The Leper (6th Sunday after Epiphany, 15th February, 2015, Mark 1:40-45)

 The Leper 

 6th Sunday after Epiphany, 15th February, 2015, Mark 1:40-45

          The Gospel of Mark doesn’t shilly-shally. It’s short and to the point. It starts in the middle of the action, and it moves fast, wasting no words. In the first chapter, just a page and half in a typical bible, this is what we get:
     John the Baptist preaches in the desert;
     John baptises Jesus;
     The Spirit of God descends upon Jesus;
     Jesus announces that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;
     Jesus calls four disciples to follow him;
     Jesus teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum;
     Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a sick man;
     Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law;
     Jesus heals many other people;
     Jesus goes into the desert to pray;
     Jesus preaches in other synagogues in Galilee;
     Jesus heals a leper;
     Jesus withdraws into the desert to escape the crowds.

     That’s quite a list. Mark doesn’t give us much in the way of dates and times; he wasn’t writing an essay for a history course. But it’s clear that this first chapter covers a lot of ground and time, many miles, and many days if not weeks.
     Mark also doesn’t give us much in the way of help about how to understand the stories of Jesus’s ministry that he has chosen to tell us. He simply tells us what happened, sometimes saying it was the next day, sometimes not. For example, he mentions in passing that John was put in prison. We are left to infer that some time must have passed between Jesus’s baptism and this event.
     Then there’s Mark’s narrative method. In some places he uses dialogue to move the story along, for example when Jesus tells Simon and Andrew he will make them fishers of men. In other places, he uses dialogue to slow down the story, so that we will dwell on that event a little longer, as in the healing of the leper. And many things are merely mentioned, such as the teaching and preaching in the synagogues. Jesus did that, but Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus said. In many ways, Mark’s Gospel is more of a chronicle than a history. History deals not only with what happened, but with why, with people’s motives and desires and goals, how they achieved their goals, or not. And so on.
   Mark usually just tells us “This happened, then this happened, then that happened.”

     So we have to pick up every hint of meaning that we can. There are two here that I noticed among many. First, in the second half of this chapter, Jesus’s ministry consists of preaching and healing. Second, there are references to his growing fame. People were talking. People were talking a lot. And Jesus wasn’t exactly happy about that.
     What are the lessons can we draw from this first chapter of Mark?

     Let’s start with the leper. Leprosy is a nasty disease. It can be cured with antibiotics these days, but it can still cause disfigurement. In Jesus’s time, its causes weren’t understood, and there was no cure. Lepers were outcasts, they were homeless. They were allowed to beg by the roadside, but they were not allowed to live in town. No one touched them, no one even handed food to them. They had to leave their bowls by the side of the road, then go away while someone came by to bring food.
     Imagine being told you have to leave home because of your illness. Imagine people being afraid of you because of your illness. Imagine people not even looking at you when they give you a coin.
     Jesus heals the leper, and he tells him, “Don’t talk to anybody; but show yourself to the priest, and perform the sacrifices according to the law.”
     So the leper dances off. Well, I think of him as dancing off, I mean wouldn’t you dance if you’d just been healed of a horrible disease that made you an outcast? He dances off, shows himself to the priest, and starts talking to everybody whose ears are close enough about this wonderful thing that’s happened to him, and who did it. So much so, that Jesus was recognised everywhere he went, and had to go to less populated places. Yet still people came to see and hear him.
     By curing him, Jesus gave the leper his life back. He could once again be a part of his family and community. No wonder he told everybody about the wonderful thing Jesus had done. Wouldn’t you?

     Why then did Jesus tell the leper to keep it quiet? Jesus had no qualms about preaching and teaching in the synagogues. He didn’t object when people admired his insights into the Torah and the Commentaries. Mark tells us that he went all over Galilee preaching and casting out devils, and healing people of diverse diseases.
     To understand Jesus’s unwillingness to have the leper talk about his healing we have to look further. Jesus makes the same request of some other people he healed. And most significantly, he complains that people want him to perform signs and wonders.  He doesn’t want people to believe his message just because they see him doing miracles. He wants them to understand his message and apply it to their own lives. Miracles can be a distraction.

     If we consider the miracles that Jesus did, we can see a pattern, a pattern that reinforces Jesus’s message to us. The miracles weren’t merely tricks that demonstrated his power. They weren’t designed to amaze us. They weren’t even proofs that he was the Son of God. The disciples performed miracles, too. So did Elijah. Magicians do things that seem impossible. In both Jesus’s day and ours, most magicians made a living entertaining people, and some made a living deceiving people. Why would Jesus want to compete with them?
     Well, he didn’t. All of Jesus’s miracles helped people. He cured their diseases. He filled their bellies. He calmed their fears. In his very first miracle he turned water into wine at a wedding. He turned what could have been a failed celebration into a better feast than the groom had planned. His miracles all remove pain, the pain of illness, the pangs of hunger, the anguish of fear, the misery of social disgrace.
     In short, Jesus’s miracles made life better for people. That’s the first lesson for today.

     The second lesson comes from an earlier part of this first chapter of Mark: The kingdom of God is at hand, says Jesus. That’s the framework, the context, the purpose of Jesus’s ministry. Repent, and believe the good news, he says. The good news is that he’s come to make our lives better in every way, physically, socially, spiritually. And Mark’s focus throughout his account is on how Jesus does just that. This first chapter sets up two major themes of Mark’s Gospel: That the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that Jesus heals us.

     The healing of the leper touches on both of these themes. It touches on healing directly, and on the presence of the Kingdom of God indirectly. The healing of the leper is the healing of an outcast. We aren’t likely to get leprosy these days, and we no longer have rules and regulations that would make us homeless if we do get it. But there are many ways in which we can be outcasts, or feel like one.
     It’s terrible to feel outcast, to be an outsider because other people don’t want you. In my first draft of this meditation, I had a long passage about mental illness and homelessness, and the helplessness we feel when someone we love suffers from an illness, any illness at all. It was quite a downer, so I’ve decide to focus on how today’s Gospel story reassures us.
     It reassures us that Jesus will heal us, that he will be there when healing is needed. The leper faced a lifetime of slowly increasing pain and ugliness, and of being shunned by his people. His future looked dark, and looked to be getting darker. Jesus changed that. He changed that because the leper asked him for healing. Make me clean, he said, I know you can do it. And Jesus did it.

