Give It All?!

There was a widow of prayer
whose pantry was utterly bare,
when all else was spent
she gave her last cent
as God’s own daughter and heir.
© B.D. Prewer 2000 http://www.bruceprewer.com/DocB/B061112.htm

It’s a nice little ditty, a bit of a limerick from Australian writer, Bruce Prewer. It takes the story of the widow who gave “everything she had” and turns it into a bit of fun, perhaps with the intention of getting under our guard in relation to a story that we have heard many times before and yet often hold at arm’s length because we know full well the challenging demand it places on our lives. And we also know that it’s not just about a guilt trip to make us put more money in the plate. No, this story is far more demanding than that. It’s not just about money, it’s about life—everything we have, all we have to live on, our whole selves.

There was a widow of prayer
whose pantry was utterly bare,
when all else was spent
she gave her last cent
as God’s own daughter and heir.
© B.D. Prewer 2000

In relation to taking on commitments like that, we’re all in different places. Some of us are commitment shy; some of us rush in to make commitments that are just impossible to keep; some of us take so long trying to decide whether to make a commitment, that the opportunities pass us by; and some of us, perhaps just a very few of us, make and keep strong and long-term commitments to which we remain loyal the whole of our lives.

Some commitments come to us by our own decision; others are made for us by our being born into particular families or particular communities. Some commitments look like a pledge to one thing and turn out to be an obligation to something different entirely in the long run. Some commitments, perhaps a few of them, are clear and open and obvious from the beginning.

Perhaps one of the most significant commitments that any of us will make is to a life partner, a husband, a wife, a significant other.

I, N, in the presence of God, take you, N, to be my wife/husband. All that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you. Whatever the future holds, I will love you and stand by you as long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow.

And I’d wager that I’d get excellent odds on the chance that none of us quite knew what we were letting ourselves in for on the days that we made such commitments.
Commitments are made when we open ourselves to the possibility that our priorities are not the only ones, and maybe even not the most important ones; when we make ourselves vulnerable to an other, to the future, and to possibilities other than we had imagined.

Commitments to each other—spouses, families, friends, communities—are part of the relational nature of who we are as humans. Different kinds of commitments are demanded in different relationships. In relation to our children and grandchildren, we know where our priorities lie—they’re number one! Others come in at different places on the continuum for a whole bunch of different reasons. But there’s no doubt, that commitments are us. Of course, that doesn’t mean we get them right.

The story of the rich people and the poor widow is a story about commitment. It’s a story about the kind of commitments that we can make when we have safe, stable secure lives—commitments which appear to be great, but which, in relative terms are just like dipping our toes in the water, rather than plunging in wholeheartedly. It’s also a story about the kind of commitments that perhaps we are only able to make from a position of vulnerability—wholehearted commitments that plunge us into an unknown future for the sake of our commitments to others.

All that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you. Whatever the future holds, I will love you and stand by you as long as we both shall live.

The call of God on our lives, to be the people of God, to share in the mission of God and the ministry of Christ, for the sake of the world, is a call that we probably only dare take on when we are most open, most vulnerable, most exposed. There are ways of pretending that the type of commitment that we’ve made is worth more than it really is; but it is only in our weakness, in our poverty, in our openness, in our vulnerability, that we are able to offer all that we have, everything we have to live on. For perhaps, it is only in such moments that we recognise that all that we have comes from God, all that we are is because of God, and all that we hope for is that which God has promised to us.

There was a woman of Zion
with nought but her faith to rely on,
as she came to God’s house
rich fools saw a mouse
but to Jesus she was a lion.
© B.D. Prewer 2000 http://www.bruceprewer.com/DocB/B061112.htm

Making wholehearted commitments isn’t for the faint-hearted, even as it is for those who are willing to vulnerable, willing to open themselves to unknown possibilities. The covenant affirmation which comes to us from the Methodist tradition paints a picture of just some of those unknown possibilities in the face of a wholehearted commitment to the purpose of God.

I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you;
exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty;
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours,
to the glory and praise of your name. Amen.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not asking you to put your brains on hold, or run yourselves into burn-out, or make rash decisions without any thought for consequences. The Christian tradition has done enough of that. But if we thought that a commitment to God and God’s purposes could be a half-hearted or part-time affair, we’d be kidding ourselves—precisely because wholehearted commitments demand time and attention. Marriages don’t work without communication and communication not just on the easy things, but on the difficult things, the things that need working through. Caring for the members of our families and friends doesn’t happen when we just choose the good stuff. And working for a better world doesn’t happen when we’re only in it for ourselves. Wholehearted commitments require intentional work with long-term goals in view—goals that lie beyond our immediate circumstances, beyond our lifetimes, extending on into an infinite future. And commitment to that work and those goals requires that we recognise our own vulnerability and commit ourselves to act in the face of that vulnerability for the sake of God’s call.

