Colossians 3: Get a 'hidden' life!

I am not sure whether you have ever been told to ‘get a life’.  I know that on more than one occasion I have.

But what is our life defined by.  What is this life that we are supposed to be getting?  And more to the point can we actually get it?

From a Christian perspective one might say a life, and our new life in Christ, is not something we get, rather it is something we are given.

This means that as Christians our life is not defined by many of the things the world tries to tell us that life is.  Life is not defined, for example, by the food we eat.   It is not defined by the family we come from, or who are parents are or how many children we have.  It is not defined by the house we live in, or by the clothes we wear.  It is not defined by the music we like, or the things that we own.  It is not defined by the team we support, the political allegiance we might have, nor even dare I say the denomination we belong to.  Our life is not defined by the job we have or the achievements of our life.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians we are told that the source and meaning of our very existence, our life, is hidden with Christ in God.  The truth of your life and my life is not about all of the trappings of this world but is the truth of a right relationship with God in and through Jesus Christ.  We are tied to his life, Jesus life, somewhat mysteriously through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So it is that Paul says, ‘seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’

This is a mind blowing statement.  We have died and we are now connected to Jesus, the incarnate Word, God made flesh, who came among us who lived, who died, who was raised from the dead is now in heaven!

Think on that staggering claim, Jesus’ human risen body, with the scars that Thomas was invited to touch, is seated at the right hand of God.  The created human form of Jesus Christ has entered into the inner sanctuary of God’s existence and we, through the Holy Spirit, are united with him.  Our human created lives are hidden with Christ in God.  This is indeed a mysterious and liberating union of the divine and the created!

Yet despite this union so often Christians throw around the question ‘what would Jesus do?’ It is as if he had finished his work back 2000 years ago and was no longer doing for us.  However, remembering his continuing risen life with God we remember that Christ continues to do and be for us what could not do and be for ourselves.  It is in him and through him that we are drawn back into the fullness of relationship with God and what it means to be truly human.

God’s will for humanity seen in the life of Christ is that God loves and cares for humanity at great cost to Godself.  God has been faithful to a faithless people.  We heard something of the drama of this reality for God in the reading from Hosea.

The prophet uses an analogy of God being like a parent caring for a young child.  Israel was a child and I called out to my son because I loved him.  There is great tenderness in God’s care for this child, ‘I took them in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them; I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love; I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.’

But what response has God’s love wrought, ‘The more I called to them, the more they went away from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.’  ‘My people are bent on turning away from me.’  We hear in the prophet the pain and anguish of God rejected and righteously angered at this rejection but God chooses to go on loving, ‘How can I give you up Ephraim?...  My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm.’

The warmth of God’s compassion, the faithfulness of God finds its pinnacle and its outworking in the sending of the Son into our world.  He alone can stand before God perfect in his obedience and he offers us to God through his perfection.  We do not all have to do what Jesus did.  Rather, we are incorporated and hidden in his life seated at God’s right hand.  We are already resurrected in him.

So Paul rightly challenges the Colossians with where their focus lies.  Seek the things above!  Now we know that heaven is not necessarily up there (point up).  Yet metaphorically we do know that God is over and above us.  So when in the communion we are called to ‘lift our hearts to the Lord’ ‘We lift them to the Lord’ who is in the presence of the Father offering praise and worship to God.  We do this in and through the power of the Holy Spirit

And so as we lift our hearts we are called to give thanks and praise to God for as we say ‘it is right to give our thanks and praise’.  It is not good, or fun, or emotionally satisfying, it is right to give our thanks and praise to God!  Coming to worship God is the right thing to do, not an optional extra in the smorgasbord of spiritual activities in which we can engage.  It is the right thing to do.

Focussing above, lifting our hearts to where Jesus is we are transformed by our heavenly encounter as Jesus sends the Spirit upon us and our lives.  We are a resurrection people, we have died with Christ and we have already been raised with him.  We are called to live in the presence of the coming kingdom now.

