The Words of my Mouth

Peter Lockhart

The final words of Psalm 19, if nothing else, should cause us to fall into silence more often than we do. How does one speak in a way acceptable to God?

For about 5 years I have regularly used the words of the Psalm as the opening prayer for my sermon.

A plea to God that the words I say, the words I have crafted, the word I have considered and prayed over may be acceptable to the One who made me.

Yet despite praying these words each week I usually describe my preaching, a little cheekily, as a different heresy each week.

The words of my sermons are limited by my human frailty yet become unlimited in possibilities because of what the Holy Spirit can and might do as I seek to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Whilst this is the way I use the words of this Psalm most often these words are not simply meant to be applied to a sermon delivered by a minister. These words are a plea to God that in all our speaking we might find ourselves using words and language acceptable to God.

Imagine for a moment that during the times of anger or frustration before blurting out those grating and hurtful words you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Imagine for a moment that during those times filled with pride in a personal achievement before shouting out and boasting of your success you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Imagine for a moment that during those times of darkness and depression before moaning about life or degrading yourself you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Words – spoken quietly or loudly.

Words – full of colour, rich with meaning.

Words – trite or serious.

Words – building up.

And words which destroy.

Words are such powerful things.

Of course the reality is that the words which we speak day by day moment by moment are most likely to be not acceptable to God.

Whether the words are spoken in ignorance or the words are spoken wilfully it is not hard for us to know so many of them, in fact probably most of them, do not give honour to the one who gave us our voices.

So where is our hope?

Paul in writing to the Philippians reminds them of the relationship between the law and faith

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”

What is being suggested here by Paul is that even if we were able to form each word and thought perfectly these would be meaningless in terms of our relationship with God because of Jesus Christ.

Yes, Jesus who walked among us and gave voice to God’s own thoughts in human words.

Jesus: who in his life, death and resurrection made us right with God!

Jesus: who promised the sending of God’s Holy Spirit, to make us one with God and each other.
Whilst our words may not be acceptable to God Jesus words were. To quote Peter in John 6, in the midst of our imperfect and incoherent babblings, we go to Jesus because he has “the words of eternal life.”

It is in listening to Jesus that we can listen to one whose words are acceptable to God and we can learn how to speak again. To borrow a phrase from Stanley Hauerwas we can learn to speak Christian: to speak of the good news knowing that whilst the words we might say will be inadequate expressions of God’s grace to trust that the Spirit will help us in our weakness as we both articulate and listen to the words of hope.

We trust that the Spirit will transform our fumbling attempts to speak Christians and to proclaim God’s love for us in Jesus day by day into a meaningful and purposeful witness. We pray that through the Spirit our words will transform others and so become acceptable to God.

To learn to speak Christian takes time and energy, the same time and energy we would put in to learning another language and another culture.

To learn the language of prayer as we read the Psalms. To discover how to tell stories as we read the parables. To discipline ourselves to prayer and meditation aware that before a word is formed on our lips God knows it.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians Paul compares himself to an athlete pursuing a goal – the prize being the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ.

When I think of the finely tuned machines of modern day athletes with their training programs and rigorous discipline, with their vitamin supplements and diet regimes I think we begin to get a picture that what Paul was talking about was throwing ourselves head long into learning the way of grace.

Disciplining ourselves to prayer and worship, committing ourselves to reading the scriptures and serving others, not to earn our salvation but to pursue with thanksgiving in our hearts the one who has saved us and maybe as we do these things to learn to speak Christian, just as Paul did, who said:

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”

Let us meditate on what God is saying to us on this day. Amen.

Coveting & Consumerism

Peter Lockhart

Not so long ago I watched a movie called “Keeping up wit the Joneses”. The premise is based on the idea of planting a fake family in a community and then providing them with all the latest gadgets and fashions and foods. It is marketing genius and plays right into one of our weaknesses - coveting.

Despite the commandment not to covet, coveting has become integral to our culture and our lives.

Our desire to own more things and the constant bombardment of advertising seduce us into lifestyles in which our lives are becoming more defined by what we posses than ever before. Consumerism drives us and it drives our economy with its insatiable need for growth.

The consequences of our over consumption are difficult for us to fathom but the scriptures suggest that whilst we know God to be a merciful God our sins do have consequences.

On the “Make Wealth History” Website http://makewealthhistory.org/ this week it marked the 27th of September as the day on which humanity had used 100% of the resources that it we produce within the year. In other words by the time we reach December 31 we will have used at least 130% of what was produced in 2011.

