Parish Of Opawa St Martins Blog

We noticed earlier this year that Matthew presents Jesus as the Wisdom of God in human flesh. We have heard about Lady Wisdom and how she is to be recognised. The parable before us today is another clear example of a parable from the Wisdom tradition. If it shows another example of Lady Wisdom, we can also see Lady Folly played out in the foolish bridesmaids who find themselves running out of oil.

The parable paints of picture for us. There are ten virgins. Five are wise and five are foolish. The wise ones have flasks of oil with their lamps. The foolish ones do not. To our minds, you might wonder why the wise ones were so selfish. Why didn’t they share? What’s all this about waiting into the night? To the kiwi mind it all seems a bit odd. With a bit of Kiwi know how this could have been handled much better. In any case, everything goes wrong. The bridegroom comes at a strange time. The foolish girls are off buying more oil and find themselves locked out of the wedding feast.

Why were the foolish ones deemed to be foolish anyway? What groom in his right mind would turn up at midnight for the feast? The foolish are foolish because they had not taken every possible contingency to be at the feast. In fact, they did not realise until it was too late, that this feast was the feast of God, and to be at the feast means everything. It means giving your whole self over to God; the investment of one’s whole being. Not realising the importance of the feast, that this is the meal of kingdom, the foolish ones sat lightly and found themselves unprepared.

This meal, the Eucharist that we celebrate week by week, is a foretaste of this heavenly banquet. Are you foolish or wise? I suspect there is the wise and the foolish within all of us. The ill prepared expect life to unfold according to schedule. Things begin with the speedy arrival of the bridegroom at which point everyone gathers at table for the feast. Everything is laid on with minimal planning and forethought, no cost, no commitment. All we have to do is turn up and God does the rest. Maybe the foolish have a bet each way. After all there many possible solutions claiming to answer the meaning of life, and there are many possible purposes for our lives. Let’s drop in for a taste.

This brings us to the oil and what it signifies. Have you heard biblical writers refer to oil as the “oil of salvation”? What if the oil that the bridesmaids need is faith itself? Suddenly the parable is beginning to make a lot more sense. The feast is the feast of the kingdom, and the wise move heaven and earth to get to it. It is the only place to be, the only thing that will satisfy the soul. The oil is our faith, our relationship with God. That is why the wise bridesmaids are prepared to hang around waiting for so long, carrying extra flasks of oil. God is coming eternally coming toward us. He asks us to engage with him, he wants to be in relationship with you and me, which is what faith is: being in relationship with God.

As church, then collectively our task is to announce the Good News of God. Our task is to present Christ to the world, to lead people into faith through the proclamation of the Word and through the celebration of the sacraments, especially Baptism and Eucharist. This is activity we engage in together, all the people of God engaging in the task of passing on the faith, being Christ’s hands and feet and mouth in the power of the Spirit, as we await the second coming of Christ on the last day.

But faith is also a personal project. Faith involves a personal encounter with you and Christ, with the Spirit activating the presence of Christ in your heart and bringing us into a deeper communion with the Father. The reformers of the reformation did a great deal to emphasise the importance of paying attention to our personal relationship with God. What ever we think of them, this was one of their gifts to the church. They remind us that faith in Christ is central to our lives, that as we are nourished by the Body of Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are invited to grow into a deeper communion with Christ, and into an intimate friendship with him all through our pilgrimage on earth. We can think of the oil, then, as the oil of salvation, nourishing us in our journey of faith, enabling us to grow more and more like God and to become the fully human person God has made us to be.

The wise understand this. They know that there are other feasts, many possible purposes to our lives. But to the wise, these things are of no value. There is nothing else worth doing than saving the oil and looking after it. They know that being at the banquet is everything, that there is no other bridegroom worth feasting with. They will be there even if the bridegroom is delayed.

This parable is part of the final teaching that Jesus gave to his disciples before he died. Jesus wants us to be wise. The wise among us see not a churchy community dedicated to the smooth running of the institution. They do not want to be part of a community dedicated to the occasional charitable work and routine pleasantries on Sunday. They are not interested in a holy club where the members are only interested in looking after themselves. The feast that the wise are interested in is the feast where the bridegroom is present. They see hungry and thirsty people and see Christ present in their poverty. They see the cold and naked, and see Christ present there. They see the poor and the vulnerable human beings and see Christ present there. They want to be part of a feast in which the Spirit enables us to see Christ in each other, where there is a trust, where the people pray for one another, where there is a deep communion and an awareness that we all belong to God. That is the holy feast that the wise know is the only feast worth attending.

Are you one of the wise ones? Are you dazzled by the presence of God in this foretaste of the great banquet of the kingdom? In your prayer this week, ask God to give you insight into the desires and expectations of your hearts. Seek wisdom, for the Good News is that the Bridegroom comes eternally, over and over again. Those beloved of God find that their oil flasks are full, that they are welcomed with open arms into the great banquet by Christ himself, who is the host.

Today we gather to celebrate the saints of God; we recall that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before us. A saint, from the Latin word sanctus means holy, so a saint is a person who shares in the divine life of Christ. In the New Testament, that means every one of us is one of the saints. So if you want to be reminded about what a saint looks like – take a good, long, hard look at the person sitting next to you! Go on! Take a look! That person is indeed one of the saints.

We sometimes look at the paintings of the saints that are in churches and museums and think that they represent what being a saint is all about. These representations, often in stain glass windows, show people looking very calm, holy, and pious with a halo to boot. The point of these images, of course, is to keep the memory and stories of these people before us. But if we were to have some of these folk to dinner, we would very likely get quite a shock. Most of the saints were never satisfied with doing what we’ve always done. They were movers and shakers who disturbed the status quo. They often led exciting lives. Some of them were fanatics who went on mad escapades. Many approached life in completely novel and fresh ways. But the reason we remember them is because when we looked at them their lives were for us windows into God. We could see more clearly through their lives what God is like.

The New Testament, however, would not restrict the term “saint” to the heroes of the faith. The New Testament writers called all the people of God “saints”. If you want to live like one of the saints, live the Beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel. The Beatitudes are widely understood to sum up the teaching of Christ. They are to the New Testament what the 10 commandments are to the old. Be pure in heart, mourn the injustices we see in the world, hunger and thirst for what is right, but be merciful also, be peacemakers, be willing to face the cost of being faithful and for working for justice; these are the things the saints of God are called to be concerned about.

As part of our celebration today, we will recall those we have known and loved in our prayer – those who have led us in the way of the gospel – our loved ones for whom we still mourn.

The Christian faith teaches that there is life in Christ beyond death. The exact form and shape of that life we can only imagine. The first reading from Revelation paints a picture of life with Christ when he is fully revealed at the end of time, but none of us really knows in a scientifically definitive sense what life after death actually looks like. But the way we make sense of death is by placing it in the context of Christ’s death and resurrection. St Paul says that in our suffering and dying we are joined to Christ’s death, so that as he is raised by God we are raised with him into eternal life; giving the promise and hope of a future with God for those who love God. This means, of course, that the pain and loss of death is never taken away or even somehow diminished. That is part of the risk of living and loving. What our faith provides is a mega story within which our suffering and pain when we are confronted by death is giving meaning.

