MT 25:31-46 

 Matthew in the margins…Reign of Christ / Christ the King…Revised 2017

No matter how we expect the Cosmic Son of Humanity to come in His glory as King we have to hold our expectation in tension with the Earthed Son of Humanity glorified by being named & crowned King on the cross. (JN makes this point strongly.)

But there’s more! There’s yet another tension. This self-same Incarnate, yet Cosmic, King has never left us (as He promised!) Physically, maybe, yes; but in the Person & Power of His Spirit, the Spirit of God, He’s always present tense among us. As He is, too, in the Person of those who say, Eucharist by Eucharist, “We are the Body of Christ” & get on with the job of being that Body in the world at large. Apocalyptic aspects of Christ’s reign may appeal. But lose sight of the crucified, glorified, Christ earthed in & among us by His Spirit & His people, & we lose the plot of God's agenda for Planet Earth - for humanity plus. 

Praying, as we do, “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” means embracing the Crucified King, serving the Raised Everyday King, & expecting the Apocalyptic King. It’s a package deal, or no deal at all! Many international folk tales, not necessarily from a Christian background pick up on the thrust of Jesus’ allegory Jesus; the Unknown who comes among the simplest of folk unrecognised & is either provided for or rejected.

The great attractiveness of the Kingship of Christ for me is the inclusiveness of His Rule. By God’s grace there is room in Christ’s Kingdom for a lot of people who might be thought unlikely candidates for finding a place at Christ’s right hand. Me for starters! The way we treat others especially those at the bottom of life’s pile, not least the persecuted, the poor, refugees & asylum seekers, & how we serve them, is a litmus test of the kind of Christ the King we believe in & serve. If we’re choosing the wrong kinds of leaders, & serving those same wrong leaders in wrong ways, we’re simply fulfilling Jesus’ teaching by proving ourselves to be more goats than sheep! Choose, at all costs, Christ as King above any other would-be contender. 

Though He speaks of judgment, Jesus makes clear we choose our own present & future state & fate. Christ reigns through us being little Jesuses to others or He doesn’t rule at all! More, when we feed the hungry Jesuses, give drink to the thirsty ones, welcome those who present as strangers, clothe the naked ones, minister to those who are sick, visit the ones imprisoned then we’re speaking Jesus’ language by doing it; for all who are marginalised. God's Rule always includes looking out for & looking after God's 'little ones'. Again, not to do that is to place ourselves at Jesus’ left hand rather than His right! Goat stuff! 

Is ‘everlasting punishment' anything other than choosing to live without the King of the Cosmos by choosing to live without the Crucified, Raised, Earthed One here & now? Who needs hell-fire & damnation (if that's your line) when such a fate looms? Speaking of looming, Christ the King’s Passion looms in the very next verses!

MT 25: 14-30 

Matthew in the Margins …24th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

The sums involved in today’s story are huge. Beyond the dreams of Jesus’ hearers & most of us, too. Like all good teachers, & Jesus is the best, He wants us to work out for ourselves what this story’s all about - just like the rest of His tales. A useful way to think of & explore parables is to discern them as being about the Kingdom, the Rule, of God. About how God’s Authority is respected & His Rule applied ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Let’s not go down the path of a ‘stewardship’ sermon; not in a monetary sense, anyhow! What we might call ‘Kingdom Stewardship’ takes us back to the fundamental nature of our human relationship with God. Every day of our lives needs to be a Stewardship Day in which we audit how well we’re using YHWH’s provision of life & love for us & make any modifications that show up as necessary.

It’s easy to lose our way in this process. We once had a neighbour selling up & moving lamenting he’d once buried a stash of money in his backyard, but now can’t find it! (He never did!) Is that what we sometimes do with the life God’s entrusted to us? Trust lies at the heart of this story; but for that kind of trust to work, it has to be a two-way love affair. What does God have to show for His trust in us? (Why not ask, also, What do we have to show for our trust in God?) Let’s not bury our hearts in our backyard sand & not be able to find them when we really need to dig them up!

The greatest gift God gives us is God-self; made inescapably & confrontingly human in the person of Jesus. Who spends His life, & indeed his death, loving & serving. As he still does by His Spirit. Does our spiritual audit reveal us walking in Jesus’ steps that far?

Many of us are good enough at managing physical assets of one kind or another. But how good are we at managing our spiritual assets? Whatever earthly interest we may have earned during our lifetime, the only interest that will count on ‘That Day’ is the spiritual interest on the love God’s invested in us & we in others. 

MT 25:1-13

Matthew in the Margins…23rd S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017    

Jesus is a great storyteller. The greatest. Life is a collection of stories. God’s & ours. After reading / hearing any story, in this case His story of the wise & unwise brides-maids, the question is, ‘But what happens next’? For the participants in the story, the answer lies within the story; all’s well that ends well for some, & poorly is as poorly does for others. The acid test of a Jesus story is always, ‘Where & how do we take it on from where He leaves off?’ 

Not long before, Jesus has been warning of the coming destruction of the Jerusalem temple & the inauguration of God's Rule consequent upon this. Eschatology, though, if not interpreted well enough can all too easily lead to faith becoming ‘pie in the sky in the sweet bye & bye’! Jesus Himself, though has already given us the necessary perspective when He tells us to pray for God’s Rule, God’s Authority with a Capital A, to be implemented ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The bridegroom is always present. Always inviting us to celebrate with Him now, not one day. We don’t have to wait for Him or anyone else to arrive in ‘the middle of the night’.