The website admits the date is a little arbitrary but it is making a salient point about the rate at which we as human beings are using the world’s resources. It is interesting to note that this week I also heard a report that Australians hospitals are holding less than one month’s supply of many important medicines – including penicillin, of which there is already an shortage.

The “Make Wealth History” Website also has a link to help calculate your personal footprint. It calculates how many planet earths would be required to sustain everyone on the planet with a similar lifestyle to your own. For me that is 3.4 planet earths.

Of course these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt but when I consider that commandment not to covet maybe all I can say is that Paul was correct when he suggested in Romans 5 that the law was given so that sin might be revealed. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ and the promise of new life and hope in him!

May we too like Paul seek to “keep up with Jesus” and not “the Joneses”, pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14)

Grateful for Work & Reward

Peter Lockhart

(The following sermon is designed to be interactive with members of the congregation participating in a reenactment of Jesus.)

Each week as a congregation we prayer in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.

I often wonder what it is we are praying for when we pray these words and whether or not we can actually say them with the sincerity with which we ought.

I imagine you have idyllic images of what heaven is floating around in your head – what image comes as strongest to you.

Angels with harps on fluffy clouds. Re-union with loved ones who have gone before. A place where there is no suffering or sickness.

Jesus tells many stories about what the kingdom of heaven is like and I want to retell one today with your help.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven “is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.”

This is one of those situations where a little congregation involvement might help us understand.

If we could have a group of prospective workers to come and wait here – image you are waiting in the village square for a day’s work.

And here now comes a landowner, a vine grower, looking for workers.

Now if you were the vine grower selecting workers at the break of day who are you going to choose?

Discuss

They agree to the pay for the day’s work.

I wonder how those who are left over feel. What do you think happens if these people don’t get work?

A few hours later the landowner returns, it’s about 9 in the morning now. He chooses yet more workers to go and labour in the field.

Who will you choose this time? Why?

How do those who are left feel now?

Hours pass again and at midday the landowner returns.

Again more are chosen.

Then once more at three o’clock the landowner comes.

I wonder how it would feel it face the prospect of a day without any income, a day without money for the household.

How do you who are left feel?

Then just before the end of the day the landowner returns one more time.

It is 5 o’clock with barely any hours left to work.

What sort of people do you think might have been left over? Who would it be that were refused work by the local landholders? What type of people might be left?

Yet the landowner makes a decision to give them work too.

Now before I push on into the story how are we feeling about this landowner at the moment.

Let’s ask those who have been given work.

Discuss

The thing that strikes me is that even at the end of the day the landowner is willing to take workers on, workers whom when ask tell the landowner no one else had given them work.

There is a generosity and persistence in the landowner who comes again and again to seek workers.

So what is the kingdom of heaven like?

It is a place in which God persists in generosity seeking people to be included and to get involved in the work of the kingdom.

So far, so good?

But now it is time to line up and receive your pay for the day’s work.

Can we have you in order from those who began last to those who started early in the morning.

Now the agreed days wage was this amount. (money?)

How do those who have worked just a little while feel about this?

What might those who have worked longer expect?

So let’s pay everybody else.

Now how do those feel who have worked the whole day and been given the same.

(Upset, as if they have been done an injustice.)

Jesus tells us that the landowner said

‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

So we pray for the coming of the kingdom of heaven a place where all share in the generosity of God regardless of the effort they have put in.

Whilst we might sit fairly comfortably with the idea that the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner who keep returning to seek workers and give them a go, I suspect most of us would struggle with the idea of the equality of reward at the end.

How many of us consider those words “Well done good and faithful servant.” As an indicator of long service and commitment to God – this is service which deserves recognition.

But the parable tells us it is not about how much we have done but about God’s choosing.

How many of us think that “A fair days work for a fair days pay is how the world should be.” But do we really live that. Consider for a moment where so much of what we buy in Australia comes from. Consider who makes and how poorly they are paid. We all know about the issues of child labour, even slavery, in some industries. We know about how much of our manufacturing industry has been taken offshore.

The kingdom of heaven is like this – all are rewarded, given the dignity of work, rewarded with life and hope, rewarded with a future, rewarded for a great effort or a little labour at the 11th hour. Who are we to be envious?

We pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Heaven, God’s rule, is a rule that promises generosity in life that for us living in a market driven world is almost unfathomable – yet this is the kingdom we pray for. A kingdom in which the priority is provision for the lives of all people with no distinction as to how much we think people have offered.

Embracing the Wilderness Experience

Sandra Jebb

The reading we have this week from Exodus tells part of the story of the children of Israel complaining as they are moved out of their comfort zone into the wilderness. What strikes you as they yearn for the “good old days in Egypt” is that Egypt had been a harsh place for them living under an oppressive regime and yet they called out to go back to Egypt rather than to go forward into the wilderness with God. Their comfort zone, Egypt, was not a good place to be and yet it was preferable to the risk and insecurity of the wilderness because it was familiar and known.

We at Kairos are facing challenging times as we seek to discern and move forward to where God is calling us to be. Perhaps you might feel we are in some sort of wilderness and you might well yearn to be back in the “good old days” when people came to church, it was just the thing to do, and there were lots of people to help in ministry. Yet our Christian faith has never been about security but always about risk, never about certainty but always about mystery. We too can complain and yearn for the past or risk moving forward into a future that is not clear and might feel uncomfortable.

To take up God’s challenge to us we need to embrace the wilderness experience and allow God to renew and remake us. Some of that renewing will mean letting go of some things and learning to trust God more. The children of Israel had been in Egypt for over 400 years and God had to move them into the wilderness in order to prepare and train them to be God’s people. God provided for them but that provision came with testing. The wilderness experience eventually led to the Promised Land.

We don’t know exactly what the future shape of Kairos will be like but we need to trust God and not be afraid to move forward. Even if we feel we are in the wilderness and things are not at all clear and becoming uncomfortable. We are called to seek God in this Kairos time we find ourselves living in knowing that God will provide but will also test us along the way. The children of Israel eventually did get to the Promised Land. The community of Kairos Uniting Church will also get there but hopefully it won’t take quite as long!!

An Ordination Sermon

Peter Lockhart
For Suzy Sitton!

What sort of person does the risen Christ entrust his church to?

As the curtain closes on John’s gospel, Jesus says to Peter, “feed my lambs” “tend my sheep” “feed my sheep”. Jesus entrusts the future of his church to Peter.

Of course the whole notion of the Petrine office and its link to the ordering church and so also ordination is much stronger in some of our sister churches.

Yet, on this night when we come to ordain Suzy reflecting on Jesus call to Peter may give some insight as to ordination and to the sheep that he is called to. To do this I want to do 2 things:

First: To consider who Peter was and what his cv looked like, and in so doing ascertain some of the qualities and challenges for those called into ordination?

And, second: to consider who the sheep that Peter was entrusted with were, so that we might know who it is we are called to care for as well.

To discover a bit about Peter’s background I began reading the gospel of John backwards to see what kind of person Jesus was willing to send out in his name.

I limited myself to discovering who Peter is in John’s gospel because this is where the story comes from. I have not included every reference to Peter in John’s gospel but certainly I am including the majority.

Jesus conversation with Peter is taking place on a beach. Why? At the beginning of John 21 just after the risen Jesus has appeared to the disciples for a second time in the locked room, Peter somewhat mysteriously decides to go fishing.

Peter’s decision to go fishing has always been perplexing. Maybe in the moment of confusion and misdirection after the resurrection of Jesus Peter is lured back to his old life. We know from John Chapter 1 Peter is a fisherman and maybe going fishing simply seems easier than dealing with the death and resurrection of his master.

In terms of ordination maybe this a reminder that each of us who is ordained has another background, another vocation, from which we have been called and which at times we may also feel lured back towards. This could be at times in which we find ourselves confused or confronted by our encounter with the risen and crucified Jesus. What are we meant to do with that? Going fishing may be easier!

Now I am going to skip back over Peter’s mini-Olympics, running to the tomb, and travel back prior to Jesus crucifixion.

In John 18 Peter’s triple denial of Jesus is set against the backdrop of Jesus being questioned by the High Priest Caiaphas.

Three times Peter is asked whether he was one of Jesus followers and three times Peter denied the association. Of course there is a clear connection to the threefold questioning of Jesus about Peter’s love in the story that we heard tonight. But it also grates against Peter’s assertion of John 13:37 when he said “I will lay down my life for you.”

