LK 1:39-45

Laterally Luke…Advent 4…Revised 2018

In making her long trip to visit Elizabeth & share Gabriel’s news - God’s news, really - with her, Mary joins the ranks of those inside & outside the Scriptures who make journeys, physical &/or spiritual, as part of God’s plan for them - & for others. What-ever plans we have for physical journeyings in life, God always knows where He needs us to be. For our own sake, & for that of others! (There are always Godly spin-offs for others when we walk The Way!)

My wife & I have long personal experience of this. 50 yrs ago we lived & ministered on the East coast of OZ. Ask us then where we’d expect to be living 50 years later, & we’d both have answered, ‘On the East coast of OZ, of course- where else!’ God, though, has a different way of looking at things. We’ve no doubt it was God who called us to move on physically - as He’s always calling us to move on spiritually - like we encourage others to do the latter when we preach! First we were moved to the North coast; then, after four years there, to the West coast where we’ve now lived & ministered for 45 of those intervening years. (Oh, & also with 3 months ‘filling in’ in the Centre!) Looking back we can see A Plan bigger than any of ours! 

In the 6th month of Elizabeth’s carrying John the Baptiser to be, Mary visits her relative. To share Elizabeth’s joy-tinged-with-apprehension (?) To tell her her own news of being called to bear the Saviour (apprehension-tinged-with-joy?). I reckon we’re meant to understand JB leaping in Elizabeth’s womb as a display of the spirit-ual energy he’s going to be capable of years later. Tiny steps can lead to larger steps once God confirms, one way or another, that we’re heading in the right direction - spiritually &/or physically. Has our own spiritual energy given any such display at any stage of our life? What’s our spiritual energy ‘rating’ right now?

If we’re called to journey physically, spiritually, or both, to bring somebody - our own self or someone else - to birth for God, then so be it! Amen! Whenever we use the ‘Amen’ word, not least after praying: ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven…’ we’re opening ourself to a call to move on, one way or another, for God. Are we open to that? Up for that? Do we discern any such call to journey, one way or the other, in the offing at the moment?

 Brian

Afterthought: In ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’¹ Eugene Peterson comments, ‘Elizabeth & Mary stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding conception, Elizabeth a barren post menopausal old woman & Mary a young virgin.’ Are there ‘extremes of impossibility’ we’re using as an excuse not to make some journey God is calling us to right now. On Advent 4? At Christmas? In the new Year?

¹ p.268. H & S, 2005

LUKE 3:7-18

Laterally Luke…Advent 3…2018

To start in the middle, what JB says here sounds very Jesus-like, doesn’t it? But it’s never JB who’s meant to be centre-stage. By all means preach this to highlight why Jesus is attracted to this wild Prophet out in the desert. Stay centred, though, on Jesus Himself; the One whose appearance among us JB comes to announce!

Maybe it’s JB’s ‘hairiness’ that reminds me, but years ago I come across an article  from Harvard Business Review about B-HAGs! Yes, B-HAGs! I’m about to run for the pesticide when I find they don’t bite. Well, not that way! It’s simply an acronym for Big Hairy Audacious Goals! (Like Henry Ford’s, when he markets his T model, is ‘to run the horse off the roads’!) Today JB has a 3-fold B-HAG. When ordinary folk  ask him, ‘What must we do?’ JB tells them, “Share what you have with those who don’t”. When bureaucrats ask, it’s “Be honest!” When those with physical power to bully others ask, he replies, “No shakedowns, no frame ups, &, be content with your pay!”¹  To prepare the way of the Lord, JB wants people to have such God-given & God-driven Big Hairy Audacious Goals as will drive everything else off the road!

As our societies are descending more, &, more quickly, into chaos today, how can we preachers lead people to the point of asking, not JB, but God, through Jesus, & by His Spirit, questions appropriate to life today? Beginning by asking those same questions of ourselves. Incorporating into our discipleship B-HAGs from our Lord, who by His very nature is the most God-filled human being ever.

However we decide to approach this, we need to go beyond JB’s B-HAGs, exciting as they are. We need to go further as Jesus does: that we love one another. That’s the B-HAG that shows a greater than John has come among us; demands even more of us as only He Who Is Being Itself can ask. If all this sounds too hard, be assured Jesus never asks of us anything He Himself doesn’t do for us, &, wouldn’t do for us!

