St Albans Uniting Parish

Readings

Genesis 9:8-17

This promise in this morning’s passage from Genesis is for the continuance of all living things and the symbol of this covenant is the rainbow.  Maurice Andrew places the passage in our context with the observation that Greenpeace named its ship, the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ for its task of protesting to protect the continuance of all living things.  He also says that

As bearers of God’s promises, in as far as we are prepared to see ourselves as a part of the whole of humanity and the environment, we do have an abiding city here.  God’s promises are sure in that, for humanity in general, they do not even depend on any special favour or on being righteous, as Noah was said to be at the beginning.  God’s unconditional promise means the future is open for everyone and everything.[1]

Mark 1: 9-15

Ched Myers describes this episode in Mark as the second scene of the first act of a drama which opens as Jesus appears from Galilee and closes when Jesus reappears, coming back into Galilee. 

Within the two Galilee appearances there is baptism and vision at the Jordan, scene change to the wilderness testing, and an undefined passage of time until John’s arrest. [2].

Galilee was regarded with contempt and suspicion by most southern Jews.  It was surrounded by Hellenistic or Greco-Roman cities, populated heavily by gentiles or non Jews.  The population was predominantly poor and cut off by both geography and politics from Judea and Samaria yet that was where Jesus, who received divine favour, came from. 

Sermon

Last week we looked at the way there is an ordered sequence of secession in biblical stories that reflects real life.  This morning’s gospel is an example of that.  Jesus is baptised by John the Baptist and has a spiritual experience of a call to mission that drives him into the wilderness to reflect on the temptations of leadership. 

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mark 1:12,13). 

That is all Mark says about the temptations but Matthew and Luke enlarge on those verses by adding in detailed temptations and dialogue with the tempter.

The list of temptations probably arose from the experience of Matthew and Luke’s own communities and they ring true even today.  But just as Matthew and Luke where justified in reflecting on leadership temptations in their own communities we are equally justified in interpreting this for us.

We may not be in the habit of committing a misdemeanour and saying the devil made me do it, in fact our society has unspecified confinement and medication for people who use that excuse.  Nevertheless we can cope with the idea of personifying temptation that arises out of unforeseen circumstances and Satan is the traditional name for our darkest alter ego.

The suggestion that Jesus was with wild beasts could simply mean that keas picked at his tent and hedge hogs rustled in the rubbish when he was trying to sleep. The angels that might wait on us could be anything from an inspiring sunrise to an ample supply of wild food.

But we are all aware of the temptations that leadership offers and both the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches include units on boundary issues in ministry training.  The Presbyterian Church makes it part of ongoing ministry formation.  Court reporting regularly contains trials of people who have used positions of authority for personal gain and history is filled with reforming revolutionaries who became at least as tyrannical as the despots they sought to replace.  The present politics in South Africa is only the most recent example of reformers in need of reform.

All of us need to be aware of the opportunities our activities present to us and make sure that we retain the integrity we aspire to and people expect of whatever position we hold. 

The Gospels show us that temptation was an issue for the emerging church and it is certainly an issue for today’s church and today’s Christians.  The call to be citizens of the divine realm is a call to live with empathy and caring for others.  It is also a call to human beings with all our failings.  Humanity is easily driven by fear, envy and desire to reproduce our own kind so it is important to maintain our integrity by taking time out to reflect on our limitations from time to time. 

The Gospel then moves on to tell us that when John the Baptist is arrested Jesus returned to Galilee and began his mission.  So we note that Jesus begins where John’s mission was focused, on repentance.  Jesus comes proclaiming the good news of God.  Jesus also calls people to repent and John’s mission was a mission of repentance, but Jesus adds a reason for repentance.     

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’. (Mark 1:14,15)

The key message was that ‘the kingdom of God has come near.’  This was the good news of God and in calling for repentance Jesus was asking people to leave behind the ways they organised their lives previously and believe that whatever the kingdom of God was it was a real possibility. 

Our best assumption from extensive exegesis of the gospel text by a multitude of biblical scholars was that the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed was a new way of organising human society that was just and empathetic.  The kingdom of God was totally different to the top down imperial system that ruled the world of Jesus’ day.  From time to time the church has claimed to be the kingdom of God and the Roman Empire after Constantine certainly claimed the title.  Furthermore, when Rome lost its political power Europe remained reasonably united through the Holy Roman Empire.  At one stage even the British Empire claimed to be the most positive manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth.  