There was a woman of Zion
with nought but her faith to rely on,
as she came to God’s house
rich fools saw a mouse
but to Jesus she was a lion.
© B.D. Prewer 2000 http://www.bruceprewer.com/DocB/B061112.htm

The Hope of In-Between

Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus come out!" “Lazarus come out!”

Now that’s a pretty good cliff-hanger for a story if I’ve every heard one: “Lazarus come out!”

And even though we’re pretty sure of the outcome, we’re waiting on the edge of our seats just to make sure. It’s the waiting and the hoping that gets us in, keeps us going, demands our attention. When you’re on a good cliff-hanger, you just have to wait until the next phrase drops. And the waiting can be excruciating even when we’re pretty sure of the outcome—what’s going to happen; will everything be all right; will everything fall into place as it’s supposed too?

And we wait…

The whole Christian story is a bit of a waiting game.

We have these ideas about “eternal life”, “everlasting life”, “the life of the world to come”, “resurrection of the dead”, “resurrection of the body”, “the final consummation of all things”, “the promised goal”, “the final reconciliation of humanity with God, and the renewal of all creation”, “the kingdom of heaven”, “the kingdom of God”, the eschaton. Whatever it is we’re waiting for, it certainly has a lot of names and even more descriptive phrases. It’s whatever we believe that God has promised, whatever we understand to be God’s will and God’s purpose, whatever we picture as the ultimate goal of God’s salvation, God’s liberation, God’s plan for the reconciliation of all creation.

And we wait…

Many of you know that I lost my Dad this year. We had in fact been expecting Dad’s death for a while… and that’s another kind of waiting, although similar in its own way. And in the course of that waiting, there’d been a range of conversations about the direction and destination of the journey. In the early days of his illness, the questions were like: “What would heaven be like?” Later the conversation took a different turn which seemed to centre more on acceptance of the present, and the promise of hope which it already holds.

It was Dad who first put John Williamson’s song “Cootamundra Wattle” together with the idea of resurrection hope for me—the story of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope of the new life we believe in because of Jesus.

It’s one of the gems he’s offered to me over the years: the fruit of long hours of silent reflection over the activity of pulling engines apart and re-building them; or developing the replacement part for some old engine for which you could no longer buy the bits he needed. Generally, his gems were offered after I’d spent a couple of hours in the shed with him, feeling completely useless—“Pass us the 10mm spanner would you… No, that’s not 10mm, that’s 3/8”; don’t you know the difference?”). I knew I wasn’t there for my mechanical skill, but to hear the gems when he chose to deliver them.

This gem was offered for my unpacking, and sometimes it takes me a while to do that, but I figure that’s okay because it took a while for the insight to be generated, and any good invention is worth due consideration.

In the resurrection stories of the Gospels, we see some of the unpacking by the early Christian community in relation to the hope they’d found in Jesus, the loss of Jesus’ physical presence, the loss of significant members of the emerging Christian community and the hope that they came to believe endured beyond Jesus’ death into resurrection, and beyond the death of others before the fulfilment of God’s promised reign.

The people saw Jesus as the kingdom of God in person, as the promised messiah who would not only heal their sicknesses and purify them from their sins, but would also liberate them from the foreign rule of the Romans... And then came the catastrophe… Jesus dies on the Roman cross in the profoundest God forsakenness: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” That was the end of Jesus the Messiah, the end of his message about the nearness of the kingdom of God, the end of the God whom he had addressed so intimately as “Abba”, the end of his divine sonship, the end of every trust that had been placed in him… (Moltmann 2004, pp. 45-46)

Or was it?

At the end of the Gospel of Mark, we begin to read of “appearances” and of the early Christian struggle with faith and doubt in the face of these epiphanies, in the face of those revelations. The various attempts at ending the Gospel of Mark indicate some of that struggle. In the early verses of the last chapter of Mark, Jesus appears to the women who flee the tomb and say nothing. Next, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene who tells about her discovery but is not believed by the other disciples; similarly, another story follows about two disciples who had been on the receiving end of an “appearance” while walking in the country. They also are not believed by those whom they tell. It is not until after these 3 stories of aborted attempts to get the message of resurrection out, that we finally get a success story with the appearance of Jesus to the eleven, complete with an upbraiding “for their unbelief and hardness of heart”. Then, by the time we reach the Gospel of John, later in the first century, the profound experience of Mary Magdalene in the garden has become a powerful expression of the hope of the Christian tradition, and Mary has become the “first witness to the resurrection”. In order to make sense of:

the two experiences—the terrible experience of Jesus’ helpless, God-forsaken death on the cross and the reviving and the quickening experience of his presence in the divine glory—and in order to understand what had happened to him, they took up the ancient Israelite symbol of hope, “the resurrection of the dead”, and talked about Christ’s “resurrection from the dead”: he was the One ahead of all others as “the first fruits of them that sleep” and “the leader of life”, as Paul put it. For the disciples this was not a reanimation of someone who has died, nor was it a ghostly “return” of the dead. Jesus was not seemingly dead. He had really died and really been buried. Nor was it his spirit that appeared to them; it was Jesus himself in the transfigured form of the resurrection world. Consequently this event was for them not a past event, something in history finished and done with; it was an event in the past which still has its future ahead of it. That is to say, it was what theological language describes as an eschatological event, in which God’s future has acquired potency over the past (Moltmann, p. 47).

My Dad didn’t have a particularly easy life. He worked very hard to live, to survive, to provide for his children. He was in comfortable circumstances at the end of his life, but along the way, he’d had a few setbacks: mates who turned out not to be mates who pulled the rug out from him at various points. When Dad began talking about heaven with me, he began with a picture of a place where he might be able to get back what he’d lost. I guess he was angry: angry at his illness; angry at his helplessness; angry at the lot that had been dealt to him in life; and angry at facing the possibility of life’s end without just satisfaction. I know he was angry because, at the time, he was in a mood to have an argument. Eventually, he ended up at the story of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Jesus in the garden and John Williamson’s song “Cootamundra Wattle”. His favourite version of this story was from The Aussie Bible.

If our life ends in nothing but our dying, and in eternal death, then in our experience of life too farewells will take precedence over all the new beginnings, since everything we experience is, in the end, transitory, and passes away. But if Christ’s farewell in his death has become the new, eternal beginning in his resurrection, then in our end we too shall find our new, eternal beginning (Moltmann 2004, p. 100).

Where men and women perceive Christ’s resurrection and begin to live within its horizon, they themselves will be born again to a living hope which reaches beyond death, and in living love will begin to experience eternal life in the fulfilled moment. They experience themselves in God, and God in themselves, and that is eternal life (Moltmann, p. 164).

Here in this moment, in the waiting, in the hoping, in the living, in the loving, we catch a glimpse of what it is that we are promised. So, "Lazarus come out!"

For Richer, For Poorer

The Gospel reading for today, like the one around the laws on divorce from last week, is one of which I think that we are more than little afraid. We’re afraid it, I think, because we’re afraid that it’s about judgement; and it is. This text is unashamedly about judgement; the judgement of God about the things that get in the road of us following the ways of God. Last week, it was about following the letter of the Law without understanding its Spirit, its undergirding its principles, the nature of the God who gave the Law as gift to human who needed it. But when the text was first read, I bet more than one of us cringed a little at the possibility that from such a text would come a sermon about the “evils of divorce”. And there’s no doubt that that text was concerned about the right response to the breakdown of very ordinary human relationships in marriage; but as we explored it, it wasn’t just about the right human response to the breakdown of human relationships, it was far more concerned with the right human response to the gifts of God in creation. Yes, there was judgement, and yes we know that God judges, but if that was all we heard in last week’s text, then we missed something of the very nature of the God who has gifted us with the scriptures. So, we come to this week’s Gospel reading… about the so-called “rich young ruler”… and we’re ready to cringe again.

We’re ready to cringe because we know we’re rich. And we know that it’s not about whether we’re on fixed or limited incomes or not, we know that it’s about relative wealth in a world where there are vast differences between the haves and the have-nots. We know that we our lifestyles, our lives and our life expectancies would be very different if we were living in Zimbabwe or remote Papua or even a remote indigenous community in Australia. We know that, by comparison, with people who live hand to mouth, or worse, we are rich. We know that, even with all our complaints about the Australian health system, we are rich in comparison to those people who still battle illnesses whose eradication we take for granted. We know that we are rich because our community has a reasonably coherent welfare system for those who do struggle and who do battle to survive even in this nation. We know that we are rich and we cringe as we hear the story of the rich young ruler, because we are afraid. We afraid that the text is about judgement, and it is. The text is about the judgement of God on the things that get in the road of us following the ways of God. And we wonder, “Is this the judgement that God brings down on us?” “Is this the judgement that God brings down on us?” Does God look at us and say, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And we’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t take that gut reaction to hearing the text seriously. Because the text if about judgement—the judgement of God on the things that get in the road of us following the ways of God.