Even though we cannot see what the next life will be like, the bible offers many metaphors to help us make sense of death and dying. Today we will look at two of them. The first is the most important, and that, of course, is the death of Jesus which the New Testament interprets as a new Exodus. One of the Greek words used for ‘death’ in the New Testament is the word “Exodus”. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah talk with Jesus about his forthcoming departure. The Greek word there is “Exodus”. So “Exodus” is the first metaphor we can use to make sense of death. Death is our journey to God, toward our final reconciliation with God. The first Exodus story, of course, is the great departure that Moses and the people of God made out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Here, we can begin to see the multiple ways the bible uses the word death. In the Exodus story, death is equated with the hellish existence of slavery in Egypt. Little surprise therefore that death and sin are often linked together in the discourse of St Paul. The journey is the sojourn into a fullness of relationship with God in the Promised Land where the milk and honey flows and there is feasting forever.

In Christ, the meaning of this journey is expanded. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the New Testament Exodus story recapitulated and given new meaning. Slavery in Egypt is broadened to mean alienation from God brought about by sin. The Promised Land towards which we journey is the fullness of life in Christ; its consummation is our final meeting with Christ in when he is revealed in his fullness at the end of time. In this way of seeing death and dying, God is leading us on a journey of faith. His agenda is for our good, and he is joining to Christ’s rising from the dead and leading us to the fullness of communion with himself, which will be revealed at the end of time.

The bible offers another way to make sense of death and that is the metaphor of rebirth; being born again. Death is like a second birth. Just as there were hands that received us when we were born into this world, so there will be hands to receive us when we are born again into the next. Our baptism is a prototype of this, a kind of school for learning how to die and how to live in Christ. S. Paul describes baptism as a real death. In Baptism we join ourselves to Christ’s death so that we might be joined with his resurrection. It is a letting go; allowing something to die so that something else can be reborn. Our ego is put to death; the part of us that needs to be the boss, that needs to be the star at the centre or the wise one or the special one, the part of us that demands loyalty, perfection, or peace at any cost, that will do anything to belong and to be liked. Of course, this is a life long journey. But the point is, when we were unborn babies, we lived in a familiar place and birth was the process of passing into the unknown. So it is when we physically die. We leave this familiar world and move into the next, where once again there will be hands to receive us and hold us. Those hands will be the hands of Christ who is waiting to receive those who love him.

Today in our prayers, we will pray for those we have known and loved. There will be a time for lighting candles for our loved ones. If you are not sure what to pray as you light your candle, simply ask Jesus to pass on a message of love to those for whom you wish to pray. That way, you are expressing your love for that person in your prayer, and your prayer is addressing Christ and asking him to pass that love on. We can rest assured that the company of heaven are praying for us and cheering us on as we run the race set before us.

The church is not just you and me gathered here on earth. The church includes the whole company of heaven, all those who have gone before us. All the members of the Body care and pray for one another, whether we happen to be on this side of the grave or beyond it. In Jesus, death and time are transcended and we are united in one body. As we make our prayers let us chose life today. We pray for ourselves, that we may grow into the love of God where all that is good may be perfected, and all that is wrong will be healed, and that death when it comes, will hold no fear for us.

The text before us today contains another question that was put to Jesus by his opponents. In terms of the mega story, this is the part of the story of Jesus we call Holy Week. The momentus entry into Jerusalem, what we call Palm Sunday, has taken place. Jesus has undertaken the provocative cleansing of the temple, which is best described as ‘poking a hornet’s nest’. The religious leaders have come out in force to attack Jesus at every opportunity. Last week they tried to trap him with a question about tax. There was another question about the resurrection. Today they ask him a much simpler question about the great commandment. Just like the other questions, this one is also a trap. To the devout Jew, all the commands and precepts were a revelation of God’s will. Even though there were over 600 of them, if one or two are singled out, wouldn’t that indicate that some of God’s commands are more important than others? Will Jesus try to downplay some of the commands? This was the trap the Sadducees wanted Jesus to fall into.

As he usually did, Jesus answers this question on his own terms. He puts together two commands, love of God and love of neighbour, and shows that these two things are inseparable. We are used to hearing these commands often. For those of us familiar with the old Book of Common Prayer, these two commands were read every Sunday in the service of Holy Communion. Many preachers talk about them as one command or ‘the summary of the law’. It’s a simple message, love God, love your neighbour, love yourself. Jesus elaborated a great deal on this, most famously in the Gospel according to Luke in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Loving God and loving our neighbour are inseparable. Along the way Jesus sets a new standard of holiness. Loving our neighbour involves being able to include those who are very different from ourselves in the community of the redeemed.

We know all this: two commands – love God and love your neighbour. We hear it every year proclaimed from the pulpit. We try our best to put it into practice with varying degrees of success. Sometimes we struggle, especially when loving our neighbour involves making room for others just when we thought we had made a nice comfortable position for ourselves. The one I want to focus today could be called the third command that is implied in this, namely, the command to “love yourself.” This is one many fail to notice, but it is key to all the rest. It is impossible to love others or even to love God if we do not love ourselves. The problem is that we want to avoid being self centred, selfish, and narcissistic. And so many people avoid anything that looks like self love. Other parts of the gospel seem to encourage this. Wasn’t it the smug Pharisee that Jesus put down, the one who thought his prayers should be noticed over the prayers of the ordinary sinner?

Well indeed it was such a Pharisee. But the reason that Jesus was able to love others (and God) was because he loved himself and knew himself loved by God. On the other hand, the Pharisee’s way of loving himself was a form of grand standing, a calling of attention to himself, which is what people do when they don’t love themselves. Grandstanding is illusory. If are afraid that we are not loved, if we have to draw attention to ourselves to prove to ourselves that we are loved, that is because we fear being unloved. That fear drives us to manipulate, or to strive for higher achievements to get the love and approval we so desperately seek. The root cause of this is anxiety and fear. The fear is that if we look into the centre of ourselves we will find that there is nothing there, that our centre is, in fact, an empty space. And so we try and cover that space up or fill it with something. We try to make something of ourselves by surrounding ourselves with possessions and accomplishments. These things can serve as a kind of persona, a protective identity that we wrap around ourselves, all of which is masking the biggest fear of all, that if someone could look into our soul, they would find nothing there. The root of this ailment is the inability to love ourselves or to see ourselves as loved by God. If we don’t love ourselves, all we are likely to see is an empty space in our souls. If we cannot love ourselves, we struggle to receive love from others. It is even hard to allow ourselves to be loved by God or to believe that God wants to love us. It becomes harder to see the ways that God’s love us breaking through to us. We think we are not worthy of that love. One reaction to that is keep working harder and to try and run faster, or another response is to numb the pain with some kind of addictive behaviour.

