Driving out the blind man.

John 9:1-41

“And they drove him out.”

Undoubtedly these are the saddest words in the story of the healing of the blind man.

The Pharisees having dragged the healed man in for questioning reject his witness and ostracise him.  This man who had lived his life blind, begging as a marginalised member of the Jewish community is healed and then through no fault of his own re-dealt the same cards.  His lot in life remains on the edges of the community determined by those who hold power and influence. Their words effectively damn him:

‘”You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.’

The contrast between this story and the story of the woman at the well is remarkable.  The Samaritan woman, estranged in her own community, is able to share the good news of Jesus and people respond whereas the Jewish blind man is more or less dragged in, vilified and thrown out.  In the blind man’s own words the Pharisees would not listen.

How ironic are these words of accusation given that when the disciples had asked the question about the man’s sin and his blindness Jesus had declared: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

The correlation between a person’s lot in life and their sinfulness is brought into stark relief in this story and a challenge is issued to the traditional views of the time – sickness and misfortune were not necessarily to be viewed as a consequence of sin.

Whilst the story revolves around a particular healing event it is clear that John is also seeking to explore deeper issues concerning Jesus.  How to live life in relationship with God and to see God’s ways?  The final few verses of the passage underline this paradoxical situation in which those who claim to see – cannot.

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

The claim by the Pharisees to be able to ‘see’ indicates their misunderstanding concerning Jesus identity and a denial of God’s miraculous works occurring through him. This issue aside their inability to recognise the blind man and his identity is also something of a concern.

One Biblical Scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer remarks on her blog. 

It may be that the most damning point this Sunday's gospel has against Jesus' accusers is one that we easily miss: they did not know the blind man who was healed.

He sat and begged there daily, and every day they walked by him, but when the time came, they couldn't be sure of who he was -- others had to fetch his parents before they could be sure of the identification

Maybe it is that when we associate sin and suffering too closely, or when we assume that our prosperity is due entirely to our own efforts whilst others suffering is due to their sin, laziness or ineptitude, that we can turn a blind eye to what is occurring in the life of others who are right under our nose.  The man would have begged in the temple courtyard but the Pharisees did not see him.

We as people who claim to have seen Jesus and been transformed should hear the words of Paul to the Ephesians as an invitation or maybe even an injunction to live as people who were blind and can now see:

Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

As the days and weeks of Lent go by I am personally being challenged more and more in my own faith as to the lifestyle that I live as I ask myself ‘where are the blind spots in my life?’, ‘where am I turning a blind eye to those in need?’  These are uncomfortable questions and unless the discrepancies between how I live and how I am being called to live are exposed by the light of Jesus love it is too easy to go on living in the humidicrib of this wealthy and so called enlightened Australian culture.

Last week I watched a confronting documentary available free on the web called “Home”.  It is made by the French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Home depicts the history and plight of this earth we call our home.

The cinematography is beautiful, the message confronting.  It raises questions which have been themes in my preaching concerning the care of our environment, pollution, deforestation, depletion of fish stocks, global warming, over consumption and the like.

Whilst I do not believe doomsday saying is necessarily that helpful recognising inequity and the seriousness of global issues is certainly a responsibility of us as Christians, more so as people, who were given dominion over the creation.

With this in mind I was lead to considering the 7 deadly sins which have been a part of the churches history since the fourth century.  Whilst they may have not been a part of the protestant tradition I was struck by 3 which seem to confront me in terms of my responsibility to live as a child of the light and where my blindness might lie and need more healing.

Greed

Gluttony and

Acedia, usually called sloth

It is not difficult to make the connections.  Our overconsumption of goods in the west and desire to own more are grounded in an economic system built on the phrase made famous by Gordon Gecko “Greed is good.”  Advertising is designed to have us buy things we do not need, when we buy the next item are we not simple buying more stuff, are we giving in to greed?

