Learning to Speak the Truth I Feel: Sermon on Luke 1:26-38 - Mary and the Angel

This sermon was given on Sunday December 18th 2011, Fourth Sunday of Advent.

It's nearly Christmas! Four advent candles lit and only one to go. My son Callum is thrilled about this, by the way. He hates having candles on the table that he's not allowed to light yet and he loves all of the Christmas biscuits we've been attempting to make.

I say, “attempting” because all week I couldn't seem to get the recipe right. Luckily for me I have a very appreciative taster who even went so far as to tell me that Monday's batch were “double yum” when to me they tasted like small, powdery, star shaped rocks. The presentation was good, they certainly looked like Christmas biscuits, but the flavour just wasn't there ( and the texture really left something to be desired).

I didn't really understand why this was happening. I went back over the recipe but I thought that I had followed it step by step. I had measured everything, mixed everything. I hadn't put the biscuits too close or far apart on the tray, I hadn't undercooked or overcooked them. I felt I had done everything and yet, for most of the week my biscuits have been disappointing.

But, it did get me to thinking. Because Christmas, as celebrated by most people in twenty first century Australia, is a lot like my biscuits were. It might look good on the outside but it leaves us feeling unfulfilled, hungry, disappointed.

It's missing something.

We're sure we've got the recipe right: tree, presents, tasteless light display in the front yard, presents, food, carols by candle light, presents, a visit to Santa (as he's now known), token gift to the less fortunate, presents, sunburn, and... custard. Surely that's everything?

We even attend church on the big day.

But the day after all we have is a stomach ache, peeling skin, credit card debt, a whole lot of wrapping paper... and emptiness.

Even when we understand that Christmas is about celebrating the coming of God into the world, the very God become truly human to walk with us, feel with us, suffer for us, even then we can feel that “missingness”.

We have our Advent recipe to go with our candles: Hope, Joy, Love, Peace but even that can seem incomplete.

At this point, if this were Christmas biscuits, I'd go back to the recipe book and try to find what I had missed. When it comes to how we experience Christmas, it helps to go back to our book too, our Good Book, and our reading today gives us a picture of what we might be lacking.

What we need are not so much ingredients, as techniques – ways of doing, ways of being, ways of cooking and mixing – that can make all the difference. We need to find some: “Techniques for a Truly Fulfilling Christmas.”

So, imagine for a moment that you are a fifteen year old girl. You're home alone, baking biscuits (or the first century Jewish equivalent), thinking about the man you're going to marry and how kind he is and how he's going to provide for you and how life is going to be relatively simple. Then an angel appears. In your kitchen. And greets you and tells you not to be afraid. At this point we can assume that Mary swallowed the scream of terror because she stayed to listen to what the angel had to say.

This shows trust – our first “True Christmas Technique” if you will.

And when she is told that she is going to conceive and bear a child who will be the long awaited Messiah, she doesn't scoff or back away in fear, which personally I think is pretty amazing. It must have seemed so surreal but she takes the announcement seriously and comes up with a very practical question.

“How?”

This shows courage, technique number two.

And her courage is rewarded with a truthful answer.

She will conceive by the Holy Spirit. And to give her proof that with God all things are possible, the angel announces that even Elizabeth, Mary's older relative, her cousin or aunt, is pregnant, against all probability, because God has willed it to be so. Astonishingly, she keeps her head. I might have been terrified, might have run, might have refused to listen or believe that such a course of events could happen to me.

Mary responds with a statement of obedience.

“Behold, I am the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.”

Obedience is our third “True Christmas Technique”.

Trust. Courage. Obedience. And ultimately, Faith.

All of these things are Mary's path to and an expression of her faith.

I think, sometimes, when I'm at our local shops at this time of year, that what is missing in the people around me, desperately buying presents and decorations and sweets, is faith. Faith in something more than the mundane and the material.

Trust. Courage. Obedience. Faith.

This was the way Mary experienced Advent and Christmas (although for her advent lasted about nine months). “Let it be to me according to your word.”

I've been told that faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the rest of the staircase. Mary probably knew that on some of the stairs there would be hardship, humiliation and public ridicule for being pregnant and unmarried, and joy too in knowing that the Messiah had come into the world.

