A Sermon: Good Moaning! Jesus Goes to Nouvion
Sometimes, even though we think we have all the answers, it is the foreigners and the despised and rejected who show us how to believe and behave.
Sometimes, even though we think we have all the answers, it is the foreigners and the despised and rejected who show us how to believe and behave.
When we walk closely with Jesus we find that even the debris of our lives becomes a source of joy and hope.
Whenever we put our own cares to one side and carry the weight of another’s grief we imitate Jesus who leads us through death to the life after life
Though rules and tradition help us access the wisdom and grace of the past we should not be in the business of allowing them to hinder us to answer the call to listen, to love, and to heal and that immediately.
Surely there can be no ‘yeah but, no but, yeah’ if we dare to proclaim that we are Open to God, Open to All? After all isn’t the only response God makes to us ‘Yes and Amen’ ? (2 Cor.1v19-21). Can we offer any less? Can we, dare we, bear all this calumny and abuse and remain un-defended? Not biting back, refusing to turn away those who abuse us and others, and instead learn only to love and then love again?
John reminds us with his final few verses, in the culmination of his telling of the Good News, that the Gospel is not a case of ‘seeing is believing’ but, instead, in the words of our Beloved it is a case of ‘believing is not seeing’:
Our Beloved in leaving us does not leave us desolate but leaves reminders of his presence. Perhaps not in an enchanted place but in ordinary things
surrounded by the dead and in fear of being killed themselves that they heard the news of the hope that was born in a cave in Bethlehem and escaped from a tomb in Jerusalem.
To be able to provide a home for another is a precious gift, to know that our Beloved provides a home for us makes all our challenges, whether they involve squatting bishops or not, melt away.
Our Beloved looks upon us in the midst of all the mess of our sins and, not ‘blinching’ at all, demonstrates his love by stretching out His arms to embrace the whole world on the tree of Calvary.