Jesus is careful to point out that all the bridesmaids trim their wicks. The foolish ones, however,  fail to see trimming a bit here & bit there can’t make up for the fact they’re out of oil. There’s a lesson for our spiritual life today here!

Think of our lives today being our ‘lamps’. Are we living them full of God’s Spirit, ’oil’, ready for anyone & everyone we need to be there for? Looking out for, looking after? There’s no such thing as being ‘half-full’ of Holy Spirit! When God fills, God fills! There are no half measures with God, nor does God settle for any half-measures on our part. If I’m right in exploring ‘oil’ as representing Holy Spirit, Jesus reminds us being half-full of Holy Spirit is a no-go! No use to anyone. Not just five unwise bridesmaids. If the five wise bridesmaids were to share their oil with the unwise ones, we’d end up with the whole ten bridesmaids with half-full lamps running out of oil. Their lamps would all be useless, leaving the bridal party, the community in total darkness. What kind of darknesses are our community living through today as a result of us or anyone else running low on, or running out of, the ‘good oil’, the God oil? 

Holy Spirit isn’t a commodity we can top up at our local church, or ‘revival centre’. The ‘good oil’, HolySpirit, is God’s own life He’s always sharing with those of us who know we need Him; with those ready & prepared to receive Him totally into the lamps of our lives to keep them filled.

Celebrating God’s being married to us all the hours of every day & every night is God’s wedding present to us; God’s own way of keeping our lamps alight & burning brightly for Him & each other.

MT 23: 1-12 & 37-39

Matthew in the Margins… 22nd S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

For ‘scholars & Pharisees’, try ‘bishops’, ’priests', 'pastors', 'elders', ‘wardens’, ‘church leaders of all shapes & sizes’! Jesus’ use of the term ‘Moses chair’, his ‘kathedra’, again raises the question of Authority implicit in our recent passage about the coin & ‘rendering to Caesar….’! There’s a clashing of far more than cultures here. The ‘A’ question probes much more deeply than that. 

Jesus tells crowds & His disciples in general, "Look at these Pharisees & Scholars! Do what they teach, but don't do what they do!” In saying this He’s underlining the importance of the Authority God delegated to Moses & that those He’s complaining about are heirs to. As we are, too, now. Back then they’re undermining that authority by blurring the lines between God’s Authority & their own. They’re wind-bags. Full of hot air.  As Jesus sees it, some of them are more interested in dressing for show than being clothed in righteousness. Once, long ago, an archbishop asks me to ‘vet’ a ‘nomadic preacher’ wanting authority to preach in the diocese. Sadly, I have to report back that the fellow is a puffed-up windbag! Full of self-importance! Are we, any of us, more interested in being celebrities than servants; rather than getting our hands dirty at ground zero in life’s margins alongside Jesus? 

We all live in cultures using some system of honorifics to mark contributions to civic, political, military, or other areas of life. I take Jesus to mean that any title we’re given needs to be one that indicates a commitment, a) to God’s Authority &, b) to His own Servanthood. Is it time to cut ourselves back to size before God does that for us, one way or another? Perhaps that hymn, 'Brother, sister, let me serve you, Let me be as Christ to you’ could become the ‘Christian Internationale’ for those who inhabit the margins of life & those who serve them out there? Sing it loud & clear in what we do for God & each other? 

Jesus has many harsh things to say about the Hebrew church as He experiences it. Maybe it's just as well we're skipping most of the rest of this passage today in our Christian sanctuaries! Weigh up the stones we’re about to cast before they bounce back on us! 

A mural / icon of saints dancing above & circling the interior of the church of S.Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco¹ incorporates a lot of people as unlikely as Jesus himself! Can we see our-selves there? Dancing round our own churches? Inside them & outside? Blessed, indeed, is everyone who, like Jesus, comes in the Name of the Lord!

¹ You can see this mural / icon through your search engine.

MT 22:34-46 

Matthew in the Margins… 21st S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

Pharisees rush in where Sadducees have not feared to tread. Those who live by Law rather than Love seem to slip into that habit rather easily!

In an old movie I once saw, a benefactor donates a rug to make the recreation room in an old-style ‘mental asylum’ a touch less bare & forbidding. But carers insist the patients not walk on that rug! Only walk round & round the outside of the rug so it doesn’t get dirty! So, day after day, patients dutifully circle round & round that rug until it becomes set in law that that rug must be circled. The purpose of the gift of the rug becomes lost on both attendants & patients! Today’s passage raises the whole question of the purpose of the Law of God.

Legal experts, or would-be experts, roll out that same rug in front of Jesus, daring Him to walk on it! He calls their bluff of course! I was about to write ‘in His inimitable fashion’, but the whole point of this passage is that Jesus IS imitable! That’s the whole point of the Gospel! JS enemies are trying to entice Him into mis-interpreting these Laws central to both Hebrew faith & the Gospel by turning them into that carpet on the floor of the ‘asylum’. Embedded in DEUT & LEV, these God-given laws have always been laws at their best because they need no explanation. It's not the interpreting that's the problem; it's the doing! As G.K. Chesterton once put it, ‘Christianity hasn’t been tried & found wanting; it’s been found difficult & not tried!’

