Readings:

2 Kings 5: 1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27; Mark 1: 40-45

Leprosy can still stir strong emotions.  The Leprosy Mission has a great ministry in not only treating the disease, but restoring people.  When I served at Murray Barracks in Port Moresby in the early 1970’s, there was an island in Fairfax Harbour which housed a leprosarium – many sufferers were segregated there.   More of that later.  At that time Libbie was an Army Nursing Officer serving at Taurama Medical Centre just outside Port Moresby.  There they treated a number of cases of leprosy among soldiers, both Papua New Guinean and I recall, one Australian who was there for a couple of months.  He’d contracted leprosy while serving in Vietnam and was sent to PNG for treatment because they knew how to do it there.

Illness can be a great leveller and is no respecter of persons.  We have two stories this morning, from First Kings and from St. Mark’s Gospel about people afflicted with leprosy – or what is called leprosy in the scriptures.  I’ll call it leprosy today, but it’s often a generic description for skin diseases.  But whatever the exact nature of the affliction was, those who suffered from it in Jesus time became almost no persons.  They were ostracised from their communities, shunned by their families, banned from any participation in communal life, or in the religious rituals that were the foundation of the communal life.   One writer describes them as corpses haunting the edges of communities they could no longer enter.  Their plight was awful.

There are differences with Namaan’s story – he was from what was then called Aram – modern day Syria.  He had military power and position and authority and influence, but none of these things could prevent him contracting his disease from which he longed to be healed.  There were probably not the same restrictions attached to leprosy sufferers as there were in Jewish society – Namaan seems to be quite free to travel for example.  The story of Naaman is both ancient and modern and has great insights combined with great humour.    Namaan’s disease affects him so much that he does what many modern day very well off people who become seriously ill do – he seeks a cure in another country.  In fact so serious is his disease  that he enlists the help of foreign political and religious leaders with whom he’d been in conflict. When the general comes to Elisha’s house, after giving a great gift to the King, he expects the royal treatment. He expects to see the great prophet himself, not some functionaries who tell him to dip seven times in the nearest river. He assumed he’d get a complex and expensive treatment, the best money could buy, but he is given the simplest directions: what you need to be healed is right in front of you, follow the directions, and you will be well.

Naaman’s servants prevail upon him.  They perhaps appeal to his vanity, but they remind him that he would gladly pay a fortune for relief, when relief can come for free. We don’t know if Naaman ever had faith in the treatment, but he followed the directions, and was restored to health. In the end, it’s a triumph of humility over hubris and arrogance. Sometimes the healing we need is right in front of us.

Jesus is confronted by the man with leprosy, who instead of calling out “Unclean!, Unclean!” as he was required to do, asks outright to be made clean.  Jesus, we’re told is moved with pity, or some translations say compassion, but what is really going on is hinted at by the footnotes which say “other ancient authorities read anger”  The Greek word translated as “moved with pity” means literally “stomach turning.”  You can perhaps pick this up in Jesus words “I do choose.  Be made clean”.  They direct, abrupt – try saying them yourselves a number of different ways with different emphasis.  Perhaps Jesus is angered by what has happened to the man in being excluded from his community.  Jesus deliberately touches him, breaking all the community taboos and the story goes to quite a bit of length about the man’s restoration to his community – which is in the hands of the priests who administer and uphold the community rituals.  So we have three aspects coming together in this story as well – the physical, the communal, and the spiritual; or body, mind and spirit  – and all are crucial in the man’s healing.  They do in a sense in Namaan’s story as well, the spiritual manifests itself particularly in Namaan’s realization that there is on true God – that’s recounted in verse 15.  I like to think that Namaan’s community – his court becomes a better place as he realizes what wise people he has among his servants.

