Doormat or Dynamite?

 

Two familiar passages today; in the first, we see Joseph confronting his brothers many years after they sold him into slavery and told his father he was dead.
And in the second, Jesus is preaching to the crowds in what is often called the “Sermon on the Plain”;
Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount that we are so familiar with from Matthew’s gospel.

Let’s look at the Old Testament story first.
You know Joseph’s story, of course;
born into the most dysfunctional of dysfunctional families, his father and grandfather both liars and cheats.
And Joseph himself was the spoilt favourite –
his father had two wives, you may remember, Rachel, whom he loved, and Leah, whom he didn't but was tricked into marrying anyway.
He also had a couple of kids by Leah's and Rachel's maids, Bilhah and Zilpah, but Rachel, the beloved wife, had had trouble conceiving,
so Joseph and his full brother Benjamin were very precious,
especially as Rachel had died having Benjamin.
He, it seems, was still too young to take much part in the story at this stage, but Joseph was well old enough to help his brothers –
and, we are told, to spy on them and sneak on them to his father.
And stupid enough to boast of self-important dreams.

It's not too surprising that his brothers hated him, is it?
Obviously, he didn't deserve to be killed, but human nature is what it is,
and the brothers were a long way from home
and saw an opportunity to be rid of him.
At least Reuben, and later Judah, didn't go along with having him killed,
although they did sell him to the Ishmaelites who were coming along.

Joseph has a lot of growing up to do,
and it takes a false accusation and many years in prison to help him grow up.
But eventually he is freed
and given an important post in the Egyptian administration,
preparing for the forthcoming famine and then administering food relief when it comes.

And so his brothers come to beg for food relief.
And at first Joseph is angry enough with them to first of all insist they bring the youngest, Benjamin, with them next time they come –
he had stayed at home to look after their father –
and then to plant false evidence that he had stolen a gold cup.
He says he will let the others go but keep Benjamin as his slave,
but the other brothers explain that it will kill their father if he does so.

And at that something breaks inside Joseph, and he makes himself known to his brothers, forgiving them completely for all they had done to him –
pointing out, even, that God had used this for good,
as he had been able to organise the food relief,
knowing there would be five more years of drought and famine to come.
And he sends for his father to come and bring all the households and settle in Egypt.
The family is reunited and –
for some generations, at least –
they all live happily ever after.

Five hundred years or so later, the son of another Joseph is preaching to the people.
And what he says is completely revolutionary.
Here is a modern paraphrase:

“If you are ready to hear the truth then I have this to say:
Love! Love even your enemies.
Treat even those who hate you with love.
If anyone mouths off at you or treats you like dirt, wish them all the best and pray for them.
If someone gives you a smack around the ear to humiliate you, stand tall and stick your chin out, and invite them to have another crack.
Absorb the hostility –
don’t escalate it.
If someone nicks your coat, just say, ‘Hey, if you’re needing that, you’ll be needing these,’ and hand over your hat and scarf as well.
Give to everyone who asks something of you, and don’t go hassling people to give back what they’ve got from you.
Live generously, and don’t go keeping score and looking to balance the ledger.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

It’s all pretty familiar, isn’t it?
We are perhaps more familiar with the version given in St Matthew, but it’s pretty much the same sentiment.
Jesus goes on:
“If you want to know how to treat someone, just ask yourself what you’d be hoping for if you were in their shoes.
Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, not just the way you are treated.
It’s not as though you’d deserve a medal for loving someone who loves you.
Anyone can do that!
You won’t find your name in the honours lists for a good turn done to those who are always going out of their way to help you.
Any crook can do that!
And if you only ever give when it looks like there’ll be something in it for you, what’s the big deal?
Every business shark knows how to make an investment, but it’s not exactly evidence of a generous spirit.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

The thing is, of course, that we don’t do it!
None of it.
We know it in our heads, but we haven’t made it part of us.
We’re taught to stand up for ourselves, we’re taught to look out for number one.
Even though we’re taught to share, we understand that we may have our turn on the swings in the playground, or whatever.
Maybe as adults, we reckon we’ve a right to our turn at the remote control….