If people’s hopes are rising at JB’s teaching [v.15], history tells us they’re dashed in more ways than one, beginning with JB’s murder & Jesus’ arrest & crucifixion. One lesson I take from this is that any hopes we have for a better, less hate-filled world will also be dashed till we become people who have B-HAGs; as big as love one another - even the unlovable!

Brian

Afterthought: 

JB’s emphasis on Baptism (it’s not our Christian Baptism) reminds us of our need to re-discover, grow into, our own Baptism. Let it really happen to us by living & loving it out. That’s a B-HAG indeed! A Big ask! Hairy, most probably! Audacious indeed! All as we live out Jesus as the Way, the Truth, the Life, & the Love of God.

¹ Complete Gospels, Polebridge, ad loc. 

LUKE 3:1-6

Laterally Luke…Advent 2…Revised 2018 

Verses 1-2a may sound boring old history, but they ground John the Baptiser, &, by association, Jesus, in recorded history. It’s important, too, to ground our own stories firmly in history; not least religious history. Including our personal ‘track record’. Who are, or have been, mentors, key players, reference points, on our journeying in faith? Including our personal dilemmas in our wildernesses?

Good preaching includes challenging people (ourselves included!) to straighten out our lives. JB follows in Isaiah’s steps in doing this; Isaiah builds on Moses & others before him. Jesus builds on them all. To preach God’s Good News is to join that succession because we’re called to do so. 

When we navigate today’s physical roads, many of us rely on our GPSs. But, we often hear someone complain their GPS doesn’t know that ‘right turn’ into such & such a street is closed off because of an ‘incident’, or road-works. JB urges us to do the hard-yards of life’s journeying ourselves; personally. Not hand over responsibility to any of the short-cuts we have a-plenty in the electronic aids on offer today. (Even someone else’s sermon notes!) JB is on about personal reformation from the ground up. As is Jesus Himself, too, in due course.

Which paths I’m currently treading need to be made straight? Which of my valleys needs filling in? Which of my mountains & hills need to be brought low? What is there about me that’s crooked & needs straightening out? Which of my ‘rough edges’ need to be smoothed? We’re not talking about someone else here. Isaiah, JB, & Jesus are all speaking to me & you! How are we to approach this responsibility? What homework do we need to do on ourself before we mount our pulpit? 

Jesus is mentioned only in JB quoting IS’s ‘Make ready the way of the Lord’. But it’s important not to turn JB into a stand-alone character. None of the saints is that! Not JB back then; not you or me today. Jesus goes out to JB to discern if & where he - JB - fits in to God’s scheme of things. Which immediately raises the question of where does He Himself fit in? With flow-on effect to where we fit in. The answer to that in Jesus’ case is to be found in His being baptised by JB. MT (3:13-15) tells us JB’s ‘horrified’ at the thought, but discerning whom Jesus is, bows to His will. As we must bow to the will of The One into whom we’ve been baptised by water & Spirit by growing in Faith in God & Faith in ourselves & our calling. 

Brian

Afterthought: Yesterday I have a ‘deep & meaningful’ with a chap of a Pentecostal persuasion from our street. He tells me he’s leaving his long-time church as the new Pastor ‘keeps talking in words I don’t understand’. Now there’s a warning to us all! Might have come straight from JB in today’s passage, mightn’t it? ‘If the cap fits….!’

LUKE 21:25-38

Laterally Luke…Advent 1…Revised 2018

Welcome to the ‘Year of Luke’! Celebrate Advent by worshipping & preaching a Jesus who lives in the present! Not in past glories; God’s, nor anyone else’s. Not even in any apocalyptic future Jesus discerns coming on the heels of His life here on earth. In the Gospels God is always opening us up to new possibilities in this world; not putting them off till the next! Live & preach in God’s ‘Now’ time; always ours, &, at the same time, always God’s. 

Today’s world is more & more scary for more & more people. That doesn’t mean ‘the end’ is coming, though it does raise the question Jesus is raising here; that any ‘end’ may well be of our own making. Jesus, though, has come, is always ‘come’ by His Spirit, & will one day come again. Maybe as unexpectedly & unrecognisably as in His first coming among us? Let’s live, &, if it’s time, die with our spiritual eyes open.