As followers of Jesus, as his disciples, all of us will find that there are moments that we forget whose we are and we too will deny Jesus. Ordination is not reliant on an unwavering faith but is done in midst of the honest struggle that any of us have to hold true to Jesus. It is more than likely that like Peter it will take the cock crowing for us to realise with shame we have denied our Lord.

Now John 18 is not the best of Chapter’s for our prospective candidate, for in John 18:10 we also hear the story of Jesus’ arrest and how Peter drew forth his sword and struck the high priest slave, Malchus, ear off.

Now Jesus automatically intervenes, despite his commitment and the best intentions Peter has got it wrong.

The sword reminds me that there are times that as people who follow Jesus we may be tempted to support violence against other people in the name of Jesus or even commit violence against people. Not necessarily physical violence but the violence of judgement or exclusion or manipulation or hatred or simply apathy and inaction because we believe in doing so we are defending our Lord, but the question does Jesus need to be defended?

Retreating backwards through time and the confrontation in the garden we find Jesus in John 13 with a towel tied around his waist and Peter refusing to have his feet washed.

The towel could just as well be bound around Peter’s head. His blindness to Jesus teaching and misunderstanding seems to reach dizzying heights.

The setting apart of people at ordination is not because those ordained listen and understand Jesus any better than Peter did at this moment. To jump out of John and to quote Paul for a moment “we see through a dark glass”. The best any of can says is that we have glimpsed the Christ and gleaned some understanding of his way, as narrow and misguided as we might be in that.

Given all of these issues, thankfully, one of the aspects of Peter’s call is that he isn’t in it alone.

We know that Peter does not follow Jesus alone; he was fishing with 6 other disciples when the risen Lord came to them. As misguided as they may have been at times the disciples did support one another and encouraged one another as they followed Jesus. We know too that it was not simple this rag tag 12 that followed Jesus and got involved but many others as well.

It is far too tempting to see ordained ministry as a private and personal crusade as if we are lone rangers riding off into the sunset. This is not the case. And the presence of the minister’s from the Presbytery tonight and people from many congregations reminds us of this. We are all in this together.

Skipping back, right to the beginning of John now, in John 1 we hear about the call of Peter and of the other disciples.

And I want us to pause here for a moment because this really is what it is all about. Jesus calls Peter to be his disciple and in the encounter on the beach in John 21 Jesus determines to send Peter as his shepherd. In John 15 Jesus reminds all of the disciples, “You did not choose me, I chose you”

As much as anything this is what ordination is about not the quality of the person being called but of the faithfulness of he that calls us. We might go fishing, or deny Jesus, or commit violence in his name, we might misunderstand his teaching or simply think that we can do it alone yet it is in the grace of God which calls to us and it is his faithfulness that we celebrate tonight.

It might be even said that the fallibility of the ordained ministry of the church is a parable of the kingdom of God, because as ordained people our failure to be all that we can be is a reminder that God’s grace extends even to the ordained.

So this is the person who Jesus called, Peter, whom despite his failings Jesus believes in and trusts to feed his sheep.

Who are these sheep that peter is feed? I do not want us to simply make the assumption that the sheep are congregation members but looking again to the scriptures to think about whom it is that Jesus, himself fed.

I am going to do this in short, but again want to invite some people to help me build this picture.

In John 3 it is Nicodemus – a man who represents deep and long thinking about who God is, he is a Pharisee, a person of faith who assumed he had it all worked out, but was in fact far from the truth.

In John 4 we encounter the Samaritan woman at the well. Someone from a different religion, a person ostracised by her own community, a woman with questionable morals: a woman who thirsts for living water.

And again in John 4 the royal official whose son had died. He was a wealthy man with power and influence whom Jesus reached out to in love.

In John 5 a paralysed man and in John 9, a man blind since birth. People coping with disability found at the fringe of society, in need of healing and hope, in need of community.

To step briefly out of John’s gospel “tax collectors and sinners” and “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.

Beyond his own followers these are the sheep that Jesus fed. Yes we are responsible to the flock of our congregation but our congregations are ministers of the gospel as well and together we are called to all of these whom Jesus loved.

“Feed my sheep”. Indeed they are Jesus’ sheep, not ours, but we who called to follow Jesus, ordained and lay alike, are called to follow Jesus by serving those whom he loved. Our very own lives are not hypocritical failures but signs of the grace of a God who in Jesus would call even us to share in his ministry, not because we are worthy of the call but because Jesus reaches out in love and faithfulness declaring God’s peace us and constantly inviting us also to follow him.