This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

– Jalaluddin Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

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He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”                       [Luke’s Gospel 11.1-4]

There’s that old church joke about the new minister who comes to a congregation, and preaches her first sermon and all who are gathered are greatly impressed.

The following week, they hear the same sermon, virtually word for word, from the new incumbent. Quizzical looks pass around the pews. Next week, same sermon, and people are restless. The Chair of Church Council is approached; something needs to be done. “Let’s wait and see what happens” is the sage advice.

Next week, an identical homily and all pretence of tolerance is gone, so the Chair speaks to the new minister, encouraging her about the quality of the sermon, but worried that there might only be one arrow in her quiver.

The following Sunday, she gathers the people for worship, acknowledging people’s concerns about hearing the same sermon, week after week. She then remarks, “When we start doing it, I’ll preach something new.”

This prayer, which is offered each week by Jesus’ disciples across the globe, suffices for every liturgy we might ever craft.

If we click on each line, what an extraordinary drop-down menu would appear, as the implications of God’s intention for the creation is declared.

What does it mean to name God with the intimacy of a child to a parent, and to honour that same God with our next breath, to declare God as holy? In our community, intimacy can be dangerous, when places which should be safe, are not. Honouring our parents, our elders, our carers can appear to be an irrelevancy, an outdated notion. Offering ourselves in relationship is costly, indeed; Jesus invites us to risk ourselves with God, and we gradually discern that Jesus, at God’s initiative, has first risked himself in our hands.

We ask for God’s reign to be realised; what does that look (and sound and feel) like in our world? The economy of God in not measured in dollars spent, or sliding tax scales, but in justice granted and mercy offered, in hungry children fed and peace being more than a handshake. If the last are first in God’s economy, then we are living our lives and world backward.  

Bread for each day sounds simple in the deceptive wealth of the global north, but then we remember that people – children, each day – are dying of starvation in Gaza, with hundreds of food trucks queued, immobile, on the other side of the barriers. Others die, waiting for the miserly handouts, when soldiers open fire.

Jesus’ words are carefully articulated; is it possible that the reign of God, and bread for each day and forgiveness for ourselves and for our neighbours are linked, inextricably?  “Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter”, Dr King reminds us, and then we remember that the Northern Territory Government is imprisoning ten-year-old children.

At first we scramble for excuses for this obscenity, and then we drop our heads, and hold our breath, unconsciously mimicking Kumanjayi White, who died, breathless, at the hands of police in the confectionery aisle of an Alice Springs supermarket a few months ago.

May I risk myself by suggesting that this moment, this time, is the time of trial? How shall we bear Christ’s witness? Let us step into this prayer, and step it out in our lives.

We pray, not to convince God to change God’s mind, but to align ourselves with the intentions and hopes and griefs of God in relation to our world. We pray, to echo the hope for God for the world, and to be adapted to the cruciform shape of God’s action in the creation. When you pray, move your feet.

Perhaps the disciples might well have asked, “Lord, teach us to live.”  Praying might appear to be a less costly request.

It is not.

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

This is what [the Lord God] showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” [The Prophet Amos 7.7-9]

I have noted previously there are biblical stories about which people have already made up their minds. These are usually well-known, like Easter and Christmas, or tales of prodigal sons. Preaching on these is like cracking concrete, as opinions – often well-considered ones – have been formed. New reflections do not penetrate easily.

Thus, this week’s gospel reading, about a Jew who is assaulted and left for dead in a dangerous neighbourhood. Two Jewish leaders, who we would expect to offer help, move swiftly aside. A little later, a man from the Palestinian West Bank, stops; he dresses the victim’s wounds, and carries him to the nearest accommodation, paying the bill.

This story has a context; Jesus has been asked what must be done to inherit eternal life. Jesus takes a plumb line and measures our lives against the commands of the Law. “Love God with everything we have, and our neighbour as ourselves”.

Tell me, who is my neighbour?

Jesus, a faithful Jew, is debating one who serves the Law faithfully and, it appears, has come equally faithfully seeking an answer. Thus, like many good lawyers and rabbis, Jesus turns the question around; who behaved as a neighbour for the victimised man?

The measure of the answer is mercy. A plumb line indeed.

There is a crisis in the Middle East, which could be a headline from any time in the last six decades, and longer. Stepping out this history can lead to despair. As with so many social and historical crises with which we live, the simple answers, some of which emerge from the school playground as much as the United Nations, are commonplace.