Part of our spiritual journey is the task of taking delight in ourselves. It is important not to confuse this with smugness and narcissism. Narcissistic behaviour comes from a focus inward on our own pain to the exclusion of others. Smugness comes from an excessive focus on our own achievements, a bit like the Pharisee who wanted everyone to notice how much he prayed and fasted and that he kept all the rules. By contrast, love of ourselves comes from a profound knowledge that we are loved by God. We know that children who are loved by their parents as they grow up are more likely to love and value themselves. So it is with us and God. The more we know ourselves to be loved by God, the more we know that we owe are very existence to Love. If anxiety and fear is the root of sin, so love is the root or redemption. Love is the beginning of faith. When we know ourselves as loved by God as we are, then faith can spring forth and flower.

Ultimately, this is why Jesus had the spiritual resources and stamina he needed in the face of conflict and stiff resistance that he faced. As the story unfolds we see that the more goodness and grace and generosity of God Jesus brought into the world, the greater the kickback was from those who opposed him. We face this too, and the question coming up in the remaining chapters of this gospel will focus the question of where the inner resources will come to face the trials ahead. The ability to remain a channel of grace and peace, the ability to show love in the face of evil comes from faith. Faith comes knowing ourselves as loved by God. It is not something we conjure up. It is a reality we experience. When we know ourselves as loved by God, then we can be grateful for the gifts God has given us. Above all, we can be full of gratitude to God for the gift of ourselves. Being thankful to God is what sets us apart from the smugness and narcissism of our current generation. Our ability to be thankful to God is also what enables us to love others. That is why we pray the “Great Thanksgiving Prayer” in every Eucharist. It reminds us that gratitude and thankfulness is to be the tone of our lives.

Loving one’s neighbour entails seeing them as they are: gifts from God, absolutely loveable, unique bearers of God’s image. We are gifts from God. Our neighbours are God’s gift. The love we share with our neighbour is God’s gift. It is the same love that Jesus had for the Father, the love we know as the Holy Spirit, and it is the same love that is the heart of the being of God.

There is an underlying anxiety among the rugby fans in NZ at the moment. Before us world cup glory beckons. Standing in the way are two teams that have been a nemesis for All Black teams in the past: Australia and France. Australia has beaten us twice before in semi final matches. France has done the same. They form a kind of two headed beast for NZ rugby fans. There will be no end of nail biting until the Web Ellis trophy is held aloft by a victorious All Black captain.

Similarly, the Isaiah reading today brings back the memories of two nemesis of Israel. Isaiah is speaking to a people in exile in Babylon. They had been defeated twice. The first was to the empire of Assyria, who carried the northern kingdom away into exile never to return again. The second was Babylon itself, who finally captured Jerusalem, laying the city to waste and taking her people prisoner. Again, a two headed beast of failure and defeat. But now, as Isaiah speaks, Babylon in turn has fallen to a new empire, and a Persian king holds sway. That king is Cyrus the Great. He has conquered, and all the territories of the Middle East are under his control.

Incredibly, God calls Cyrus his “anointed”. Isaiah declares that he is God’s Messiah. Sit with that for a moment. We are used to hearing that the Messiah would be a son of David, ultimately Christ himself. But in this passage, God’s messiah is none other than a gentile king, potentially the next oppressor. He is the one “whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their robes, to open doors before him…” (Is 45:1) He is the one who will be God’s instrument to free Israel and make possible the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. This is an incredible passage, not well received by Isaiah’s audience I might add, in spite of the hope of restoration embodied in the text. The point is that God is the master of creation and it is God who sets the agenda and sees that his purpose will prevail.

Even if Cyrus is God’s Messiah for a moment, this is the Middle East, and ancient history is full of the rise and fall of empires: Assyria, then Babylon, to Persia, Alexander the Great and his Greek armies, then Rome. This is a story of empires and their claim to shape our world and the myths we live by. They rise up and they conquer. They also tax people to death. There is an old saying that there are only two things of which we can be certain in this life. One is that at some point all of us will face death. The second is that we will be taxed. Death and taxes, all we can be certain about.

Rome was no different. When Jesus arrived, Rome had risen. They levied a poll tax. That was the point of holding the census that comes up in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus. The idea was that everyone in Judea would pay one day’s wage every year to Roman conquers. If empires were unpopular, so were their taxes even more so. This was money that went overseas to feather the emperor’s nest and make his life more comfortable. From the Jewish point of view, this was paying the conquerors to be oppressive. Given that the local people had effectively lost their land and their self determination, this tax was the last insult. As you can imagine, the Romans had to contend with this resentment: the “we don’t want to pay this tax because we are poor and you are cruel to us!” response. But it was not the only problem the Romans had to contend with. The opposition was also ideological. They also had the: “paying this tax is against our religion!” sort of response.

So from the point of view of a faithful religious person in Jesus’ time where there were religious laws that covered every aspect of life, when it came to paying taxes they weren’t doing so for God or to be responsible citizens. Paying tax was simply another part of the injustice that had to be endured. Paying tax could even be declared impermissible, something that is against God and their faith. Tax therefore, was one of those ideological places, a point where society divided.

So when Jesus comes to Jerusalem and begins teaching in the temple, the Pharisees come presenting the perfect ideological question, one that is likely to spark opposition within a volatile crowd. Also against Jesus are the Herodians. They were a group that supported the Romans and received power, riches and favours as a result. Any answers Jesus gives will be dangerous. He could support the fundamentalists and get in trouble with Rome and the Herodians, or he could betray Jewish law and arouse the crowd. You can almost hear the Pharisees smug self satisfaction with the genius of their trap. They can smell triumph.

Unexpectedly, the question is thrown back. What belongs to Caesar? Let’s sit with that question for a moment. Caesar is the imperial head of an empire and to all appearances he has everything: power, wealth, and the comforts of life. But we have already noted what happens to empires. They come and go. Cyrus was God’s anointed 500 years ago, but what does he have now? For those with eyes to see is plain that nothing belongs to Caesar. Psalm 49 puts it succinctly:

“Do not fear when some become rich or when the wealth of their household increases. For at death they take nothing away with them and their riches will not follow them. While they lived they counted themselves happy and others praise them in their prosperity, but they will go to join their ancestors who will never again see the light.”

The point is, that to be Christian, to be a disciple, is to discover the point of God’s revelation. The point is that we are called to share in God’s life. That is our purpose and that is what will make us happy and contented, and will make life rich with experiences of intensity and depth; not struggles for wealth or power or for taxes.

“Give back to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God.” Everything belongs to God, which leaves us with a problem greater than the one posed by the Pharisees. Giving what is God’s back to God? Could that mean giving our very selves to God? Could that mean giving all that is ours to God without holding back anything? Well, it might well mean that, but only because of the love of God in the first place. When I know that I am utterly loved by someone, only then might I be prepared to trust enough to give that person my whole life. That is the context here. We belong to God and we are made for God, and we make ourselves available to God, not because God is a demanding tyrant, but because God utterly loves us and his agenda is absolutely for our good. Once that is known and experienced, we can relax into being our truest selves knowing that we are loved as we are and not as we think others want us to be. Then we will set the world on fire. But we can do nothing or be nothing without God. Even the great Cyrus of Persia needed God, though he was unaware of it. “Though you do not know me, I am the Lord, and there is no other. I arm you, though you do not know me… From the rising of the son and from the west, I am the Lord, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45: 5-6)

“The bible tells us to love our neighbours and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” Thus said, GK Chesterton. On a day when the world remembers the horrors of 9/11 ten years ago and the terrible wars that have followed, we have before us today a series of texts that talk about the forgiveness of God. It’s a simple message: God is forgiveness. God’s goodness and mercy and forgiveness are infinite. It is by passing on that forgiveness to others that we share in the life of God.

