Light Shiners and Glory Givers

 A sermon based on Matthew 5:1-2, 14-16

“You are the light of the world … let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

This exhortation of Jesus to his listeners occurs within the context of what we now call the sermon on the mount. Within the sermon Jesus challenges people to consider what it means to be blessed and within this there is a theme which points towards inclusion, justice, and an identification with those who have been dispossessed.

Artwork by Zoe Belle
Guwa Koa and Kuku Yalanji woman.

I suspect Jesus audience, including his closest followers, would have found Jesus’ teaching difficult. He turns norms on their head and pointed at the rectifying of systems of life within the community that privilege some and excluded others.

Yet, his belief was that in turning things on their heads the sum result would be that the light of God’s love would shine forth and glory could be given to God.

As we hear Jesus’ teaching 2000 years later and they interpret who we are I believe Jesus’ teaching remains uncomfortable for us. The challenge to love unconditionally, to seek justice, and to advocate for those whose voice is silenced. When we consider Jesus’ words about shining our light before others and giving glory to God, we do so within the context of living in this land we now call Australia.

Each one of us as a person of faith is called to be a light Shiner and the glory giver. The way I understand this is that through our own lives and the decisions we make we can shine with Jesus’ love. In addition to this, we have the opportunity when we observe the light of Christ shining through another person to give glory to God and articulate to that person how we can see God's work within them.

In thinking about this I would want to encourage you to understand the Holy Spirit may be at work in any person we meet regardless of their personal faith or understanding of who Jesus is. God works where God wills.

Given that today is Australia day and is also recognised as a day which contains great difficulty four First Nations Peoples, I am reminded of the words of a person who I count as a friend, a Waka Waka woman, Brooke Prentis.  At the Preachfest conference in Sydney in 2021, Brooke challenged us to consider how any sermon that we preach might sound to a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage. Or to put it another way how I might as a preacher be a light shiner and glory giver to God in this context.

As I thought about this, I was reminded of the words of an elder from Cherbourg who spoke to the students from Eidsvold. He shared this little nugget of wisdom, “We have two ears and one mouth. We should listen twice and speak once.” This seems to be consistent with a concept that I learnt about recently which is called deep listening called Dadirri. Which comes from what we now call the Daly River region in the Northern Territory.

One place that we have been invited to listen deeply in recent years has been the Uluru Statement from the Heart. As I read the statement this week, I was caused to contemplate how the statement might help me understand what it means to shine the light of God’s love and give glory to God. As I prayed, contemplated, and listened I was drawn to the three actions that the Uluru Statement invited us as people to think about as we seek reconciliation: Treaty, Truth and Voice.

In shining the light, I want to explore these three words through three different lenses and invite you to listen with me to some of significant Aboriginal voices who might teach us as we give glory to God for the light which shines through them.

I begin with the notion of Treaty.

Whilst there are some Australian States and Territories that have begun conversations about the concept of a Treaty, I want to shine the light on what the Uniting Church has done. Last year at the National Assembly we recognized 30 years of the Covenant with Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Congress which was established by the then President Dr Jill Tabart and Pastor Bill Hollingsworth. These two visionary people modelled for us humility and grace in giving us a way forward.

Pastor Hollingsworth said in the Covenanting Statement:

 

Because it is pleasing to God to love one another, and it is our commitment to do so, we invite you on behalf of Congress members to develop a new

relationship by entering into the struggle of those issues that presently are the cause of continuing injustice resulting in broken relationships.

 

You seek our forgiveness because your understanding has been enlightened

by the Spirit of the living God to recognise the failures and mistakes of the past and you desire to establish a new relationship based upon real recognition, justice and equality.

 

The grace expressed in Bill’s words should not be underestimated given the impact of the arrival of the British in Australia in 1788.  The commitment to work towards reconciliation in our relationship with First Nations people has been a complicated one. In the recent book The Present and Future of the Basis of Union there is a conversational Chapter between Rev Dr Michelle Cook and Rev Ken Sumner a Kukabrak/Ngarrindjeri korni (man). In this chapter Ken says, “I could not find my songlines in the Basis of Union.”

Part of the journey towards helping people with First Nations people find their identity in relationship to the Uniting Church and a step to deepening our journey toward reconciliation was the adoption of the Preamble to the Constitution of the Uniting Church. In its third point it made a radical claim concerning the concept of revelation:

The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.