But from what Jesus is saying, we don’t.
We need to put other people first.
We need to allow other people to walk all over us, to hit us, to steal our possessions.
It does sound as though we’re supposed to be doormats, doesn’t it?
As though we need to just stand there, being totally passive, allowing other people to run our lives for us.
No wonder we don’t do it!

But are we supposed to be doormats?
I don’t think so!
Jesus wasn’t, after all.
Yes, he allowed himself to be arrested and crucified, he refused to defend himself at his trial.
But before that we see him arguing with the Pharisees and teachers of the law.
He doesn’t say “Oh well, I expect you’re right,” but tries to show them what he is all about, what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
He took up a whip and drove out the traders in the Temple –
was that being a doormat?

You see, it’s not just about standing there and taking it.
It’s about being positive, as well.
“Be different!” says Jesus.
“Love your enemies and do good to them.
Lend freely, and don’t go looking for returns.
God will see that it’s worth it for you.
You will be God’s very own children.
God is generous to those who don’t deserve it,
even if they’re totally ungrateful.
God forgives whatever anyone owes.
Do likewise:
treat people the way God treats people.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

“Treat people the way God treats people.”
Of course, there are those who go around saying that God hates this group of people, or that group.
There are those who would like to exclude all sorts of people from God’s love.
But that’s not what the Bible says.
Our Methodist doctrines teach that everybody, no matter who, can be saved.
“And every offender who truly believes,
that moment from Jesus a pardon receives!”

God doesn’t hold things against us.
It worries me, you know, that people’s whole careers can be ruined because of a thoughtless tweet they may have published ten years ago.
People move on.
I don’t know about you, but there are things I’ve thought or said in my past that make me cringe to think about them now –
had there been social media when I was young,
I’d probably be utterly disgraced now!
And you can probably think of occasions in your own lives, too.

But the thing is, God doesn’t think of them.
“So far as the East is from the West,
so far has God put our transgressions from us,” says the Psalmist.
And Jesus reminds us, here as elsewhere,
that because that is so, we need to forgive, too.
Think of the story we call the Prodigal Son.

The son who asked for his share of inheritance and went into the world to have some fun,
and when he was in the gutter decided to go home again.
And the father ran to meet him, and put on a massive celebration for him,
and had obviously been longing and longing and longing for his son to come home again.

But the father couldn't make the son come home.
He had to wait until the son chose to come home of his own free will.
What's more, the son had to accept that his father wanted him home again.
He could have said "Well, no, I don't deserve all this,"
and rushed off to live in the stables, behaving like a servant,
although his father wanted to treat him as the son he was.
The son had to receive his father's forgiveness, just as we do.

And don't forget, either, the elder brother,
who simply couldn't join in the celebrations because he couldn't forgive his brother.
How dare they celebrate for that lousy rotter!
I don't know whether he was crosser with his father for having a party, or with his brother for daring to come home.
I feel sorry for him, because he allowed his bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time.

And that is exactly what happens to us when we do not forgive one another.
We allow our bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time with God.

I often think forgiveness is the Christian’s secret weapon.
All of Jesus’ teachings in the passage we have been looking at this morning seem to be about forgiveness.
If someone hits us, we forgive them, rather than hitting back.
If someone steals our coat, we forgive them, and perhaps even offer them more of our clothes.
And so on.
After all, that’s how we’d like them to treat us, isn’t it?

But as you know, and as I know, the world isn’t like that.
And we tend to conform to the world’s standards,
rather than God’s standards.

But what if we didn’t?
What if we really did do as Jesus tells us?
What if we really treated people the way God treats them,
the way we would like them to treat us?

