 Readings, Isaiah 56:1-8 and Matthew 15:10-28
Image, Michael Cook, “Crumbs of Love” There are a lot of overlapping themes and tensions across our last few readings from Matthew. Today, I want to lay them out to see how they might shape our approach to some of the prickly parts of today’s reading. But it is helpful to attend to our reading from Isaiah, which sets a helpful backdrop to all we are going to encounter. I’ve been teaching a class on the church at United Theological College this semester, and early on in the course we do a week on the doctrine of election. The aim of the course is to explore what makes the church the church, and that particular class introduces the idea that part of what makes the church the church is the action of God to choose and call a people to witness to the way of Christ. Of course, this idea of God’s electing activity is around long before the church. The story of Exodus is organised around the famous words I will be your God, and you will be my people. God chooses Israel and delivers them from Egypt, so they can witness to the reign of God in the world. Now, thinking about election leads to a number of tensions and issues – many more than we can do justice to today (I’m not sure I got through them all in a two-hour class), but one is the issue of universality vs particularity. Scripture attests that God is the God of all, the God of all the earth, the God of all creation, the Sovereign, Universal Singular. Yet, Scripture is also emphasising the particularity of God vis a vis Israel, or vis a vis Israel and the Church. Naturally, this can, and has, lead to superiority complexes of various kinds – with attendant justification of violence and dispossession not only in scripture but across history. Now, Scripture also has threads which undermine or trouble the particularity. God, for instance, makes a promise to Hagar to make a great nation from Ishmael (just as God had promised Abraham to make a great nation from Isaac). In the Book of Numbers, God speaks through the non-Israelite prophet Balaam. The Book of Ruth celebrates the determined faith of the foreigner, who becomes part of the Davidic line. And, in what we heard today, the prophet Isaiah reminds the people of the word of the Lord: the foreigner and the eunuch should not be kept separate, but those who love God and keeps the sabbath shall be brought to God’s holy mountain and made joyful in the house of prayer, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered. Of course, this passage alone does not solve the tension of universality and particularity – importantly, the vision in Isaiah is still that of a situation where those on the outside are brought in to a kind of stable centre. But it does critique the hardlines we might want to draw between who are or aren’t the chosen, who or who don’t warrant the care of God. God is the one who will gather those besides those already gathered, God’s house shall be a house of prayer for all people. There is an expansive trajectory we might say, that the particular is not the be all and end all, but rather it is through the particular calling of Israel and the Church that God will bring about the universal salvation of the world. The chosen elect are thus those who are called to witness to what, someday, many more will know. Which, in my mind, makes all the more strange and troubling the rebuke of Jesus to the Canaanite woman, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Is not the promised Messiah the one who will gather others? Who will bring about the messianic age where all shall come to the holy mountain and pay homage to God’s glory? Why is Jesus insisting on such strident particularity? Why is he so determined to cast those of Israel as children, and the Canaanites as dogs?