     When we are so far down that we think there’s no way up, we too can ask Jesus to heal us. And one way or another, Jesus will do that. He may help us change the way we see ourselves and our situation so that we can see a way out. He may help us trust friends and family to support us as the body and the mind heal. He may give us the confidence to hang in there until things get better. He may lead us to a healer, a spirit guide, a doctor, who will use their gifts to bring us out of the darkness. He may grant us a vision of himself that will energise us so that we can move on and up, away from depths that threaten to drown us.
     For you see the story of the leper is also a story about the power of prayer. If you pray with faith, your prayer will be answered. Prayer is not a magic spell. Prayer is a way of connecting with the Spirit, and that Spirit will enable us to recognise what has been there all along, the healing power of faith and trust in the One who embodied love.

     Accept that love when it’s offered.
     Offer that love when it’s needed.

     Let us pray.
     Lord God, who made us, saved us, and keeps us, grant us so to trust you that we will pray for your healing power. Give use the humility to recognise that healing when it is offered, and the confidence to offer that healing when we see the need. We ask this in the name of the One who healed us all by his death on the Cross. Amen.

 Repentance 

 [2nd Sunday of Lent, 21st February, 2016, Luke 13:31-35]
     Today’s Gospel story is one of the more difficult ones. Jesus says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
     That’s not exactly a happy speech. It’s one of Jesus’s harshest sayings. It sounds very much as of he’s writing off Jerusalem, and I suppose in a way he is. However, looking at it in terms of the Passion of Christ, there is what looks like a smidgen of hope:  and I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. When Jesus returns to Jerusalem, the people will welcome him with just those words. But a few days later they will shout Crucify him! Crucify him!
     What’s going on here?
     When I read the Bible, I never stop with just the facts of the story. Any story about some specific people is also a story about us, about you and me. Every story shows us something about what it means to be human, about how people behave, about what matters to them, about the choices they make and why they make them. What makes the stories in the Bible so believable is that the stories show us all these things. And that means that every story in the Bible has some meaning beyond itself. Usually, the easiest of these meanings is how the story applies to us, here and now.
     So I will talk about how this incident in Jesus’s ministry applies to us.
     But Bible stories aren’t just about humans. They are also about God. Every story shows us something about how we relate to God, about how God relates to us, and how this relationship affects and shapes the way we relate to each other. I take it for granted that understanding the Bible means understanding these aspects of the Biblical story too.
     Let’s start with the story itself.
     Jesus was expanding his ministry, and that was causing trouble. People came and listened to him, and they wanted to know what they could or should do to enter the Kingdom of God. In chapter 13, Luke includes several parables. There’s the one about the fig tree, in which the keeper of the orchard asks for one more chance to fertilise the ground so that the tree might bear fruit. If it fails, it will be uprooted and burned.
     There’s the comparisons of the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, and to yeast. You are the yeast, he tells his disciples. You need yeast to make bread. And the one about the house shut against those who claim a right to enter it, but the door is barred against them. There will be weeping and wailing among those who are on the wrong side of the door.
     There’s a healing, too. A woman has suffered for eighteen years, bent double with what we would call severe arthritis. Jesus healed her. But he healed her on the Sabbath, which annoyed the rulers of the synagogue, who complained that Jesus broke the law. Whereupon Jesus pointed out that necessary work, such as watering one’s animals, was permitted, so why not the work of healing?
     There’s also one of the most famous of Jesus’s sayings, The last shall be first and the first shall be last. There’s no way around its meaning: What we think of as being important does not match what God wants.
     One of the major themes of Luke’s Gospel is that the established order of things will be overturned. The Kingdom of God is at hand, and the Kingdom of God is not, as Jesus says, “of this world.” It’s not organised the way this world is organised. It’s not based on the values of this world. It’s not one in which it’s enough to obey the law and be respectable and behave like everybody else and not cause trouble. It’s not a Kingdom in which the great movers and shakers will rule, as they do in this world. It’s not a world in which power and wealth matter.
     It’s radically different.
     Over and over again, in his parables and in his sermons, Jesus condemned power and wealth. Over and over again, in his talk and in his actions, Jesus warned against mistaking the outward show of piety and moral worth for the real thing. Over and over again, Jesus said that to seek the Kingdom of God means giving up the things that bring success in this world.
     And that’s why the authorities were more than a little annoyed at him. That’s why Herod wanted to get rid of him. A man who preaches radical moral and personal change preaches radical political and economic change, too. Radical change in one aspect of your life requires radical change in all aspects of your life. It’s all or nothing.
     Scary, really, to commit yourself to radical change. But that’s what Jesus expects of us.
     Some of the Pharisees were sympathetic to Jesus’s teachings, so they warned him about Herod’s plans, and for a while he escaped the danger. Some time later Jesus will return to Jerusalem, the crowds will welcome him with shouts of Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of God. And then he will be arrested, charged with blasphemy, convicted, and executed.
     But now, as he leaves Jerusalem, he says that he wished Jerusalem would hear his message. He wants to gather her in, he says, like a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings to protect them. He wants to save Jerusalem from itself, but it will not listen. It continues on its way, seeking wealth and power and worldly fame. He foresees that Jerusalem will be left desolate. Because it plays the game of power, it will be destroyed by people who play a stronger game. That is indeed what happened to Jerusalem more than once in its history. Just as it has happened to every city or nation that has played the power game.
     What does this mean for us?
     Well, I think we can see here several messages. Personal ones, that apply to how we choose to live our lives. Communal ones, about how we live and work and play together. Political ones, about how we do, and how we should, use power.
     But most of all, a warning: Choices have consequences. That’s obvious, but we keep trying to avoid those consequences. We sometimes say, But I had no choice. What we really mean is that the other choice was just too hard. And sometimes it is. But too often it was merely unpleasant or inconvenient. Or, like taking your medicine, it tastes bitter, but you need it. Children have a hard time accepting that. I trust that we grownups will take our medicine without complaining.
     It’s hard enough to accept that choices have consequences we may not like. It’s harder to accept that we have bad reasons for our choices. Ideas have consequences too, because ideas govern our choices. We choose what we choose because we believe some things are worth having. We justify our beliefs in all kinds of ways, with arguments, with appeals to habits, with excuses of one kind or another.
     And here is where it gets tricky. It gets up close up and personal. Because when we make a bad choice, we then try to excuse ourselves. Or we give an apology in which we claim that we take full responsibility, and do nothing. Or we blame someone or something else. We may even attack the accuser. Kill the messenger of bad news, and the bad news goes away, right?
     No, it doesn’t.
     We like to think of Jesus as meek and mild. Charles Wesley wrote a poem to this effect:
          Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
          Look upon a little child;
          Pity my simplicity,
          Suffer me to come to Thee.
     But as Luke reminds us, Jesus was often the messenger of bad news. Like John the Baptist before him, he reminded people that they had made the wrong choices. Powerful people don’t like to be told they are doing bad things. Neither do we, the less than powerful people. If we can’t ignore the messenger, we turn on him:  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her.
     Lent is the time the Church has traditionally set aside for us to contemplate the bad news, that we make bad choices, that we fail to love each other, that we resist the reminder that we have sinned and need to repent. Gloomy and dark, right? Well, it’s not completely gloomy and dark. Tied up inside that bad news is the good news: That by God’s grace we may repent, and so enter into the Kingdom. Jesus does not condemn the sinner. He warns the sinner. He offers a way out: Repent!
     I’ll end with a few thoughts about repentance.
     It’s not enough to feel guilty. For that matter, feeling guilty is merely a kind of shame. It doesn’t get you very far. When Jesus says Repent! he doesn’t mean “I want you to feel bad, because you did something bad”. The grammar teacher in me reminds you that “Repent!” is a verb in the imperative mood. It’s a command. You can’t command someone to feel a certain way. You can only command someone to act, to do something.
     So what is it that we should do when we repent?
     We should change the way we make choices. We should examine our reasons, our beliefs, our values, and when these tend to lead to bad choices, we should drop them or change them. We should put a lower value on our own convenience and pleasure, and a higher value on what’s good for us, and what’s good for other people. We should think not in terms of Will I like it? but in terms of Is it the right thing to do? We should ask Is it necessary? and not Do I want it?
     In short, we should shift our perspective, our point of view, our way of looking at things. We should try to look at other people and the world as creatures of God, and therefore worthy of our nurture, our support, our protection, and our love.
     When we take the command to repent seriously, we accept another command: To love God, and to love our neighbour.
     Let us pray.
     Lord God, you created us, you saved us, you help us. Grant us the grace of repentance, that we may think and speak and act in accordance with your will. Show us to how serve you by serving each other, so that our present life may be a foretaste of your Kingdom. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

