore of our lifeless head knowledge. The sleet of life’s storms would still rain down on us, but if we never venture into the thrashing water, we will never experience the real Jesus;  the overcoming One;  the one who, even asleep, still knows the storm rages.  He wakes to our call.  Every time.

Perhaps that’s why the story is told the way it is – because we know Jesus even sleeping, is still with us, so the sleeping bit is like a metaphor which represents our interpretation of what we feel when he doesn’t stir and answer all our why questions and answer our prayers in the way we want.

The mystery and the blessing of the storms of our lives are all mixed in together.  It feels messy to us.  Life is messy, complicated, unexplained.  The blessing we finally learn from our wave tossed journeys, are the blessedness of the presence and therefore the peace of Jesus, even while the tumult rages.

It can be unwise to directly link God’s caring of us, with our circumstances.  I have a friend on Facebook, who has had a pretty comfortable life.  And I know, we can’t always see behind closed doors, but in the overview of life she’s got a lot to be thankful for… stable marriage, plenty of money, healthy kids, grandkids, a job she loves.  Sometimes her posting to Facebook will be filled with exclamation marks and big smiley faces…. Things like “I love my life.  God is so good”. Or, “flying out to Paris today, our God is wonderful!” There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s giving God the credit for our many blessings.  But if we only count the good circumstances of our life as proof of God’s favour and love for us, then when the storm comes, we may want to abandon the faith life altogether. A head knowledge faith, can be a fair weather faith.

The truth is that we live in a world which is defined at times by injury, loss, illness and death.  We all face our own storms and this story tells us, not so much why they happen – I’m not sure we can ever know that – but about how we can behave in the midst of them.  Of course, the disciples were afraid.  We also are afraid when terrible things happen.  And I think, it’s OK to cry to God, as the disciples did “Don’t you care?” Maybe that’s why this story records their reaction.  It’s like God is reaching down the years, saying to us “it’s OK to ask me why, or even why not”. But in the end, Jesus is the voice of calm, and he calls us to trust him over our fears.

Can we cultivate so firm and deep a trust in the wisdom and sovereignty of Christ that we do not fear following Him into the boat at evening, to go to the other side? The paradox is that until we step into the boat and until the storm arises, our faith can never be that firm or that deep. When we are in the thrashing unsafe boat and realize that He is still in control, our faith in His ability to either calm the storm, or calm our spirits, becomes rock solid.

Finally, can I share a lovely image of this seaside encounter with Jesus.  In his book Letter to a Man in a Fire Reynolds Price tells of an elderly lady who wrote to him about her experience of seeing Jesus more clearly. She was facing her own “storm,” as she was going through exhausting medical tests in preparation for surgery. One day an image came to her mind’s eye. "I went out along the Galilee shore and came to a crowd gathered around a man, and I stood on the outskirts intending to listen. But he looked over the crowd at me and then said, 'What do you want?' And I said, 'Could you send someone to come with me and help me stand up after the tests because I can't manage alone?' He [Jesus] thought for a moment and then said, 'How would it be if I came?'" (Letter to a Man in a Fire, 30-31)

“How would it be if I came?" This is precisely what God has done in Jesus Christ. God has come to us in our suffering and pain, in our struggle to be human, in our fear and anxiety, and in our doubt and uncertainty. Jesus put off deity and put on humanity. He became one of us--one with us--one for us.”

He bids us follow him into the boat, without revealing where the other side might be – without giving us a travel plan or sea sickness pills or life jackets.  He calls us to follow knowing full well that the journey will involve setbacks and storms.  But we have to get into the boat with him, before He calms the storm or hands out the life jackets.  Sometimes, indeed, he waits until the storm is strongest before he acts. If we waited until all was prepared and ready and known we might never go.  And risk being stranded on the shore for all eternity. 

Lord of safe harbours.  We know we are forgiven for all manner of our frailty You are the same today as you were when you bid the waves and winds to cease in the midst of the storm at Galilee.   You understand our fearfulness;  you speak the same words of peace to us.  You hold the mystery to all which befalls us;  you always know the measure of our endurance and faith, and will always command the storm to cease, before we plunge beneath the waves.  We know that all things are under your control.  You can calm the storms we face;  you can give us peace while the storm rages. Blessed by your name O God.  

