Readings, 2 Timothy 2:8-15 and Luke 17:11-19
Image, René Magritte, La reproduction interdite, oil on canvas, 1937. 
 
You may have heard it said: we are mysteries to ourselves. That is to say, just as we cannot know everything about another person, that other people are not transparent to us (we cannot stop them in time, lift them up and observe them from all angles inside and out) we are also not transparent to ourselves. We are somewhat inscrutable even to ourselves. We act in ways that surprise us, we feel in ways we cannot properly put into words, our desires shoot out in baffling directions, we cannot always predict our reactions, we – as Saint Paul so immortally described – do not always do the things we love, but the very thing that we hate. “Know thyself” the old adage goes… “not so easily done” we might respond.
 
I’ve been reading some Saint Augustine for my studies. Augustine, the fourth century African theologian and Bishop of Hippo, is perhaps known most for his Confessions. Among its themes, Augustine suggests that to work out who I am, I need to be speaking and listening to God. Augustine shares the sense that the self is not-transparent, not able to be examined or narrated with any finality as even the appeal to our own memory is a shaky rather than stable exercise. But this recognition does not render impossible the understanding of a sense of self, instead, “once we have recognised how obscure we are to ourselves we somehow see that only in relation to the infinity of God can we get any purchase of the sort of beings we are.” (Rowan Williams, On Augustine, p. 4)
 
That is to say, we need to present ourselves before God in order to get a handle on who we are. To begin the task of self-discovery we do what is instructed in the second letter to Timothy: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel. It is Christ, after all, who is faithful when we are faithless, because while we might not know ourselves, Christ cannot deny himself. Such is the surety of Christ’s self, that even when we waiver and are faithless, Christ can only be who he is: with pure steadfast consistency, and Christ is the faithful one of God, the saviour of the world, in whom we live.
 
Today’s gospel reading helps illustrate these points. Jesus, travelling toward Jerusalem, encounters a group of lepers. What follows -up to the point of their departure - is entirely in keeping with the religious customs of the Judaism of Jesus’ day. It is what happens next that is surprising:
 
As they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
 
We note that the lepers were not made clean in Jesus’ presence, but, somewhat mysteriously, while they were on their way to present themselves to the priest. The Samaritan saw the change and turned back praising God and giving thanks to Christ. I have some questions: do you think he is the only one to turn back because he is the only one who thinks to thank Jesus, or because he is the only one to notice being made clean? Does he turn back because, as a foreigner, he is not expecting a warm welcome from the priest? What do we make of the fact that the one who turns back and receives commendation from Jesus, is the only one who disobeys his direct command? And, finally, what does it mean for Jesus to say to him that his faith has made him well, when he – like the others – were already made clean before and despite their decision to return and honour Jesus?
 
Perhaps the nine who pressed on did not notice they had been made well. Perhaps so accustomed to their affliction and its resulting isolation they struggled to see themselves anew, struggled to notice that new life could break in through old wounds. Soon enough they would arrive before the priest and their change would be revealed, but it can be hard to recognise changes in ourselves. If we take this as possible, then perhaps the reason the Samaritan is able to notice that he has been made clean, is the same reason he turns back to Jesus, and the same reason his faith has made him well… it is that he has gained purchase on who he is because he recognises that he came face to face with the infinity of God. With this newly established point on his compass the Samaritan can recognise both that he has been made clean and who he owes this blessing, and in so doing a new faith has been awakened in him. This faith is not what makes him clean, but it is what makes him well, in that it gives him a clearer more dazzling picture of himself, because he has a clearer more dazzling picture of what God is doing through Jesus Christ. 
 
How might we come to do the same? Present ourselves before Jesus Christ, and relate ourselves and our quest for self-understanding to him? It is significant to the story that the one who turns back is the Samaritan, a foreigner. This continues a theme developing in the gospel of the surprising capacity of outsiders to recognise the significance of Jesus – a recognition that is often set in contrast of the inability of Jesus’ own people to recognise him as their messiah. And what this theme, and particularly this instance, reveals for us is that proximity, familiarity, and a sense of privilege obscure us from recognising our need for Jesus, and in turn, obscure our understanding of ourself.
 
That is to say that part of why the Samaritan recognises what has happened is because of his outsider status. Because of the animosity he has faced, because the usual sites set apart for the encounter of God and God’s people have been closed or hostile, he is open to seeing a new thing, open to having his religious life reoriented, open to recognise the inbreaking of something new. The lesson for us is that proximity and familiarity can muffle the sense of unrecognisability of the self. A life lived on the inside, comfortable in our religious status, can in turn settle the sense of ourselves. We can come to believe that who we are can be known and defined perhaps through a label, or an association, or by reference to our own character, beliefs, actions. The fallout of such a settled sense of the self, of settling on a view of ourself as good, or elect, or churchly, is that we can neglect the need to continually orient the self in relation to Christ. Because this orienting act is never complete, it is ever occurring in the act of repentance, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. Ever occurring in the act of presenting ourselves before Jesus Christ as one approved by him.
 
Recognising the finiteness and incompleteness of any label, or any self-attained sense of self, and in resolving to gain a sense of purchase of ourselves in relation to the infinity of God, keeps us open to the peculiar movement of the Holy Spirit which can disrupt the familiar and allow us to see in the strange and the new the workings of God. Our worship seeks this kind of ever occurring reorientation of the self to Christ. We disrupt our sense that we can know and control the full motivation and effects of our works in the act of confession. We disrupt the sense that we have no more good news to hear through the act of the proclamation of the Word. We disrupt the sense of ownership and obligation through the act of offering. We disrupt the sense of our self-sufficiency through coming to be fed at Christ’s table. We disrupt the sense of our limits through the act of sending. And across the week in our response to the call to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God in our service to and solidarity with our neighbour we disrupt any sense of self that is not interdependent with creation and dependent on God.
 
In baptism we confess our identity is known only in Christ: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. And so let us commit together, to the collective work of continual reorientation of who we are in relation to the heart of our faith: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel.

Readings, 1 Timothy 6:6-19 and Luke 16:19-31
 Image, The Rich Man and Lazarus, David Wojkowicz
 
We likely know Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, or at least a filmed adaptation (with or without muppets). Wealthy, miserly old Scrooge is visited by three ghosts – of Christmas past, present, and future – and told to change his ways or be forever cursed. Scrooge is confronted by the harm of his greed, the pain caused by his profit-seeking and closed heart. At first, Scrooge resists the lessons, until seeing that his own future death will be met with no tenderness or grief (but relief and giddiness) and pledges to change his ways (and in so doing seek to prevent the death of poor Tiny Tim).
 
What I’ve left out of this little summary is an important visitation that occurs before the ghosts. Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner, equal in his greed and miserliness, appears before Scrooge, weighed down by chains and money boxes. Marley has been cursed to wander the earth so encumbered, and warns Scrooge that the same fate awaits him should he refuse to change his ways.
 