Today, many are ignorant of the heritage that is our Hebrew Bible. (Sunday by Sunday listening to passages often lacking context isn’t much help.) If we remain ignorant, though, how are we to recognise the Two Commandments that all the Law & the Prophets hang on? Being a disciple of Jesus involves going on from where the Hebrews left off, carrying their old & precious treasures along with our new ones.

First round of this bout goes to Jesus. He doesn’t dismiss the Pharisees' question despite its clear intent of bringing him undone. Questions need to be explored. Jesus asks His question-ers to apply the ‘Great Commandments’ to Himself & themselves, rather than just theorise about them, or Him! Finding the right questions to ask in life comes before finding the right answers to them!

Jesus appears to change the subject, but if He is the Anointed, David's son, then the answer about the greatest commandment is physically standing in front of them! Unrecognized. The One who loves God & neighbour perfectly. “I’ve done it!” He’ll go on to shout from the cross! Loving God & others that far doesn't come out of Bible quotations or sermons!

The verses about whose son is the Anointed is another of Jesus’ hard riddles. But as long as we get our heart round His question, as well as, even more than, our head, the answer will be revealed! Let’s put following Jesus the Anointed into practice & not just keep circling Him like that rug on that floor.

MT 22:15-33 

Matthew in the Margins… 20th Sunday after Pentecost…Revised 2017. 

Never play Two Up with Jesus! Heads He wins, tails we lose! What do we constantly learn about His enemies in the Gospel? That they never learn! Have we learned from Jesus as we write our own new pages, chapter by chapter, extensions of Gospel today? One essential is never to try outsmarting God!

Which reminds me of one of those old rather unkind stories told against the Irish: Mick & Paddy are stumbling home drunk after closing time late one night. Taking a short cut through the cemetery, they fall down into a newly dug grave. Try as they might they can’t climb out. After calling & calling for help, & with no response at all, they decide to pray! Mick prays, “O God, if you get Paddy & me up out of this hole we’re in, I’ll give you my fine fat pig!” But Paddy says to Mick in a stage whisper, “Mick, you can’t pray that to God; you haven’t got a pig, let alone a fine fat one!” “Will you be quiet, Paddy! Can’t you see I’m only fooling him!” Trying to fool God is like being stuck down in some hole we can’t get out from! Digging our own grave?

Of those who try to trap Jesus with their One Coin Trick, The Complete Gospels¹ has it ‘They were dumfounded'. Of the crowd who see & hear how Jesus bests those who try to trap Him over ancient Levirate law, it translates, ‘They were stunned.' Whether we're a religious heavy, or simply one of God's ‘little ones’, are we as dumbfounded, stunned, by God as we ought to be? Learning to be dumbfounded, stunned, by God may be a helpful jumping off place for the next stage of our spiritual journey.

Whoever it is Jesus tricks (yes, he does trick them!) into producing that Roman coin makes a fool of himself as he would make a fool of Jesus. Such a pious one oughtn't to have such a pagan coin in his possession, except to actually pay the hated tax. Maybe that's what he's about to do when Jesus asks to borrow his coin. Caesar’s coin! Just having the coin is the man's own answer, ‘Yes’, to the question they pose to entrap Jesus. Whether Jesus answers ‘Yes’, or, ‘No’, they’ve got Him, or so they think! We know better! How do we ourselves set about discerning our responses to the big ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions of life?

Pharisees allying themselves with Herodians is an ‘unholy’ alliance. The Sadducees then also join in the game of  ‘Let’s Gang Up On Jesus’ with their question relating to levirate marriage laws [DEUT 25: 5+]. He answers, “You have missed the point again, all because you underestimate both the scriptures & the power of God.”²  Today some are still missing the point of, & under-estimating the Scriptures & the power of God, trying to make their own point rather than God’s! Pray, guided by Holy Spirit, to discern issues as Jesus, God, might see things, rather than pontificating on them to make our own specious claims.

God’s Name isn’t  'I AM' for nothing. So, let’s live for God, & with God, & in God. That’s the way we become who We Are, too!

¹ Polebridge, 1992, ad loc.  ²  Complete Gospels ad loc. 

MT 22:1-14 

Matthew in the Margins…19th Sunday after Pentecost…Revised 2017 

However we discern we should preach this parable / riddle / allegory, & focus on prepared-ness, ex / inclusiveness, light & darkness, whatever, it’s vital, life-giving, that we bring it out of 1st C. Palestine & into today where we live. Vital to bring God out of that Palestine,  out of this Book & freed into our own world, into our lives now. MT starts off, ‘God’s Rule is like…” & essentially that’s what it’s all about. But there are inconsistencies. Not least that God, the King, ends up acting as violently as the earthly rulers whose ungodly acts regularly court God's indignation & condemnation! Perhaps what JS originally says has been tweaked in the telling before it takes the shape we know today? In both LK 14, & TH 64 (it’s often worth checking TH) it’s simply a person giving the feast, & neither contains the ‘throwing out’ bit!