My wife & I have a large fig tree, product of a bird dropping a seed long ago. For 15 years it produced not one piece of fruit! Then, one Summer a crop of figs appears. Aha! But those figs are dry as chips; inedible! Even the birds won’t touch them! 5 years ago, a smaller second crop appears in Autumn. Among them a few edible figs; the pattern, we expect, for the foreseeable future. How far, though, is ‘foreseeable’? 

Neither the Scriptures, nor the Faith revealed in them, guarantee God will rescue us in the foreseeable future from small dilemmas, or the real trials & tribulations many are grappling with. The Scriptures though, if we read with open & discerning hearts & minds, do re-assure us of God’s presence with us & in us throughout whatever we’re suffering. Preaching a Son of Humanity coming on the clouds will be, like us expecting a huge crop of edible figs next Summer, escapism. Pray, hard, ‘Save us from the time of trial, &, deliver us from evil’, but be prepared for that saving & deliverance coming in surprising ways! As we don’t write off our fig tree!

Brian

Afterthought: Jesus, now by His Spirit in us, always reads ‘the signs of the times’, the state of our humanity, in us & what we get up to. Was there ever a possibility so un-expected as Christ’s kind of Messiah-ship? How many, though, ‘read’ that in His life, His death, & Resurrection? How are we ‘reading’ that now, in our own day?

Luke 24: 36b - 48

Laterally Luke…Easter 3…Revised 2018  

The Easter story continues & widens as Cleopas & his companion, who’d met up with the raised Jesus on the way to Emmaus, now meet up with the eleven & compare notes. Jesus’ appearance among the disciples, though, produces not joy, but fear & terror! (Fear & Terror were once weapons of choice for some churches. Are some of us still trading on that now? Hopefully, not!) How does our Easter Journey continue & progress? Or is it still, ‘same old, same old’? Do we compare our own Easter notes in Bible Studies, or Home groups? Are we making progress? As far as was reached at Emmaus? Or is it still, ‘same old…’? Are we celebrating Easter-every-day-Joy in our on-going lives, or are we like the eleven in that upper room, still doubt-full? Afraid, even? Of what? Of whom?

Misinterpretations of the Scriptures can be fostered & foisted upon others by people still locked behind their own fears of losing control over their followers. Or even, over ‘God’?

Do we know the feeling? On which side of the locked door(s) are we, or those to whom we preach, standing?

Opening people’s minds to the Scripture is no easy task. So  many pre-conceptions, mis-conceptions, & failure to conceive . (Conceiving is the most creative of all activities, isn’t it?) Are we conceiving & bringing to birth the truths of Faith & Scripture? The early church learns to re-read the Hebrew Scriptures in the Light of Jesus & His Resurrection. As today’s disciples we need to learn to ‘join all the Jesus dots’. Make connections between what’s been passed down from before, in both the H.B. & our Christian N.T., & the dots with your name on them, & mine. Let’s keep the Scriptures open & life-giving by reading & re-reading them respectfully, positively, & in the light of increasing knowledge in so many fields. Faith-communities only shape up as we share our stories & move on with the ‘old, old, story’ & into today’s stories. In the faith & hope & love that free us from behind locked doors. Re-living someone else’s yesterday’s stories, won’t raise us from today’s deadnesses!

I’m taken by some words of Richard Rohr¹, when he says, ‘For all time he (Jesus) becomes our sign, our promise, our guarantee, our fulfillment. It’s all summed up in Jesus: He’s the beginning, the middle, and the end. For us, he is everything. He is the Word of the Father. He is what God can accomplish in humanity when we say yes to God.’

Saying “Yes” to God may cost us, as it costs Jesus; even if not so drastically. But God is still self-giving as He is in Jesus, & by Holy Spirit frees us to be self-giving, too. Resurrected to walk the Jesus Way wherever that leads us now.     

¹ The Good News According to Luke, Crossroad, NY, 1997, pp.189-190

LK 2: 22-40

Laterally Luke…Christmas 1…Revised 2017

Take Simon - ‘righteous, devout, looking for the consolation of Israel, Holy Spirit being upon him’ - together with Anna - ‘prophetess, not departing from the temple, worshipping, fasting, & praying night & day’; what a formidable combination they make! Would that every congregation had combinations like Simon & Anna!