When considering this tale next to today’s parable, Dickens seems more generous than Jesus. For if we consider the rich man to be Jacob Marely, begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus to the house of his brothers to warn them of the awaiting agony, Abraham refuses this request. No further warnings, They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them. No, father Abraham; The rich man persists, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But there shall be no Marley, there shall be no ghosts: If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
 
Perhaps Jesus’ lesson is that so tightly does greed and wealth close the heart to one’s neighbour that in reality, Scrooge would be unmoved even after his Christmas visitations. Perhaps thinking of the story of Moses, Jesus reflects on the closed heart of Pharoah, whose heart remains shut even to the most remarkable of signs; unable to release the slaves even when it would prevent him from agony.
 
Indeed, it appears that the rich man’s heart remains closed to his neighbour even in agony. For while he demonstrates concern for his brothers, this doesn’t mean much (as Jesus says elsewhere, anyone can do that). For the rich man, in the language of 1 Timothy, has wandered so far away from the faith, has, in his desire for wealth, become so trapped by senseless and harmful desires, that even in agony, even looking up to the unreachable heavens, his selfishness is untamed. For both of his pleas to Father Abraham are accompanied by demands of Lazarus – and not only demands, but indirect demands – he never addresses Lazarus directly. He speaks to Abraham, but about Lazarus, a sign that in death, as in life, the fullness of Lazarus life goes unrecognised. The chasm that exists between the rich man and Lazarus goes back a long way.
 
Indeed, as the writer of 1 Timothy makes clear, the chasm created by the love of money estranges us in three directions. It creates a chasm between the individual and their neighbour, between the individual and God, and between the individual and their own life. Those who want to be rich, declares the writer of 1 Timothy, fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
 
As we heard Jesus say last week, we cannot serve God and money, because the love of money opens a chasm between us and God; it makes God’s wisdom and commandments a thing to be despised. This chasm in turn opens another between us and our neighbour. And in becoming estranged from God and neighbour, a further chasm will eventually open within ourselves. Our desires, our self-understanding become gnarled, twisted, and perverted around the insatiable want for riches, plunging us into ruin. For this is what has befallen the rich man of the parable: in failing to attend to the teachings of Moses and the prophets, he has become estranged from God. Failing to see Lazarus (in life and death) as a full human deserving of dignity and care, he has become estranged from his neighbour. And unable to understand his life in relation to God and neighbour, to see the chasms which had opened around him, he has become estranged from himself.
 
In contrast to this this life of estrangement and chasms, is what the reading in 1 Timothy describes as the life that truly is life. One of my absolute favourite phrases in Scripture. This phrase concludes the instructions to those rich in this life, who are told not to trust wealth, but be rich in good works, generous, sharing what they have – in such they make a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
 
For the life that truly is life is one lived like the swallow finding a home at the altar of God. It is a life in harmonious relations with God, neighbour, and self.
 
It is a life lived in communion with God, marked by a grace-filled the enjoyment of God, the love of God’s wisdom, and an earnest attempt to live God’s way. It is a life lived in openness to our neighbour, an openness marked by a willingness to give and receive, to learn and to grow, to serve and be served in pursuit of flourishing, justice, and dignity. And it is a life lived in a rightly ordered understanding of the self – where the self is not defined by what we can claim ownership of, by numbers and acquisition, by grind and reach, but the self defined through relationships (dependence on God and interdependence with creation). This is what marks the life that truly is life, the life we learn from Moses, the Prophets, and the one who rose from the dead – the blessed and only sovereign. For after all, Jesus was more generous than Dickens, becoming himself the one risen from the dead not only to proclaim both the call to change our ways but also to make this possible through the news of his completed work, the sending of the Spirit, and the gift of the Church.
​
The challenge for us then, as a people, is not to require ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future, not to need someone sent back from the dead with ill-tidings and skeletal warnings, to alert us to the widening of chasms separating us from God, neighbour, and self. Because instead of ghosts sent on the precipice of disaster, we have the completed work of Christ, the gifts of the Spirit, and the daily fellowship of the saints. We have one another to encourage, correct, and walk with down the path Jesus has opened. We, who are sent by Christ to the world, are also bound by Christ to one another. In the counsel of the Spirit, we take up the responsibility of siblings to remind each other to remain open to the words of Scripture and the presence of our neighbour. We have each other (as well as the tireless example of Saints long passed) to build bridges over chasms and to seek together, day by day in the land of the living, the life that truly is life. The life which knows a day in the house of the Lord is better than a thousand elsewhere. Like the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple standing at the foot of the cross, we have been given by Jesus to one another to be and become a people who assist one another to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. [Who] Fight the good fight of the faith; [and] take hold of the eternal life. The life that truly is life.

Readings, Hosea 11:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21
Image, Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child (1880)
 
You might be familiar with the phrase “Chekhov’s gun.” It comes from the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who remarked – more or less – that if there’s a gun on the wall in the first act, it better be fired in the fifth. You’ll have encountered this in storytelling before, just recall any broad comedy that spends a lot of time early in the show drawing attention to grandma’s antique vase, you know that is coming crashing down later in the story. What you set up, needs to be paid off. So, what has been getting set up in Hosea?
 
Across the preceding chapters of Hosea, the wrath of God has been building toward Israel. God and prophet lay the charges of injustice and idolatry:
You have ploughed wickedness,
   you have reaped injustice,
   you have eaten the fruit of lies.
 
Their heart is false;
   now they must bear their guilt.
The Lord will break down their altars,
   and destroy their pillars.
 
The days of punishment have come
 
The promised judgment shall be swift and the punishment severe:
 
Even if they bring up children,
   I will bereave them until no one is left.
Woe to them indeed
   when I depart from them!
 
As Hosea declares, the very basis of the identity of the people as God’s people, recipients of the covenant and its promises, all this shall be snatched away:
Because they have not listened to him,
   my God will reject them;
   they shall become wanderers among the nations.
 
The verdict has been pronounced, the sentence prepared… and then, at the eleventh hour, in the eleventh chapter, there is a shift in tone.
 
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
Out of Egypt I called my son.
 
In this sequence, God describes Their relationship with the people of Israel as that of a mother to her infant child. It was I, God declares, who taught you to walk, I who lifted you from the ground so you could nurse, I who led you with bands of love.
 
In the first instance this seems only to heighten the betrayal. Israel’s idolatry is akin to the rejection of one’s own mother, who has done nothing but protect, love, and provide. But the image also signifies a shift – not in what Israel is done, but in what God is going to do:
 
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
   How can I hand you over, O Israel?
My heart recoils within me;
   my compassion grows warm and tender.
 