What does this mean?  It means, according to Paul, putting to death whatever is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).  Get rid of ‘anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouths’.  We hear in these words echoes of Jesus’ teaching in the gospel reading.  Do not focus on this world and the desires of this world, of wealth and money and power but focus on the treasures in heaven.

The difficulty is that we participate in the world and its ways.  We are so imbued with our culture that we are blind to the way that culture entices us and seduces us away from God.  We measure our lives by achievements, by jobs, by families, by possession, by political affiliations almost without a thought.  And as churches we lose faith and worry about numbers and money in the plate and relevance and forget that ultimately all things are in God’s hands and our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

As Christians we are clothed with a new self, we are given to be a new creation! We have been renewed in the image of our creator.  And in this we know that we travel towards a time when God’s kingdom will come in all its fullness, yet as we wait we know that Christ is all and is in all and we can share in that future now. Paul goes on to challenge the Colossians with some positive attributes:

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

As a congregation we are called to live out what we have become in Christ and what are to become in the fullness of time, resurrection people renewed in the image of God.  We are to love one another, to serve one another, to be slaves to one another.  We pray to for each other and with each other, we worship together, we serve this world for which Christ died and as people we focus on things that are above, not the things of earth.  Whilst we do not do this perfectly we celebrate what God has done for us at so great a cost so that we might be found renewed and reunited with God as God’s people.

This week ask yourself if you have been raised with Christ are you setting your mind on the things which are above or are your eyes focussed so firmly on the things of this earth.  Pray that the Holy Spirit might give you the strength to look above where your life is hidden with Christ in God.  And remember if anyone tells you to get a life, say that you’ve got one and it is a gift from God hidden with Christ in heaven.

And unto God be all the glory, honour and power now and forevermore. Amen.

Remembering, emptying, living blessings.

Deuteronomy 26:1-15.  Remembering our heritage.

You may be wondering why I chose this passage this morning to help us understand the place of the church in the world.  How does Moses words spoken thousands of years ago “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor” help us?

The answer is that Moses words are all about remembering, remembering whose we are and who we have been.

These words, which essentially set up a liturgical practice, were spoken by Moses towards the end of the time of wandering in the desert.  The people of God were about to enter the Promised Land and this liturgy was to help them remember their history.

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.”

Creative commons Flickr: Denbola

The people had been nomads with no land of their own, they had settled as residents in Egypt, aliens, and there had become slaves.  Lead by Moses they had fled Egypt and had become refugees.  In entering the Promised Land they would displace other people and it could be argued would become the oppressors.

So the people had been nomads, resident aliens, slaves, refugees & even oppressors.

It is in this context and with anticipation of prosperity in the Promised Land that God’s people were to offer the first fruits of their harvest to God.

Now these offerings were not to sit idly and rot.  No they served a very specific purpose.  “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” 

The prosperity of the people was to be celebrated by giving to God for the sake of others – to the Levites, the aliens, the poor and the widow.

I often match this reading with the reading from Leviticus 23 which instructs God’s people to leave the edge of their harvest for the poor and the strangers and the widow and the orphan.  God’s people were not to think of their prosperity in selfish ways but in ways which looked outwards.

In remembering that they had been aliens and refugees, marginalised and lost, they would remember people of other cultures, religions, ethnicity and those who were marginalised such as the orphan and the widow and they would be generous to them.

I personally find these words inspiring and confronting in the context of which you and I live.  As God’s people who are prosperous now we are to remember that our history includes a time of displacement, of dislocation, of being resident aliens and even slaves or convicts.  And in remembering these things we are called to welcome the stranger and alien in our midst and we are to be people of generosity, for our giving to God flows into the support of both those who are strangers in our midst and those who are marginalised.

For those of us who are Australian citizens the reality of 46 million refugees in the world is disturbing.  The policies of our government and those proposed by the opposition raise serious question for us to our collective amnesia that our ancestor was a wandering Aramean.

