Fr Duncan's Sermon on the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Matthew 5 13-20

How to be a good parish priest?  This is the question which lies at the heart of my ministry and no doubt the ministry of hundreds of faithful Christians who are called to this role.

It isn’t an easy life.  I get a bit fed up at times with the jokes from lay people about only working on Sundays and having 6 days off.  I am sure there are lazy priests, but I don’t think I know any personally.   And then there is the reality of the frustration and guilt I feel about people.  Wardens, altar servers, musicians, those who serve morning tea, the flower guild, the welcomers.  There are so many people in a church community that there is always someone I am worried about, and someone I forget about.  Someone I didn’t say hello to and someone who has said or done something I don’t agree with.

 When I read St Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians I think he experienced all these things.  He was so busily trying to bring people to Christ that his frustration and despair sometimes can be seen in his writings.  Look at the passage we hear this morning.  It is from his 1st letter to the Corinthians.

The church in Corinth was very important to St Paul.  Tradition holds that he founded the church there and he had a major epiphany here.  It was in Corinth that Paul decided to shift his teaching to be more focused to the gentiles.  He was fed up of the constant refusal by the Jewish leaders to accept him in the synagogues. 

And so he went on his missionary journeys. By the time he got to Ephesus word reached him that his church in Corinth was growing. But people were arguing and frustrated with each other.  They were looking for solutions to theological issues which were complex and needed leadership.  They was no doubt gossiping and in-fighting and Paul was fed up.  In Ephesus, whilst building the church we hear of in Ephesians, Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says,

2 When I came to you, brothers and sisters,[a] I did not come proclaiming the mystery[b] of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3 And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4 My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom,[c] but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Just listen the frustration in this passage.  Read it carefully and you can hear Paul saying something like this.

Listen folks, when I came to you, I worked really hard to try and make this about Jesus.  Not about me, Paul, but about Jesus.  I didn’t use big words or try to make out I am better than you.  I looked for Jesus Christ in every one of you and I found him.  I found him in your brokenness and your beauty.

And you know what, it isn’t easy doing this stuff.  It scares me so much that I get the shakes and panic attacks.  But before I speak, I always pray to God that he might use me as a vessel.  I pray that his words might come through, not mine.  And when that happens, and I believe it does, you are building your faith, your church on God’s will not mine.

Now compare this to our modern church.  How often do we see and hear, at every level of the church, that people are disagreeing and arguing?  Throughout the generations tensions between Christians have featured time and time again resulting in schism after schism. 

This parish has seen its fair share of these kind of behaviours, and one has to ask the question, no matter how grave the situation is, is arguing, is defying, is fostering disagreement and disdain God’s will for us?  Does God want us to be so single minded that we do so to the exclusion of the rest of the church?

St Paul decided to know nothing among us except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  He came trembling in weakness and fear.

This week the news from England is not great.  But it is not the strikes and poverty I am referring too.  The Church of England has returned after 6 years of debate and discovery with a landmark ruling which will permit a legalised form of words to bless those who are in same-sex relationship.  I was heavily involved in the process, and lead training in my own diocese which was attended by people from a wide range of backgrounds.  The church was wrestling with complicated issues of gender identity and sexuality.  At the heart of this was the idea that marriage can only be for a man and a woman for life.

We worked hard to explore the issues from every theological angle and do so in a respectful and honest way.  For the first time, those who had the loudest voices were expected to listen to those who had the quietest,  and all of us learnt to grow together.

I felt the process was productive and I was honoured to lead sessions.  The eventual outcome was predicted by many: no change to ecclesiastical law, marriage between a man and a woman remains, but a change to the subtext of the church and its teaching.  The Church of England will now formally bless those in a same sex relationship.  Of course, as a priest I have always been able to bless whomsoever I choose, but the fact that the Church of England is now formally acknowledging that same sex relationships can be blessed and creating a liturgy for it is challenging for many. 

Regardless of what you believe about this issue, the sad reality is that after 6 years of hard and committed work much of the rhetoric has degenerated into a bun fight, embarrassingly reported in the media and online.

So what would St Paul say to the Church of England this week?  Something like this perhaps.

            My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

When we began this process six years ago I spoke about the need to love each other and find a way to respect our differences.  I spoke carefully and used words that I had considered and prayed about.  I chose them so as not to cause hurt or offence.  I did not try to persuade you about anything other than my love for you in Christ Jesus.

So please stop hurting each other and understand that we are declaring God’s wisdom as it lives among his people.   Love one another even when it is hard to do so and focus on that which God has revealed to us, the Body of Christ.

Here in Australia things are different.  I choose to minister in a catholic parish in a liberal diocese.  It is an uneasy truce that has developed over the years, but it seems to have held well recently.

We are about to undergo some change in our Diocesan Leadership.  Archbishop Aspinall has gone, and the process to find a new Archbishop is beginning.  It could mean choppy waters for us in the future.  Or it could mean there are opportunities we have not had in a generation to build new bridges and tell a different story about All Saints’.  I wonder what St Paul would say to us?  I wonder what he we say to me? And to you?

Fr Duncan's Sermon 30th Sunday (c)

One of the great things about being in an Anglican is the fact that we have the use of a lectionary. This is the cycle of readings that cover every single day of the year and tell us what to read. It is so helpful because it usually themes readings and helps us make links between the Old and New Testaments. If you don’t have access to one and would like to give it a try then I would thoroughly recommend the one we use here; do ask for more details.

Sometimes it is hard to find the theme of the readings, and sometimes it is easy. Today is one of the easier days I am pleased to say. But before we speak about the meaning of the texts, I wonder how many of you noticed that our first reading was the source of great debate and controversy. Well, not the specific reading to be exact, but the book from which it is taken.