0 Comments
 Reading, Matthew 14:22-33
The moment that puzzles me most in this reading is Peter’s response to hearing Jesus identify himself as the figure approaching them across the water. Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. The more I think about it the stranger it feels that Peter chooses this command unprompted. To recap, the disciples are out on the boat near dawn, the winds are against them and they have spent hours being battered by the waves. A figure approaches them in the darkness, seemingly walking on the water… understandably they are terrified of this approaching ghost, perhaps come to bring them down to a watery grave. Hearing their fear the figure responds, Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid. Now what adds to my puzzlement, or exacerbates the strangeness of what Peter says next, is that it is unclear how sure the disciples are that it is Jesus. Perhaps in the crashing of waves and whooshing of wind it is hard to discern for certain the source of this voice? Perhaps the phantom is posing as a trusted voice so that they drop their guard? Perhaps it is Jesus and so their fears of immanent ghost attack are replaced by concern for what this storm will do to Jesus or their boat? The thing is, I’m not sure which of these scenarios best explains Peter’s request: Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.  Readings, Genesis 32:22-31 and Matthew 14:13-21
Image, Laura James, 5000 Fed (1999) There’s a kind of story I’m sure most of us a partial towards. It’s when you have experienced something go off without a hitch, only to find out later that a string of near disasters were only narrowly averted. It’s the invisibility of these hurdles that makes their belated revelation all the more thrilling. The revelation that the cake was nearly dropped en route to the table, that the actor was nowhere to be found moments before their cue, that the star athlete won gold with all kinds of hidden injuries, or, the soloist prepared for entirely the wrong concerto and only realised the moment the orchestra sounded the first chords. We then played this video of Maria Joao Piers having prepared for the wrong concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=300t2DS3VdQ It is often lauded as a sign of true grace under pressure when someone is still able to execute after everything has gone wrong without giving away that anything had gone wrong. Both of today’s readings share something of this quality. Both are famous scenes, where the central character performs something miraculous, which is made more incredible when we realise the wider context of pressure and hurdles they are facing. That is to say, the acts of the miraculous feeding and the wrestling with the angel are impressive enough on their own, but are even more so when we understand all that Jesus and Jacob are experiencing, before, beneath, and beyond these scenes.  Readings, Psalm 34 and Romans 6:1-11
Image, Cressida Campbell, Flannel Flowers (2013) Imagine with me, for a moment, that you’re on holiday in a new town. As you mosey about something strange catches your eye. A giant billboard celebrating shiny white teeth. Having seen this first sign, you can’t stop noticing all around the town other similar signs, posters, ads, and murals. Each of them a variation on a theme: healthy teeth, beautiful smiles, minty toothpaste, gentle brushing – kids and adults of all genders beaming bright white teeth and enthusiastically gripping or displaying a dazzling array of toothpastes and brushes. Having now become fixated with the sheer amount of these signs, their uncountable multitude spread in every nook and cranny across the town, you actually meet your first local. Naturally, only one thought occupies your mind: I’ve got to get a look at this person’s teeth. Now, here’s the question for all of us: what is the state of this person’s teeth? Because our first guess might be, well, clearly a town that so vigorously promotes healthy oral hygiene will be filled with people with pearly whites. But if that was the case, we might wonder, what’s the need for all these vigilant reminders? On second thought we might ask: do all these reminders, all these celebrations of toothbrushing actually reflect the fact that this whole town has, for generations, neglected their teeth? Is this whole town adverse to brushing, ignorant of gum health, and circular-motion brushing? Are these signs not a reflection of town values, but a desperate attempt to change the people’s habits? The psalms contain a lot of calls to praise, and more than a few appeals to rejoice. It was hard to get some exact figures, but I found one source which noted that the English word praise occurs 248 times in the King James Bible, and about 155 of those times across the book of Psalms. Rejoice (in its varying forms) occurs about 260 times across scripture. And so, the question might be posed: are all these references there because Christians are such joyful and grateful people, consistently rejoicing and praising God… or are they there because we perhaps ought to be… but are struggling to internalise the message?  Reading, Psalm 23 and John 10:1-18