But from contemporary perspective the kingdom of God Jesus was talking about is not any of those manifestations.  Furthermore, we should not be surprised that explaining the kingdom of God is difficult because it appears from the Gospels that even Jesus had difficulty explaining it.  Whenever he tried to explain the kingdom of God Jesus told a story. Each story Jesus told give an insight into a completely new idea of a human community which could not be described by a chart of lines of responsibility or even a PowerPoint presentation.

Interestingly I have just finished a delightful contemporary novel that does the same thing called A Man Called Ove.[3]

Ove is an older man who, as an only child, was orphaned as a teenager but learned a real sense of integrity from his father along with a set of traditional male skills, brand loyalty to a particular model of car and a sense of meticulous and mind-numbing routines.  He gained further a set of skills after marrying the love of his life who encouraged him to complete a correspondence course on building.  He then moved from the job with the railways he inherited from his father to the department of building and housing where he spends the rest of his working life.

Tragedy follows him because his pregnant wife is made a paraplegic in a bus accident and not only loses their child but also the ability to have children.  After a teaching career that specialised in educating children regarded as unteachable she dies of cancer. 

The book opens after Ove has been made redundant.  Having lost the only two things that give meaning to his life the reader meets Ove measuring the centre of his lounge ceiling, boring a hole of exactly the right size and screwing in a hook.  The next morning, he gets up at his usual time makes a pot of coffee and eats two slices of toast. He then does is usual rounds of the housing complex to make sure everything is as it should be.  On his return he places a chair under the hook with its legs padded so as not to damage the wooden floor, climbs on the chair, puts a rope from the hook to a noose around his neck and kicks away the chair.  The rope breaks.

As he lies in bewilderment on the floor the new neighbour who will henceforth will be known as ‘the idiot who can’t even back a trailer’ smashes Ove’s letter box with a borrowed trailer.  After pointing out to the young man that the sign distinctly forbids driving in the residential area Ove moves car and trailer to the appropriate place.  The reader then moves to another chapter were Ove places a long plastic tube on the exhaust of his car takes the other end into the car with him and starts the engine.  At that point ‘the idiot who can’t even back a trailer’ falls off a ladder trying to prise open an upstairs window.  The man’s pregnant Iranian refugee wife comes banging on the garage door demanding that Ove takes them to the hospital.  It is probably on that journey that she not only smells the diesel fumes in the car but smells a rat as well. 

From then on she involves Ove in helping her family, the people in the housing complex and a few others and somewhere along the way the attempts to end his life cease.  There are little clues that things are changing, like the picture her daughter drew for him and wrote ‘to Granddad on it’. Ove went to a kitchen draw got out a magnet and placed the drawing at the top of the fridge door. 

The reader has their suspicions confirmed that his neighbour knew about his self-destructive attitude when, after attacking some burglars, he ends up in hospital diagnosed with a heart condition.  A grim faced junior doctor explained that Ove could go at any time to which his Iranian neighbour exclaimed ‘No need to worry about that, Ove is hopeless at dying.’

However, nature takes its course and one morning she wakes to see that no one has swept the snow off the paths.  She finds Ove dead in his bed having left strict instructions that he is just to be dumped in the ground next to his wife, there is to be no service and absolutely no one is to come.  Three hundred people came to pay their respects. 

Even at the best of times Ove had routines rather than life.  It was not until his neighbour drew him into caring for his neighbours that Ove truly lived.  As the movie poster proclaimed ‘Misery hates company’

Reluctantly Ove taught his Iranian neighbour to drive, restored the relationship between a bigot and his gay son and used his considerable skill help new neighbours restore their homes.  In giving and receiving love Ove became an adopted grandfather to children whose maternal grandfather had been killed in a foreign war. 

A man Called Ove is a delightful novel and as such it comes from the imagination of a very observant author.  But I could imagine the Jesus we meet in the gospels beginning the preface ‘The kingdom of God is like this’ 

In loving others Ove moved beyond regulations and routine and grief and not only found new life for himself but gave new life to his community.

It is in giving and receiving love that the rainbow covenant brings new life out of struggle and grief, exposing the reality that the kingdom of God is at hand.