Sermon Opoho Church Sunday 12 August, 2018 Pentecost 12

Readings:  Ephesians 4:25-5:2   John 6:35, 41-51

We 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

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their mind, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.  I believe that what self-centred [people] have torn down [people] other centred can build up.  I still believe that one day humankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and non-violent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every person shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.”  I still believe that We shall overcome….

Martin Luther King Jr, from his Nobel Peace Prize speech, 1964.  Four years later he was shot dead on the balcony of the motel he was staying in in Memphis, victim of the violence he preached against. And not much has changed – if anything violence has escalated, and you could argue has been increasingly justified in the highest places.

It does make you wonder if there is any hope!   Are we so inured to violence, so overwhelmed that we find it best to detach ourselves from concern for the state of the world and simply get on with our (relatively) peaceful lives?  It’s not that we don’t care of course – just that it is beyond our ken and so we lower our eyes to what we can do and be.  Yet there is inherent violence in our day-to-day lives too.  The story from the pool –two women talking about someone who had several times dissuaded others from swimming in ‘his’ lane, punching out and in-your-face abuse.  The story from the morgue where yet another baby has been unable to survive the beating, the slap or punch dished out by one of the family. The story of road rage, bar brawls, dairy robberies, angry words, bullying….

The story of the children – parents in the Philippines paid to rape their children by someone in Auckland who likes to watch that kind of thing, children sent to war, powerless children beaten and worked to the bone for profit.

The church is not immune – the threats and angry words and vile deeds done in the name of Jesus, of Muhammad, of Moses and Buddah are well documented and ongoing.

Where to then Martin Luther’s speech?  Where to Jesus words of love and compassion, the church’s teaching throughout history. Where to the scripture that tells us to: Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you (Ephesians 4: 31-32)
Those words from Ephesian challenge us both in our living as Christ followers and in our approach to the violence we see around us.  For we can honestly say that our hope for peace on this earth, goodwill to all, for peace insinuating itself into the fabric of the world in a meaningful and growing way – seems not to be gaining much traction despite our best efforts. 

As Christ followers our way is clear – peace, compassion, kindness, justice, forgiveness – all wrapped up in the unconditional love we both receive and give through God.  Examples given, rules taught, stories shared, life given so that we might truly understand what it means to live in the peace of Christ. 

At first glance the reading from Ephesians seems to set out for us a bunch of rules that we are to adhere to – this is what we are to do if we are to be faithful followers.  The writer of the epistle, however, is wanting to point out that just following rules is too simplistic, not sufficiently proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in our lives.  Its half hearted, open to slippage, to being highjacked by our own interpretations. We are told instead that it is not good enough just to be an observer, an adopter of a ‘how to’ but rather we are required to jump in boots and all, to be completely immersed in this new way of living because we have found the key (the key being Jesus)      that changes our behaviour from within, so that unwritten rules are intuitively understood and everything we do is ruled by love – always - because it is simply who or rather whose we are.

Paul and his contemporaries - and the church - understand this in the context of our baptism – that in committing our lives to Christ we are reborn, changed within so that these rules are not merit badges of Christianity, something we follow to become good Christians, but actually the outpourings of the presence of Jesus in our lives, ways of right living that we cannot help but be.  Those words that we sometimes express after communion – ‘take us out as changed people because we have shared the living bread and cannot remain the same.’

God in us, the living bread that nourishes every hunger and satisfies every thirst, gives us the capacity to turn our backs on the darkness and to focus on the light.  We no longer make our choices alone, we no longer work to our own wisdom but to God’s, we are held in the guidance and teaching of Jesus and the Spirit.  We do not need to have a rule book to know what is right and wrong – it is within us and we are to live it.   We need the teachings and the stories of Jesus to learn about and constantly remind us of our journey and we need the community of faith that we live in to give us strength to do what is set before us, to encourage and help each other when we are stumbling and to challenge us when we step off the path of peace and love.

And because we have that most precious and loving of relationships with God through prayer, through scripture, through the saints before and now present, we do not wish to do anything other than love, and grow in that love.  We do not wish to grieve God (although we do) and so we keep careful attention on our way of living, constantly re-orientating ourselves to the way of light and love.

In our living as Christ followers we are bound to live in this way of peace and love – in our personal lives and in our church community.  And it is hard at times.  We know we get it wrong, anger winning out over hard truth, comfort over justice, apathy over compelling need.  And we certainly know too many stories within the Christian church where rules have been twisted to enable and promote greed, exclusion, violence, hatred. And lets not just point to examples far away - here too in Aotearoa we know many examples where faith based loving kindness is both conditional and selective. 

But even where we get it right in our living as Christ followers, it is not all that Jesus calls us to – that is a puny vision, a severely limited understanding of God’s hope and love for the world. We are to be the voice and the example of peace in the world –active in speaking out and challenging the behaviours that promote violence and war, that give permission for anger and hatred and prejudice to be not just expressed but also encouraged.  And if we just keep our eyes on New Zealand – how are we handling TV shows that make fun of failure, suggest naked body viewing is a good basis for beginning relationship, cope with ads that encourage borrowing money for your slightest whim.  How about our poverty, our growing prison numbers, our market driven economy, our homeless…..  Oh yes there is much to speak into and work for here at home, here in our city, here in our local community. 

And just in case we are still uncertain of the power of God in we who have been made new in Christ – the power to transform, to make a difference to the violence and hatred that permeates this world and our communities, then I would finish with a story that explains to us how the smallest act of kindness can make a spectacular difference to our broken world – let this sit with you for a while if you can.

Called ‘The Heaviest Snowflake’ a fable from the pen of Kurt Kauter: New Fables – Thus Spoke The Carabou

 “Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.  “Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer. “In that case, I must tell you a marvellous story,” the coal-mouse said.

“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow-not heavily, not in a raging blizzard-no, just like a dream, without a sound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say-the branch broke off.”  Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away. The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”

Amen.  Thanks be to God.

Margaret Garland