As people who come from the Protestant and Reformed traditions, we tend to relate our understand of revelation to the Bible. One of the catch cries at the time of the Reformation was Sola Scriptura – by scripture alone! Here, though, the Uniting Church points to a more nuanced understanding of revelation – the idea that we can experience and encounter God’s presence in other ways. I will come back to that in a moment.

Whilst neither the Covenant Statement nor the Preamble are a Treaty as such, that is a matter of government, these actions shine the light of God’s love in a way which values and recognizes our history and relationship in a more formal way. It is something we can give glory to God for. If you have never taken the time to read the Covenanting Statement or the Preamble, I commend them to you as a place in which you can encounter the light of Christ shining and the glory of God.

This brings me to the question of truth. One of my first areas of academic study as an Arts student was Australian history. I studied my arts degree in the years spanning the bicentenary. During that time, I learnt a great deal about the history of our country which I had not known. I remember reading Ian Breward’s collated bicentennial lectures Australia the most Godless Place under Heaven and being challenge by the title of a collection of essays collated by W.E.H. Stannard White Man Got no Dreaming which was a quote from an Aboriginal Elder.

The decades of the 1980s and 1990s were awash with music that taught us aspects of our history. From Goanna’s ‘Solid Rock’ to Midnight Oils ‘Beds Are Burning’ to Yothu Yindi’s ‘Treaty’, Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s ‘From little things big things grow’ and Archie Roache's haunting ‘Took the Children Away’.  As we grapple with all of these things as a nation, I shared a friendship with a young Aboriginal guy at University who was part of the stolen generation. It was a journey I did not relate to or understand and continue not to asit is an experiencce so different to mine.

The truth of Australian history and the atrocities that have been part of it is that they have been glossed over. Whilst many of the issues seem distant to us, they are closer to our generations than make us comfortable. Last year I had the privilege of meeting Brenda Matthews. Brenda wrote her story down in a book called The Last Daughter. A documentary of the same name can be viewed on ABC iView. Brenda, alongside her 6 siblings, was taken from her family in 1973. Her father was a Pastor at a church but in those days, she says an Aboriginal Pastor was not paid. She was later returned to her own family and within the story the place of faith.

In the book Brenda shares the unusual Will her father wrote. Whilst I would like to share the whole document, I am restricting myself to what he left Brenda in his will.

To my youngest daughter I leave my peace. The kind of peace that can only come from above and is found in Jesus. Make him King of your heart and you will have peace forever. (p.243, The Last Daughter, Brenda Matthews.)

 

If I ask myself, what does it mean to be a light shiner and glory giver, Brenda’s truth-telling about her own story and her father’s words stand out to me. More than that her humbling and instructive words written to me as an inscription in the front of my copy of her book, “To Peter, Healing begins with you.” 

How can I too be a light shiner and glory giver in this land we now call Australia?

This brings me to the third and final aspect which is Voice. A voice that has inspired and challenged me is the voice of the Wiradjuri man, Stan Grant. The last Synod took place just after the referendum about the Voice to Parliament and we had Stan as our key guest speaker. His pain and hurt, his confusion and loss, were palpable as he spoke to us at the Synod and as he tried to begin to process his disappointment.

In December last year Grant released a new book called Murriyang: Song of Time. As I read the book it is clear that Grant has been on a deep journey of healing. The book is a prayer, a meditation, shaped by the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra – deep silence and respect.

Echoing the conviction of the Preamble to the Uniting Church constitution Grant says, “nothing of God was strange or unknown to us. We lived here in a thin space between earth and heaven – Murriyang - where the mystical realm was a breath or a touch away. I was entrance by the stories of the spirit world that my parents told me, never did I think to question it, why would I? To me it was the evidence of things unseen. If faith loses its mystery - what Greek Orthodox called the Mysterion - then God becomes just another rational being, competing with us for meaning and it is a short journey from there to where we become masters of the universe.” (p. 16, Murriyang, Stan Grant)

The mystery of our faith is ever before us and the presence of God in our natural world has always been a witness to us. I wonder how many of you consider that you feel closest to God in nature. If so you have a kindred spirit in Grant who has rediscovered God’s presence in nature and silence. I want to finish with his words today. It is a longer quote. If you wish to you might closer your eyes bask in the light of his wisdom and give glory to God as we contemplate how healing can begin with us as we live in God’s presence.

