SUNDAY 16

17-23 July

Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

Romans 8:12-25 (Sermon 1: “Thinking well of yourself”)

Genesis 28: 10-19a (Sermon 2: “God ---- on the rocks”)

Psalm 139: 1-12, 23-24

PREPARATION

This gathering is now convened……..

by the love of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We are in the Presence of an unspeakable Love!

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I could count them, they are more than the sand,

if I could arrive at the very end, I am still with you!

As many people as are led by the Spirit of God

have become children of God.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me,

you know when I sit and when I stand;

should I fear I am far away, you know all my thoughts.

You did not receive from God a spirit of slavish fear,

but a Spirit of adoption enabling us to cry “Abba! Father!”

You have hedged me around with your love,

and laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to grasp,

it is so high that my mind can never grab hold of it all.

The Spirit bears witness with my own spirit

that we are indeed, children of God.

PRAYER OF APPROACH

Holy, most holy Friend,

teach us

to be in awe of you

without fear,

to know you

when you are near,

to serve you

without complaint,

and to adore you

without restraint.

In the name of Christ Jesus.

Amen!

Adapted from- “Brief Prayers” © B D Prewer

CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE

God’s love is unqualified; mercy is ‘ever faithful ever sure.’

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for the patience you show us, caught up as we are in an ignorance that we do not always recognise, and in complicity with evil that we do not readily face.

Thank you for the saving love of Jesus who embraces us no matter what happens.

There are many occasions when--

we are foolish and impetuous, but you do not leave us,

we are rebellious and stubborn, but you don’t leave us,

we are selfish and arrogant, but you do not leave us,

we are anxious and faithless, but you do not leave us,

we are indifferent and prayerless, but you do not leave us.

We thank you, gracious God, that though in this world we are often forced to compete with each other for many things, it is never so with your inclusive, redeeming love. Your forgiveness is never withheld from any individual that turns to you in repentant faith. Thank you for including us today. Through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Amen!

The peace of the Lord Jesus be always with you.

And also with you!

PRAYER FOR CHILDREN

We are happy, God,

that you adopt us as your own children,

and that we will always have a special place

in your loving family.

Will you please help us to keep your family rule

about looking after each other

with heaps of love?

In Jesus’ name,

Amen!

PSALM 139

See page 40: “Australian Psalms”.

Ó B D Prewer & Open Book Publishers

WEEDS AND HERETICS

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

I cry, “This will not do at all!

This is a noxious weed

that sprouts in God’s good soil

and spreads its nasty creed.”

In wrath I fume and shout:

“To end this disrepute

I’ll tear the weedlings out

exposing each foul root”.

But as I rave more wild

in my most zealous mood,

He says: “Keep out, my child,

you’ll do more harm than good;

your folly in my field

would uproot wheat instead;

let things come to head,

or risk your daily bread.”

Ó B D Prewer 1999

COLLECT

Most loving God, your thoughts are not like our thoughts, your ways are not as our ways. Save us from quick judgements and hasty actions. Induct us into your patience and generosity, so that we may work skilfully and efficiently at the tasks you assign to us, and leave to those who you chose those matters that are not our business. Through Christ Jesus our Saviour.

Amen!

** This is too wordy. A succinct version is appended.

SERMON 1: THINKING WELL OF YOURSELF?

Romans 8: 14-17

What are the grounds on which we think well of ourselves?

We hear much about cosmetic surgery these days. The tragedy of this, in many cases, is that people who have a poor self image are attempting to establish a good opinion of themselves by how they look to others. They look to external appearance for self assurance of worth... They will endure months of pain to try and buttress their low self esteem.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not against all plastic surgery. There is an important place for such surgery among those who are terribly scarred from birth or from accidents. Moreover it seems an act of mercy to the few who are born with elephantine ears or proboscis, leading to situations where strangers stare at them and nudge each other. In God’s name, let us do all we can for such folk. The recent Chinese attempts at a total face graft (in a case of terrible disfigurement) seem to me like a great act of kindness.

But in general, improving one’s outward looks will not make us think better of ourselves. Not for long. We will soon find other things about our appearance that will make us self-depreciating.

If not looks, then what? Shall it be bigger income, a high status occupation, or a larger house in an elite suburb?

DANGER 1: THE PROJECTIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE

Don’t put too much store on what others think.

I have to have to admit that to some degree, the opinion others project on us can deeply affect us, if we take on board their opinion and internalise their attitudes. Their judgements are happening all the time. That loaded question at a dinner party, or wedding reception:

What do you do? Do you answer: Lawyer? Garbage disposal agent? Brain surgeon? Cleaner? Teacher? Pilot? Tram driver? Councillor? Home maker? Manager? or Checkout chick? (oops! check-out cashier!)