The Lord's Prayer

“Teach us to pray;  the Lord’s prayer”.  These are my thoughts on what the verses from Luke mean to me; it’s how I’ve applied these precepts in my own life.

*        The opening sentence is “Our father in heaven; hallowed by your name”.  It’s like in a nutshell of who God is: We have on the one hand the invitation to see God as a very personal God who is like a father, and on the other, the Jehovah God to whom all things owe adoration and worship, and who reigns in heaven which is the beginning and end of all creation.  “Hallowed” means “all holiness belongs to you”.  . Some people struggle with the image of a Father God, because their earthly father was a very flawed character, We can feel compassion for those whose fathers were strict and severe, or violent or abusive, or feckless or work-shy; Nevertheless, we can at least relate on an intellectual level, to the ideal of a loving parent who has our best interests at heart, and who will always be interested in our lives;  who will forgive  us no matter what, who provides for us and looks out for us..” Our father” speaks of relationship;  of being able to talk to God in our own language, confident that He is listening. So we are invited to be in relationship with the One to whom all sacredness and power belongs.  And it seems that this prayer teaches us how to get our priorities right.  To start with acknowledging who God is and what He deserves from us, is a good beginning.

*        The next bit is “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This has absolutely nothing to do with our idea of earthly Kingdoms.  I confess, I’ve recited this bit since I was a child, not really seeing it’s significance, or knowing what it really meant.  But after my son died, it became more meaningful.  My son was a young policeman, and when we gathered at Wesley   for his funeral; as we walked up the aisle we could see that the church was absolutely packed;  everybody squashed into the pews, and the little slide out seats too, and outside, and in the vestry. As we bowed our head for the first prayer, I began to have a sort of mental picture of that packed church and I could see lots of slender soft ribbons floating down onto the heads of many of the people.  In later days, as I pondered and prayed over Ben’s death and where God was in all of it, I could still see the ribbons descending.  And I began to pray that whatever purpose God had in allowing Ben to die, that it would begin to be put into place on earth;  I began to pray, that in relation to Ben’s death, God’s will would be done on earth as it already was in heaven.  God’s will was done in heaven;  Ben was with him;  God had counted Ben’s days;  He’s counted all our days and he has the final word on what happens to us..  Now I prayed that this will and purpose would be done on earth too, for all those people on whom the ribbons settled.  I felt that in this one way at least, Ben’s death would help someone else find peace with God, as he himself had found. Perhaps this is fanciful to you;  the silly imagination of a grieving mother.  Maybe.  But this I know;  God’s will is a fact;  a force;  a divine energy;  the divine intellect and purpose in the shadow of which we can only stand in mystified awe.  I could never say that it was God’s will for Ben to die, but "in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Ben was called home to God according to God’s purpose and I have to believe it works for good in the big picture.  Jehovah and parent God, may your will be done for us, on earth, as it already has been done in heaven.

*        Now we come to the petitionary part of the prayer;  “give us this day our daily bread”  This is the only part of the prayer which is for our physical provision.  Or is it?  I’m sure it  means we should be asking for the bread of physical life.  Notice that we are instructed to ask only for what we need today, on a daily basis, not for our sustenance and health in the days to come.  Tricky, very tricky.  It goes against our inclination doesn’t it? We want to know that we will be secure with food and money, long into the future. I don’t think many of us have any idea at all of what it would be like not knowing where our next meal was coming from.  But for the people of Jesus’ day, this was a real prayer, prayed for their survival.. And we are to ask for others too “give us”, not “give me”. And when we ask for bread, we probably should be mindful of all those who grow it and cook it and transport it, and especially those who are dying for the want of it.