Let’s look at the wedding garment. In an earlier edition of these notes I suggested Jesus Himself is our invitation to His own wedding & that it’s Him we’re being invited, required, to put on; Him we need to be wearing all the time. To reject Jesus, God’s gracious invitation to us, then, is to throw ourselves into outermost darkness. A form of Hell, surely, is meant. Excluding ourselves from loving God & celebrating God day by day is to live in a darkness of our own choosing. But I’m grateful to our son, Andrew¹, for illuminating that approach further based on Augustine of Hippo’s Sermon 90. Augustine equates the missing ‘garment’ with ‘Love’. Not any old common or garden love, but the self-giving Love of the Gospel. Agape Love, Augustine tells us love is both our invitation to the feast & the way we’re to come prepared to join in. To ‘put on’ the wedding garment is to clothe ourselves in love. Let’s be clothed in love all the time. Love isn’t something to be donned only for special occasions! To act like that would be to bring love itself, Love Himself, into disrepute. 

When we give God the brush-off, we’re putting ourself outside God's gracious presence. That is outer darkness indeed. God doesn't put us outside; that’s a choice we make for our-selves! (After saying this I still find myself questioning whether there is anywhere outside God's presence, God’s grace.) Maybe one way to experience outer darkness is just to think we're outside God. We can fool ourselves into thinking we are. But we can’t fool God! In the midst of so much darkness & depression today - outwardly & inwardly - is there a clue here, for how to mount a spiritual counter-attack against the pain such darkness brings? 

It’s been well said that God's wrath is simply God's love experienced from the wrong side! Also worth pondering is the question of whether there’s any evidence God invented outer darkness, or Hell, under any guise. Compared with a great deal of evidence we go on re-inventing it over & over again, for ourself or for someone else. Best to take up the invitation to the great feast - & turn up! Fittingly clothed in love! 

¹ Preaching in All Saints, Margaret Street, London, Oct. 12th 2014

MT 21: 33-46 

Matthew in the Margins…18th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017  

Can we almost hear Jesus singing Isaiah’s beautiful old love poem about YHWH & His vine -yard to His critics today? His critics certainly recognise the poem. And, like those long before them fail to recognise themselves in it. Can’t grasp that when it turns into a lament it’s doing so because they in their turn have become the villains in the piece.

Rather than holding a post-mortem on what was happening in Isaiah’s time & comes to a head in Jesus’ day, we need to find ourselves in the story too. Today. Are our spiritual ears tuned well enough to God for us to be faithful servants, slaves, even? Can we hear the warning in the lament & heed it if it applies to us? By this stage of His ministry Jesus is identifying with the Son who falls victim to rebellious share-farmers in His Father’s vineyard. The powers-that-be are dismissive of Him because they’re too sure of themselves. Religiously learned, maybe, but religiously ignorant. Best we discern the key Jesus is singing in to us & sing along in the key our part calls for.

Politicians are probably the ones who most obviously appear today as those who have an exalted view of themselves & their self-entitlement. They’re not the only ones, of course, but they’re easy targets when they get their comeuppance - or should that be come-downance? - for rorting the public purse, for instance. The fall from grace & power of those caught out comes to mind as I meditate on Jesus’ yarn. It is a tale, but how well He captures the vineyard lease-holders sense of self-entitlement! There’s no way they’re ever going to inherit that vineyard! Do we have any such air of self-entitlement as we go about whatever job God calls us to do in His vineyard in partnership with Him? If the answer is, ‘Yes, we do have such a sense’, we have work to do! We have work to let God do on us & in us as part of the vineyard, too!

Though portrayed in this parable / riddle as an absentee landlord, God is not, & never has been separated from His world. Creation is a labour of love on God’s part. Labour in which God calls us to be joint-venturers. Faithfully joint-venturing with God keeps us celebrating God, rather than usurping Him in any jumped-up way.

Does God have any more to show for His investment in the vineyard of Creation with us as under-managers, than under the older regime? Let no false sense of entitlement on our part mean we’re simply trampling the grapes of wrath all over again.

MT 21: 23-32 

Matthew in the Margins… 17th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

The question of Authority keeps raising its head in Scripture & Church, Hebrew, then Christian. Suzanne de Dietrich¹ wrote: ‘True authority isn’t proved by arguments; it is recognised, it authenticates itself.’ Has there ever been a more authentic person than Jesus? How’s our authenticity in comparison with His?

In Jesus God shows how His Rule works from the bottom up; so it happens ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’. Authority must be recognised & exercised, tested to see if it’s consistent with God’s; in communion with God. The authentic God, though, isn’t to be found locked up in the pages of His own book. Lock God up in there, & we lock ourselves in there too - on the wrong page! On the wrong authority! As is happening here.

It’s just after Palm Sunday. The religious heavies are alarmed at what Jesus is up to: riding into Jerusalem as He does with adoring followers; healing the blind & lame; &, shock, horror, cleansing the Temple itself! "By what authority....?" They ask Him. He looks them straight in the eye, &, in effect, says, ”Well, my own actually!" He may be playing them along, but He’s deadly serious!

It’s no use us saying ‘Yes’ to God if we don’t do that yes. Make our ‘Yes’ happen. Make God’s will happen. Jesus has the ‘authorities’ over a barrel & they know it! Instead of showing Jesus up, all they’re doing is showing themselves up as unable to discern God’s authority, Jesus’ authority, any more than they discerned the Baptiser’s!