When we remember rightly we are confronted by who we have been even if it was three thousand years ago and we are called to consider carefully how we use our first fruits and whether we are leaving the edge of our harvest for those who are in need around us.

Philippians 2:1-11. Emptying ourselves for others.

At the heart of the Christian faith is the notion that Jesus came to reconcile us in our relationship to God and renew us in our relationships with one another.  It is a reconciliation and renewal which is given to us as gift because the reality we do not always remember that our ancestor was a wandering Aramean.

Yet through the power of the Holy Spirit we are also taught that as followers of Christ we are drawn into Jesus own life.  Just as he brought light into the world so we too are to bring light.

The passage from Philippians like the one from Deuteronomy causes us through remembering to look beyond ourselves:

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

The words which follow this are sometimes referred to us the kenosis hymn, kenosis being the word for emptying in the Greek.

Jesus pours out his life for others.  He empties of being God to become human and even empties his life out for our sake.  In my mind I can find no reason for God to do this other than love.  If we believe God is completely free there is no necessity in what God does in Jesus and it is done unconditionally.

If we as people are drawn into the self giving life, this life which is poured out then as God’s people we are to pour our lives out for the sake of others.

I do not suggest we do so to save ourselves, this work has already been done, we do so because we have known God’s love.

We empty ourselves out for the world for which Christ died – not a world which necessarily loves God, or is nice, or will reciprocate that love appropriately but because we are taught by the one who loves us beyond our rejection of God and beyond our human fallibility.

I read an article last week that suggested if I was protesting against what Kevin Rudd had done with the PNG solution to the refugees I should do so knowing it would cost me and that I should be prepared to help resettle and help refugees and to be prepared to bear any additional tax burden.

I have read similar articles in relation to addressing the issues in our aged facilities, in our education system, in terms of climate change and the list goes on.

If you and I are drawn into God’s life, into Jesus self-emptying the question hangs heavy on my heart how will I empty myself out for others.  I cannot help but think of the rich young man who went to Jesus and when Jesus instructed him to empty himself by selling everything he had and giving it to the poor he went away disheartened.

Matthew 5:1-11. Living Blessings.

These well known teachings called as the beatitudes appear to have three aspects.

The first is that there is recognition that Jesus recognises as blessed people who had traditionally been thought as suffering or as outsiders by the Jewish community:

The poor in spirit

Those who mourn

The meek

God blesses people we don’t necessarily think of as blessed.

Secondly, Jesus recognises as blessed people who act out God’s loving way in the world:

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

The merciful

The pure in heart

The peacemakers

God blesses those who act to bring fullness in life to others.

And lastly, that those who live out God’s ways often attract disdain:

Those who are persecuted for righteousness sake

Those who are reviled on Jesus account

God blesses those who make sacrifices in God’s name.

As we consider how we are to be the church in the world when we listen to the beatitudes it seems to me we are called to acknowledge and live as blessings, even maybe to be living blessings as we discover that those whom we don’t always think of as blessed may actually be blessed and as we live out being merciful, peacemakers, pure in heart and seekers of righteousness.

This morning as we collect our offerings I have provided each of you with a card with 3 questions for you to contemplate as people who have received God’s grace and being drawn into Jesus life and ministry:

1.      What is the most challenging thing have I remembered about being part of God’s people?

2.     Who I am I being asked to empty myself out for?

3.     Where will I be a living blessing in the week ahead?

Give us this day our daily bread

By Peter Lockhart

Week by week, around the world, congregations follow Jesus instruction to pray the Lord’s Prayer. I believe that there are times that we say and do things in our faith and over the years of doing and saying them one of two things can happen. Firstly, through repetition and deeper understanding the words become our own and so we as we say them they deepen our faith and commitment. Or, alternately, familiarity breeds contempt. Repetition of the words creates an immunity or boredom sometimes exacerbated by ignorance and often resulting in rejection.