A few thoughts about Taxes (2017-10-25)

Distilled from a sermon to provide a short meditation for a meeting.

 

     Jesus had a reputation as a teacher, as an interpreter of the law and the prophets. The Temple authorities didn’t like his teachings, so they tried to trap him. Teacher, they asked, is it lawful to pay taxes to the Romans? Many Jews believed that the only lawful taxes were for the upkeep of the Temple, so if Jesus’s answer was a simple Yes it could upset a lot of people. Bring me a coin, answered Jesus. Whose image do you see on it? It was of course Caesar’s image. Then pay to God what belongs to God, and pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, said Jesus.
     And like so many of Jesus’s answers, it raises more questions. Here, the questions are, What belongs to God? And what belongs to Caesar? Jesus leaves it up to us to figure it out. Like a Zen Master, Jesus wants us to think for ourselves.
     It seems to me the obvious answer is, Everything belongs to God, including Caesar and his Empire. But this answer is a puzzle too. For if it’s true, what does it mean to say This belongs to me? And That belongs to you? What is ownership, anyhow?

     We humans have developed a lot of rules and customs around ownership. There’s the negative rule, Don’t steal. That is, don’t take what does not belong to you. You need the owner’s permission to take that thing; for example, he may be willing to trade.
     There’s also the positive rule, Share what you have. Again, every society we know of has complicated rules and customs around that. You are supposed to give things away, but not just anything, and not just anytime. The rules of gift giving are mostly unwritten, and they constantly change. But as with buying and selling, we expect something in return, if not now, then later, and if not from the one we give it to, then from someone else.
     Oh, yes, ownership is a complicated business. So what looks like a simple answer is really a complicated one.
     Basically, ownership is a specific kind of control over the use of some thing or other. In trade and gift-giving, we expect things to balance out, to be fair. Give to God what belongs to God, and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That’s nicely balanced advice. Sounds fair, right?

     But what if it’s not really ours to give? If everything is a gift from God, it’s not really ours, is it? William Howe wrote a hymn about that:

     We give Thee but Thine own,

     Whate'er the gift may be;

     All that we have is Thine alone,

     A trust, O Lord, from Thee.
     Note that word “trust”. It reminds me of the parable of the talents. The master gave his servants money to take care of for him. Two were rewarded for investing the money and making a profit. One was punished. He did nothing with his capital.

     I came across a saying some time ago which goes like this: What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.

     There’s the same idea as in the parable. We must invest what God has given us so that we may return it to him showing a profit. How do we do that? By living according to his law, which is to love him and love our neighbour. We each have different talents, so we each have different ways of fulfilling the law.
     And oddly enough, when we do that we also render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. For Caesar too has a gift to invest, the gift of power and authority. Government is one of the methods we use to love our neighbour. We do this by keeping the peace, regulating trade, providing for common needs and wants, defending against those who would harm us, and so on. That’s what those taxes are supposed to be for.

     Lord God, show us how to use our treasure, talents, and skills to do the work of love you have given us to do. In Jesus’s name. Amen
     2017-10-25

The Road to Emmaus (3rd of Easter, 2024-04-14)

The Road to Emmaus

Easter 3, 14 April 2024, Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:13-35
© W. Kirchmeir The Gospel is not that listed in the RCL.

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     Today we’ve heard one of my favourite stories, the story of the two disciples travelling to Emmaus.
     They met a man going the same way. They started chatting with him about the recent events in Jerusalem. They became so engrossed in this conversation that they didn’t notice much about their fellow wanderer. What caught their attention was what he said, the questions he asked, the way he connected their thoughts and ideas to the scriptures. They wanted to continue the conversation, and besides, it was getting dark. In those days, night was definitely not a safe time to travel. So they invited him into their home and prepared a meal. When the stranger said the blessing over the bread, then they saw who he was: Jesus, the friend they had mourned since the day of Crucifixion.
     Try to imagine the shock.
     Try to imagine the mixture of joy, astonishment, awe, and hope when they recognised him.
     You can almost feel the twinge of self-doubt, knowing they had been talking with him for an hour or more without knowing who he was.
     Quite an emotional scene, this: so much so, that they hurried to tell Peter and the others about their wonderful encounter with a stranger who turned out to be Jesus.
     Why didn’t they recognise him? Well, there’s the odd psychological fact that we don’t actually see what’s in front of us. We see what expect to see. We don’t see what we don’t expect to see. In other words, we don’t see, we perceive. This odd and uncomfortable fact explains otherwise inexplicable collisions at intersections. But I didn’t see the stop sign! Yeah, tell me another one! – But psychologists have shown that in fact the hapless motorist did not see the stop sign.
     This error of perception is so common that psychologists have given it a name. They call it “selective inattention.” That’s a very helpful name, I think. Every parent, every teacher, every married couple knows exactly what it means.
     “Selective inattention.” It certainly helps explain what happened on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and his friend certainly did not expect to see a dead man walking along the road with them.