I'm sure she probably had no idea that thirty three odd years into her journey up that staircase her son would echo her words, and her conviction : “not my will, but Your will be done.” But she chose to take that step all the same, and we can too.

It seems easier at Easter, to decide to embrace the spirit of rebirth and live our lives anew. But what about at the time of actual birth? At Christmas? What better time to dedicate ourselves? And say: do to me according to Your word; not my will but Your will. That's true giving.

That was Mary's gift.

And we shouldn't underestimate what a huge thing this was for her. Being pregnant and unmarried could have led to her losing her home, her protection, her life. Would you have done what Mary did, with as much conviction and commitment? At age fifteen?

She was an amazing young woman. She is an example of holiness and what it means to say yes to God. But that doesn't mean she was exceptional. We shouldn't put her up on an unreachable pedestal and say that she is different from us. We shouldn't shy away from following her example, especially at Christmas.

We need to remember the “Techniques for a Truly Fulfilling Christmas” that she has shown us:

Trusting God, no matter what kind of unexpected angel turns up in our kitchen.

Being courageous enough to talk to God and take responsibility as a member of that relationship with God.

Responding to God with obedience, no matter how improbable the situation seems.

Having faith in God and knowing that God will be faithful.

These things can seem rather small or simple or even obvious in the grand scheme of Christmas preparation and merriment. To some they even seem unnecessary. Why can't we just bung the ingredients in any old how? But quite often it's the little things, the simple things, that can have a huge impact on the outcome.

A bit like the simple techniques in making biscuit dough, I've discovered, like; using your fingers to get the butter and flour mixture to really look like bread crumbs, and using a knife to mix in the milk, and not over kneading your dough.

They seem really simple and obvious, and to an inexperienced cook, a bit unnecessary. But the proof... is in the biscuits. The soft, springy, melt in your mouth little star shapes I finally succeeded in creating.

You don't need to over work the dough, just like we don't need to over work Christmas.

You just need a little faith.

So, give yourself as a gift to God this Christmas, in trust, courage and obedience, with certainty, bravery and humility, and guaranteed you will feel satisfied and filled.

And the taste in your mouth will be sweet.

Amen.

Learning to Speak the Truth I Feel: Sermon on John 4:46-54 - The Nobleman's sick child

In the last twelve months I've been learning the art of preaching and writing a good sermon.
I've found that constructing something that people can follow, that people can connect with, that people will remember, is quite an art.

In the hope of gaining some feedback I've decided to post some of them, starting with the last two I gave at my local church in 2011.

So, here it is: 

Sermon on John 4:46-54 - The Nobleman's sick child

I hate to see my children sick or in pain. I'm fairly sure that no parent likes it when their kids are unwell. It just makes us feel so helpless. When my daughter Rhiannon was born in March this year, she wasn't a well little girl. She couldn't breathe. For that first week of her life I sat by her crib in intensive care, on a small stool surrounded by busy nurses and aloof doctors, flashing lights and alarms sounding at random intervals at the most annoying pitch. I sat by her crib and I held her tiny, frail little hand, and I prayed. I prayed because my belief was all I had, was all I could give her. I couldn't hold her, I couldn't feed her, I couldn't make her better. But I could surround her with my belief in God's plan for her life.

Part of me grieved. And I was told by the social worker on the ward that this was completely normal. She went through the seven stages of grief with me and told me that, if I could hold on to my faith, it might help me get through.

Now, I have always been a person of faith (I think) but when life is going well, it's easy to take it for granted, to get a bit absent-minded about God. It's during those heart-wrenching distress, like when we are faced with a sick child, that we recall our faith, when our faith can be transformed, strengthened, grown by God and our gospel story today details a man's journey in faith and belief.

The seven stages of grieving are quite well known. There's Shock and Denial, Pain and Guilt, Anger and Bargaining, Reflection and Loneliness, The Upward Turn, Reconstruction and Working Through, and finally Acceptance and Hope.