Jesus is fond of vineyard metaphors. He doesn’t call Himself the ‘True Vine’ without good reason. No doubt He passes many vineyards on His travels. All have some story attached to them. As do all the vineyards of our lives. Versions of this story differ, with the two sons responding to their father in different ways. Evidence of a story being passed down by word of mouth & being modified in the process. 'Chinese Whispers' we used to call it. A warning to literalists! What’s Jesus’ point for us today? How can we bring that out of the Book & into the realities of our own ‘vineyards’, including our congregation? 

To accept God's Authority, God’s Rule the Lord’s Prayer speaks of in its beginning & at its end, means accepting that earthly ways of looking at things need to change. And, change is possible. Like the brothers in the story; even like those who work in fields that may raise our eyebrows &, maybe, our hackles today. To despair of change is contrary to all Jesus is, & all He’s on about. All he stands for. True branches of the True Vine always have a future for God.

¹ St. Matthew, SCM, London, 1961 p.110

MT 20: 1-16 

Matthew in the Margins… 16th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

In this passage Jesus repeats the lesson & punchline of Ch.19 : the last will be first & the first last. It’s also an extension of His teaching about ‘little ones’. He’s not really on about new converts to faith being welcomed & rewarded as much as ones who’ve always been faithful. There are other aspects to consider. 

At heart, today’s parable isn't about money, work practices, labour relations, or any of that kind of thing. It’s bigger than that. It’s about, Jesus is on about, the topsy-turvy World we’ve made out of what YHWH God created; & the topsy-turvy way God rules this world. What God is out & about looking for round the clock are faithful workers living according to God’s topsy-turviness rather than the world’s ways. Even when we don’t understand; when we may not agree; when we don’t want to obey! I see three qualities of God’s Rule here: i) God is maddeningly Generous. ii) God is mind-bogglingly Just. iii) God's Generosity & Justice are inescapably Present Tense. God is always the God of Now, never yesterday, or even tomorrow. 

Jesus’ own life reflects an ongoing struggle with all three of these issues. Who better, then, to be our Guide through the vineyards of life? But what about those who’d love to live in reach of a fruitful vineyard where they could work for a living, but instead are condemned to survive in slums, on rubbish dumps, take cover in war zones or live under plastic sheeting in refugee camps? Or those trafficked by their own or other countries along life’s way? Those always at the mercy of disease & poverty & human predators?

Jesus doesn't use the word 'compassion' in this story, yet it underlies the whole tale. The compassionate God is always out & about, one way or another, looking in one place or another for those who’ll work for Him. Work His way for Him. We know the Good Shepherd is always out & about looking for sheep that have strayed. Jesus, though goes so far as to be on the look out even for sheep no-one else wants. Those that others pass by, pass over, pass up on in the queues of life. Most of us think of there being four directions: North, South, East & West. Celts think of five: the above four plus  Here! And ‘Here’ is where God is, just as God is always ‘Now’ time-wise! 

So the Good News is not only that even those late out of the starting blocks can be winners, but they are, we are, winners Here & Now. God's Rule isn't competitive. Everyone who genuinely wants to, comes first, Here & Now!

MT 18: 21-35 

Matthew in the Margins…15th S. After Pentecost… Revised 2017

Forgiveness & arithmetic don't make good companions. The unimaginable sum owed by the first servant & the trivial amount by the second, are exaggerations on the part of the Master Story Teller. Jesus knows how to put a point across! But the question remains: do we 'get it' any more than Peter does? Than the first servant in Jesus’ yarn does? Even after what God has done for us in Jesus? Do we know, have we forgotten, or are we just blase about just how much God has forgiven us? In the face of which, anything someone else ‘owes’ us, & asks forgiveness for, fades into insignificance. 

Do you ever despair, as I sometimes do, at what can seem an over-emphasis on sin & confession in our liturgies. Is this simply a hangover from medieval days, or is there something of the ‘sinister’ lurking here? After all, in Jesus we’re forgiven people! Are we still not convinced forgiveness sticks every bit as much as, more, even, than sinning does? Do we need to re-emphasise that we’ve been forgiven & live in a state of forgiven-ness? One symptom of how confusing this can be is an odd practice that once cropped up in our part of the world, i.e. that after confessing our sins, & being assured of God’s forgiveness, we were then launched into the Kyries too! Liturgies need to be a celebration of forgiven-ness rather than a constant, nagging, reminder that in some cases the church doesn’t get today’s parable either!

The forgiving king is one of only three people apart from Jesus (all three are parable figures) of whom the word compassion, 'being moved in your gut' is used. The other two are the Forgiving Father, & the Good Samaritan. It’d be great to be counted along with them, not as parable figures, but real life ones. Little Jesuses so ‘moved in our gut’ at the plight of the hurting & unforgiven that we go in to bat for them whatever it takes.

We can only experience God's Rule where forgiveness is the expected norm, as ‘we forgive those who sin against us’ as Jesus puts it in His prayer. When there’s no forgiveness on our part, we remain alienated from the Forgiving God. Loved, still, but alienated. Trapped by our own not-doing on the flip-side of God’s compassion when there’s no reason for us to stay there!

One last word - by Jesus Himself: Forgiveness is from the heart, from the depth of our being; or it isn't forgiveness at all! 