It’s a simple message, but it one of the hardest to put into practice. While we all felt the grief and horror of the 9/11 attacks ten years ago this day, we have also watched as western governments have played out the human need for revenge and retribution, as the world undertook the war on terror. Thousands of people have died in the conflict, which is still going on in places like Afghanistan.

The world God is inviting us into looks very different. The first reading concludes one of the wonderful sagas in the book of Genesis. It is the conclusion of the story of Joseph and his technicolour dreamcoat. Most of you know the story well. Joseph was one of the youngest of Jacob’s sons. As the longed for son of his favourite wife, Rachel, Joseph was dad’s favoured son. His brothers became so angry that they plotted to Joseph’s death. At an opportune moment, they tossed him down a well, waited for a passing camel train, and sold him into slavery. They soaked his specially made coat in goat’s blood to convince his parents that he had been killed.

Joseph was taken down into Egypt. Through a complicated turn of events, Joseph’s ability at interpreting dreams was brought to the attention of Pharoah, who eventually gave him high responsibility in the kingdom. When the drought that had been correctly foreseen by Joseph finally arrived, Joseph’s brothers are forced down into Egypt where they find themselves confronted by none other, that Joseph himself. The terrible truth about what they had done came back to haunt them: selling their brother to slave traders and the deception of their parents, and so they feared for their lives. The saga of deception and guilt of course, had been eating away at their souls like a cancer. Would it bring further violence and death?

Thankfully with God, it did not. In spite of the horrendous events of the past, Joseph could see the larger providential purpose of God at work. Joseph and his brothers were reconciled and their father Jacob and the whole family were brought down to Egypt where, by the grace of God, they could be fed and nurtured in safety. God turned evil into good by placing Joseph into a position where the family would be cared for.

But our reading today comes after all that. The old patriarch, Jacob (Joseph’s dad), has now died. The power of the guilt and fear of the past still lingers in the family and the old wounds emerge once more. So the brothers go again to Joseph, and in fear and trembling fall down at his feet to beg for mercy.

But Joseph has grown wise in the ways of his God. “Am I in the place of God?” he asks. “Even though you intended to bring harm, God has intended for good.” In other words, God overrides the plans and schemes of the people in the story. Here, in these final verses of Genesis, evil is overcome an d goodness is restored again. The people of God have stabbed each other in the back. They have betrayed one another, tricked each other, and left some for dead.

But God has over-ridden all that. God does not holding it against Joseph’s brothers. God does not point the finger, or demand punishment and retribution. This is the point that is so hard to for us to believe. It is the same point that comes up in the resurrection account of the New Testament. Instead, does not seek vengeance or retribution. God comes to reverse the cycle of violence by offering mercy and forgiveness in its place. God does not leave us helpless in the face of evil. God means for good. God’s plan is for welfare. This is a programmatic affirmation of the gospel that governs the whole book of Genesis and becomes a theme all through the bible. Evil plans of human beings do not defeat God’s purposes. Indeed, with God, they are unwittingly turned to good. Joseph has seen that and that is why he has no need to take vengeance against his brothers. And so he forgives them again. Joseph knows God as forgiveness, and so he forgave his brothers again. When our instinct is to strike back and hurt the one who has harmed us, the response of Joseph points us to the way of God and the way Jesus wants his disciples to treat one another.

But this is not easy as we know. Peter puts the question to Jesus; “How many times must I forgive a brother or sister if he or she wrongs me?” And so Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant. The first point of the parable is the vivid picture that is painted of the sheer immensity of God’s goodness and mercy represented by the master. The ten talents of silver represent debt that is humanly impossible to repay. Yet, all of it is forgiven.

The servant in the parable gets it wrong. Either he has completely forgotten God’s grace, or he has never accepted it in the first place, preferring to believe the populist view of God as a punishing tyrant. The debt of a few hundred denarii pales into insignificance against the ten talents forgiven him by the master. The servant shows himself to be small minded and hard hearted, the complete opposite of the life of God. This picture of the servant who refuses to forgive is a picture of the human condition. We do harbour grudges. We do remember old wrongs. We do scheme about ways of getting back at our enemies and jump at the chance when it comes. The reason we carry on behaving like the ungrateful servant is that we fail to see the immensity of God’s grace and mercy that is being offered you and me. We can only see our little bit of the picture. We can go further: Our reluctance to forgive is really our refusal to accept God’s forgiveness that he so very much wants to give us.

The end of the parable can make God look like a tyrant, and you can read the parable that way if you wish, but I want to suggest another way of looking at it. What if we are the ones who hand ourselves over to the jailor when we are unable to forgive? What if our failure to forgive locks us into a kind of prison that allows the cancer of bitterness to eat away at our soul? Maybe our reluctance to forgive means that we treat our brothers and sisters as if they are dead, and alienation and pain damages the community.

God is forgiveness; God is for healing. God is for our welfare. He sent Jesus to show us forgiveness and mercy being lived in a real human life. God is saying: “Forgive and you will share in my life. Forgive, and share in my work of healing. Forgive, and experience freedom to love and be loved. Forgive and you will be as I am.” We are to be a school for learning how to love and forgive; how to pass on God’s forgiveness. Today we will baptise Ayla. Because of this day she will know God’s forgiveness. May she too grow up to be as God is: set free to love and to be loved.

Conflict and hurt in our relationships! Conflict in the church – conflict between Christians! Few of us enjoy it. Sadly, most of us have a colourful story or two we can tell about things that have happened to us in churches; vicars that said or did something to offend, vestry decisions that upset us, the debate at an AGM where people said things. When Jesus was training his disciples to become apostles, he knew that there would be conflict among Christians. Having to face conflict can be very difficult. Few of us do it well. There are so many escapes. Some stuff their feelings down inside until the situation gets so bad they explode. Some people use gossip as a weapon because they are unable to face the person who has offended them. A person who can confront another, discuss it reasonably, and stay in relationship, is a rare person indeed.

On the world scene, it is easy to see how conflict between human beings can be brutal. Just look at the horrors unfolding in Lybia at the moment where there civil war is raging. There is evidence of nasty atrocities on both sides, use of torture, revenge killings and the like. Here at home, the media thrives on conflict. Current affairs programmes thrive on controversy and sometimes even create it by bringing in two people with extreme opposite points of view. The rush to identify conflict, and then to be outraged, offended, and victimised is one of the hallmarks of our world. Finding the culprit and laying blame is another sport that our society engages in.