What aren't so well known, are the seven stages of faith. As my daughter grew in strength and health to be the chubby little girl we have today I realised that I had been travelling along that path, those seven stages of faith and when I read today's gospel I thought, what a perfect way to share them with people, because here they are, demonstrated in the man from Capernaum.

The first stage is Crisis. Faith and the growth of faith almost always starts in a crisis, when the world spins out of our control. It was certainly so for our Royal Official. We can imagine that he was a man of power and wealth and influence. He was probably a man used to giving orders and having them carried out. But now he was faced with a problem he couldn't just order away: his son was ill.

We don't know the details of the illness, only that it had weakened the son nearly to death. That's a crisis if ever there was one.

Which brings us to stage two. Humility. When our Royal Official heard that Jesus, a healer and worker of miracles, was in the area, he set off at once to see him. He doesn't send a servant. He could have done. Sent a servant so he could stay at his son's bedside. Just in case. But he chose to go himself, not even really knowing who Jesus was, he chose go and humble himself by asking the help of a man of lower class, of no social standing.

How often do we do that? How often do we ask for help? It's difficult. I am quite stubborn and as a teenager I used to get myself into a jam and struggle and struggle with it until eventually I would have to swallow my pride and confess my problem to my dad. And he would ask me: “Why didn't you just ask me for help? You know I'll always give it to you.” But I just didn't like to admit that I couldn't do something on my own. Humbling ourselves before another person is difficult. Humbling ourselves before God can be surprisingly difficult too.

But we need to do it, cos that's stage three. Requesting, asking, praying. So much of humanity's genuine prayer is born of desperation. It is needy people who pray. Those who aren't needy don't need to pray. And they don't. That's why people in hospitals call for priests and chaplains. They don't want to die with burdens on their soul. They want healing but if they cannot be healed they want to make sure that they are ready to meet God. When times get hard, we cling to God like a drowning woman clings to the life guard's hand. In this case desperation turned a powerful man into a beggar.

He begged Jesus to come and heal his son. No flowery language, no argument about deserving preferential treatment or offers of a reward or payment. He supplicated himself before Jesus, showing that his faith had reached a point that he knew Jesus could save his son.

The response he gets from Jesus is almost a little bit rude. “Oh, you people, unless you see miracles you won't believe.” But Jesus isn't saying it because he wants to be rude, or because he's a bit miffed at the great horde of people following him around and gawking at him and he doesn't say it because he can't be bothered walking from Cana to Capernaum. He does it because the Royal Official is only halfway through his seven steps of faith and step four is persistence. Jesus was putting this man's faith to the test. If he went to Capernaum a crowd was sure to follow and witness the miracle and Jesus would become very popular but the faith those people had in him would be stunted.

So Jesus' response to this man isn't rude, so much as it is a Spiritual Challenge and the man from Capernaum meets it head on. He isn't looking for signs and wonders, he isn't looking for a good show. He is there because he knows that Jesus can heal his son and that belief is not going to be squashed by a refusal. He begs Jesus again. I know you can heal my son.

And so Jesus gives him what he asked for. Just not what he thought he was asking for. He healed the man's son right then and there and issued him with another challenge. “Go.” Because the fifth stage of faith, is obedience. If humility is hard, obedience is terrifying. I wonder if I could do what that Royal Official did. Could I have walked that long road home alone, empty handed, with only Jesus' word to keep me from succumbing to despair? That kind of faith is believing without seeing. Naked faith, simple faith, faith in the word of the Lord.

I like to think of it as the proper outlet for my stubbornness. Digging in my heels and declaring that I Will believe that's God's word to me is true and that walking in obedience is not walking with empty hands.

St Augustine wrote: “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of faith is to see what we believe,” And stage six is this reward for faith, confirmation. This story has a warm and fuzzy ending. The Official is met on the road by his servants and told the amazing news that his son has recovered and that his recovery took place at the moment when Jesus declared it. I can only imagine the flood of emotions which must have run through that man on hearing that news. And then upon seeing his son.

That sort of experience, of faith solidified, leads to the final stage of the faith journey; commitment. The Royal Official moved from the simple belief in Jesus' miracles which brought him to Cana, to a deeper belief in Jesus' word, which he carried with him when he left Cana to the solid faith in Jesus himself which greeted him when he arrived home.

