Trinity 1 -Prioritising the embrace of love over rules- Mark 2.23-3.6, 2 Corinthians 4.5-12
Today we tread into the territory of Ordinary time. We’ve had a lot of intense focussed journeying with Jesus throughout Lent and Easter learning the heart of discipleship and the amazing opportunities the risen Jesus brings to us in assurance that life in all its fullness is ours. The very life force of the creator of the universe includes us in their orbit. How wonderful! And we’ve seen Ascension-tide, and Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, what a heady mix of high level, deep theological stuff we’ve been a part of! Now we have reached Ordinary time, we can put our feet up and relax a bit. We have 20 weeks or so of easy bible to listen to and quietly grow the borders of our extraordinary gift of life.
Only that’s a complete lie. Here on week 1 of Trinity season, our bible readings are nowhere near easy reads for summertime, what with Jesus being eye-balled for putting his foot wrong on the sabbath by zealous religious types, and Paul talking of being rinsed for all his got for the sake of his sharing the story of good news.
What! Giz a break! We’ve only just recovered from the vertigo of getting our heads around the idea of a trinity for crying out loud.
Well now, this season is certainly not going to be an easy ride across the summer months. Not the easy novella for reading on sun drenched holiday beaches. Mores the pity. Nope, this is the growing season of faith, this is the season for back-breaking turning of the soil of our lives, in order that what we plant now might become a good harvest of action, thought and prayer by the autumn. And we have 2 snippets in the gospel today, 2 mini stories as it were, that immediately get us to sit bolt upright as Jesus comes along and seems to totally push aside the rules and regulations that he, if he was a good teacher of the Law, was meant to exemplify.
Jesus however was fully aware both times that he was being watched so as to be caught out and so he deliberately seems the flaunt the rules, teasing his watchers into calling a priority on what is the right thing to do. Is it more right to follow the rules all the time, or is it right to break the rules from time to time in order to meet a real need?
Jesus was willing, himself, to override certain ceremonial sensitivities for the needs of those he was with and argued that there was good historical precedent for his case. His easy one liner to us today would be to say: “We have to make sure that we are not so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good.”
‘Nice one vicar, clever words. I’ll write that one down and put it on my twitter feed!’
But I’m not finishing there. Let’s unpack what that means a bit. It means things are present to us in the structures of our faith to give us a framework to grow well, but that sometimes the framework itself can get in the way and to not be afraid of calling priority on something so that one single universal truth of God’s heart may never ever be shifted, and that is that all, absolutely all human beings, no matter what colour, creed, shape, or form they come in, are loved by God and are to be shown that love when they come through the doors.
I had a rare plant once appear in the vicarage garden. I say appear because I didn’t plant it there. I don’t know what it was I couldn’t pin it down in the books, but it was very pretty. It was growing directly where the rhubarb would later put out huge leaves and smother the sunlight from it. What could I do? If I try and move a wild flower it will likely not survive. If I leave things to chance, well the rhubarb would gladly take whatever resources it could get its hands on. I had to intervene. I made a choice to just go out and lop away stems of rhubarb as they came up. Foregoing an early crumble I tell you! Just so that, that one flower could be enjoyed for what it was, and it was lovely.
Think of the passage of the prodigal son, who left and mis-used the inheritance he had paid forward to him. When he eventually returned destitute and about as ceremonially acceptable as camel dirt. His father actually fore-went social standing, and ran, skirts flying to embrace this thing ridden with flies and scraps of what used to be clothing. Because he knew that no matter what had befallen the boy, he was his own and nothing would disqualify him from being embraced as such.
When we welcome people at the doors each Sunday, it is like we who are inside our heavenly parent’s house choosing to give that same recognition to all who come in, that they are our sibling, our beloved sister or brother, even if you’ve never set eyes on them before in your life. God’s family is wide.
And the structures we live by here- they can be flexed. The way we do our services? They are so valuable and meaningful and yet there are other ways of saying the same thing. Those precepts of faith we hold dear- not one of them is so essential that it should get in the way of someone knowing that they are the beloved child of God’s family.
When we had the many bikes parked outside on the lawn at All Souls recently. It was brilliant to have some of the folk come in and share the service with us. It was equally brilliant that others basked in that wonderful sunshine we had that day, and lapped up a sense of closeness to God in the social chatter they shared in the shade of the church building, having used their good time to help raise funds for our church there. Worship of 2 different kinds was happening, and it was fantastic, flexible, and faith-filled. It was David in the temple pinching the bread of the presence all over again.
We still have some challenges in the churches about being able to embrace and welcome. Nationally, no globally, we are a mess and a laughing stock as we argue our way between those who feel excluded for the including of peoples in ways that fall foul of deeply held convictions of faith, such as the blessings of same sex couples, and the exclusion of the same. Locally, we’re doing alright on that front, but there will always be some things we can attend to. Things where we may feel that a line has been crossed that shouldn’t be crossed in our welcome of others, where our inner-heart response may be like the other son in the story of the prodigal son, one of disgust and disdain. It is worth asking ourselves if we have ever experienced a moment of that kind.
Christ demonstrated that there was a need for making priorities amongst the scaffolds of religion that holds up our living breathing faith. All God’s children are to be welcomed. And there will be moments of discomfort in doing that, and swallowing of pride.
We look at Paul’s words in the New Testament reading, and we will find there is a pattern there. In everything, every time Paul did something for the benefit of God’s world, it was pain to him. Pain to him, but gain to others. All we will do in the act of embracing every single sister or brother of ours, even the ones we don’t know, it will be costly to us, but of great mercy to them. That is the pattern of faith. It is gift. Gift comes with cost. Someone will bear the cost, and it shouldn’t be the broken frightened, nervous, one who comes to the door perhaps for the very first time.
When we did the groundwork for joining the Inclusive Church movement, we did so knowing that it would always be a work in progress where we can never say we have fully arrived. But we did so because we could see around just how many groups of people had despaired of the church over the years, with many giving it up as a lost cause seeing it as an institution unable to hold its arms open in welcome like its founder did. Certainly as I spend time with transgender youth from various corners of the world, it is a repeating theme I come across time and time again. Similarly, it is a wonder we have as many women ministers as we do, given the way the Church has treated women and their journeys of vocation over the last century or so.
There is so much to do. So much we have to learn about for this very simple task of just making anyone feel welcome. But it is the crux of mission and if Jesus can break the rules so as to meet the very real needs of the people around him, so can you. He is your big brother, and he leads you with a good example.