And you know yourself that the judgement is true. How much time do we spend deciding what to do with our money? How much time do we spend taking the advantages we have for granted? How little time do we spend dwelling on the plight of those who, compared to us, even those of us on very modest incomes, compared to us are greatly impoverished in their access to resources, in their disposable income, in their life prospects? Of course, the judgment is true.

But if that’s the only thing we heard in this text, then we’d be making the same mistake as we might have made last week. Yes, there was judgement, and yes we know that God judges, but if that was all we heard in this week’s text, then we missed something very important about the very nature of the God who has gifted us with the story. We would miss the hope. We would miss the hope.

"How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." And again, I’d like to say that we could mitigate this text, that we could water down the judgement by talking about “eyes of needles” as small holes in city walls through which a camel (a possession) was unlikely to move, but which would allow the passage of a human being, but I fear that too might both let us of the hook of God’s judgement too easily and worse—it might mean that we entirely miss the marvellous message of hope that is offered in this passage, which is so hope-filled, only because the judgement is so fitting and so right.

"Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God… For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

And in this profound statement of hope, we are reminded that if we like the “rich young ruler” were to too quickly succumb to our shock and go away grieving in the face of our wealth, if we were to do what the “rich young ruler” did, we would not be hearing the hope that we are offered in God… despite our riches, not because of them… despite our apparent powerlessness to change the distribution of wealth across our globe, not because of it… despite our giving up of our wealth for the sake of others, not because of it… despite who we are, not matter how poor, no matter how lowly, no matter how rich, no matter how advantaged… despite all this, God has opened God’s realm to us in Christ and we are invited to enter it through the power of the Holy Spirit. None of it has anything to do with us, or with camels, or with eyes of needles—whatever they may be. And lest we boast, even when we think we have reason to lay claim to such a place, as Peter attempted to do so by drawing attention to what the disciples had given up, we are reminded: “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” It is not then or now and never will be about us. It is all about God—God’s judgement and God’s hope. Thank God! Because of God’s gift to us in Jesus, it is not our worry where we are placed, rather it is our calling to honour the God who has given so much, by giving thanks, and by praying that our wills may be confirmed to God’s will and that the fullness of God’s reign of justice and peace will come to fruition in God’s time. And that more than anything will free us to be the people of God we are called to be.

Receive All As Gift

The story of Job is an extraordinary one. Job, “a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil”, is tested by the adversary of God, the Satan, literally the devil’s advocate. And God allows it! God allows it.

The Satan is given permission to afflict Job—with the death of his family, with the loss of his livelihood, with terrible disease, and with taunts to “Curse God, and die” in the face of such calamity—and God allows it. God allows it. At least in the story, God allows it.

But even more unexpectedly, Job accepts it. Job accepts it. It is precisely from the book of Job, that we get such aphorisms as: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) and “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10). And though nearly the whole book of Job is riddled with diatribes from Job’s friends attempting to get Job to “curse God”, blame God, give up on God, Job never does. Right to the very end of the book, Job remains faithful to God, and God “restores his fortunes”.

Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, the story of Job is very troublesome—how on earth can we human beings be expected to accept everything that happens to us? Did God intend that Samoa and Tonga would be devastated by a tsunami? Did God intend that a typhoon would hit the Philippines and earthquakes ravage Indonesia? Does God intend our loved ones to suffer and die, and for us to be afflicted by illness and disability? Does God really want to see children die of hunger, and crops fail due to drought? Did God engineer the global financial crisis? And does God enjoy seeing the rich third of the world getting its comeuppance? And even if God doesn’t want this, must we at least agree that God allows it? And if we did understand our God to be such a God, why would we want to trust in such a being?

And it’s precisely some of those sayings from Job that have been used so often and so glibly in the past to minimise the devastation wrought in people’s lives by death and disaster, damaging relationships and chronic and debilitating illness. Accept what you’re given and live with it. You made your bed, you have to lie in it. Even this will pass.

The book of Job is yet another one of those enigmatic books of the Bible like Esther which we looked at last week. If Esther never talked about God but was intent on God’s purposes, Job is always talking about God, but the book has almost nothing to do with God’s nature. Rather, it is all about the nature of human responses to the gift of relationship with God. It’s all about the way in which we, as humans, respond to God.