The first Christians were known as the people who turned the world upside-down.
But that was two thousand years ago, and over the centuries we have watered down Jesus’ teaching.
We have got used to it, and we don’t see how revolutionary his teaching actually was.

Joseph, as we have seen, was able to forgive his brothers –
it took him awhile, but when he got there, he really forgave them.
He saw how God had worked everything together for good, and not only forgave them, but invited them to come and settle locally.
He really is the poster child for forgiveness.

Jesus promises us that if we give generously –
and I don’t think he means just material giving, but giving of ourselves, of our time, of our love, of our forgiveness –
then God’s generosity to us will know no limits, either.

What do you think, I wonder?
If you did as Jesus says in the gospel reading –
would you turn into a doormat?
Or could it be, possibly, just might, it prove to be dynamite,
something to turn the world upside-down?
Amen.

A tree planted by the water

 

From our first reading this morning, the passage from Jeremiah chapter 17:
“I will bless the person
    who puts his trust in me.
He is like a tree growing near a stream
    and sending out roots to the water.
It is not afraid when hot weather comes,
    because its leaves stay green;
it has no worries when there is no rain;
    it keeps on bearing fruit.”

And in the Psalm we read together, we are told that those who delight in the law of the Lord “are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in due season.
Their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.”

Some time ago I saw a documentary about the Kalahari desert in Africa, which is one of the driest places on earth.
But water still flows under, and very occasionally on top of, the dried river beds, and you could see, from drone footage, exactly where the rivers run, because they are lined with green trees,
and it was those trees that enabled giraffes to live there,
as they could feed on the leaves.

Israel is pretty dry, too, I understand –
the Negev, do they call the desert there?
Anyway, the whole thing of irrigation, and planting trees by the river, has a great many echoes in the Bible,
so I imagine it must have been very much a thing,
especially back in the days before modern irrigation techniques were able to make the desert, quite literally, blossom like a rose.

One of my favourite passages is in Ezekiel,
where that prophet has a vision of a stream of water beginning in the Temple in Jerusalem and flowing down to the Dead Sea,
becoming wider and deeper as it flows, full of fish, fertile, bringing fertility to the whole area, including the Dead Sea.
And we are told that “On each bank of the stream all kinds of trees will grow to provide food.
Their leaves will never wither, and they will never stop bearing fruit.
They will have fresh fruit every month, because they are watered by the stream that flows from the Temple.
The trees will provide food, and their leaves will be used for healing people.”

Zechariah also mentions this river, but says half of it will flow to the Mediterranean and half to the Red Sea.
He doesn’t put trees alongside it explicitly, though.

This river appears, according to the book of Revelation, to be in the heavenly Jerusalem rather than the earthly one we know.
The writer has a vision of the new Jerusalem, and in part,
“The angel also showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing down the middle of the city's street.
On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month;
and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.”

But the point of the passages in both Jeremiah and the Psalm is that it is we who are –
or who can be –
like the tree planted by the water.
It is we who can bear fruit all year round, who can stay green and fresh even in times of drought.
And at this point we all start to wriggle and feel uncomfortable and think, “Oh God, I’m not like that at all!”

And, of course, we aren’t like that.
At least, most of us aren’t.
Some of us are, and you will know who those people are in your life.
But they won’t know it –
partly because if they did know it, they might start thinking what great people they are, and then, of course, they wouldn’t be.
Because the whole point is, those of us who do bear fruit, or green leaves, or whatever, are the ones through whom God’s Spirit flows.

Jesus said that if we abide in him, we will bear much fruit, and apart from him, we can do nothing.

We know, too, what the fruit is that we are going to bear –
those lovely, life-enhancing qualities that St Paul lists in his letter to the Galatians:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
And I am sure there are others –
Paul’s lists are apt to be descriptive, not prescriptive!

But to get back to our passage, Jeremiah also points out that people who do not trust in God are like desert shrubs –
small, stunted, good for nothing much at all.
A far cry from the lush trees growing by the river.
And we may well know people like that, too;
people who do make a fair fist at being human,
but oh, how much more they could be if only they trusted Jesus!

