Bearing Fruit : Lent 3

 

Luke 13.1-9, 1 Corinthians 10.1-13

You are probably aware that our Lectionary, the scheduled bible readings for each week, repeats on a 3 yearly cycle.

Three years ago, in connection with today’s readings I said…’I’ve got a cherry tree in my garden which is at least 10 years old. Hopefully it will soon be in beautiful white blossom which is most welcome of course, but the total amount of fruit is has produced since it was planted would be enough to fill, well, a couple of coffee mugs. A bit like the fig tree in the parable, I have thought about cutting it down but live in hope that if I give it one more year there will at least be enough for one cherry pie.’

I bet you are bursting to know what has happened since, in fact I expect that you’ve thought of little else! I gave the cherry tree one more year, I fed it, I pruned it and.. then I chopped it down due to lack of fruit. You’ve had time and several chances I told it before wielding the saw. The space is now occupied by a productive Bramley apple tree.

One interpretation of Jesus’ Fig Tree Parable could be to see God as the landowner coming to Israel for many years seeking fruit, Jesus as the gardener and elements of humanity as the fig tree. Despite failing to reach fruition Jesus wants to nourish us and give us more time. But like many of Jesus parables it offers a lot more potential than that which is immediately obvious.

Many people are distinctly uncomfortable with the suggestion that for many things there simply is no logical explanation, accidents, illness, suffering, persecution. They like to believe that mankind has conquered all, understands all, can explain all when the truth is that our world has layers of complexity which we may never penetrate.

It can be a natural reaction to say ‘what have I done to deserve this’ when sadness and tragedy strikes. It’s not always possible to immediately turn to God in strength and faith yet if we will let God travel with us, show his love for us we can begin a journey where his forgiving love and offer of eternal salvation is evident to the point that the question ‘what have I done to deserve this’ shifts from a bewildered cry to one of thankful recognition.

As we see horrors unfold in Ukraine there is a depressing reminder today that mad men have been prepared to kill innocent people without hesitation throughout history. Our Gospel reading begins with some people, probably on a pilgrimage from Galilee, offering sacrifices in the temple when they are slaughtered upon the orders of Pilate. Perhaps he saw them as a threat. We are told that the blood of the people mingled with those of their sacrifices.

It's against the backdrop of this that Jesus chose to go to Jerusalem. I draw hope and comfort from this, there’s a sense that despite the occupying Roman army and all the dangers they pose, God’s agenda, his message of love, keeps grinding forward regardless of obstacles and opposition. Despite whatever challenges we face, whatever evidence we see of humanities lack of, well humanity, God wants those who choose him to keep bearing fruit in the world.

Perhaps the Jews in Jerusalem are telling Jesus about the slaughter of the Galilean Jews because they considered them less faithful than themselves and were hoping that Jesus might affirm their prejudice and say that they got what they deserved. Throughout the bible Jesus is invited to comment by people who already know what answer they are hoping for and they are regularly disappointed.

Perhaps they also hoped that Jesus would condemn Pilate for a sacrilegious act and be drawn into the political situation. Perhaps they hoped to rile Jesus to the extent that he would endorse some violent act of retribution against Pilate and his forces.

Jesus simply directs those drawing him into the subject to look inward, examine themselves and change their own ways. It’s so easy to say that bad things happen, that so much is wrong around us, because of other people when the greatest difference we can make to this is to consider how we can further God’s agenda for humanity. Time spent judging others is time we could be investing positively.

The people slaughtered at the Temple the others crushed when the tower of Siloam fell on them, Jesus wants us to know that they are likely to be no better or worse than most of us. Life can be unexpectedly short for inexplicable reasons and we need to choose whether we are fruit bearers now and turn to God, repent, turn away from the things we know to be wrong and choose life.

Most of Jesus’ energy goes into positive reasons for following him. He’s not big on criticism and negativity but he is very clear that those with the privilege of power should not exploit, destroy and poison the lives of others but serve them and their interests.

It’s not difficult to find excuses that suggest our efforts to improve an apparently failing world are futile and for this reason to give up and fall into lazy patterns focussed solely on our ourselves. We often can be guilty of a similar approach to the Jews trying to trick Jesus into saying things that make them feel better about themselves, seeking excuses if you like. Yet it is clear that through Christ, God aligns a functioning and fruit bearing world, one where nature flourishes, with one where we also would flourish. To see the opposite of this it’s easy to bring to mind split and charred trees in Ukraine which show humanity at its worst, depriving opportunity for new growth and poisoning the environment in every sense.

Only this week someone suggested that it’s ridiculous that we worry about things like energy conservation when millions of tonnes of munitions are destroying cities and people and the threat of nuclear contamination looms large.

Yet we have to make choices, are we going to be pushed from what we know to be right because of the evidence of evil or press on with even greater determination.

We are and wish to continue being a religious community that bears fruit, what would be the point otherwise?