These first couple of weekends in October are big weekends for marriage services in Armidale—it must be Spring, or at least school holidays! Marriage services always confront the people involved with them with questions about human relationships, about the commitments we make to one another, about the hopes we have for ourselves and for each other. We know that if we enter relationship expecting that everything will be smooth sailing, we’re kidding ourselves. Life is not like that, or as one of our previous Prime Ministers said, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.” Well, I don’t know about “meant to”, but it certainly isn’t easy. Being in relationship takes work. You can’t ever take relationship for granted, and yet equally truly, there are always moments when the delight of being in a loving, committed relationship is far more than we might ever have expected. So it is in relationship with God. If we think that committing ourselves to live a godly life, follow in the way of Christ, seek to respond to the wind of the Spirit, is taking the easy option, we’re going to be sadly disappointed. Being committed to God is not about getting rich, or being protected from bad things, or even living a quiet life. Being committed to God takes commitment. It does mean work.

But you know if that’s the only way that we understand relationship—as hard work—we’re going to get sick of it pretty quickly. Relationship is not simply about duty, about doing what you’re supposed to do, or at least not just because you’re supposed to do it. Relationship relies on us accepting the other in the relationship as gift, as something so precious and so providential that nothing can shake our desire to be in that relationship. In a very real way, it is only when we are able to welcome what comes to us as gift, that we are able to find the resilience to meet it, the generosity to share it, and the hope to live in and through it no matter what happens.

And that’s where we come to the Gospel reading and you’re probably all wondering what I’m going to do with it. It’s been such a problematic text for the church, for individuals, for society over the centuries.

If Esther never talks about God but is intent on God’s purposes, and Job is always talking about God but is basically about our response to God, then this text, which on the surface appears to be about divorce, has almost nothing to do with divorce per se and everything to do with the way that human beings can twist that which is given as gift from God.

It is, of course, a discussion about the nature of God’s law. The Pharisees are as usual in debate with Jesus, and Jesus acquits himself admirably as a good rabbi, arguing scripture for scripture and theological concept for theological concept.

“So on the matter of divorce, what is it that you think Jesus?” And Jesus cleverly puts the question back on them, “What does Moses say?”, i.e. “What is in the Torah, the Law, God’s Law? What is in the first five books of our Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy?” The Pharisees go to Deuteronomy: “Moses says it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife.” But Jesus is not stumped, “Ah yes, but what about Genesis? What about the gift of male and female in creation? We need rules because we do not live up to God’s dream for our world, because we do not receive the gift of relationship offered to us by God and through God. The Law is gift and the Law tells us of God’s gifts to us in creation. Look at the world around. Look at the gifts given to you. Better still: look at the way children look at the world. Everything is a big adventure; everything is to be explored. The very soil of the earth is stuff for testing out, in mouths and great building projects and simply in getting dirty because they can. The way in which children receive God’s world is the way in which we should receive God’s Law, God’s creation, God’s gifts to us—with wonder and delight, awe and astonishment. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

So we are invited to received God’s creation, God’s world as gift—all of it—and maybe, just maybe if we are able to do it, we will discover how to care for it; and maybe, just maybe if we are able to do it, we will not be so worried about hoarding the resources we have, for surely the best gifts are to be shared; and maybe, just maybe, if we are able to receive God’s world as gift, we will know how to respond to each other’s pain and grief, and the needs of our communities, and the needs of those who face such hterrible disasters as the Asia Pacific region has seen this past week.

The resources for Social Justice Sunday from the National Council of Churches this year remind us that “In times of crisis, we often turn first to consider our own interests.” Our fear drives us to fear for ourselves, to fear tat we will not have the resources for us let alone anybody else. “However, when most of us are asked, we say that we would prefer better healthcare, education, roads and public transport to a few extra dollars in our pay packets. This response reflects our understanding that taxation is what we use in our society to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and the raising of public money, our “common wealth”, our common purse.” It reflects out understanding that everything we have comes from God; and that we are responsible to God’s Law, God’s way for what we do with the resources we have. “Christianity teaches us that we have a responsibility to care for each other and share what we have so that the most vulnerable are not left wanting.” And we can only do that if we are able to accept all that we have from God as pure gift. And perhaps that is only possible when we accept that God is on our side—God loves us, God cares for us and God wants the best for us. In the face of the generosity and graciousness of God, our only response can be gratitude and generosity in turn.

But most of us are not like Job, most of us need the rules, need to know something about what is required of us, because gratitude and generosity don’t come easily to us. Whether because we’re afraid or confused, or worried or in pain, our natural tendency is to think about ourselves, just us. God invites us to enter a world that is not about “just us”, but justice; to view what we have as children with delight and awe, wonder and astonishment—receiving all we have as pure gift and longing to share it with others.

(Some sections are sourced from Hope for the Common Good: Beyond the Global Financial Crisis, Resources for Social Justice Sunday 2009, NCCA.)