So what is a good, healthy, Christian approach to managing conflict? As I have mentioned, Jesus knew there would be conflict among Christians, and he faced a great deal of it himself in his own life and ministry. The gospel paints a very different world from the one we see in our society. Jesus calls men and women to form the Church in a world which is marred and damaged, in which people are hurt by all kinds of experiences. But from the point of view of the gospel, the way we approach conflict is to be marked not by the need to find the culprit or lay blame or to be the offended one. Conflict is to be moderated by truth; the truth about God and about ourselves.

When one Christian has a case against another, the first step will be an attempt at a private reconciliation. There is good wisdom in that. It protects both parties from humiliation, from forming public positions that they cannot back away from. One when this fails does one bring in a third party, and after that it is brought before the church in a public way. This is good policy in other spheres as well. As a parent when our son was in primary school, there was a policy issued by the school Board of Trustees saying what to do if you were unhappy or if you had a complaint. The first step was to raise the issue with the staff member concerned, and only if that wasn’t satisfactory did one go to a more senior staff member or the principal. The idea was to try and stop some of the unhelpful gossip that went around the school community and help us work through conflict in a healthy way. So it is to be for us in the church.

What Jesus is calling us to do is to insist on truth, to remain hopeful, and to overcome our fear. The hope we need is the hope that others will see good in us and will want to stay in relationship with us. We also need enough hope in others so that we can expect to find goodness in those who wrong us. The real story however, is the persistent hope that human beings are able to hear the truth about themselves. But hearing truth is in fact what we also fear the most, which is why it is easier to use all sorts of avoidance mechanisms. Basic to the gospel is the hope that human beings are able hear truth about themselves, but also the hope that they can live that truth with joy, knowing whatever we have done and whatever we have been, God is with us and loves us to bits. “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”

It’s easy to talk about hope that human beings can hear the truth about themselves, but we all know that truth can be difficult to face. To know who we have been, to face the messes we get ourselves into, to know how my actions or words have harmed someone, even those I love dearly, can be a heavy burden to bear. What Jesus is asking of us today is that we be prepared to face how we have failed another. It means being able to look at the real picture of myself, rather than the one I prefer to project, the one I want everyone to see. That truth can be a hard one to face. But the hope of the Gospel is that truth sets us free. The real conflict is not the kind of conflict where the innocent confront the guilty, the kind of conflict we might see on TV shows. The real conflict is the discovery of our failures and weaknesses, our complicity in harming others, discovering the ways we cause alienation and hurt and being able to face that squarely and honestly, but in the process find the love and forgiveness of God. That is the point of the readings today. God will always wait until the last minute to turn to him. There is always an extension of time and God is always ready to receive us.

There will always be conflict in our world and in the church. Today Jesus instructs us on how to deal with this conflict. He gives power to the church to bind and loose. Throughout history the church will have recourse to the precepts of Jesus. Sometimes we will have to be honest enough to declare that communion has been broken and ruptured. But the state of rupture and brokenness does not have the last say for the Christian. God sees past the messes we get ourselves into. The truth is that we are always loved by God, and when he looks at us he sees the unique image of himself that is ours to bear. He sees the face of Christ in our faces. That is the real story here: a story of a God who loves and who is forgiveness, and who seeks always to draw us into communion with himself, so that we can glimpse something of the truth that sets us free.

In the movie The Dead Poets Society Robin Williams stars as the new English teacher at a prestigious boys school who brings new and refreshing teaching methods onto a campus that is ill prepared for them. At first, the boys are encouraged to rip out pages from the approved text book as sign that they are to abandon the old ways and embrace a new pedagogy. For the headmaster, a red flag goes up when the boys disrupt the studious silence of the school as they are taken out into playground during class time to engage in what might be called the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The teacher has the boys standing on their desks to see the world from a different angle. His inspiring and unorthodox teaching style helped the boys find healing for their wounds, discover the deep desires of the heart and their dreams for the future. The headmaster, however, is sees this as a threat. Inspiring the students is last thing that should be happening. When one of the boys finds that his emerging identity is in conflict with his bullying and controlling father and the boy commits suicide, the headmaster seizes his opportunity. In the ensuing witch hunt, influential parents, board members and the headmaster in a play for power, turn on the teacher who is unceremoniously sacked from the school. But the winner in the story is truth. It is very clear that the boys can see what has happened. They were in the presence of a gifted teacher who had taken them on a journey in search of truth. The reason the teacher was forced to leave was because certain parents and a certain headmaster were unable to face the truth of their limitations, nor could they face the truth of who the boys were becoming. Some of the boys colluded with the witch hunt to save their own butts. Being on the winning side was seemed a good idea at the time, but they knew they had participated in a lie, and deep down they knew that the lie diminished their souls.

The teacher in this story is a figure of Christ, who is also inviting us on a journey, a journey of faith. Last week we noted that Jesus had reached a turning point in his ministry. He was beginning his journey to Jerusalem, and a new phase in which he will begin to train his disciples to be a core group; the nucleus of this thing that we will soon call Church. We often note the forgiveness of God, the love and compassion and the mercy of God. But the first instruction the disciples receive from Jesus is about the demands and expectations that God has of those who would be followers of Jesus. Brothers and sisters, the gospel before us today is not an easy message. Having invited them to be his followers, the first things Jesus tells the disciples is that this journey of faith is going to involve danger and risk; this will be a costly journey. It will take him to Jerusalem and once there he will undergo great suffering at the hands of the religious leaders and be killed, and on the third day be raised. He goes on to say that any who want to become a disciple must take up their cross also and follow him. Jesus is absolutely clear. Being a follower is not going to be a bunch of fluffies. It will involve engagement in the nitty-gritty of life and death, the struggle against small mindedness and roots of human sinfulness. Disciples of Jesus need to be prepared for this. They will need stamina and resilience; they will have to be tough, and they must be ready for the cost.

There is a cost to being a follower of Jesus perhaps for two reasons. One is that Jesus is committed to loving the world and all of us within it. A love that is committed to staying in relationship will do so even when it hurts. On a simple level, that means living the vision that St Paul offers in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is not selfish or rude. It does not insist on its own way. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God is the love that stays connected to us even when we are messing things up. Love does not run away when things are getting difficult. This is the love that the teacher demonstrates in the movie. When the authorities start bullying him to do things the way they want; the teacher could have caved in to their demands. But he did not. He stood by them even though he knew that in doing so, his job and his career would be at risk. Jesus offers this kind of love. Jesus is the love bears all things, endures all things and hopes all things. He calls us to be ambassadors of this love, even when it means putting aside our own agenda, and even when it means risking our reputation and well being. This is the beginning of what Jesus means when he calls us to take up our cross. He calls us to share a Love that looks beyond ourselves.