In my mind gluttony is one expression of our greed, an expression that many of us fail to recognise.  The great Indian philosopher Ghandi once said “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”.  The distribution and availability of food on our planet is a massive issue as millions go hungry every day.

Acedia or sloth is not simply laziness or lethargy but not doing good.  It is the sins of omission – the things we don’t do that we should.  Seeing the suffering of the nameless millions and like the Pharisees failing to recognise that here is a person who is just as loved, just as valued in God’s eyes, who may need our help means that as enlightened as we might think we are we are still blind.

When we live in the light of God’s love, when we like the blind man can say I once was blind but know I see, we see not just physically but we see through the eyes of people who hope in a coming kingdom of justice and peace and love and equity. 

It is interesting to note that in his great hymn “Amazing Grace” John Newton captured the words of the blind man.  Of course we who know the history of the hymn know that the blindness of John Newton from which he was set free was his blindness to the evils of the slave trade.  Newton’s encounter with Jesus, his healing from blindness, leads him to become an activist and advocate in the context of the tyranny of his age and ours as well: slavery.

This of course raises the issue for me what are the key social, economic, religious and political issues of our day and age that God is calling us to respond to. How are we to live faithfully, seeing, hearing and obeying?

Seeing again brings a response in how we live.  It begins for the blind man in his belief in Jesus and in his worship of Jesus.  But the witness of the New Testament and of Christian history is that an encounter with Jesus also leads to a transformed way of living, a way which may brings us into conflict with the powers of this world and the way things are done. 

Of course we may hesitate to change our lives because we ask ourselves ‘Can one person really change the world?’  My answer to this would generally be ‘no’ but the issues for me is whether I believe I am living as a faithful witness to God’s love in Jesus and the promise of renewed creation.

It is possible that the consequence of living our lives in God’s time, we will find not a welcoming embrace in our community, but that like the blind man, we are ostracised.  In fact, I sometimes find it surprising that more Christians do not find themselves being driven out by a community which is largely not Christian.  But, if we see as Jesus calls us to see, and, if we live as our faith drives us to live, then it only makes sense that we will live differently to others.

For, if we revel in singing the words “I once was blind but now I see”, we should also live as children of the light, because we have been healed and set free by the immense and unending grace of God that has touched our lives.  

Make straight the way for the Lord

Peter Lockhart

There are times at which the text of the scripture modulates its tone between history and prophecy, between narrative and divination.


The references in today’s text from the book of Luke is one of those occasions in which we find reference to historical players which help us situate the timing of the events around Jesus’ life.

Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod and his brother Philip, Lysanias and the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas. The political and religious situation for the Jewish people was tense. They were essentially a conquered people with some of their own rulers and leaders making the best of the bad situation by pandering to the Romans.

According to the Roman historian Tacitus Emperor Tiberius, the second Emperor of the Roman Empire, was cruel and unjust. It was a time of turmoil.

It is into this setting that the words of prophecy from John are spoken as he called people to be baptised and repent.

John himself is claimed to be the fulfilment of another prophet Isaiah, who declared, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

John’s words were speaking into a community in which the valleys, the hills and the mountains were clearly associated with the turmoil created for the Jewish community by the Roman rule.

It should always be remembered that the pax Romana, or peace of Rome, was peace which was dictated to people through force and the use of the sword.

The idea that the very landscape in which the people were living, the valleys and the hills, needed to change to prepare the way for God indicates the tumultuous transformation that was necessary. It was challenge to what was commonly accepted and what was commonly practiced. There was something wrong with the way of the world.

Making straight the pathway was about correcting the crooked thinking that was present in people’s minds and telling the difficult truths about what was occurring.

Yes the prophecy was about hope and was about transformation and from the obscurity of the desert John’s lone voice challenged the Empire, the authorities, and the temple system. Turn back to God; look for hope beyond the rugged terrain of your existence, there is something more, something better on the way.