Stay with that last example for a moment: Even the place where the cashier works carries connotations of worthiness: An employee of David Jones or Myers is one up on Target or K Mart. Target and K Mart is one up on Bi-Lo or Bargain Warehouse. People do make judgments about us. And they try to project and imprint their valuation on us.

If we let them get away with that stuff, reality is badly distorted. If we allow these external projections define us, and should we internalise them, we are in big trouble- up sewer creek without a paddle, as the uncouth (but very honest) folk might describe it.

All attempts to establish our self image on external factors, as others assess them, will fail.

DANGER 2: BUILDIDNG ON OUR PERECEIVED VIRTUES

Likewise there is danger on trying to establish it on internal factors.

For example our self image as having: a brilliant mind, a sensitive soul, being an astute observer, a spiritual person, an utterly honest man, a clean living citizen, a patient soul, a forgiving woman, a man of prayer, a gracious lady, a righteous church-goer, a devout Catholic, a pious Protestant, a person of truth and justice.

I am not saying that some of these are not desirable virtues. I am asserting that they are not a good ground on which to build our self image. Sooner or later these can crumble. We fail, and we know it. Even if we hide our failures from others, we still know it. We know it and our self image totters on its pedestal.

After fail, should we then happen to overhear others praising us for our cultivated virtues, one part of us grins and feels smug, while another part grimaces, and thinks: “I hope they never find out what I am really like.”

All such factors, outward status symbols or inward virtue, cannot give us a valid, good opinion of ourselves.

ST PAUL FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT

Enter St Paul.

As the young Saul of Tarsus, he had worked strenuously at establishing a good opinion of himself. But the more he worked at attaining righteousness the deeper his frustration became: “The good that I want to do, I fail to do. And the wrongs I do not want, that I end up doing. O wretched man! Who shall rescue me from this body of death?”

For many years this devout Jew got it all wrong.

Then he met Jesus Christ. His whole life changed. It was God’s gift of love that mattered, not his righteous deeds. And in Romans 8 he spells out the freedom that belongs to us. he spells it out in one particular metaphor. That of adoption...

He employs the Roman code of adoption. An adopted son had the full rights along side a blood child. There was no distinction. Even an adopted son of an Emperor had the right to succeed him on the imperial throne.

Paul wrote that we are like adopted children with full rights. He saw, and experienced, that the Holy Spirit led us to the love of Christ Jesus. Through the Saviour we are embraced by the welcoming, redeeming love of God. Christ has wiped out the past and adopted us into the family of God. It is a wonderful metaphor!

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. You were not led by a spirit of slavish fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, enabling you to joyfully name God as Abba! Father!”

“It is the Spirit that assures our human spirit that we are indeed the children of God.”

In case we should miss the glory of what Paul is claiming, he underlines it by going further:

“If we are God’s children, then we are God’s heirs. Yes, God’s heirs and joint-heirs with Christ.”

Nothing could be more forthright that that. Joint heirs with Christ! Truly the children of God. No distinction. It really is mind boggling, isn’t it? There can be no mistaking our status in the household of God.

That is the only sure basis of having a good opinion of ourselves.

God offers us a self image which is not built on the shifting sands of physical appearance; not on the clothes we wear, or our money, power, professional status or social standing. It is an opinion of ourselves not established on what others people think of us and project on us.

Nor is it a self image which is constructed the precarious ground of our presumed virtues as we project them and have tried to live them...

The one sure basis in the Divine love. The Holy One chooses that we should be the children of God, equal heirs with his Son Jesus. This is a gift. The pure gift of God. Therefore nothing can erode it or shatter it.

AN UNSHAKEABLE FOUNDATION FOR SELF RESPECT

All else can move, change, shake and fall.

Circumstances change. Rich and powerful men (like the colourful Alan Bond of America’s Cup fame) can crash from being seen as heroes to being treated as scumbags. Once respected priests and pastors (like the ones we read about in the press) can fall into temptation and be disloved and despised. Good mothers and wives (as may have happened to friends of ours) can in a time of loneliness and boredom, while hungry for a bit of romance, can fall prey to a smooth talking, roses-giving, wining-and-dining seducer; and lose their reputation in the wider family or church community.

