Sermon by Anne & Martin Stewart

Whether we are aware of it or not, we all have a range of languages we use depending on our contexts. There is a language for things of a medical nature, a language for things botanical, there is the mysterious language of youth, and there is distinctive church language, and so on. All language is located; it has a situation in which it functions and out of which it has come. Some of the language we use is conceptual and some of it is quite earthed or grounded. For example, if you simply say “I love you,” to a person, you are offering them love as a concept. If you don’t flesh it out a bit, that person is left to having to interpret it according to their experience of you. But the problem with concept language is that by not being specific, it might be hard for them to understand. “Do you mean love as in the way that our friends Donna and Josh love each other – warm and generous and consistent, or do you mean love in the way that you treat me – lots of words about love but no willingness to help with the cooking, the dishes, the washing, the kids, or my need to be held at the end of the day with no strings attached?” There is quite a difference between conceptual language and earthed language. Interestingly, much of the language used in church is conceptual; we talk about things such as love and justification and redemption and forgiveness and even ‘God’ – but these concepts need to be fleshed out if they are to offer people something to link with in their lives. Interestingly Jesus never spoke of these things without offering earthed examples; he told stories that fleshed out the concepts, and thereby always allowing us to enter the experiences and make them our own. Faith has to take form: the Word becomes flesh. Thus with Jesus, God and God’s ways are not to be philosophical concepts or nebulous other-worldly things – no, with Jesus, God interacts in the everydayness of people’s lives. It is Christ who lives in us that is important, writes Paul in his letter to the Galatians.

By way of example, we see in today’s reading the way that Jesus handles the concerns of the Pharisee who invited Jesus to eat with him, not by talking about sin and debt and forgiveness as philosophical ideas, but by telling a story that invites the Pharisee to get what these concepts actually mean in people’s lives: “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Now Jesus and the Pharisee could have debated the idea of forgiveness all night long, but by telling the story and asking the question, Jesus forces Simon the Pharisee to address the issue in concrete terms: Which one will love him more? “I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt,” Simon replies. The Pharisee’s concerns about a terrible sinner being in his house are put into the background – by using a concrete story, Jesus invites the Pharisee to finish the story and declare exactly why the woman should be forgiven.

We love concepts because they encourage us to debate the issues they address such as fairness, equality, people’s rights, and so on. The theories around these issues fascinate us; they excite our passions and ignite our sense of justice. But our talk is nothing until it is put into practice. Faith is to be lived out in the everyday world. In offering us concrete stories, Jesus illustrated that faith is not a theory that we can shelve when we choose, but rather something that is taken into all of our lives, heart and mind and body, as well as soul.

I have noticed with the teenagers in our house that when I need to get something across to them, giving them a concrete example and inviting them into a role in that example seems to have much more effect than simply telling them what they should be doing or even why they should be doing it. Teaching by this approach takes more thought, more time and more care in the execution BUT it definitely gets better results. I usually start with an ‘I want you to picture this, or, imagine if you were…’ and it always amazes me how they can and do enter into the picture. But it does have to be well thought out – they are not fools and any blip in logic needs to be covered before I start.