How do we as 21^st century Christians respond to such stories?  It’s useful to reflect on what are and have been the “leprosies” of the era in which we live – illnesses that  result in fear, social exclusion, even loathing, discrimination.  HIV/Aids is the obvious example in our era. Some years ago, it was news around the world when the late Princess of Wales was filmed touching a person with HIV/Aids.   I mentioned the leprosarium in Fairfax Harbour in Port Moresby.  By the time I was back in Papua New Guinea with ABM in the mid 90’s, the leprosarium had closed.  A friend of mine, an Anglican priest, was also the wife of the Australian High Commissioner at the time and found herself on a fairly high level committee looking at HIV/Aids in PNG – the incidence was growing alarmingly.  Some in the PNG Government wanted to round up the sufferers and house them in the old leprosarium.   There have been stories in Australia of attempts to exclude children with HIV/Aids from schools.  The other major illness leading to exclusion in our own era is mental illness.

We tend to adopt a “medical view” of illness and forget about or downplay the other aspects.  My father for many years was an honorary ambulance bearer (as they called them in those days)  I can remember him telling me that often he coped with the things he had to do by just concentrating on the injury in front of him.  In an immediate situation that’s maybe what you do, but there is much more to people than flesh and blood as we know.  The Christian view of healing considers the whole person and their community.  In the story from St. Mark’s Gospel, the community is healed, and that’s just as important as the healing of the individual.  I think our modern day community still needs healing in respect of mental illness for example.  The “medical” view leads us to concentrate on “curing” not “healing.”  In the Gospels, the word often used for healing is the same word as is used for “saving”.  So it means much more than a cure, Jesus brought people to wholeness of body, mind, and spirit.  In the course of my ministry, I’ve seen people both cured and healed, but I’ve also seen people who were healed but not cured, and people who were cured, but not healed.

I am convinced that our touch and prayer can be life-transforming. That’s why we lay hands on people and pray for them in services here.  Nevertheless, many of those we will touch, or anoint, and pray for will continue to live with chronic illness; they may die. This shouldn’t deter us from practicing healing ministry. Healing practices like prayer and laying on of hands and anointing can be crucial among the many factors influencing a person’s health condition. There is much recent medical research which asserts that prayer, meditation, and religious commitments can have a positive, indeed, curative, impact on people’s health.  I believe that our prayers create a sacred space that enables God’s aim at wholeness to be more effective in people’s lives.  And after all, that’s what the stories of Namaan and the man Jesus encounters are really about – lives transformed, lives made whole.  May we claim God’s grace as we journey to being a healed transformed community of faith in which individuals may find healing and wholeness.

COLLECT FOR THE DAY:
Everliving God, your Son, Jesus Christ, healed the lepers and brought good news to the despised and outcast: grant us your gifts of compassion and self-control, that in serving others in their need we may strive for the imperishable wreath that you bestow on all who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen

READINGS
2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9: 24-27
Mark 1: 40-45

HYMNS
Introit:  638 (tune 376)
Gradual:  246
Offertory:  536
Post Communion:  523
Missional:  242

DOWNLOAD .PDF: For the entire document, you can download and view it here
Tidings 12th February

COLLECT FOR THE DAY:

Saving God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, healed the sick and brought them wholeness of body and mind: inspire us, his disciples, so that we may constantly proclaim his gospel by our words and by the dedication and integrity of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.   Amen

READINGS Isaiah 40: 21-31 Psalm 147: 1-11 1 Corinthians 9: 16-23 Mark 1: 29-39

HYMNS Introit: Gradual: Offertory: Post Communion: Missional

DOWNLOAD .PDF: For the entire document, you can download and view it here. Tidings 5th February

Readings:

Isaiah 40: 21-31; Psalm 147: 1-11; 1 Corinthians 9: 16-23; Mark 1: 29-39

Libbie was driving home from the Parish of Freshwater a few days ago and, as she usually does, had the radio on in the car.  She heard part of an interview between Dr. Norman Swan who produces programmes like “The Health Report” for the ABC and the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, Rabbi Sachs.  The Chief Rabbi was asked about science and religion, and he replied along fairly conventional lines about how one could approach truth through both, and then he used the image of the human brain.  He said science and religion were like the right half and the left half of the human brain.  You can’t live with half a brain said the Chief Rabbi.  Now, you and I might be able to think of people we’ve come across in our lives who try to do that.  Seriously, I think many of you know that the right brain and the left brain are responsible for different functions in our bodies, the right brain for “head stuff” and the left for “heart stuff”, but both complement each other and work together.  I think that this image is a useful one to hold on to when thinking about the readings for today.  They are really quite different, but they complement each other and work together.