MT 18: 10-20 

Matthew in the Margins…14th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Guardian angels are, in a sense, boundary riders where heaven & earth overlap. In Jesus God reaches out to us across all the boundaries we set to embrace ‘little ones’ trapped in systems that put them down & keep them down. Jesus' inclusiveness, & therefore, God’s, extends to children & all the other ‘little ones’ overlooked & excluded by our societies. If we believe in guardian angels (I do!) let’s join their ranks as honorary members. Take the risk, as Jesus does, of crossing boundaries to make ‘as it is in heaven' a reality on earth, too. 

A heaven that’s only ‘up there somewhere’ can simply be an escape clause, an escape hatch. Leaving God’s 'little ones’ & God-self stuck with no way out! 

God operates on the ‘ from the bottom up’ principle, not from the top down. Otherwise, Jesus would have come as a very different Messiah! Might even have got Himself elected! Had His statue erected all over the place - not just in churches that have such things - till someone decided it was time to pull Him down & move on!

Still on the subject of guardian angels, Jesus’ train of thought extends to shepherds - of four & two legged sheep! There are many ‘sheep’, ‘little ones’, lost & gone astray out there in today’s margins. Mind you, Jesus may need to revise His arithmetical figures with regard to the numbers of losts & founds today!

Being a disciple means being at the same time a faithful sheep, & an under-shepherd to the Good Shepherd. Carrying the Christ in people, lost or not, across boundaries standing in the way of God’s inclusiveness. There are many issues dividing us today. Depending on where we’re fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to live. Issues, boundaries such as biblical & other forms of  fundamentalism, same-gender marriage, sexual discrimination of all kinds, jobs & their availability, health cover, adequate social security…the list goes on & on. When Jesus rebukes Peter for ‘thinking as humans think, not as God thinks’ [last Sunday, in MT 16:23] He means us to learn Peter’s lesson, too. We need to discern God’s mind as Jesus reveals it by His Spirit before we shut others out from being pushed or kept outside the boundaries of society. Binding & loosing powers are all about boundaries. We need to take the time & invest the spiritual effort required to discern which are of God’s scheme of things, & which are of the way we ourselves think or feel. As well as discerning how God might think about issues, we also need to discern how God feels about people! 

When she doesn’t want to talk about a subject, my grand-daughter will sometimes say to me “Don’t go there, Grandad!” I take her to mean, ‘Don’t go where angels fear to tread!’ But do let’s be alert to their footsteps & footprints, & do let’s tread in them! For God’s sake.

P.S. Suzanne de Dietrich in one of her writings some years back wondered if the bit about treating someone like a pagan or a tax-collector might be dominical humour; meaning such persons need even more mercy & compassion! Interesting? Provocative?

MT 16: 21-28 

Matthew in the Margins… 13th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Oops! Peter’s in trouble! In deeper water than when trying to walk on water awhile back. Oops! Jesus has just called him ‘Satan’ after he tries to dissuade Jesus from going through with what will be required of Him as the Anointed One. Not long before, Peter’s recognised Jesus as the Christ, though clearly not fully understanding what this will entail. Who did? Who does?

Peter will soon be in trouble again - Oops! again -when he suggests prolonging Our Lord’s Transfiguration (in a reading that won’t recur as we’ve already celebrated that in preparation for Lent). The water will get deeper still in the High Priest’s courtyard when Peter will actually deny Jesus. Several Oopses!! [But the end of John’s Gospel tells of reconciliation that’s taken place.] To return to today’s passage, in calling Peter 'Satan' is Jesus seemingly shifting the ground towards today’s common understanding of Satan as God’s enemy? Away from the H.B. (n.b. Job) understanding of Satan as what in Australia we might call ‘Counsel Assisting a Royal Commission’? Whose job it is to get to the truth of a matter by teasing out the evidence in a case.

Our passage & what’s going on in it, centres on v.23 where Jesus dresses Peter down for ‘thinking in human terms, rather than God’s’. One lesson from Jesus & Peter today is that the more we discern 'the mind of God' on any matter with each other, the less we’re likely to experience a Satan-like fall from grace in lonely splendour. Today it’s Holy Spirit, not any human or other Satan who helps us discern the mind of God.

 Kosuke Koyama put it long ago¹, ^‘There is no convenient way to carry a cross....if we put a handle on the cross to carry it as a businessman carries a briefcase, then the Christian faith has lost its ground. Jesus didn't say “Take up your lunch box & follow me”. A cross is a juggernaut, an out-of-our-control consequence of discerning the unfolding of the mind of God in human affairs. Trying to get a handle on the cross can make us as much a stumbling block to God's Rule through God’s mind as Peter is accused of being here.

Jesus demonstrates that He must enter His Passion, as he demonstrates everything else - by going through with it! That's how we're called to follow, too; by going through with what we, in concert with other faithful, discern God’s mind for us to be. There are no handles on the Cross, or on Resurrection, for us any more than for Jesus.

Too much concentration on the Son of Humanity’s apocalyptic role can lead us into escapism. The very opposite of the engagement in human affairs that the very-much- earthed Son of Humanity represents. Take heart! God Rules in our margins as well as in religious centres & one day, in clouds of glory. The Son of Humanity brings the way God Rules to a head in His death & resurrection. Could any future coming, no matter how glorious, really challenge, up -stage that greatest of all Cosmic Events?