“There was no time when I did not have faith. But it had dimmed as I moved away and let the world into my soul. Now though something more profound and more troubling and more inspiring is stirring in me. God feels so much closer, close enough to touch. God came to me when I wasn't looking. God has crept up on me. In recent years I have begun to hear God in songs, see God in nature, experience God in the little things - looking at the stars, eating a meal, walking at dawn. God was waiting. God was where he always was, I just couldn't find him, I was blinded by the world. Now I see by faith not by sight.

The best way that I can describe this is that God has called me home. God has led me away from the life I have to live, returning me to a life I need. God speaks to us as who we are, and he has spoken to me as a Wiradjuri person. I did not want to hear, so he embraced me with silence. That's how God found me, he just stopped talking. Instead, he put me in places - by a Creek, under a night sky, sitting on a rock, curled up in a chair with a book - quiet places where his gentle presence could settle my mind. God reenchanted my Wiradjuri soul. How I needed that.” (p. 12-13, Murriyang, Stan Grant)

Love doesn't need a reason

Last year I was introduced to the writings of Hadewijch, a Flemish Beguine, of the thirteenth century. A mystic, Hadewijch was excluded from the Christian community of her time because of her views. Reading her writings I was struck but how often she names God as 'Love' and how regularly she uses the female pronoun to speak of God. She writes, 

In the beginning Love always contents us.
When Love first spoke to me of love,
O how with all that I was I greeted all that she is! 

So often Christians speak of God's unconditional love but the behaviour of many Christians appears to be anything but unconditional when it comes to Love. I am constantly confronted by the challenge of what it means to love one another and to become the Love, which I am already. Is this not so because in Christ I am in a new creation. More than this Love is not a feeling or a thought but an action. Hadewijch wrote to one of her followers of her commitment to live this Love.

"But you must still labour at the works of Love.… For my part I am devoted to these works at any hour and still perform them at all times, to seek after nothing but Love, work nothing but Love, protect nothing but Love, and advance nothing but Love."

I was drawn to thinking about Hadewijch again recently when David Hayward (The Naked Pastor), another modern day mystic, shared these words of wisdom in a poem, on his Facebook page

Love doesn't need a reason to love.
Love is like the sun that doesn't need a reason to shine on everyone.
Love is like the rain that doesn't need a reason to fall on everyone.
Love is like gravity that doesn't need a reason to attract everyone.
Love is like the sower who sows seed indiscriminately over all the earth.
Love doesn't need a reason to love.

God is Love and it stands to reason and is a matter of faith to say that Love doesn't need a reason to love. Amen

The Ascension grounds us in this life

 The Ascension

Why do you stand looking up at the skies?

Acts I:II

It wasn’t just wind, chasing

thin gunmetal clouds

across the loud sky;

it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend

on that excited air,

rising like a trumpet note.

 

And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking,

her crying out,

the downward draw of blood and bone…

 

It was all of that,

the mud and new grass

pushing up through melting snow,

the lilac in bud

by my front door, bent low

by last week’s ice storm.

 

Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,

begins to nurse her child,

beginning the long good-bye.

 

+ Kathleen Norris

In this short poem, Kathleen Norris grounds us again in the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ ministry, “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Too often Christians are caught with those first disciples “looking up at the skies”. We long too deeply for what is to come. But the poem challenges us that being born again is about being born again in this life, in this earthly existence.

The images of birth, the budding lilac, the storm, and the nursing of a child are about the earthy and messy mystery and wonder of our human lives. They remind us of our being in this world for which Christ died. And whilst Norris says birth is the “beginning the long good-bye” it is also the start of our journey in a creation which God loves so much. A creation that God redeems and chooses to be fully present in through Christ and in the Spirit.

Our lives may be hidden in the ascended Christ, but our lives are lived in this world as participants and signposts in the coming kingdom of God now. N.T, Wright reflects on this in his book Surprised by Hope. He says, “Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonise earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.” The ascension then is also not about looking up but living with confidence that our lives are hidden in Christ’s ascended life so that we can live flourishing and faithful lives now.

