Sermon Sunday 27th May 2012 Pentecost - Opoho Church.

Readings: Acts 2:1-21, John 15:26-27, 16:12-15

Let us pray:  Let us pray:  Loving, living God, open our hearts and minds to hear your words, your prayer for us, your people.  Amen.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”  [Acts 2: 1-4]

It’s a powerful passage isn’t it – full of drama - a momentous event that birthed the church and changed lives forever.  Look too at the powerful symbolism  – fire, wind,  a babble of tongues  and the Holy Spirit – the dove – entering into all those who believed.  We have some of those symbols around the church today – thanks to the Youth Group and others.  We have encouraged that symbolism too this morning with the lighting of the many shaped and coloured candles – bringing to mind not only that all are welcome in God’s house but that we come as many different people, yet one in the unity of Christ.

Today I want to pick up that theme of diversity in unity a little more and apply it particularly to our worship time.  A number of things have directed my thoughts towards this.  One is that Abby and a small group are revisiting what it means to be a Kid’s Friendly church – using PCANZ resources and expertise we are wanting to know how we could be more welcoming and inclusive of young people.  And this immediately expands, for me anyway, into whether we are also a disabled friendly or other culture friendly church too.  A second has been the worship and faith questionnaire that all of you? have filled in (or are about to).  This is not about pre-empting what you might have to share in those responses but rather about acknowledging that there are going to be many differing needs and so we need to be thinking about how we might respond with grace and integrity to those which are raised.  The third thing has been the reading today of the many diverse people, from all walks of life, all cultures, who were united in the gifting of the Holy Spirit, understanding each other easily in that moment of wonder and in the power of the Spirit.

Let’s begin with the reading from Acts.  The people came from many places and spoke many languages – now I don’t know if they were all Jews at this point –scholars seem to think so – but they were speaking different languages and from differing cultural groups.  They would have not easily mixed would they – can’t you just see the little pockets of languages sitting together in their own spaces – all probably having the same conversation of anticipation but only with those whom they could easily converse and be understood. And then they found that, in the Spirit, they were able to cross those barriers, lose some inhibitions, talk with strangers, people that, moments before, they may have considered outsiders.  It was unusual enough for some bystanders to immediately think they were all drunk as skunks – what else could cause such an aberration from normal dignified behaviour?   And afterwards, after the excitement had subsided somewhat  – well they listened to Peter preaching and many were baptised and, I assume, eventually they returned to where they had come from.  But it was different now – they had been melded into a community of faith, wherever they went – they met together to praise God, to pray, to share food around the table and care for others.  It was indeed the beginning of church.  But, and this was the point that stood out for me – they didn’t all suddenly turn into identical clones who agreed on everything and saw everything the same way – they were still who they were, still old and young, women and men,  Jew and Gentile, traditional and contemporary, mathematicians and artists, emotive and logical, impatient and slow to decision. United in the love of God made known in Christ and now empowered by the Spirit, they became community but not to the degree of losing their individuality, their uniqueness.  There was no magic speaking with one voice, seeing the world with one set of eyes - as Paul’s and other’s letters attest to.  In fact there were those who headed off in some pretty weird directions, those who tried to make everyone do it their way, those who broke away to form new groups, those that thought they were right and others wrong, those that embraced change and those that fought for tradition.  What actually kept them together, kept them travelling on the road of love and grace was to be constantly reminded in the Spirit of what Jesus taught and lived.  The Spirit takes what is the Son’s and makes it known.  And what is the Son’s is from and of the Father’s as Jesus reminds us in his prayers for us.  Jesus made alive in the Spirit kept them in God’s purpose.   

So how is this reflected in worship in 21^st century, let’s say New Zealand for want of some kind of containment?  Well I guess the first thing to consider is whether there are ways that we sort of huddle together so to speak, making it hard for others to break into our comfortable spaces.  We have probably all been in churches where children are sshhed or glared at for the slightest noise. Some of us may have attended worship where everyone but you knows what to do and when, and anyone who is new to worship will remember I am sure trying to get a handle on the language used and what it means– I came across a phrase in my reading for today ‘What we have in the Pentecost narrative is an ethno-eschatological unveiling (apokalupsis) that deconstructs a theology of ethnic exclusionism toward a broader theological vision.” 

Actually I am just being silly there but you know what I mean. 

Where do we see worship in terms of the presence of the Holy Spirit unifying us in Christ and the fact that each of us has differing opinions, understandings, approaches to what it means to be Christian.  Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the debates that have taken place around our ability to hold any longer to one creed – to be able to state together what it is that we believe as a Church when much of the theological content is not expressing what we, each of us, believe.  Even the attempt of PCANZ to produce a contemporary confession of faith, Kupu Whakapono, has met with a lukewarm response by many.  And yet we are called by Christ to express our unity as a people of God  – how do we do that in worship? 