¹ No Handle on the Cross, SCM, London, '76, p.7] 

MT 16:13-20

Matthew in the Margins…12th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Our local government rates (taxes) arrived today. Never welcome, but at least we can afford to pay them. Others in our community are asking questions like, ‘How am I going to pay them?’, ‘Where’s my next meal coming from?’, ‘Am I ever going to get a job?’, ‘Which bridge can I safely sleep under tonight?’, ‘Should I leave my abusive partner?’, & many more. We all live, & maybe, die, with big nagging questions of our own. Questions important in our own lives may help us preach questions important to Jesus. Like today’s, ‘Who are people saying I am?’, then, “Who do you say I am?” Questions can be more enlightening than some answers!

We’re in Caesarea Philippi, where Herod (undeservingly called ‘Great’!) had built a temple in honour of Augustus. ‘Sucking up’ to Caesar!’ Raising the question, ‘Who really rules?’ Caesars, or would-be’s, strutting the stage where we live, or somewhere else? Or, God? Answers to Jesus’ 1st question show people struggling to recognise the God in Him. Despite YHWH pointing towards Him for centuries. A question for us is, ‘Would we have recognised this unorthodox Messiah with His unique rule from the bottom up, rather than the top down, back then?’ A second question for us is, ‘Do we recognise Him in our lives right now?’ Which is where Jesus’ own 2nd question kicks in.

Peter’s confession that God’s Kingdom, Power, & Glory are implicit in Jesus - though later events show he’s a bit shaky about this  - is the rock on which God builds His church & His world. Anything less may become a mill-stone that will drown us or grind us down, rather than the rock on which our faith is built!

The ‘keys of the kingdom’ are in our hands now, not Peter’s! To use to open the world’s closed situations up for God & God’s people. To open us up from what we’ve locked ourselves into. To release others from what they’ve been locked in or out of.  Keys like love, joy, peace, openness, forgiveness & others like them are all in Jesus’ bunch. When God asks, “Where are those keys I’ve given you?” it’s no use us fumbling in our pockets for them, hunting around for them, looking to see if we’ve locked them in the car, or even asking others, “Have you seen those keys God gave me?” Lose them, or just not use them & they soon rust up & become unserviceable.

We once used to pray, maybe still do, to the God ‘whose service is perfect freedom…’ but our freedom only comes when we use the keys of God’s kingdom to set ourselves & others free from things that lock us in - or out! 

MT 15: (10-20) 21-28 

Matthew in the Margins…11th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Within the brackets, Jesus poses another riddle. Parables are riddles. Meant to be puzzled over. This time about what’s clean or unclean, allowed or not permitted, all that kind of thing. His attitude to such things, &, more importantly, to the people involved, flows on into the story that follows. People always have a face to Jesus. Those who espouse narrow interpretations of Law (whose law?) & seek to impose their own law over Love, beware!

Jesus says it's what comes out of us that defiles, rather than what goes into us. I take this to mean that devil, demons, evil in general, all too often emerge from the dark side of myself.  'Demons in the air' is as unhelpful an approach to life's ills as 'Reds under the beds’! Scape-goating demons may be a facile avoidance of issues simmering & festering inside our own skin. Scapegoating anything, or anyone doesn’t equip us to confront on-the-ground issues where we live & move have our being. Nor does ranting about that kind of thing in public. (Or in church!)

The rougher side of Jesus' tongue (we’re fooling ourselves if we don't admit it has such a side) has come to the fore earlier, as he talks about ‘weeds’, & ‘blind’ people, & rebukes Peter. Perish the thought of being a ‘weed’, ‘blind’, or ‘thick’, in the things of God! 

Let’s call the Canaanite woman ‘Canea’ to give her a name, show her respect. She’s an important  figure in the Gospel. Canea doggedly keeps at Jesus. At first, He's silent. Which doesn't mean he's not ‘taking her on board’. Not at all! He tells the disciples, & Canea, by implication, in curt terms where His priorities lie. When He speaks to her so brusquely, likening her to a dog, Warren Carter¹ quoting Ringe, in ‘Gentile Woman's Story’, puts it: ‘Jesus seems to be caught with his compassion down’.

But can’t we also see a smile on His face as He picks up on her doggedness? Canea’s shrewd enough to keep the joke going, & claim a kind of honorary citizenship in Israel by admitting to being just like one of their dogs. She breaks through Jesus' defences & He welcomes her, &, by extension, her sick daughter, as one of his own. It's a great story, & illustrates how relating seriously to God may take all the doggedness we can muster!

There’s more in this encounter than that. In His exchange with Canea, Jesus finds a kind of  healing of His own, too, humanly speaking. Resolving His dilemma about extending His ministry beyond Judaism. Resolving serious life-dilemmas is also a kind of healing, surely?  

If Canea can be an encouragement to Jesus Himself, she can also be  an encouragement to any of us who feel disregarded within or outside Church or other social structures. If we are finding it hard to embrace ‘outsiders’ by our attitudes, rules, practices, & traditions, Canea can also encourage us to persist - doggedly - in showing God’s all-embracing love in Jesus, & in recognising Bonhoeffer’s point that grace isn’t cheap.