     Simply as a story, the road to Emmaus is an impressive achievement. There’s grief and hope. Could it be true what those women reported, that their murdered friend was alive after all? Hope aroused will be either fulfilled or denied. The disciples meet a stranger, and they talk to him about the very things that depress them, and that also give them hope. When they recognise the stranger  as the risen Jesus, hope is fulfilled.
     They now see the events that led up to this moment from a different angle. They now recall how intense the conversation was, how it led to insight and understanding, how they were absorbed in it. No wonder – for the stranger was Jesus.
     When the turning point in a story not only resolves the tension of the plot but recasts it in a new light, that’s great story telling. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve liked this story so much. A well-told tale has always pleased me.
     But as much pleasure as we may get from the sheer telling of the tale, there’s a good deal more here. There’s our reaction to the contents of the story. Surely, we think, we would have recognised Jesus! Surely we would have had some suspicions when Jesus begins his conversation with Did not the Christ have to suffer this and enter into his glory? Surely we would not have suffered from that selective inattention that plagued Cleopas and his companion?

     H’m. Really?

     It’s easy to forget that we have the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight. We suffer from a different kind of selective inattention. We don’t attend to the fact that we would have known exactly as much, and exactly as little, as those two disciples. I think it’s pretty certain that we would have behaved exactly like them.
     I’ll go further: I don’t think we have progressed much further from that incomplete understanding that the disciples had.
     We are no further along the road to Emmaus than they were.
     We too, suffer from selective inattention.
     We too fail to recognise Jesus among us.
     For Jesus is among us. He really is. I am with you always, he said.
     He’s not safely tucked away in some sunny blue heaven filled with fluffy white clouds and angels with golden harps. The right hand of God is not some place beyond this universe. Jesus has not left us behind to ascend to some unearthly planet beyond the sky, from where he watches us with some kind of super-telescope to make sure we do as we’re told.
      No, he’s here and there and everywhere. We just don’t always recognise him.
     Well, who am I kidding? We hardly ever recognise him!
     Why don’t we recognise him?
     Do our assumptions about class and respectability get in the way?
     Do our stereotypes about young and old, male and female, friends and strangers prevent us from seeing who is right there in front of us?
     Do our ideas about intelligence and smarts, about common ground, about people like us and people who are different, do these expectations interfere with our perceiving what our eyes and ears are telling us?
     Yes, and yes, and yes.

     Where is Jesus, then?
     Or maybe better, who is Jesus?

     He’s the homeless beggar sitting in front of Tim Horton’s on a busy downtown street.
     He’s the fellow parishioner sitting beside you in the pew every Sunday with whom you exchange the peace.
     He’s the bus driver taking you and 50 other tired people home after a long day.
     He’s the teacher who made you do an essay over again because he knew you could do a better job.
     He’s the girl at the checkout who rings up your groceries and smiles Hello.
     He’s the old lady who walks her dog up your street every day.
     He’s the scruffy man who holds the door for you at the post office.
     He’s the waitress who brings you a glass of water.
     He’s the neighbour who watches your house while you’re away for the weekend.
     He’s the club member who volunteers (yet again) to sit with you selling raffle tickets.
     He’s the guy staggering under an enormous backpack who’s getting on the bus to go planting trees up around Kenora.
     He’s the kid at the gas station who comes out to fill up your tank in a blizzard, while you wait in the warm car for him to finish.
     He’s the young man, oh so handsome in his uniform, who’s been deployed to Afghanistan, where he will see things you don’t want to imagine.
     Jesus is all these people and more.

     There’s more.
     Marie said she thought the story of the road to Emmaus is about sociability, about companionship on the journey. I think she’s right. She’s right because we need someone to accompany us on our journey of faith, someone to open up the scriptures to us, someone who will listen to our questions and help us grope towards an answer. That someone is Jesus.
     But like the disciples, you may not realise it. And when you do realise it, it may be not so much because of the serious discussion that you had, but because of a simple gesture of faith, such as saying the blessing over a meal.
     These insights may come in other ways, too. There’s the story of  the little boy whose Sunday school class had to memorise the 23rd Psalm. Although he practised and practised, he could hardly get past the first line. When his turn to recite the psalm came,, he stepped up to the microphone and proudly said, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know!"
     A charming story, isn’t it? Did the boy know the full meaning of what he was saying? Probably not. But we grown-ups are a little further along, we understand it, right?
     Well, maybe we do. These aha! moments are very satisfying. Finally, we’ve seen a truth we didn’t see before. But they are also troubling, for how many truths have we not yet seen? How much have we not understood?

     When a grown-up presumes to teach us what we need to know, we are less likely to be charmed. We may even be offended. Every pastor knows that sooner or later a sermon will upset someone in the congregation. Every preacher has felt the temptation to soft-pedal a hard message, to use the familiar words that comfort us because they are familiar, and won’t raise questions.
     Why? Because we all have different takes on what the Bible teaches. When we read the Bible we often suffer from selective inattention, and it prevents us from reading what we don’t want to hear.
     There is one message among many that these days seems to be selectively ignored: What you do to the least of these my brothers you do unto me. We like to think in terms of those among the poor that deserve our help and those that don’t. Not surprisingly, we tend to think that most of the poor don’t deserve our help. They aren’t like us, you see.
     There are those who believe that Jesus has gone away to some other place, and will return on some specific date to judge us all. He will take those who have the true faith up to heaven with him. For some reason, those who make this prediction are convinced only they will be among the elect. Well, we can scoff at these and other notions as the effect of misunderstanding biblical language. But when we do so, we may be selectively inattentive to the core of the message, which is that Jesus has risen, and lives.

     Remember what Paul wrote to Timothy, that all scripture is given to us for our understanding, that we may learn what we need to know. I think Paul really did mean “all scriptures”, that is, all written texts. Paul knew that the old texts he had studied as a young man were written by people long dead. But the insights and knowledge of those long dead seekers after truth were just as valuable as anything he heard anyone say. Writing is speech preserved for us, that we may hear what our ancestors have said.

     We need to listen to each other. We need to discuss, not argue. We need to share, not declare. Jesus showed Cleopas and his friend how the old writers from Moses onward had told the same story. How they had spoken of the Anointed One who heals us from sin. How asking the right questions leads to the best answers.
     We all have insights and understandings, and those insights and understandings are gifts of the Spirit. We need to pray that our eyes may be opened, that our selective inattention becomes more complete perception, that we may know Jesus in whatever form and person he reveals himself.

     We are on a journey; we have not yet reached its end.
     We are surrounded by travelling companions; Jesus travels with us.
     We wonder whether what others have testified is true; Jesus will reveal the truth.
     We are anxious about where the journey will lead us; Jesus assures us that we will arrive home safely.

Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, show yourself to be present among us. Give us the grace to see you in each other. Give us the heart to have compassion as you had compassion. Give us the wisdom to recognise your truth, and the humility to know how little we know. Guide us by your Holy Spirit, that we may live as you have shown us how to live, so that in our words and deeds your glory and your love may be revealed to all the earth. We pray in your name, O Lord, you who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Love (5th of Easter, 2010-05-02)

 Love 5th Sunday of Easter 2 May 2010 [John 13:31-35]

Love one another. That was Jesus’ last command to the disciples. Love one another as I have loved you, he said.

     I wish we would. I wish we could.
     What’s love anyway? Everybody knows that the word “love” refers to many things. What comes to mind when you hear the word? What does “I love you” mean to you? The Summary of the Law says you should love God and love your neighbour as yourself. What do you think that means? How do you imagine doing that? How do you imagine feeling about yourself? How do you imagine feeling about your neighbour?
     These are not easy questions to answer, but we have to start somewhere. So here are some random thoughts about love, which I may be able to tie up in a nice neat bundle at the end. Or not, as the case may be.
     James Thurber said that love is what you’ve been through with somebody. Someone who loves chocolate may have that in mind when they decide to have another piece. Or not, as the case may be.
     One thing is for sure. Love, however you define it, is risky. Tina Turner has a song What’s Love Got to Do with it? It’s a lover’s lament, a very common kind of love song, especially in country music. Lovin’ hurts. The love Tina sings about is painful:

What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love, but a sweet old-fashioned notion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?

     Leonard Cohen has a song about the pain of love, too:

There ain't no cure for love, there ain't no cure for love,
All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky,
The holy books are open wide, the doctors working day and night,
But they'll never ever find that cure for love.
There ain't no drink, no drug, ah, tell them, angels,
There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love.

     If pain is a sign and symptom of love, then love is a disease. Or not, as the case may be.
 

     I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982, basing it on a television series on war that he made for the CBC and PBS. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war. Dyer’s thesis is that civilisation and war were both born of the agricultural revolution in neolithic times, around 10 to 15,000 years ago. That change in food production led to an increasing human population, and eventually to the invention of cities. Cities have to be defended, so humans invented war. War and wealth accelerated developments of technology and science, and now war has become a suicidal institution.

      One thing is for sure: war is not an expression of love between nations. Maybe if nations could love each other the way people love each other, war might come to and end. Or not, as the case may be.

 

     Love can cause strife. Jealousy is a twisted, possessive form of love in which the lover cannot accept that his beloved may have a focus other than himself. He can’t tolerate the thought that someone or something else matters to his beloved

 

      Well, we could go on, but I don’t think we would find an answer to help us understand what Jesus is commanding us to do. The reason is simple: all the notions of love that I’ve touched on so far can’t be commanded. Love as understood in these examples is a condition, it’s a state of mind or emotion, it’s an attitude towards someone else, it’s a need or desire. You can’t command these, because they are not actions. You can command people to do something, but it’s pointless to command them to feel good about it.

     That’s the first insight: that love is an active verb. What Jesus is telling us is to do something, to perform certain kinds of acts, to make things happen.

 

     So what is he telling us to do? The fact is that the desires and feelings mentioned earlier do make us behave in certain ways. When we feel love for someone, we want to do things for them and with them. Do any of these desired actions fit what Jesus wants us to do? Maybe they do. But to answer the question, we have to understand somewhat better what we mean by the word “love.”

     C S Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves. In it, he discusses what people refer to when they say “I love”. He ignores the casual use of the word in expressions such as “I love chocolate”, because what we really mean is “I like chocolate a lot.” He talks about four kinds of love between and for other people.

 

     The first is affection, that good feeling we have towards people in our social and family circle. It’s affection that makes us happy to see them, and grieve when they are in trouble. It helps us get along with each other, it forms the bonds that make us into communities. Affection enables us to overlook and tolerate the minor flaws and quirks that would otherwise annoy us. It’s basic, and human, and starts and ends with familiarity. It’s that basic good feeling that grows out of living together in a family or community. It strengthens those ties, and that’s what makes it valuable. But we feel affection only towards those whom we know. Affection depends on physical presence; affection for someone you don’t know is impossible.

 

     Many of us think of affection as the basis of friendship, but Lewis says friendship goes further. Lewis was a great befriender. He knew that friendship can be a source of pleasure, joy, and satisfaction. He says that friends have in common a love for something outside themselves. You discover that someone else shares your pleasure in some activity, some aspect of the natural or human world, and that’s where your friendship starts. You like the same books, you meet on the golf course, you are both quilters or hunters, something draws you together. Friendship consists of doing things together, but the focus is outside yourself. That external focus makes friendship selfless in way that affection is not.

 

     A stronger love is eros, or being in love. That’s the love that Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen sing about. Lewis knows perfectly well that this love can be extreme or twisted or too self-centred, that it may be no more than an attraction to or a desire for an imaginary person, an ideal that we’ve formed. When we are first in love, we see the beloved not as she or he is, but as we want them to be. But at its best, eros changes into something stronger and more lasting than this fantasy attraction. It can make us aware of another person as a person. We love him or her because of who and what they are, with all their flaws and weaknesses, even despite their flaws and weaknesses.

     This love is powerful. Merely being in the beloved’s presence may be enough to make a bad day good. Eros may move us to sacrifice ourselves for the happiness of the beloved. Like friendship, eros may be selfless.

 

     The fourth love is charity. Lewis does not mean simply writing a cheque or dropping a toonie in the Sally Ann’s Christmas basket, although these actions may be valuable and necessary. He means love for other people just because they are people.

     And at this point action does become important. Charity is above all doing things for others. That’s why we think of charitable organisations as helping people, and automatically think of volunteers. You donate to the Cancer Society to help them help cancer patients and support research. You help out at Community Days. You volunteer to serve food at a parish supper. And so on. You do these things not because you like the people that will be helped, although you may in fact like them a lot. You do these things even if you do not know the people you are helping. And if you do know them, you may not like them, you may think they aren’t good or respectable enough, they aren’t your kind of people. This makes it difficult to help them. But you help anyhow. It’s what Jesus would do. It’s what Jesus actually did.

     And one of the odd things is that when you perform these acts of loving kindness, you may well develop affection or fondness for the people you help. You may even begin to see them as persons, not just as recipients of your charity. That’s why personal acts of charity are so important.

     And of course, charitable work is rewarding. People feel good about themselves when they see the good they’ve done for other people.