One way is in the Affirmations of Faith that we say each week.  Each one starts off with ‘We believe...’  but you haven’t had a chance to suss out whether you do or not.  I used to think that a communal statement of faith was just that – something that I had to believe literally and concretely to be a Christian; and discovered in fact that that thinking confined God to humankind’s ability to shape words around the divine.  An impossibility I would suggest – especially if we bring all our differing perspectives and attitudes to bear.  Now I see an Affirmation of Faith as an opening up of the possibilities of the mystery of God made known in Christ and through the Spirit.  Some phrases  perplex, some aggravate, some deeply connect, for each of us I suspect differently,  as we together look for ways to share our belief that we are made one in the transforming love of God.  

The last point I would want to make about unity and diversity in worship is that of how we use language.  When I was a member of St Andrews in Amberley, and it came to the Lord’s prayer – I just loved the invitation from the minister of the time to say the version that we were each most comfortable with – for most it was the old version, for some the modern – and we did.  On this day of all day, when many languages were heard, it seem appropriate to say that if you want to use the old version of the Lord’s prayer, do so – if you want to say it in your native tongue, do so, if you hear your neighbour doing just that hold to your way of doing so, that is just fine.  Saying this doesn’t make me any more comfortable to be in a worship service where people are speaking in tongues – that is not what I am talking about – but I am saying that we don’t all have to be completely on the same page with everything that we do and say – it’s not about uniformity but about integrity and unity in our differences.  When we come to sing the last hymn – I am going to sing some slightly different words rather than saying that God is just for men – that matters to me but it is of absolutely no import to others – we can sing different words and still be one in the Spirit, can we not?  I think so.

So let us not be uncomfortable or threatened by difference, our individual takes on God and worship and Church, but let us be comforted on this Pentecost Sunday by the knowledge that, for 2000 years, unity in God’s love is made known in the Spirit and is to be lived out in all our loving and caring diversity as Christ’s disciples, as Christ’s church as we have done here in Opoho for many years and will for many to come.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

Margaret Garland

Sermon Sunday 20th May, 2012 Easter 7 Ascension.

Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26    John 17:6-19

Let us pray:  Loving, living God, open our hearts and minds to hear your words, your prayer for us, your people.  Amen.

Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season within the Church year, the week before Pentecost, the week where we remember the Ascension of Christ.  The question comes early on in the sermon today – how tempting is it to use Ascension as a time of longing for some future place of thrones and heavenly hosts to the detriment of Christ’s prayer for us, his disciples, his church to bring eternal life to this place, here and now?  In other words is the picture of a Christ being drawn up into the clouds the predominant image of this act of ascension or can we discover that there is more to this story.  It’s no wonder that for much of my faith life, there was no more than this image.  The words ascension in itself immediately conjures upwards, a physical act of time and place which had completely captured my attention and left no room for any perspective that Christ might bring to that moment of parting. Moreover, we have in our art and our history, concentrated on the physical details of our interpretations of this event –what might it have looked like, where did it take place etc.  You know a long time ago I visited Jerusalem and have said for some time that the most sacred place I visited was a little wooden church on a hill somewhere that was known at the Church of the Ascension – it was a simple, unadorned, rectangular place with no people in it and no one asking for money outside.  Ah I thought, I have finally found the sacred in the midst of this frenetic mayhem of religious tourism.  Well imagine my surprise yesterday when I went online for a photo of the church and discovered a completely different ancient octagonal church building that was firmly established as the place where Christ was said to have ascended to the heavens.  I have no idea where I was and probably never will.  But that seemed to me a good lead in to suggest that the ascension needs to been seen not so much through our eyes of physical location, farewell, separation and hoped for images of future glory but through Jesus eyes of hope and prayer and preparation for those who are to be his people here in this world.  The Ascension reminds us of our responsibility!  Jesus is no longer in the world – but we are, we who are the Body of Christ, we are in the world and we have a job to do!

Why else do we remember Pentecost next week – and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit –if not to continue to do the work that Jesus began to the purpose of God?  There is a posting on Facebook this week from Mark Johnston[1], Auckland staff member of Knox Centre, where he ponders what the world might look like if we had a stronger theology of place, that is that where we are, where we live, what is in front of us here matters to God.  He goes on to suggest that the Churches mission only takes this seriously when there is a disaster – like an earthquake - and what would it involve if church actually took place and the ordinary and everyday of it all as a matter of spiritual significance all the time.

Maybe this is what Jesus is looking for us to understand as we listen to his prayer for his disciples that we heard read from John’s Gospel.  Perhaps we are being encouraged to take our eyes off what we are assured is to be – as Bill Loader said: to believe that death does not separate us from God and to trust God with the detail – and to focus on what Christ commissioned us to be as his disciples here in this place.

And so Christ prays for us.  We, who choose to be in relationship with God through Christ Jesus, and to pick up the task that the Father gave to the Son and the Son gives to us are held in close prayer for a future that is not easy.

There seem to be three main threads for concern that Jesus has for his disciples in this prayer.

