Sometimes the message of Jesus is inflammatory – there are no two ways about it! Today Jesus expresses this very directly as he says, ‘I came to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it was already kindled!”   Now this is not at all comfortable. Most of us prefer to avoid conflict and live life peaceably. We are much more at home with Jesus’s messages about love and peace and kindness, treating everyone with respect and seeking to welcome everyone. So, what are we to do with today’s story about how Jesus comes to bring division, even into the intimate unit of the family?...

Well firstly I think we need to consider the historical context and realise that Luke wrote his gospel at the point in our Christian story, where the message about Jesus was indeed causing divisions in the Jewish community. It is easy enough to imagine how that happened. Peter, or Paul or Silas visited a Jewish synagogue. Everyone was happily listening to the readings and prayers in the usual way. Then one of them starts to speak and tell them that Jeshua bar Joseph from Nazareth actually died and rose again, and that He is the long -awaited Messiah. Some are convinced by what they hear and welcome this message with joy. Others in their congregation and their family are utterly horrified and try to convince their friend and family member of their error. And conflict arises. Further conflict arises when the early Jewish Christians are asked to come to terms with the idea that God is calling Gentiles to follow Jesus as well as Jews. But without that conflict, the early church could never have grown.

Conflict in life, in families, in institutions like churches, across nations, is inevitable. Indeed, there can be no growth without conflict. One of the questions Jo and I have generally asked when considering a call to a new parish is ‘what has been your most recent conflict and how was it resolved?’ And if we were told there had been no conflict, we generally did not go to that place. Because conflict, however uncomfortable, is actually a sign of life. However, it can of course also be deeply destructive. So how conflict is handled – preferably with gentleness and wisdom - is also very important.

You may like to think of times in your own life when you have experienced conflict that led to something new and better. It may not have felt that way at the time, but with hindsight it is clear that the conflict was necessary and led to growth in yourself and others.

Within the gospel text itself conflict and division are part of the story of Jesus from the very beginning. I am not
quite sure how we arrived at any kind of notion of gentle Jesus meek and mild from the text of scripture, because it is simply not there.  He is depicted as not infrequently incandescent in his condemnation of those who lay heavy burdens on the vulnerable.

This week past we have celebrated the feast day of the Virgin Mary. If we think of Mary’s song, the Magnificat, we can see that dramatic social upheaval in the cause of justice is the expectation of the child Jesus, even before he is born. He is expected to cast down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly; to feed the hungry and send the rich away empty. This is an agenda calculated to cause problems, for the powerful have never been known to give up their power without a struggle. Similarly, when Simeon took the infant Jesus in his arms and blessed him, he warned Mary that he was ‘destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed – and a sword will pierce your own soul also.”  From the very beginning, Jesus seeks a justice that is always likely to cause division, even as it seeks to make whole.  Jesus challenges his hearers to interpret their times in the light of his message, encouraging them to judge for themselves what is right. This is not a popular message among those who prefer people to do as they are told and not think for themselves, whether in church or state.

Yesterday Josephine and I attended the rally to oppose religious exemptions and Jo spoke.  As clergy within the rainbow community we sit in a challenging spot. The political narrative of choice at present opposes queer people to people of faith, seeking to create conflict between the two. But what if you are both, or at least sympathetic to both, as are we and many of you here? Then be sure you are likely to receive brickbats from both sides. But if you speak the truth, then others respond.

One lady, a veteran of many such rallies, approached us. She told us that she was not religious, but that she was ‘in love with Jesus, because how can you not love someone who is willing to speak up for the poor and vulnerable and to resist the rich and powerful?” Quite so.   But for us, who are proud to take the name Christian, and who seek truly to love Jesus, there are many conflicts and divisions to be faced, as we seek to read our present times in the light of the gospel. There are signs we would rather not read – signs of climate crisis; signs of human trafficking and slavery here in Australia as well as overseas; signs of the ongoing mistreatment of refugees and of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples; signs of the continued prejudice against LGBTIQA+ people – we heard yesterday for example the truly appalling statistic that 75% of our rainbow young people between the age of 12 and 25 have been undergoing homelessness as a result of their gender or sexual expression – 75%!

