Text: Matthew 22.34-46; Ps 90.12
Theme: (1) Jesus the Jester and (2) teach us to number our days
Prayer: O Saviour Christ, in whose way of love lays the secret of life and the hope of all people. We pray for quiet courage to match this hour. We did not choose to be born or to live into such an age, but let its problems, challenge us, its discoveries, exhilarate us, its injustices anger us, its possibilities inspire us, and its vigour renew us, for your kingdom’s sake. Amen.
I am torn this week because I want us to reflect upon both the Gospel and the Psalm, and I have had trouble linking the two into one neat sermon. So, in the end I said, blow it, I’m going to talk about both, and pray that it’s not too long and you are still with me at the end.
First, two riddles. What is the one thing that all wise people regardless of politics and religion agree is between heaven and earth? A: ‘and.’ What is greater than God, worse than evil, the poor have it, the rich require it, and if you ate it you would die? A: ‘nothing.’ At the end of his interaction with the pharisees where Jesus has played a straight bat to their tricky question about the greatest commandment; giving the response we all know so well and use each and every Sunday – Jesus answers back with a riddle. A riddle that can’t be solved unless you truly recognise Jesus for who he is and FOLLOW him!
And that response is impossible for these religious authorities. It would rearrange their entire world. It would mean a loss of control and authority. So, they don’t answer. And they don’t dare to ask any more questions. Instead, they are silent. And they draw ranks and harden their theology. They plot to kill Jesus.
Acting like a court jester holding up truth to power, Jesus uses a riddle -- because riddles melt the solidity of the world. They play with our sense of order and our values. Riddles are difficult to answer, sometimes seemingly impossible. Because they topple the very hierarchy of ideas and assumptions that normally allows us to make sense of the world.
I believe the gospel itself has this unsettling character. The gospel itself is a kind of jester. All the way through the gospel we find paradoxes and riddles and parables that melt the solidity of the old age that is dying, and call us into an unsettling new creation that is being born.
Crucified Messiah. Impossible! Good Samaritan. Outrageous! Blessed poor. What?
Love enemies. No way! Foot washing Lord. Never! Weak power. Foolish wisdom.
Last first. First last.
Paradoxical riddles -- all of them. They can’t be solved as if they were a nice, neat mathematical problem. Rather, they create a new reality, which we live into by following Jesus.
In Jesus the new creation has broken through the old age. He creates a space in between the old that is dying and the new that is being born, and he simply calls us to live into that unsettling threshold space. It’s odd, really. Given that the Anglican way is all about order and stability and beautiful long-lasting solid churches, and glorious liturgies, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what we do here at Christ Church BUT, and it’s a BIG BUT, Jesus doesn’t call us to stability or security or certainty at all. Rather, Jesus calls us to follow him, always on the move, always on the way from the old to the new.
And maybe today we are able to appreciate this unsettling, in-between gospel. For we belong to a church that is in transition, that is in between -- between the old ways that are dying and the new ways that are being born, even though we cannot fully discern its form yet.
And the world itself seems to be in transition -- political, cultural, environmental -- moving toward something new and at times frightening. In such a context, the great temptation is to bunker down, put our heads in the sand, to secure ourselves and kin, and to sharpen the spears.
And we hear these reactions everywhere we turn. Sometimes we hear them in the silence that pulls the trigger of a gun or drops a bigger bomb. Or in the actions of a country which invades a neighbouring country or one which responds with even more deadly violence to terrorism inflicted upon itself by persecuted and violated people. Sometimes it is not in the grand theatre of war that we hear them but in the more mundane yet more disheartening discordant sounds of bitter shouting and violencewithin our own families.
As followers of Jesus, however, we need not respond to these unsettling times with circled wagons and iron theologies, mourning the loss of the old, figuring out ways and strategies to re-capture some rose-coloured, memory of church or society past. For truly, we are in-between people, threshold people. We are not bound to the old categories, the old hierarchies, the old conventions. We are people always living into the gospel’s new, unsettling riddles. We are people who follow Jesus, unafraid, on the way from the old that is dying to the new that is being born.
And we do so within a life we know that can be so short and a life in which all our days are numbered, and with the knowledge that we will all one day die. And to this, I move to the Psalm this morning – Psalm 90, which contains one of my all-time favourite verses, upon which I couldn’t pass the opportunity to say a few words. Psalm 90, verse 12: So, teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. In the context of the Psalm portion, we have said (or heard sung,) verse 12 follows immediately on from verses 1-6 – which are a meditation on the grandeur of God – a God who is our dwelling place, within whom, as expressed in others parts of Scripture – we live and move and have our being - a timeless God – as poetically expressed - from everlasting to everlasting, where a thousand years in God’s sight are like yesterday when it is past or like a watch in the night, where a thousand years are swept away like grass that is renewed in the morning and which fades in the evening. In response to this God – what are we called to do – number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Some days in our lives are memorable – following the sermon from Bishop Jonathan earlier this year –
I dug out my baptism card and found I was baptised in Christ Church St Kilda on the 5 May 1968 – a week before my first birthday. I was married at Holy Spirit Church, Kenmore, on the 25 July 1992 – a Saturday – a day of glorious winter sun – and if I close my eyes, can still picture it as if it were yesterday! Many of you could tell me where you were when Apollo 13 landed on the moon, or when you heard that JFK had been assassinated. I can recall clearly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the plane crashes into the Twin Towers in 2001. But while particular days are memorable and can be recalled – that is not what is being asked – we are to number our days – count our days. Now, bringing out my inner nerd – I can tell you that as of the 29 October today, I have been alive 20, 625 days.
But to number or count our days is more than to physically add up the number of days I have been alive on the planet – although – you realise quickly that when you have numbers like mine – more days have passed then lie ahead! It is to realise that while God is everlasting to everlasting – our physical human life on this planet is not – to number our days is to value our days and to realise that we are dust and to dust we shall return – memento mori – remember death.
To number our days is to live in this moment – knowing that there is not one thing we can do to change what has happened and to know deeply that tomorrow truly is a promise to no one! That is not new stuff – we know that up here in an abstract manner – if only we would allow it to slip down and settle deep down in here. Even our secular world knows all about mindfulness and meditation – but the Judaic/Christian faith has known about this truth for three thousand years.
The wisdom gained from counting one’s days:
Life is to be savoured each and every day – good, bad, joyful, or full of sorrow – it is to be lived following our Lord who said he came to bring life in all its abundance.
There is no way we can do everything our hearts and minds desire, so we need to put away the fantasy of endless possibilities,
and choose the best from among a range of often good competing options on how to engage one precious time and life. We run the danger of two modern temptations. First, because there is often so much choice on offer, especially within our relatively affluent lifestyles, that we become paralysed and unable to settle and choose what to do. Or second, because we often think the future is endless we attempt all or think we can do all, forgetting that we are finite creatures living within the love of the everlasting God.
To number our days so as to get a heart of wisdom is to learn the art of holy discernment. No time here to unpack that fruitful phrase, there will be other sermons, and this one is too long even now, but just to say briefly that it requires a humility and realism in our self-awareness.
I finish with a quote from St John Chrysostom which sounds callous on the surface but is profound the longer one sits with it. John is reported as saying in the early fourth century, “If you knew how quickly people would forget you after your death, you would not seek in your life to please anyone but God.”
God is God and everything else is provisional. Let us number our days so as to gain a heart of wisdom to live as followers of the divine court jester who shows up the world for all it sham and violence and greed and seduction and offers the only life worth living – a life of abundance. The Lord be with you.