Here, contradicting Hosea’s earlier warning that God shall reject them, God asks, How can I give you up? It is the kind of question we may have asked ourselves, when despite all the rational reasons one might have to let go, or part, or reject, we realise that the heart is not so easily convinced, its desires not so quickly quenched, its ties not so swiftly sundered. As we read in our book club novel just this last week, “human relationships are not social services, and love has nothing to do with deserving.” How can I give you up, How can I hand you over. God’s own heart recoils within, and God’s compassion grows warm and tender, and the prophesied wrath will not come to pass.
 
There is a long abiding tension in the Christian tradition over the impassibility of God. That is to say, that for some part and parcel of what it means to confess God’s perfection is to confess that God never changes. To change, the argument goes, implies a shift from perhaps less perfect to more perfect. The argument also goes that a changeable God is not as reliable an object of our trust and devotion, compared to an impassable and unchangeable God who cannot be swayed or moved. But at the same time, the Biblical account, particularly through the Old Testament, is filled with stories of God changing God’s mind, of God relenting from a plan of destruction, of God been swayed by the appeal of a prophet.
 
What’s interesting to observe in this reading, is God’s own reasoning for the shift, God’s own rationale for the decision not to execute God’s fierce anger:
For I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
 
It is human, it seems, to be able to forget the former love, human to resist the recoiling of the heart, human to be able to cool compassion and remain firm against its tender pull. It is human to be able to look upon a betrayer and reject, renounce, and depart… human, we might say, to be in a sense impassable in the face of deserved judgment and irrevocable breach. And we need to be able to be human, to sometimes be impassable to the appeals of those once dear to us who have hurt us, we need to be able to do this for our safety, health, and flourishing… but God is God and no mortal, and God doesn’t need to do anything. God is free to recoil, to respond to the tugs of compassion, to remember the days bending down to nurse those now bent on turning away. God is God and no mortal, and it is precisely as God, as the Holy One in [our] midst, that God does not come in wrath but is led by bands of love. It is not the promised judgment, nor the power to bring devastation and desolation, that the Divine Nature is revealed. Rather it is the compassion induced decision to not come in wrath that reveals what it means to be God in distinction to a mortal.
 
If God is impassable, perhaps it is that our human proclivity to sin and idolatry is not powerful enough to pass by, to overcome, or render null and void God’s earlier decision to be for us and for our freedom. If we go back to Chekhov, the gun of God’s judgment might have been on the wall in act one, but there is something deeper, and older of God’s nature which is the foundation of the whole set. God’s prior decision to be for us, holds up the entire edifice, and it is this, which is paid off in Chapter 11. For God is the one who called Israel out of Egypt, determined to be their God and have them be God’s people. Just as God is the one who in Jesus Christ chose us before the foundation of the world. This eternal decision of election, of covenantal love, of redemptive presence, is impassable. It cannot be altered by our misdeeds, forgetfulness, sin or tomfoolery. For God’s own heart recoils in the face of wrath, God’s compassion wells on the threshold of departure. Gods divine nature determines God’s divine activity and so God does not come in wrath but roars like a lion to call God’s children back to their proper home. God has chosen to be for us, often despite us doing anything to warrant such tenderness and compassion, but this is why it’s grace.
 
And this is also why we can do wild and crazy things like resist the urge to build up our storehouses and stockpile our wealth. This is why we can attempt to live into the topsy-turvy economics of the kingdom of God, which resists taking refuge in wealth and hoarding what we do not need so that there might be none with need in our midst. Someone in the crowd asks Jesus to arbitrate over their inheritance squabble, but Jesus is God, not a mortal, and has come in our midst for something far better than that. Jesus has come to share the riches of God so that we might be able to be rich toward God. Jesus has been sent into the world, not to condemn the world, but to show once more the world shall be saved through him. It is in being reminded of the nature of our God, compassionate and tender, steadfast in love and faithfulness, that we are strengthened and sustained to live a life which does not consist in the abundance of possessions, but learns to walk with God, led by bands of love and nursed at the table of grace.       

Readings, Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37
Image, Emma Amos, Untitled (1962)
 
Let’s ask one of those classic questions we ask when reading the Bible: where, or who, do you think you are in the story? There are seven people: the teacher of the law, Jesus, the injured man, his attackers, priest, Levite, and Samaritan (and perhaps a donkey if you're so inclined). To whom do you relate?
 
In many ways we have been taught to place ourselves in the role of the Samaritan – or at least to see our role as aspiring to be like the Samaritan. An understandable tendency since, Jesus ends the parable with the command: go and do likewise. At the heart of discipleship is the love of neighbour, as so, we as disciples, are called to be like the Samaritan: hearts welling with compassion, devoting our time and material goods to alleviate the suffering of others even if they are very different to ourselves and have no way of repaying our kindness.
 
This is a good goal to fix before us. However, we can run into trouble if we fix ourself in that role, if we, like the classic Actor-Director of the local theatre company, continue to cast ourselves as the heroic lead and never the one in need of help (let alone as a villain).
 
Because who we relate to in the story is not fixed. At different points in our life, we might relate to most, if not all, of these players. Like the man attacked, we have probably all been someone who needed a neighbour, needed care and support in a difficult time and perhaps found it performed by an unexpected person. Likely, we have all had a moment like the teacher of the law where we have wondered how far our responsibility for care extends, who exactly we need to prioritise as an object of our love. Perhaps you have found yourself in the position of Jesus, helping to teach someone the importance of treating others as we’d like to be treated, challenging parochial approaches to charity and justice. If we are honest, I’m sure we can all name times where, like the Levite or the Priest, we have averted our eyes, quickened our step, or rationalised our decision to not stop and help. And if we are really honest, we may look back at moments in our lives where we have knowingly caused harm, where we have taken unjustly, where we have been cruel.
 
And if it can be true for us that we move between the various stars in the constellation of this story, then it can be true for everyone. That is to say, the story is a moving map of the world, as who among us does not, at some time, need a neighbour, be a neighbour, ignore a neighbour, create a problem for a neighbour, or discuss the ethics of neighbourliness. And the reason I am emphasising that it is not only us who move across the spectrum of roles in this story, is because it is the very act of fixing people in a role, in associating a person or community with a single role, while keeping ourselves centred as the Samaritan, that makes the very command of the story, go and do likewise, impossible.
 
A couple of weeks ago, Sureka Gorringe was here from UnitingWorld. She made the observation that mission and Christian aid has often been imagined in this kind of fixed relation. We are the Samaritan who show up to help our overseas neighbour who is in need. We don’t hear from them; we just decide on the path of care and move on. And while much of this was performed with compassion, and much of this addressed urgent needs, it does not, Sureka taught us, reflect the proper nature of the church. It ignores that the image of the body is one of interdependence – where there are no lesser members who can be ignored or cut off. Indeed, the church is made the body of Christ in the mutual giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts – no one is only given gifts to give, we are also to receive from one another. Too rarely, Sureka noted, has the Western church seen itself as the one requiring compassion and care from those typically cast as disadvantaged or needy.
 