Love is not the easy thing

1 John 4:7-16

I was around 15 years old at the time. I was the son of a Uniting Church Minister, and he was preaching. I was sitting in the balcony of the church with a few of the other young people. It was small country town where everybody knew everybody. 

As dad was preaching, I heard him say these words, “A young man came up to me the other day, I won’t tell you his name because it would embarrass him, and he said ‘dad’” … At this moment numerous members of the congregation glanced back to me in the balcony. It had to be me, my brother was away at boarding school in Sydney.

In that moment I knew the betrayal not simply of my father but the betrayal of the church. It was a betrayal my father experienced many times himself in ministry.  Such to the point that when I came to give my father a letter to candidate for ministry my mother who was here simply said, “You should know better.”

“You should know better.” Clearly, I didn’t, but I did come into ministry with my eyes wide open to the failings of the church and its people.

Just this week I was teaching a Year 10 religion class and I shared with them the Compass episode entitled “For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined.” It covers the Crusades and association of Jesus with violence and then moves into the 'troubles' in Ireland during the late Twentieth century before moving on to the message and ministry of Martin Luther King Junior.

In teaching this lesson I made the comment that taken at face value, based on the history of the church and its current failings, you would not want to touch the church with a 10-foot pole. Part of why I am saying all of this is to recognise difficulties are nothing new for us as Christian people. Division, mistakes and failings are par of the Christian life.

Yet here we are. Here I am. Here you are. But, why? 

I think that the first letter of John gives us a clue. “We love because God first loved us.” Or maybe we stay “because God first loved us.” It is God’s love which holds us fast beyond the failings of us as individuals and as an institution. The God who comes to us in Jesus.

So, in this moment, on this day, in the midst of your personal life journey and your journey as a congregation my question is how you understand and find love now. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it taste like? Because it is precisely in times of trouble that we need to draw on love and to recover its meaning. 

But as U2 sang in their wisdom in the song Walk on “love is not the easy thing.” 

Love is not the easy thing.

• Not when we have encountered suffering.
• Not when we have encountered betrayal.
• Not when there has been a break down in trust.
• Not when we are dealing with grief.
• Not when we say the injustices of the world around.
• Not when we feel as though we are walking through the alley of the shadow.
• No, love is not the easy thing.

And as Christians we know this for it is seeing Christ on the cross that we see and know God’s love. As we sing in the old hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross”:

• See from his head, his hands, his feet,
• Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
• Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
• Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

But what does it mean for us to love one another having encountered this love of God. Firstly, we should know that love is far more than an emotion.

Working in an educational setting I’ve often encountered the quote by Maya Angelou, the American writer, poet, and activist. 

She said, 'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' There may be some truth in her words but what is done and what is said matter, and these things matter because they lead us to how we feel.

So, as we contemplate our human expressions of love and how we are feeling now it is worth reflecting on our human expression of how we love one another.  

Back in 1992, a few years before I was giving my dad the letter to say I wanted to candidate for ministry, Gary Chapman wrote this great little book called The Five Languages of Love. 

In the book Chapman spoke about how we as human beings express and receive love with one another. He spoke about these five ways we give and receive love:

• Words of affirmation
• Acts of service 
• Receiving gifts
• Quality time, and 
• Physical touch

Whilst I don’t think Chapman’s work is grounded in empirical research, I would suggest that there is something valuable here for us to reflect on because his work helps us understand why love is not the easy things.

You see if you gave me a gift thinking that I would understand that you love me but what I needed was to hear was words of affirmation that told me I was doing a good job then the gift and its intention are lost in translation. If I gave you a hug and then moved on but what you really needed was quality time then you would be left wondering why I didn’t care. Even the basics of understanding how we can love one another are not an easy thing. The requires us to listen deeply and take notice of each other and consider how we connect to another person’s need to feel loved and include.

In our attempts at loving one another and finding the right way to do this I was reminded of the words from Philippians:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset of Christ Jesus.”

No, love is not the easy thing. And rebuilding that sense of love which involves trust and hope and new life after encountering confusion is hard work. But for me it is the work of resurrection.  It is the work of understanding love. It is not the easy thing but it is the work of a resurrection people.

During Lent I read daily devotions from a book called On Earth as in Heaven. It is quotes from the works of N.T. Wright compiled by his son Oliver. In one of his reflections Wright acknowledges lent as a time to weed the garden and maybe even to do some serious digging to root things out. 