¹ Matthew and the Margins, Orbis, 2000, ad loc.  See also David Lose..In the meantime, ad loc

MT 14: 22-36

Matthew in the Margins…10th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017

Jesus eventually gets the quiet time He missed out on last week! Now, He sends the crowds home, & sends even His disciples back across to the other side of the lake. If we don't engage with God in the silence, deeply & meaningfully, can we ever be well enough prepared to engage with others? As Jesus makes Himself available to others then, & us, now? As when Jesus feeds the crowds last week, when we make time & space apart, we find when God fills, God fills!

We can rationalise the walking on water miracle if we want: bad light, shallow water low tide, sand bar, etc., but note v. 24! (I once read of a tourist spot in Israel where a jetty’s been built just below the waterline so tourists can walk where Jesus walked!) Or we can accept, teasing as it may be, that God-in-Jesus does what God's got to do, & does whatever it is when & where God’s got to do it! The same goes for us!

If Jesus can't walk on water, neither can Peter! Not even briefly! Whatever we preach about Peter's role in the story, at least credit him with getting out of the boat! Preach the positive! Would I have ventured out there? I very much doubt it! Are there other 'boats' representing relative safety, we mightn’t want to get out of to 'walk to Jesus' across today’s stormy seas? Jesus, John’s ‘In-the-Beginning-Word’, can still bring order out of chaos. Bring good to birth out of the most unlikely situations. When we trust Him! Let it happen His way.

Peter’s big ‘If’ (v.28) is right up there with the biggest of life’s ‘Ifs & Buts’. Let’s not draw too hard & fast lines between our 'physical' situation & our ‘spiritual’. Nor twixt the things of heaven & those of earth, as those of us with Celtic back-grounds may appreciate. Where are our own fears seated? And the fears of those to whom we're preaching? Of those we’re called to pastor? God really can reach out to save us from our demons, no matter what deep water we’re trying to tread! Providing we first call to Him to call to us. More, we can always count on Him reaching out a hand to save us as He does for Peter, & Peter himself later goes on to do for others.

Did that terra-firma at Gennesaret feel good under their feet, or didn't it! We can find God in Jesus in all kinds of places, situations, needs. Remember, though, that God has always found us before we realise we’re lost, or in danger of being so! Touching the fringe of His cloak' sounds a bit superstitious today. Can we recognise, though, lots of folk on today’s ‘Gennesaret' shores? Those who feel as close as they can get is only ‘touching the fringe of God’s cloak’ as it were. People who feel they can’t, or shouldn’t, or just plain don't want to touch God. If, that is, God, in some form, exists for them. Let’s accept & welcome anyone who does attempt ‘touching God’s hem’ if that’s the best they can manage at this point. Their very attempt may be the start of something bigger!

MT14:13-21

Matthew in the Margins…Pent+9…Revised 2017

Jesus never draws too firm a line between soul & stomach. True religion always feeds both. To feed the hungry may be justified by theology, but to feed the hungry is to do theology!

John’s death puts Jesus himself at risk. Herod will be after him next, if, the priests, or the Romans don’t beat him to it! Jesus is a threat to the status quo; still needs to be today! He goes out there by the lake to give Himself some personal space to come to terms with John’s death & its implications for His own life & ministry. Warren Carter¹ says withdrawal is 'to …..make space for a different reign’.

But crowds get wind Jesus is coming their way, & when they see Him heading for the other shore in a boat no doubt crewed by fishermen friends, they set out on foot to race Him to the other side. When JS sees what a sick & sad & sorry lot they are, He’s so moved He puts His personal need for space aside & heals the sick among them. When, late in the day He’s told the only food they have between thousands of them is 5 pieces of coarse barley bread & 2 tiddlers. He tells them, “Bring your bread & fish to me!” What follows is a miracle, a sign of the Very Presence of God among them. Someone (Weatherhead?) long ago suggested a way of ‘understanding’ this miracle / sign based on John’s account. A boy hands over to Jesus the meal his mother has packed for him. When Jesus accepts the boy’s gift, blesses the bread & fish, & begins to pass them round, people every-where catch on, & produce food they’ve brought with them from their pockets & bags. Sharing it with others round them. And it’s more than enough to go round. Who, except God, knows how the miraculous feeding takes place! But since hearing that idea years ago, I’ve sometimes thought, ‘If it did happen that way, that would’ve been as great a miracle as any other.’

Think of it like this: As Jesus gives up the personal space He’s out there looking for, & shares His healing gifts with the sick in the great crowd, so the boy gives up his lunch & shares it with Jesus, who shares it with the crowd. Who then share with each other, as the above view suggests. For that spirit of giving up something personal: space, bread, fish, whatever, & for sharing to explode among the great crowd, wouldn’t that be an amazing, mind-blowing sign of God in their midst? What are the signs of God in our midst today? Can we expect to find any if we’re not doing our share of sharing? By the way, there’s evidence that in some parts of the early church, fish, as well as bread, became part of the eucharistic celebration.² In memory of this event, as of that Other One?

One aim we, today’s church, could take from all this for today’s sick, hungry world is that we not keep to ourselves, for ourselves, any of the gifts God graciously shares with us, but pass them on. Pass them around. Make them go around! The Gospels meticulously record there were left-overs. When God fills, God fills! What about next time we have something, anything at all we can share, we offer it to God to pass on to someone who needs space, healing, or is hungry in any way at all? And see what God will do with our gift. See how far God can make it go around.

¹ Matthew & the Margins, Orbis, 2000, p.305   ² Andrew B McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, Oxford, 1999, p.127+