Naomi Wolfe, a trawloolway woman, historian and theologian has made a similar point when considering her experience with this story in churches. She’s written* about the perpetual casting of Indigenous people as the voiceless victim in need of a good white neighbour. But this ignores the wisdom, testimony, and witness of Indigenous siblings in Christ – just as it ignores that in matters of justice in this land, the mainline church has played, at varied points, the role of bandit, Levite, Priest, and teacher of the law wondering who really counts as neighbour.
 
Assuming the fixity of our role as Samaritan, as the benevolent extender of compassion and justice, of the neighbour with rather than without, also risks closing ourselves off to the word of truth which brings repentance and freedom. Amos goes to the heart of his nation with the word of God’s judgment. But the Priest of Bethel says to the King of Israel:
Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.
 
The word of God, given to the prophet, is unseemly to the priest and the king. It is not a prophetic warning but conspiratorial threat, it is not righteous judgment but words which taint the land and tarnish the nation. The prophet’s words are deemed to spit on the image of the people as the people of God, on the status of the city as sanctuary of the king, the temple as temple of the kingdom. So fixed is the view of the priest, king, and nation that they are the centre of God’s story, the agents of God’s agenda, that the words of the prophet, the words of truth, the words of warning, can only be received as a threat and their teller must be expunged: O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there.
 
We might hear echoes of these words in many times and places, where those who raise a word of critique against their society or nation are met with the rebuff, well if you don’t like it, leave. We might hear echoes of these words across the eons of the church where the call to reform has led to excommunication and persecution. We might hear echoes in these words in families and communities who claim calls to redress the past as conspiracies against the foundations of the house. We might hear echoes in the defensiveness of friends and loved ones who were unable to bear warnings about the perils of their chosen path.
 
And time and again these rejections, rebuffs, silencing, and accusations are the result of a fixed conception of the self (or the institution, community, nation) as the good guy. As one whose only role is Samaritan (or aspiring Samaritan). But the only one who is ever only in that role, the only one without need, the only one without error, the only one possessing only gifts to bestow is God. The church is foremost the church in repentance, in a posture of humility and confession, understanding that we have not always got it right, that we do need correction, that we do need, perpetually, to turn once more to follow Christ.
 
Because to follow Jesus’ command to go and do likewise, to inherit eternal life, to love our neighbour as ourself requires us to be more than just the Samaritan, it asks more of us than solely compassion and charity. To love our neighbour, to be part of the kingdom we need to allow ourselves to be loved, allow ourselves to receive help, allow ourselves to be shaped through relationship.
 
To repent and seek the kingdom means we have to be open to the truth, open to the word of the prophets, open to the judgment of God, and to do this we have to be able to consider the various roles we embody, and the various roles our church has played. We need to recognise the times we have been a neighbour, but also when we have needed, ignored, or mistreated a neighbour. We must resist the lure to justify ourselves, to consider our obligation to the law fulfilled and recognise that we – like everyone else – are never one thing to each other, even though we are always, and perpetually one thing before God: one who has been rescued by God from the power of sin and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
 
When we know ourselves first as the one rescued and in perpetual need of rescuing, we are freed to see the fluidity of our movement across the spectrum of this story, to receive the prophetic words of repent and repair, and to know that even if we have not always been a neighbour, the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit make it possible for us to change our role in the story.  

--
* Naomi Wolfe, "Reading the Bible in Australia: A Place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples," in Reading the Bible in Australia, Edited by Deborah R. Storie, Barbara Deutschmann and Michelle Eastwood (Wipf & Stock, 2024), pp. 30-31.

Readings, Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8
Image, Segment from The Holy Family with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1618)

What does it mean to believe in a Triune God? To confess the Holy Trinity? To live as though our God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? There are, of course, conceptual answers (more often than not teaching us what not to say: the Son is not created, the Father is not above the Son, etc), and they are important. A proper understanding of who Jesus is, or why the Spirit is sent at Pentecost requires the full picture of God as Triune.
 
However, while worthy of a sermon, this is not how I want to approach the question “what does it mean to believe in a Triune God” today. Instead, the sermon is: we glorify, recognise, and confess the reality of the Triune God in treating human beings as crowned by God with glory and honour, treating each person as one who the wisdom of God delights.
 
I’ve been reading a book on the Soviet dissident movement, called To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (which would have been my toast to myself had I come out to preach on the conceptual answers to the question of the Trinity). The book centres the simple though radical choice these dissidents made: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.
 
This serves as a guide for our own lives as subjects of the Triune God, citizens of the kingdom of heaven, living amidst worldly fracture, failure, and folly. That in a world of prejudice and discrimination, of abuse and neglect, of violence and war, of tyranny and despotism, of callousness and cruelty, we live as those who believe God cares for the human person. To confess the reality of the Triune God is to live in God’s reality. And in God’s reality, God is mindful of and cares for the mortal, has crowned the human with glory and honour. To glorify the Triune God is to defy the worldly appearance of things and live as if each person has really, truly been made little lower than a God.
 
To live “as is,” is not to live in blinkered delusion, but to awaken to incongruity. It is to wake and see where in the world people are treated as if they bear no crown, no divine image, no holy delight. The most recent Peninsula Living was delivered which detailed the rising scourge of elder abuse across the Northern Beaches (and across the wider State). Stories such as this create a clash between the world as it is and the world as it should be, a clash between how the vulnerable are too often treated in the world, and how they are viewed by God. And this clash acts as a spark, it ignites us to act, advocate, organise and pray so that the as it should be gains ground in the world. 
 
On the global scale, we see the humanitarian crisis spiralling out of control in Gaza. The blocking and destruction of international aid by Israel, their strategies of starvation and deprivation added onto direct military strikes, are enabled and empowered by their own (and much of the wider world’s) decision to classify a population not as little lower than a God, but far lower than human dignity, rights, and compassion. The cataclysmic death toll is enabled and empowered by the ability to look at some people not as crowned with glory and honour, not as a site where Divine Wisdom delights, but as an inhuman problem to be extinguished or expelled. Again these heart wrenching stories spark a clash within us, they create an undeniable incongruity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, about the human as seen through a sinful, worldly vision, and as they are seen by God.     
 
More intimately, we might connect this to last week’s message about the Spirit bearing witness with our own that we are children of God. God has crowned us with glory and honour, making us little lower than a God, and this creates a clash of incongruity with our own negative self-talk, which would seek to place us several rungs lower on that ladder.
 
We believe in the Triune God by not settling for the vision of the world as it is. We believe by  rebelling against the worldly categorisation and treatment of our fellow human beings as anything lower than what God has determined us to be. Because as the reading from Proverbs stresses, it is this relationship to the human that defines the nature of our God.
 
