Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you
on account of the Son of Man.          [Luke’s Gospel 6.20-23]

Imagine if these were the words which we heard from community leaders and politicians. What would it be like to attend a presentation when the speaker addressed our deep concerns?

When Jesus speaks these words, often referred to as the “Sermon on the Plain”, people had gathered from all around the region to hear him speak and to find hope through healing and encouragement.

Jesus’ words of blessing are balanced with words of warning those who believe they have found all the answers now; “Woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh now, and have all people speak well of you …”

This is not a list of vengeance, but a reminder that there are always those around us who need our encouragement, our laughter, our resources. When our focus is self-centred, addressing only our own comfort, be warned.

This sermon on the plain continues, talking about loving enemies, forgiving others and far more besides. This is the heart of the sermon, the heartbeat of our calling. The radical nature of faith is not identifying any particular issue – domestic abuse, gender identity, First Nations justice.

It is discerning that each time we are acting out of our faith to serve those who are our neighbours, loving those we are yet to meet and, most significant of all, to forgive those who have no intention of loving us, then we realise the community into which Christ calls each of us. This is the journey.

The words of Jesus’ blessing are the beginning of the sermon; they are extraordinary, but do not leave them there. We act from the mercy and blessing offered to us in Christ.

Right now, everywhere we look there are speakers – online, in print, on our screens – telling us that being outraged is the only way to be. Soulless promises are made that have no soil in which to grow, and that is almost certainly a good thing. People are in need, but vengeance and resentment lead us nowhere.

“In fact, violence merely increases hate … Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”  [M.L. King Jr.]

Jesus offers these blessings because he knows the world; the voice of corruption, the heel of Empire, the struggle of the faith community in the face of such challenges.

The journey to which he calls will not cease until all is complete, but we are invited to act because we know each time we are acting out of hope and articulating the only story offering life.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.  [Luke’s Gospel 5.10-11]

The disciples’ nets are empty, having worked fruitlessly all night.  

The images on our screens this week of Palestinian desolation in Gaza are arresting, leading to despair. Where does one start to rebuild? More critically, where do you find your home, your street, your neighbourhood?

The glib suggestion about removing the Palestinians altogether and creating a beach resort was the remark from someone not understanding, or ignoring, profound pain – the immeasurable agony of loss of friends and family, of home, community and future.

Please don’t suggest that this issue is patently more complex than my brief preceding paragraphs; the simpleminded political solution offered is where this week’s problem begins. The cruel irony of proposing that the Gazans might be removed by train to somewhere else ridicules not just their history and sense of place, but the obscene anniversary the world has just acknowledged about the liberation and closure of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We cannot worship this week – any week – without attending to the world in which we live. We cannot speak of hope without asking what does hope look like for people fearful of the next hour, or the next day.

I have been reading enough recently to be confident that there are pieces of hope the size of mustard seeds being sown in Palestine and Israel. They are sown not by the hands of missionaries from abroad, but by locals – Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim and Christian and none – who have lost much, and refuse to succumb to despair.

Even if I had wisdom which I was arrogant enough to offer, more than seven decades of pain will not be addressed, resolved and healed by more punishment and vengeance. We cannot permit this week – and the years before and the stories to come – to pass unacknowledged.

We must pray for, and speak of, and embody, justice.

The Gospel reading this week addresses the way people feel when they encounter Jesus. Jesus’ new disciples are confronted with their mortality and their frailty; they come with nothing and discover the fear and wonder of hope at Jesus’ hands.

The word which I found arresting this week is when Jesus invited them to follow him, leaving their impossibly full nets – and everything else – behind. Jesus called them to be “catching people, alive”, a word in deliberate contrast with their trade.

As we watch the cataclysm in Gaza being removed stone by stone, and slowly restored; as we grieve over the birthplace of Jesus being scarred consistently by war; what does it mean for us to serve and attend to people, especially those in need, to offer them safety? What does it mean when salvation is not just an idea, but the offering of wholeness itself – here in and the life to come?

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.  [I Corinthians 13.4-8a]

This wonderful reading has often been hamstrung by the context of the marriage ceremony. People gather, their hearts excited about the love about to be promised between two people, and the larger (uncomfortable?) story to which Paul is attesting, slips by, unnoticed.

Last week’s reading, from the previous chapter in Corinthians, identifies the diverse gifts which are ideally present in the community of faith. Not simply about prophecy and teaching, speaking in tongues and miracles, but about the frailty and strength of different people at different times in the life of our community.

Paul articulates the challenge of living in community, one of which is that there are some people who are up front, leading us on and there are others who require greater care.