The first is that living in the love of God made known in Christ brings us into conflict with other values in the world and brings dangers.  And I don’t believe he is talking so much dangers that other impose on us but rather where our responses take us into ineffective spaces or, alternatively, places of collaboration with those values.  One response to danger is to withdraw, is it not, into the safety and comfort of known companions and familiar contexts?  From here we can sometimes venture out into the hostile environment that we call the Mission Field – but it’s often a foray only, from which we return gladly to our sanctuary.  There is also a danger of the opposite response to conflicting world values – and that is that we conform to them, telling ourselves that, on the whole, societal rule, the status quo gets it mostly right – from this place we can end up sponsoring, colluding in all kinds of oppressive and unjust acts on a people and a world that we hold in our care in the name of Christ.  The consequences of withdrawal or collusion are a church with its eyes averted from the task that Jesus passed to us.

The second thread for concern is the loss of holiness – the losing touch with the Son and the Father, trying to do this thing on our own.  Jesus prayer suggests that it is only in the power of the relationship with God that we are kept from betraying that which we have committed to as Christians.  That is not to say, though, that as long as we are in relationship with the divine, all is well, no more is needed.  We need to underpin this concept of holiness being found in relationship with God with the other great commandment – to love your neighbour as you love God.  Holiness is living in God, and that means living in love.  Where we do not live in love we are betraying Christ and putting love to death, again.

And thirdly Jesus was concerned about unity – ‘that they may be one as you and I are one’, addressed also in the verses following this morning’s reading.  Well in this we could say that the church has abjectly failed.  Divisions came in the blink of an eye – remember back to the reading last week of the differing opinions on how Gentiles could be brought into the Christian family.  The church throughout its entire history speaks loudly of division and when there did appear to be unity, it was pretty much achieved with an iron fist.

But maybe we have confused unity with lack of division, with unity for the sake of unity or for the sake of peace.  And I don’t think any of those are what Jesus was praying for us.  To be all one in agreement and practice is denying our very humanity – and I do not believe Christ was that foolish!  We would end up going underground with our beliefs or leave the church completely - in that scenario of unity.  Rather perhaps he was praying that, if we are one in him and in the Father through the Spirit, then our diversity and conflicts can be worked through and, if need be, lived with, in a loving, non-destructive way.  This would speak volumes into this destructive divided world of how to live in loving community in our diversity.  Jesus hope for us is that we model the resolution of conflict to the wider society in a manner which will persuade people that there is something transformational about the Christian message.  How are we doing at that?  I would suggest we don’t have a lot of kudos points in the bank for that one at this time.  But for all that, it remains Christ’s prayer for us, that we are one in the Father and in the Son, and in the Spirit, so that our unity, our holiness, our very being is in the God who so loved the world, not heaven but the world – and who tasks us with that same purpose through the risen Christ.  Thanks be to God.

Margaret Garland.

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[1] Rev Mark Johnston, KCML Auckland Co-ordinator

Sermon Sunday 13th May 2012 Opoho Church, Dunedin Easter 6

Readings: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Let us pray: Open our hearts, our minds, our very souls to your word for us O God and may we know both challenge and affirmation in our responses. Amen.

One of the commentaries on our Acts reading of today, the story of Peter baptising the Gentile house of Cornelius, suggested that this passage, if it was ever to be made into a feature film, would be a powerful and action packed story filled with conflict, tension, relationship struggles, surprise and surrender and even a touch of the supernatural that changes lives forever. The writer, Jacob Myers¹, further suggested that it would take an extraordinary actor – his words were “a profoundly emotive thespian” – to play the role of Peter – and he suggests Ton Hanks or Denzil Washington!

What makes this such a powerful story? First of all we have Peter, a conflicted character torn between everything that he has ever learned – from his mother’s knee so to speak – and what he is being instructed to do now. All his upbringing, all his religious teaching has been about excluding those who were unclean ie the Gentiles and now he is being instructed directly by God to include them. He is finally having to get to grips with Jesus teaching that this gospel good news is for all people not just the Jews. Whilst his head may have picked up this distinction – it is pretty obvious that it hadn’t yet sunk in, become a habit. Remember when the road rules were changed a month or so ago – experts warned that the danger would come not from the days immediately following the change when we were all on high alert, but in the time after - before the changed rules became a new habit and the old habit died. Peter was still engaged in his old habit - in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, four times he said he was speaking to his fellow Israelites. Acknowledging that Christ was for all people still hadn’t sunk in. This tension was not helped by the people who had come with Peter – showing disbelief, astonishment that Peter should do this thing, even in the face of the evidence of the Holy Spirit – and he was to face further criticism on his return to Jerusalem by the circumcised believers. And yet Peter ordered their baptism – for he was convicted by the presence of the Spirit descending on these people - and stayed to enjoy their hospitality for some time after – also a radical decision in light of the laws of association in the Jewish community.

We read on in Acts 11 that Peter came before the believers in Jerusalem to defend his actions and explain how he came to do these things. And his bottom line defence was: If God, by giving the Holy Spirit to these people, welcomed them into the faith community, who was he to gainsay that! It might not still be an imbedded understanding but he was going with it, because of his faith in God. So there we have it: conflict, tension, new understandings and new relationships, persuasion, following the heart, and commitment - all the elements for a potential block buster, you agree?