I have to own that the reading from Isaiah is one of my favourite passages of Scripture.  It is set in the context of the exile of the people of Israel in the 6^th century before the birth of Christ.  The people, except for a few, called “the remnant” who remain are captured and taken into exile by the Babylonians.  Jerusalem is besieged, then captured and the temple destroyed.  Truly they believe that their ways have been hidden from God and that they have been cast off and disregarded.  Yet in wonderful language that appeals to the imagination, God promises a restoration.  The language and the imagery is vast and sets God’s actions in a cosmic dimension.  It’s direct, almost accusatory.  “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning?  God through divine energy and will creates the world and its peoples.  God creates the ends of the earth, stretches out the heavens, those who think they are powerful are brought to naught.   The Psalm, a hymn of praise, celebrates God’s grandeur as well.  He determines the number of the stars, he covers the heavens with clouds.  There is a sense in which we can feel insignificant in all of this – like grasshoppers.  Humans by comparison with God  rise and perish in a day, carried off like chaff before the wind.  But there is great joy, too, in being caught up in something so vast an unimaginable.  I can remember an occasion standing by myself at a lookout early one morning in the Blue Mountains when no one else was around and the sun was riding.  Against that vast canvas I felt quite small, yet it was an indescribably joyful moment to be somehow part of such a scene.

We are a part of the vast scene of God’s creative power and energy, part of his unsearchable understanding.  And we are a part of it because we have a vocation within the vastness described by Isaiah and in the Psalm.  We are a part of the universe, a part of God’s created order; we are made in God’s image and likeness.  And that unsearchable, unfathomable energy and creative power, which can be beyond our comprehension are focused on us in our vulnerability and weaknesses.   God is not morally indifferent. The downtrodden will be lifted up and the wicked cast down, the brokenhearted will be healed, says the Psalmist, Isaiah writes  “He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless – those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles.  Do you ever have dreams about flying, soaring unaided above the earth – just imagine it being like that.  That power and energy can be awakened in us if we are open to God, if we allow our imaginations to roam.  That vastness can have a particular focus.  We can be channels of that divine energy for our time and place.  “Make me a channel of your peace” we’ve sung this morning.  Openness to God means we can do it.

We turn to the Gospel reading this morning for the particular focus.  Set against the readings from Isaiah and the Psalm, we have a kind of “day in the life” of Jesus.  Jesus has just preached at the local synagogue. He gains notoriety that day not only for his message but his healing of a demon possessed man. The healing, of course, carries a symbolic message – the power of healing, ascribed to God is focused in this one person.  None of the Gospels calls Jesus’ healing works “miracles”. They are signs (a word St. John uses), pointers, glimpses of who God is and what God’s purpose is  – that is, wholeness. He then retires with his inner circle for dinner. Jesus is still “on duty” – he doesn’t find rest at Simon’s house.

Simon’s mother-in-law, the matriarch of the house, is sick with a fever and unable to fulfill her vocation as hostess and hospitality-giver. Jesus raises her up, and she responds by serving her guests. This is not a matter of “Poor woman. Has to get up from her sick bed and serve the blokes”.  It’s a sign of vocation – the word used for “serve them” is exactly the same as Jesus would use when he said he came not to be served, but to serve. Simon’s mother in law shares in the vocation of service in her time and place.  We are called to service in our time and place – something given focus at the ordination of seven deacons at the Cathedral yesterday.  They have a vocation of service, but as The Rev’d. Canon Rosalind Brown made clear in her sermon, it’s something which the whole church is called to share.  Deacons are a focus of that vocation, they have a calling to model it, but they don’t do it on their own.  Healing is never solely for our personal aggrandizement or benefit, it is also about reclaiming our vocation or discovering our calling for our unique time and place. We receive God’s healing touch so we can share in the healing of others.