Now there is no doubt that the historical characters in the reading give us a sense of its historical placement and importance in confronting the issues of the time almost 2000 years ago but words of prophecy are not contained within a moment of history, rather they transcend the moment in which they are spoken.

To borrow from idea of Bruce Prewer, who locates the story in our present, we could just as well hear the beginning of the passage read in this way.

In the time of the minority Labor government led by Julia Gilliard, when Can-do Campbell Newman was Premier of Queensland with a landslide victory and Graham Quirk was Mayor of Brisbane. Andrew Dutney was the President if the Uniting Assembly and Kaye Ronalds the Moderator of the Synod “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

The scriptures are not simply an historical text. They are indeed a window into our present reality and the promise of the future. From the margins of life we hear:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

If the valleys and mountains in the time of the rule of Emperor Tiberius were reflective of the oppressive Roman rule and the threats of that age I wonder what it might be that we can hear today about our landscape and how it needs to be straight.

Let me share 3 stories from my week in which we might hear the voice of the prophet calling us to repent and make straight the paths of the Lord.

On Wednesday I was with a gathering of ministers from our Presbytery and we heard from Aunty Jean Philips, a tireless worker among the indigenous community, who shared some of her current experiences and hopes for her people.

I was humbled on Thursday when Aunty Jean personally called me to ask after my family and to continue to share her stories of pain and hope. I heard a story of a young aboriginal woman in Brisbane who recently handed her child to another person on the train platform and then stepped in front of the oncoming train. I heard the story of an indigenous man who had been in and out of prison for 29 years who died recently and there was no one apart from jean to gather the money for a funeral.

I heard about the hope of the Grasstree gathering of young indigenous leaders in Melbourne and the people who were stepping up to work with and among the indigenous community.

As Australians what might it mean for us to declare that hope that all flesh shall see the salvation of God, not just some?

On Wednesday when we were with the ministers we were reminded that we came by boat to this land and the question hung in the air about how our government is treating Asylum seekers.

This week I read an article on the ABC website by the President of our Assembly, Andrew Dutney, who reflected on the current approach to Asylum seekers in a post entitled “The fear of others has corrupted the Australian soul.”

I want to read the beginning of Andrews article to you:

“Amnesty International has confirmed that conditions for asylum seekers that Australia has sent to Nauru are wretched. There is poor sanitation, inadequate accommodation, overcrowding, and the mental and physical health of detainees is deteriorating. Uncertainty and loss of hope breaks the hearts and spirits of people who have fled unimaginable circumstances in search of safety.

This kind of treatment is soul destroying. Not only does it crush the souls of detainees. It points to a sickness in the soul of the Australian nation.

Jesus said, "Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12).”

Again I ask, “As Australians, what might it mean for us to declare that hope that all flesh shall see the salvation of God, not just some?”

You may have noticed that in my preaching and speaking I often comment about my concern for God’s creation and the Climate Change which is occurring around us. For me one of the driving questions was recently addressed by another article in a online magazine. Peter Hess writes:

“In the face of global warming, a question confronting any parent is, “How can I best prepare my children to cope with the enormous changes happening in the world around them?”

Over the next decades the world will be an exponentially different place to what it is today. It is more than likely wars will be fought over water and fossil fuels and possibly even food. The oceans may already have raised enough to cause the need for migration out of some coastal areas. Many species will become extinct. The number and movement of refugees across the world will increase.

The fragility of God’s creation is overburdened and threatened by our human activity. What hope can we teach our children about their future in this world?

As people of faith, we are convinced, as Psalm 24 puts it, that "the earth is the Lord's and all it holds" (Ps 24:1). The valleys and mountains which are to be brought low seem high.

Again I ask, “As Australians, what might it mean for us to declare that hope that all flesh shall see the salvation of God, not just some?”

John’s words of prophecy are words which contain a vision of a difficult and monumental change in the landscape. Each one of us knows how difficult it can be to change any one of our behaviours, to turn in a new direction.