Whatever else we explore in the readings at this time of year, a main thrust in them is that God consistently works from the ground up, not from the top down. There is no trickle down effect in the way God’s Kingdom, God’s Rule works. God chooses & works with people who have little or no standing in the public eye. People like Zechariah & Elisabeth, Mary & Joseph, foreign astrologers, today’s Simon & Anna, a scruffy-looking & way-out, in more than one sense, Baptiser. Even you & I qualify if we’re more tuned into God than into ourselves.

Today’s church is mostly adrift as much as society in general. Rapid social change - the fastest since evolution began - has left many looking for, even longing for leadership to ‘trickle down’ from where someone has been elected to, or seized power. The lesson from Scripture is that meaningful change the way God sees it happens from the bottom up; as faithful people are called, & respond, to God & God’s way of looking at & doing things! (Church leaders are no more able to put things to rights by pontificating from the top than politicians - of any stripe - are!)

God works through people like Simon & Anna, to stick to those two now, out in the margins of life. People who are called to think & act laterally as God calls us into His confidence to be ‘righteous, devout, looking for the consolation of Israel (& a new Israel), Holy Spirit being upon us’ & ‘prophesying (in the best biblical sense of that word), not departing from the temple, worshipping, fasting, & praying night & day’. 

That’s the only way the world can be put to rights, & it will happen in God’s time & space, not ours. There are no short cuts. And there are likely to be more crowns of thorns in the short term, than golden ones. More crosses than thrones. But do it, do things, God’s way & praise & peace win out as God’s time frame kicks in!    

LUKE 1: 26-38

Laterally Luke…Adv.4 (Christmas Eve)…Revised 2017

If we happened to find an ancient parchment with just this passage on it, might we wonder what kind of God it is who sends an angel, an archangel at that, with such a message to a young woman? ‘Disruptive’ comes to mind. But that’s a healthy corrective to the common view of a ‘comfortable & comforting’ God. A question like, ‘How does the God we believe in compare with Mary’s God?’ might open up some possibilities. Do we see ourself, like Mary, as the servant (slave!) of God, willing to be disrupted in the outworking of God’s plan, or not?

Mary doesn’t appear to be at all disturbed by Gabriel’s appearance on the scene; only at the message he delivers! I have a strong belief in ‘angels & archangels & all the company of heaven’. Maybe because, so far, my contact has mainly been protective & guiding rather than disturbing as Mary is disturbed. The word LK uses is a strong one implying a ‘stirring up’, as in, ‘stirring the waters’; of the possibility of a new creation emerging?

The late Peter Gomes, once Preacher to Harvard University, says ‘Mary joins the the line of unwilling & troublesome prophets for whom God’s call is an unsolicited interruption of the routine…..Why me? Why now? Why Mary?’.¹ We don’t usually think of Mary as a prophet, do we? What is a prophet? One answer may be, ‘One called to speak God’s word into being’ or words to that effect. Mary becomes a unique prophet by being called not to speak God’s word into being but give birth to God’s Word made flesh! In what way are we being called to make God’s Word a reality? Why me? Why now? Am I / are we open enough to God’s call to become even a ‘small p’ prophet in whatever situation we’re called into?

Once we discern God’s will, &, preferably, having checked that out with godly persons, the putting of it into action depends, with God’s help, on us. God stood by the Prophets, though things didn’t always happen the way they thought they would or should. Why would God now desert those of us called to the ‘small p’ kind of ministry? Have faith that God is still as real & as close as Mary discovers God to be when she makes her amazingly faith-full ‘acceptance speech’ & proves she is God’s ‘slave’; dependent upon God’s grace, as she carries out the unique role she has been given in human history.

To end on another thought from Peter Gomes on this passage, ‘God chooses for reasons known only to Him….When God chooses you, you are chosen.’ The only response fit for any of us to make is Mary’s, “ I’m God’s slave; may all this come true!’ On which note Gabriel’s done his job, & departs the scene. Do we have any doubt, though, that he’s always there in the wings?!   

¹ Sermons, Harper SF, 1998, p.11