Call To Worship for Year B Ordinary Sunday 27

What a gift God has given us—
to be created in God’s image.
What a responsibility God has laid upon us—
to be stewards of God’s good creation.
What are human beings that God is so mindful of us?
Everything that we have is a gift from God;
and all that we are called to do is
to honour God the giver of every good thing.
Then let’s do just that and worship God…

For Such A Time As This

So, the Jesus All About Life TV ads begin this week. They are new ones prepared for this campaign and, as you’ve seen, their catch-phrase is “Jesus has answers”. “Jesus has answers”.

Well, I don’t know about you, but that’s not been my experience. More often than not, confronted by Jesus, I have more questions than answers. And you know I’m not so sure that that’s such a bad thing. The big questions of life are not solved so quickly with easy platitudes and sentimental phrases. If Jesus really has answers, how come life seems to be just a series of questions, even for Christians? And why is it that despite the questions without answers, Jesus still seems relevant to me, to us, today, at such a time as this, for such a time as this.

What is this time that we live in and where does God fit into it? Does God fit into it at all? These are real life questions for today… for such a time as this, but more often than not these questions come out in different forms, in forms relevant to our time, in questions that don’t even mention God—questions like: Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the best intentions have unintended consequences? What is the purpose of the fleeting nature of mortal life? What is it that we really want and where on earth can we find it? And though God is never mentioned, these questions are explorations of ultimate things. They are questions about God and about everything in relation to God. They are faith questions, questions of meaning and purpose, questions of ultimate reality.

When confronted by such questions, the Judaeo-Christian tradition tends not to offer easy answers or definitive statements. No, more often than not, Jewish-Christian responses to these important life questions about ultimate reality are answered with prayers, with honest expressions and outpourings to God—Why God? How God? When God? Who God? What God?—with lament and thanksgiving, confession and supplication, with praise and invocation—and in the wake of those outpourings, we discover something about the nature of God, the nature of ourselves and the nature of everything in relation to God—but what we discover are not glib answers, but real life wisdom discovered through prayer.

And if those important life questions about ultimate reality are not worked through in prayerful torrents, they are generally responded to with story—narratives, and tales and parables.

And thus, we come to the story of Esther—a story which never mentions God—but which deals with an awful lot of ultimate questions, questions of meaning and purpose; a story about a woman challenged to find her purpose “for such a time as this”.

The book of Esther is a novella, a short story written with great skill and artistry using the literary techniques of suspense and caricature. It "combines fairy tale, legendary, heroic, or mythic elements with a history-like orientation to daily affairs in [a] recognizable sphere of life within a smaller community [and] … in high politics" (Gottwald, 1985:551-552):

Set in the time of the Persian Empire, the book of Esther tells of "a spectacular last-minute deliverance of all the Jews within the Persian Empire from a plot to annihilate them. The plot is hatched in high government circles and it is Jews serving in those very circles who become the agents of Jewish salvation. Esther, the Jewish queen of Ahasuerus, helped by her cousin and one-time guardian Mordecai, frustrates the designs of Haman to kill Mordecai and then to slaughter the entire Jewish populace. Instead, in perfect poetic justice, Haman is hanged on the gallows he prepared for Mordecai. The enemies of the Jews who would have killed the Jews are themselves killed by the Jews.

The plot is replete with dramatic reversals: the Persian Vashti is replaced as queen by the Jewish Esther; newly promoted Haman, who cannot stand Mordecai's lack of deference toward him, in scheming to kill his rival loses his own life and his position is granted to Mordecai; an imperial decree to slaughter the Jews concocted by Haman is superseded by an imperial decree to slaughter the enemies of the Jews dictated by Mordecai.

The action is framed by court banquet scenes and audiences with the king. The driving tension in the plot is whether the anti-Jewish or the pro-Jewish forces in the court will receive the blessing of the king who appears as a manipulable power figure without decided judgments of his own (Gottwald, 1985:561).

And in the midst of all this is the figure of Esther, Jewish girl risen to the rank of Persian queen. She is caught in a dilemma: a dilemma about identity, about loyalty, about survival or herself and her people. She is facing her own set of ultimate questions—what matters? Can one person make any difference? Am I responsible for myself or for my people or both?

Esther must negotiate this dilemma of relating to two cultural homes, that of her ancestors and that of her husband and, indeed, captor, for the story is set in the time of the exile of the Jews from their homeland. Esther has experience the lifestyle of captive and captor and her position of privilege is due to the silence which is kept about her racial origin. Who am I and where do I belong? What is my purpose? Why am I here?

Esther is a special story and a special book. It is also a different piece of writing from many others in the canon of Scripture. Esther is one of what are called the Festal Scrolls. There are five of them. The others are Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Ruth. Each of these books is related to an annual Jewish ceremony and even today, those books are read on the relevant ceremonial dates.