In considering the words of the Lord’s Prayer which are not simply Jesus instruction but are also filled with rich meaning I want this morning to simply focus on one line of the prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Jill Matsuyama Creative Commons

In reflecting on these words I want to bring three things to your attention.

Firstly, the literal sense of the words as they have been translated into English.

Secondly, a sense of meaning that is grounded in Jesus statements in John’s gospel “I am the bread of life” and “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

And thirdly, a context of meaning found in the Eucharistic practices of the church.

Give us this day our daily bread are words which when understood simply at face value appeal to God for the basis sustenance of life: food. My earliest recollections of praying this line of the prayer are to do exactly with that. I understood that we prayed to God to provide for us our basic human needs.

This in itself is an act of faith. In praying give us this day our daily bread we look to God as the one who ultimately can provide and does provide all things. This line of the prayer reminds us that all things come from God and regardless of our human efforts and systems of society not one thing exists or is available for us but by God’s will. As words standing alone in their basic meaning they are words which should humble as we share in praying words that Jesus prayed and as we realise that the world and all that is in it belongs to God. We look to God for what we need.

I have little doubt that this basic meaning is meant to be a part of our understanding of Jesus words but when we look deeper than the English translation and consider the wider context of not only the prayer but the whole of Jesus life there is more to be said.

When tempted by the devil to turn stones to bread Jesus declares “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt 4:4, see also Luke 4:4) Jesus understanding was that whilst bread may be important for our physical sustenance we have greater need than this.

On this point it is interesting to note that in the Egyptian Coptic Church’s translation of this passage and of the Lord’s Prayer the phrase is translated something more like, “Give us this day the bread of eternal life.”

What might we think of as the bread of eternal life? The answer is given to us by Jesus in John’s gospel, chapter 6.

“The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

And when asked, what is this bread? Jesus answer is.

“I am the bread of life”

“I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

Combine these statements with the words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ might also be said ‘Give us this day and every day Jesus’. The statement in the prayer operates on more than one level. In appealing for our daily bread we appeal to God to give us Jesus, every day.

This raises the importance of saying these words immensely and as we say them week by week in church with this understanding they ground us in the reality of our faith. Not simply that God provides for our physical need in bread but that God has given the bread of heaven Jesus Christ and this is what we need more than all else. In the gathering of the worshipping community we receive this bread as we hear the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed as we eat the bread together in communion. We receive the bread in word and sacrament.

This leads me into my final point. This prayer has Eucharistic significance. The Lord’s Prayer is placed within the setting of the communion service I believe because it points us to God’s coming kingdom and also to the bread with which we are fed upon the way: Jesus Christ himself.

One of the great sadness that I have for the Protestant Church in general is the loss of understanding concerning Jesus presence feeding us in the celebration of the Eucharist. We have been guilty of reducing our understanding of what we are doing as mere remembrance of what Jesus did and often this is further exacerbated by the individualism of our faith whereby we see taking the elements as something merely occurring between me and God.

Yet in celebrating together, being fed with the bread of eternity, we are not disparate people coming as lonely individuals before our God. By no means! We are made to be what we are companions in Christ. The word companion comes from two words ‘with’ ‘bread’ and literally companions are those who break bread together. As we are fed at this table we are bound not by respect or love of one another nor even are we stifled by our incapacity to respect and love one another. At this table we feed on the bread of eternal life and in breaking this bread with us the Lord makes us one. Companions in Christ!

As a final aside on this particular point the prayer is “Give us this day our daily bread.” For me there is an argument here for more regular celebrations of the Eucharist. The great reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin live in a time when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated 4 times per year it was they from whom we draw our heritage who argued first for weekly communion. A few hundred years later, John Wesley in his revival is said to have celebrated communion up to 3 and 4 times a week. The appeal for daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer I believe points us to celebrating the Lord’s Supper each time we worship together and in fact the assumption in the Leaders Book Uniting in Worship is that communion is celebrated each week. There is something to dwell on fir us all here.