No self image, built on ourselves, can be sure of standing the tests that this world will, sooner or later, throw at us. If nothing else reduces us to a diminutive size, aging, sickness and death will. Just think of the self image of the fabulously rich iron magnate, the late Lang Hancock of Perth, in his days of hubris? Then compare it with the decrepit, pathetic old man who eked out his miserable last days with everything that money could buy except love.

Paul chose the adoption theme. By the love of Christ Jesus we are adopted. Adopted and treasured. adopted and respected. Adopted and loved eternally. No higher self imaged possible.

GOD IS NOT IN THE CIRCUS BUSINESS

However, adoption was just one of the metaphors Paul employs to describe the wonderful reality of what happens to us, through the saving love of Christ and in the nurturing arms of the Holy Spirit.

At times he moves among other Old Testament insights to bring out aspects of the Gospel which the adoption metaphor cannot convey.

He was keenly aware of the Biblical doctrine that we all have the “image” of God within us.

And God said, "let us make humanity in our own image, in our very likeness.”

That is our intended glory. Paul never lost sight of that. But he emphatically knew that the likeness has been drastically corrupted and distorted, and that by ourselves we could never recover the glory.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Yet by saving love, the free gift of God, we are salvaged. Through Christ and in the radical power of the Spirit, we are scrubbed clean, cleansed, and the shining image restored.

We were created to become children of God. Through Christ we come back to our true selves; to our true glory.

The Gospel is not wanting to turn something alien into a creature that is semi-divine. Not trying to do perform something equivalent to animal trainers making dogs walk on their hind legs, ponies count up to ten with a hoof, or elephants to keep their balance while standing on a moving barrel.

God is not in the circus business. Never has been. Never will be.

God is offering us the opportunity to return to our true nature. He is about recovering what is lost and is (from our human view point) irremediably corroded.

The self image that the Gospel offers us is one that flows from the original plan of God that we should be “only a little less than the angels. That intended glory is never totally absent. Even in the most foolish of us, and in the most depraved of us, there remain remnants of that lost glory.

CHICKENS OR WILD GEESE?

There is something about the freedom of birds in the wild that tugs at my heart. Be it the great wedge-tailed eagles, dancing brolgas, or the elegant jabirus, or flocks of magpie geese on the wing.

In his novel “Sea Room”, Norman Gatreau, creates one of the key characters as the youth Jordi. There is a paragraph set outside the farm house in Springtime.

It is springtime, all nature rejuvenated, Jordi is outside in the sunshine. Wild geese in chevron formation are on the annal migration, beautiful against the sky. The farmyard hens notice them, some ancient avian memory stirs, and then a few of them run and try to fly like the wild geese above. They only get a couple of metres off the ground and travel only a dozen metres before landed exhausted.

Question: Are people with Christian faith, who believe they are adopted in the family of God, just like farmyard chickens trying to be like those wonderful wild geese? Always destined to flop to the ground?

Never! When the Spirit of adoption inspires us, we are adopted back from alienation into reconciliation. We recover our true identity. We take up a self image that is forever grounded in God’s creating and redeeming love. We accept that transformation which we are promised (in the first Letter of John) will one day, make us even as Jesus Christ is.

Forget surgical make-overs, money, power, influence, social climbing, or even a reputation as being a righteous person. Those will never give you lasting self affirmation and contentment. Turn to Christ and his Abba-Father. Open yourself to the motherly embrace of the Holy Spirit...

“If we are God’s children, then we are God’s heirs. Yes, God’s heirs and joint-heirs with Christ.”

SERMON 1: THINKING WELL OF YOURSELF?

Romans 8: 14-17

What are the grounds on which we think well of ourselves?

(Don’t misunderstand me. I am not against all plastic surgery. There is an important place for such surgery among those who are terribly scarred from birth or from accidents.)

But in general, improving one’s outward looks will not make us think better of ourselves. Not for long. We will soon find other things about our appearance that will make us self-depreciating.

If not looks, then what? Shall it be bigger income, a high status occupation, or a larger house in an elite suburb?

DANGER 1: THE PROJECTIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE

Don’t put too much store on what others think.

The opinion others project on us can deeply affect us, if we take on board their opinion and internalise their attitudes. Their judgements are happening all the time. That loaded question at a dinner party, or wedding reception--

What’s do your profession? Do you answer: Lawyer? Garbage disposal agent? Brain surgeon? Cleaner? Teacher? Pilot? Tram driver? Councillor? Home maker? Manager? or Checkout chick? (oops! check-out cashier!)

People do make judgments about us. If we allow these external projections define us, and should we internalise them, we are in big trouble- up sewer creek without a paddle!