And he didn't just keep that faith to himself. He swept his family and all his household up in the enthusiasm of his dedication.

The story ends well. Of course, not every story turns out that way. My daughter's road to health was gradual and many times it feels as if God has not answered our prayers at all. Sometimes the fever does not leave our child, it snatches our child from us. God's plan is not necessarily our plan and sometimes being obedient to God means sitting with someone as they fade from this world or comforting those who are left behind.

God works through our adversity, our pain, our trials, our sorrows. When we are in the midst of desperate circumstances, we see only our problems and we come as children to God, begging for help, “Jesus come quick. W need you. The world is falling apart and only you can help us.” And Jesus says to us, “Go your way. Be in peace. I will take care of your problems.” So, will we have faith to go in peace, trusting him? When we do we discover that Jesus is true to his word. Quite often too we look back much later and say, “I didn't see it then. In my sorrow and pain and frustration I thought the Lord had forgotten me. I thought my prayers were being ignored. But now I can see that Christ was there all the time, and he answered in ways I didn't expect. And if it hadn't been for Christ, I wouldn't have made it at all.”

Crisis

Humility

Requesting

persistence

obedience

confirmation

commitment

We cycles through these seven stages of faith many times through our lives as we face the ebb and flow of daily existence. Some stages will be easier, some will be much, much harder. But we know one thing for certain. When we set out from home, looking for Jesus, we will always find him. And when we pray that little prayer, that desperate prayer that is the seed of faith, he will always find us.

Amen.

Mummycopter

I have come to suspect that I am a helicopter parent:

In the playground I follow my son around rather than sit on a bench with my iphone or magazine.

When we're shopping I enforce the “stay close to Mummy” rule rather than let him wander off in a shop to poke, taste and possibly break things which I don't want to pay for.

When we are waiting for the bus or train he knows he has to stay where I can see him and be well back from the road or tracks.

At parties I like to know where he is at all times.

If there is pool my watchfulness increases 100 fold.

Yes, I'm a helicopter. But I'm not embarrassed to be one and sometimes wish other parents would follow my view with regard to their kids safety.

Some of my protectiveness comes from the fact that my son has Ehlers Danlos Syndrom. He's more likely than other kids to lose his balance, fall, hurt himself, start bleeding and not be able to stop, dislocate something, or worse. He's only three so he hasn't learnt to think before acting and can't tell whether an action will lead to an accident. So I watch him around hazards like slides, jungle-gyms, stairs and swings. I've seen other mums roll their eyes at me when they see me following my son around, telling him to be careful and assisting him on difficult equipment. He looks normal, except for his skinny, low muscle tone, legs, flat feet and lanky body. But I don't care. Sometimes, when I see the rough behaviour and language that comes out of other kids at the playground, I wish those parents would take an interest in their kids' play.

When it comes to shops and public places my attitude has been moulded by my many years as a retail assistant (currently in a gift shop attached to an exhibition space). I get sick and tired of people letting their kids wander around shops unsupervised. I don't mind the touching so much because kids' learning can be very tactile, but I do mind the pulling of items off shelves, the throwing, stretching, ripping, trampling, licking, unwrapping, running, shouting, and breaking which goes on. Every week I see parents walk into the gift shop in which I work and make a bee line for the books in the back corner where they don't have to see or hear their children. Then, when I have to tell off said children for, as an example, throwing snow globes, the parents seem first surprised then affronted.

I also don't put my son on a lead, because he isn't a dog. I hold his hand. Sometimes he runs off but never far and he knows the rules. By asking him to stay close I'm teaching him self control and at the same time I'm training myself to go at his pace rather than dragging him around all the time. I have found that I want to see what he's exploring. What my children are interested in is important and I need to see that so that I can talk to him, play with him and share with him about things that he thinks are cool. I like talking to my kids and spending time with them and sticking together helps us do that.

Worse are the parents who send their children into the store alone while they go to the café. I send those children back to their parents because I don't allow kids in the shop unattended, and for good reason. Because it isn't just the destruction of merchandise on the table here, it's the reality of child molesters and abductors. They exist and when they see a bunch of kids in a busy shop they think they've hit the jackpot.

