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

As I feel sure many of you will remember, in the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian”, Jesus at one point is discovered by Brian teaching the people. There is a huge crowd gathered around him – very much as described in our passage today – so huge that some of the people on the outer edge of the crowd cannot hear what he is saying. As Jesus pronounces what have become known as the Beatitudes -the declaration of those who are blessed – one of the characters in the movie, desperate to know what Jesus is saying asks a man ahead of him in the crowd, ‘what is he saying – what’s he saying.’ The man checks with someone in front of him, who in turn checks with someone else and then the message is relayed back, rather as in the game of Chinese whispers -  “The Master says, “Blessed are the cheesemakers”
 
Well that was obviously a joke! – but it also a good reminder to us about how easily we misunderstand what Jesus has said, and how often we misunderstand about blessing. I was talking with you last week a little bit about the dangers of the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ and about how it is easy to assume that when things are going well God is blessing us and conversely when things are hard that somehow, we have lost God’s favour. There really could not be a clearer reversal of that thinking than today’s Gospel passage (Luke 6.17-26)...

The great and much maligned former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, used to say, “We are not up to it, but thank God, God gets down to it.” Today we have heard the stories of three quite ordinary people, Isaiah, Paul and Peter, who did not feel up to it; yet by the grace of God, they found themselves caught up in God’s work; despite their own feelings of weakness and inadequacy.
 
I don’t know what your own experience has been, but I have certainly learned that following God's call is not a single event. Rather it is a life - long process filled with much failure punctuated with occasional bright points of something that felt like ‘success’, but not success as most people would measure it...

Some of us may have heard that, on the same night as this year’s Sydney Mardi Gras, a gay man was beaten up in the centre of Toowoomba.  This should not take the gloss off the rightfully joyful celebrations of 40 years of Mardi Gras, or the recent advance with marriage equality and all that that symbolises.  Yet it is a vivid reminder, if we needed it, that there is still more to do.  I say that with deep sadness, for after ministering for over six years in Toowoomba, I have seen that city become increasingly broad and beautiful, in its affirmation, not just tolerance, of our amazing Australian human diversity.  So I am not despondent about Toowoomba, or anywhere else in Australia, even though we have just been recalled to the powerful forces of rage in our society…

What do you think makes for a great political slogan?  Whatever you think about him, I think Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ was pretty effective.  Other catchy slogans which have famously worked well in the USA have been Lyndon Johnson’s ‘All the Way with LBJ’, Bill Clinton’s ‘Its the Economy stupid’, and the clever response to Barry Goldwater’s ‘In your heart, you know he’s right’ which was ‘In your guts, you know he’s nuts’.  In the UK, the one slogan everyone remembers was Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Labout isn’t working’.  What about Australia?  My guess is that Whitlam’s ‘Its Time’ has probably been the most effective, with ‘Kevin 07’ perhaps a catchy runner-up as most recently memorable.  It is hardly a new phenomenon of course.  Leaders were coining political slogans from ancient times, not least the Roman Emperors.  So too with Jesus.  For, whilst Jesus’ proclamation – his evangelion, his ‘gospel’ - was much more than political, as we hear it again in today’s reading, it most certainly had its political dimension.  It is something important that we can easily miss with the passing of time…

When are where did you receive a ‘call’ to a new ministry in the Church?  Did it come gradually upon you, or was there a particular turning point?  For what it is worth, in my case it has probably happened over a period of time.  However I do remember getting on a train in rural Lincolnshire to travel to Birmingham to stay with some friends.  Such a cross-country journey can often be a little grueling, for UK train lines which do not involve London are typically less speedy and more complicated.  So it was that five hours of stop and starts provided me with plenty of time for reflection, at the end of which a new sense of vocation had been planted in me.  If Margaret Thatcher had no time for the old nationally owned British Rail, God clearly did!   In what way though, if any, do our own calls to ministry compare with those of the disciples in today’s Gospel (Luke 5.1-11)?...

This morning we bring together three important aspects of our lives together: the liturgical Season of Creation which we begin this week; the witness to justice and care for Creation which has been explored in our Abundant Justice conference this weekend; and the Gospel call, which we have just heard, to follow Jesus to take up the cross and follow him.  So I want to speak this morning about three connecting things: about three ‘c’s; about the cross, about change and about communion; about how the cross comes when you try to change things; about how true change is grounded in the communion of all being; and about how that communion is founded on the cross of God’s creation…

A few weeks ago I asked a local rabbi what was the Jewish ‘take’ on Saul of Tarsus, otherwise known to Christian as St Paul.  The rabbi said that there really wasn’t a view.  Now he may not have quite understood what I was asking, or perhaps he was simply trying to be diplomatic and avoid controversy.  For surely, over the centuries, Jews have had something to say about Paul, particularly when he has been regarded, in some Christian quarters, as an archetypal model of Jewish conversion.  The rabbi’s response however was also suitably chastening.  Christians may rightly hold Paul in high regard, even some awe.  Why though would Jews have much consideration for him?  He left the faith and, in doing so, no longer belonged to Jewish history.  Judaism essentially simply moved on.  Christians must therefore be careful not to read into our understanding of Jewish-Christian relationships particular aspects of St Paul which are precious to us.  This is certainly something to be borne in mind when we hear biblical passages like this one from Acts chapter 13 today.  Jewish-Christian relationships have always been much more complex than many people have often wanted them to be, and this is clear from the history of the first Christian centuries…

Today's Gospel (John 3.31-36) appears very abruptly in the text of John's Gospel.  Indeed some commentators have even considered whether they are words of John the Baptist.  For he has just been speaking and there is no change of speaker indicated.  Yet they seem to me all of a part with the Johannine figure of Christ and its high christology  Key themes of the Gospel are indeed included in it.  Let me turn to them in a moment.  Firstly however, as Penny observed, at yesterday's eucharist, about an earlier passage in this same chapter 3 of John, these words clearly come from a context of conflict...

Well we have a real piece of theatre in our Gospel reading today, don't we? It's beautifully set up. We can picture it clearly. Jesus in shining robes or simple sackcloth. The devil, however we want to picture him - or her- horn and tails, or sharp cut suit and red high heels. Good on one side, evil on the other and after a bit of  verbal swordplay good comes out victorious. It's how we'd all love it to be. It is the subtext of every superhero book or movie.  Yet it is not real life is it? It is not the world in which we struggle to pay our bills, and sit up late to meet someone else's deadlines and get cranky with our kids and shout at the dog. In our real world good and evil are all mixed up. We know the good thing that we want to do for our own good and that of others and we do the opposite for no reason we can fathom, as Paul said. In this real world we are four days into Lent and many of our good intentions, I'll take a bet have already evaporated or never been begun. (Never mind pick yourself up and have another go!)  But what use is this story to us, mere humans?...