All attempts to establish our self image on external factors, as others assess them, will fail.

DANGER 2: BUILDIDNG ON OUR PERECEIVED VIRTUES

Likewise there is danger on trying to establish it on internal factors.

These may be desirable virtues but they are not a safe ground on which to build our self image. Sooner or later these can crumble. We fail, break our own code, and we know it. Even if we hide our failures from others, we still know it and our self image totters on its pedestal.

All such factors, outward status symbols or inward virtue, cannot give us a valid, good opinion of ourselves.

ST PAUL FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT

Enter St Paul.

For many years this devout Jew got it all wrong.

Paul wrote that we are like adopted children with full rights. Through the Saviour we are embraced by the welcoming, redeeming love of God. Christ has wiped out the past and adopted us into the family of God. It is a wonderful metaphor!

“It is the Spirit that assures our human spirit that we are indeed the children of God.”

He underlines it by going further:

“If we are God’s children, then we are God’s heirs. Yes, God’s heirs and joint-heirs with Christ.”

That is the only sure basis of having a good opinion of ourselves.

AN UNSHAKEABLE FOUNDATION FOR SELF RESPECT

All else can move, change, shake and fall.

No self image, built on our own virtues, or on our public reputation, can be sure of standing the tests that this world will, sooner or later, throw at us. If nothing else reduces us to a diminutive size, aging, sickness and death will.

(Remember the inflated self image of the fabulously rich iron magnate, the late Lang Hancock of Perth, in his days of hubris? Then compare it with the decrepit, pathetic old man who eked out his miserable last days with everything that money could buy except love.)

Paul chose the adoption theme. By the love of Christ Jesus we are adopted. Adopted and treasured. adopted and respected. Adopted and loved eternally. No higher self image is possible.

GOD IS NOT IN THE CIRCUS BUSINESS

By saving grace, the free gift of God, we are salvaged. Through Christ and in the radical power of the Spirit, we are scrubbed clean, cleansed, and the shining image restored.

We were created to become children of God, and through Christ we come back to our true selves; to our true glory.

God is not in the circus business. Never has been. Never will be.

God is offering us the opportunity to return to our true nature. He is about recovering what is lost and is (from our human view point) irremediably corroded.

CHICKENS OR WILD GEESE?

There is something about the freedom of birds in the wild that tugs at my heart. Be it the great wedge-tailed eagles, dancing brolgas, or the elegant jabirus, or flocks of magpie geese on the wing.

In his novel “Sea Room”, Norman Gatreau, creates one of the key characters as the youth Jordi. There is a paragraph set outside the farm house in Springtime.

“If we are God’s children, then we are God’s heirs. Yes, God’s heirs and joint-heirs with Christ.”

SERMON 2: GOD---- ON THE ROCKS

Genesis 28:16-17

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Does the story of Jacob, sleeping in the open with a stone for his pillow, sound a bit far fetched? How easy do you find it to get to sleep? Could you sleep with a stone for a pillow?

Let me suggest you could, if you were tired enough. When you are really tired you can sleep in almost any situation.

As a young man, I remember being on guard duty on a very cold night in an army camp at Brighton, near Hobart in Tasmania. In the early hours of the morning, with the snow falling around me, I stopped and propped myself against a building for a moment. The moment became fifteen minutes. Although I knew there was a strict penalty for a lapse in duty, I slept, standing up, in the snow. You see, we had been on a route march the day before. I was monumentally tired!

I don’t think the story of Jacob is at all far fetched. Jacob was not a particularly nice bloke. He was a cheat. His name means “a heel,” and he was just that! Jacob was on the run from the anger of his twin brother Esau whom Jacob had foully outwitted. He would have been moving fast, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the anger of his brother. He did not stop running until sunset. There in a rocky place he rested his head on a stone and fell asleep.

Every Sunday School child knows what followed: the vivid dream with a ladder stretching between earth and heaven; and God speaking to Jacob, promising to be always with him, and that one day he would return home.

When he woke up, Jacob looked around at the rocky place and exclaimed:

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven

He called that place Bethel, from the Hebrew baith=house, el=God. He promised that he would be true to God, and give a tenth of any possessions he acquired to him.

GOD LOVES EVEN CHEATS

Two things strike me about this story. The first is that God loves even despicable cheats like Jacob. After a bad start to his life, Jacob was followed by God and given a new start. Jacob who had been a cheat, went on to become one of the great legends of the Jewish people.