Esther belongs to the feast of Purim, a time when Jews celebrate the deliverance from anti-Semitic pogroms such as those conducted in the Maccabean Hasmonean times before the coming of Jesus and in Tsarist Russia and in Nazi Germany. Purim is a celebration of the overcoming of Gentile opposition to Jewish identity but the victory over the Gentiles comes in quite a different way to that in the book of Daniel and indeed, it cuts across many of the laws found in the book of Deuteronomy.
Esther is firmly bound up in the traditions of the people amongst whom she lives, the Persians. She uses their system of government and their laws to overcome the threat at hand to her own people. She is at one time a good Persian queen and a good Jew, perhaps living in a world of compromise but negotiating the boundaries of such an arrangement with artistry and skill. She does not fit the paradigm of the orthodox Jews who seek to keep themselves separate from contact with Gentiles especially through intermarriage. In addition to this, the book of Esther in the Hebrew canon does not contain "a single explicit reference to God or the religious practices of Judaism" (Anderson, 1975:566).

In the first three centuries of the Christian era, there were doubts expressed amongst Jews over the right of the book to be in the canon. Yet it was also regarded as the scroll par excellence, the most perfect of all the scrolls. In later Jewish tradition, it was second only to the Torah this story of Jewish identity, of privileged position and of victory through devious means and political power plays over those who plotted against the Jews.

Now, it would be very easy to theologise away the significance of the story of Esther; just as it’s easy to say “Jesus has answers”. Even theology is used to avoid dealing with issues of power being played out before us. Esther could be seen as an example of the role of privileged people who have recognised their identity in Christ in taking responsibility for caring or pastoring those who have not yet discovered that identity. That's an important message if heard in the right context but it is only part of the significance of Esther for us.

The story of Esther is also a story about a woman in a privileged position working with the tools she has to free her people. And that work involves her risking the very privileged position that she enjoys “for such a time as this”.

The interplay of power dynamics is of course not confined to the story of Esther. We see it played out on the world stage—in the talks about responses to climate change. We see them played out nationally—in the toings and froings of oppositional politics. And we see them locally in different community groups vying for public attention. But they are also, of course, part of our own community situation here in this congregation. The play of power dynamics is part of what it means to be human; and that doesn’t mean it’s all bad, but it is a part of our everyday lives in a myriad of ways.

Esther is a story about someone who is clearly a part of her society, embroiled in it. But the important thing is that Esther uses her position to bring salvation to her people, not destruction—to build a future for her people, not to consign them to the past, however glorious a past that was.

As Christians, it can be tempting to think ourselves separate from the things that happen around us. Some Christians choose to do that. But that was not Esther's way, she used her position of privilege to bring about social change: not by withdrawing from her society but by actively participating in it—with all its questions and dilemmas—by acknowledging her position of privilege, understanding her people's plight and by putting herself, her reputation and even her life on the line.
The action of God, the act of salvation, is very clearly seen to be performed through Esther who is willing to enter into the struggle for freedom of her people. But she could only do it because she entered into her dilemma. She faced the ultimate questions of life and death, meaning and purpose facing her and her people.
And that is the gift and the example given to us in Jesus—not glib answers to ultimate questions, but a God who dares to be with us in the midst of the dilemmas, of the ultimate questions; a God who dares to get down and dirty, to get messy, to be human, to wrestle with life and death, to want to give up, to risk everything for the sake of what’s really important. And as the body of Christ, this also is our calling—to be in the dilemmas, in the dialogue, in the conversation, in the mess, in the struggle—for the sake of what’s important.

The Jesus All About Life ads are asking people to wrestle with some real life issues. Remember we’re asked to be prepared to have conversations around these ads. Perhaps as with me, the catch-phrase “Jesus has the answers” rests a bit uncomfortably with you. Perhaps, you’d prefer to say something like “Jesus makes a difference” or “Jesus understands” or “Jesus is in the conversation about real life issues” or something else. Maybe “Jesus has answers” is the way you’d say it. However, you would want to respond to those dilemmas or talk about your understanding of the relevance of faith in Christ for those dilemmas, they are real life dilemmas and as such they are invitations to conversation about what is really important, about ultimate questions, about meaning and purpose. Jesus is all about life; and life is all about questions. We are called to risk being in the conversation, and more often than not that means risking our privileged positions in our families, our workplaces, our communities.

