Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

As a Mercy school, forgiveness is right at the heart of what we are about.  And this a powerful parable that needs little comment and explains that attitude.

Forgiveness is right at the heart of God’s relationship with us.  But forgiveness is like air - if you don’t breath it out you can’t breath it in.   Either receiving and giving forgiveness is part and parcel of who you are or it’s not; the two can’t be separated.

The debts in the story have to be faced up to – forgiveness is not about ignoring the problem but facing up to it in a way that leads to reconciliation rather than punishment.  To healing, not further hurt.  To mended relationships, not not ones that are broken still further.  Isn’t that what our restorative justice is all about?

“How many times…”.   “Not seven, but seventy times seven”.  In other words, stop counting and just do it.

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Matthew 16:21-28

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

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Matthew 15:21-28

21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Even Jesus, it seems, needed to take a break and get away from it all.  So he and a few followers go north, out of Jewish territory to the Syro-Phoenician, Gentile, area to the north.  But even there word must be out because people come looking for him still.

We live in a world that, at least in theory, takes racial equality for granted.  And we expect Jesus to help anyone who asks.   So when he refuses this Canaanite woman – a Gentile, a non-Jew, and does so in such a way we are shocked.   But Jesus’ immediate mission was not to go around healing as many randomly chosen people as possible.  His mission was focused on Israel.  On reminding Israel of its vocation, of showing Israel what that vocation was supposed to look like, and of bringing that vocation to its climax and fulfilment.    There isn’t the time to go around and heal and teach the whole world.

And yet.

The purpose of that vocation, the goal of that fulfillment, is for the whole world.  With Jesus’ resurrection will come the opening out of that promise, and the whole world will be invited in.  There will be no Jew or Greek, slave or free, any longer. All will be welcome.

And around Jesus the future cannot help but keep breaking out in the present.   His is a ministry that shows what God’s ultimate future is like in glimpses here and now.  And so, when this Canaanite woman shows the kind of faith he struggles to find at home, he cannot help but grant her request.  One glimpse of the future – a world where differences are causes of celebration not division - leads to another, her daughter is healed.  A glimpse of the world’s release from all that ties it up in a mess.

As we go about our day, working with each other, working with the students, are we conscious of a vocation to show the world glimpses of God’s future?  Tiny snapshots of what the world should and will look like that inspire others to do the same?

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Feeding the Five Thousand

(Mk 6:30–44; Lk 9:10–17; Jn 6:1–14)

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”16 Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”17 They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.”19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

When you’ve just heard some shocking, unpleasant, news you probably want to get away on your own for a bit to take things in.   Maybe shut yourself in your office with the door locked, escape into the chapel, disappear down to the river.   Jesus has just heard about the execution of his friend and cousin, John the Baptist.  Beheaded by  Herod Antipas for challenging the king.  And even more shocking to Jesus because it must remind him very graphically what is in store if he keeps challenging the authorities.   So he tries to get away from it all – but the crowd follows.

Put yourself in the place of one of his followers – not a leader but maybe someone on the fringe.   You see the problem developing – all these people and no food.  You’ve been around Jesus long enough to know that he expects you do to something to help. So you do – you suggest sending them away to get food; a very helpful, practical, suggestion.  But Jesus turns it around – “you feed them, he says”.  You have a little bit of food, but it really is absurdly inadequate to the task – barely enough for two people, let alone thousands.   But you’re willing to do the tiny bit you can so after Jesus gives thanks to God for it you start to hand it out.   A bit to this person, a bit to the next person,…   And somehow – you don’t really know what’s going on – but somehow you seem to still have food to keep going.   And some of the people you’ve given food to are finding they can share theirs as well.     And so it keeps going.

And that’s how it is with following and serving Jesus.   We spot the problem, and we turn to him with a solution – usually one that involves him doing something.  And he does welcome us doing that. But he turns that around into a challenge for us: “no, you feed them, you heal them, you fight the injustice, you put the problem right…”    And so we take what little resources we have and make a start – uncomfortably aware of the absurdity of it all – how completely inadequate we are for the task.   And yet, somehow, maybe we don’t quite know how, we do start to make a difference.   Somehow Jesus does seem to take what we do and multiply it.   And sometimes, after a while, other people do start to join in.

When you see an insurmountable problem, listen for Jesus saying “you deal with it for me”.  And remember the five loaves and two fish.

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Three Parables, Matthew 13:44-53

Three Parables

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

51 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with the Old and familiar – at least to his original audience: the whole story of Israel from Abraham onwards summed up in his openning genealogy.   It finishes with the New and shocking: the death and resurrection of Jesus.   All the way through it weaves those two together, showing how Jesus’ ministry, his life, death and resurrection, is both radical and surprising.  Overturing old ideas – yet the fulfillment and climax to that ancient story.  Here, in the centre of the Gospel, we actually have a description of that, a description of what Matthew is trying to do: ““Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

And three short, snappy, parables about the Kingdom of Heaven.   A hidden treasure so wondeful you’d give up everything else to acquire the land it’s hidden in.   A pearl so beautiful and valuable you’d sell all those other pearls to buy this one.

There’s no room for half measures, Jesus is saying.   Being part of what God is doing is so wonderful you’re prepared to give up the other stuff to be part of it.   You can’t hang on to all the other stuff and have this as well.

It is the true continuation of what has gone before, but it is a shocking new direction.   You can’t hedge your bets.  Either you get on board with the Kingdom of God to the exclusion of everything incompatible with that, or you don’t.

Because if God is going to put the world to rights, ultimately he will need to separate the good fish from the bad; those who want to be part of a just world, healed and put to rights, from those who what to carry on as before with greed, injustice, oppression, violence and force,…

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Psalm 119: Hearing, reflecting, responding...

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Matthew 11.25-30
At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

There are some things about people that only very close family members ever know.  Perhaps there is something about your son or daughter or father or mother that only you are aware of.  Maybe it’s not something you could put into words if you tried.

Here we see Jesus coming to the same recognition about the one he called ‘Father’.   There were things about his Father that, for some reason, only he seemed to know, and only he could tell.  As he announced God’s kingdom and made God’s love visible in healing, forgiveness and bringing new life, he must have started to realise that the other people he met – the religious leaders, the ordinary people, even his own disciples and own family - did not have the same awareness of the Father than he did.

And how frustrating he must have found it when he discovered not only did they not have that awareness,  but they didn’t want to hear it when he tried to tell them.   Either they became hostile, or they made excuses.   And strangely this gave him a further insight into how the Father operates, and leads to this fresh burst of praise for the way God is working.

Jewish literature for centuries had spoken warmly about the wisdom of the wise.  God gave wisdom to those who feared him; a long tradition of studying Torah and piety indicated that studying the Scriptures in fine detail and debating the nuances of the Law lead one ultimately to know God.   For the average person of Jesus day that was as out of reach as being a brain-surgeon – you needed to be a scholar, trained in languages and literature, with time on your hands for that.

No, Jesus declared.  You just need to be like a little child.  Jesus had come to know the Father the way a son does – by spending time with him, living in his presence, listening for his voice, joining in his work.  The way Miriam wants to help when she thinks I’m doing something interesting at home.  And now he was discovering that the wise and learned were getting nowhere and the “little people” – the poor, sinners and tax collectors – were discovering more of God simply by following him (Jesus) than the learned specialists who declared that he didn’t fit their complicated theories.

Jesus had come to see himself as acting as a window onto the living God.

And he invites us to be the same.   To learn about God by spending time with him – in prayer, in contemplation, in reading and reflecting on his story - and in his work in the world.

And so as we come to know more and more about God by spending time in his presence so we can be that window onto God for others.

It does mean choosing another way.  It does mean following a call and walking away from some things.   It does mean giving some things up.  But, he says, “the burden is easy”.   Why?  Because he is there to help carry it.

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Ruth 4

The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

(Powerpoint)

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Today is actually the Ascension – forty days after Jesus’ resurrection at Easter.  Though we usually move the celebration of Ascension (which always falls on a Thursday) to the Sunday these days.

Acts 1:1-11

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning²until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.³After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.⁴While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me;⁵for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”⁶So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”⁷He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”⁹When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.¹⁰While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.¹¹They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

For forty days after Easter the risen Jesus appears among them (have we remembered we are still in, and still celebrating Easter or are the eggs long forgotten), teaching them about the Kingdom of God.

Finally they ask him “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Still they have not got it.   Still, despite his death, and his resurrection, they are expecting a Kingdom brought about by a conquering hero marching in and ruling like the Maccabees or any other conquering hero only a bit better.  Is his answer a “no”, or a “well, it doesn’t begin to look like the sort of thing you have in mind”?  Or some of both?    His victory parade was the cross.  His defeat of his enemies was the resurrection.  His Kingdom is always “now,… but also not yet”.   Existing in the hearts and actions of his people, but with ultimate fulfillment to come.   So what’s the rest of his answer?  “… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

“Is this the time for your Kingdom?” they ask.  “Go and live the Kingdom, ” is his response, “not just in Jerusalem and Judea, but in the ‘enemy territory’ of Samaria and to the ends of the earth”.   “But for that you are going to need not me bodily in one place, but the Holy Spirit living in and working in each one of you.  For that you’ll have to wait a little bit longer.”

And then he goes.   It’s all to easy to have a picture of him zooming upwards like a NASA rocket, feet sticking out from behind a cloud.  But that’s not what the account is about.    We know heaven isn’t actually ‘up’.   Up from where, anyway?  Up from Jerusalem would be down from here.   They knew that too – when the High Priest stood in the Holy of Holies in the Temple once a year it wasn’t like he was in heaven; they thought he was in heaven.   Heaven is God’s space overlapping ours.  But ‘up’ language is the best we can do.   In Daniel 7 the “Son of Man” is described as “coming on the clouds of heaven” to be enthroned next to the Ancient of Days.   The clouds in the story are there to tell us the significance of the event – this is the moment of Jesus’ enthronement as Lord of all.  Leaving his followers – us – with a job to do bringing his Kingdom into a reality.

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This Sunday’s gospel is from John 14 – Jesus farewell discourse on the night before his arrest.

John 14:1-14

Peter has just asked “Lord, where are you going?”  And so Jesus is attempting to get across to his disciples the significance of what is about to happen.  And he does this by expanding on the relationship between himself and the one he calls “Father”, God.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.   If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.

Philip doesn’t get it: “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied”.  Jesus replies: “have I been with you all this time, Philip, and still you do not know me?  Who ever has seen me has seen the father.”

If we want to know what God is like we need to put aside all our notions about what God should be like and look at Jesus of Nazareth.  How can that be and how does that help?   Well, right back at the beginning, in Genesis 1, God created humanity, us, precisely to be his image in the world.  To show the world what God is like, to be his agents in the world, and to bring His plan to fruition.   Jesus, in modelling what it is to be fully human shows us, more completely than anything else could, what God is like.

But it mustn’t stop there.  We need to allow that to form and shape us so that we can become more fully human.  So that we can reflect God’s image ever more clearly in and for the world.

And we need to remember that every person out there is also made in that image.   There’s an ancient rabbinic saying that in front of every human being there walks a thousand angels crying “make way, make way, for the image of God”.  Do we manage to see God in our colleagues and in our students every day?   What difference would it make to the way we interact in the classroom and the staffroom if we stopped and thought “this person I’m talking to is the image of God”?

I was privileged to be with the Year 8s on Camp in the Grampians last week.  It’s easy enough to appreciate God in the wonder of that beautiful scenery.  But even more worthwhile was to stop and see God in the fantastic young people we teach.  In Noah plodding up a mountain determined to persevere to the top no matter that he found it twice as hard as anyone else.  In Ebony gently encouraging and helping along those who were struggling. In Brooke overcoming her fear of heights.    In Will standing up for those at the back when others were complaining about being slowed down.   In a whole group of them forgiving me for dragging them up a mountain in the pouring rain.

When was the last time you stopped and learned something about God from the 25 or so images of God in your classroom?

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