In language reminiscent of the prologue of John, the figure of Wisdom is described as being set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. Narrating God’s ordering of the primordial creation, Wisdom declares Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. It is writings such as these that resourced the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early church. But again, the emphasis today is not on the conceptual articulation of the Trinity. Rather, we find the emphasis in the following verse when Wisdom declares, and my delights were with the sons of men. Wisdom, who was with God when there were no depths, finds delight with the sons of men. Like the opening of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and lived among us.
 
There is always a directionality, or focal point, for the figure of Wisdom or Word: to be among us, to be for us, to live and delight with us. While it is established that these figures are with God from the beginning, pivotal in the act of creation, the emphasis is not on their relation in an idealised pre-human eternity. Rather the emphasis is the movement toward the human, the decision to be with and for us. The emphasis is that God, who established the clouds above, the mountains below, and the limits of the seas; God for whom the moon and the stars are the works of Their fingers; should be mindful of human beings, that God should care for mortals, and make them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. Who God is, from the beginning is the one who is turned toward the human. God is only and always a God for us. A God who has elected in freedom to be our creator, redeemer, and sustainer. Who is the Triune God? The one who crowned us with honour and glory. 
 
As Julian of Norwich wrote, I saw that God never began to love mankind; for just as mankind will be in endless bliss, fulfilling God’s joy with regard to his works, just so has that same mankind been known and loved in God’s prescience from without beginning in his righteous intent… For before he made us, he loved us. (Showings)
 
What does it mean to recognise this Triune God and live faithfully in this reality? It is to recognise ourselves and our fellow human creatures as those God is mindful of, and in turn be mindful of them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as cared for by God, and in turn care for them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as crowned by God and in turn treat each other as crowned. It is to live as dissidents to the world of sin and death, to the world as it is, and instead to live as free citizens of the kingdom of God; world as it should be. We live as those who see and consider neighbours and strangers with the dignity, respect, and love that befits God’s own care. We live as those who are troubled by the incongruity between the all-too-common worldly denigration of the human creature and seek to rectify this out of a robust vision of God’s as it should be. In doing so we believe in the Triune God as the one who in absolute freedom, and from without beginning answered the question of divine identity simply in being mindful of us, and in being mindful, loving us.

Readings, Rev 21:22-22:5, Acts 16:9-15, and John 14:23-29
Image,  Lydia, Silvia Dimitrova (2009)

Over the last few years I have been reading, in fits and bursts, the Les Rougon-Macquart series of novels by French author, Émile Zola. Zola’s novels are set in France’s Second Republic and capture the way cataclysm, societal upheaval, and cultural and economic change can afford people a chance to make themselves anew. The limits of just how daring this new can be, and the various misfortunes that befall both protagonist and their relations in its pursuit are all part of the novels’ enthralling world. What Zola captured of course, is not a novel invention. Shifts and movements in society can create cracks in former impenetrable walls allowing individuals to forge a new path, change their fortunes, re-write their stars. And usually, the bigger the upheaval, the greater the potential for ascent, which provokes the question about what the upheaval Christ’s resurrection makes possible, when the reality of new creation breaks forth in the subjects of his kingdom?
 
We are going to consider this question through the figure of Lydia. In a manner similar to Tabitha some weeks back, the textual details for Lydia are scant, but dense. Some of what we have retains a level of speculation based on historical research, other aspects are gleaned from a close reading of Luke’s account in conversation with Paul’s letters.
 
We can begin with her name, which may not really be a name, at least not in the sense we are familiar. Lydia (the woman) was from Thyatira, which was a city in a place called Lydia. To be named after a place was a practice often associated with slaves – who may be named this way not out of affection, but utility. It is a way of dehumanising and enforcing, at the base layer of identity, a gap in status and worth. There’s a similar occurrence in the Old Testament, with Hagar. Hagar, Sarah and Abraham’s slave, though from Egypt, is not an Egyptian name, but is the Hebrew for “foreigner,” “alien” or “sojourner.” She, like Lydia, is named in a way to distinguish difference and disregard, place rather than personhood.
 
And yet, if this is the case, by the time we reach the scene by the river, Lydia’s fortunes have turned around. We are introduced to Lydia as a dealer in purple cloth. Purple, we might know from our Advent godly play stories is a royal colour. It was a difficult dye to source and produce, making it exclusive. And, like most things that are exclusive, it was expensive. Lydia it thus appears, was a woman of some wealth. This fact is further emphasised by her ability to host Paul and his travelling companions at her house (alongside her normal household). Implying that not only her pantry but her house was large enough to accommodate them (and not only them, it turns out, because later in this chapter we will read that the emerging church in Philippi was meeting in her home).
 
But her fortunes have turned in another way. Whether or not she was at one point enslaved, she would of, at one point, been under the authority of father or husband. And yet, in this story there is no mention of such a figure. Lydia doesn’t check with anyone before inviting Paul to stay in her house, and the detail that it was her household that was baptised further emphasises her autonomy and authority in her home and business.
 
But there are further remarkable details in the character of Lydia. I mentioned before that she is described in the story as a worshipper of God (or God fearer in some texts). This is a term for a Gentile who worships YHWH, adhering to Judaism without being a full convert. This too I take as a sign of boldness, of Lydia’s capacity to strike out: to be drawn to and compelled by a religion, a people, a story other than her own and devote herself to it.
 
Perhaps part of her remaking came from having the Torah opened to her. To hear, as perhaps a former slave, named for a place, this holy text proclaim that we are all made in the image of God, that God freed the slaves in Egypt, that God is the protector of the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner, that God knows not only our name but the hairs of our head.
 
Or perhaps it was the story of Hagar that she found not only herself but her potential. Perhaps it was in hearing God meet Hagar in the wilderness and make a new life for her and her child in freedom that Lydia drew strength to transform her outer circumstances and inner sense of worth and capacity. Perhaps when she heard Hagar name God, The One Who Sees, she knew that here, with these people, in this story, she too was seen at last.
 
And then, here at the river, listening to Paul extol the gospel, the Lord opened her heart. Like the disciples walking to Emmaus, like the Ethiopian in the chariot, her heart is opened to see Jesus as the fulfilment and continuation of the story of God which has already renewed her life. In so doing, she is able to remake, or refashion, her life once more. She takes another risk (at this point she has perhaps made a habit of it), she invites Paul and his companions to stay, she listens to them, discusses with them, learns with them, and becomes the visible site of the emerging Jesus movement, the latent church of Christ in Philippi.
 
And risk is the right categorisation here. Paul will shortly be seized by crowds, stripped and flogged, and thrown in prison. We know from Paul’s letters this was not an isolated event for the apostles, nor for those leading and participating in these early house churches. So Lydia takes no small risk in joining this movement, in opening her house, in declaring this allegiance. She risks her business, the wealth and security it has afforded her to make a life so different from what it once was or might have been. She risks her household, she risks her autonomy and freedom. But such risks can be taken by those who know the love of God, and feel encouraged to pursue the call of Christ in the company of the church.
 