The Gospel reading concludes with a description of Jesus at prayer. Jesus has worked late in the night, healing ailments of body, mind, and spirit. He has restored bodies and social standing. He has transformed outcasts like the demon possessed man into insiders. As morning dawns,  Jesus retreats to a solitary place for a time of prayer and meditation.  Jesus’ ministry involves the rhythm of action and contemplation. His healing power and personal authority come from “waiting on God” (Isaiah 40). Whatever we do should come from “waiting on God’ either personally or as a parish.  Prayer is essential.  In a sense, the readings come full circle.  We’ve gone from the vastness of God, to the particular in the daily life of Jesus and the focusing of the vastness of God into individual humans like the man in the synagogue or Simon’s mother-in-law, and then Jesus returns to a deserted place where in the silence  he too can feel part of the vastness and grandeur of God and feel restored himself.  Let us pray; Gracious God, we come to be restored and healed.  Fire our imaginations with wonder in your truth and love so that we may be channels of your peace and bring your love and hope in our time and place.  Amen.

Readings:  Isaiah 6.1-8:  Psalms 96:  2 Corinthians 5.14-20:  John 21.15-17

Many of you will know that I was the Priest in the Parish of Texas Inglewood before I came here to Bribie Island.  About half way between Inglewood and Warwick is a district called Cement Mills – there used to be a settlement of that name not far off the highway until the early 1960s.  I would take a property service in the district every now and then – and we always had a Christmas service there.  In the course of visiting I discovered that in a shed on one of the properties was an old travelling altar – the kind of thing that would pack up into a box – with everything inside it – and be carried on a pack horse.  I was delighted to discover something more – that the altar had been reliably traced as one owned by Archdeacon Benjamin Glennie and used as he travelled all over the Darling Downs.   The property owners restored the altar and we used it at a Christmas service on their property.  It was a great privilege, but a strange and humbling experience to stand at an altar at which Glennie had stood.  But there are other ways in which his name and influence filters down to us this morning.  He did much to establish the school in Toowoomba that bears his name.  I didn’t find out until after I had asked her to read the first lesson that Helen Lower is a former student of the Glennie School.  Benjamin Glennie had a vision for the so called four “evangelist churches” on the Darling Downs – St. Matthew’s Drayton, St. Mark’s Warwick, St. Luke’s Toowoomba and St. John’s Dalby and was instrumental in their development.  His diaries record at one point: “I am happy to report that Mr. Marshall has given a very nice site of 11 acres for a parsonage and Glebe at Warwick.  Also we have in hand nearly 50 pounds on the Dalby Church Building Account” Both Archdeacon Herbert Booth and Canon Geoffrey Thomas are former Rectors of St. Mark’s Warwick, and in Geoffrey’s case, of St. Luke’s Toowoomba as well.  Bishop Raymond Smith is a former Rector of St. Matthew’s Drayton – all of them followed in some way in Glennie’s footsteps.

We celebrate today the bi-centenary of the birth of Benjamin Glennie.  Who was he?  He was born on 29 January 1812 in Dulwich, in England.  He was the twelfth son of Dr William Glennie, principal of a private school in Dulwich, and his wife Mary. He was educated at his father’s school and at King’s College, London. At the age of 30, after several years on the Continent as a tutor, he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge (B.A., 1847). Three of his elder brothers had migrated to New South Wales: and one was later ordained.  Benjamin arrived at Sydney in January 1848 in the party of Dr William Tyrrell, first bishop of Newcastle.

Benjamin Glennie was made deacon by Bishop Tyrrell at Morpeth in March 1848 and appointed to Moreton Bay, then part of the Diocese of Newcastle.  There he faced an immense pioneering task, made more difficult by the ineffectiveness of his predecessor who drowned at Nundah in what were called suspicious circumstances.  He faced much religious indifference and a nervous condition which threatened the early termination of his ministry. He battled this throughout his life.  In Brisbane he increased the congregation at the temporary St John’s Church and established day and Sunday schools. He also visited Ipswich each month and made an extensive pastoral tour on the Darling Downs. He was ordained priest in 1849, and transferred next year to Drayton on the Darling Downs. In 1850-60 he was responsible for the whole of the Downs but after the Diocese of Brisbane was created in 1859 and his territory divided into parishes, he served at Warwick in 1860-72 and Drayton in 1872-76. He engaged in long and arduous pastoral tours which in the early years averaged almost 5000km a year on foot or horseback. He laid the foundations of a parish system on the Downs by establishing congregations, buying strategic sites and building churches.