A friend’s daughter was having some difficulty accepting a new person in her life. The new person was the woman who had moved in to live with her father. While most of the time the girl lived with my friend, every weekend she spent a night or two with her father and his partner. Soon there was conflict and it escalated to the point of putting the new relationship at risk and straining the old ones. Some concepts were put forward to the girl in a threatening manner: “You should be accepting of people! It is not right to be rude! Do as you are told! Why can’t you grow up?” I was asked to offer some ideas of a way through what was becoming an ugly and damaging scene. One day I sat down with the girl and invited her to try and picture what it might be like one day in the future when she found a person that she really loved and wanted to share her life with. I asked her to imagine what it would be like for her if her sister just couldn’t stand the man that she had chosen. How would she want her sister to treat him? “I would want her to try harder” she replied. “But,” I asked, “what if she couldn’t try harder or simply didn’t want to try? Would you want to have to choose between them and risk losing someone you loved?” “No” was the reluctant reply. Pushing it a bit further I asked, “If she couldn’t accept your choice what would she be saying about you – that you didn’t matter enough to her for her to try to accept your choice?” To my amazement I could see the cogs turning as the picture emerged for my friend’s daughter. She backed off her hostility and has done pretty well at getting along with her father’s partner. While there may never be a close relationship, there is relative peace as she has learned to accept that this new person is the choice of someone who she loves. Obviously the girl needed to come to terms with the fact that sometimes we all have to learn to live with what we cannot change in order to preserve important relationships – but she was struggling to take that concept on board. It needed to be earthed in her life in another way.

The reformer Martin Luther made a great deal of the way that God’s saving work in the world was earthed in the real world we experienced. His paraphrase of Mary’s song of praise early in Luke’s gospel has Mary describing herself in very concrete terms: “I am the workshop in which God operates.” Not only did God work in and through Mary’s thoughts and prayers but in everything she was – even in her very body! God’s workshop: what a wonderful image for us to ponder about how God works in us! It paints a picture of God planning, pottering, tinkering, shaping, and creating in our lives.

Now it could be argued that when Jesus talked about the kingdom of God that he was offering up a concept rather than a concrete reality. But look at these references to the kingdom. They are invariably followed with real events or very practical stories that earth the kingdom right into the lives of his audience. Here are a few examples of the way in which Jesus opens up the concept of the kingdom of God in very earthy ways in Luke’s gospel…

How is the word of God to be known? There is no conceptual ten-point plan, no strategy, or philosophy put forward – no it is like this: a sower went out to sow his seed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew up, it produced a hundredfold.”

How is everyone to be cared for? Jesus uses the catering crisis of the disciples to show that there is always enough for everyone in the Kingdom of God. The disciples are overwhelmed by the hoards of hungry people and suggest sending the people away, but Jesus calls them to give the people something to eat. They said, “We have no more that five loaves and two fish – unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” But Jesus said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” They made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the food, and gave it to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was let over was gathered up and it amounted to twelve baskets of broken pieces.

One day they asked him: “Who is the greatest?” Jesus didn’t offer them a theory, instead he took a little child to his side, and said to them, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.”

What must we do to inherit eternal life? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

But a lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbour?” To this Jesus talked about the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. That was Jesus for you, always locating the story in the context of the listeners who would all be able to picture the scenario, and by his doing this we are also invited to do the same. Who is our neighbour? What story might we tell that makes the same point as the one Jesus told? Try this one. You all will know of relationship break-ups in your family circle – you will have heard the words of judgement and recrimination – usually one of the parties is blamed more than the other and hurtful things are said by people who think that they know everything. Often the worst words of judgement are offered by church people. But who is our neighbour? Who are we to act like?

Once upon a time there was a young man about to be married for the second time. His first marriage had ended in divorce and he had found someone with whom he was brave enough to try again. He sent invitations to three old friends and their wives; friends he had known from school and youth group days. The first couple to reply were deeply devout Christians who declared they would not come to the wedding because they could not reconcile his divorce or remarriage with their faith. They disapproved of his life and could not condone this new chapter. The next reply came from a couple he had been very close to, also deeply committed Christians, these two announced that after much soul-searching they would come to the wedding but they needed him to know they were not comfortable with his choices either. One of them even took the man aside after the ceremony and made that point again. The third reply arrived, this one from a couple who do not describe themselves as Christians or attend any church. These two said they were very sad they could not attend because of a prior commitment but they were hugely excited about the new marriage and they enclosed a voucher for a one night stay in a flash hotel in a nearby resort town and hoped the wedding was a blast!

“Which of these three,” Jesus asked the lawyer, “do you think, was a neighbour? He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” Amen.