Reflections from The Hill – Bread – John 6.1-21

Like much of the world in this Olympic year, I’m gearing up for a couple of weeks of broken sleep, when too much sport is never enough. Winners are grinners, but I wonder why every commentary I’ve read makes the point that the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle recorded in all Four Gospels.

It’s as if the more times a miracle is recorded across the Gospels, the more we need to take notice. Why? Isn’t just one recorded miracle enough any more?

Have I missed something? Sure, I can see the point that a miracle is emphasised by repetition but why? Are we now at a point where we are grading miracles as if they’re in an Olympic pre-selection trial? That the Gold Medal goes to the one that appears in all 4 Gospels?

I would have thought that any miracle is worth a look, whether or not it appears in multiple places, wouldn’t you?

On the other hand, instead of observing the number of repetitions – as if we are in some theological sporting contest – maybe I should concentrate on the content of the Miracle.

Let’s first be mindful of this, though: the Gospel Readings for the next five weeks are from John 6. What this means is that, over that time-frame, there will be lots of references to bread and how it comes from above and stuff like that. A test of ingenuity approaches, methinks.

There is one significant difference between the version of the Miracle that we’re reading today and the ones found in the other Gospels: John calls his version a sign (it’s a sign, it’s a sign) and therefore not simply about satisfying people’s empty tummies.

Here, the reader is going to discover something about Jesus and something about God at the same time, Two-for-One style. What that is, of course, is that Jesus can and does satisfy every one of our needs.

Jesus is way more than a heavenly baker or Brumby’s owner. He’s way more than a Baker’s Delight franchisee and he’s certainly not just trying to drum up business for the local welfare food outlet.

The punters don’t seem to get on board with this idea at all – and haven’t done since Jesus did the water-into-wine thing back in Chapter 2. They want more tucker, more grappa, more healings, more whatever.

Some time ago, My Beloved and I were at an Investment Seminar and someone asked the presenter this question: How much money do I need to be happy? The man answered with tongue in cheek: about 10% more than you get already.

We are so convinced that material possessions will make us happy – and just a bit more will make us even more happy – that we miss the point of this miracle yet again. More may be what we want, but is it needed?

Have a look in my bathroom if you still don’t believe me. Although My Beloved banned me long ago from doing the weekly shopping with her, I do go to the supermarket by myself sometimes.

Do I take a list? No. Do I know what I’m going to buy? No. Do I end up with a drawer full of traveller’s-sized toothpaste and facial wipes? You bet. Have I got enough? I fear that I will run out.

The real miracle is surely not about whether my Superannuation account will be sufficient to retire on, or whether I will run out of facial wipes.

The real miracle for the lilies and the birds and the crowds and the people like us is this: today, Jesus addresses and satisfies both our deficiencies and our poverty. He is all we need.

Reflections from The Hill – Doing It Jesus-style – Mark 6.30-ff

It ain’t easy being green, or a vicar, or a dad; they each come with their own special challenges, although being a frog would be hard. But what must it be like to have been an apostle?

The spiritual ones among us would rejoice, like Fr Mulcahy of M*A*S*H, because they were nearer the cross and, by implication, nearer to that form of spiritual power that is measured in centimetres and is based on the Theory of Proximity.

Then there’s us others who are separated by centuries from the original events yet still manage to get caught up with every wind and breeze that comes along.

It never ceases to amaze me that, one minute, we can be face to face with some miracle or other and the next be dragging our bottom-lip around as if we’d lost a quid and picked up sixpence.

Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah – and lots of others – were masters at that game. They have their hi-lo moments, as did the apostles in Mark’s Gospel. In the Feeding Story, Jesus tells his Boys to feed the large number of followers. The Boys know there’s no Brumbies or Maccas close by, so they get all aerated and sarcastically ask Him where He thinks the nearest food outlet might be.

I can hear the exasperation in his answer: “How many loaves have you?” It’s like “When are you going to get it?” So he takes the few loaves and fish and multiplies them right before their eyes. That’s the Jesus way.