This idea of a providential God, supplying everything we need and looking out for us, is a bit of a two edged sword and is never simple.  God is not a Father Christmas giving us what we think we want or even need.  We can’t say “God is good since he saves our children;  and we DO say this “God must have been looking after him or her because they walked out of the wreckage unscathed”. But where does that leave people like me, whose child was not saved?  Why was Peter freed from his prison cell by an angel, but Stephen was stoned to death? Why was John the Baptist allowed to be killed at the whim of a silly girl?  We believe in God’s providence when we get what we want, and we must also trust that providence when He allows things to happen which we don’t want. If I’m going to believe in a God who is absolutely good and always has my best interests at heart, then when Ben died, I couldn’t turn away and declare that God isn’t a loving Father.  This is mysterious stuff which we won’t understand until we get to heaven.  It’s all mixed up with our free will, and God’s absolute will, but at the end of the day, we are still the child, with the burdens and cares of our lives, coming to God’s door, saying “Give to me what I need and I’ll trust you for what that is;  let your will be done for me and all that happens to me”.  In the face of the death of my son, this is all I could offer God.

Could these verses about bread also mean, that we should be asking for God’s very heart to be shared with us;  the bread of Life;  the Spirit.  After all, the rest of these verses  go on to speak of the Holy Spirit, and God’s delight and desire to share his personhood with us, through the Holy Spirit. (down in vs 11-13 where he says that as earthy fathers know how to give good gifts, so the Father longs to give us the Holy Spirit)

*        And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  We accept and embrace God’s forgiveness of us, but we aren’t always so energetic about forgiving others who have wronged us. It can be very hard to forgive people and our capacity to forgive is probably linked to how much they have hurt us.  Sometimes it can take a long time to forgive and it takes much prayer. Maybe this is why we are instructed to pray in this manner;  so that God can change us from resentful, ungodly people, into forgiving, Christ-centred people.   Prayer is not designed to change or persuade God; it is designed by God to change us! Prayer is a spiritual discipline through which we are formed into disciples of Jesus Christ. And a surprising shortcut to forgiving people is to pray for them. 

When my son had been dead for less than a year, I encountered a woman who took every opportunity to establish a pecking order, with me as the peckee.  She could have done me a good turn but she did me a bad one;  she could have shown compassion but she showed me veiled malice instead. In her defence, the things she said and did were petty, small-minded and if I’d been in a normal emotional state I could have flicked them off before they took hold. But I was in a very dark place, with a great wound on my heart and soul. It went on for months and as I drove home one rainy winter night, after another bad encounter with her, at a meeting during which I was not permitted to speak, I thought that I didn’t really want to be in the world any more. But after a few more months and with a skerrick more emotional strength, another way of escape presented itself. I began to pray for this lady.  I prayed for God to bless her;  I prayed that my attitude to her would change.  I prayed for God to love her and for me to love her the way He did. We can’t change how others treat us but we can change how we respond.  She had added to my burden of brokenness.  But prayer began to change the way I saw her and it allowed me to withdraw from the arena.  Her bossy pettiness began to fall on my deliberately-deafened ears.  I yielded her up to God and if that meant she always had the last word and the victory in the pecking order, then my reward was a healing emotional state. She began to seem like a little girl, always trying to prove how much she deserved praise and approval.  I began to see her with more compassion and understanding. Prayer did that. I’m sorry to be sharing something which is so personal, but I discovered that this praying for those who hurt us, actually works.

*        The next bit of this prayer is “And lead us not into temptation”. It’s no surprise that we are told to ask God not to lead us into temptation.  We could spend a month of sermons on this one.  Do not bring us to the time of trial.  Nobody wants trial. God knows how frail we are;  he knows we have need of confession. - We all of us have inclinations to wander to a particular area of sin;  for some it might simply be eating too much, or gossiping, or any type of natural appetite for which the human race is so prone to distort and adulterate. Temptation never strikes when we are strong and have the ramparts of our souls in place.  The evil one knows our weaknesses as well as the Christ does and he waits ‘til we are made vulnerable by any type of life circumstance through which he can fire an evil dart.  But with much praying and the help of the Spirit, we can overcome any temptation.  We have Christ’s example in that too.

*        We move on to the verses 6 to 13 and they are really about persistence;  the man who keeps knocking on his neighbour’s door, the verses about seeking and finding, asking and receiving.

In his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, the great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, puts it this way: Some things God cannot give to a person until he or she has prepared and proved his or her spirit by persistent prayer. Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door, until God says, "Lo! The House is ready. Now may the guest come in."

