Sermons

Do you remember when people used to ridicule changes in our language around disability? There was resistance to using word words like vision impaired instead of blind. Resistance to talking about people living with impaired vision instead of “the blind”? Do you remember such signs of respect being labeled as "politically correct" or "woke"? Ours is not the only culture to resist shoring respect to people who are seen as lesser and other. In this story at the centre of John's Gospel we find a man living with severe vision impairment and: 1. We see Jesus' disciples talking about him in front of him, as though he were an object rather than a person. 2. We see neighbours controlling his movement as though his disability placed him under their authority. 3. And we see religious leaders trying to co-opt him for their own cause. Jesus is not the one who turns all this around. The man who has lived all his life with a disability is the hero of this story!

It is everyone's favourite verse with good reason. John 3:16

We often think of temptation as desire for something bad or evil, but for Jesus in the desert, it was his good desires that the devil used to tempt him. That is often our experience as well - we desire good things and are vulnerable to the allure of shortcuts that promise to get us there faster. We need to understand that the wounds of our humanity are deep. Healing is happening in the slow unfolding of God's loving will. It is hard to be patient but quick-fixes can only sooth the pain for a time, they cannot bring the deep healing we need.

This is a tough passage from the Sermon on the Mount, with some hard sayings from Jesus. Jesus' words here about divorce have often been interpreted in a way that has caused great harm and lasting trauma. What do we do with that? Do we allow love and compassion to distract us from the law of God? OR do we condone harm done in the name of obedience to God? Are those our only choices? Is there, perhaps, another way?

These verses from Matthew’s Gospel, known as the Beatitudes, are just about the best known and most loved of all the bits of the Bible – probably among the most loved words from all literature. Why is that? What do people love about them? Is it just a nice thought that God will lift up all the people who have been trodden down and overwhelmed by the cultural tide that is always going in the other direction? Do we think: it is OK that they are trodden down, because God will take care of them? Is that why people love these words? Or is it because, when we are trodden down, we can think about a day when God will make sure that we come out on top? When we are losing, the Beatitudes assure us that one day we will win. And that hope can sustain us so well that we don’t feel any need to fight for a better world now? Is that why people love the Beatitudes? Those are cynical questions, I know, and I don’t think most people love them for those reasons. It seems to me that we are captivated by them because they draw us into paradox. They strip away simplistic thinking by placing opposites together and telling us that it is the nature of God’s kingdom that those opposites are held together.