So how do we bring the drama and depth of this story about Peter, his associates and his new friends into focus for today and for us? I am sure that already you are picking up on some possibilities – here is what immediately came into my thoughts as sub-scripts,

• that of constantly revisiting what it is we believe always in the light of the love and commandments of Christ,
• that of both mind and heart accepting the truth of the statement “we welcome all people” - without limitation
• that of standing strong for what we believe even if it means putting ourselves into a position of isolation,
• that of letting go of the head sometimes and recognising that there are some things that we just don’t understand or that we might be wrong on,
• that of a growing and deepening understanding of who God is – forever challenging and drawing us on into Christ-like living in relationship with God and each other.

I invite you to expand on that further. But for the moment I would like to develop what I consider a common thread of all those points – and that is that all of these teachings from the story of Peter and the coming of the gentile household of Cornelius to faith point to this place: the place where Christ says “I no longer call you servant but friend”. There is almost a sense of Peter growing up at this moment – of sloughing off a skin that has been constricting him and walking in the freedom of friendship with God.

The difference between servant and friend in this passage is defined by Jesus as the difference between living obediently in the law of God or living in the full knowledge of the purpose and will of God, where laws were always measured against the command to love God and one another. Ludicrous as it seems to say about Peter the Rock, the one who had been through every test, every character building moment and emotion possible in his faith journey, Peter had still had something to learn of this distinction between servitude and friendship.

So how might it look for us to be friends of the living God:

We are to measure all that we say and do in the light of that love – so if we find actions or rituals or attitudes that contradict that purpose we have to question why we are doing it and often let them go. For Peter it was the necessity for circumcision before baptism, for us it might be doctrine that excludes, or ways of living that hurt and harm or exploit others

We are to welcome all people – for Peter it was the Gentiles, for us it might be those who are angry, or ragged or disrespectful or irritating, those who disagree with us or those who do it differently.

We are to stand strong for what we believe in – even if it puts us at odds with others and even if we don’t totally feel comfortable with it. Transformed living means we will often be standing in a very different, and often contrary, place to those around us – but we can do this because we are convinced of the way we are following, heart and mind both.

Interesting though isn’t it? Peter didn’t try and convince others of his new understanding with deeply complex and unassailable arguments of theology – he simply told them what had happened, that God was present in that situation and so he believed. It is in our actions and attitudes, our convictions that we offer real proof of the purpose of God in this world.

There are times when the evidence of our eyes, of the presence of God assaults our long held opinions and we have let go of them or modify them. For Peter it was giving up a whole way of living – a culture as well as a faith that told him to not associate with the uncircumcised – a major rethink of his attitudes – but he was able to do it because of a greater direction in his life – that God’s love was for all people in all places regardless of their ethnicity, their cleanliness, their behaviour or their genes.

Makes you realise, doesn’t it, what a great movie script our lives make when we too walk with the integrity and purpose in the knowledge of God made known in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt there will be sub-plots of conflict and tension with ourselves and others, there will be scenes of uncertainty where the only way forward is in faith and trust in others, there will be times where we are challenged by the establishment and have to find ways to respond, and where our vision is not the vision of everyone else.

But if we, like Peter, can learn trust the working of the Spirit way beyond our imaginings and comforts, if we are truly living in the knowledge of the one who calls us friend then we are presenting the world with a captivating and inspiring script for how we might re-image this world and all who live in it – in the love of God. Thanks be to God. Amen

Margaret Garland

1 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=1&alt=1

Sermon - Opoho Church, Dunedin Sunday 6th May 2012. Easter 5

Readings: 1 John 4:11-21, John 15:1-8

Let us pray:  O God, may your word challenge us and your challenges move us to live more deeply and prayerfully as your love in this world.  Amen.

I remember someone saying to me once that all this talk about ‘God is love’ is simply encouraging a wishy washy understanding of God, all sweet and light, warm fuzzies and benign leadership.  And I agree, if that is what we understand the definition of the word love to be.  Many do – and I have to wonder how we have gotten to that - a sense of love being perfect only in a sparkling pristine fair-weather kind of way – no edges or depth to it.  It immediately reminded me of the period of child rearing that Mike and I were part of as parents – where some of the current wisdom suggested that you didn’t lay any boundaries on a baby because love meant letting them tell you what they wanted, when they wanted fed or to go to sleep, love meant never you dictating routine to them.  Fortunately we were older and wiser - or possibly some of our own parenting rubbed off on us! 

Love is way more than a general sense of bliss and benevolence, or an avoidance of conflict, whether it be in family, in friendship, in marriage or in faith.  It’s way more than the absence of hate or exploitation or suffering.  Our readings today suggest that love has serious impact and I suspect we all know that - we know that love hurts as well as heals, love disciplines as well as delighting, love shakes us to the core and delivers the most wonderful gift to all whom it touches. 

Maybe some of our confusions comes from not always recognising that Love is a doing word not a noun.  Christ didn’t invite us to look on him and know love – he drew us instead into his acts of love and asks us to live out love in action.  It is not so much about recognising that we mustn’t hurt people so much as showing how much we love them.

