Travelling Light

Sermon based upon Isaiah 35:3-6, 2 Timothy 4:5-17 & Luke 10:1-9

It’s become something of a tradition here at St Michael’s to dedicate the Sunday closest to St Luke’s Feast Day, the 18th of October, to a service of Wholeness and Healing. The author of the Book of Acts and Luke’s gospel is responsible for over a quarter of the content of the New Testament, so he’s a bit of a big deal when it comes to the history and theology of our church.

The link between Luke and healing is because of the belief he was a Greek physician. Other opinions are available but we take this opportunity as a community to pray for wholeness and healing, whatever that means to each of us.

Today’s gospel reading from Luke speaks of risk, vulnerability and urgency. I think if I was allowed I would have actually wanted to reverse the order of today’s readings and have the Luke reading first.

In it we see the instruction to the seventy chosen disciples to go out in mission, just as they are. No money, no possessions, no suitcase or rucksack. I don’t know about you but I’m a “pack for every conceivable scenario” kind of a girl.

This usually means I have a case or indeed car full of things I never use or need. What it does bring me however is comfort, I feel a gentle reassurance in having my “just in case” items with me.

The thought of going out, like these seventy disciples, with no purse, no bag and no sandals fills me with dread- never mind sandals I also need my walking boots, wellies, trainers and something pretty just in case we go somewhere nice!

But Jesus was preparing the disciples for a particular mission, preparing the way, in towns he would later go to himself. He was also asking a group of Jewish people to eat whatever was placed before them, whether it abided by the strict Jewish food laws or not. These people are being put right out of their comfort zone.

Finally, he tells them to cure the sick. It doesn’t elaborate whether this is through prayer or physical care, but the disciples have their instructions and are to get to it ASAP. No time for small talk. Off you go.

How scared, vulnerable and maybe even a little excited would they have been? It’s the beginning of an adventure but one where they risk losing everything.

So, if I were reversing the order of today’s readings I’d still put Paul’s second letter to Timothy in the middle. He reinforces our need to be missional people, Jesus has given us a ministry which we must carry out in full; God gives us strength for this.

Paul also serves as a reminder of the risks we take by following God’s will for our lives, and to be honest it’d probably put most of us off! He’s banged up in jail at this point, but crucially he’s still full of hope, happy in the knowledge that he’s followed the path set out for him. Paul’s very much a “bigger picture” sort of chap.

Finally, I’d have the Isaiah reading at the end as it shows us what’s possible when we follow where Jesus is leading or go where he sends us. It’s so poetically joyful!

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
   and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
   and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
   and streams in the desert

If this were to happen, as the disciples go about the land, what truer sign would there be of the kingdom of God truly being near?

For many of us the words from Isaiah reflect a kind of healing, an idea of what wholeness in our relationship with God and indeed our lives and the world might look like. It’s something we long for but may never expect to experience.

I mentioned earlier that healing means something different to each of us, but I believe that central to it is the idea of the completeness of our relationship with God. There’s tiny glimpses in these readings of how we might be able to actually achieve this.

It’s important to remember that the instructions in our gospel reading aren’t being given to us but to a particular group of people, with a particular mission, two thousand years ago. That doesn’t mean there isn’t something we can’t learn, particularly about vulnerability and baggage.

There’s a quotation from Dorothee Soelle I’d like to share with you:

He who takes the most with him and leaves little behind, and therefore remains much the same as he was before, has little chance of finding what he seeks…he who does not give up anything cannot find anything…

We’re each carrying things with us which prevent us from moving forward, stops us from finding our true purpose and from being in a more complete relationship with God.

It might be stuff that like me with my holiday packing we hold on to for comfort. When our lives are so filled up with stuff we often lose sight of what really matters- we can’t hear over the noise of activity or see the spaces between the clutter.

We can also take baggage with us that we feel chained to, that we can’t shake off- whether the emotional baggage of a past we feel we can’t escape from or the obligations we feel locked in to.

Jesus advises to travel light because only then can we discern what’s of real value; only then do we create space in our lives to be filled up by God.

Healing is about transformation and we’re transformed when we set aside things which don’t really matter and give space to the things which do.

This can be scary, transition often is. We like comfort and we fear transition and change. Take away the familiar and the comforting and we’re vulnerable, but this is the model of being that Jesus has left us with; strength through weakness, life through death.

If we’re brave enough to model gaining strength through vulnerability others will see it and be less scared to do it themselves. Through this the words of Isaiah become more than just beautiful poetry, they become a fulfilment of prophecy and of God’s will for our lives.

We can achieve healing and completeness in our relationships, we can make peace with ourselves and with the world around us.
We can be a sign of hope, reconciliation and healing,
we can be water bursting forth in a desert.

It’s risky and it’s scary, to step forward and go out just as we are, and I don’t know how far down that path I am myself, but for a chance to live a healed, more complete, reconciled life it’s got to be a chance worth taking; to ask ourselves what do I need to let go of? What’s my baggage?

Because if we do this, dump the baggage and make that space for God, not only do we make ourselves more complete but we become God’s instruments of healing and reconciliation in the lives of others, and that’s got to be worth taking some risks.

Strengthen the weak hands,
   and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
   ‘Be strong, do not fear!

