On the weekend of 1-2nd June, Castle Square URC and St David’s Uniting Church were blessed to have Revds Martin and Anne Stewart bring greetings and blessings from the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and in particular, the churches with whom they minister in Christchurch, New Zealand. Phil had a great time showing them some of the sights and delights of Wales and on Sunday evening, Anne led a Communion liturgy with Phil whilst Martin delivered the thought-provoking sermon below :
Lost & Found
Sermon shared with Castle Sq & St David’s
Reading:
Luke 15: 1-10
The main focus of my study leave at Cambridge is on the theme of Finding & Losing. Jesus calls us to seek and find and then, a little later, we hear him asking us to lose ourselves in order to truly find the life he promises. And, if we didn’t understand what he meant he then went and lost his life for our sake. It is all a bit paradoxical, but Jesus seems to be okay about holding these opposites together. The prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi reveals some of these paradoxical elements that we are to walk into… it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I’ve been working on the story of the two boys in the parable that comes after the stories of the lost coin and the lost sheep, and what their being lost and found looks like. I’ve been wondering about why the church over the centuries has focused so heavily on the younger brother, even naming the parable after him – the Prodigal Son – ‘prodigal’ as in spending money recklessly, when back at home, right under the father’s nose, is the somewhat entitled and deeply embittered older brother, who seems just as lost.
Of course, the reckless life of the younger son is problematic, but it is not he who is, at the end of the parable, the one whose fate is unknown. What we are left with at the end is no clue whatsoever about the decision of the older brother. Does he join in the party? Does he storm off in a huff? Does he go away to a bitter and twisted far country of his own? Does he wait for an opportunity to kill his brother as in the first tale of two brothers in the Bible?
Every time I have preached on that parable someone has come over to me afterwards and expressed that they side with the older brother. They feel he had been let down by his father. Maybe he had. In his own eyes, he obviously had. I wonder if, over his growing up years, he had often felt displaced. I wonder how many times he felt his younger brother got the easier ride. Doesn’t that happen a lot with families?
Our little grandson Finn is 18 months old now. Hana our daughter recognises that Finn well and truly lives in Finn-land – for Finn thinks that the world revolves around him, and to a degree it does. He has a vast array of tricks up his sleeve to get the attention of his parents! Anne and I bought Finn a tee-shirt the other day, on it is this message: ‘I may be small, but I am very influential!’ What will happen if Hana & Will have another child? Finn will be displaced. Suddenly he will discover that all the attention and the cameras are no longer pointed at him. Finn is cute, but he will never be as cute as a little baby! I vividly remember Hana’s face when her younger brother Sam was born – in the photos at the maternity wing there is a little girl with thunder in her eyes! Was she dreaming up how to torture her brother right there on the day he was born?
I wonder, how often, over the years, did the father have to go out to the older brother to plead with him. Isn’t the great journey into maturity mostly around understanding that the world does not revolve around us? That the journey with God is about finding ways to get out of the way and let God be God in our lives. Bravely embracing the notion that we are not the centre of any existence, not even our own. That’s what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy will be done.’ A form of surrender. Your way God, not mine. Some people get this, some don’t. Some of the ones who are all about themselves can cause a lot of mayhem. You would really want to make very sure that you don’t elect them as your leaders!
I wrote a poem thing, called,
…………………. The wait
………………………every time I set out
………………………on the course
…………………….. positioning myself
………………………as more worthy
………………………than my brother
………………………I require of my father
……………………..another long wait
……………………..on that lonely hill
If you want to truly live, says Jesus, you must die to yourself. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it does, it bears much fruit.”
My guess is that the father in the parable had practiced dying to himself over and over again with those boys: To the younger he says: “Here, have your share of my property / here is my life.” To the older he says: “Don’t you see, everything that I have is already yours / all I am is in your hands.”