Give us this day our daily bread.
Provide our physical needs for us day by day.
Give us your Son day by day.
Feed us with the bread and wine offered at your table day by day.

As we think again on these words this day as we feed on him by Word and sacrament I pray that we all this day may come to a deeper understanding that we are truly companions in Christ and this will inform your congregation here in the days and the weeks and the years ahead until Christ comes again in all his glory. Amen.

A Shared Life

By Marilyn Healy

The sermon this morning continues as part of the ‘Living the Faith’ series that Peter has been preaching on for the last few weeks and indeed will continue next week as well. The topic for today is ‘a shared life – how do we live in a Christian community?’ Being a well-trained academic I always start with definitions. So, a shared life – what do we mean by that? Well that was an interesting exercise because if you Google it you find all sorts of government agencies who define shared living. But that was not what I was looking for – I was looking for a shared life not shared living. So giving it some thought I came up with some facts. We share worship and the celebration of the communion. We share fellowship hour and lunches and dinners. We also share in other ways at bible meetings, coffee nights etc – but are we really sharing or just participating? I’ll leave you to think about that point.


The next aspect to be defined was ‘a Christian community.’ Well there could be many ways that we can think about that. A Christian community is a group of people who pool their resources, financial or otherwise, to further the work of God; or what is a simple and more obvious definition is that a Christian community is a group of people who come together to worship God. That point seems to be pretty obvious but the key here is to worship God.

Then if we go to the Gospel reading for today from John 13 vs 34 “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ So worshipping God is to love one another as Jesus has loved us.

The new commandment that Jesus gives is not one of the 10 commandments that each of us knows so well but In John in chapter 13 - God give us this new commandment – to love one another. It’s a new commandment also because in the Old Testament in Leviticus 19:14 God had commanded love. What makes Jesus’ commandment NEW is the new standard he set in the example ‘as I have loved you’ and Jesus was saying this in the context of someone who was about to lay down his life for others.

That brings me to another question – what do we mean by love. Now we bandy around the word ‘love’ as if we all know what we are talking about. So what is love? Again, being a well-trained academic I started looking at the meaning or definition of love. In the secular world, the online dictionary, dictionary.com defines love as different things –

It says, “Love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. Love is sexual passion or desire”.

On YouTube, children were asked; what is love? Some of the children replied in the ‘boy meets girl’ sort of love – sparks, feeling goofy, and when someone takes you to Hawaii and you fall in love. Each of those statements by the children and the way that loves Is defined in the online dictionary are legitimate but is that the same love that Jesus was referring to in this passage? NO, although one child was closer to the concept of God’s love then they said that ‘love came from the beginning of the word when the world started.’

But coming back to the personal relationship type of love - each of those statements about sexual love are reflected throughout the bible in some way – for example, desire or sexual love such as the physical, sensual love between a husband and wife. The Greek term for this is EROS. Eros as a word does not appear in the Bible, but Eros, or erotic love, is portrayed in the Old Testament book, The Song of Solomon and the Apostle Paul noted that it is wise for people to marry to fulfill their godly desire for this type of love.

Part of the definition from dictionary.com referred to a feeling of deep affection. You could equate this phrase with the Greek word Philia. Philia - means close friendship or brotherly love in Greek: it’s a positive feeling of liking. Philia and other forms of this Greek noun are found throughout the New Testament. Christians are frequently exhorted to love their fellow Christians but in John, as I said previously, Jesus has set the standard ‘as I have loved you.’

In the NT reading of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the bible tells us that love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing but rejoices in truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This is God’s description of love. God is love - this is what he is like. And although these are the common verses quoted at a wedding, Peter will quickly remind us that that these verses were not written with a wedding in mind.