Then he goes on to say, “Easter is the time to sow news seeds and to plant out a few cuttings.” To be able to do this requires us to have hope. Hope in the signs of new life and resurrection because how often to we lean on the words, “God’s mercies are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness.”

Hope doesn’t lead us to complacency though. It leads us to action. I saw an add on TV for an interview with Jane Goodall which is coming up. At aged 90 she is still working, and it is hope that drives her to do so.  I did a little googling, and she has lots of quotes about hope. This one comes from here book aptly titles The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.

“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”

(Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.)

In the midst of all the mistakes that we make as people in the church, whether personal or institutional, we nurture a hope in things not seen. This is faith. We tend the seedlings of new life, we plant new cuttings, we reach out to one another tentatively trying to find the way of love because God first loved us. We draw strength from the Holy Spirit, and we lean into our relationship with Jesus in whom we abide and who abides us for in him we know that we are loved.

It is said that Karl Barth, possibly the greatest Protestant thinker of the twentieth century, when asked what was the most import theological truth that he knew said these well-known words:

“Jesus loves me this I know, and the Bible tells me so.”

Many of you will have heard about the different words used for love used in the Scriptures. Love is communicated through four Greek words which are eros, storge, philia, and agape. They are characterized as romantic love, family love, brotherly love, and unconditional love. One of my mentors Professor James Haire once said to me that whenever we read the word agape in the Greek we should read it as “Jesus dying on the cross”.

Love is God’s action towards us and whilst we may seek to express agape in our community our stumbling attempts usually look more like eros, storge, or philia. But that’s O.K. because in these feeble expressions we encounter love and seek to love one another because God loved us.

To return to my religion lesson with Year 10 this week one of the students asked me the difference between Christian and Catholic. Having spent nearly 12 years on the national dialogues between the Roman Catholic and Uniting Church in Australia I could have said many things. But I would begin by reflecting on the idea that Catholics are Christians and denominations area a sign of our unfaithfulness to the teaching to love one another. 

But I would then also reflect on the reality that I learnt many things and one of them from Bishop Michael Putney, who I counted as a friend and mentor. He has a wonderful expression which connects to N.T. Wright’s concept that we plant seeds and cuttings. Bishop Putney used to say that when “When Peace breaks out we see the kingdom of God.” I would go to say that when pace breaks out, we encounter hope, and we act to proclaim God’s love. 

There are days that I am still that 15 year old boy in the balcony grappling with the failures and betrayal of the church of people I thought loved me. There are days that I reflect on my mother’s words “You should know better”.  But somehow the Holy Spirit has held me in, and I have seen signs of new life – seedlings springing forth and cuttings being planted. I have found hope in things not seen and when I am struggling, I often think of the last conversation that I had with my father who reminded me “it’s not you who finds God it is God who finds you.” Maybe this is love, that God finds us.

Or, as John wrote, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

Take a moment to contemplate what love looks like now for you and what God is saying to you today.

An Easter Poem

 

In an interview on the occasion of being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Maya Angelo expressed her faith and doubt in this way:

 

“I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I think, ‘Already? You already got it?’ I’m working at it, which means that I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being.”

https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/2/6/maya-angelou-on-being-christian?rq=Angelou

Angelo's words inspired me to write this poem. 

I’m working at it.

 

My faith is

Incomplete

I’m not there,

yet

It may sound,

Cliché

I’m on a journey

With faith

and with doubt

 

I heard the news, that

The tomb was

Empty

 

Mary stayed close

She encountered

Her name

Being spoken

With love and hope

 

Renewing her life

A mysterious gift

Of his implausible

presence

 

But,

 

I’m not there yet

I’m working at it

I’m a work in progress

 

Trying to believe, and

Trying to live

As if it matters

That Jesus rose

 

I am trying,

as I live,

to live with

 

Kindness

Being fair

Giving generously

 

To live

 

Respectfully,

Courteous to

Each and every

human being that I encounter

                               

And as I do so

 

Longing also

to hear

my name spoken

 

To have my life

Renewed by the

Mysterious gift

Of his implausible

presence

For,

He is risen.

 

But,

 

I’m not there yet

I’m working at it

I’m trying to live

With courage

And with hope.