John’s baptism for the repentance of sin was about taking that first step in a different direction in the hope and belief that God’s peace and God’s love will break into our existence making straight, bringing low mountains and hills, helping us to see, know and experience the coming salvation of our God.

We live in a world which is as filled with as much turmoil as the time in which John wandered in the wilderness inviting people to repent. Just as much now as then we look with hope to God to bring transformation in our live personal and as a common humanity. The coming of Jesus and the promise that he will come again helps us to see beyond our current experiences and be transformed by the hope and peace and love of our God. Amen.

The world does not know us

By Peter Lockhart

“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (1 John 3:1)
On the Monday night following Easter I made a conscious decision to avoid watching Q & A which had invited Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Pell to be panel members. Both are dogmaticians and crusaders for their chosen beliefs, yet neither has much to say which appeals to my thinking or understanding about life, the universe and everything. I anticipated the show would produce the same tired diatribe between atheism and fundamentalism and contribute little to furthering humanity in our relationship with God or each other in any way.

Interestingly the ripples of the debate echoed through the Global Atheism conference held in Melbourne last week into this week’s episode of Q & A. A young woman from the audience asked the question, “Given that 76% of the participants from last week’s qanda-vote agreed that religious belief does not make the world a better place, does the panel believe that religion's blatant discrimination against members of the Australian community has finally become an unwelcome part of Australia's politics, policy & society?”

It would have been interesting to have the atheist author of “Religion for Atheists”, Alain de Botton, answer this question, but even if he or anyone else can prove that religion is good for the world it misses the point and reduces faith and belief to a function of our humanity.

Almost 2000 years ago the infant church was receiving a far more hostile response to its presence in the world. As the earliest witnesses sought to theologise the problem John wrote these insightful words, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

It should be of little surprise to us 2000 years on “the world does not know us”. No logical argument can prove God, mind you neither, at least in my humble opinion, can any logical argument disprove God. The great theologian Karl Barth writing in the mid 20th century saw it was not simply a pointless exercise to engage in debate with atheists about the existence of God it was actually counter-productive inasmuch as it gave validity to their position.

No amount of logical and reasoned debate will lead people into a realised and enlightened relationship with God. This comes to us as a gift.

Again John writes, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

We are children of God by virtue of a gift from God. I will not deny there is exclusivity to this gift, to do otherwise would be naive and the struggle about why some respond to the message of grace whilst others reject it remains a mystery to me.

Having said this I do not necessarily think there is a direct correlation between belief and salvation as if it was our belief in God that saved us. No the action of salvation comes from its author not its recipients, “See what love the Father has given us.”

Through the centuries this has been a real conundrum for Christians of all different allegiances because when any of us respond to God we are more likely to think it is the way that we do this that counts. We have a tendency to define our response and our understanding as the only right one. The result is of course the shattering of the church into the scattered fragments we see strewn across the world today.

It is a shattering and dissension that makes us an easy target for atheists and presents us with another paradox. A paradox that is found in John’s letter, “You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” Once I move beyond the personal confrontation with my own impiety and consider I am yet to meet someone who does not sin, even amongst my most pious of friends, I wonder what John was playing at. Is he simply setting the bar too high? Especially, that given elsewhere in his letter, he seems to be expecting the people within the church will sin.

Maybe Martin Luther’s explanation of Christians at one and the same time sinners and righteous may help us with this reality is that we can see sin and its consequences all around us. Yet despite this reality John’s words confront us with the paradox of what our lives maybe should be. There is no glib acceptance of sin as the way things should be.

Living within the conundrum and paradox of Christianity can make people of faith, no matter how pious and well meaning, appear as hypocrites and meddlers in the lives of others so what is it that we should be doing?

As sons and daughters of God, those who have been the gift of insight into God’s love for the world, we listen for Jesus and his instruction to the disciples.