A lot of parents think I'm being ridiculous but it happens. It nearly happened in my shop.

Last week I had an angry mother confront me when I told her that her daughter could not go in to see an exhibition on her own. The mother was furious that her daughter was allowed to stay home on her own at night, could catch a bus on her own but wasn't allowed to wander around a public gallery by herself. She scoffed at my reasons, that her daughter could be vulnerable to predators, refused the free entry I offered her to accompany her daughter and walked off in a huff. I thought it best not to inform her that her daughter was only ten and can't legally be left at home alone at night until she's twelve. I could at least know that I wouldn't have that young person on my conscience if something had happened after I let her in on her own.

Attending parties combines the clumsiness with the stranger danger, really, and the fact that my son is really curious (as all good three-year-olds are) and there have been incidents with tablecloths and broken cups before. It's easier just to keep an eye on how he's getting along than to have to search for a dust pan and brush when his curiosity leads to a large crash.

Lastly, swimming pools, and really bodies of water of any size. It doesn't take a lot of water for a child to drown and it doesn't take long. When it comes to child locks, kids seem to have a real knack for getting them unlocked. I know one little girl who managed to get a pool gate open at the age of two-and-a-half, even though it was a double lock.

On the plus side, my son is petrified of water, has been since his first bath at two days old. He doesn't just run into pools and has never willingly gone swimming in the sea. The down side to this is that he cannot swim at all. If he fell into a pool or spa or fountain, he'd panic and have no skills to draw upon.
Hence the vigilance.

Helicopter parents get a bad wrap. Apparently we're breeding a generation of kids who don't take risks, have no initiative or independence, are dibber-dobbers, and rely too much on their parents.

I like to think that I'm teaching my kids to weigh up the risks, to try things when they feel ready but to not be afraid to ask for help when they need it, to tell me if anyone has said mean things or tried to hurt them in any way – too many kids keep silent about abuse out of fear that they will be told off as dobbers or just not believed, how heartbreaking is that? – and that their parents will love them unconditionally.

And in my “overbearing parenting” I'm also enforcing manners, courtesy and politeness and actually teaching my kids to be assertive when I demonstrate standing up for our rights in a clear but polite way. At least, that's how it seems to me.

Of course, I'm not interested in bullying my kids' teachers and care givers, doing their homework for them (when they start getting it), or spying on their Facebook pages and mobile phone messages (when they turn 16 and show that they're mature enough to have them). That's like Black hawk Helicopter parenting, darkening children's sunny skies with ominous shadows and an oppressive drone.

I like to think of myself as a nice helicopter. The kind with a large stash of band aids, ice packs and Arnica cream inside, and snacks and emergency changes of clothes. But still a helicopter.

One day I'll start to hover a bit further back, when my son understands that the people who push him and laugh at him when he hurts himself are just dumb thugs and not worth his emotional investment, when he learns to swim and understands the importance of water safety, when he really is old enough to go out unsupervised and is big enough to kick prospective abductors in the nads.

For now though, I've decided just to be a proud little Mummycopter.

Sometimes, quite often if I'm honest, I worry that my kids eat too much junk. My son loves ice cream and chocolate milk and my daughter will attempt to eat anything she can get her hands on. Added to this I worry (like a lot of parents) that my kids don't eat enough. My generation, and my parents', was brought up to eat what was on the plate, and eat all of it but some days my son will eat less than his baby sister, other days he'll eat more than I do.

Recently though, Boyo (my darling three-and-a-half-year-old) was diagnosed with a distended bowel, related to his Ehlers Danlos, and I've had to keep a food diary. I've also been picking the brains of friends, paediatricians and (in one case) a random person in the super market, as to how to get kids to eat and eat well.

So the questions of the day are:

How much food should kids be eating?

How can we make them eat it?

How can we cut out the bad stuff without them noticing?

I have a few ideas.

My first bright idea was to learn my son's and daughter's eating habits.

My daughter, at ten months old but the equivalent of an eight monther, has days when she only wants Mummy milk and days when she wants to eat her body weight in rice and veg, so with her I just have to go with the flow.