The sadness is that the Boys miss out again on grasping the reality that the Kingdom of God is there in front of them and that they’ve just muffed an invitation to participate in it.

This Big Feed contrasts with many Church meals I’ve attended: you know the sort – tables groaning with chicken wings and quiche, piles of salads, sandwiches (egg mostly), devilled kidneys (maybe), bread rolls, slices, coleslaw, apple crumble and Peter’s Ice Cream to top it off.

The Big Feed had none of this. Rather, the resources were meagre by comparison to a pot-luck supper. It was more like “Whatcha got in the pocket of ya cloak?” than “Would you like to bring a slice or a meat dish?” It was more like “Sit in groups of fifty” rather than “Table 12 goes first.”

Relying on, participating in, the miracle nearly always means that there are often more resources available than we first realise. That’s the Jesus way.

However, if storms are your thing, and not food, then the next part of the story is for you, even if it’s more difficult. To start with, the disciples are described as ‘terrified’ and ‘astounded’ as they face the water but they’re still not getting it. Then, perhaps the most poignant verse in the whole of the Gospel: “they did not understand about the loaves for their hearts were hardened.”

We’ll hear this ‘hardened hearts’ thing again in the next Big Feed Story and I’m beginning to think that this is a bit like a mantra, a chorus, a cycle that keeps getting repeated. How easily we lapse into being ignorant and fearful followers, much more like hangers-on than co-workers.

There may well be a case to argue that this was Mark’s argument with The Boys all along. They were call to follow and they were to participate – but they certainly weren’t picking up any clues about participation. Maybe doing it is just too hard.

And isn’t that true also as we look over our life and the ministry to which we’ve been called? That while a vocation might be clear, the doing of it is often clouded by other stuff like sloth or disobedience.

While we might want to try and balance a call with an activity (or series of activities), Mark is actually challenging us to look further into the area of the miraculous as a significant aspect of our work because, above all else, that’s His domain and that’s where He wants us to be.

Reflections from The Hill – More – Mark 6.14-29

Just occasionally, with the emphasis on just, reading one of the Biblical stories is a bit like living in reality TV-land but more uncomfortable.

Reading Bible stories can be fun and exciting. Hey, who wants TV fiction then? Just get out a copy of the Gospels and get stuck into reading that.

Let’s take today’s Gospel Reading as a case in point. Reading about Herod the Tetrarch, for example, makes me think straightaway of that one-time President of the US of A, Richard Nixon.

Tricky Dicky was a master of manipulation and political intrigue, yes? So blinded was he to the vortex of ambition that he was prepared to sacrifice his principles to give himself an advantage over others, just like Herod.

On the goodies side, there are remarkable similarities between John the Baptist and Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero or Dietrich Bonhoeffer; real life leaders who were willing to tell the truth about corruption and the misuse of power, whatever the cost.

Let me not let the ladies off the hook, either. Herodias is just like those female characters who, black widow-like, exterminate their lovers or friends on grounds of self-protection and build themselves a platform of power. Remember Roberta Williams?

Even if it is true that Herodias was intent on protecting her own children, which I doubt if what she allowed her daughter to do is any indication, we might be challenged ourselves to contemplate the lengths we would go to protect our own offspring.

One thing’s for sure about this Reading and that is that Mark has a very specific purpose in telling the story. It’s the only scene in the Gospel, I think, where Jesus does not play any part. So, it’s important. Why?

The first thing to note is this: the proclamation of the Kingdom has significant implications, and I just don’t mean political ones. The status quo is always under threat when we live out our life as Christians.

As David Lose says, ‘our all too easy acquiescence with the cultural presumption that might … is right’ is severely compromised here. The proclamation of God’s kingdom principles is a costly business.

Even more challenging is the possibility that, when we stand up against George St or Canberra or whatever your Parliament’s address is, there will be some collateral damage and we might find ourselves on the wrong end of a baton, or worse.