In his appearance to this disciples following his death we are told by Luke Jesus, “opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’”

The task of we who believe is to be witnesses to what God has already done in Jesus.

Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.

The messages of repentance and forgiveness of sins are not easy ones to share in a world that is hostile to even the notion of God’s existence, yet this is our twofold task.

Let me tackle each of these notions separately.

First, the idea of repentance. Repentance is one of our well worn pieces of Christian jargon that we can easily forget is a completely foreign concept to those who are outside the church community.

What does it mean? Well literally turning back to God, turning our faces and our life’s directions towards the one who made us.

As I have said this is a strange concept for anyone but a person who already believes that there is a God. No amount of logic or reason can help us argue this to a person who does not believe or see any necessity for belief in God.

This means that engaging in debate about God’s existence is pointless our task rather is to simply find ways of declaring the faith and hope we have, trusting that God may speak through us.

Let me give one example. The act of saying sorry to the indigenous people of Australia, in particular to the stolen generation, can be used as a parable for what it means for us to be people who turn back to God. We believe in a God who seeks renewal and reconciliation for all people on earth, for the healing of lives and of communities.

In the act of saying sorry to indigenous people the Australian government owned the wrong done and created new possibilities for community and a future together. As imperfect as this may have been and continues to be to me this is what living towards God is about: creating pathways to new possibilities in community via reconciliation.

So if turning back to God is one part of the story what does it mean to proclaim forgiveness of sin?

Well the first thing it means is to deal with the issue that many people do not particularly like the concept of sin nor do we understand it that well.

The word sin is another of those inaccessible jargon terms that can evoke all sorts of responses.

On the ABC Religion and Ethics website one person commented something along the lines that telling children that they were sinners was tantamount to child abuse.

Depending on how the child is told this, when and by whom the person who put the comment up may in fact be right but this does not mean that sin is not a pervasive and difficult issue that all of us, including children, face as human beings.

For me sin is about being in discord with how we are meant to live in God’s creation with one another. Often we reduce sin to the things we do wrong but this glosses over the depth of the problem. The things we do wrong are more like the symptom of the bigger problem.

Declaring forgiveness of sin then to people who do not understand the concept invites into the world of parables again.

Consider the story we are constantly sold in our Western culture that if we have more money and own more things we will be happier. In his book, The Great Disruption, Paul Gilding quotes a number of studies that indicate that this is not actually the case and says that once people have reached a certain level in which their needs are met having more money and more stuff does not actually make us any happier. Moreover, this continued delusion that having more will make us happier has negative consequences on the environment and the culture.

This is what sin is. It is about living in ways which deceive us to what our lives are about. It is always easier to talk about sin as those gross things that other people commit, like theft and murder, than deal with the complexity of our lives which are almost constantly out of kilter with God.

The hope of Christianity that we are called to declare is that in Jesus we are forgiven for our inability to live constructively and faithfully as God’s people in this world and that this forgiveness is to be is “to be proclaimed in his name to all nations”.

None can put parameters on the extent of God’s grace, all we can do is proclaim this good news as we have been called to proclaim it and place our trust in God.

The answer as to why some will respond to the proclamation of God’s love and others do not, does not seem to have any logic to it in my mind, it remains a mystery. A mystery that should be no surprise to any of us because for 2000 years there have been people who simply do not know us nor know or understand anything about the God we proclaim.

Yet this does not mean we simply take a back seat and leave our faith on idle for we are witnesses to this God who loved the world so much that in Jesus he became one of us and who has opened our minds so that we too might share the good news and mystery of our faith, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Jesus terrifies!

I think that like the disciples there is a part of us that is terrified of Jesus.

Most of the time we like to think of Jesus as a friend or comforter, maybe a guide or teacher. Yet in some stories, like this one, the idea of Jesus, a man walking across a stormy sea, is utterly strange and confronting. The disciple’s terror may not simply be the strangeness of the situation by the fear that can be generated from within when confronted by something we don’t understand and cannot control.