Now this does not by the way necessarily mean that things are getting worse (though sometimes it does indicate that). Rather it may mean that things are getting uncovered as the #metoo campaign for example has done. And that is a good thing. It is a painful, difficult thing that often leads to divisions among us – but it is a good thing; something that leads to growth and freedom.

Jesus was sometimes inflammatory. Sometimes He needed to be. Sometimes we need to be, if we are to respond to the longing of God in Christ for change that leads to justice. So, in your own ways, and in the just causes of the gospel, go light a few fires. In the name of Jesus, who came to bring fire to the earth. Ame

by Penny Jones, for Sunday 18 August 2019, Pentecost 10 Year C

So, it’s straightforward is it? Ask, seek, knock – and you will get some kind of response – not necessarily the response you were hoping for; but at least a response. And if we ask for the gift of the spirit, Jesus is saying God will always give us that gift. It sounds like a transaction – right words in, right results out, a bit like a vending machine!  Yet prayer, and Jesus’s teaching about prayer, is not as straightforward as it might appear, or perhaps as we might hope. On the one hand in this passage Jesus sounds very reassuring – God will treat us better than we treat our own children; we can be assured of God’s care for us and God’s responsiveness to our needs. Keep it simple – ask for what you want and you will receive it, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. But on the other hand, it really is not quite like that, is it? We all know of others if not ourselves, who have prayed for help, for healing, for relief from suffering in all kinds of terrible circumstances, and it seems as though their prayer has fallen on deaf ears. So, what then? – was their prayer not ‘good enough’; their faith not ‘strong enough’; their moral calibre not high enough? Surely this is not how it works? Yet I have known folk despair of God’s love for them and reject themselves as unworthy and unfit, simply because God has not appeared to answer their legitimate, heartfelt prayers. This is not the kind of God I want to know or associate with – and it is not good enough to say; ‘it’s all a mystery and one day we will understand!”...

These few verses in the gospel of Luke have caused a lot of bother over the centuries. And even today, when they are so familiar, they can give us pause for thought. Whether we are sympathising with Martha and feeling that she is a bit hard done by, or cheering Mary on for breaking the gender stereotype, it is hard to remain neutral, when these two sisters are set up by the text itself in opposition to each other.  The scholar Carol Noren reminds us of the “need for us to imagine ourselves back into the customs and mores of first-century Judaism. In the context in which the event occurred, the episode was shocking, not for reproving Martha, but for praising Mary. As far as Jesus' own culture was concerned, Martha was in the right. She knew how to serve itinerant rabbis, how to treat guests with honour. She knew that her place was back in the kitchen. The apostles probably expected Jesus to rebuke Mary, because she was breaking the rules...

I learnt a new word this week.  It is a German word – warmduscher.  And it means a person who likes their shower warm – not cold, not hot, just warm – and they won’t experiment in either direction. In other words, they are a person who prefers to stay firmly in their comfort zone. They are a person who is very resistant to change. And you know what, that is most of us! – no wonder it is so hard to get elected to government on a program for change! It is really hard for most of us to try something new, because as human beings we are hard- wired to stay safe, and not risk change.
 
Which brings us to today’s story. Three things strike me in this story. The length of time the man has been waiting at the pool. The clarity of Jesus’s question ‘Do you want to be made well?’ and the mystery of why Jesus chose this person to heal on the Sabbath. Let’s think about them in turn...

One of the great things about theology from the margins is how it brings the Bible alive in liberating ways.  Therefore, as the young gay Sydney Anglican Joel Hollier puts it, for many queer folk like he and I, ‘we’re not queer despite the Bible.  We’re queer because of the Bible.’  As we read the Bible ‘with queer eyes’, more and more sexually and gender diverse people are renewing the very elements which gave the Bible power in the first place: seeing and exploring the extraordinary diversity and dynamic of goodness in creation and human bodies; the central call to justice and infinite compassion for all; the redeeming power of love in the face of suffering and death; and the resurrection promise of new life and flourishing found in the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the world.  That is one reason why, personally, I’m so over the old arguments about sexuality and gender, not least the so-called ‘clobber texts’.  Honestly, why on earth would we waste time on others’ hang-ups, when we’ve such good news to explore and share?  In this, today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 9.36ff) is a striking example.  For in Tabitha/Dorcas, we find a startling model of discipleship from the margins: truly, an evocative, entrepreneurial, exemplar…