In dying, we live. In giving, we receive. In forgiving, we are forgiven. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…
I’ve been thinking about the church losing and finding. I am trying to work out, at this given point, where on the line from Losing to Finding we are. In your country, as in mine, we are not what we once were. Most of our congregations are struggling to generate and are trying to find ways to function practically and faithfully in this long season of decline. How long do we have to keep losing before we start finding? It seems to be a long road and we cannot see the end of it. We could get a little frustrated and resentful. Some of those younger churches are really thriving and here we are slaving in the fields without even a goat to share with our friends. In Christchurch we have the largest Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. They have 800-900 people along in four congregations on Sundays and something like 40 full-time or part-time staff working in all kinds of community-facing projects. They seem to have received a very generous half of the family farm! Recently some of the young families from our church have drifted there. Some of the other Presbyterians around the city have fits of ‘older brother’ envy and resentment, especially when it comes to allocating some of the mission funding resources we have at our disposal. Haven’t these people already got enough? How come we top it up with a ring on the finger and a fatted calf?
I’ve been wondering if the Lost & Found dynamic is circular. At different times we are close in and confident of where we are, and at other times we are like the lost sheep stranded on the edge and needing to be rescued. I’m trying to do some creative writing. On any given day, I can oscillate from confidence to despair. The only way through is to surrender and hand over all of the doubtful and destructive voices in my head. So often, I am the lost sheep stuck in need of rescuing. So often, I am turning the house over, looking for the very idea that will provide a path to walk on. Sometimes, I receive a glimpse of a far country where all my dreams lie shattered, and I am glad of the sanctuary of home. Yet, I know that I will not find without losing something. It is the process. I simply cannot have it all. Something has to die – like my dreams of creating something unusually profound, like my need to be admired, like my need to produce something to prove that I can write.
Can you identify these patterns in your life? Times when you cling, when the call is to let go and give God room to grow something new. Times when you are resentful and uncharitable towards someone. Maybe you have provided a deep harbour for long-held hurts and you simply don’t know how to up-anchor and put them out to sea. As they say on your trains, See it. Say it. Sort it. Phil it!
I wonder if there is a constant rhythm of losing and finding to be journeyed with in the Christian life. The mountain top and the valley, we know these places, it is not good for us to dwell too long in either, but we still seem to need them both.
Josh, our youngest son seems to be the latest one struggling with this dimension of living. He really loves the mountain tops and doesn’t mind the climb to them as long as he can see those mountain tops at all times. But he resents the bluffs and the valleys. He doesn’t seem to know how to negotiate them all that well, and they can quickly become a far country for him. His new job working for a landscape gardener is helping him. The preparation of the site is hard work, breaking up concrete, shovelling soil (sometimes for days on end), working through the cold and the rain… but the landscaper has seen his eye for detail, and he gets Josh to do all the planting. It is the reward at the end of the labour, it is the mountain top with a view, and it is teaching Josh that he has to surrender in order to receive. He has to lose to find. He has to trust the process and weather the storms. (I’m wondering just how many metaphors I can fit into one sermon!)
As you heard, Anne and I recently walked 500 miles on the Camino de Santiago. There was a daily rhythm there that had all the dynamics of the pilgrim life… ups and downs, easy and tough, all kinds of weather, aching legs and feet every day, ugliness and rare beauty… and also a sense that if we just keep walking it will be ok and what is needed will be provided. And it was. But we needed to shrink ourselves to handle it. We needed to pare our lives back to the very basics, and to lean into every moment with less expectation. Then the rewards came, but something always needed to die. I’ve tried to capture it in a poem…
……………………less
…………………….you can walk five hundred miles
…………………….and still see the world
…………………….in the same old way if you choose
…………………….to be spiritual you’re invited
…………………….to walk those miles
…………………….as a stranger to every moment
…………………….even your very self
…………………….becomes fluid.
…………………….It always was
…………………….but you had forgotten
…………………….to be open to this way
…………………….requires confinement
…………………….even though the daily vista
…………………….is as wide as wide can be
…………………….you shrink into it
……………………becoming little more
……………………than a one-foot-at-a-time
……………………wanderer seeing much
……………………and knowing less
……………………is the pilgrim way
……………………to revelation
………………….Gracious God
…………………..You draw close
…………………..We lean in
…………………..You whisper abiding love
…………………..We offer our brokenness
…………………..You shape us in the way of Jesus
…………………..We are grateful. Amen.