Corinthians tells us that love is patient. Do we show patience if things are not done the way we would like them to be done?  Sometiems we do if the service starts a little late because we ahve to wait for the bus to arrive.  Soemtiems we do when communion is not done in the form that we prefer?  And how about kindness?  Is it showing kindness when think we are too busy to help another in need?  We all have busy lives but often our own agendas take place over our need for kindness or love to others. And I could go through each of the nouns that St Paul used - envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, irritable or resentful etc. What Paul was demonstrating in his letter is that love has greater virtue than any other gifts; in this case it is because love is eternal where gifts are temporary

In John, Jesus gave us the new commandment to love one another just I have loved you. God made us in love. God‘s love and what Jesus was talking about is the highest form of love. Love which is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love. It refers to the covenant love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God. So God’s love is holy. God is love. Had we continued reading the gospel of John we would have heard the passage in verse 16 – God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Jesus ‘love was divine. God’s love is divine. Emil Brunner is his book ‘The Christian Doctrine of God” comments that ‘love is the self-giving God: love is the free and generous grace of the One who is the Holy Lord.

So ‘God is LOVE’. Implicit in this statement is that love is not just an attribute or quality as I have been outlining earlier. It does not mean that God is loving – rather is means that it is the very nature of God. It is the highest form of love. As I said God is love. God loves all. Not just the Christian people or the good people but all people, the sinners as well and that includes us. This kind of divine love we do not know as humans, but we are commanded by God to love our neighbour. So love is a commandment to us, not purely an example of divine love. The unity or oneness between Christ and Christians must be the same as the unity, the oneness between Jesus and God.

Thus far I have not directly addressed the last part of verse John 12: verse 35 – ‘by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’

My simple interpretation of that passage is that loving God is not only coming to church and praising the Lord as in our definition of a Christian community which I gave earlier. Rather, it is living out the love of God that we have been talking about, by example; by how we treat each other as a Christian community. In Mathew 25:31-45 there is the story of the sheep and the goats and the disciples ask Jesus when had they not come to the aid of the hungry or thirsty stranger or to the aid of the naked stranger in prison. Jesus said “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me. As Palmer comments ‘this is a wonderfully affirmative story about our potential to be channels of god’s love. We in this congregation are not strangers, but if we neglect any one of us we are neglecting Jesus.

So as Jesus commanded - love one another just as I have loved you. You will be my disciples if you love one another.

So is this how can we live in love in a Christian congregation? Such a concept may be hard to understand for us. We all affirm that we love God but we need to live out that love of God in our daily lives? It’s easiest and it’s natural to organise our lives around our own selfish desires: to be intolerant or judgemental of others. Love is forgiving people for their transgressions.

Jesus was an example of a life that lived and breathed love. He gave himself and calls us to do the same. True love is more than a feeling. It is a consistent attitude to give ourselves for others.

That God is love is the embodiment of the whole bible. When the spirit of Christ comes into our lives, he fills us with love, so that we in turn can express that love to those around us. “Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reminds us that love is generous and outgoing. It is not hateful or divisive or has need for self-promotion. Love does not try to win power and form factions for self—importance. It does not disregard the people in need.... It does not pride itself in being superior. “

As one little girl on YouTube said” ‘sometimes you can’t choose who you love.’ And a verse I found said ‘every experience God gives us, every person He puts into our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.’

We can’t see the future implied here in this verse, the future of eternal life. But in our world, the future is now. So To Live in a Shared Life in a Christian Community means that we follow the covenant of Jesus - love one another just as I have loved you. You will be my disciples if you love one another.

The Sun goes down at noon!

by Peter Lockhart
A sermon on Amos 8

This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.

When I first read the readings for this week I automatically shied away from Amos with his harsh words of

prophecy as they made little sense to me and I have not really given time for myself to enter into the Old Testament deeply enough.

What the heck does the image of this basket of summer fruit signify? It was a complete mystery.

The other readings set down from Luke with the story of Mary and Martha and the wonderful images of Jesus in Colossians as the eternal Word of God in who the whole world finds its meaning were rich troves from which to preach.

Then by chance I decided to return and read Amos, I read the whole book of the prophet and then a commentary about Amos and suddenly a new light dawned.