After a week of the food journal it finally hit home to me that my son likes to eat in the morning, not at night.

Why has it taken me three years to figure this out?

And on the days when we didn't make time for him to eat enough breakfast he was a pretty unhappy child.

I've learnt too that Boyo needs a couple of different elements to make food appetising.

One, he needs it to look nice.

Two, he needs me (or someone else) to join him while he eats.

Three, he needs it to be at the right temperature.

Four, all food is better when it has a story.

Five, he needs to be involved in the creation process.

He is, as my mum would say, a bit artistic, so porridge in the morning involves him helping me to measure out the oats; me sitting and eating my porridge with him; the porridge being just above room temperature; the blue berries being asteroids hitting the porridge moon and the plate and spoon needing to be the “right” plate and spoon.

When I do this he eats and he eats well.

This is, three or four mornings a week, preceded by a tub of yoghurt. Fruit, toast and milk are also part of breakfast which is quickly followed by morning tea, elevenses and lunch. He usually slows down at that point. Afternoon tea is a casual affair and dinner can be half hearted.

Our paediatrician said this was fine, if it works for us and as long as the food he's getting is healthy.

So, is it?

I'm still not sure.

Time for another confession. I've been snooping. When we go to the shops I've been peaking into other people's trolleys. I've been worried that my son is eating junk. (Earlier this week I went out to lunch with my mum and the kids menu in the restaurant was a choice of nuggets and chips or mac and cheese. We got the nuggets and I slipped my son half my salad. I still felt dreadful.) Some weeks we buy tiny teddies. Then I saw what was going into the trolleys of other families. Chips and lollies and fizzy drinks and processed meats and frozen meals. Not a single lonely piece of fruit. I try to tell myself that maybe they go down to the green grocer for their fruit and veg, after all, we quite often go half and half, depending on the specials and the quality. But somehow I doubt it.

I try to imagine a life without fruit...

My husband, when he reads this, will roll his eyes. After all, he doesn't eat nearly as much fruit as I'd like him to. But if we didn't have fruit, I don't know what we'd do.

Boyo is obsessed with fruit!

Today he ate over half a punnet of blue berries, a banana, an apple, a pear, a nectarine and some grapes. For veg he had baby spinach, home grown tomatoes, and pumpkin. Other days he's obsessed with broccoli and peas but mostly it's fruit.

I've been to parties and seen parents tell their kids off for scoffing the fruit instead of the chips.

Their reason was that fruit will give their kids runny bowels.

We don't have that issue. Trust me.

I looked up to see what a child of three should be eating, sure enough, my boy gets an A+ for his fruit and veg but the food journal has showed me that he really doesn't eat meat unless it's in the form of his Nana's meatballs.

I worried. (I'm good at that.)

Everyone kept telling me it was weird that my son would rather eat a zucchini sausage than a pork one. I then had a bright idea. People can voice their opinions but I don't have to listen. Our paed says that a kid of three can get away with one serve of meat a week! As long as he has beans, nuts, eggs, milk and such. He also suggested that because of my son's muscle weakness he may have been put off meat when he was younger because it was tiring to chew.

So the good news is that Boyo is getting enough and is getting the right stuff. But sometimes I want him to eat dinner. And sometimes his reluctance isn't about lack of appetite, it's about being distracted or me forgetting the five steps mentioned above.

I've been working on making his food more interesting. I know, we've all seen those nauseatingly cheerful kids cook books that tell us the way to get kids to eat their food is to make it fun. I've rolled my eyes at them along with everyone else and as yet I haven't turned to them for help. I'm not going for fun, I'm going for interesting.

Any ideas?

Last week I made mushroom cap boats filled with risotto and baby spinach with roasted pumpkin and the pasta island with broccoli forest. Sometimes Boyo is a rocket and his dinner is his rocket fuel. Other times he's a whale shark and we have to tickle his gills to open his mouth to get the food in, it all depends on how willing he is (and yes, tickling a whale sharks gills will make it open its mouth).

I need to take more photos and would love to hear other people's interesting food ideas.

Happy feeding!

Ta!

Fast Food Baby!

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/875464
A must see.