Now, whether or not the story happened in the way Matthew describes could be a point of contention but Matthew weaves a marvellous tale for his listeners packed with depth of meaning that reaches to the core of our existence.

I just want to make a three quick points about the story.

The first is to say that the image of the disciples in the boat was adopted by the early Christian community as a symbol for the church.

The disciples facing the storm as experienced fishermen worked together and battle the storm, they were in it together and the believed that they would sink or sail by their own efforts.

Sometimes I suspect that we in the church feel a bit the same. We sail the stormy seas of life, thinking we are guiding the ship, thinking that we are in control and that it is we alone who have the capacity to defeat the elements.

Jesus’ appearance ultimately calms the storm and reminds us that even thought we think we have things in hand there are forces greater than our efforts, powers that can even demonstrate a command over nature: God.

As the church we should take confidence in this, whilst we battle the storm, Jesus comes to us and we are not alone.

This brings me to a second point about Peter. Peter demonstrated more than a little faith, in my opinion, to step out of the boat. If we are going to follow Jesus, going to him can mean taking the risk of stepping out of the boat.

There are times when we see the walls of the church and our gathering as a kind of life vest, a security blanket. We are OK to own our faith in this setting but when we step out into the storms around us we can suppress our journey with God and so hide from others the hope we have found in following Jesus.

Today the footprints (footprints are being to each congregtaion member) that you take with you are a reminder to step out in faith every day. Step out with your little faith and take the confidence that where ever you find yourself Jesus is there ready to reach out and give you a hand.

The third and final point thing is to think a bit about the sea and the storm. If we go back to the story of creation in Genesis the image of the beginning is that of God moving over the waters.

The metaphor that is presented demonstrates God drawing back the waters of chaos to make a space in which to create. There are the waters above and the waters below.

This metaphor carries into this story. Jesus walking on the waters in the midst of the storm – the waters of chaos and uncreation above and below. The deep roiling waters and the lashing storm threaten life.

But Jesus stands in the midst of the storm as a beacon of hope, he is unassailable.

As I consider the waters above and the waters below I was struck by the things which threaten us, things which threaten to unravel the world as we know it.

Above us loom the storms of climate change and rapidly depleting resources, natural disasters and millions of starving people in the horn of Africa.

Below us the churning of the waters are like: plummeting markets and drought and war.

And whilst these mind bending and massive issues rage around us the winds that blow through our own lives distract and we become frightened. Winds of loneliness, of illness, of broken relationships. Winds of unemployment, of depression, of constant change.

Here in the midst of the storm Jesus calls to us come and reaches out to help us in the midst of our fears and our doubts and our questions.

This is the hope we find in this story – God has not left us alone to the ravages of the storm but comes to us in the midst of it.

This is the good news that we celebrate today. The good news we celebrate in being together, to remind each other that God is with us. The good news we celebrate as we baptise and as we share bread and wine. The good news we are not alone that God is with us, that Jesus is here reaching out his hand to lead us through our life’s journey.

By Peter Lockhart
(photo creative commons)

Living with hope.

Now hope that is seen is not hope.
For who hopes for what is seen?
But if we hope for what we do not see,
we wait for it with patience.

This week in Melbourne there was a gathering of scientists at a conference with the ominous title “Four degrees of more”. Why ominous? Because despite the agreement made at Copenhagen and reaffirmed in Cancun by world leaders, to seek to limit the rise in the average global temperature by less than 2 degrees Celsius, based on current inaction and trends it is more than likely that by the end of this century the rise will have been 4 degrees or more.