We would be a community that doesn’t contribute beauty to our world, which is out of touch with the wider population, their needs and interests. Our coming together would only be self-serving, trying to make ourselves feel better, engage in a theological system which exists solely to perpetuate itself and sticking our heads in the sand to problems which cannot be ignored be they near or far.

In short we would be sucking nutrients from the soil, using resources without any intention of bearing fruit, fruit which has the potential to delight and nourish. It would  be as if we are deliberately violating God’s nature.

I can almost hear you reaching for the saw, sharpening the axe, ready to pass it to God so he can remove this waste of space and replace it with something productive.

It’s worth us each reflecting upon what it really means to flourish and realise at least some of our potential.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians includes a note of caution, ‘so if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.’ Really this links with the obvious need to nourish and nurture our faith. To understand the difference between accepting that we are loved and forgiven versus being lazy even to the extent that we no longer want to foster the relationship through prayer, no longer bother involving God in both our happy times and our struggles, and no longer want to learn more of God’s nature through scripture which has more to reveal to us than we have days on earth. In short don’t let our faith become complacent, keep seeking opportunities to make God’s love known.

When the people told Jesus of the Galileans being slaughtered in the temple they didn’t spare him the gory detail. As horrific as this was then and other events are today we must note that he reminded them of their own mortality and their need to accept God’s love for them while they still had time. In doing this he reinforced the sometimes difficult to hear truth, that meaningful change begins with us.

It feels that now, during Lent, we should make time to reflect honestly about the fact that if we accept that the love of God can be found in the wonder of nature thriving, feeding the earths people literally and in other forms of wellbeing what is the danger for us if we continue to inhibit its potential to bear fruit?

Amen

Kevin Bright

^{20th March 2022}

Bearing Fruit : Lent 3

 

Luke 13.1-9, 1 Corinthians 10.1-13

You are probably aware that our Lectionary, the scheduled bible readings for each week, repeats on a 3 yearly cycle.

Three years ago, in connection with today’s readings I said…’I’ve got a cherry tree in my garden which is at least 10 years old. Hopefully it will soon be in beautiful white blossom which is most welcome of course, but the total amount of fruit is has produced since it was planted would be enough to fill, well, a couple of coffee mugs. A bit like the fig tree in the parable, I have thought about cutting it down but live in hope that if I give it one more year there will at least be enough for one cherry pie.’

I bet you are bursting to know what has happened since, in fact I expect that you’ve thought of little else! I gave the cherry tree one more year, I fed it, I pruned it and.. then I chopped it down due to lack of fruit. You’ve had time and several chances I told it before wielding the saw. The space is now occupied by a productive Bramley apple tree.

One interpretation of Jesus’ Fig Tree Parable could be to see God as the landowner coming to Israel for many years seeking fruit, Jesus as the gardener and elements of humanity as the fig tree. Despite failing to reach fruition Jesus wants to nourish us and give us more time. But like many of Jesus parables it offers a lot more potential than that which is immediately obvious.

Many people are distinctly uncomfortable with the suggestion that for many things there simply is no logical explanation, accidents, illness, suffering, persecution. They like to believe that mankind has conquered all, understands all, can explain all when the truth is that our world has layers of complexity which we may never penetrate.

It can be a natural reaction to say ‘what have I done to deserve this’ when sadness and tragedy strikes. It’s not always possible to immediately turn to God in strength and faith yet if we will let God travel with us, show his love for us we can begin a journey where his forgiving love and offer of eternal salvation is evident to the point that the question ‘what have I done to deserve this’ shifts from a bewildered cry to one of thankful recognition.

As we see horrors unfold in Ukraine there is a depressing reminder today that mad men have been prepared to kill innocent people without hesitation throughout history. Our Gospel reading begins with some people, probably on a pilgrimage from Galilee, offering sacrifices in the temple when they are slaughtered upon the orders of Pilate. Perhaps he saw them as a threat. We are told that the blood of the people mingled with those of their sacrifices.

It's against the backdrop of this that Jesus chose to go to Jerusalem. I draw hope and comfort from this, there’s a sense that despite the occupying Roman army and all the dangers they pose, God’s agenda, his message of love, keeps grinding forward regardless of obstacles and opposition. Despite whatever challenges we face, whatever evidence we see of humanities lack of, well humanity, God wants those who choose him to keep bearing fruit in the world.

Perhaps the Jews in Jerusalem are telling Jesus about the slaughter of the Galilean Jews because they considered them less faithful than themselves and were hoping that Jesus might affirm their prejudice and say that they got what they deserved. Throughout the bible Jesus is invited to comment by people who already know what answer they are hoping for and they are regularly disappointed.

Perhaps they also hoped that Jesus would condemn Pilate for a sacrilegious act and be drawn into the political situation. Perhaps they hoped to rile Jesus to the extent that he would endorse some violent act of retribution against Pilate and his forces.