We cannot speak about the horrors of the Hamas attack on 7^th October 2023, or the appalling reprisals engineered by the Israeli Government as if there is no larger history of fear and violence, pogrom and persecution, threat and retaliation.

Youth workers have, for generations, tried to find a contextual parable to match that of the Jewish victim, the negligent clergy and the merciful outsider. There is no need to look too far distant; Jesus’ parable is crying out for enactment on his front lawn.

At the root of the Gaza horror story lies Jesus’ parable, and Amos’ prophecy almost eight hundred years before Jesus spoke. Amos offers a polemic against those who trample the needy and bring ruin upon the poor, who bargain deceitfully and shackle in debt those who will never find a way out.

There is a reason that this is the most famous of Jesus’ parables. It is a radical departure from how we commonly act – retaliation and reprisal. Blame. Excuses.

A South American theologian argues that the reason the Samaritan stops is because he knows the danger on this road; he has been assaulted here before. And no one stopped to help.

Jesus’ words are, as always, a radical departure from our standard response. God expects more of us. The God of Amos, of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, expects more. And I risk myself by assuming that an equal demand is made by the God of those who are descendants by faith of Ishmael.

I am neither sufficiently naïve, nor foolish, to assume that my words will affect any action in Gaza. I will be audacious enough, however, to hope that they may affect how we pray, how we debate and how we act in mercy toward our neighbours, our family, in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Who acted as a neighbour? The one who showed mercy.
Jesus said, Go and do likewise.

“Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.”  [Luke’s Gospel 10.3-6]

You must always bring something with you, when you visit someone’s home. It’s common courtesy, or so we were told when we were children. Cake, or biscuits, even from the shop; a bottle of wine if it’s evening. You don’t go empty-handed, it’s just rude.

That’s one of the first memories that springs to my mind when I read this passage, the idea that you appear at someone’s front door, hoping to go in, and your hands are empty.

This passage takes us even deeper; this is not about afternoon tea, it’s about staying with people, imposing on their hospitality until the job is done. Whenever that is. We are hoping for a welcome, and one that lasts beyond the kettle cooling.

Even if we take into account the Middle Eastern culture of hospitality, and the inherent obligations to the neighbour and the stranger, this is a significant challenge. We are carrying nothing.  

We have no money, no footwear, no protection, no bags for the clothes we are not carrying.  Nothing.

Consider the planning meeting for the new church plant, for the new faith community   we hope to grow in our neighbourhood. First step of the Action Plan: we arrive at someone’s door, expecting food, drink, perhaps a change of clothes and some money for an Uber.

Consider the Mission Consultant (deserving of capitalisation) who outlays no cash for the proposal, not a smidgen of financial planning, and tells us all we need to carry with us is the Blessing of Peace, and the proclamation, “The reign of God has come near to you”. In your hands are healing, for those communities in which you receive a welcome.

(Might we have some training, please? When we last tried to heal a child, we under-performed…)

What does it mean to arrive in a community, disarmed entirely? When we have no resources – material, financial – behind which to shelter, we can feel exposed. And we are.

In the astonishing Old Testament story about Naaman’s healing (II Kings 5), Elisha’s messenger tells the military commander that he needs to dip himself in the Jordan seven times and everything will be fine. What? No bells and whistles? No drama and theatrics? Nothing?

Just barefoot, no sandals, no staff, no cash required?

With all the resources at our fingertips, we find it difficult to imagine that the only resources required are the mercy of God, our story and our selves.

This is not a romantic allusion to poverty, to the honour of having nothing. It is an assertion of how God is at work in the world, through us and, frequently, despite us.

We take with us a blessing and a story, the story of our experience with Christ, and what that means for us. The story we need to bring is unadorned, unromantic and as tangible as our handshake. We share hospitality, because conversations happen more easily over a percolator and a pikelet.

We never impose the gospel, but offer it, as a cup of tea is offered. It can be received, or refused, but the gift endures – and may well be offered again.

Material resources for our participation for God’s mission are – at best – the next step, when people have offered blessing, and hold each other’s tale reverently in their hands.

Our world is consumed with those who would impose their will, their violence upon others, with any number of excuses and rationales. Jesus has always chosen a different course, and calls us to the same. 

When we consider how we might offer a blessing to our friend, our neighbour, even our enemy, remember that we bring with us an encounter with the reign of God in the world. This is God’s astounding mercy – for us, and for those to whom  we offer ourselves,  woven into the story of God, at work in the world for which Christ died.