The resurrection of Christ upturns the world, we have returned to this point again and again since Easter. Not only does it defeat death and conquer sin, but in this act, Christ, the Good Shepherd, calls us by name and leads us into newness of life. And at the heart of this newness is the community of Christ we call the church. This community of disciples where the old dividing walls are not only cracked but broken down. In this community, the old hierarchies and designations: Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free are robbed of their power to assign worth and status. Instead, the church becomes a place in which we are all remade as disciples, as priests, as siblings. It is this kind of place that someone like Lydia – whatever her past – can exercise her gifts and leadership, remaking her life in the image of Christ as a blessing for her whole community.
 
And this is what distinguishes the kind of remaking the gospel makes possible, from what might more commonly emerge after other societal upheavals. The goal is not the forging of a self-sustained, self-aggrandised individual, but to be remade into a self-for-others. The goal is to let the depth of love and worth we find in God allow us to run the risks that come when we open our heart to the call of Christ and the need of our neighbour. This kind of remaking, exemplified by Lydia, made possible in the Spirit, is the kind we are all invited into. The shape of our story will be different to hers for all the obvious reasons, but the potential is shared. For the gospel she heard, the baptism she undertook, is the same as the one which opened our heart and led us to this household of God’s grace.
 
There is another, albeit brief lesson I want to tack on here. It is a reminder and encouragement to us all – that not only is our task this kind of remaking of the self in the image of Christ’s own generosity and grace, but it is to help one another do the same. It is to be, and continue to become a community that fosters, encourages, and nourishes others to be like Lydia. To create an ecosystem of support and safety that allows the remaking of the self in the image of Christ. A community which removes material hurdles, advocates against systemic disadvantage, that doesn’t cling to old names, roles, or limits, but believes that the Spirit has been poured out on all flesh and that we are the body of Christ in the very giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts. A community which celebrates and encourages one another in every glimpse of Christlikeness and neighbourliness in our midst. This we do, until the day comes when these remakings are perfected in the fullness of the new creation, and we live with God face-to-face, the light of the city in the age to come.

Readings, Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6: 17-26
Image, Dora Chapman, Self portrait in brown hat, 1935

The ambition at the heart of much portraiture is to try and capture the human character of the sitter: their heart, their will, their history – in short, the fullness of the person. The aim is to evoke - through the many varied and studied choices – the fullness of the subject beyond simply a collection of shapes and tones. To ask and perhaps answer, who is this person, or even perhaps, delving further, what do we know of the human creature?

Because it is seldom the aspect we direct our primary attention, we can miss that the Bible contains astute and probing passages on human psychology and moral life. We tend to think first of the stories, or the proclamation of salvation, or the odes to God’s nature, but there is much concerning the nature of the human creature, our hearts, our will, our virtues and follies. Offerings, as it were, to Hamlet’s immortal question, what a piece of work is man?

Usually, my go to example of such is Paul’s famous quip: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Who among us does not know this feeling, has not exclaimed years later in the car or shower, why did I do that? Who has not known the agony born of the gap between will and act, intention and execution?

But Paul also has, and I’ll use the King James here just to give it that appropriately Shakespearean flair: For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Does this not run at the core of so much poetry and psychology? We are mysteries to one another and ourselves, and who can know the things of Jock over here except Jock himself.

In another way, I’ve always felt Cain’s response to the Lord’s question: where is your brother Abel, I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper? Speaks to the habit of the guilty, to fight question with question. This is perhaps the essential dynamic of discourse between parents and their teenage children. Asked where they were the night before, the nervously guilty jump to their own questions: I told you yesterday? Don’t you trust me? Is this a police state? 

Or, speaking of teenagers, there’s that line in Ecclesiastes which comes to mind as I walk through the shops and see those younger than me reviving mullets and other fashion trends which were buried in obscurity for good reason: Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘see this is new?’ It has already been, in the ages before us. 

With all that established, today’s reading from Jeremiah offers another such contribution to the understanding of human nature and will.
More crooked is the heart than all things,
It is grievously ill and who can fathom it?

This is perhaps a bleaker view of humanity than we might usually operate with, but there are plenty of times it appears accurate. It is helpful to remember that the heart was associated less with emotion (as we might today, when valentine’s day decorations are a sea of red hearts). The emotions were in the gut, kidneys, or bowels (all of which are slightly more complicated to render in the window of a florist). The heart was the seat of understanding, the loci of the will. Jeremiah’s diagnosis is that there is crookedness (or deceitfulness) in our understanding/will. That something in our instinct is ill and lies beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to fathom. As the wise and noble Olaf the snowman remarks (paraphrasing this very passage in Frozen 2), who knows the ways of men.

For this crooked or deceitful heart is the site of snap judgments, instinctual reactions, and first impressions – all of which on further interrogation, we know can be faulty. Because while we might often be advised to trust our gut, go with our instincts, and don’t overthink it - this is often far from advisable. It is not to say there are never times to do this, as we rely on our instincts and gut reactions for a million micro-decisions across the day. But we ought to be wary of believing that our will, our instincts, are automatically good (or even neutral). 

For any thorough self-examination reveals our instant reactions are often those we would be uncomfortable speaking aloud. Prejudices, stereotypes, judgments can spring to mind as we walk behind someone in the shops, hear a voice over the phone, or read a story in the news. And after a second or two of contemplation we recognise these judgments as uncharitable, and without merit; vestiges of inherited scorn. Because why should we see the unhoused person and assume they are the architect of their struggle, see the crying child and assume they are product of ill-disciplined parents, hear the person detailing the difficulties of losing weight and assume lack of discipline, hear the testimony of the victim and wonder if they also ought to shoulder some blame? Well, it is as Jeremiah proclaimed: 
More crooked is the heart than all things,
It is grievously ill and who can fathom it?