And that’s where I want to make one more connection into our own community here, into this congregation. We are a marvellously diverse community, but there’s no doubt about it, our demographic strength lies in the over-60s; and that’s not a bad thing. It is in fact a strength we can celebrate; and we do in the document that is the outcome of our Visioning Process. We celebrate the spiritual maturity of our congregation—maturity that comes through faithfulness and life experience and lifetimes of waiting on God. But within our strengths are also our challenges.
For older people, some of the ultimate questions that are important may be—What is my legacy? Will the things that I think are important continue? Can I trust that the others who come after me will understand what has been important to me? And can I trust them to continue to do things in the way that I have done them?

Now it would be easy to think that there were easy answers to these questions. That we could prescribe how things are always to be done and what is understood to be important. But deep down, we know that we can’t. So here too we are called to risk. In this position of privilege—of longevity in the community, of participation in processes of decision-making, of being part of the regular crowd—we are called to risk giving it all up—to risk creating the space for others to be involved, to take up the tasks that have previously been ours, to express their praise and honour of God in new and fresh ways that keep the essence of what we are on about alive. We are called to risk our future, by letting it go in outpourings of prayer, of lament and thanksgiving, confession and supplication, praise and invocation; to risk it by giving it up in story—in narrative and tale and parable; and ultimately to trust that while there are no glib answers, God is with all and in all and through all, after all.

So, let’s risk the conversations; and let’s risk our powerful positions for the sake of what’s really important. We can do nothing less if we claim that we bear the name of the one who risked everything for our sake.

Jesus All About Life

The Jesus All About Life TV advertisements begin this week. They are new ones prepared for this campaign. Their catch-phrase is “Jesus has answers”. The text of the main ad is:

Hey Jesus, thanks for the sunshine, but what about the sunburn?
Hey Jesus, how come the more I have, the more I want?
We’ve got more friends, but less friendship.
More convenience. Less patience.
We have bigger hopes, but more uncertainty.
A healthy body still isn’t good enough.
How come the best things are always have to end?
Jesus has answers.

The ads are asking people to wrestle with some real life issues. Remember we’re asked to be prepared to have conversations around these ads.

Perhaps as with me, the catch-phrase “Jesus has the answers” rests a bit uncomfortably with you. Perhaps, you’d prefer to say something like “Jesus makes a difference” or “Jesus understands” or “Jesus is in the conversation about real life issues” or something else. You can find some reflections on the life dilemmas raised at http://www.biblesocietynsw.com.au/_literature_53726/JAAL_Web_Text These reflections are just some of the ways of approaching those dilemmas in Christian ways. Remember the dilemmas are invitations to conversation and you are an important conversation partner.

Here are some sentences from the website indicated above that I thought might help conversations to open up rather than close down. I’ve added some questions of my own for you to think from your own faith perspective:

Hey Jesus, thanks for the sunshine, but what about the sunburn?

“Sunburn wakes us up in order that we can start to recognise that there are problems in this world.” What do we need to wake up to, and how does our faith help us wake up?

 

Hey Jesus, how come the more I have, the more I want?

“It is an odd thing about human nature, but no matter how much we buy it never seems to last.” What might we be looking for in our endless consumerism, and how does our faith help us to move beyond the desire for material things?

We’ve got more friends, but less friendship.

In the story of the Good Samaritan, the neighbour is the one who acts. What does it mean to be a friend, and how does our faith help us to understand and act in friendship?

More convenience. Less patience.

“We can make instant coffee in no time but we often choose to wait for and buy good coffee because we like the outcome. We appreciate good coffee so we don’t mind waiting. Impatience works against some of the important areas of life. Things like relationships, character, parenting and caring for others all take time and all require patience.” How does our faith help us with knowing what the good things are and being patient in seeking/waiting for them?

We have bigger hopes, but more uncertainty.

“Our biggest hopes are heaven on earth—health, wealth and freedom. Our big fears are hell on earth—ending up poor, sick and powerless.” How does our faith help us to live with the uncertainty of life and being human?

A healthy body still isn’t good enough.

“We have better health care than ever before in history and at the same time record levels of anxiety and depression amongst men and women at every level of society. We fear death so we worship youth. We have an unhealthy obsession with looking young.” “External image can help you in job interviews and impress people at a distance but it is who you are as a person that will determine the significant of your life.” How does our faith determine who we are and what difference does that make?

How come the best things are always have to end?

“Our existence is determined by time. Every moment of our lives are marked by the ticking clock that records the progression of time and marks the steps towards the end of whatever human endeavour we are involved in. Most humans living in developed, western and wealthy cultures resent that we can’t control all of our lives and that we can’t cheat the clock…The challenge is to look beyond the present and ask questions about what actually lasts, what goes on into the future, what will make a difference.” What does our faith tell us about what lasts and what matters? How does our faith help us to live for what lasts and what matters?

Jesus is all about life; and life is all about questions. Let’s be in the conversation!