How do you feel about anointing? I’m talking full on anointing here. I don’t just mean anointing as a metaphor, nor the very reserved forms of anointing which can take place in many churches. I mean oil poured out profusely: all over the head, body, and feet. I mean total divine sensate massage and aromatherapy: exquisite sensation, overpowering perfume, near sensory overload. Ever tried it? The Orthodox Church typically anoints someone all over at baptism - I kind of like that. It reminds us that, to be a Christian, is about being soaked in the Holy Spirit, exuberantly alive with fabulous sensation and fresh nurturing life. That, certainly, is at the heart of the Gospel story we hear today: an amazingly radical story, on so many levels, which models, and invites us to become more fully the beloved community of vivacious, scandalous, love…

It has been a rather terrifying and depressing week in both church and wider world. So, what ‘good news’ do our scriptures offer us today? A curious little parable about a fig tree. Can this help us? I think it can. Let’s suppose that the fig tree is us, and the gardener is God in Christ. The question then becomes ‘are we – humanity - willing to let Christ dig around our roots and put in some manure?’ Are we willing to be ‘done to’, or would we rather persist in the arrogant and clearly dangerous view that we can fix ourselves?
 
St. Augustine pointed to the humility of Christ the gardener, who is not afraid to get their hands dirty; to use earthy matter, manure to bring fruitfulness. This is a very helpful corrective to views of God in Christ that suggest a heavenly being of little earthly use. In times like this we need a God who can get down into the mess of life with us and help us with the stuff that is really difficult, from terrorism to child abuse...

If you have ever been to St Luke’s church in Toowoomba, you will know it has wonderful stained glass windows.  These include, above the high altar, a replica of the famous medieval ‘Blue Virgin’ window from Chartres cathedral.  Another outstanding feature, at the west end, above the baptistery, is a beautiful modern Australian stained glass window; which, almost like an Aboriginal dot painting, plots and celebrates so many aspects of Creation.  There are several other windows too which command attention, including one with St Peter and girls from The Glennie School; a rendering of the meeting of Mary Magdalene with Jesus at the Resurrection; and a moving portrait (in the Warriors Chapel) of a dying soldier reaching out and touching the crucified Christ.  All speak powerfully of Christian faith, and are, as it were, the Gospel in glass..  Over the years I ministered there however, the window I was surprisingly increasingly drawn to was one of those which are easily passed over: namely a stained glass window representing the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.  As time went on, I would indeed particularly point this out to those who came for baptisms.  For the message of that window goes to the heart of the good news – the Gospel – we all need to hear today: the good news which lies behind Jesus’ responses to the great human temptations in our Gospel reading today.  To flourish beyond such temptations, we, like Jesus at his baptism, need to hear, for ourselves, the words of God ‘You are my Beloved, in you I am well pleased’…

I cannot really think of a better verse with which to stand on the threshold of that amazing annual journey we call Lent than Psalm 50 verse 23:  “Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice, honour me.” . Tomorrow we step over the threshold and the journey will begin. But today, we stand on the threshold. We’re about to clear our fridges, make pancakes and make space for something new.  I wonder how you’re feeling?...

The Transfiguration - as Joseph Pagano has described it “three holy heavyweights hold a summit meeting on the ways God will fulfil God’s promises through the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus”. It is not heralded with the pomp and ceremony of Trump meeting Kim Jong Un. But the outcomes are life changing for all of us.
 
Peter, James and John nearly sleep through it all – a foreshadowing of course of their inability to stay awake in the garden of Gethsemane. Whether it is the glory of God or the agony, the joy or the pain, we mere humans are inclined to choose sleep over wakefulness, because being awake asks so much. But never perhaps in the church’s history has it been so imperative that we keep awake to what God is doing and to refuse to shut god up in boxes and booths of our own making...