In 1863 he was appointed the first archdeacon of Brisbane by Bishop Edward Tufnell but apparently he took little part in diocesan administration until Bishop Mathew Hale moved him to the parish of Toowong, Brisbane, in 1876. From 1877 he was full-time archdeacon and, as examining chaplain, was also responsible for training the first local candidates for holy orders. When Bishop William Webber arrived in 1886 Glennie retired from active work and was appointed first honorary canon of St John’s pro-Cathedral, Brisbane. He married in 1868, but he and his wife Mary who predeceased him had no children. He died on 30 April 1900 at Wynnum.

He was not the first Anglican clergyman at Moreton Bay, but he can be honoured as the pioneer of the Anglican ministry in Queensland. He won widespread affection and respect for his devoted pastoral work.  He accepted human fallbility and rarely made moral judgments about people.  His long, patient and devoted ministry in the face of many setbacks, his extensive travels and his foresight in laying the foundations of a parish structure all provided for the future growth of the Church.  He was often poor through the failure of his people to support him adequately.  In his diaries he writes at one point of “the folks in Warwick” who were “exacting and withheld their subscriptions to the Stipend Fund.”  But he was generous with money and by personal exertion raised the nucleus of the fund which made possible the foundation in 1908 of the Glennie School in Toowoomba. He is often referred to as the ‘Apostle of the Downs’.

That’s who he was in a nutshell.  Why celebrate him.  A report from the House of Bishops of the Church of England in 2008 said in part;  “From early times the Christian Church has celebrated those in whom it has seen, with particular clarity, the power of God to transform human lives – those who first heard Jesus’ teaching and followed his call, those who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and carried forward the Church’s mission in its beginnings, and those who have succeeded and been inspired by them in subsequent generations.” (House of Bishops of the Church of England  2008).  We rightly celebrate the great saints – St. Peter for whom this church is named – Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, the patron saints of churches Glennie established.  Often we can feel somewhat separated from them.  How good to be able to give thanks to God for one from whom we are not separated by very much, one who did much to establish the life of the church in this Diocese, one who was faithful and persevering despite all sorts of difficulties.  As we have just celebrated Australia Day and inevitably are drawn into reflection on our history, how good to be able to give thanks for one who was a true pioneer.  In many ways, Benjamin Glennie was a fish out of water – a cultured Englishman who was well read and fluent in three European Languages suddenly thrust into the rough and tumble of the bush and its fledgling communities.  I have a published  collection of letters written by some of his contemporaries – all from England and all plonked into the bush and the letters reveal just how tough it was. It’s important that we, as a community know our history; not to be bound by it, but it has made us who we are and we need to know from where we have come if we are to confidently face the future God has in store for us.  The prayer for Australia Day in our Prayer Book says; “We bless you for our history, with all its struggles in adversity, its courage and hope.” (APBA page 204)  We could easily adapt that and pray to God; “We bless you for Benjamin Glennie, with all his struggles and adversity, his courage and his hope.”

God give us grace to be worthy followers of his life and example, urged on as St. Paul was and Benjamin Glennie himself was by the love of Christ.

Acknowledgments:

Australian Dictionary of Biography: Glennie, Benjamin (1812-1900) by K. Rayner

The Reverend Benjamin Glennie: a lone survivor? Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland volume 14 issue 11 pp433-448  Watson, Tom: Brisbane Q.

