Category Archives: Aligning ourselves with God

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Seeing from the Cross

Click here to listen to this 18-minute message.

Today is Good Friday – a poorly named day in my view. It should be Dark Friday. The Passion Week is transformed to good on Easter Sunday, but not before. There is nothing good about Friday. But my opinion is unlikely to change centuries of tradition!

Today, at my Anglican community church in Irene, South Africa, we participate in a three-hour service, from 12pm to 3pm – the hours that Jesus hung on the cross. It is a kind of vigil, like the women who kept watch as Jesus hung there. It is one of the best attended services at our church, and most people stay the full time. Today, we used the Seven Last Words of Christ to structure our service. The priest, deacon and lay ministers shared the preaching. I preached on the passage from John 19:25-27, where Jesus says “Woman, behold! Your son. … Behold! Your mother.” (my translation).

The central thing that stands out for me is that Jesus SEES his mother and his friend (thought to be John, the disciple). And seeing them and their need, he invites them to SEE each other (the Greek for ‘behold’, or ‘here’ in other translations, means ‘Look!’ or ‘See!’). So, in this sermon I suggest four layers of meaning:

  1. The passage foregrounds the humanity, dignity and worth of women, as central to the story. We need to stand against patriarchy, violence against women, the silencing and marginalisation of women, the exploitation of girl children.
  2. The passage speaks about Jesus’ commitment to family and to intimate relationships. We need to invest in these relationships, in the domestic, because this is of interest to God.
  3. The passage suggests the great potential of the church to recreate the world. We should examine our own churches, asking if we are really doing what God wants us to, are we being who God wants us to be?
  4. The passage advances God’s concern and love for the whole of humanity. God sees us, knows us, recognises us, loves us, champions us, cries for us. And we should also.

Wishing you a blessed and joyful Easter 2016.
Adrian

P.S. I struggled to find a picture that depicts what Jesus would have seen from the cross. The arts are almost entirely focused on Jesus on the cross – rightly so. But I found this one by James Tissot, a French painter, painted in c. 1890. For those receiving this by email, you won’t see the featured image for each of my sermons. Follow the link to my blog to see them.

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When the World goes Mad

Click here to listen to this 16-minute message.

Sometimes, the world seems to be going mad. On the morning of the day I preached this sermon, two terrorist attacks in Brussels left 31 or so people dead. IS claimed responsibility. Attacks like these, like the multiple attacks in Paris in 2015, make us afraid and want to withdraw from the world. Fear sets in. Muslims and Arabs seem dangerous. The world seems a threatening place.

In South Africa, we face increasingly racialised discourse, from all sides of the political and racial spectrum. Some people are calling for doing away with reconciliation and an increasing emphasis on racial identity and distinctiveness. These conversations elicit fear and uncertainty, prompting us to withdraw from each other into our safe comfort zones.

Jesus also experienced a world going mad. As religious leaders becoming increasingly threatened by him, his actions and his popularity, they set up traps to discredit and marginalise him. They plot to kill him. Indeed, they succeed in murdering him.

But through all this madness, Jesus does not withdraw, he is not cowed by fear, he does not avoid. Instead, Jesus continues to engage, to move towards, to step across boundaries. From where does he get this confidence in the face of considerable odds? He gets it from a confidence that his authority comes from heaven, from God. He knows that he is living out God’s will for him – to reconcile all things together within God’s family.

And so he remains steadfast. As we also need to remain steadfast. To not be cowed or afraid or marginalised. But to continue to live out the faith that we have inherited. A faith that hopes and trusts in a powerful God. A faith that engages and connects. A faith that steps across boundaries and embraces. A faith that loves.

Mark 11:27-33

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Reconciliation

Click here to listen to this 20-minute message

South Africa, at the moment, has become a pot reaching boiling point, as racial tensions and anger mount. For some, reconciliation has become a dirty word, and for others there is fear that the reconciliation that was built up in the last 90s is under serious threat. Globally, we see similar breakdowns in relationships and rolling often violent fracturing of relationships – among the states of the former USSR, in the Middle East, in parts of Africa. And at a domestic level, we all too often experience broken and pain-filled relationships in our communities, with our neighbours and friends, and even in our families. How is it that we humans are so good at breaking fellowship?

This 20 minute message tackles these difficult issues and questions. Starting at the beginning of Genesis, I trace this origins of broken relationships: between people, with God, with the world and with ourselves. We call this ‘sin’.

Working through the First Testament, I show the many ways in which God, who created relationships and is in the business of reconciliation, worked to restore these fractures, and to build harmony and wholeness in humanity.

And then I show how Christ’s incarnation, life, death and resurrection are the pinnacle of God’s work to redeem us, to restore us, to reconcile us.

And finally, drawing on Paul’s teachings in 2 Corinthians 5, I show how we are called to be agents of reconciliation, to join with God in bringing about reconciliation. I suggest four main ways that we can and should do this: accepting God’s offer of reconciliation with us, praying for those who have fallen out of fellowship, transforming our hearts of racism and sexism (and all the other -isms), and taking a step towards an estranged loved-one. In so doing, we build the Kingdom of God in our midst.

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Living on Purpose

Click here to listen to this 23-minute message.

Luke 13:31-33 gives us a penetrating insight into the Jesus’ understanding of living with purpose. It a master class of a life lived with intensity, rooted in both the present and the future, where personal will is aligned with Divine Will. In just two verses, Jesus shares with us a philosophy and a method for living on purpose.

This message breaks open this brief passage, showing how Jesus makes sense of his own purpose and God’s purpose for his life; how he thinks about today and tomorrow and the next day; how he understands that there can be a sequences of ultimate purposes for one’s life; for living fully in the present while also looking towards one’s future.