 

     These four kinds of love and loving and all their variations do feel good. Affection, friendship, eros, charity –  these all can and do make us feel very good. Life is better when we love. I think it’s this good feeling that makes it easy to think of love as simply a feeling. It’s also this good feeling which makes us seek love. But that good feeling may shift our focus from the person we love to the good feeling of loving. We may do what we do less for the sake of the other person, and more for the sake of ourselves. That’s when we discover that the good feelings of love don’t last, and we say that love doesn’t last, that our hearts can be broken.

     But what really happened is that we thought those feedings were the whole of it, the point of the game, what love is all about. We failed to see that love is what we do, not what we feel.

 

     So we come to the love of God, which in Greek is called agape  (ah-gap-eh), selfless love. The word agape is used in John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. It’s used in the Gospel we heard today.

     In the Christian context, agape refers to God’s love for us. That love is in itself an action. God’s love is seen in the act of creation. It’s seen in his gift of free will. It’s seen in his self-sacrifice when we misused that free will.

     We can aspire to return that love by loving each other with a selfless love. It’s not easy. It’s hard to feel affection for a person who is unlovable, and so it’s hard to do things for them. But that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to do. It’s not only here, as he takes leave of his disciples, that he says so. He has already said, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, turn the other cheek, if someone needs your coat give him your shirt too. Love your neighbour as yourself.

     Those are hard sayings, they go against our natural inclinations and then some. But we can try to do as Jesus has commanded. Start with little things. Practice the virtues of love. Patience is one. When someone for the 3,027th time does one of those little things that irritate you so much, bite your tongue, and say nothing.

     Kindness is another. Hold the door for someone who’s carrying two large bags of groceries. Better yet, carry them for her. Or him, as the case may be.

     Be generous. When the Kidney Foundation canvasser comes to the door, and you haven’t got a five dollar bill, give her a ten. If you have a fight with a family member, don’t insist on being right, but try to understand why they are angry. Plan how you will avoid causing that anger again.

     We could take all day sharing little nuggets of advice like these. But really, what have I said that you didn’t already know? We all know what to do. We learned it in kindergarten. We just need the will and the strength to do it. For that we need help. Jesus will provide that help, we only have to ask. We won’t change into perfect examples of loving kindness overnight, or even by the end of our lives. But we can and will do better.

     Jesus commands us to love each other as he loved us, selflessly, not because it feels good, not because it raises our self esteem, not because it’s rewarding, not because it’s fun, not because we like someone, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Let us pray.

Lord God, loving Father, Brother, and Friend: help us learn our failings, that we may correct them; and by your grace strengthen and guide us in the works of love that you have commanded us to do, that by our actions we may show your love and glorify your name. Amen.

Money (3rd in Lent, 2015-03-08)

 3rd Sunday in Lent: Money
(March 8, 2015)© Wolf Kirchmeir
 
[Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-22; John 2:13-22]

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is St John’s version of the Cleansing of the Temple. St John tells us that Jesus made a whip, and drove the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals from the temple. It’s told in a few verses in each of the four Gospels.

It’s an exciting story. Many artists have painted the scene. Imagine, Jesus wielding a whip, overturning tables, shouting at people, using harsh language: Take these things away. Do not make my Father’s house a place of merchandise. In another Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying My Father’s house is a house of prayer, you have made it a den of thieves.

Considering how few words are used to tell the story, it has attracted a lot of attention. Why is this? I think that it’s not just the drama of the event. I think it’s that this event touches on many questions which all relate to the single most basic one: What is life for? It does so in two ways. It shows us that money and wealth can be serious problems. And it symbolises the radical reorganisation of life, the universe, and everything, which Jesus offered in his ministry, and which culminates in his death on the cross.

Let’s have a closer look at the core of this event. Why did Jesus cleanse the Temple?  The simple answer is that he was deeply offended by the focus on doing business in the Temple. Sure, people needed to buy sacrificial animals, but trading in them was not what the Temple was for. Doing business was not the business of the Temple.

Does Jesus say anything about money and wealth anywhere else? He sure does. He points out how the widow who donates one dollar gives a much larger proportion of her wealth than does the Pharisee who gives a hundred. He tells the young lawyer that he should sell everything he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and become a disciple. He tells a parable about a man who has filled his storehouses with wealth, and plans to lead a leisurely life of retirement, except that he will die that night. He says that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. He holds up a coin and says, Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And so on.

Jesus has a lot to say about money and wealth. So do the writers of the Epistles. So does the Old Testament.

And that leads to the obvious question: What does the Bible teach us about how to think about money and wealth?

Some people will no doubt say that the Bible is not an economics textbook. That’s true, if you think of economics as being all about the numbers. But the economy isn’t just about the numbers. In fact, the numbers are the least of it. The economy is the way we’ve organised our community life so as to produce and share the goods and services that we need. That’s all.

So what’s the role of money? Money is a method for making the exchange of goods and services easier. Sure, we can use it for many other purposes. We can use it track the costs of production and distribution. We can use it to account for debt. We can use it to calculate how much each partner contributes to a common enterprise. We can even use it to save for the future. Instead of storing actual wheat in actual storehouses for future use, we can create a money debt so that we have a claim on wheat that’s grown years later, when we need it.

Money is one of the great inventions of humankind. I put it right up there with the wheel. By the time the books of the Bible were written down, money was already important. It was so important that the Old Testament has many rules about fair wages and fair prices and fair measures, and how to handle debt, and how to deal with people who don’t follow these rules. And every seven years you were supposed to cancel all debts.

By the time Jesus came up to the Temple and attacked the money changers, money was already taken for granted as the main medium of exchange among strangers. The Temple was important because it was the only place at which the Jews could perform the sacrifices according to the law. The temple forecourt was where money and religious observance came together.

To perform a sacrifice you had to give an unblemished dove or lamb or other animal to the priests, who performed the actual sacrifice. Most people bought the sacrificial animal in the Temple forecourt. For this, you needed coinage without stamped portraits of emperors and such. Those are graven images. Using them to buy a sacrifice would be blasphemy. Hence the need for money changers.

There was a lot of money changing hands, and the Temple authorities got a cut of the proceeds. When Jesus tossed out the money changers, the Temple authorities were of course annoyed. How dare this upstart wandering preacher interfere with their business?

Let’s take a little side trip and think about money. Money makes the world go around, so they say. That’s an odd idea, when you think about it for a while. You can’t eat money, you can’t breathe it, you can’t drink it. You can’t drive it from here to there, you can’t plow it and grow wheat in it, you can’t do much of anything that you need to live, or that you like to do to make life more pleasant.
      In fact, it’s pretty useless in itself. It’s only useful when you spend it. Then you can eat or drink something, or you can put some gas in the car and get from here to there. Or you can get a tractor and a plow and a seed drill and plow your patch of ground and plant wheat in it.