COLLECT FOR THE DAY:
Heavenly Father, loving shepherd of your people,we thank you for your servant Benjamin Glennie,who was faithful in the care and nurture of your flock; and we pray that we may follow the good of his example and grow into the fullness of the stature of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,one God, for ever and ever.   Amen

READINGS
Isaiah 6: 1-8
Psalm 96
2 Corinthians 5: 14-20
John 21: 15-17
1 Samuel 3:1-10,
Psalm 139: v1-5, 12-18
1 Corinthians 6: 12-20
John 1: 43-51

HYMNS
Introit:   188
Gradual: 672
Offertory:  534
Post Communion:  409
Missional: 531

DOWNLOAD .PDF: For the entire document, you can download and view it here.
Tidings 29 January

COLLECT FOR THE DAY:
Bountiful God, through your Son you have called us to re-pent of our sin, to believe the good news, and to celebrate the coming of your kingdom: teach us, like Christ’s first apostles, to hear the call to discipleship, and, forsaking old ways, to proclaim the gospel of new life to a broken world; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for-ever. Amen

READINGS:
Jonah 3: 1-10
Psalm 65: 5-12
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Mark 1: 14-20

HYMNS:
Introit: 598
Gradual: 589
Offertory: 259
Post Communion: 459
Missional: God’s Call Rings Out

DOWNLOAD .PDF:
For the entire document, you can download and view it here.
Tidings 22 January

There will be only one service that day, at 8.30am. The AGM meeting
will be held in the Church Hall, Cooinda, immediately after the event.

Jonah 3: 1-10; Psalm 65: 5-12; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20

When Libbie and I travel, we like to do our own thing.  Sometimes people ask us “Did you do a tour?”  Well, we don’t.  Partly that’s a reflection of our own personality types – we both find large groups of people exhausting – so those of you who have had any exposure to Myers-Briggs Personality Type might be thinking “Oh yes, they’re both I’s” and partly because when we go away we’re generally peopled out.  It goes with the personality type territory.  And partly it’s a reflection of tour guides we have seen.  I remember once visiting Versailles in France..  For those who have been there, you’ll know it’s a wonderful experience, but it was ruined for us by tour guides.  We were doing our own thing, trying to take our time to look closely, but constantly having to avoid phalanxes of people practically running us down, pointing here, cameras clicking there, wherever they managed to point them, all the while trying to keep up with someone at the front with a coloured flag leading them around at a great rate of knots while talking fifteen to the dozen – or whatever the metric equivalent is.  Or if you’ve been in one of the great cathedrals trying to find some time and space for a chat with God, you’ll know how difficult that can be sometimes as tour guides rush here and there.  We had a similar experience in Basle in Switzerland recently – had to get off the footpath to make way for the tour guide and the following mob.

We did make an exception once.  Over ten years ago we were in Prague and joined a walking tour of the city and it was a completely different experience – one that stuck with us.  We were a small group, two Australians, three young men from middle America on their first overseas trip, a Canadian woman who lived and worked in New York.  We met our tour guide at a pre-arranged spot – and what an amazing experience it was.  She was a young Czech university student – supplementing her income no doubt, and why not.  But we took time as we walked.  And as she lead us around we walked and talked with her and with each other, and our eyes were opened.  She told us things about landmarks and obscure corners that we wouldn’t have otherwise heard, she pointed things out, she gave us time to look and to observe.  I remember sitting with her in a café – a literary café where as long as you buy one cup of coffee, you’re free to sit and read and watch for as long as you wish.  Gradually we became aware of her story, and her city’s story, and we began to see things through her eyes.  And as we continued to walk and talk, we lost track of time – there was no “We have to be somewhere else in ten minutes” – and we learned from her and from each other.  Lives and opinions began to change.  I’ll always remember one of the young American men saying to Libbie and I that he’d come to realize that next time he came to Europe he would need to take the time to gain some understanding of one of the European languages.  He said he was surprised to feel in many places how much Americans were disliked – they have a reputation of being insular and arrogant and demanding – and he wanted to be able to engage in some way with the people he met.  He was beginning to see his own life and the life he saw around him in a different way.  I’ll never meet him again, but I hope he carried through with it.