The second reason that being a follower of Jesus will be costly is because Jesus is Truth. As he goes about his ministry he exposes truth, and speaks truth. There will be many who will not like this. This was the experience of Jeremiah too. Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet was strong. He describes the Word of God as being like beautiful food, almost like bait on the end of a fishing line. Once the food is swallowed, he finds himself irrevocably hooked by God. Jeremiah says in his prayer that the word of God is a delight, a source of joy to him, such that his mandate for being a prophet has become the overriding reality of his life. But the problem for Jeremiah is that the task God gives presents a heavy burden. Jeremiah is sent to the king and nobles of Jerusalem to give them an unpalatable message: that the King of Babylon will prevail against them; that the Egyptians will turn out to be a hopeless, unreliable, and self interested ally who will disappear when the crunch comes; and that Jerusalem should prepare a peaceful surrender rather than a foolhardy attempt to defend itself. Poor Jeremiah is accused of treason and of undermining the morale of the people. At various points he is thrown down a well, left for dead, put in stocks, and generally mocked by everyone. He is left without friends, a social outcast; just like the teacher in the movie. In hindsight, Jeremiah turned out to be the only prophet who spoke realistic truth. The advice of all the others became hollow words. Our reading today is his no holds barred prayer of lament, in which Jeremiah complains to God in a pretty forthright manner about the fact that he has become socially isolated. He says to God that he is in continual pain because of the heavy and demanding call that God has placed upon him. The point of course: Jeremiah has been faithful to the demanding call of God, and it’s brought nothing but trouble. And yet God gives Jeremiah hope and strength to continue. This will be the story of Jesus. He knows that the path before his will be fraught with danger, that his disciples will be at risk as well, and that they will need to be well resourced and well trained to cope with what is to come. So it will be with us. The journey with Jesus will require endurance and the ability to stick to the task even when everything looks wrong. It will involve taking up the cross.

Up until now the disciples have really only witnessed the upside of being a disciple. Jesus has celebrity status at this point in the story. The temptations for the disciples were to think the journey of faith would all be about fame, being popular, riding in like the lone ranger to the rescue with yet another miracle, the chance to watch Jesus put the authorities down with yet another wise crack. So Jesus has to tell them that the real task of being a disciple is still to be discovered. It will be about loving others even if it means putting your own life at risk. It will involve facing the painful truth about themselves and speaking truth to people who will not want to hear it. In short, it will mean disciples who can be brave and courageous for God, but also disciples who understand the humble servanthood that the gospel requires. St Paul described this in terms of allowing our egos to die and putting our God given gifts at the service of the Gospel for Christ’s sake. It may mean that God calls us to be the teacher of the movie Dead Poets Society, not to be the hero, but for the sake of God’s goodness, love and truth, and for the sake of Christ and the Good News he died to bring us.

This why we rehearse the story of Jesus’ death Sunday by Sunday as we celebrate the Eucharist. It reminds us that our lives are to be a living sermon that demonstrates a love that looks beyond ourselves, a love that is surprisingly unafraid and free. The Good News is that suffering and death never have the last word. God says to Jeremiah, “I am with you. I will deliver, I will redeem”. The witness of Jeremiah is that his prayer expressing his disappointment, by the grace of God, turns to hope and trust. The more risk we are able to take for God, the more we find that God’s restoring, creative presence can be seen and trusted. Jesus said, “Take up your cross.” In other words, be brave in your loving and courageous in seeking truth. And after he was raised from the dead Jesus also said, “Do not be afraid. I am with you to the end of world.” That is absolutely clear. That is good news and that is our hope.

The gospel today contains a turning point in the story of Jesus. Jesus has been faced a great deal of hostility in his ministry. This hostility has been growing, especially after the episode we reflected on last Sunday when Jesus abolishes the traditions around the food laws, thus beginning the process of tearing down the fences that blocked access to the table of the kingdom; fences and hoops that had been erected by religious leaders of his day. As you can imagine, the religious leaders were people with long memories and while Jesus may have got one over them this time, they will be back later and at an opportune time with big sticks with which to strike back at Jesus.

So now Jesus turns away from Galilee and the crowds to concentrate on forming the disciples. His goal will be to make them into a nucleus, a core group, who would become the new people of God, soon to be called the Church. This is going to be journey of trust and of growing in faith. It will involve going up to Jerusalem where Jesus will suffer and die, and it will take the disciples on an adventure that will transform their lives in ways they can never imagine. For the disciples, this will be a pilgrimage. One of the downsides of being in New Zealand, so far from the ancient holy places in the Middle East and in Europe, is that we don’t tend to go on pilgrimages to ancient holy places very often. If you ever get the chance to go on a pilgrimage: take it! They are lots of fun. They also may involve an arduous journey and much preparation. England has a number of places of pilgrimage. Elizabeth and I went to Walsingham in the late 1980s where there were bus loads of people coming to keep a religious festival. There were amazing processions that went for miles all the way around the town. There was an amazing range of leaders from all sorts of religious traditions wearing funny hats. People went to a sacred well to wash in water that was said to have healing qualities. There was incense, people chanting prayers everywhere. The pubs were bulging. The shops were full of trinkets. The atmosphere was vibrant and electric.

One of the reasons why people came on these pilgrimages was so that they could be taught the faith, not just hear about it, but so that they could physically live into it and enjoy a time of deep fellowship and prayer and closeness to God. Lots of the people there had made arduous journeys to get there. They were enjoying making new friends, and they were enjoying a greater intimacy with God. But one of the key things people were looking for was a closer connection with God, and a chance to deepen their faith and to be refreshed in their faith journey.

Many people found Jesus a confusing person. It was hard to work him out. He was sometimes elusive, going away into the mountains to pray or walking on water instead of travelling in the boat. He spoke in riddles and parables that some people found difficult to understand. Some people thought he was Jeremiah. Some said he was John the Baptist. Some said he was Elijah. In a flash of insight, Peter sees Jesus for who he really is: The Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Peter has been listening to the teaching of Jesus now for quite a while. He has been mesmerised by what he has heard. He is seeking faith, and the gift of faith has been granted to him.

Faith is not something we conjure up. It is not a package of beliefs we get by learning a creed off by heart or a formula we learn from a book. It is relationship and it is a journey. That is why a pilgrimage can be important, and why the imagery of pilgrimage and journeying is so prominent all through the bible. It reminds us that faith is a journey, that we need lots of time – leisurely ‘journeying together’ for that relationship to deepen and grow. We are all on a journey with God, and we are here because we are seekers, wanting to know Jesus more and grow closer to him.

Isaiah talks about listening to God, as we heard in the first reading before us today. At this point in Isaiah’s poetry, the prophet is still addressing the faithful in exile. The Babylonians are most probably the mockers and the revilers. They are the ones who mock Israel’s particular identity and rub in their status as defeated prisoners. Yet, the prophet invites them to recall the miraculous blessing God has given to Israel in the most unlikely circumstances. Abraham and Sarah were comforted long ago with the birth of Isaac in old age and they went out into the unknown because they lived into a future God was promising but was yet still unseen. So now for the exiles, the force of “new creation” will be enacted on the wounded and beloved people. The promise of a new beginning is not the only reason for listening to God. The people of Israel are invited to trust the teaching of God, which will be transformative, durable and reliable. God is inviting them to be a brave people, a people of courage, to live again into a counter identity rooted in God’s promise, as opposed to the expectations of the imperial and secular power brokers of the day.