Mark is telling us this, partly, because he’s describing the world in which he lives but, by extension, he is warning those of us in future generations about the implications of doing and saying the right thing.

Is that it, you ask? Is this all there is or are we yet to squeeze the Gospel orange a little more, at least enough to extract the Good News from this passage?

Maybe that’s the point, that John’s beheading by Herod and family isn’t the end of the story, it isn’t the whole enchilada, that there is more?

Truth is that there is something more than the intrigue, the heartache, the tragedies; of Herod, of Nixon, and of our penchant for the status quo.

Isn’t the heart of the Gospel the belief and teaching that Jesus came to make it possible for us to have something more than mere survival, more than simply success?

Didn’t he come to help us imagine – and enter into – something more than just living, that there is something called ‘the abundant life’ which can be ours? Isn’t that a better ending than many of us seem to expect?

When our Temple has been destroyed, or our marriage is on its last legs, or we’ve just been made redundant, or we’ve just found out that our best friend has cheated on us, then the possibility of another, good, ending has immense appeal.

That’s not just good news. It’s got to be better news any day than anything we can imagine or construct ourselves.

Reflections from The Hill – Shooting Isaiah’s Arrows – Isaiah 49.1-6

Growing up as I did in a repressive family, I used to fantasise about sitting behind a desk. I interpreted this to mean that, one day, I was going to be in charge of something.

However, no-one ever came to that desk. No one asked me to deliberate on an issue; no-one brought me anything to fix; no one stopped by for a yarn. I was all alone, bereft of friends and things to do.

Then I learned that desks can be barriers for us to hide behind. This brought a new light to my life. People came, but not too close. They didn’t stay, not once. They brought stuff with them but it ended up in the WPB. The barriers were up and I was as happy as a pig in a barrel of malt. Happy, safe, and bored witless.

The desk had to go. I had to stop hiding behind the “Lovely service, Father” stuff and all the other security-oriented approbations. I had to get out of the cloying wonder of my own presence else I’d be as stiff as a four-day old road kill.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had my share of holy moments: I’ve wept beside the death-beds of young children; I love teaching adults “If I Were A Butterfly” with actions; I’ve been put over the fence by a wide-eyed Santa Gertrudis cow and had many other similar Pastoral joys helping people in need.

There have always been the hair-pulling reactions from people who just don’t get it that bring me back to earth. And, unlike Isaiah in this First Reading today, I’ve never been able to convince people to return to a homeland some of them have never even seen, especially since that homeland was in ruins.

What I’m more inclined to do is to rail at them for their obstinacy and beat my head against a wall. Or, if things get really bad, to grab a nice red or single malt whiskey and put a dent in its contents.

I’ve always considered myself to be more a pastor than anything else; more comfortable among a mass of sinners rather than shaking a righteous fist and preaching God’s wrath at them.

Prophets don’t have a long employment history. They either get booted out of town or have their heads cut off after one too many so-called ‘incidents’, so I’m not particularly excited to be among them.

Still, if people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and God has other ideas, then sometimes it takes a sharp stick or a pointed jab to get them off their derrieres and into moving to where they ought to be.

I am aware that The Good Book has two words for ‘time’. One word is the tick-tock word that describes sequential time; the other is the special moment word, that describes the right, or opportune, time.

There’s not a lot of future in being a knock-‘em-down, drag-‘em-out, fire-and-brimstone type of guy and, frankly, it ain’t me. I’d rather be picking myself out of the dust of a drafting yard than standing on a street corner telling the passers-by that they’re all going to hell in a handbag.

There is a kairos time for many things. I was going to be the pastor with the soft heart who slogged through the rough stuff with the sinners, who wept and laughed with them and who grabbed their sweaty palms and said “This stuff stinks. It’s good that God’s with us, eh?” God’s time was different.

Maybe I ought to have had a hissy fit and yelled at them once in a while. Maybe I ought to have yelled at the coastlands a bit more often. If I did that, maybe I could have shaken them out of their complacency. Maybe.