I was sent this week a quote from GK Chesterton[1] that, for me anyway, spoke of how the love we find in Christ should be known – found in his essay ‘A piece of Chalk’. 

He had set out on a beautiful summer’s day with brown paper and a variety of chalks to draw, to sketch whatever he might see.  But he found, of all the chalks he had taken with him – he had forgotten the most important one – the white chalk - to draw with:

"Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. “

And he goes on to talk about how virtue is not the absence of vices but a vivid and separate thing, identifiable in its own right – just as we can see love as a burning passionate white-hot act of living, not just the absence of all that prevents it. 

Is this not a way of understanding Christian love – not just a desire to take away the bad, the evil things in life but to instil a passion for love in us all, one that sees past the unlovely and the conditional and the selective to a way of living that sweeps all that is divisive and unjust and cruel before it.  It doesn’t mean an absence of pain – all here would know this – but it does suggest that love sees us through when we are at our lowest and transforms us and the world at its most generous.

And we as Christians believe this sustenance, this transformation is possible is because we abide in God and God abides in us.  Or as the NIV translation says ‘that we live in God and God lives in us’.  This is a core message from the readings – that the love of God is made visible in us and through us into the world because we abide in God’s love for us.  For anyone who is looking for the reality of God in this world – look for acts of love and there you will find God.  This is what takes our understanding of love out of the somewhat dispassionate place that is the absence of evil and into the white-hot burning passionate way of living.

And here’s a thing – in this world that seems so flawed, so hope-less, we are told by the author of 1 John, that this love, when known, is perfect.  That is some claim – we all know that nothing is perfect, well apart from fleeting moments in time – and what is more this is not some eschatological perfection – something to come in the end days – but it is a hope, a possibility, a reality in fact for today, here and now.  Perfect love is ours to give not because we feel we should but because it simply is who we are in Christ.  Now there is a challenge – we certainly don’t always get it right, we do begrudge, detour,  avoid, with-hold love – so how can it be perfect? 

Maybe because love is given perfectly to us, as in given unconditionally, freely, forever – and when we touch that love we are in God and God in us.  Even though we make choices that sometimes withhold that love, we can be confident that every moment when love is present, so is the kingdom of heaven perfectly made known here on earth. 

The power of that love is strong enough to drive out fear says the author of 1 John.  I am sure that we have all heard stories of, if not experienced it ourselves, when love overcomes fear – and that doesn’t mean it ignores or deletes fear but rather that it encompasses it with a greater power – the power to love.  One of the many stories – a family in Morrinsville – who have given up health, income and any hope of a ‘normal life’, whatever that might be, to care for their third child – a boy with Down Syndrome who is also profoundly autistic.  His destructive behaviour has driven the family to the very edges of despair – but their love for their son is a powerful force that holds the family together and helps them plan for a future that is not going to be ever easy.  Love drives out fear.

And for a last thought – we hear that love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.  We love because God first of all loved us, not because we fear punishment, or reward for that matter.  So how did we get to put so many buffers, so many fears of punishment, between us and God, to believe that we needed someone to pay all our debts, that we are not good enough for the church, for God, that we have to be a baptised saved Christian to receive God’s love, that it is all about eternal life somewhere in the future and the now is something to be endured, that hell and eternal damnation is the lot of the perpetual sinner – God will indeed be lonely in heaven. 

So no, the love of God made known in Jesus Christ is not wishy washy benevolence, it is not simply the absence of evil, it is a powerful, perfect and fearless, white-hot passion it is the piece of white chalk, the part of life and faith that we cannot do without – for we abide in God and God is love and abides in us.  Thanks be to God who loves us forever and always.  Amen

Margaret Garland

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[1] A Piece of Chalk by G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Sermon - Opoho Church, Dunedin Sunday 22nd April, Easter 3 2012

Readings: Luke 24:36b-48,  1 John 3:1-7

Let us pray:  O God, we pray that through your Spirit we may hear your word and encounter within it, the great width and length and height and depth of the love of Christ for us and in us.  Amen.

At first glance the passage we heard read this morning from 1 John is challenging and somewhat contradictory.  What do you do with, this statement, for instance:  “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”  It seems a bald provocative statement of right living to which few of us could possibly connect and against which all of us would experience failure. It also seems totally in contrast to the embracing concept that we are God’s children, loved and cared for and welcomed as we are.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now.”  What can we do with the tension between a total intolerance of any sin and a recognition of the grace of Jesus Christ that allows sinners to be the children of God?  Various people have tried to find ways to explain this uncompromising statement on sin – asking if for instance we can make sense of it by imagining it is about habitual sinning versus the occasional lapse – but somehow achieving an 80% pass mark doesn’t quite fit with a God who wants us to strive for a transformed life in Christ.  Or is the other way to suggest that it is only when we are not sinning that we are in relationship with God – ie stepping in and out of abiding in Christ.  That too is against all we understand of a God from whom nothing, not even death, can separate us. 