The Rev. Dr. Charles Reeb, pastor of United Methodist in St. Petersburg, Florida, has expressed this attitude very succinctly:  “When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistently enough, something happens on the inside of us. The discipline of prayer begins to awaken us to the Holy Spirit inside of us, and our motives and desires begin to change”.

It’s been said (Peter Annet) that those who pray persistently are like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock. As they pull on the anchor, they think they are pulling the rock to themselves, but they are really pulling themselves to the rock.

This is what persistent prayer does. Especially, if God’s answer to us, is eventually “no”. It pulls us closer to the rock of God’s divinity. . And in that continual coming, God changes us;  in that persistent coming, we are changed into what God wants for us.  In that constant coming, He shares his Holy Spirit with us. When our temporal needs are foremost in our minds, it might seem that this isn’t what we need.  But it IS all we need in the whole of our life’s journey, and is what is at the heart of this passage. Teach us to pray Lord?  Yes, he teaches us to pray, but it’s not an easy learning; we are often on a different wavelength, with different values and different ideas of what we need.  Yet, as we move closer to God in prayer, we may not always get what we ask for;  instead,  from the wisdom of God, we get what we need. We get what God wants for us, for our spiritual and eternal good. We find that as we move closer to our Rock, we begin to desire what God desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants to give us. Then the truth of Jesus' words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive. This is the secret of how to pray.  In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen

When God does nothing

There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist.  It is a very confronting story.  It’s confronting, because of the pictures it gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death.  We have this terrible picture of Herod and his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing to intervene. 

This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a deceitful woman and her spineless husband.  It is a story of the risks we take  when we choose to follow Christ.

John, the cousin of Jesus;  the one whose voice in the wilderness, foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested.  While John is in prison, Jesus is about and about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go back to before John’s death. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution.  And he hears what Jesus is doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  After his own glorious ministry, as the prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sings for joy?  It must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues.  It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad things happen.

Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the entire Palestinian region.  When Herod the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.

If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father.  A brief study of his character reveals that he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and manipulation.  We know this because of his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his wife.  He’s scheming for the way out of his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed.  The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner.  He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was also his niece).  He is a sleazy man.  He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by his wife.  He is weakness personified. 

This is the man, who so abused his authority against the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading.  This is the picture we have of the strutting weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too.  He scorned and mocked and thought he would have the last word. 

All of this background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it included?”  Why does the death of John include all this detail about Herod and his family?  Why do the preceding chapters tell us of John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell?  Where’s the good news in all this?

There is always the danger in religious circles to think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe.  Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.

The sobering reality is that even the very best of us can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison?  He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in 1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10; moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a brilliant doctor.  When the first world war came, he served as the 5^th Battalion’s Doctor on 25^th April 1915 at Gallipoli.  He survived the landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a creek bed.  After the 5^th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away fell to earth and struck him on the head.  He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but was struck down by a freak bullet.  Not only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor.  He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of his Mum.  She lost all her children, except this one;  she lost her husband and then her  only remaining child marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle front.  Life is not always fair. This story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will intervene, fix, heal, save.  But he didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.  And he didn’t save John the Baptist.  That’s why it’s such a confronting story.

But, these fates aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still God’s.  It’s why we need to keep our lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.

John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to?  How do we understand this story in the light of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and the afflicted being healed?  Can we step outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will and expectations on our hearts?  The truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful our circumstances are;  he himself becomes our hope, our strength;  we look beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come.  And in doing this, we begin to live now, with hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever that might be.

When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized that his task was done.  He had foretold of such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled.  So take heart, because even our suffering, our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that God is present in all our circumstances;  whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations.  The abundance of happy things, is no more a sign of God’s presence than the desolation;  the constant is God.  We tend to measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the mountain top.

Sometimes, like the story of Clunes Mathieson,  the very worst happens.  It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  And let’s remember, it’s not over until the resurrection.  The story of whatever has happened to us here, is not finished until God welcomes, recognises and renews us, on that Resurrection morning.