So I ask: is it possible to shoot Isaiah’s arrows or swing his sword without being cut to pieces by an angry crowd? Is there any future in that?

Reflections from the Hill – Working at Hearing Mark 4:26-34

It wasn’t until I was given an IPod Nano that I began to notice how many other people have the regulation earpieces in their lugholes, trailing thin wires like bunting on Mt Everest. I am a dinosaur and blind, it seems.

Many of us humans can’t even walk down the street without noise filling our headspace and my guess is that the more we are bombarded by this cacophony, the less we actually hear.

Because of this, I think that we don’t need to work at hearing; we need to work at not hearing. Case in point: airline travel. Next time you are flying somewhere by plane, watch the other travellers during the safety demonstration and see if we are intent on not hearing a spiel that is intended to save our lives.

For us, however, this may be a problem because we employ this tactic of not listening when we come to worship. Living in a world that spends much of its time working at not hearing, when we come to church we can easily allow the familiarity of the Liturgy to lull us into la-la land.

Rather than switching off when we come to the Kirk-house, we need to actively work at hearing. Unless we make a conscious effort to listen differently, to listen with attentiveness to the reading of Scripture and the preaching of the sermon, we may do to public worship what we do to the airline safety demonstration.

This process has a particular and immediate application because, for the next wee while, as the New Zealanders say, we’ll be walking through Jesus’ “Kingdom of God Parables” in Mark’s Gospel.

One thing’s for sure: these parables can’t be understood by a switching off the listening hole or by a folding of the arms in feigned objectivity or even by a ho-humming ourselves down the ‘heard-it-before’ track, although some will try.

The only way to understand Mark in this is to allow the stories to lay their own claim on us. How? By hearing, by letting the parables have their intended effect on us by hearing them.

Like the first three Chapters of this high-powered Gospel, Marks Chapter 4 is alive with action and determination as Mark allows the narrative to carry the message he wants to deliver. In Mark, the essential convictions and teachings are shown rather than told.

We stand a better chance of understanding if we first see it demonstrated. Mark’s vigorous narrative is designed to prepare us to hear what Jesus has to say to us.

Hearing is difficult, as we have discovered, so Mark postpones the teachings of Jesus until our familiarity with him helps us understand him, so he starts with the Parables.

Parables can be deceptive. Many of us grew up on the “Parables-are-earthly-stories-with-heavenly-meanings” theory and, for the most part, that’s fine, except that this shows a misunderstanding of the purpose of parables.

These Parables can’t be understood by standing outside and peering into them, like looking at goldfish in a fish tank. They can only be understood by getting out of our seats and becoming part of the action.

Each of the three Parables in Chapter 4 has two things in common: first, they’re each about seeds and second they’re each surrounded by Jesus’ own encouragement for us, his hearers, to actually hear.

By themselves, seeds don’t grab me greatly but I do know they have tremendous potential. I know, for example, that this or that little seed can become a carrot or a carob tree, buffel grass or banksia, given the right circumstances.

The clue for the Gospel hearer lies in what happens next: just as the seeds have to be planted and watered and waited for expectantly, so the Gospel has within itself the power to become something other than what it appears to be. The stories also require some additional activity.

The Parable of The Mustard Seed, proverbially the smallest of seeds, makes a point. Though almost invisible, the mustard seed grows into a shrub large enough for birds to nest in. That something so large could come from something so small is unfathomable. What we have here is an analogy.

When we first hear the gospel, when the gospel is first declared to our world, it seems small and insignificant. Many other things seem more important: there are plans to be made; careers to be considered; proposals and marriages and children to reckon with; houses to build; relationships to pursue, and so on.

Yet the Parable is about the power inherent in the gospel to supersede the eye evidence and to produce something else that is wholly unexpected. In comparison to such things, the gospel seems like a dark speck in the palm, something to be looked over for a moment, and then overlooked for ever.