Image, Good Shepherd Sculpture, 280-290CE Today’s gospel reading is out of sequence. Since Easter we’ve been enjoying the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus gathering up his wayward disciples, but now we jump back to well before his death. Why is that the case? Why have we been taken here? I think we can approach it like a flashback at the end of a movie. One of those brilliant moments, when at the crescendo of the film, with the camera swirling and the music welling, we revisit an earlier, seemingly small moment in the plot, which is suddenly imbued with vibrant significance. All of a sudden a passing comment, an innocuous act takes on a new and greater meaning. The moment is plucked out from its sequence, and shown again, now in new light and clarity, demonstrated to relate palpably and personally to this moment in our protagonist’s life. Such is the nature of a well-executed flashback, and such is the power of today’s reading in this season of the church. We’re going to attempt then, to enter such a scene, to feel such a flashback, to encounter anew this teaching of Jesus in the light of the resurrection… Picture, the scene: early morning, green fields, a woman approaches rocky tombs. Her feet were drenched from the dew. She had trod this path three times already this morning; once walking solemnly, twice running bewildered. Now, as she inhaled the morning air, its crisp freshness felt coarse in her throat and lungs. Bending to look in the tomb, reeling with exhaustion, she grabbed her knees for balance. She wept long and loud, sweat and tears ran down her face, drops painted the dirt below. “Woman, why are you weeping?” came a voice from a stranger in the tomb. Her mind filled with all manner of horrors – Had the tomb been ransacked for valuables? Had Roman soldiers come by night, still giddy from the rush of power, to further violate the body of their victim? In desperation she exclaimed, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him!’ At that moment, still not having comprehended these figures occupying her Lord’s resting place, she heard footsteps and turned. She saw a gardener, sun rising behind his right shoulder. “Woman, why are you weeping?” she heard him say. Perhaps he had said it the first time too? Maybe the tomb was empty after all… “Who are you looking for?” For a split second she had a glimmer of hope, perhaps Jesus’ body just had been laid elsewhere, she asks the gardener if he moved her Lord, if so she will tend to the body. It is such a small request, surely if this man has any heart he will grant her this mercy. “Mary.”  Reading, John 20:1-18
Image, Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), Mary Magdalene Stood Crying, 2021. First, a poem, from one of the great post-WWII Jewish poets, Anthony Hecht: It out-Herod’s Herod. Pray you, avoid it. Tonight my children hunch Toward their Western, and are glad As, with a Sunday punch, The Good casts out the Bad. And in their fairy tales The warty giant and witch Get sealed in doorless jails And the match-girl strikes it rich. I’ve made myself a drink. The giant and witch are set To bust out of the clink When my children have gone to bed. - All frequencies are loud With signals of despair; In flash and morse they crowd The rondure of the air. For the wicked have grown strong, Their numbers mock at death, Their cow brings forth its young, Their bull engendereth. Their very fund of strength, Satan, bestrides the globe; He stalks its breadth and length And finds out even Job. - Yet by quite other laws My children make their case; Half God, half Santa Claus, But with my voice and face, A hero comes to save The poorman, beggarman, thief, And make the world behave And put an end to grief. And that their sleep be sound I say this childermas Who could not, at one time, Have saved them from the gas. Hecht knew well the horrors of his century. He fought in WWII, was present at the liberation of Flossenbürg concentration camp, and was charged with interviewing its prisoners. He was well acquainted with the 20th century as Leonard Bernstein described it: a century of death. And yet, despite the gap in time, works such as Hecht’s resonate with us still, because judging from these last 26 years, the C21st seems so determined to share that mantle. This might appear a peculiar place to begin the Easter Sunday message. And yet, the Day of Resurrection, as the gospel passage makes clear, begins in darkness: Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Mary begins her day in the grip of death and grief, the shadow of loss and mortality, of finitude and failure.  Readings, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 and John 13:1-17, 31-35
Image, Christ on the Mount of Olives, Arent de Gelder (1715) We know from the synoptic gospels that Jesus and his disciples sing a psalm during this final Passover meal together. Perhaps, it could have been the one we heard tonight, which opens with: I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. Saint Augustine asked the immortal question: what do I love when I love my God? The response of these opening verses is: I love the one who heard me when I have called out in the past. And because of this, I will call on God as long as I live. If this was the psalm they sung, it certainly maps onto the experience of Jesus across his life. His life is marked by intimate communication with God his Father, whom he has called on across his ministry, receiving time and again what he needs to tend to his friends, serve the people, and reveal God’s glory. God has heard Jesus’ voice and supplication, God has inclined an ear to Jesus, and so knowing his hour is at hand, Jesus places his trust in God once more. As the trial awaits, Jesus affirms he shall die as he lived: calling on God.  Readings, Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 11:1-45