So what do we do with this passage?  Well here is the thought I would like to explore – are we or can we become a people for whom sinning is increasingly an unreal option? Can we make more real the connection between who Christ is and who we need to be?  And if so how might we do that, how might we live into the future promise that when Christ appears, we shall be like him?

Now in case that word sin is causing us any difficulty, can I define sin as that which does not come from love, that which does not have its origin in God?  There is a much bigger discussion to come on sin at another time but for today let’s sit with that.

So basically what the author of 1 John is saying, I believe, is that we are to see living as the children of God as being a holistic, fully transformational change to our lives, not just a piecemeal picking up of some useful, pragmatic and seemingly fair rules for life.  It’s the difference between intellectually knowing that you should not verbally abuse someone and caring deeply of the hurt you might cause them.  It’s about the love flowing in every aspect of our lives because we have looked on the face of God in encountering the risen Christ, and we want to become what we have looked upon.  In this sense the claim that no-one who abides in Christ can sin begins to make a little more sense, be more reachable for us because it suggests, not that we are going to cease all sinful behaviour but that we are going to always measure what we do, say and be always in this love and that makes it much harder for us, increasingly, to carry out unlovely actions in our lives. 

An illustration: over the last week we have had here in the church hall about 20 odd children attending a volunteer Otago holiday programme.  They were loud and lively and had a great time.  But there were a few that found it fun to escape the activities from time to time and take refuge in the Minister’s office.  Minister of Magic they dubbed me.  And in one of the conversations several around 13 year old girls started talking about the latest happenings in Shortland St.  I made a face, it seems, because they asked me why I didn’t like the programme.  Because it’s a challengeable reality I said – except I probably said: “life’s not like that’.  And then they said but, Minister of Magic, it gives all kinds of, I think it was ‘life instruction’ for us.  They meant that it had moral teachings I think.  And they started reeling them off:

You shouldn’t steal $25,000 to build a charity clinic cause you will get caught.

You shouldn’t lie to get people out of your flat – it doesn’t work

Don’t get pregnant – you might not be able to get the father to admit it

A somewhat twisted and limited understanding both of what is right living and why!  Without the underpinning rationale of love and care for each other informing these girls’ concepts of right and wrong, they are always going to be struggling to get the difference between what we have called sinning and what we know as living in the new creation that is the risen Christ.  I hope that when they are ready to acknowledge the failings of Shortland St as the source of right living, that they might think to ask a person of faith if they have an answer!

At the annual meeting of Synod that I attended for the first time this weekend, we were also challenged to live into this vision of a church that had looked on the face of God and wanted to become what it had looked upon.  To find answers to the question: what kind of church is God calling us to be in Christ and by the power of the Spirit? How do we distinguish in the church those rules for Christian living that are anchored pretty much in social and historical understandings of right and wrong and can easily be conduits for abuse and exploitation, and, on the other hand, those understandings of church that are based in the love of Jesus made know in scripture and through the Spirit.  If we can live in the second, then maybe we can become a church for whom living without love is an increasingly unreal option?  We didn’t come up with any particular model of how church will look in 2020 in Aotearoa New Zealand – that was the challenge of the new Moderator – but there were inspiring words from Graham Redding as he summed up the discussion – do we, he said, have the heart to allow ourselves to re-evangelised by the gospel, to hold to what it means to live as a transformed body of Christ as church, through our worship, our mission and our love for one another, to live simply, prayerfully, grace-fully, hope-fully, joy-fully and generously. 

Maybe in this church that has looked on the face of God in the life and death of the risen Christ, maybe in this church there will be no sin – for we have become what we have looked upon and can envisage no other life.  That is Christ’s prayer for us, his beloved people.  Amen.

Margaret Garland

Sermon - Opoho Church, Dunedin Sunday 15th April 2012 Easter 2

Bible Readings : Acts 4:32-35,  John 20:19-31

A Question of Belief: reflections on the Lenten Study

We pray:  As your Church, as your Easter people may we be open to your prayer for us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

The first verse of an Easter hymn by Shirley Murray goes like this:

Church of the living Christ,

people of Easter faith –

speak to the Man who walks

free from the dark of death!

The Christ who burst the tomb apart

comes questioning the Church’s heart.

And I guess in some ways that is what our reflections over the Lenten time were about – questioning, laying on the table what it is that is our heart as a church community – what troubles us, what questions we have, what re-imaging we want to make of what we believe, what we hold firm and foundational and what excites new understandings.  What is the Spirit saying to the church, to us?

I tell you those Monday evening discussion roved far and wide, turned unexpected corners and were I think fairly stimulating and helpful to all.  So today, as we consider what it means to live in a post Easter faith, I thought it would be helpful to offer back to the full congregation some of the thinking that came out the discussions around Bill Loader’s letter to Dear Kim...not a cohesive resume but rather some of the things that really resonated.