It is my hope that we can walk in Jesus’ footsteps, in whatever occupies our time and attention (be it formal employment, unpaid voluntary service, raising a family, or doing ministry part-time), but living on purpose, not by accident.

Blessings and joy
Adrian

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Gender in the Kingdom of God

Click here to listen to this 26-minute sermon

God’s vision for the Kingdom is one in which all of humanity is related to each other in relationships of equality, dignity, respect and peace, under the sole headship of Jesus Christ (Eph 1:9-10). But in South Africa, as in many parts of the world, women do not enjoy this Kingdom. Women and girl children are all too frequently the victims of abuse, violence, exploitation, domination and subordination. I have been harshly confronted with this over the past 33 years, since I was a young teenager. We live in one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women.

But the church has typically been silent and even complicit in this oppression of women. This is often because people of faith interpret the Bible through the lens of their culture, and most cultures are patriarchal – thus we come to the Bible with preconceived notions of gender and ‘find’ support for our ideas in the Bible. And of course the Bible itself was written in patriarchal societies by people who endorsed patriarchal beliefs. But while the Bible is surely filled with patriarchal passages, there are also many passages that have been invalidly used in support of patriarchy – texts have been distorted to serve the interests of men in power. What is required, in fact, is that we allow the Scriptures to interpret our culture, so that our culture is redeemed and transformed into the image of the Kingdom of God.

In this sermon, I take two passages that have, for thousands of years, been used to support the subordination (and often abuse) of women by men, and read them closely and carefully to show that they really do not provide support for male superiority or female subordination, but rather for equal partnership between the genders.

Genesis chapters 1 to 3 lay the foundation for our understanding of God, creation, humanity and the divine-human relationship. But far from endorsing gender power differentials, these chapters (specifically 1:28, 2:22-23 and 3:16) endorse both domestic and commercial partnership and equality between women and men, and depict patriarchy (a husband’s rule over his wife) as sin.

Paul, of the New Testament, was almost certainly a chauvinist, and grapples with the implications of there being “neither male nor female … in Christ” (Gal 3:28). Ephesians 5, with it’s infamous verse about wives submitting to their husbands, must be located against 5:21, which calls for mutual submission within the household of God. Using three pairs of power-differentiated relationships (wife-husband, child-parent and slave-master) Paul first introduces the cultural norm of submission/subordination for the less powerful person, though with a bit of a spiritual spin; and then a counter-cultural requirement for submission by those in power. Read as a whole, this passage calls for mutual submission or consideration in all human relationships, particularly when there are cultural power differences.

Through all of this, I am calling for people of faith to set aside their cultural assumptions as they read the Bible; to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, in choosing to unlearn racist, sexist and colonialist ways of thinking and relating; and to not stand by silently when women are humiliated or oppressed.

Blog image from http://www.borgenmagazine.com/10-examples-gender-inequality-world/

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The Parable of the Talents (Remixed)

Click here to listen to the MP3 of this 21-minute message.

How often have we heard a sermon on Parable of the Talents? The idea that God has bestowed talents or gifts on each of us? And that we have to use our talents or lose them? This is not a bad idea, but it is not what Jesus is saying in this parable.

In this message, I deconstruct the notion that this parable is about talents and place it where it belongs – in the metaphor of business and commerce. I put forward the idea that Jesus is inviting us to become shareholders in God’s business venture on earth – the business or mission to bring salvation to the whole cosmos. What a great opportunity, if a little daunting, to be a business partner with the Son of God!

 

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Tithing

Click here to listen to the podcast of this 25 minute sermon.

Money is a touchy subject for many Christians and particularly in some Christian denominations. In our church, our giving is extremely private – our financial contributions are known only to ourselves and one other person (the dedicated giving recorder, who keeps a record of monies received). So discussing money is sensitive.

In this sermon I map out four principles of money matters in the church, on the premise that our thinking about money is in need of transformation. Paul says that we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we can test and approve God’s will. Finance is an area in need of transformative, sanctified thinking.

  • The first two principles speak to how we think about our own money:
    • Everything we have belongs to God
    • God has entrusted everything to our care and for our use.
  • The second two principles speak to how we think about giving:
    • Our giving should be in proportion to what we have
    • Our giving should emanate from our confidence in God’s trustworthiness

I advocate a particular position on the ten percent tithe that not everyone will agree with. As it is, tithing is hotly debated in the church. I think that my position is aligned with Jesus’ approach to Old Testament Law. Listen and see what you think.

When all is said and done, we have a unique opportunity to participate with God in God’s great work in the world. One of the ways of participating is through our financial giving. What a privilege to partner with God in the work of bringing into being God’s Kingdom on earth!

Love and peace
Adrian

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In Praise of the Small

In Praise of the Small

This is inspired by the witness of Elizabeth and Mary, and consistent ways in which God works through those who are small and ‘less than’, through our little gifts and small abilities. God does not require greatness; rather God looks for our willingness. Luke 1. 23 December 2012.

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The Blind Leading the Blind

The Blind Leading the Blind

This is from the story in Mark 10:46-52 of Jesus healing the blind beggar Bartimeaus, who is a model of discipleship for us. Mark 10:46-52. 28 October 2012.

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Matters of the Heart

Matters of the Heart

Today is the fifth and last Sunday in our Stewardship Month, and is called Dedicated Giving Sunday. Today everyone brings up the dedication of tithes and ministry for coming year. The sermon is called ‘Matters of the Heart’, because I emphasise that it is the heart of love that underlies the behaviour of giving.  Ps 51:13-17, Ez 11:16-20, 1 Cor 13:1-8, Lk 6:43-45. 30 September 2012.