Image, The Raising of Lazarus, 1943, by Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) We have two incredibly famous passages today, both perfectly placed by the lectionary as the sun begins to set on Lent. Both point to what we are moving toward, what we will come to celebrate at Easter: the power of God over the forces of death. We have talked before that the gospels record much of Jesus’ ministry in a way that points to his power to cure and dispense with the forces of death. Across the gospel Jesus meets with, tends to, and heals those who have been made impure, all to foreshadow his crucifixion, where death will be taken up in Jesus’ own body, where death will seemingly overwhelm Jesus’ body, only for the resurrection to reveal Jesus’ ultimate triumph. The message of the Lazarus story, in such a sequence, is one of amplification. Jesus has healed those who are living but have the signs of death on their body (such as lepers), Jesus has healed those who have only recently died (such as the young woman), but now, Jesus heals Lazarus who has been dead for four days, whose very body stinks of death. And what’s more, Jesus heals him from a distance. The difficulty, as it were, of these conflicts with the forces of death have been increasing, amplifying the wonder of Jesus’ power, preparing the way for the greatest wonder of them all, which we will see with the Easter dawn. But we when we pause and pay attention to just how very dead Lazarus is, especially when we couple it with the Ezekiel reading, we can learn something more still.  Readings, Jeremiah 31:7-14 and Ephesians 1:3-14
Image, Lee Krasner (1908–1984) Through Blue, 1963 There are some pleasurable phrases out there you love to hear: “all inclusive,” “take your pick,” “I got both kinds,” “it’s all free!” Undoubtedly others come to mind. Characteristic of these is a freedom from imposition or limit, freedom from any concession or compromise, freedom from only if or only after. In hearing these phrases our decision is governed not by any consideration of external factors or tit-for-tat, but solely by the good pleasure of our will. Though it is not the good pleasure of our will that I want to focus on today. Instead, it is the good pleasure of God’s will that will occupy us, as we heard in today’s reading: God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Why does Christmas happen? Why is the Son sent? At a foundational level, the Christian confession is that all this happens… according to the good pleasure of God’s will.  Readings, Isaiah 63:7-9 and Hebrews 2:10-18
Image, Laura Lasworth, Lily Among the Thistles, 2001. Let's take a moment first up to reflect: What did Christmas mean to you this year? How did the story of the nativity speak to you? What does it feel like to hear God with us right now… where is that with for you? The Hebrews reading leads us into something of a part two to the sermon on Christmas Day. The writer seeks to stress the very humanness of Jesus. Christ, they insist (against those who found the idea of God taking on flesh absurd or abhorrent) shared the same flesh and blood as all of us. The Word of God really did take on flesh, really did unite humanity and divinity, creaturely life with the Creator. But, as we noted at Christmas, it is also emphasised that such things were done for us: so that he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. There is a theological tradition which holds that the fear of death is the root of all sin. We sin, in this account, because gripped by the fear of death we cannot find true peace or experience pure love, and this leads us into vice. We covet our neighbour’s property because we feel that one extra product, or one more room would fix the hole in our heart and keep thoughts of death at bay. We become greedy thinking we might live on through our wealth and influence. We hate our mother or father because gripped by our own mortality we wish to strike out beyond them seeking to taste a fuller life. We refuse justice and mercy to the poor and refugee because the fear of death makes life an economy of scarcity where what is provided to another must have been denied to us. We worship false idols because in the murky waters of fear we do not pay proper attention to what we are grabbing for relief. The fear of death wraps around us like chains, warping our experience of life, leading ourselves and others into suffering. Therefore Christ had to become like his siblings in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested. |
SermonsPlease enjoy a collection of sermons preached by Rev Liam at the Kirk. If you have questions about them, or attending a service reach out using the Contact Page. Categories
All
|
RSS Feed