However, the gospel will not be relegated to an insignificant place. If this was just about human stuff then, perhaps, we might ditch it. But it is something more than that; it’s God’s work, His creative, redeeming and restorative presence.

Maybe the beginnings are small and inauspicious but slowly, even imperceptibly, it creeps into our spirits and begins to intrude into our lives to the point that we can’t ignore it, despite the many competing sounds of a world that, at first, seem more important.

The transformative power of the gospel produces the qualities of life that we most long for, but that most elude us, by encouraging us to hear the story to the point of heeding. The Parable of the Sower in each of its complexities promises that those who hear the gospel in this way receive it, and “it bears fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20).

Reflections from The Hill – God and Maths – Trinity Sunday 2012

The Holy Trinity has been a significant part of my life’s journey: my mum and dad went to church at Holy Trinity, Kelso (NSW); the first Parish I served in as a Deacon was Holy Trinity, Dubbo (NSW); I was Ordained Priest in Holy Trinity, Mackay (QLD); I worked as the Rector of Holy Trinity, Woolloongabba, QLD); and now our Retirement Village address is Trinity Court. Neat, eh.

It’s a pity that the doctrine of the same Holy Trinity doesn’t match the neatness of this roll-out of my life, for you’d have to go on a long day’s hike to find any preacher anywhere for whom this day or subject is a favourite.

Part of the problem, as I’ve already hinted, is the mathematics: three-in-one; one-in-three. How does one figure that? What does it mean? I’ll be a wealthy man if my attempts at doing these sums were remunerated.

Of course, I’ve tried being erudite, especially after I’d read some theologian or other on the subject, but all that’s happened is that I’ve become too smart by far.

Which of you readers, for example, will recall the Trinity Day sermon I preached while wearing three hats: a Stetson: a Beanie and a safety helmet? There are some still alive, I’m told, but memorable? Only for the wrong reasons.

Not only could I not swap these titfers around quickly enough to make the point, the whole thing looked like a circus juggling trick for which I had no skills.

If we’re serious about trying to get our heads and hearts around this theological conundrum called The Trinity, the best and first thing to do is to ditch the maths. It’s simply not going to work.

Instead of trying to do sums that won’t work (that’s a bit like Sudoku in my opinion) maybe it’d be a good idea to turn our focus on The Big Fella himself, onto his character and his nature and see what makes him tick.

Behind all the Trinitarian controversies of the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, behind all the doctrines, philosophies and convoluted attempts at preaching it to our congregations is a God who disrupts our preconceptions. He came in weakness not power, in shame not glory, in what looked like defeat not victory.

The early Christians figured that if they could be wrong about the coming of the Messiah, there might be other things they could be wrong about, like what they thought about God himself. It’s just so confusing.

Part of the confusion, I think, is aided and abetted by The Night Visitor, dear Nicodemus. He’s a nice bloke but, man, is he mixed up. The fact that he’s a religious leader who came ‘at night’ (the time for confusion and doubt) is enough to set the alarm bells ringing.

Even though Nico recognises Jesus’ teaching authority yet doesn’t understand what that means, he also fails to comprehend what Jesus is on about when he talks about being born from above.

Even when Jesus talks plainly to him about the mystery and the power of the Holy Spirit, Nicodemus still asks the “Yes, but how?” question so loved by sermon tasters the world over.

Nicodemus’ confusion rests in two misunderstandings about God: first, he misunderstands what God’s freedom means. God, and those born of God, Jesus says, is more like the wind that blows where it will than like an immovable rock. He is a dynamic God, and his activity is not always as predictable as we would like it to be.

Drawing help and comfort from a capricious God can be a scary option, especially if we fail to recognise Nico’s second misunderstanding about God: that The Big Fella is, above all else, a God of Love.

This is the touchstone of John’s Gospel. We see its inherent power in the world’s most famous Bible verse: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16).

It’s staggering to think that, for John, all of Jesus’ work through the Spirit is to save us from our own stupidity and our own overweening penchant for self-destruction.