But as we do so, I would ask you to consider these reflections in the light of this Easter story and our commission from the risen Christ to re-member him and to continue to live out his love in the world as we talked about last Sunday.  Today’s reading is an interesting backdrop too – poor old Thomas labelled for all time as the doubter – it’s really so unfair to focus doubt onto just this one honest person when all, I suspect, doubted at some time or other.  I wonder if in perpetuating the myth of this solitary doubter, it makes it easier for us to see doubt as a sin rather than as a very normal and human way of exploring faith and life.  Because that was for me one of the pivotal understandings that came out of these Lenten discussions – we were given permission to express our doubts, our questions, our conundrums if you like.  We came at issues from many different perspectives, heard of differing struggles and interpretations and were able to express doubts and have self labelled ‘dodgy’ thinking affirmed

And so what follows are the musings of some of those who attended, including my own. 

So some thoughts – first of all from Philip.

Tui told me of one particular thought that was important for her – and I quote:   “ The sessions, and discussions with other attendees after the sessions, challenged the way I conceptualised words  like 'theology' and '[bible] commentary'. Living as we do in North Dunedin we are blessed with a close local department of (academic) theology. I was surprised to realise that I had come to view words such as theology and commentary as belonging to the academic and/or ministerial world (where people use big words that I often do not understand) rather than be something that I might do or think in more simple language. I guess I haven't viewed what I read as commentary - just seen it as books I read, and my thoughts I have just seen as my thinking, not "doing theology". It has made me wonder about whether non-theologians need to actually reclaim theology back for ourselves for the good of us all.” End of quote.  She is so right – we each and every one need to reclaim theology as a personal space, not leave as something that other people do – for it is imperative in a world that questions the value of faith that we  know what it is we believe and share our understandings clearly and relevantly. 

Affirmation of life after death but not needing to know anymore – that was a part of the studies where John Allen welcomed his reticence.  In the words of Loader, “Yet in the choice of denying or affirming life after death, I come down on the side of belief.  My starting point is God and I am confident that in death I am not cut off from God.    I believe that, as with Jesus, I go to be with God.  I don’t think I need to know any more.  God is enough, the rest is imagery.  It was enough for the disciples to know that Jesus was going to be with God, and that they too would be with God.  Time and energies spent speculating on what that might look like is time taken from being Christ in this world.  Trust as Thomas trusted when he knew the presence of the risen Christ was before him.

When we came round to talking about the bible there was this incredibly wide diversity in how we read and understand it, as well as which parts speak most directly to us.  It helped to remind ourselves of some ways of thinking of the Old and New Testaments:

·        that they are made up of gathered writings over time selected or rejected by the early church for various reasons,

·        that it is not the infallible word of God but the rather a witness to the life of faith in God and, in the NT, as made known in Jesus Christ.  People wrote from their understanding and knowledge and faith into the situations they found themselves at the time.  

·        It’s all about context – what is the spirit of Christ saying to the Church in the 21^st century in Opoho, as Jesus words and deeds spoke into the church of 1^st century Palestine

We talked about different ways of reading the bible – verses, chapters, books – and the contradictions and those parts that just spoke directly to us of God’s love and faithfulness.

It was interesting that here and in other places Loader speaks of his early life as a Christian where he had a reasonably fundamentalist view of faith, a view which he now considers in opposition to the teachings of Jesus, and that by trying to literally believe all that is said in the bible, he was subjecting love and compassion to law making – just what Jesus spent his time rejecting.

And the final topic I would like to share – this was one that came out of our last discussion on what it means to be Christian.  John’s sermon from Palm Sunday generated a frank sharing of our relationship with forgiveness – not so much with our receiving but our struggle with giving.  We talked around what forgiving someone actually meant:

·        Should it only be given when repentance was expressed? The answer to that was no.

·        Does it mean that you forget what happened? Also no.

·        How should we deal with hurts that go very deep?

·        Where does our unconditional love sit?

·        Is there some who are beyond redemption?

·        How much around forgiveness is about our spiritual well being?

·         And more.

We didn’t find all the answers and I am thinking this a place where we need to continue to explore and open up. I thank you for that.

May we continue to be open to Christ’s questioning of our Churches heart and may we respond with wisdom and with courage.  For, as the last verse of the hymn says:

We are the Body now –

our feet must mark the Way,

our speech declare the Word

and live it day by day,

the resurrection story ours,

disciples gifted with new powers!

Rev Margaret Garland

Sermon Opoho Church, Dunedin Sunday 8th April. Easter Sunday

Bible Reading: John 20:1-18

Prayer: 

O God, may our hearts and minds be opened and challenged by your Word for us and for the world we live in.  In Jesus name.  Amen. 

Its official, I have decided.  New Zealand is a secular society!  That is if you measure it by the degree of acknowledgement of the Christian Easter Story in the media and on the TV channels that bring us entertainment and enlightenment.  I had a quick flick through the listener – mainline TV managed to resurrect for the umpteenth time the Vicar of Dibley Easter special (good as it is) and the fairly crass Bruce Almighty where Jim Carrey gets to play God for while.  That is it. 

In the news there has been and will be some media coverage of the Easter services held around the country, of the walks of the cross in the city as there was in the ODT on Saturday.

But still I say – that is it.