Ecclesiasticus is part of what we Anglicans call the Apocrypha. We don’t often hear readings from it at Mass, and I thought it might be interesting to explore why. You may remember a couple of weeks ago I spoke of the origins of our texts. There were hundreds of different texts being used in different churches throughout the Christian world.

Origen of Alexandria, commented on this in his writings. He was a great scholar and theologian who was born in Alexandria in Egypt, but travelled extensively through the area we now know as the Holy Land. He died in Tyre, which is in Lebanon, north of modern-day Palestine. Origen is an amazing character to learn about and there is much I could say here, but I don’t have time and must not stray from my point. If you don’t know who he is, please have a look at him and his life online, or come and read some of those books downstairs in the library next to my office! Points will be awarded to those of you who can tell me what Origen’s greatest contribution to the Christian faith is. It is a legacy that ultimately caused great debate and change.

Anyway, Origen noticed that some of the writings he encountered as he journeyed were of, as he put it, were of questionable value. He used the word ἀποκρύφοις apocrophois to describe these texts. One of the problems of course is understanding what he meant by this word. In Origen’s time, the word almost certainly meant “secret” or “hidden” and it was used to describe works that were considered so profoundly divine that they should be kept from those who were not holy enough to see them.

But Origen seems to use the word differently, he describes a body of texts which he believes are questionable in terms of authenticity and meaning. One of the most interesting legacies of Origen’s views on the Bible are the books that very nearly didn’t make it in. Songs of Songs, or the Wisdom of Solomon, which I think is the most stunningly beautiful text in the Bible, was actually nearly excluded because Origen considered it may be against the true faith. It is basically about love and sex, so it’s good to know that this caused as many arguments 2000 years ago as it does know!

Because of the work of scholars like Origen, and subsequently Tertullian and Clement who developed Origen’s ideas, the word apocrophois, or as we say, Apocrypha came to be re-defined as meaning of doubtful origin, or obscure in meaning. This mattered, because these were the times when there was great turmoil in the church as it began to develop doctrines based on scriptures. So, you can understand why agreement on which scriptures were holy and true was much debated.

Over time the word canon came into usage. It describes the body of the core texts which form the Bible. After Origen, Tertullian, Clement and others had wrestled with the issues; the Bishops of the early church weighed in and met to agree once and for all on what should be included. This was the Council of Rome, and it took place in 382. It agreed a list of books which formed the catholic, or universal Bible.

However, various schisms have occurred along the way and the one that affects us today is the Reformation. In the years leading up to the Reformation there was again much turmoil in the church and disagreement about which books should be considered as core texts. The bishops had another big meeting, this time The Council of Trent, in 1546 and re-affirmed the scriptures they considered to be canonical. And this was when things began to drift. The re-formers wanted change and rejected the texts they did not consider to be authentic. And that is when Protestant Bibles began to be published.

Nowadays, the Anglican church, famous for its desire to find a via media, a middle way, to bridge the gap if you like, chooses to identify these texts as being worthy of study and inspired by God. They do not form part of our core texts, but they occasionally appear in our lectionary. And that is what where we find our first lesson today which is from Ecclesiasticus. Just to confuse us, the Roman Church call this book Sirach, because the author of the text is accredited as Ben Sira, hence Sirach.

The book is very similar in its content and layout to the Book of Proverbs. It belongs to a body of work we refer to as the Wisdom texts. Wisdom is a very interesting concept in the Old Testament. Wisdom was often personified, and usually in the female form. This is fascinating as we so often think of women in Old Testament times as housewives and mothers, yet some of our greatest texts point to Wisdom as feminine, divinely inspired, and teaching on the issues of the day.

In our text from Ecclesiasticus we are told:

12 Give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford. For the Lord is the one who repays, and he will repay you sevenfold.

Compare this to the message we hear in our Gospel. Last week in our reading, you may remember that Jesus used the image of the persistent widow to describe faith.

He goes straight on to teach the same group of people about their responsibility. 2 men, 1 a tax collector the other a Pharisee go to pray. The Pharisee is a pious man, he follows the law, takes care to maintain his ritual cleanliness and fasts twice a week. He gives thanks that he has possessions and money and gives a 10th of his income. But the tax collector is too ashamed to enter the temple. He beats his chest and tries to repent for his sinful behaviour.

Jesus tells his followers that it is the tax collector who is justified because

all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Compare these messages from Sirach and Luke. Do they say the same thing? The proverb tells us that when we give to God as he has given to us, God will repay us sevenfold. Surely that is what the Pharisee is doing? He tithes his income, he follows the law? Yet the sinful tax collector seems to come out better.

You see, none of us can live a truly pious life. We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try not to be. But the often overly simplistic message of the Old Testament times got the Jews into a lot of bother. God isn’t binary; it isn’t as simple as giving your money and doing good deeds or facing divine punishment. It is God’s will for us that we should follow him unconditionally and this begins with our hearts. When we open them to God, we realise that nothing is too difficult for him. The deep shame and pain so many of us feel, as well as the feelings of being better than the poor, the needy, the uneducated, the vanity of mind and body, the abuse of ourselves and others, these are the things that we need to face up to. The tax collector opened his heart to God humbly and honestly. He was so broken, he couldn’t even raise up his eyes to heaven.

We have the opportunity to meet God in a number of ways. But being open and honest about our failings and seeking God’s forgiveness is hard. If you are feeling happy and comfortable in your Christian faith, then you need to do a bit of work and examine your hearts. Try to live in a cycle of grace. Take time everyday to consider your actions and the impact you have on others. Be a little more humble, forgive as you are forgiven, and meet God in Word and Sacrament.