So why do we think money is so important? Because we’ve created an economic system in which we need money to buy and sell. Money makes trading very convenient, which is certainly a good thing. It makes trading so convenient that we’ve built the most complicated economic system the world has ever seen. Most of the things we buy are made and brought to us by people we will never meet face to face. Amazing, when you realise that. Imagine: dozens, possibly hundreds of people do their jobs day in and day out, and the result is that you can buy a pen for 98 cents. Plus tax.

So money is very, very convenient. But that convenience comes at a price. The price is our ideas about and attitudes towards wealth. Money shapes our notions of what’s important. Money is a number, so we confuse price and value. We need money to buy what we need and want, so money distracts us from what makes life worth living. And money buys power, so it distorts our politics.

We take money for granted. About the only time most of us think about money is when something goes wrong with the economy. And then we have at best confused ideas about what money is, and too often we have wrong ones. Worse, many, perhaps most people, become frightened when the money economy begins to fail. The worst effect of this fear is hyperinflation. That’s when people no longer trust what money means, so they want more and more money, and eventually a wheelbarrow full of banknotes will just barely buy a loaf of bread.

Yes, no doubt about it. Money is important in our lives. But everything the Bible says about money and wealth elaborates on three themes. First, that we should share the wealth. Second, that trading requires justice. And third, that our relationship with money is problematic, to put it politely. Paul’s words are harsher: in his first letter to Timothy we read that The love of money is the root of all evil.
      In short, the Biblical record, in both Testaments, reminds us that ethics are at the heart of economics. An economic system that doesn’t promote ethical dealing and fair sharing of wealth is a bad one. If there are few or no incentives to deal ethically and fairly with each other, then something is seriously wrong.

There was something seriously wrong with the system for providing sacrifices for the worshippers who came to the Temple. Doves were the cheapest sacrifices, sold for dollar or two in our money, and supplied because poor people couldn’t afford lambs and goats and young bullocks. No problem with that. But as I said before, the Temple authorities got a cut of every sale. I think that’s the main reason Jesus was annoyed. The Temple authorities no longer saw the trade in doves and other animals as a necessary and useful service for the worshippers, they saw it as a way of making money. It had become a lucrative business. It was now a profit centre.

Trade is good. It makes life better for everybody. That is its purpose. But the traders and money changers and Temple authorities used trade as a way to enrich themselves. In economic language, they used trade to transfer wealth from other people to themselves. They did not simply exchange wealth for wealth.  Jesus called what they did robbery.

Jesus makes it quite clear that he disapproves of enriching oneself at the expense of others. Transfer of wealth isn’t what the economy is about. Sharing the wealth is what it’s about. Money is just a method for making that easier, and if used rightly, it makes sharing the wealth fairer.

So what’s the lesson for us?

Should we stop using money? Of course not. It makes trade easier.

Should we stop doing business? Of course not. Our way of doing business ensures that we have enough of what we need and what we like.

Should we stop making a profit? Of course not. Profit is on the one hand the seller’s income, his wage. And on the other hand, profit is an efficient incentive for pooling resources so that we can do things together that no one of us could do on their own.

Then what should we do?

And here’s where the symbolism of cleansing of the Temple comes in. What does Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple mean? It means that the Kingdom of God is not about doing business. That life is not about making money. That making a living is not the purpose of living. That these things are methods, not purposes. We need to do them so that we are have the time and the energy to do what really matters.

How do we apply this lesson to economics? The answer is simple. We should do business the same way we should do everything else: as a way of relating to each other in mutual service and love. Prices should reflect actual value. Contracts should be equitable, and not give one side an advantage. Profit should be enough for you to stay in business, and if possible improve the quality of what you offer. Wages should be sufficient for a decent life. Promises to pay should be kept. And so on. Any code of ethics will fill in the details.

Most of all, we should keep in mind that there are vastly more important things in life than making money.

There’s time spent with family and friends. Playing games, enjoying meals together, celebrating birthdays, hanging out at Timmy’s chatting about whatever comes to mind. There’s doing things that give you deep satisfaction, whether it’s reading a book, going fishing, playing a fiddle, building a table, growing vegetables, even organising and neatening up your house. Or just going for a walk and breathing fresh air and seeing how the sun makes the landscape glow. There are so many good things that we can do, so many things that bring us joy.

And there are needs to be met wherever we look, for the world doesn’t run on Jesus’s economics. People are cheated out of wages. They aren’t paid enough to enjoy a decent standard of living. Fraudsters trick people out of their life savings. Random accidents and illness make it impossible for people to work for a living.

Most of all, fear for our own future makes us selfish and unwilling to share what we have. No one will help us when we need help, we must look out for number one. But when everyone looks out for number one, none of us looks out for each other.

We are fortunate in this town. Most of us have enough income to live a good life. Jesus calls us to share what we have. His economic theory is simple: Share the wealth, and everyone will have enough. That’s the Economics 101 version of his command to Love one another as I have loved you.

Let us pray.
Lord God, give us grace so to trust in your promise of more abundant life that we may in this life share the abundance that you have provided of your bountiful goodness; and that in the life to come, we may share in the joys of your Kingdom. We pray in the name of him who gave his life that we might have life, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

......................................................

Missionaries (4th after Pentecost, 7th July 2019)

 4th after Pentecost, July 7, 2019 : Missionaries
© Wolf Kirchmeir

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Isaiah 66:10-14; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     Jesus sends out 72 disciples, two-by-two, to tell the people that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He also gives them advice. Reading this passage, I thought, Aha, this is about messages! So I fired up my trusty search engine and looked for a story about messaging. Here’s one that I found:
     A priest and pastor from the local parishes are standing by the side of the road holding up a sign that reads, "The End is Near! Turn yourself around now before it's too late!"
     "Leave us alone, you religious nuts!" yelled the first driver as he sped by. From around the corner they heard screeching tires and a big splash.
     "Do you think," said one clergyman to the other, "we should just put up a sign that says, 'Collapsed Bridge'?"
     Messages. You’ve got to make sure you get them right. That applies both to the one sending the message and the one receiving it. Jesus sent a couple of busloads of disciples into the country to spread the message of the Kingdom. They were to go to the towns and villages ahead of him to tell them that Kingdom was near. Before they left, he gave them advice and instructions. Some may sound a bit odd to us, and some may be a puzzle.