So, from the Gospel reading this morning, as Jesus gathers a small group around him and says “Follow me”, what makes them follow?  I want to suggest that if we think about the two different types of tour guide, we might find an answer.  Jesus knew the territory, both physically and spiritually – he was, after all, a Rabbi. And as he gathered his group together they began to walk – and he walked with them.  Not some flag waving hustler out the front – but with the group of disciples.  And as they went, he told stories – stories about everyday things of life – farmers planting the crop, travelers falling among thieves, vineyard owners looking for day labour, trustworthy and untrustworthy servants, bridesmaids at a wedding, a woman searching for a lost coin.  And as they walked and shared the stories, Jesus pointed things out to them about the landscape of their culture and their lives, he answered their questions, not always in the way they expected or wanted to hear.  And gradually they began to see things in a different way – they began to see through his eyes – not always, and not all of them – but as they began to see things through his eyes, lives and opinions began to change.  They saw that he wasn’t always talking just about the ordinary things, but behind it all there was a much greater and deeper reality- the kingdom of God had come near.  It was time for repentance – which is not just a change of mind about lives and living, but a change of practice in the way they lived their lives.

Now just imagine for a moment that we are about to start a journey through a foreign city or town……..and we’re not going to have to wait too long for our imaginations to be fulfilled, because we enter that foreign territory the moment we go out the door this morning.  Christians are increasingly marginalized in our society, as are all people of faith.  On Friday night, Fr. Daniel Berris was commissioned as Priest-in-Charge of the Provisional Parish of North Lakes – where Bishop Raymond Smith has been working to establish the faith community.  Bishop Jonathan Holland in his address invited the congregation to think back 50 years to 1962.  He told us of St. Stephen’s Coorparoo which then had a Sunday School of 900 with 60 teachers.  They hired a train to Beenleigh for their Sunday School picnic.  He said if we had walked out on a Monday  morning and picked up our Courier Mail, there would have been a column “From the Pulpit” on page 2.  On Wednesday there was a section “Round the Churches”.  We are increasingly being frozen out of public discourse.  Not because we don’t want to be part of it – but often the media just aren’t interested in what we might want to say.  Our community speaks a different language now – the language of consumerism tells us to spend on things; our language tells us that where our heart is, there will our treasure be.  The language of pragmatism says do what seems OK; our language speaks of righteousness – doing what is good and honourable and true.  The language of individualism says “I” and I can do what I like as long as no one gets hurt; our language says not what I want, but what God wants and talks of sin and repentance  The language of celebrity says “look at me, I’m famous”; our language says those who would be great must be servants.  Bishop Jonathan said that we are daily faced, as the Psalmist was, or as Jonah was with the question of the exiles in Babylon “How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.”

Well, if we’re going to sing the song, we need to know the words – and have the words deep within us.  That takes time in prayer, in reflection on the scriptures, in allowing Christ to be the tour guide around our own lives first – pointing out landmarks, telling us about obscure corners we thought were hidden from view, gradually beginning to see our lives through his eyes, gradually changing our lives and refining our ways – and what we do here in worship is crucial in all of that.  And then we go out, with the tour guide around our own landscape of which we are a part, but also not a part – in it but not of it.  And we bear two gracious invitations with us – one  we heard last week – “Come and see”.  The other we hear today – “Follow me”.  God give us grace that with his disciples through the years, we may turn to him wholeheartedly.

There is an epilogue –  Marilyn Cullen reminded Libbie and I as we drove back from Northlakes on Friday night, the exiles came back.  Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land does not last forever.  But if we don’t sing it, who will?

Note:

The “tour guide” theme was drawn from an address given by The Rev’d Canon Rosalind Brown  at the 2012 Clergy Summer School

COLLECT FOR THE DAY:
Eternal God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, is now exalted as Lord of all, and pours out his gifts upon the Church: grant it that unity which only your Spirit can give, keep us in the bond of peace, and bring all creation to worship before your throne; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

READINGS:
1 Samuel 3: 1-10
Psalm 139: v 1-5, 12-18
1 Corinthians 6: 12-20
John 1: 43-51

HYMNS:
Introit: 207
Gradual: 626
Offertory: 497
Post Communion: 429

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Tidings 15 January