So now, Peter has come to recognise Jesus as the trustworthy, reliable and durable Word-Made-Flesh. In a flash of insight given by God, he sees that Jesus is God’s unique agent of God’s restoration, healing, life and hope. We see in Peter the beginning of faith, the recognition of who Jesus is and a longing to be close to him, to listen to him, and to travel with him.

And that is our task. The journey of faith is not so much about acquiring knowledge about God, or knowledge about the bible or about the Christian faith, although this kind of study is very important. It is most of all about going on a journey with Jesus, being attentive to him in our prayer so that we begin to think the way he does, act as he would, and speak as he would. In other words, our hearts and our minds grow to be more and more Christlike. This is something that the grace of God does in us as we grow closer to Christ and seek to be more like him. This is the process of growing to be at one with God. I have heard many sermons say that when Jesus died he saved us from our sins. But the process of growing to be at one with God is much more than having sins wiped away so that we can be close to him. As we are invited to grow to be more and more like Christ, the Spirit of God elevates us into a new state of being. Greek Christians call this a process of Deification, in which the Spirit of God acts to raise us up to be more and more like Christ. So when Jesus tells Peter that on this rock I will build my church, he is saying that as we grow closer to him and more like him, he will make us into a temple made with people, a temple that will reflect his glory.

So today, Jesus is inviting us all to begin a journey. You may have been on this journey for a while, but as St Theresa of Avila said, God invites us to begin again often, to treat each point in our journey with God as a new starting point. So will you come on a journey? Well, be warned that this may not be an easy journey. The journey that Jesus travelling is a journey that involved in the struggle against injustice and the roots of human sinfulness. That means that the journey for Jesus will be a journey to the cross. Along the way, he will have to show the disciples that being like Jesus will involve servanthood, humility, self giving, and commitment.

But this will also be the most life giving journey of all. For being close to Christ is to be filled with his joy and hope and love. The closer we are to him, the more we know him, the more we will be filled with his life, his peace and his joy. He will make us into his holy people, a royal priesthood, a people after his own heart, and everything else will seem less important. This is what he is promising to do for Peter in the text before us today. He invites us to join him on the journey as well, to be brave enough to go on a journey of faith as Abraham and Sarah did, trusting only the promise of God. Jesus is beckoning you too, to come on a journey of faith, to allow him to make you into one of the building blocks of the kingdom, and to go on a most amazing adventure with God and his holy people. Thanks be to God.

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people. God had called Abraham and Sarah and made them a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people after his own heart. And then down through the ages God continue to call them and to nurture them. God was with them when they went down into Egypt. He called and sent Moses to be their leader when it was time to call them out. God gave them the law, made a covenant with them and gave them the Promised Land in which to make a dwelling.

It is hard for us to understand what it meant to be the chosen people of God. It is more likely that we will think of “being chosen” in negative terms. Kiwi people tend to think that anyone who thinks they are special in some way need to be brought down to size and kept in their place. Sir Ed Hillary is probably a very good example of a person who has a special place in our history, and yet when he was alive he insisted that he was just an ordinary kiwi bloke. Goodness knows if we let anyone think they are special they will get swollen heads. But this is not the way the bible portrays God’s relationship with Israel. Israel is often thought of as bride, someone God’s longs to seduce, to be with. It’s a love story where God and Israel are spouses enjoying a loving and faithful relationship. The relationship is to be a blessing to the world, not an opportunity to gain power or status or to make people feel superiour. Israel’s mission was to engage with God in such a way that they would be a blessing to others. So the biblical witness is quite clear. The people of Israel are God’s chosen people. Jesus was Jewish, and through him Gentile Christians are grafted on to the tree of Israel.

Having said that the Kiwi psyche is well attuned to any sign of arrogance that can come from a group viewing itself as the chosen and special ones. Rules can be made to bolster the identity of the chosen ones, to make clear who is in and who is out, who is special and who is not. In the contemporary situation, notice now the secular drive in the United States to “gain control of our borders” and exclude “illegal aliens”. The questions on the immigration cards that one fills in now when you enter the USA are classic. “Are you a terrorist?” is one of them. The rules become a fence around the table so that only the special ones can get there. If we imagine the kingdom of God as a table around which the people of God are seated, with Jesus as the host, the laws of the Pharisees have become a fence. Follow the rules they say, and you can sit with us at our table. Naturally, being in the right ethnic group all helped.

The prophecy of Isaiah though, radically expands the vision of God’s kingdom. The first reading today was addressed to the exiles not long after they had returned home from Babylon. Here God is the exile-breaker. That is God’s identity. He wants to end alienation and loneliness. God intends a homecoming for everyone. He wants to be in communion, to be in community with all peoples. Those who love God’s name, who want to be God’s servants, who want to hold fast to deep and close covenant relationship with God: these people will be welcomed by God into the kingdom.

But that is a radical programme for a community who just want to celebrate its chosen-ness. There were plenty of communities who read Isaiah’s vision but thought it in need of serious correction. The Qumran community for example, was a community which removed itself and went out into the desert to live a radically religious life of simplicity and austerity. When they read these passages in the book of Isaiah, they said, “Yes, we can include Gentiles.” But, they said, what Isaiah meant to say is that there will be a demanding initiation process for Gentiles, and once they are in there will still be an ordered hierarchy, which they described in detail. Gentile converts, of course, found that their place was a long way down the pecking order.

So the scene is set. Jesus knows Isaiah’s prophecies. In fact, Isaiah’s vision shapes a great deal of Jesus’ own self understanding. So Jesus begins to remove the metaphorical fence, the teaching of the religious people of his day that made it nearly impossible for you and me to sit at the table of God. Out go the food rules, the requirement for washing hands and so on. Jesus is putting in place Isaiah’s vision in all its radical simplicity: what matters is the state of our hearts, our openness to God, our ability to come to him with humble hearts. Out go the restrictions on other ethnic groups, all will gather together around one table. This is the point of being the priestly people of God, a holy nation. It’s not so that we can bolster up a privileged place with God, not to show that we are more holy than everyone else, and certainly not to prove that I am in and you are out or that I am more special than you are. The whole point of being a priestly people is to enable others to be in relation with God. Jesus was saying that the rules are stopping that, so then, they have to go. And that was Jesus was doing, and it became one of the reasons that Jesus found himself on the wrong side of the authorities.

Brothers and sisters, this is risky stuff. Building fences is such a human thing to do. Fences are so easy to build: the unwritten rules that send signals that children are not allowed because they make a noise or leave a mess; the unwritten rules that say only middle class white people are allowed here. What fences have we put up? The gospel calls us to tear them down!

Breaking down the fences to enable people to be with God is what we are to be about. That is what it means to be part of the priesthood of all believers. It means that all of us are tasked with removing barriers between people and God. Our task is to present God to others, to speak our faith with confidence and joy and hope; a hope that comes from knowing that God makes room for all and gives everyone who wants to know him a place to dwell and a future to live into.