That reminds me of the Gospel reading today. That parable of Jesus concerning an enemy who sowed weed seed in a good crop, where it sprouted among the wheat. The workers asked to be allowed to go and pull out the weeds. The owner said no; you will root up some good wheat as well. Let it be until harvest. Then the wheat can be saved and the weeds stacked up and burned.

In the wheat paddocks of the church, when we see the weeds, the teachings we reckon are not right, the people we find doctrinally and morally offensive, we want to rush in and get rid of them. Sometimes we may not even get it right; we may not be able to pick the difference good growth and bad growth. But we think we do. We get self righteous. Clean up the church! Get rid of the heretics and sinners! Rip them out!

Jacob seemed like a weed, a dislove to his grandparents Sarah and Abraham. Wouldn’t it have been better for God to let the young rogue just disappear on his flight from Esau? No way! That’s not how God sees us; we are given the chance to make a new start. Jacob is granted the vision at Bethel, receives the promise of God’s Presence with him, and he makes his vows to God.

The parable of Jesus tells us to wait until the harvest. Then what is wheat and what is weed will be clearly seen. The owner will know the right time. He knows what is truly wheat and what is truly weed. Then the weeds can be destroyed. And do you know what I reckon? I suspect that at the harvest I will get a big surprise as to which in fact are the weeds and which is the true wheat. How about you?

GOD IS FOUND AMONG THE ROCKS

The second thing that I delight in from the story of Jacob is that God came to him in a most unlikely situation: a rocky place.

In later times, the prophet Isaiah would see the glory of God in the golden temple at Jerusalem.

Not so with Jacob. This was no ornate temple, no chapel or meeting hall, no lofty cathedral of exquisite beauty, no evangelical meeting with emotional choir singing and ecstatic preaching, no parish church with beautiful liturgy. Bethel was an unpromising place for a divine revelation; plenty of stones lying around; not much else. That night, as the fugitive dropped his exhausted body to the ground, Jacob would have thought that the God of his people was far away. Yet Jacob found it to be a place where God was very close to him; he called this open place “the house of God”

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”

As much as we appreciate beautiful buildings set aside to the glory of God, do not let us ever imagine that these are the only “houses of God.”

There will be rocky times in your life, when you seem on your own (like Jacob) and you may imagine that God has deserted you, but that will not be true.

There will be unfortunate times in you life when you (like Jacob) have acted badly towards others, and suspect that God might want nothing to do with you. But that will not be true.

God will be there in the rocky place.

God will be with you in your shame.

The commitment of God is total. God is a covenant God who remains faithful to the promise agreement to be there for us. God is present in every place and situation. Sometimes you may be aware of the holy Presence. But most often you will have no such awareness.

Don’t be mislead by your feelings. Feelings are treacherous things, totally unreliable as a barometer of God’s Presence. Jesus the living Word of God promises to be with us always, and where Christ is, there is God. That is a covenant we can rely on.

No matter how hard the territory you are in, no matter how alone you feel, not matter how much anguish or grief you suffer: “Surely the Lord is in this place; though I did not know it.”

I am also alerted us to the truth that God will be present in others, even with those we may not like, those who discomfort us, irritate us, or appear to be irreligious. Rocky times, rocky situations, rocky people, are no barrier to God. Listen to what your opponents say: somewhere within their words there may be a word from God.

One part of me wishes it were not so. It would be much easier if irksome people were scrubbed off God’s visiting list, enabling me to not care about their opinions. It would be more comfortable to divide people into separate camps of “nice people and nasty people”, with a clear line down the middle. Then we would only have to take the nice people seriously and listen to them carefully, while consigning the opinions of that other rough mob to the trash can. But it is not like that. God loves every person, is present with all, and is capable of speaking to us from any one.

[What is more, which camp would I be in? There is enough of sneaky Jacob in me to suggest that it would by no means certain that I would be patted on the head and consigned to the “nice people” camp! And which do you reckon you would find yourself in? Thank heaven that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways.]

Rocky places, rocky predicaments, rocky people. Without experiencing a dream like Jacob, we can take it from Jesus that wherever we are:

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

IN OUR ROCKY SITUATIONS

Think about it. Think with faith about it.

Think about it when you are being hassled at work.

Think about it if you are lying on a bed in hospital

Think about it when you feel depressed and useless.

Think about it if you become bored in church.

Think about it when you are feeling badly let down by a friend.

Think about it if you are being verbally attacked.

Think about it when others prosper while you battle on.

Think about it if your whole world seems to be falling apart.

Think about it when you feel stretched to the limit of your endurance.

God is found among these rocks.

“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

THANKSGIVING

Your tireless love, O God, extends through the heavens,