And, you know, it’s not just us as individuals, but us as a church.
As a church, we can be lush trees growing by the river;
at that, we can guide people to the source of living water, Jesus himself.
We can cry out against injustice where we perceive it;
we can stand by our American friends who are really worried by this new regime; by our Ukrainian,
Russian,
Palestinian,
Israeli,
Sudanese,
Somali
or Syrian friends whose lives have been devastated by war;
we can cry out against the conditions that mean people need to use the food banks –
and, indeed, donate to them;
and so on –
you can watch the news as much as I can!
Or, alas, we can be small and stunted and good for nothing much –
but I’m sure this church isn’t like that!

And Jesus himself had some pretty harsh things to say to people –
and, presumably, churches –
who only trusted themselves, as we heard in our Gospel reading.
We are more used to the version of this teaching given in Matthew, I think, probably because Matthew’s version is so much easier.
We can think of ourselves as poor in spirit, as hungry and thirsty after righteousness –
but we are manifestly rich and well fed,
just like those whom Jesus condemns here.

I imagine Jesus does not condemn us just for being rich and well fed and content –
after all, that is largely an accident of birth.
Had we been born in another country, at another time, things might have gone very differently for us.
But it’s the “I’m all right, Jack” mentality that so often goes with being rich and well fed that is to be shunned at all costs.
We may be all right –
but there are plenty of people who aren’t.
We may be going home to a big Sunday lunch,
or we might be planning to go out for brunch,
as there are so many good restaurants in this area that serve it on a Sunday.
We’re on our way to the country for a week!
But what of those whose cupboards are bare, who depend on the food banks for today’s meals?
What of those who are homeless and begging in the streets?
These appear to be the ones who, in this passage, Jesus is praising and blessing.

I’m not saying, of course, that we should be giving to every beggar on the streets –
there are better ways of
helping to relieve homelessness and hunger.
I know some of you have donated to the Brixton Food Bank recently –
Robert took a car-load from here over to the hub at Brixton Hill just the other day.
Please go on doing this as and when you can afford to –
it is more necessary than ever, alas.

But it isn’t so much what you do, as your attitude.
Remember Jesus’ story of the rich man ostentatiously giving huge amounts to the Temple, and then the poor old beggar woman giving a tiny coin?
It was, said Jesus, the woman who had given the most;
the rich man wasn’t going to miss what he’d given, but that coin might have meant the woman going without her supper that day.

But how do we become that sort of person?
I know I’m not!
The sort of person who resembles a tree planted by the water,
bearing fruit and leaves all year round –
well, that’s not me!
I’m far too selfish and lazy and greedy and so on….
But then, we all have our faults.
And if I were to try to conquer mine in my own strength, I’d just be setting myself up for failure.

The thing is –
and this isn’t easy, either –
it’s about letting God grow us.
We are to produce fruit, and fruit isn’t manufactured, it’s grown.
Leaves aren’t stuck on the tree with Blu-tak, they are grown, too.

Some years ago now, a friend gave me a small flower-pot containing an aloe vera shoot. These days, it’s huge – at least three large plants, and I ought to repot it. But I’ve done nothing to make this happen – given it a few drops of water from time to time; plucked a leaf when I’ve needed some aloe vera for something, and that’s it. It has grown.

Plants grow.
Flowers grow.
Fruit grows.
Leaves grow.
We can’t make them grow, and we can’t make ourselves produce the good qualities that are required of God’s people.
But we can allow God the Holy Spirit to flow through us,
to fill us,
to indwell us,
to enable us to become the people God designed us to be.
And if we do that –
and, let’s face it, we’re not going to be able to do that every moment,
but the more we try to allow God to work in and through us, the more successful we will be –
if we do allow God the Holy Spirit to flow through us, we will gradually become a tree planted by the water side.

Amen.