Readings: Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28
Let us pray: may
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O God, our rock and our sustainer.
Amen.
Have you ever been so caught up by your reaction to
something that someone has said that you simply don’t hear the rest of the
sentence and respond quite inappropriately, only to the piece you hear. Just as big hearted impulsive Peter did in
this Gospel passage. Did Peter hear only
the words ‘great suffering’ and ‘be killed’ and respond with his outburst on
that basis? Could it be that he didn’t
hear the words of hope that followed - ‘and on the third day be raised.’
Or maybe he did hear the promise of resurrection but
couldn’t quite imagine how that could be or whole image didn’t still fit in
with Peter’s understanding of the best way the Messiah could save his
people. It wasn’t to be suffering and
ignominy, was it? That wasn’t the plan.
This becomes even more interesting when you realise
that the immediately preceding verses are of Peter’s affirmation of Jesus as
the Messiah and in turn being affirmed himself as the rock on which the church
will be built. A high point – of understanding and focus and confidence! And it is in that same confidence that he
chides Jesus – and gets it badly wrong.
Maybe for us today the teaching from this Gospel
passage is just that. All the good
intentions in the world are as nothing without the teaching of Christ ringing
in our ears and hearts, without our always listening fully and discerningly to
the voice of God. Mature in the faith or
not, fully committed or not, we get it wrong.
Every horror in the church, every act of violence or arrogance or
injustice that the church has undertaken or turned their back on is when
Christ’s voice has been lost and ours has been ascendant, when we have stopped
listening properly to the voice of God.
Jesus wants us to listen, to discern and live out
right living, Christ living against a powerful current of culture that tugs us,
sometimes ever so gently and other times quite abruptly in wrong directions.
The Christian Church – the community of faith and the
individuals who are part of the body – is set apart for a distinct mission in
the world – to make Jesus Christ known - and to do that we have to understand
and articulate the nature of the teachings we choose to live by in Jesus name. Paul understood this – in his letter to the
Romans he first spent time assuring the Roman that God’s justifying grace is extended to Jews and Gentiles alike and
this chapter 12 he comes to the great ‘therefore!’ Therefore: here are the implications of God’s
grace for the way we live our lives, as individuals and as communities of
faith. Here are the teachings of Jesus
that help us to get it right, to live by Christ’s light, to be Christ’s light
in the world.
Do you know that that in this one paragraph we heard
today there are, at a quick count, well over twenty imperatives? Not only that, but Paul manages, as one
commentator put it, to pack in elements of Christology, ecclesiology,
soteriology, eschatology and ethics.
That would be ministerial self destruction if I tried to do unpack all
of that – so instead today some thoughts about how we live apart from and yet
in the world and one of the imperatives that has particular relevance.
We are in constant tension are we not? Between living the way of faith and living
within the dominant culture that surrounds us.
And for us here in NZ that has a particular danger – we can easily identify
the obviously wrong, the violence, the mistreatment of the vulnerable members
of our society, and a growing gap between rich and poor – but there is the
overwhelming sense of ineffectiveness and participation in that which we want
to challenge. Many of the things we
could be challenging wear a cloak of benign neutrality when in fact they are
quite toxic. How can we make a
difference? Well there are all our
personal choices – one of which is to vote.
I would be reasonably certain that everyone here who is of age would
take part in a general election. And yet
it seems to me from conversations and interviews heard that most people vote for
what is best for them as individuals or families. As Christians we would consider the policies
that are best first of all for this community and this country – and which
might just not benefit us as individuals.
I just love it that, along with the one coming up in Opoho, there have
been political forums at First Church, South Dunedin Presbyterian, Knox Church
for this election – and I bet hard questions were being asked.
And how does the church sometimes get caught up in
listening to the voice of the world rather than the voice of God?
Well there are the times when we confuse worship with
entertainment or marketing, when we allow programmes, or buildings, to
monopolise our understanding of who we
are as ‘church’, when we measure vitality by growth and success by who comes to
church and failure by not having all age worship. There is not much there that differentiates
us from the corporation or club or business that is seeking success is there
not?
What we as a faith community offer, what sets us
apart, is an invitation to join with
others who choose to listen to the heartbeat of God, the teachings and life of
Jesus and live that calling out in the power of the Spirit in as individuals
and within community.
Therefore those who live in the power of the
crucified Christ seek to live in a way which promotes life giving
relations. They engage a way of being
and acting that embodies genuine love, mutual regard, humility, solidarity,
peace and harmony. It is a way of being
that cares not only for members of the faith community but also for the wider
society, particularly the strangers in our midst. The Christian tradition has called this
practice ‘hospitality’ and sees it as a distinctive mark of the church. Some
would say that it is by the practice of hospitality that the church stands or
falls. Hospitality is not just about
welcoming strangers into our midst and doing acts of charity, it is about
hospitality as an act of justice.
Eleazar Fernandez[1]
suggests that hospitality as charity offers crumbs from the table, hospitality
as justice offers a place at the table.
And that in the context of our dominant predatory global market, our
self absorbed consumer society, our recourse to violence whenever threatened,
hospitality involves transformation of a system that is inhospitable to the
great majority of this world.
We are involved in a ministry of radical
hospitality! What might that look like
for us today? It is significant that before Paul talks about how it is we are
to live in the way of Christ he speaks of the gifts that we are given: of
prophecy, of ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, generosity, leadership,
diligence, compassion and cheerfulness. [2]
And where we interweave our gifts as the body of
Christ with the ways that Jesus teaches us to live within the grace and love of
God we have a church rich in hospitality, a church that truly is listening to
the voice of God above the voice of the world.
Look around and see the gifts of God in this place, weave through them
the threads of teaching as to how we are called to live in the grace and love
of God, and we have a community of faith that lives in the heartbeat of God. And for this we say thanks be to God. Amen.
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