Sermons

This miracle of abundance is indeed from God, but I believe it is an abundance drawn out of what already exists. Drawn out of people who are encouraged and hopeful because Jesus has given them encouragement and shown them hope. In that hope, they are bold to share what they would once have kept jealously guarded for themselves.

With Jesus help, all of them are miraculously moved to share what they have. And there is enough left over to help drive home the message.

Do you see it yet? Do you understand how wrong we’ve all been – with our penchant for large architecture, and our devotion to historic properties? We are prone to following in David’s footsteps. Our sanctuaries try to capture the glory and grandeur of God in their design and decoration. We have meant well – we really do aim to honour God in this. But through the prophet, God was pointing in a different direction. Metaphor – not Greek or Hebrew or the Good Old King James Version – is the language of these divine ideas.

We are experiencing a global moment. In the last several years the approach to power by those who – in democracies all over the world – are granted the privilege of power by their fellow citizens has been hard to understand. And the citizens (you and I among them) have reacted to the occasional abuse of power and the slide towards absolutism. The all-or-nothing approach to politics is generating bad feelings and a growing sense of hopelessness. We say we want action – we want change – we want (something). But maybe what we need is John and Jesus.

We may have only experienced ‘repentance’ in relation to how horrible we are. The call to repent is aimed at a long and varied list of ‘sins’, but it is also a call to reconsider our actions, our attitudes, and our approach to life. Metanoia invites a turning around or a turning toward.

The word implies that we open our minds to other possibilities and different ideas. Better ideas. And in the context of this story of Jesus’ ‘rejection’ – by those who thought they knew him best – metanoia invites us to think again about what God is doing in our midst, about who Jesus is (to us) and what Jesus represents.

Again, there are those who would say God is either completely absent, or right here on “My” side. But maybe Jesus is just resting in the back.

Maybe Jesus would lift a weary eyelid and whisper “faith or fear?’ Maybe the lesson is in that question, and not in the calming of the waves. Maybe, just maybe, the collective wisdom and experience that we have of the goodness of God is enough to sail through this.

Once again in Scripture, the realities of being human come up against the reality of an infinite, mysterious, magnificent God. And – not for the