But then I started to think – possibly generously– that maybe this is not because programme chiefs or reporters are passionately secular or deeply anti-religious or just reporting a newsworthy event  – far from it -  but because people increasingly just don’t see how a Christian Easter has any relevance within this fast paced, complex world of self-survival any more.  It may be that for some people within the church, too, there is a sense of detachment, of the repeated story of Easter losing meaning in the reality of living in this world, of difficulty in connecting with the drama that is the Easter story. Because it is a time of high drama – when you walk through Lent – look at the banners on the wall to remind you of the stories – when we experience the events of Holy Week, we become increasingly involved in sensing the anger, the betrayal, the loneliness and the pain, of Jesus and the anguish, the life seemingly extinguished, the waiting, waiting and finally the rebirth of hope in the risen Christ for those early followers and for all who have followed Christ since then.

It seems to me that there is a gap of understanding – and that the somewhat mysterious, ritualistic often uncomfortable happenings of Easter week within the church appear to those who look on from a distance, as a place of ‘yes well.. so...’?  I see this as one of the great chasms that we need to bridge – if we want the gospel narrative to have any meaning and relevance for this world.  And I see it as one of the hardest bridges to build with the most non-conformist engineering design that you are likely to find.  We have to not only recognise how church is seen from those who have little experience of it but also figure out the story we actually want to tell.  As an example of perspective, I remember a comment from a chance encounter – when the person found out I was training for ministry they said – well I totally refuse to have anything to do with a belief that promotes torture - on the cross – that is just not right. 

I also wonder how many use the debate on whether the physical body of Jesus was fully restored in the resurrection as the most important entrance belief into being a Christian – small wonder if they do as we seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time on the question of a bodily or not resurrection.  What do we want to say is the Easter story?

If, miraculously, the world of media and reporting was suddenly to turn to you and say – so what is it that you want on the front page of the paper, as the headline for tomorrow’s news, what is it that you want in the programmes for television over Easter week-  what is it that you would reply?  What is the Easter story you would want to tell the world?  It’s an intriguing question but I believe we might find some direction in the reading from John heard today.

John’s Gospel tells the story of the empty tomb with drama and with clarity, with simplicity and an almost impatient sense of purpose for what is yet to come.  I love the way that the John draws us in to a no nonsense account of the discovery of the empty tomb.  It’s all action, Mary comes, sees, runs to tell the others.  They run, race to the tomb, wanting to be the first to see, it’s almost childish, their rivalry, they see and believe – that the body is gone – they leave, walking past Mary who has come back, to weep and find out who has done this awful thing.  It is she who learns the truth of the risen Christ in the garden, she who goes back to the disciples and brings a tale of hope and new beginnings. There is no mention of checking up or disbelief of Mary’s word in John.

One can get from these events a real sense of needing to work this one out together, that it takes community to hold each other in the midst of despair, uncertainty and discovery.  Peter’s leadership is acknowledged in that he is first to enter the tomb, but the passion of the beloved disciple and the tenacity of Mary are equally needed to find a way forward in this bewildering conundrum.  True faith and insight belongs to all.

But this action is quickly over - it is in the encounter with the risen Christ that John is seeking to draw our attention. And the clarity of the words of Jesus, ‘I am going to be with my Father, do not hold on to me, I have not yet ascended to be with my God and your God.’  The one whom the world lifted onto a cross is being lifted to the presence of God – the son returning to the Father.  This is the secret, the truth of the cross, told to Mary in that one sentence, the same message that Jesus told in a much fuller and longer version to the disciples in the upper room.  Whilst the reality of the resurrection is intrinsic in John’s Gospel account, what we do not have is such a focus on the risen Christ appearing to the disciples.  There is an urgency in this narrative, a focus instead what is to come, a handing over of the reins so to speak to those who are the church – Jesus is about to ascend to the Father, his job is done and it is now up to those who are left behind.  In the following half dozen verses, Jesus appears to the disciples, commissions them to go out into the world and breathes the Holy Spirit onto them – this is the new stage in God’s history with humanity – equipping the disciples with the Spirit and sending them out into the world.  It’s all about action, not verification.  Whilst we re-live the Easter story every year, we are not to stop at the miracle of the resurrection, whatever we might deem that to be, but are to go on beyond it to something much more significant.  Ultimately what matters is that Jesus, who came from the Father returned to the Father, and that in him we meet God who gifts us with light and life and truth through the community of faith.  By participating in that relationship, we are committed to and equipped for loving God and each other in a way that celebrates what the world ignores, loves where the world hates, acts when the world sleeps and seeks justice when the world turns a blind eye.  That is the bridge, the radical design that will connect the gulf between those who live in the Easter Jesus and those who look from the outside in some perplexity.

So what is our ideal media headline for Easter – I suggest it might be all about action – something like this:

Homeless offered a long-term place to stay and recover their sense of purpose.

Government forced to back-down on plans to increase poker machine numbers.

Church leads the way in dialogue with racially divided community

This is Jesus prayer for us, his people as we gather around his table, to re-member him and continue to live out his love in this world.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Rev Margaret Garland.