I learnt that in the Hebrew language the word for summer fruit is a word play with the word end. They sound the same, to use the technical term they are homonyms.

So the imagery of the basket of fruit is somewhat meaningless because the Hebrew writer is using a poetic device to emphasise the word end.

Confronted by this new learning I was drawn to consider the rest of the passage more closely and found myself feeling somewhat judged by the words towards the end of the passage in verse 11:

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

As a preacher I am deeply troubled with my struggle to hear God. I long for a direct revelation and clear and concise words to speak of the hope that I have found in Jesus Christ, whom I count as my Lord and Saviour.

Yet whilst I have had my moments of insight and comfort much of the time the deep silence of God’s vastness and mystery confronts me.

So as the prophet suggests I wander:

They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

I delve deep into books on theology and church history and spirituality. I go to my supervisor and spiritual director and seek out mentors – I run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord for in the din of this secular age of the West there are so many distractions and idolatries.

Yet in the midst of all of this struggle with the silence on reflection it was the moment in which I first walked up the three steps of the pulpit in St Andrews Church of Bundaberg to preach that I discovered what it meant to be home – for I had arrived to be at home with God, where our true home lies. Up until this point in my life I had always felt a sense of homelessness as if I had nowhere to belong. But at this moment Jesus embrace enfolded my life in purpose.

It is this experience alongside the knowledge that that first sermon would have been consider a basic heresy of the early church that has kept me going in ministry. Despite my error I continue to believe and be reassured that God was in that moment not simply for me but for the congregation as well and that somehow in the power of the Holy Spirit God’s eternal Word Jesus Christ was present as he was proclaimed.

Faith is a mix of doubt and unknowing as much as it is about assurance and certainty.

And so week by week we gather to listen again for the most important message and hope in this culture of despair in which we live.

A culture in which for most of us our wealth blinds us to the abject need of the world and of the immense problems associated with our economic structures, with our use of energy and resources and our irreparable impact on the environment.

Amos declared to his people the threat of the darkness to come, a time of great angst:

On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

I heard a story which involved fear of such descending darkness recently.

In conversation with a minister from the Solomon Islands I was describing the Australian context in which less than 10% of Australians attend church regularly and whilst many still claim belief in God it is an ambiguous belief at best. Atheism is on the rise and they are seeking converts!

The response of the minister from the Solomon Islands was a plea not to tell his people about the unbelief of Australians. White people bought us the gospel, don’t tell us that they have stopped believing! It struck me then and there the irony that the enlightenment has brought such darkness of unbelief in the West. This minister feared the impact of such a darkness descending on his people – the sun going down at noon!

What confidence can we offer to him and his people? What faith can they offer us?

Surely the message of the crucified risen son of God present now in our midst, which can stand against the very gates of hell, can prevail against the onslaught of the bright fluorescent and neon lights of our progressive enlightened era.

The sun goes down at noon... this event has occurred. I read from Luke 23:

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

But this as we know is not the last word on the matter of descending darkness. For the Jesus who died on the cross, the wisdom teacher before whom Mary sat listening, the man who walked the roads of Galilee is at one and the same time God who walks amongst us, the light sent into the world. As Paul wrote to the Colossians:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

In the face of darkness new life springs forth, hope transcending our attempts in the West to domesticate God or even worse to pronounce his eulogy and lay him to rest as if God never was.

Jesus has come into the world and like Mary we can sit at his feet and learn about who God is from God himself, in God’s own words. The riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ is in you, the hope of glory sustains us because we know that God loves us in this transitory existence as we await the fullness of Jesus return to make all things new.

As Paul wrote to the Romans for now we see through a glass darkly but then we shall see face to face yet what wondrous images of hope do we glimpse though that glass and witness to by God’s actions in and through our lives – justice flowing like a river, the blind seeing, prisoners set free, the poor blessed, people reconciled with God and with one another... peace!

So like Mary let us sit in silence now before our Master teacher and listen for his word to each of us on this day.