“On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect …” [I Cor. 12.22-23]

This is not the way our wider community currently appears to function. We have community members, commentators and politicians calling for punishment towards those “who do not fit”.

The church slides easily into this trap; we are uncomfortable with people who don’t believe what we believe, or behave the way we’d like them to. We have a “church mission plan”, and we are intolerant of waiting for people to catch up.

Which is precisely why Paul has written this chapter of love immediately following the chapter on membership and gifts. This is not about the heart beating faster as we make our wedding vows, this is about the behaviour of the church as we love each other and our wider community.

This is the foundation for all our actions in our Congregation, and the guidelines by which we make decisions. We start, not with expediency, but asking how we serve each other and those who are most in need, who live their lives in the margins of our Congregation, or our community.

This sounds too much, I know. Paul also knows this.

That’s why this is discipleship, not arrival. We can see “in a mirror, dimly” as we find our way. We are asked for faithfulness, hope and love, and that is our GPS. And from these gifts, all the others arise, and are more a reflection of Christ.

Let us continue to pray for our Congregation, that we will continue to grow, to seek forgiveness from each other, to serve those in greatest need of service, and to love each person, as Christ loves them – and us!

Let no one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within.
Haunted by tribal memories, I know
This little now, this accidental present
Is not the all of me, whose long making
Is so much of the past.

Tonight here in suburbia as I sit
In easy chair before electric heater,
Warmed by the red glow, I fall into dream:
I am away
At the camp fire in the bush, among
My own people, sitting on the ground,
No walls around me,
The stars over me,
The tall surrounding trees that stir in the wind
Making their own music,
Soft cries of the night coming to us, there
Where we are one with all old Nature’s lives
Known and unknown,
In scenes where we belong but have now forsaken.
Deep chair and electric radiator
Are but since yesterday,
But a thousand camp fires in the forest
Are in my blood.
Let none tell me the past is wholly gone.
Now is so small a part of time, so small a part
Of all the race years that have moulded me.

Our friends recently told their youngest child that Santa Claus is myth.

When they explained to us how they had revealed it to her, I was astonished by their care and respect. The hard-bitten part of me, the Santa-only-gets-in-the-way-of a-real-Christmas part of me had a reflex response almost of disdain.

After some thought, I am more than a little ashamed by my reaction. I will need to make amends.

There is something of a similar disdain, or disregard, by many people about the deeper, original, Christmas story. This is a response from within the church, as much as without. There is an almost reflexive disbelief about miracles and prophecies, about Mary’s extraordinary pregnancy and the story of shepherds and magi and wondrous proclamation.

There appears to be a sudden urge to explain, or diminish, to nod our heads condescendingly and talk about world views and obstetrics. We want to ignore theology, transformation and wonder, and surgically scratch our way to a story rendered anaemic by our greater knowledge.

May we allow the splendour of the story to sing for a moment?

What if we felt the perplexity of Mary, and the comfort of her friendship with Elizabeth, as they discovered what unexpected pregnancy might mean for the two of them? What if we dawdled with Joseph’s confusion, ameliorated by an extraordinary dream, as he considered the social crisis of Mary’s pregnancy and the implications for his child – and for himself?

What if we step more fully into a story where we explore what it means that God breaks into our world as a child, embracing our humanity? What if we allowed ourselves to be humbled by Mary’s courage as she accedes to God’s request; and equally astonished by Joseph’s obedience in caring for Mary, and raising Jesus as his own?

What if we pay deserved attention to what the stories of Luke and Matthew (and the mystical poetry of John) are superbly proclaiming to us, that God’s imagination and initiative sundered all the established boundaries, stepping into our lives and world in love, constrained, entirely and wonderfully, in the form of a newborn baby?

God has become human flesh. Suddenly, no life is ordinary, neither is its value easily explained. God has become like us, and nothing can diminish the wonder of God’s embrace.

Your cry a provocation, a call
To prayer; all day you wail our troubles.
Prophet of the suburbs, you declaim,
As summer midwifes the earth’s second
Birth each year: suffer my child to come
And be your own. So it goes with love
Both sacred and profane: a borrowed
Cot, a sacrifice, an act of faith.
And may we so raise each other up.

And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?”He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” [Luke’s Gospel 3.10-14]

So, what should we do?

This is the question for which all proclamation yearns, the inquiry for which preachers wait. This is the response to what has just been spoken, with the hope that it has been heard and inwardly digested.

John the Baptizer has confronted the community and urged them towards change. The failed image of repentance is a person, sitting sorrowfully in a corner. This is not what John is calling for. There is no place for huddled remorse, but an active response to failure, to injustice, to harm.