Sometimes we need to hear that ourselves and sometimes we need to be the ones saying it.

So I want to say to you “be strong and do not fear”, and you can say it back to me later if you like! We live in God’s love, he guides or steps, let’s see if we can take the risks he’s asking of us.

Amen.

Instagram-Perfect life

Preached at the main service 23rd October 2013 (a healing eucharist) and based upon Luke 18:9-14

Pressure to be perfect is something which I feel permeates our society. Not just to strive for physical perfection but for every aspect of our lives to be picture perfect. I feel the pressure to not only look a certain way but to be a perfect homemaker, expert gardener, top chef, have interesting hobbies, go to the gym, see the newest films, read popular books, be up to date with current TV, current events and politics, listen to the right music, have the newest gadgets and the right things. It’s exhausting.

This obsession with achieving a picture or Instagram perfect life is all about what people see on the outside, it says nothing about who we are inside and what we really think and feel. It creates a separation, a disconnect, from our spiritual self, our lives become all about what’s on the surface, which is what’s going on in our gospel today.

On the surface of things the Pharisee is a good man, a holy man, an upstanding member of society. He’s middle class. He appears to be doing all the right things; praying, fasting and giving to charity, but there’s that disconnect. His contempt for the outcasts- thieves, rogues, adulterers and the tax-collectors- reveals that his is a superficial faith, concerned with how he appears to be. He thinks that he’s morally better, and if we’re looking at the surface of things we might be inclined to agree. “I’m holy” he says, “not like these people”.

Next to him we have a tax collector, a sinner, a self-confessed sinner, and that’s the big difference between the two men. The tax collector is honest about who he is, and he’s honest with God. He’s not interested in trying to make himself look better, or compare himself to others whose offences are worse. “God, be merciful to me a sinner”. He knows himself, what he is and never tries to hide that from God. His petition is honest and raw.

Jesus tells us that it’s this second man who finds favour with God, not the man who appears Holy. The tax-collector doesn’t try and present a sanitised view of himself to God, he brings everything that he is, including his brokenness and puts himself into God’s hands. This is something which is really important as we think about wholeness and healing today.

There’s a saying that I’ve heard- do you want your church to be a museum of saints or a hospital for sinners? I think most of us come to church not because we consider ourselves to be holy or righteous but because we know that we aren’t. We love God, we want to be the people he created us to be, but we keep getting it wrong- I know I do.

You start your day with the best of intentions- today will be a good day, today I won’t slip up. I won’t shout at the kids, I’ll be productive, I’ll be patient with my colleagues, I won’t be sarcastic, I’ll treat my spouse gently and I’ll do everything lovingly. It only takes one little perceived failure in this to make us think we’ve failed at it all. So we start again the next day- striving to be a more perfect version of ourselves.

But what if God doesn’t want us to be perfect? He created us a diverse and imperfect people. What if the most important thing for us to achieve a more whole relationship with God is for us to simply be honest with him?

There’s an initiative in the US called The Hearth which aims to help people build community and address suffering by sharing stories. It’s director, a man called Mark Yaconelli, says that we as Christians are reluctant to share our stories unless it’s something that’s behind us, something where we can identify where God was at work. The stuff we’re still grappling with, the things we haven’t figured out, the things we really need to confront now are the things which we don’t share and aren’t honest about. But we can’t hide our true selves from God, even the things we particularly don’t like or wish we could conceal.

We don’t know what happened to the tax collector after today’s gospel story, whether he went on sinning, but his honesty and his cry for mercy meant that he had a much more rounded and whole relationship with God than the Pharisee.

Healing in any relationship can only come when there’s honesty and acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Only then can there be true reconciliation. I’ve been reminded a lot in recent weeks for various reasons of the Truth and Reconciliation commission set up in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Hearings started in 1996 with a mandate of restorative justice, to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations under the former political regime, as well as attempting to repair and rehabilitate. This was about restoration, not reprimand. To repair a country almost destroyed by a system of division and hate.

This was in sharp contrast to the Nuremberg trials set up after the collapse of Nazism. There’s a lot of criticism of the commission, a lot of which is tied to our human ideas of what justice is. Our own justice system is based on ideas we perceive as biblical; crimes require judgement which results in punishment, but our interpretation is filtered through the legal and philosophical lens of both the time the biblical books were written and the times they were interpreted.

I can’t help but wonder if the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was one human construct which has got the closest to maybe how God does things, in line with Jesus’ teaching from today’s gospel.

Acknowledgement of the things we do that aren’t what God would want, and a call for mercy creates a bridge between ourselves and God. It opens us up to his reconciling ways. There’s no sign the tax collector turned from his way of life, but he did acknowledge it and that’s what God wants from us.

As theologian Jane Williams puts it: if God really is loving and teasing and forgiving, like he is in the stories Jesus tells, then we all have a chance. You have to want God, just God, offering the chance for God to see you as you really are and love you.

This is where healing begins; being fully ourselves before God, the good and the bad, and realising that we’re still loved in our imperfect state. This acknowledgment begins the healing of our relationship with ourselves, the healing of our relationship with God and the healing of our relationships with each other.

God doesn’t want perfection, he wants us to be the people he created us to be, aware of our imperfections, and most importantly aware of our need for him.