The gospel is in many ways, the great rebuff against going with your gut, of trusting our instincts as naturally virtuous, our understanding as untarnished. For the gospel asks us to trust that the one crucified by the State was not some degenerate or miscreant, but saviour and messiah. The gospel asks us to trust that the one who was pierced and buried, has been raised and ascended. The gospel asks us to believe that the last will be first, and first last. The gospel asks us to believe that the mighty shall be cast down and the lowly lifted high. In today’s very passage, when Jesus begins his sermon on the mount, the gospel – in full contradiction of our common understanding and instinct – declares:
Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
   for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh  

Then, as now, common understanding and gut reactions attach wealth to personal virtue. The rich must be blessed, hardworking, noble, and trustworthy… the poor must be idle, shifty, cursed, and of loose morals. This is the deceitful will, the crooked heart, the corrupted understanding at the base of our instincts. Jesus overturns this time and again. Those who shall laugh are those we might see weeping and wonder ‘what have they done to improve their lot?’ Those who will be filled are those we hear ask for food and wonder ‘are they lying to me?’ Those who will inherit the kingdom of God are those we feel the flash of doubt when asked, ‘can they be trusted here alone?’
​
To be a Christian is to open our heart to Jesus. To ask Jesus into the crookedness of our hearts so that its ways might be made straight. To ask Jesus into the deceitfulness of our instincts so that it may be judged by the truth. To ask Jesus into our ill understanding and so that it may be made well. We open our hearts to Jesus so that we might learn how to question our gut, to question those snap judgments, hidden prejudices, and unspoken assumptions. We ask Jesus into our hearts so that what we will see in the face of another is the fullness of a portrait painted by God. What we see in another is not defined by our initial and faulty instinctual reactions, but we recognise a deep inner life, a full story, a complex and evolving mystery. But more than this, we see the person in front of us in the shop, or on the phone, or in the news as  a neighbour, made in the image of God, who deserves dignity, love, and service. We ask Jesus into our hearts because he can fathom it. Jesus can search the human heart and uproot that which does not serve us, or our neighbour, or God’s kingdom. We say, come, Lord Jesus: reform, reshape, and repair our heart, let not our will be done, but yours. 

Readings, John 18: 33-37 and Revelation 1: 4b-8
Image, Station I: Pilate condemns Jesus to death, Bruce Onobrakpeya (1969)
 
In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the Duke of Vienna walks through the city disguised as a Friar, witnessing the many abuses of power being visited upon the city by his second-in-command Angelo. He remarks:
My business in this state
Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,
Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble
Till it o’errun the stew.
In the play’s final act, the Duke drops his disguise and confronts and condemns Angelo.
 
In his vision, John declared that when Christ returns on the clouds, every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him. Christ, in heavenly glory, rule of the kings of earth, will be recognisable to those who punished him as a criminal, who knew him only as the ironic king adorned with a crown of thorns… what are we to make of that?
 
Much of our scriptures and liturgy stress the continuity and consistency of God. The recognisability and trustworthiness of God’s character, the unchanged and unchanging quality of divine nature. As that reading from Revelation ended, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Who is God? Well, whoever God is, it is always the same, yesterday, today, tomorrow. As we say in the communion liturgy, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ has come again. Who is Christ? Well, whoever Christ is, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
 
Whatever we say about Christ in glory, cannot be inconsistent with Christ in humility. Whatever we say about Christ in eternity, cannot be in contradiction to Christ incarnate. This is particularly important when we come to Christ the King Sunday when it is so easy to start speaking of Jesus in a ways anathema to the Galilean peasant we know from the Gospels. Without careful attention to how we speak, the Christ coming in glory starts to sound like a cold and rigid medieval monarch leading a crusade, imposing his power and authority with undeniable force. And this, we quickly realise, feels at odds with the one who said true greatness is found in service, true love in laying down one’s life. At odds with he who stood before Pilate – facing impending torture and execution – and invited those around to listen to his voice as it testified to the truth, stood before Pilate and said that his followers had no need to take up the sword, because his kingdom is not like those of the world.
 
This is all to say, that yes, we await the day when Christ comes again in glory, but that what we will see is not a categorical break from what those who walked with Jesus two thousand years ago saw. To speak of Christ’s rule and reign, of Christ as king, is a kind of speech that must pass a quality test of sorts… does it still sound like Jesus of Nazareth?
 
Does it sound like the one who stopped in his tracks when the bleeding woman touched the hem of his cloak? Does it sound like the one who looked on the crowds with compassion and ensured they were fed? Does it sound like the one who wept at Lazarus’ tomb? Does it sound like the one who told his disciple to sheave his sword and healed the wounded soldier? Does it sound like the one who called his followers friends? Does it sound like the one who proclaimed the kingdom of God where last are first, debts forgiven, and the forgotten found? Does it sound like the one who from the cross asked God to forgive his tormentors, his friend to tend to his mother, and promised paradise to the thief by his side?
 
Even when resurrected, it is clear that as much as some things have changed (Jesus is more or less unbound from the rule of physics, able to move through walls or disappear entirely), more has remained the same: Jesus still bears the wounds of the world, still attends to the grief of his friends, still gathers those scattered and forlorn, still offers food to the hungry.
 
So it is with the ascension. Jesus, no longer bound bodily on earth, sits at the right hand of God. Yet, he remains consistent in his nature: Jesus sends the Spirit to be our counsellor and to secure our adoption into the household of God. He gives himself in bread and wine, and when we pray in his name he advocates as our High Priest (familiar with our struggles).
 
He is who was, is, and is to come; He who died, is risen, and will come again. The manner of his presence may change, but his nature does not. This is what it means to confess that those who pierced him on the cross shall recognise him on the clouds. As the one who testified to and was identified as the truth, there is no falsity within him, no duplicity, no late in the play surprises that reveal he was not who he seemed to be. The one born of Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate is recognisable as the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
 
And yet, in one of those delightfully mystical paradoxes so common to our faith, there is also an unrecognisable quality to Christ the King. For when Jesus teaches of that final day when he shall come in glory, placing sheep and goats on his right and left, Christ (like the Duke) will be revealed to have been walking among us still, walking among us unrecognised as the least of these. And to deepen the mystery of it all, Christ has gone unrecognised by both the wicked who did not feed the hungry and visit the prisoner, and by the righteous who welcomed the stranger and clothed the naked. This is the paradox of this age, the time between Christ’s resurrection and return. For when Christ comes on the clouds in glory he shall be recognised by all, but until then Christ comes to us here and is recognised by no one.
 
This parable of Jesus’ cannot teach us to recognise Christ, but it can teach us what it means to recognise that Christ is King. For we recognise the reign of Christ when we give the hungry something to eat, the thirsty something to drink, when we welcome the stranger and cloth the naked, when we visit the sick and imprisoned.
 
We do not wish to be found, like those in Vienna, suddenly surprised that the Duke walked among us in these days. Exposed for our lack of care and compassion, surprised that the modest apparel disguised his glory. Instead, let us encourage one another that to live within the reign of Christ is to recognise our king in the least of these. To recognise Christ in those who call on us to provide the kind of care we recognise and trust as Christ’s.
 
The world seeks to teach us how to recognise prisoners, strangers, and the needy. So many kingdoms of the world have sought to establish their identity and bounds by teaching their subjects to recognise the least in ways marked by denigration, dismissal, and derision. So many earthly kings have sought to establish their virtue by conditioning subjects to recognise the supposed threat of the least of these. Angelo sought to establish his rule through a strict set of sexual mores and the punishment of those deemed deviant. The tragic aim of so many worldly kingdoms is to seek to cast the marginalised and oppressed, not only as so much lower than a God, but lower still than a man. However, to follow Christ as king is to learn a new kind of recognition. To be a subject of this kingdom is to bestow proper value and worth, proper welcome and care on those too often “misrecognised.” To confess Christ as King is to treat the least as bearing his visage and moving to stand in solidarity in the work for justice and dignity. It is the treatment of the least that proves true recognition of the King and the true authority of his kingdom over and against the kingdoms of the world which would have us recognise the least as anything other than a child of God.
 
Christ is our king, and we can recognise him through his humble service and magnificent love. And Christ is our king, who goes among us as the unrecognised, awaiting us to serve and love in his very example. Let us go forth then, to serve and stand with those who bear the presence of Christ, in the way of Christ, for the glory of Christ. 

Reading, Job 38:1-11, 34-41, 40:1-9 
Image, John Ross, The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (1960)

 
Last week, Job, stricken by calamity, demands God answer his complaint. This week, God answers Job out of the whirlwind. In between the story of Job is broken into a series of speeches. Job’s friends make cases for why misery has befallen Job. Most work along a logic that since the wicked always receive just punishment at the hand of God, Job must actually be wicked. To which Job counters with two points: 1) defending his blamelessness, and 2) reminding them that by and large the wicked receive no punishment, no justice in this life: They spend their days in prosperity and in peace they go down to Sheol. They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.’ So, Job contends not only am I not wicked, but even if I were that would not be enough to establish that this is why I suffer, since it doesn’t seem like God has much interest in bringing justice upon the wicked.
 
Time and again Job’s friends offer accounts for what has happened (accounts, we shall come to see, will be condemned by God as false speech) and time and again Job rebuffs their words and demands God answers him directly. Again, this is a testament to that fierce, determined faith Job exemplifies (which we discussed last week) one which is unwavering in its belief in God’s sovereign power and in his own right to demand God front up.
 
And so, eventually, God appears. This is the first time we have seen God in the narrative since the two early wagers with Satan, and the first time that Job has beheld God since all this began. It is important to remind ourselves that the story of Job is not history or journalism, but a poem, a fable, a parable. A story constructed in order to address the reality of human suffering, of the incomprehensibility of evil and woe. So how does God’s answer from the whirlwind do that?
 
One of my favourite contemporary novelists, Garth Greenwell, opens his new book, Small Rain, this way: They asked me to describe the pain but the pain defied description, on a scale from one to ten it demanded a different scale.
This is kind of like what God introduces into the story, a different scale. Instead of arriving to tell Job, look, here’s what happened… all the angels and I were hanging out, and then Satan came in, and well, one thing led to another... Or, coming and saying, look, Job, your friends are right, you sinned in your heart on April 16, 4062, and thus everything that has befallen you has been justified… Or, coming to say, look Job, I know you’re upset, but this is the reason bad things happen to good people… instead, God appears in a whirlwind and says,
Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
 
Talk about a different scale? Job has been asking God to give account and God shows up and says, I’m the one asking the questions here: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Not the most pastoral approach, indeed, rather accusatory. It is almost like if your new fridge was faulty and you called to get it returned and when you said, listen, everything at the back is freezing, the person on the helpline said, I’m sorry, were you there when I invented ice?!?
 
This moment was brought vividly to life in Terrance Malick’s film, Tree of Life. Early in the film a mother learns of the death of her son, and she utters, in desperate grief, Lord, did you know… where were you… what are we to you… answer me… and at this request the film goes back to the beginning of all things. In a near fifteen minute sequence it works its way slowly through the creation of the cosmos, the first creatures to populate the seas, the emergence and collapse of dinosaurs, only then it returns to the family. What this says is the only way to approach the questions born of this personal loss is to tell the whole story of creation. We are but part of this story, the story of all things which unfolded at the hand of God. Where were you, the mother asks, to which God responds, everywhere.
 
Many have deemed this is an unsatisfactory response. That God’s assertion of an eternal knowledge which trumps all temporal concerns is insufficient in the face of immediate, personal, unjust suffering. Job, it appears, does not find it wanting. He remarks at the end of God’s address, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know… Therefore I recant and reconsider concerning dust and ashes. Job is sufficiently awed, his grievances transformed and any right to further speech given up.
 
But even if we don’t share Job’s position (nor his eventual reversal of fortune), we might still consider the whirlwind. Because maybe there is no satisfactory response to the problem of incomprehensible suffering to be found anywhere else? Perhaps the point is to change the scale, and thus change the perspective. Because whether or not we have or may grasp a reason, suffering occurs, catastrophes happen, loss and grief are inevitable. As we say in the funeral prayers:
Give us grace in the face of the mystery of life.
Give us the wisdom that says:
‘Even if our questions were answered,
even if we did know why,
the pain would be no less,
the loneliness would remain,
and our hearts would still be aching’.
 
And so perhaps, this swirling reminder of the majesty of God’s eternal presence, power, and provision give comfort. The gap between us and God, the finite and infinite, the created and Creator offers a new scale. The speech of God offers us a reality where there is something over, under, and around all of history’s inscrutable, scattered moments. But not just a random something, for when we take the testimony of the whole of Scripture, then we see that the something (or better someone) over, under, and around all the things that we can and cannot see and comprehend is the God who is love. The one who heard the morning stars sing is also the one who hears the cries of the oppressed and acts with a mighty hand. The one who knows when the mountain goat gives birth is the one who found the slave girl Hagar and her child in the wilderness and helped her survive. The one who numbers the clouds is the one who stood between the accused woman and those bearing stones and numbering sins. The one who can draw the Leviathan out of deepest ocean is the one who descended unto death in order to triumph over the grave and lead us to newness of life.
 
Not a flap of a wing nor a blink of an eye has occurred without God. And while this does not diminish the pain of loss, the grief of suffering, or our rage against evil, it does offer us something. A different scale, another way of thinking about the pain of the world. So much that might feel without reason, might appear without logic, might defy comprehension, might instead occur within the world and history God creates, sustains, and redeems. These moments are thus not, ultimately, without meaning, not ultimately random, not ultimately finished… each takes place within a bigger meaning, a bigger story, one which has always and will ever continue to unfold within the sphere of God’s interest and love.
 
This, as I have said from the start, does not solve everything (perhaps, for some, it solves nothing). But the story of Job is not set out, I believe, to do that. The whirlwind offers a picture of reality in which God is present. It offers a way of living where history’s many moments of violence and catastrophe are not the final, unaccountable word, but remain open to the redemptive and restorative activity of God. This doesn’t mean we must accept all things as they are – we, like Job, can bring our charges before God, and we must act upon the earth to seek justice, peace, and restoration. But the whirlwind offers us a foundation on which our faith and activity might rest: that while much lies beyond us, nothing lies beyond God, and in this there is hope, because God is love, and love never ends: it makes all things new.