Interestingly, Jesus was well aware of this. But reforming a few eating rules here and there was one thing. The rubber hit the road when he met the Canaanite woman in the Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon. Suddenly all the prejudices he was brought up with came to the fore. When she asks for help he insults her by calling her a “gentile dog”. Her response shows a great deal of wit. “Yes but even the dogs eat the crumbs from under your table.”

Heavy stuff! Here is Jesus showing no compassion; here is Jesus having to be reminded of his mission and the identity that God is calling him into. And that reminder is coming from an outsider: a gentile woman. That would have been a hit to the ego if ever there was one. Here is Jesus still learning. Dare I say it, God is showing Jesus something through this woman, calling him deeper into a new identity and a new way of being?

The unnamed woman is a person on the edge of society. People on the edge know what it is like to suffer, to be treated badly, to be ignored, to be under valued. That is why we need to listen to them because they are the ones who understand the gospel so clearly. They know what it is to receive God’s grace and to hear that they are profoundly loved by God. They know what it means to be welcomed by God and given a place at the table. Today, Jesus shows that he is big enough to learn about God from an outsider, from someone on the edge.

So in the words of Isaiah, join yourselves to the Lord once again. Come and eat and drink bread and wine together with the Lord. Come with humble hearts, hearts ready for God to enlarge to make room for the stranger. Listen to what the stranger has to say about God. And know this. God is one who ends exile and loneliness and isolation. We know that because God has already welcomed you and me. He is bringing you home and providing a dwelling place for you in his temple forever and ever.

We are gathered here today to celebrate one of our parish’s special days, the Patronal Festival for the church of St Anne. Sermons on St Anne in this parish traditionally begin by saying that we know virtually nothing about St Anne. We note every year that St Anne does not appear in the New Testament; and that the tradition that we have received really comes from mediaeval piety about Mary, sometimes called Mariology (which is just a fancy word meaning “Mary talk” or talk about Mary). According to this Mariology, the story of St Anne is a construction based on the life of Hannah, the mother of Samuel in the First Testament. Hence we have the name Anne, which is a variant of Hannah.

According this legend, St Anne becoming the mother of the Virgin Mary comes about in a miraculous way. God works a miracle! Anne and her husband Joachim are devout and righteous but they are also childless. Both Anne and Joachim are visited by angels, they meet at the golden gate at Jerusalem and kiss, and hey presto, Mary is conceived and eventually she is born. If anyone is keen to offer a re-enactment today, please feel free, although given the Anglo-Saxon heritage of many of us, we would appreciate it if any displays of affection don’t go too far!

So today we are going to think a little about miracles, because a miracle is at the centre of this story about St Anne. The miracles of God that we hear of all through the bible present a range of problems to the modern mind. On the one hand we believe that God cares for everyone equally, and loves everyone to the same degree. Yet in the stories of miracles, it appears to modern ears that God singles out certain people for special attention. And that becomes puzzling for some people. We cover miracles in year 7 and 8 at St Mark’s school, and every year someone will ask, “If God performed a miracle for that person, what about all the others who missed out?” Well that is a good question and a fair one that sharpens the dilemma around the issue of miracles; why is it that one person experiences a miracle and the other does not? We all pray for them from time to time. But the idea that God is able to single some people out for salvation, while leaving others to perish or suffer is one of the questions that will arise.

The underlying question here is really about the nature of God, and our ability to understand God. Sometimes we find ourselves disappointed with God, even angry with God for letting us down somehow. But more often than not, when we look back, it is our understanding of God that has had to change. Or we have learned more about ourselves and we find we have changed in some way too.

Nevertheless, in the bible God’s care for his people is often expressed through a miracle. That is the point of the miracle of St Anne conceiving Mary. Anne and Joachim are people who know who to trust, how to wait on God. And God coming to them is an expression of his great love for them. Essentially, that is what miracles are. They are stories and word pictures of the breakthrough of God’s extraordinary love and care that have come down to us from previous generations of Christians. These experiences of God’s love are so profound and so life changing, that the biblical writers and saints of old describe them to us in the language of miracles. That means miracles can still happen and still do happen, because God is always longing to love us just as profoundly today as he loved the people of ages past. Miracles of all shapes and sizes are happening all around us everyday, and one of our spiritual tasks is that of discernment: taking time each day to notice the points in our lives where God’s love has touched us, to recognise the miracle and then offer thanks to God for those moments. Perhaps that was St Anne’s gift, not so much that she became pregnant, but that she was able to discern that moment as a gift from God, a gift of profound love and care.

After all the earthquakes and aftershocks there has been the odd mention of miracles. It was said that it was a miracle that no one died in our Cathedral on 22 February. Usually when we talk about miracles in this way, we are thinking of something unlikely happening, or the near impossible. For instance, we hear of a huge pile up of cars on the road, but this one driver escaped uninjured. Someone survives for days under the rubble of a collapsed building and is rescued, and it’s a miracle. Yes, these things are miracles, but this kind of way of talking about miracles leaves out God. It just concentrates on the unusual event, but not on what God has done or is doing. These are stories of something freakish happening, statistical oddities. But a miracle in the Christian sense of the word is much more than this. A miracle is something that God does, and it’s about being brought close to God, to a point where we know we held profoundly in God’s love and care. Again, this is why we remember St Anne. We might know little about her. But we do know that Jesus was fully human, that therefore he had a grandmother. The tradition being transmitted to us is that his grandmother was a person of prayer, someone who trusted God, and who knew what it was like to be loved by God. That is the point of the legends about St Anne, and I am sure she would have passed that knowledge on to the young Jesus when he was born.

Nevertheless, the other side of this subject concerns the people who are desperate for a miracle and nothing happens. As we gather today there are people in Somalia and the horn of Africa who are desperately hungry, hungrier than we can ever imagine. Some will die today, and tomorrow, and the next day. Some of the dead will be children. Does God care about them? Do we care?

We ought to be praying every day for a miracle to happen for them. Not to pray for them is neglect. It may be that nothing miraculous will happen for them. But that is not a cause for us to doubt God’s love and care for them. It is not possible for us to understand all the mysteries of God. But what we do know from the countless stories all through the bible and from the saints of old, is that God’s love is steadfast and can be trusted, even if our lives at the present seem full of unresolved pain or full of injustices that leave us feeling numb.

The question is, does God care, and do we care? Yes, of course God cares. Our care is expressed through our prayer, which we pray repeatedly and often for those who are in severe need. But are care does not end there. All through the bible God calls his people to put their prayer into action. The gospel calls us to care for the stranger, to feed the hungry, to provide water for the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to care for the sick, to visit those who are in prison. We do that because we already know what it means to be loved by God, and because we want to pass on the grace we have received to others. And when we face Jesus at the last day, we will have to front up to the extent we have been there for others, passing on to them God’s love and care.

The miracle we experience Sunday by Sunday takes place here at this table. The miracle is that Jesus is here, present in this celebration. He is here offering his life. He is making present the same costly love that he displayed on the cross. He feeds us with his body and blood. Having experienced the miracle here, may the grace of God help us see the miracle of God’s love present in the places we live and work and play, and may God open our hearts to extend the love and care we have received from God to those we meet and to those in need.