     Let’s look at one of the odd ones first: “When you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say,`Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you.” What’s with this wiping the dust off one’s feet? It’s clearly some kind of reprimand, but why?
     Dirt on the feet has always been a problem, even before most people had shoes. Every tribe and nation has rules about feet and shoes and dirt. We here in Canada take off our shoes at the door so we don’t track dirt into the house.
     I think that from the beginning one of the primary purposes of footwear was to protect you from dirt. You wiped your feet or took off your sandals so you wouldn’t carry dirt into the house. And that’s why wiping the dust off your feet can be a reprimand. When you wipe the dust of the street off your feet, you show that town is so unworthy that you don’t want to carry even its dust on your feet as you go along the road.
     What does this have to do with messages? It’s all about context. The meaning of a message depends on the situation in which it’s sent. That’s why the driver in the joke misunderstood the sign: he thought it was a religious message because two clergymen were holding the sign. Our customs around dirt on the feet are different, so we need to know what the rules were 2,000 years ago in Judah.
     The other advice for the travellers makes sense when you recall that back then they didn’t have motels and restaurants and other such conveniences for travellers. Sure, major towns on the major trade routes had inns, but in other places you basically relied on the kindness of strangers. In fact, the custom was and is that people took in strangers. A guest was treated as family while they stayed in the house. So it makes sense to remind the disciples act like family. Greet the householder with a blessing before entering. Eat what’s offered, in other words, don’t cause extra work or trouble for the host. And so on.

     Then we come to main instructions: Heal the sick who are there and tell them, `The kingdom of God is near you.’

     Jesus sent the 72 disciples out as missionaries.  He gave them instructions and advice. These instructions and advice have guided missionaries ever since.
     Well, they are supposed to guide missionaries, but that hasn’t always happened.
     Missionaries. They’ve been a mixed bag, as they say. These first ones did exactly what Jesus asked them to do. When they returned, they were very pleased: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name,” they said. “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven,” Jesus said.

     The mission of the church, of every Christian, is to heal the sick and to announce that the Kingdom is near. Simple instructions, and a simple message. Shouldn’t be too hard to get it right, right? Yet too often, we Christians have got it wrong.
     We’ve got it wrong because we think we know better. We think it’s not enough to heal the sick, we have to fix their life styles and customs to bring them into line with ours.
     We think it’s not enough to tell the unsaved that the Kingdom is near, we have to impose our liturgy and theology on them, and warn them against other Christians who do these things differently. Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not take a purse or bag or sandals”. Not only have we brought along our purses and bags and sandals, so to speak, we have also brought along the powers of empire and conquest.
     Instead of saying "Peace to this house", we’ve said “We claim this land in the name of our King”.
     We’ve insisted on doing things our way instead of learning and respecting the laws and customs of the country.
     And in Canada, we’ve collaborated with the government in destroying a way of life. Why? Because the residential school system was seen as a kind of missionary work. The children would not only be turned into good little Canadians, they would be turned into good little Anglicans, and Catholics, and Presbyterians.
     We have too often ignored Jesus’s instructions. “Spreading the Word” is good, it’s what we are supposed to do. So criticising what missionaries have done and still do is often seen as refusing Jesus’s command to spread the word. But if we stick to his instructions, we can’t go wrong. They can be summarised as follows:
     1. Heal the sick wherever you find them.
     2. Announce the coming of the Kingdom.
     3. Don’t pick fights, but leave places where you’re not wanted.
     4. Behave yourself by observing the customs of the country (such as eating what’s put in front of you).

     That last instruction may deserve a little more explanation. Remember that much of the Law recorded in the Old Testament is about food, about what and when and how to prepare and eat the food that God has given us. For observant Jews, keeping kosher is important. So when Jesus tells the 72 disciples to eat what they were given, he’s saying “Your customs and rules about food don’t apply everywhere.” But what’s true of food is also true of all other aspects of a way of life.
     So, Behave Yourself.

     Simple instructions, really. So why is following them so difficult?

     It’s difficult because of two temptations that we find almost irresistible. First, we love to complicate things. Secondly, we interpret advice to suit our egos.

     We have often complicated the simple instructions of Jesus. “Tell them the Kingdom is near”, he said. Well, it can’t possibly be as simple as that, right? After all, we have different notions of what the Kingdom is, so we have to make sure that the heathen get the correct ideas! And what does “Tell them” mean? Is that all? Shouldn’t we explain it all to them? And shouldn’t we persuade them? They will be damned if they don’t listen and understand, so we really ought to make sure they do listen and understand. Even if we have to use strong measures to get the job done.
     And so on. And so forth. It really can get quite complicated, and the more complicated it gets, the harder we try to justify what we’re doing. It’s the human thing to do.
     And that’s where our ego comes in. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. If only a few people have come to be baptised, we’ve failed to reap the harvest. Failure is something we can’t accept. So we try harder to spread the word, and measure success by the number of souls saved, by the number baptised, by the number who have made a decision for Christ.

     So what’s to be done? Let’s start with the proposition that we also have been sent, like the 72 disciples. We also are to heal the sick and tell of the Kingdom. How do we do that? We aren’t all cut out for travel to foreign lands, or work in the inner city, or even to teach Sunday School. We can support those who do these things by giving money and other support so they can do their work. But I’m sure you sometimes may have the same uneasy feeling I have when I’m writing a cheque, or donating food and clothing, or buying a box of art supplies, that doing these things isn’t quite enough. Good as these actions are, they may be a way of avoiding the hard work ourselves.

     Well, there’s lots of good advice out there. Some commentators have said: Just live the Christian life wherever you are, and that witness will testify to the power of God’s love in your life, and the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

     When you think about your daily life, you know that there are plenty of occasions to talk about what God means to you. You don’t have to say much. Sometimes a phrase of blessing is enough. At other times, you may be able to say that your faith is like solid ground under your feet. We Anglicans tend to be shy about expressing our deepest feelings. We don’t want to be thought of as religious nuts, because that means we’ve put people off. But really, it’s OK to be up front about what you believe, and why.

     There’s also much occasion for serving our neighbour. It could be a donation to some charity that does the kind of work you want done. It could be helping a neighbour get their groceries home. It could be visiting a sick or grieving friend or acquaintance. It could be a friendly word or chat with someone at the post office or the store. It could be yielding the right of way to a car when you arrive at the stop sign at the same time.
     In fact, serving your neighbour starts with common courtesy and good manners. It builds from there to the kind of help that someone wouldn’t get any other way.

     So where are we now in our meandering around the story of the 72 disciples and the instructions Jesus gave them?

     We’ve arrived once again at the Summary of the Law and the Prophets. Healing the sick and telling of the Good News applies the summary of the Law and the Prophets. You love God, so talk about him as occasion offers. You love your neighbour, so serve all people that you meet, as occasion offers.

     Let us pray.

Lord God, grant us the grace to know when to speak and when to act, that your love may be shown in our lives. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen