Luke 23:33-43

Laterally Luke…Christ the King (Last S after Pentecost) 2019…Rev2019

N.B.: From next Sunday (Dec.1st) please see: matthewinthemargins.blogspot.com

Is it reasonable to begin by asking what relevance Christ has as King in a day when kings or monarchs of any kind are pretty few & far between? When there are leaders elected democratically, dictators of various kinds, some pretending to be democrats, & others making no pretence at all.  Does Christ fit into any of today’s pictures? Isn’t He His own unique picture? Don’t we have to work within that frame. His frame?

Is there a Divine irony in that, though God is no democrat, in our passage people get to vote for who would not be their King? Jesus wins; His prize a cross. The Jewish leaders at the foot of that cross get to vote again. Still they vote against Him. As does the first bandit up there beside Him. The second, though, votes for Him in a way that resounds down the ages.

When Pilate sets free the person the crowd asks for, is he simply freeing the un-God in us all? A consequence of choosing not-God instead of God?

When Jesus tells the second of His fellow-crucifieds he'll “be with Him in Paradise today” let's not be diverted into thinking of life with God only starting when we die. We can choose to live every day in ‘Paradise' - God's garden - if we choose God as our King. Our True Ruler, day in, day out!

Talk of Paradise reminds us of the mythic Eden, where God rules un-questioned till those physical & spiritual forbears of ours choose otherwise. Do we all have to live - & die - with the consequences not only of their bad choices, but our own, too?

What does our call to live out Jesus’ Rule mean in down to earth terms today? Not in the Middle East, but where we ourselves live? A Rule that’s all about living in a dynamic relationship with God?

To recognise Jesus as King is an earth-shattering, life-changing, life-giving experience. Two last questions: ‘Is that a risk worth taking?’, &, ‘Is it an even greater risk not to take it?’  

Brian 

Afterthought: Wasn’t it Farouk, the deposed king of Egypt, who’s reputed to have said there’d soon be only five kings left - the king of England, & those of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades & Clubs? Oh, Farouk, you seem to have forgotten the One King who really matters!

LK 21: 5-19 

Laterally Luke… Pentecost + 23…Revised 2019 

Jesus has been sitting by the Temple treasury. (Or, in the vestry as the Treasurer counts the weekly offerings?) Observing. The incident of the poor widow - let’s call her ‘Leah’ - flows into what He says about the Temple & its grandeur. To focus on buildings rather than people is still an issue that dogs us.

Jesus discerns in His ‘spiritual genes’, God’s ‘genes’, what’s going to happen if the Jewish leaders, church & civil, keep going the way they’re going. But they do.  And it does. For this question to be valid for today’s congregations, it must lead to responses & strategies that will enable Church not only to change & survive, but be resurrected in our rapidly changing circumstances. Jesus isn’t on about us losing our lives so much as our gaining them! Not by trusting in, sheltering in, church buildings but by becoming relevant.  Gaining people’s confidence & trust in a God relevant today. 

Church means those who gather in Jesus’ Name, rather than applying to buildings. Being Church is about who gathers, what we do & how we do what we do when we gather. What we do when we go out from our gathering as Church ‘in there’ to being Church ‘out there’. The end of the world as we know it is closer to hand now than it was for both Jews & new Christians ‘back then’. Nothing is going to slow down for us. All is going to keep changing faster than most of us can keep up with - or want to! Some of these changes will Bewilder us. Threaten us. Scare the pants off us. Frustrate us. Make us feel Helpless. Left Behind. Lost. That’s the bad news. But there is Good News! 

Jesus’ picture of the Temple in ruins back then, & social change happening faster & faster now, are wake up calls to our need to become a new Church. Taking new shapes. Helping us live Jesus-like lives.  Attracting & encouraging others to join us in living Jesus-like lives, too. Gathering with us as God’s faithful people. Living as His Spirited Body in our not necessarily brave new world. 

The precarious outward appearance of ‘Leah’ is in contrast with the inner faith that leads her to be so generous to God. She becomes a symbol of what Jesus goes on to say: Disaster may be looming, but, “By your perseverance you will gain your lives!” Let’s all persevere to become that new Church of new people, & do it the new Jesus Way. That will undoubtedly mean changes. Are we up for them? Take heart; God is!

Brian 

Afterthought: Years ago, I am standing outside a church where I was then PP. It was being renovated & covered with scaffolding in the process. A passer-by asks me, “Are you pulling the church down?” I’ve long pondered whether in the light of the church’s apparent irrelevance to her, we should have been doing just that - in some meaningful sense!

LK 20:27-40

Laterally Luke…Pentecost + 22…Revised 2019

Many years ago I’m trying to teach this story to a class of 9-10 year olds in a special school for children with learning disabilities. I must have had a learning disability of my own, even to attempt such a thing, but I guess it was in the syllabus! The day is saved - for me & everyone else - when a bright spark puts up his hand & says, "Fr. Brian, that must be why they were called Sadd-u-cees”! We all have a good laugh, & hopefully learn that not to believe in the resurrection may well be a sad thing. Also, that it’s laughable to try to trick Jesus, or God in any of His Persons! 

Not to believe in the Resurrection is sad because it diminishes God, & us, too, in the process. The question these Sadducees pose, based as it is on picking & choosing from Mosaic law & M.E. custom is a trap they end up in themselves! 

What is resurrection, & how does it ‘work’? As Jesus makes clear, YHWH God is always present tense, & always personally present to us in this world as well as to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, & the other souls in theirs. Jesus’ “Before Abraham was, I am!” [JN8:58] is one of the key passages in Scripture. Eternal life springs of God’s very Being, & reaches across all boundaries of time & space.  

Other lessons here include not playing off one bit of Scripture against another for point-scoring.  And, the need to treat people, including the theoretical oft-widowed & now dead woman with respect, rather than as objects. No one of us is theoretical, or an object. Back in the story, we find ‘some of the scholars’ have the grace to score the encounter Jesus: Lots of points v Sadducees: 0! These are probably not Sadducees changing their minds, but Pharisees, who believe in Resurrection, & are as glad to see Sadducees put down, as the latter are to put Jesus down!

We're not likely to solve Resurrection posers for anyone in a sermon (do sermons solve anything?) but we can at least open up the matter of Resurrection & its implications for renewed & expanded understanding of renewed & expanded life in this world & a next. The quality of resurrection life lies in a dimension we can only enjoy when we discover God & are ourselves enlivened.

The common bond between Moses, AB, IS, & Jacob is that they are all called by God to become somebody & to do something. IS may be a kind of ‘marking time’ person in himself, but brings Jacob, Israel, to birth. We should note, too, the role the over-looked wives of these & other men play in God’s unfolding purpose.   

Brian

Afterthought: Trying to put God & Jesus in a strait-jacket, along with the theoretical woman - let’s call her ‘Miriam’ - her theoretical husbands, Moses, the Law, & all the rest, as the Sadducees are trying to do here is to try to contain the Un-containable! Don’t go there!