In fact, if we read to the end of verse 21 and don’t cut the Reading short, says David Lose, we may be horrified or surprised or even pleased to find that God doesn’t seem to have any plans at all for our punishment or rejection.

Rather, the Big Fella desires only our health and salvation. He wants us to have life in all its fullness, both now and in the ages to come.

Surely this is the scandalous love that can be grasped only by the Spirit of God, the restless and dynamic spirit that blows where it will, who helps us to receive the unexpected Messiah and reveals the gracious and loving Father to us.

Reflections from The Hill – Names – John 17.9-17

It can be tough living with a name you’ve inherited. Someone else’s reputation can be a millstone or some other inconvenience to you. Children who grow up with famous parents know what I’m talking about.

For example, the famous Aussie cricketer, Don Bradman, had a son called John who, for many years, called himself “John Bradson” because he couldn’t stand the pressure of being known as The Don’s son.

The person doesn’t have to have world-class fame either. If you go to a school where your older brother and sister was dux – or villain – it can be a hard task just establishing your own place. Often, especially in clergy families, knuckles have been known to be helpful.

On the other hand, names can be a bonus. All sorts of doors can be opened or indiscretions overlooked for the son or daughter of a well-known person. Names can count in this world sometimes.

So I ask: what’s in a name? Most of us wear our moniker well but there are some for whom their name is a particular burden. What’s in a name, indeed? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, surely.

Well, no. Sorry Mr Shakespeare, any name will not do, not for people anyway.  No. The essential thing about names is that they are connected to identity. They are about who we are and, in today’s Gospel reading, whose we are. 

Why does Jesus pray that we’ll be connected? Because he wants to have the same identity that God first gave him, that’s why. That puts a different kind of slant on things. Our identity is now tied up in God’s identity.

There are a few parts of God’s identity that we could well do to adopt as our own. The first is Reconciler “Protect them in this name you have given me, so that they might be one, just as you and I are one.”

With the rhetoric of reconciliation off the public discourse since the ‘Sorry Speech’, it’s a bit hard to make connections with practical examples. That’s not a bad thing: there are other examples.

It doesn’t take too much imagination, though, to see Jesus speaking up for the original occupants of this country. You don’t have to read much of what Jesus had to say about the relationships between the possessors and the dispossessed to know where he’d stand on the issue of indigenous versus settler peoples in Oz.

Of course, there’s much more to reconciliation than this; even if we start with the Indigenous issue, there’s a long way to go before all the issues to do with reconciliation are dealt with. 

One-ness and Unity among God’s people is not a pipe-dream or even a vague possibility: it’s part of our identity as Christians and its practice is needed all the time. That’s what being tied up with God means.

There’s more. If we adopt God’s identity as seen in Jesus, we’re committing ourselves to a lot of praying. Jesus continues to represent us to God, praying for our well-being, our protection, our strengthening and equipping for the tasks to which he has called us.

Both on Sundays and in our daily prayer, we begin to live into the identity we have inherited from our great high priest and, as we begin to grow into that identity, our actions begin to grow into our prayers.

That’s what “being part of the answer” means. Otherwise there’s not a lot of sense, or use, in praying for anything. The two (prayer and action) go together, just as surely as a singer needs a song. 

If reconciliation and prayer are two bits of our identity as Christians, by implementing both we discover the real miracle of God-with-us. That is, God, who is always real, becomes tangible when our identity shines. We are the Body of Christ.

The most tangible version of this is seen, not only when we gather together Sunday by Sunday (important as that might be), but when we leave that place to be Jesus in the world.

The name we inherit from Jesus Christ is both our security and our mission. We begin to grow into it in the place where Communion happens, and we carry that identity with us as we go out into every area of our normal, everyday, lives. 

The risen Christ continues to pray for us and, with our faith in him, we join his prayer and we grow into the identity he has given us, for there’s something beautiful about that Name.