Even at a rise of 2 degrees Celsius there are significant global impacts but a sobering thought coming out of the conference “suggested that Australia, the world's sixth largest food exporter, may no longer be able to feed itself.” (http://nothing-new-under-the-sun.blogspot.com/)

In March of 2009 Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Chair of the German Scientific Advisory Council, advisor to the German Chancellor and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that on a four degree world the planet’s “carrying capacity estimates [are] below one billion people.” (http://nothing-new-under-the-sun.blogspot.com/) That is to say that if the temperature raises by 4 degrees the world may only be able to sustain the life of one billion people as opposed to the current nearly 7 billion people now living.

These kinds of ominous warnings and statements combined with other pressing concerns like overpopulation, peak oil, pollution, the destruction of the oceans, poverty, economic crises and, wars and unrest can seem overwhelming.

Growing up in the 1970s and the early 1980s with the spectre of the Cold War looming large in my thinking I can remember having a sense of impending doom in which I believed I would not live to see my 18th birthday let alone to until the ripe old age of 42 which I am today.

The reality is that we are facing difficult times as human beings yet in each new age we face a variety of challenges. Whilst here in Australia we may not be feeling the impacts of the dire warnings about the effects of climate change or any of these other issues yet that does not mean we will remain immune.

This brings me back to a question raised when reading Paul’s letter to the Romans about hope. How do we as Christian people live with hope in this context?

The Nicene Creed helps to paint a picture of hope for us. “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

The promise of God in Jesus, according to Paul, is that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through who we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.” This peace that we have been given has been given through Jesus’ own life, death and resurrection and gives to each one of us the promise of our personal resurrection which shapes our life as Christians. Yet it is not simply our own resurrection that we hope for but the renewal of all things, that is to say, “the life of the world to come.” Salvation is both very personal as well as entirely universal, for the creation which groans in longing.

The personal side of our relationship with God, its intimacy and its closeness, is expressed beautifully in the words of Psalm 139 which we heard today and which bear repeating:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

In the context of all that occurs within our lives and the world around us God knows us: personally, intimately, and completely, and God cares for us, even despite our opposition and rejection of God and God’s love. God hems us in not to trap us but to enfold us in his loving embrace. This is good news that we can hold on to even when we face the cold unknown journey of death.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

There is no where that we go that God is not with us and our hope is in Jesus who has traversed the very pathway into death and come through to the other side. This is a hope we cannot see nor I suspect fully grasp the significance of, but it is our hope.

Yet this personal gift of grace, the intimate knowledge that God carries of us and God’s will to redeem us also takes place in the broader context of God’s will for all things.

Paul’s letter to the Romans draws us into a deeper reflection on our place in the world.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

When Paul expressed the notion of the groaning of the creation there can be no doubt that he could not foresee how important these words would be in the 21st century.

The creation is groaning but from Paul’s perspective the groans are labour pains and point to a future renewal of all that God has made.

The correlation between our personal struggles in life, our health issues, our moral decisions, our spiritual aridity and the groaning of the world are clearly linked in Pauls’ mind. We hope for what we do not see – a resurrected life in a perfected world.

This, however, does not mean that we live with disregard to our present existence and the creation which God made and declared as good. Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that they owe God to live by the Spirit of God which has set them free.

We have a purpose and meaning in life which points to a future yet to come but we live now, faithfully present in the world, witnessing to that future which we are promised by living as we are enabled and empowered to by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We live as people of hope liberated from fear of being unknown and set free from the bonds of our consumerist culture which seeks to exploit the very last drop of every resource of the creation for the benefit of the privileged few, among which we in the West must admit we are numbered.

As we face this present age I believe our challenge is recover our hope, our hope that God does know us and care for us, our hope that God has redeemed us and has a future in store for the whole the creation, our hope in things that we do not see but can embraced as forming our way of living.

On this day may you find hope in the good news that you are not anonymous but our known intimately by God and may you share this gift of intimate knowing by loving others so they too understand that they are known. May also you find a sense of God’s concern for the future of all things and live in the groaning creation with respect and concern for all that God has made. And may God bless you this day and evermore.