Jesus simply directs those drawing him into the subject to look inward, examine themselves and change their own ways. It’s so easy to say that bad things happen, that so much is wrong around us, because of other people when the greatest difference we can make to this is to consider how we can further God’s agenda for humanity. Time spent judging others is time we could be investing positively.

The people slaughtered at the Temple the others crushed when the tower of Siloam fell on them, Jesus wants us to know that they are likely to be no better or worse than most of us. Life can be unexpectedly short for inexplicable reasons and we need to choose whether we are fruit bearers now and turn to God, repent, turn away from the things we know to be wrong and choose life.

Most of Jesus’ energy goes into positive reasons for following him. He’s not big on criticism and negativity but he is very clear that those with the privilege of power should not exploit, destroy and poison the lives of others but serve them and their interests.

It’s not difficult to find excuses that suggest our efforts to improve an apparently failing world are futile and for this reason to give up and fall into lazy patterns focussed solely on our ourselves. We often can be guilty of a similar approach to the Jews trying to trick Jesus into saying things that make them feel better about themselves, seeking excuses if you like. Yet it is clear that through Christ, God aligns a functioning and fruit bearing world, one where nature flourishes, with one where we also would flourish. To see the opposite of this it’s easy to bring to mind split and charred trees in Ukraine which show humanity at its worst, depriving opportunity for new growth and poisoning the environment in every sense.

Only this week someone suggested that it’s ridiculous that we worry about things like energy conservation when millions of tonnes of munitions are destroying cities and people and the threat of nuclear contamination looms large.

Yet we have to make choices, are we going to be pushed from what we know to be right because of the evidence of evil or press on with even greater determination.

We are and wish to continue being a religious community that bears fruit, what would be the point otherwise?

We would be a community that doesn’t contribute beauty to our world, which is out of touch with the wider population, their needs and interests. Our coming together would only be self-serving, trying to make ourselves feel better, engage in a theological system which exists solely to perpetuate itself and sticking our heads in the sand to problems which cannot be ignored be they near or far.

In short we would be sucking nutrients from the soil, using resources without any intention of bearing fruit, fruit which has the potential to delight and nourish. It would  be as if we are deliberately violating God’s nature.

I can almost hear you reaching for the saw, sharpening the axe, ready to pass it to God so he can remove this waste of space and replace it with something productive.

It’s worth us each reflecting upon what it really means to flourish and realise at least some of our potential.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians includes a note of caution, ‘so if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.’ Really this links with the obvious need to nourish and nurture our faith. To understand the difference between accepting that we are loved and forgiven versus being lazy even to the extent that we no longer want to foster the relationship through prayer, no longer bother involving God in both our happy times and our struggles, and no longer want to learn more of God’s nature through scripture which has more to reveal to us than we have days on earth. In short don’t let our faith become complacent, keep seeking opportunities to make God’s love known.

When the people told Jesus of the Galileans being slaughtered in the temple they didn’t spare him the gory detail. As horrific as this was then and other events are today we must note that he reminded them of their own mortality and their need to accept God’s love for them while they still had time. In doing this he reinforced the sometimes difficult to hear truth, that meaningful change begins with us.

It feels that now, during Lent, we should make time to reflect honestly about the fact that if we accept that the love of God can be found in the wonder of nature thriving, feeding the earths people literally and in other forms of wellbeing what is the danger for us if we continue to inhibit its potential to bear fruit?

Amen

Kevin Bright

^{20th March 2022}

The stars and the darkness: Lent 2

 Genesis 15.1-12,17-18, Luke 13.31-end

 

“Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be!”

 

Many of us these days never see a starry sky like the one Abraham looked up into. There’s usually too much light pollution for us to see any but the brightest stars here in South East England. But an ancient Middle Eastern nomad like Abraham, whose only artificial light was the glow of a camp-fire or a flickering oil lamp, would have seen thousands sparkling in the night sky, with the Milky Way spilling across the darkness. Counting them would have been impossible.

 

And that’s the point God is making to Abraham. He will have more descendants than he could ever count.

 

But that’s something that seems more than a bit unlikely to Abraham, because right now he has no descendants at all, and he’s already in his eighties. His wife Sarah is well beyond child-bearing age too. If he doesn’t even have one child, that starry crowd of descendants is impossible. Reason tells him that he and Sarah will be the end of their family line.

 

This isn’t the first time God has made this promise, though. More than a decade before, God had called him to leave his home town of Haran in southern Mesopotamia, where he was living a comfortable and prosperous life, to head out across the desert to a new home. And the only incentive that could have led him to set out on this crazy expedition is that God has told him, “I will make of you a great nation… “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. “ The prospect that he might finally  have an heir to carry on his family name outweighs the uncertainty and danger of the journey ahead of him. He and Sarah set off, with their nephew, Lot and whatever possessions they could carry between them, into the unknown. When they get to the land of Canaan, God renews his promise. “To your offspring I will give this land”, but the years pass, and still the promised child is nowhere to be seen, and Abraham and Sarah are getting older and older.

 

That’s the background to the reading we heard. Look towards heaven and count the stars? So shall your descendants be? By this point it’s all starting to sound like a cruel joke.

 

Abraham still seems to believe that God might come through with a miracle, but understandably, he’s starting to feel he’s entitled to some proof. “How am I to know that I shall possess this land?” he asks. How can I be sure that the “great nation” God has promised will come into being?.

 

And this is the point where an already weird story gets a whole lot weirder. God tells Abraham to make a sacrifice. There’s nothing unusual in that; it was a standard form of worship. But when Abraham lays the carcasses out, a “deep and terrifying darkness” descends. The starry sky is gone. The only light there is comes from a fire pot and a flaming torch, carried by invisible hands, between the sacrifices.

 

“A deep and terrifying darkness”. How does any of this answer Abraham’s question? How does it explain how a nation will come from this childless couple? It doesn’t, is the obvious response. What it does tell Abraham, though, is that God is still with him, and that God is in the darkness as much as the light. Just because Abraham can’t see a way forward doesn’t mean there isn’t a way forward. Just because Abraham can’t see what the future looks like doesn’t mean there isn’t a future.

 

In time, as it turns out, Abraham and Sarah do have a child, Isaac, and from him a tribe grows, until there really are too many to count. God keeps his promise. Those who first told this story saw themselves as Abraham’s descendants. This was their origin story. If Isaac hadn’t been born, they wouldn’t have been either. But I don’t think that is, or ever was the most important message of the story.  

 

Much of the Hebrew Bible, which we often call the Old Testament, was drawn together when the people of Judah were exiled in Babylon, and its stories are deeply shaped by that experience. The Jewish people thought they were facing the end of their nation, their culture, and their faith. Just like those fleeing from Ukraine, they didn’t know when or even if they would return to their homes, and what they’d find if they did. They’d lost everything, maybe forever. So, what had it all been for, they asked themselves - their history, their achievements, their struggles?  It felt as if the stars were being swept from the sky, those stars which represented their legacy to the world, their impact on the world, not just physical children, but all they had done. They thought they would be forgotten.

 

When their storytellers told them this story of Abraham they were inviting them to stand with him in the desert, to look up into that starry sky and to go through that “deep and terrifying darkness” with him.  That’s what stories do for us. They enable us to step inside them, try them out for size, and by doing that to find ourselves within them. “The heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus” said Abraham – Eliezer was actually Abraham’s servant, but he was going to inherit all his master’s belongings, because there was no one else who could. In the same way, it seemed to the exiles that their land was being left to anyone who wanted to move in and take it.  As Abraham wondered what God was playing at, they were reminded of their own doubts and questions, their fear that it was all over for them. But the Biblical storytellers knew that if they could identify with Abraham’s despair, maybe they might also be able to find his hope and his faith, and dare to trust God in their own “deep and terrifying darkness” as they faced an unknown and unknowable future.

 

This story told them that God wasn’t only present in what seemed bright and shiny, in triumph and glory, but also in confusion, pain and doubt. That was a comfort and an inspiration for the exiles, but also for many who came after them, including Jesus’ first followers. Abraham’s walk with God had involved long years of waiting, and deep darkness, so the fact that Jesus had lain helpless in the darkness of the tomb didn’t mean that God had deserted him, or that he was a fraud or a failure. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus foretells the trouble ahead of him, as he heads for Jerusalem, “the city that kills the prophets”.  But that wouldn’t be the end of the story, he said. “On the third day I finish my work” – and of course that is meant to remind us of the resurrection. God’s faithful presence with Abraham through the tough times he faced, and with Jesus in the stillness of the tomb, inspired them to believe  that he could be with them as they faced persecution and hardship for the sake of the Gospel.

 

And perhaps it can inspire us to believe that God can be with us too in our times.  After all, there’s no shortage of “deep and terrifying darkness” around us. We’ve lived through two long years of pandemic – who could have imagined what this has been like - and now the war in Ukraine threatens the peace of the whole world. If we’re not feeling just a bit frightened, we’re probably not paying enough attention.   We don’t know what’s around the corner, how it will end, what it will lead to, or how we will cope. Glib reassurance that it will all turn out ok just won’t wash. There’s no magic wand, no easy answer.

 

We’re living in a time when it can feel like there’s no certainty about anything. But faith isn’t the same as certainty; it doesn’t drive away our questions. What faith does is far more powerful. It enables us to live in the darkness, to walk through it lovingly and with integrity. Faith is the act of reaching out into it, trusting that the living God will be there to take our hand. And why should he not be? After all, life begins in the darkness of the womb. Seeds germinate in the darkness of the earth. Resurrection happens in the darkness of the grave, so maybe the “deep and terrifying darkness” can be the holiest place of all.

Amen

 

The stars and the darkness: Lent 2

 Genesis 15.1-12,17-18, Luke 13.31-end

 

“Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be!”

 

Many of us these days never see a starry sky like the one Abraham looked up into. There’s usually too much light pollution for us to see any but the brightest stars here in South East England. But an ancient Middle Eastern nomad like Abraham, whose only artificial light was the glow of a camp-fire or a flickering oil lamp, would have seen thousands sparkling in the night sky, with the Milky Way spilling across the darkness. Counting them would have been impossible.

 

And that’s the point God is making to Abraham. He will have more descendants than he could ever count.

 

But that’s something that seems more than a bit unlikely to Abraham, because right now he has no descendants at all, and he’s already in his eighties. His wife Sarah is well beyond child-bearing age too. If he doesn’t even have one child, that starry crowd of descendants is impossible. Reason tells him that he and Sarah will be the end of their family line.

 

This isn’t the first time God has made this promise, though. More than a decade before, God had called him to leave his home town of Haran in southern Mesopotamia, where he was living a comfortable and prosperous life, to head out across the desert to a new home. And the only incentive that could have led him to set out on this crazy expedition is that God has told him, “I will make of you a great nation… “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. “ The prospect that he might finally  have an heir to carry on his family name outweighs the uncertainty and danger of the journey ahead of him. He and Sarah set off, with their nephew, Lot and whatever possessions they could carry between them, into the unknown. When they get to the land of Canaan, God renews his promise. “To your offspring I will give this land”, but the years pass, and still the promised child is nowhere to be seen, and Abraham and Sarah are getting older and older.

 

That’s the background to the reading we heard. Look towards heaven and count the stars? So shall your descendants be? By this point it’s all starting to sound like a cruel joke.

 

Abraham still seems to believe that God might come through with a miracle, but understandably, he’s starting to feel he’s entitled to some proof. “How am I to know that I shall possess this land?” he asks. How can I be sure that the “great nation” God has promised will come into being?.

 

And this is the point where an already weird story gets a whole lot weirder. God tells Abraham to make a sacrifice. There’s nothing unusual in that; it was a standard form of worship. But when Abraham lays the carcasses out, a “deep and terrifying darkness” descends. The starry sky is gone. The only light there is comes from a fire pot and a flaming torch, carried by invisible hands, between the sacrifices.

 

“A deep and terrifying darkness”. How does any of this answer Abraham’s question? How does it explain how a nation will come from this childless couple? It doesn’t, is the obvious response. What it does tell Abraham, though, is that God is still with him, and that God is in the darkness as much as the light. Just because Abraham can’t see a way forward doesn’t mean there isn’t a way forward. Just because Abraham can’t see what the future looks like doesn’t mean there isn’t a future.

 

In time, as it turns out, Abraham and Sarah do have a child, Isaac, and from him a tribe grows, until there really are too many to count. God keeps his promise. Those who first told this story saw themselves as Abraham’s descendants. This was their origin story. If Isaac hadn’t been born, they wouldn’t have been either. But I don’t think that is, or ever was the most important message of the story.  

 

Much of the Hebrew Bible, which we often call the Old Testament, was drawn together when the people of Judah were exiled in Babylon, and its stories are deeply shaped by that experience. The Jewish people thought they were facing the end of their nation, their culture, and their faith. Just like those fleeing from Ukraine, they didn’t know when or even if they would return to their homes, and what they’d find if they did. They’d lost everything, maybe forever. So, what had it all been for, they asked themselves - their history, their achievements, their struggles?  It felt as if the stars were being swept from the sky, those stars which represented their legacy to the world, their impact on the world, not just physical children, but all they had done. They thought they would be forgotten.

 

When their storytellers told them this story of Abraham they were inviting them to stand with him in the desert, to look up into that starry sky and to go through that “deep and terrifying darkness” with him.  That’s what stories do for us. They enable us to step inside them, try them out for size, and by doing that to find ourselves within them. “The heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus” said Abraham – Eliezer was actually Abraham’s servant, but he was going to inherit all his master’s belongings, because there was no one else who could. In the same way, it seemed to the exiles that their land was being left to anyone who wanted to move in and take it.  As Abraham wondered what God was playing at, they were reminded of their own doubts and questions, their fear that it was all over for them. But the Biblical storytellers knew that if they could identify with Abraham’s despair, maybe they might also be able to find his hope and his faith, and dare to trust God in their own “deep and terrifying darkness” as they faced an unknown and unknowable future.

 

This story told them that God wasn’t only present in what seemed bright and shiny, in triumph and glory, but also in confusion, pain and doubt. That was a comfort and an inspiration for the exiles, but also for many who came after them, including Jesus’ first followers. Abraham’s walk with God had involved long years of waiting, and deep darkness, so the fact that Jesus had lain helpless in the darkness of the tomb didn’t mean that God had deserted him, or that he was a fraud or a failure. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus foretells the trouble ahead of him, as he heads for Jerusalem, “the city that kills the prophets”.  But that wouldn’t be the end of the story, he said. “On the third day I finish my work” – and of course that is meant to remind us of the resurrection. God’s faithful presence with Abraham through the tough times he faced, and with Jesus in the stillness of the tomb, inspired them to believe  that he could be with them as they faced persecution and hardship for the sake of the Gospel.

 

And perhaps it can inspire us to believe that God can be with us too in our times.  After all, there’s no shortage of “deep and terrifying darkness” around us. We’ve lived through two long years of pandemic – who could have imagined what this has been like - and now the war in Ukraine threatens the peace of the whole world. If we’re not feeling just a bit frightened, we’re probably not paying enough attention.   We don’t know what’s around the corner, how it will end, what it will lead to, or how we will cope. Glib reassurance that it will all turn out ok just won’t wash. There’s no magic wand, no easy answer.

 

We’re living in a time when it can feel like there’s no certainty about anything. But faith isn’t the same as certainty; it doesn’t drive away our questions. What faith does is far more powerful. It enables us to live in the darkness, to walk through it lovingly and with integrity. Faith is the act of reaching out into it, trusting that the living God will be there to take our hand. And why should he not be? After all, life begins in the darkness of the womb. Seeds germinate in the darkness of the earth. Resurrection happens in the darkness of the grave, so maybe the “deep and terrifying darkness” can be the holiest place of all.

Amen

 

Worth it? : Lent 1

 Deuteronomy 26.1-11, Luke 4.1-13

 

“Because you’re worth it!” I’m sure many of us recognise that advertising slogan for the cosmetics firm L’Oreal. The company is so proud of it that it has its own page on their website. Apparently it was coined back in 1971 by a 23 year-old woman who was working on a L’Oreal ad, and who wanted to challenge the message that women should look beautiful so they could catch or keep a man. How would it be if we could just do it for ourselves, she thought? It’s all very laudable, until we remember that it is still just an advert for some gunk to put on our bodies, and that if our sense of self-worth depends on having unwrinkled skin or glossy hair then we’ve probably still got quite a way to go in terms of self-acceptance.

 

It works as a slogan, though, because it taps into our anxieties about who we are and how we feel about ourselves. Many people – men as well as women - don’t think they are “worth it”, whatever “it” is. They aren’t sure they are loved, or loveable. Would anyone miss them if they were gone? Have they done anything with their lives that is worth doing, that anyone will remember or celebrate?

In desperation, when we feel like that, we will reach for anything that seems to tell us we matter. We allow wealth, possessions, jobs, social media  ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ and appearance – helped along by all that expensive gunk we’re sold -  to define our sense of self-worth. But the problem is that those things are transitory and fragile. Beauty fades sooner or later, whatever we do, wealth fails, achievements are forgotten. The things we scramble for and grasp at to tell us that “we’re worth it” slip through our fingers, there’s never quite enough for us to feel really safe. If our sense of worth is based on them, we’re building on sand.

 

The people of the Old Testament were no different. In the reading we heard today, Moses speaks to them not long before they finally enter the Promised Land. They’ve escaped from slavery in Egypt, where they were the lowest of the low, with no status, no rights, nothing to  call their own. Even though they are now free, they’re landless and homeless, wandering for decades in the desert. But soon they’ll enter a land “flowing with milk and honey”. They’ll have everything they could want ; fertile land, abundant water, security. And human nature being what it is, Moses knows they’ll soon come to assume that it is theirs by right, that they have it because they are “worth it”, that they have won it by their own strength and cleverness, that they are entitled to it.

 

That’s why the ritual Moses tells them to keep is so important. Every year, he says, they must gather up some of the first fruit of the land – the first fruit, not the leftovers – and bring it to the place of worship to offer to God. Every year they must tell themselves their story once again. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” the script begins, and it goes on to remind them that when they were treated cruelly in Egypt, it was God who heard them, rescued them, sustained them in the desert, and led them to this new land. Everything they have is a gift, given to them by God, not to be grasped for themselves, but to be shared with others who are homeless and landless as they once were.

 

They must never forget when they are surrounded by riches, that ultimately– like all of us – they don’t truly own anything. All that we have is a gift, even life itself, and it is given not as a reward for our brilliance, not “because we’re worth it”, but simply out of God’s love for us, the God who loves us whether we are worth it or not. 

 

It’s a hard lesson to get our heads around. The language of entitlement, the presumption that we are getting what we deserve, is very alluring. It puts us in control. We like to feel that when good things happen, it is because we have done something to deserve them, and even when bad things happen we can at least say to ourselves, “if only I had done this or that, I could have influenced events and made things turn out differently,”

 

The language of entitlement is threaded through our Gospel reading today too. Jesus “is led in the wilderness” by the Spirit at the beginning of his ministry. I’ve stood in that wilderness; it’s a rocky, arid landscape, with sparse, scrubby vegetation and very little shelter, a bleak, inhospitable place. At the time of Jesus people thought it was the haunt of demons. It very often was the haunt of bandits and wild animals. No one stayed in it for any longer than they had to. It was a place in which you were stripped of your security and comfort, and reminded how precarious life was. It was a place of dispossession – where you found out what it was like to go without the basics of existence; to hunger and thirst, to be without shelter, baked by the sun, frozen at night, unable to help yourself.

 

At the end of forty days and nights it’s no surprise to be told that Jesus was “famished” and it is at this point that Satan comes to him with what he thinks will be his killer argument. “If you are the Son of God…” He appeals to Jesus’ sense of entitlement. The key feature of being a son in the ancient world was that you were the heir. You could assume you would enjoy your father’s special protection in life, that he would invest in you, so that eventually you would get to inherit whatever he had and continue the family line. Sonship implied entitlement. “If you are the Son of God…then surely your Father won’t let you go hungry or let you suffer, won’t want you to go without even for a moment. If you are the Son of God, you are entitled to have anything, do anything – you are entitled to absolute power.”

 

The Roman world was familiar with the phrase “Son of God”. It was one of the titles they gave to their Emperors. They’d declared Julius Caesar to be divine, so his heirs and successors were Sons of God, and became  fully divine when they died. And they knew how those emperors, bolstered by their sense of divinity, behaved. The threw their weight around, expected unquestioning obedience, enjoyed the finest of everything. It is still the way of the world today, as those who are suffering the empire building obsession of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine can testify. Why would anyone expect Jesus to be different? Satan certainly doesn’t seem to.? “If you are the Son of God…”  he says, tempting Jesus to act in the same, entitled way.

 

But as St Paul put it in his letter to the Phillippians , Jesus did not “regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but humbled himself, taking the form of a servant.” It’s significant that the very first act in his ministry was to go out into the desert, dispossessing himself of wealth, comfort and security, making himself vulnerable, living with all the uncertainty, pain and limitation of human life. He was setting the pattern for the rest of his life and ministry, which would be a demonstration that material possessions and success are not necessarily signs of God’s blessing, that those who have nothing and can do nothing have not fallen out of God’s hands or been rejected by him.   Jesus needs to be secure in this now, so that he will be secure in it later. He hungers and thirsts in the desert, as he will one day hunger and thirst on the cross. He rejects the temptation to call for flights of angels to rescue him now, just as he will refuse to call for them to rescue him from crucifixion.  And yet he never doubts his Father’s love whether he is rejoicing with his friends, acclaimed by the crowds, or alone, in pain, dying.

 

Lent, which began last Wednesday, is often a time for giving things up, but the most important thing to give up is our anxious attempts to convince ourselves that we have to be “worth it” to receive God’s love. We have it anyway, in good times and in bad. We can never lose it or destroy it. We can’t make God love us more than he does, or cause him to love us less. And that goes for everyone else around us too – rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight, messed up or sorted out, Ukrainian or Russian…

The invitation of Lent is to go out into the desert – even if it is just five minutes of stillness and reflection, to sit with God and ask him to show us what we have allowed to define our self-worth. We are invited to discover the God who doesn’t love us because we have done anything to make ourselves “worth it”, but simply because we exist.

Amen

Worth it? : Lent 1

 Deuteronomy 26.1-11, Luke 4.1-13

 

“Because you’re worth it!” I’m sure many of us recognise that advertising slogan for the cosmetics firm L’Oreal. The company is so proud of it that it has its own page on their website. Apparently it was coined back in 1971 by a 23 year-old woman who was working on a L’Oreal ad, and who wanted to challenge the message that women should look beautiful so they could catch or keep a man. How would it be if we could just do it for ourselves, she thought? It’s all very laudable, until we remember that it is still just an advert for some gunk to put on our bodies, and that if our sense of self-worth depends on having unwrinkled skin or glossy hair then we’ve probably still got quite a way to go in terms of self-acceptance.

 

It works as a slogan, though, because it taps into our anxieties about who we are and how we feel about ourselves. Many people – men as well as women - don’t think they are “worth it”, whatever “it” is. They aren’t sure they are loved, or loveable. Would anyone miss them if they were gone? Have they done anything with their lives that is worth doing, that anyone will remember or celebrate?

In desperation, when we feel like that, we will reach for anything that seems to tell us we matter. We allow wealth, possessions, jobs, social media  ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ and appearance – helped along by all that expensive gunk we’re sold -  to define our sense of self-worth. But the problem is that those things are transitory and fragile. Beauty fades sooner or later, whatever we do, wealth fails, achievements are forgotten. The things we scramble for and grasp at to tell us that “we’re worth it” slip through our fingers, there’s never quite enough for us to feel really safe. If our sense of worth is based on them, we’re building on sand.

 

The people of the Old Testament were no different. In the reading we heard today, Moses speaks to them not long before they finally enter the Promised Land. They’ve escaped from slavery in Egypt, where they were the lowest of the low, with no status, no rights, nothing to  call their own. Even though they are now free, they’re landless and homeless, wandering for decades in the desert. But soon they’ll enter a land “flowing with milk and honey”. They’ll have everything they could want ; fertile land, abundant water, security. And human nature being what it is, Moses knows they’ll soon come to assume that it is theirs by right, that they have it because they are “worth it”, that they have won it by their own strength and cleverness, that they are entitled to it.

 

That’s why the ritual Moses tells them to keep is so important. Every year, he says, they must gather up some of the first fruit of the land – the first fruit, not the leftovers – and bring it to the place of worship to offer to God. Every year they must tell themselves their story once again. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” the script begins, and it goes on to remind them that when they were treated cruelly in Egypt, it was God who heard them, rescued them, sustained them in the desert, and led them to this new land. Everything they have is a gift, given to them by God, not to be grasped for themselves, but to be shared with others who are homeless and landless as they once were.

 

They must never forget when they are surrounded by riches, that ultimately– like all of us – they don’t truly own anything. All that we have is a gift, even life itself, and it is given not as a reward for our brilliance, not “because we’re worth it”, but simply out of God’s love for us, the God who loves us whether we are worth it or not. 

 

It’s a hard lesson to get our heads around. The language of entitlement, the presumption that we are getting what we deserve, is very alluring. It puts us in control. We like to feel that when good things happen, it is because we have done something to deserve them, and even when bad things happen we can at least say to ourselves, “if only I had done this or that, I could have influenced events and made things turn out differently,”

 

The language of entitlement is threaded through our Gospel reading today too. Jesus “is led in the wilderness” by the Spirit at the beginning of his ministry. I’ve stood in that wilderness; it’s a rocky, arid landscape, with sparse, scrubby vegetation and very little shelter, a bleak, inhospitable place. At the time of Jesus people thought it was the haunt of demons. It very often was the haunt of bandits and wild animals. No one stayed in it for any longer than they had to. It was a place in which you were stripped of your security and comfort, and reminded how precarious life was. It was a place of dispossession – where you found out what it was like to go without the basics of existence; to hunger and thirst, to be without shelter, baked by the sun, frozen at night, unable to help yourself.

 

At the end of forty days and nights it’s no surprise to be told that Jesus was “famished” and it is at this point that Satan comes to him with what he thinks will be his killer argument. “If you are the Son of God…” He appeals to Jesus’ sense of entitlement. The key feature of being a son in the ancient world was that you were the heir. You could assume you would enjoy your father’s special protection in life, that he would invest in you, so that eventually you would get to inherit whatever he had and continue the family line. Sonship implied entitlement. “If you are the Son of God…then surely your Father won’t let you go hungry or let you suffer, won’t want you to go without even for a moment. If you are the Son of God, you are entitled to have anything, do anything – you are entitled to absolute power.”

 

The Roman world was familiar with the phrase “Son of God”. It was one of the titles they gave to their Emperors. They’d declared Julius Caesar to be divine, so his heirs and successors were Sons of God, and became  fully divine when they died. And they knew how those emperors, bolstered by their sense of divinity, behaved. The threw their weight around, expected unquestioning obedience, enjoyed the finest of everything. It is still the way of the world today, as those who are suffering the empire building obsession of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine can testify. Why would anyone expect Jesus to be different? Satan certainly doesn’t seem to.? “If you are the Son of God…”  he says, tempting Jesus to act in the same, entitled way.

 

But as St Paul put it in his letter to the Phillippians , Jesus did not “regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but humbled himself, taking the form of a servant.” It’s significant that the very first act in his ministry was to go out into the desert, dispossessing himself of wealth, comfort and security, making himself vulnerable, living with all the uncertainty, pain and limitation of human life. He was setting the pattern for the rest of his life and ministry, which would be a demonstration that material possessions and success are not necessarily signs of God’s blessing, that those who have nothing and can do nothing have not fallen out of God’s hands or been rejected by him.   Jesus needs to be secure in this now, so that he will be secure in it later. He hungers and thirsts in the desert, as he will one day hunger and thirst on the cross. He rejects the temptation to call for flights of angels to rescue him now, just as he will refuse to call for them to rescue him from crucifixion.  And yet he never doubts his Father’s love whether he is rejoicing with his friends, acclaimed by the crowds, or alone, in pain, dying.

 

Lent, which began last Wednesday, is often a time for giving things up, but the most important thing to give up is our anxious attempts to convince ourselves that we have to be “worth it” to receive God’s love. We have it anyway, in good times and in bad. We can never lose it or destroy it. We can’t make God love us more than he does, or cause him to love us less. And that goes for everyone else around us too – rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight, messed up or sorted out, Ukrainian or Russian…

The invitation of Lent is to go out into the desert – even if it is just five minutes of stillness and reflection, to sit with God and ask him to show us what we have allowed to define our self-worth. We are invited to discover the God who doesn’t love us because we have done anything to make ourselves “worth it”, but simply because we exist.

Amen