So, the question comes, three times, to John; what should do we do now? Individuals from the crowd, moneychangers and soldiers all ask, publicly, what they can do.

And John reminds them – and us – that repentance is creative, not simply responsive. Once you realise what’s happening, change how you live; don’t stop living, live differently!

The critical change is not simply avoiding destructive behaviour, good as that might be, it is about creating hope and life where you are.

Use your life, your resources, to create life for others. What you have in your wardrobe and your kitchen, your wallet, your job and your life can provide hope when none is visible.  

Neither is it about the “grand gesture”, because that’s usually a gesture manufactured for avoidance. We plan, and consider and try to change the world, when all that is asked is about the relationship at our front step.

What is the creative act you can offer in this relationship – of thirty years, or thirty minutes – that can engender hope, build worth, encourage resilience? You are citizens of a new economy, says John, where worth and esteem are valued by service and generosity and justice.

You might consciously ask yourself, in which direction will I turn to create that today, for the next person I meet, and for the person sitting last in the queues for bread, or justice? We are citizens of a new community, proclaimed by John, and shaped by Christ’s very person.

Before Jesus
was his mother.

Before supper
in the upper room,
breakfast in the barn.

Before the Passover Feast,
a feeding trough.
And here, the altar
of Earth, fair linens
of hay and seed.

Before his cry,
her cry.
Before his sweat
of blood,
her bleeding
and tears.
Before his offering,
hers.

Before the breaking
of bread and death,
the breaking of her
body in birth.

Before the offering
of the cup,
the offering of her
breast.
Before his blood,
her blood.

And by her body and blood
alone, his body and blood
and whole human being.

The wise ones knelt
to hear the woman’s word
in wonder.

Holding up her sacred child,
her spark of God in the form of a babe,
she said:

“Receive and let
your hearts be healed
and your lives be filled
with love, for
This is my body,
This is my blood.”

From Accidental Wisdom by Alla Renée Bozarth, Universe 2003
and This is My Body~ Praying for Earth, Prayers from the Heart by Alla Renée Bozarth, Universe 2004.
All rights reserved.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” [Luke’s Gospel 1.76-79]

An unruly character breaks early into the story. Roughly hewn and sharply edged, he proclaims a story which unsettles all around and brushes against us like sandpaper.

He has wandered in the scrub for decades, perhaps, waiting until the right moment to come and disrupt the community from which he arose. He’s a minister’s kid, probably with all the baggage that entails, and a full awareness that the words he offers will not provide comfort.

Comfort is not in his job description, neither for himself, nor for those he encounters.

His vocation is to progress like earth-moving machinery through his community, making a path for the one who follows him, knocking down locked gates and clearing out speed bumps.

In this season when we look for cute and cuddlesome, John is the antithesis of these. When we want (demand?) our stories to be tinsellated, this eccentric cousin of Jesus has no tolerance for decoration, demanding instead the substance of repentance and transformation.

John is not the guest speaker for your Christmas function; you don’t invite him to neighbourhood drinks, unless you want an early night.

Notwithstanding all of this, John is the Advent cornerstone, ushering in Jesus, who embodies the reign of God in the world. John seems like a poor marketing choice, an HR nightmare.

And yet, all four gospel writers place him at the forefront of their story, disturbing everyone and offering renewal, because renewal does not come without cost and consequence.

If you come seeking justice, can you live justly? If come seeking forgiveness, can you offer it to others in your turn?

Then, as now, we like our stories undisturbed. Unless, of course, our stories have broken edges, or a fractured mainframe. Unless we come limping, or lost, or fearful of what every day is like. Unless renewal appears like water to a life drowning in sand.

John comes, asserting that story in which we live is not the whole story; that the story can be transformed towards life; that the one following him embodies a life worth everything.  

As we stride and stumble toward Christ’s coming, are we willing to live forgiveness and offer mercy, to articulate the hospitality of God, and carry peace with our every step?

If you are, there is someone you need to encounter.

There is no silence lovelier than the one
That flowers upon a flowering tree at night. 
There is no silence known beneath the sun 
That is so strange to bear, nor half so white. 
If I had all that silence in my heart, 
What yet unfinished heavens I could sing! 
My words lift up and tremble to depart, 
Then die in air, from too much uttering.

It must have been beneath a tree like this 
An angel sought a girl in Galilee, 
While she looked up and pondered how the kiss 
Of God had come with wings and mystery. 
It may be that a single petal fell.
Heavy with sorrow that it could not tell.