A sermon by the Revd David Enticott,
pastor of the Rosanna Baptist Church and chaplain in the Australian Air Force

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Of all that nature. With a gradual step,
A stir among the leaves, a breath, a ray,
It came in softly, while the angels made
A place for it beside me. 

The moon came,
And swept my chamber clean of foolish thoughts
The sun came, saying, ‘Shall I lift this light
Against the lime-tree, and you will not look?

I make the birds sing–listen! . . but, for you.
God never hears your voice, excepting when
You lie upon the bed at nights and weep.’

Then, something moved me.

 Then, I wakened up
More slowly than I (verily) write now,
But wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wide
The window and my soul, and let the airs
And out-door sights sweep gradual gospels in,
Regenerating what I was. 

O Life,
How oft we throw it off and think,–’Enough,
Enough of life in so much!–here’s a cause
For rupture; herein we must break with Life,

–And so, we hide our eyes
And think all ended.–

Then, Life calls to us,
In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice,
Above us, or below us, or around . . .

Our Mindset for the Journey of Faith

A Second Look at Paul

I grew up hearing Christian talks where we were fed a steady diet of Paul’s letters.

The gospels were something of a side dish at times, while Paul and his theology seemed to be the main course. And it seemed that Paul’s main beliefs centred on the doctrine of predestination.

So . . . it’s been something of a surprise to take a second look at Paul in my fifties, and to realise that there’s a lot more to Paul than just doctrines of election and salvation.

In fact, Paul himself was an incredibly curious person.

After his Damascus Road experience he goes out to Arabia (perhaps Mount Sinai) for an extended period of time and then spends as long as a decade in Tarsus (south Turkey) making tents.

It is only when the call comes from Barnabas that he begins his great missionary exploits around the world.

Paul is a traveller.

In his book, What Paul Meant, Garry Wills writes:

“Paul was, by any measure, a heroic traveller. It is estimated that he covered 16000 kilometres, much of it by foot. He lived in a new age of travel, thanks to the Roman roads and bridges engineering. Paul himself says: 

Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; ²⁷ in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food,^[e] cold and naked.

Paul doesn’t push these experiences away, instead he sees the Spirit teaching him during these experiences. Travel becomes a way of seeing faith. It must have pained him to have been dictating these words from a prison, trapped somewhere in the Empire.

He writes to the Philippians:

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal,^[e] but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ^[f] has laid hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold^[g] of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly^[h] call of God in Christ Jesus.

Faith is a winding track. Where we are walking towards home, and that home is Jesus.

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Faith is a journey. That’s one of the themes of Colossians and earlier Paul writes, “Now that you have welcomed the Anointed one, Jesus the Lord, into your lives, continue to journey with him and allow him to shape your lives.” (Colossians 2:6, The Voice).

Here in chapter 3,

Paul addresses our Mindset for the journey ahead.

He is calling for a change of heart similar to the poem from Elizabeth Barrett Browning that we began with.

Then, I wakened up
More slowly than I (verily) write now,
But wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wide
The window and my soul, and let the airs
And out-door sights sweep gradual gospels in,
Regenerating what I was

********************

At first glance it might seem that what Paul wants is for us to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.

He writes, 

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, ³ for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

******************

But what Paul really wants is for them to reflect Jesus, as Philippians says: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

And this means letting some things go . . . 

It’s a long list . . . 

“fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed”

And 

“anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language.”

And

“Do not lie.”

Hmmmm . . . now these things can all too easily be turned into a long list of dos and donts for the Mrs Mangles or Delores Umbridges of this world . . . but what’s the common ground between them?

*********************

Paul’s long list of things to let go of all bear one thing in common . . . they split and divide . . . they disintegrate . . . they separate. In our gospel reading we find a man building bigger and bigger barns . . . who is completely out of touch with the needs of his community. Who is completely out of touch with God.

And God is a God who brings us together. Who Integrates.

Look at what comes after the list:

“In this renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free (remember Onesimus stole from Philemon and now is returning with this letter!),

But Christ is all in all.”

Walk, practice church, with the mindset that all things come together in Jesus; discern conduct by asking: will this integrate or separate me from this person or this community?

Walk with an open heart.

*******************

What does this look like?

A few weeks ago a friend gave me a great book book, Things become other things by the American photographer Craig Mod.

Craig is from the United States and finds himself walking the old pilgrimage paths between Temples and forests in Japan.

Towards the end of the journey, he writes this . . . 

“Palliative an encounter like this. I learn more sitting in silence with Seamus for five minutes than I had from my father over a decade. Stack a thousand moments like this together and you might begin to heal a heart.

His simple blessing like an ice bath, coolness spreading throughout my body from the centre, like the whole of the day, maybe the whole of the walk, was leading to this beacon of safety for us both, to this encounter on the side of the road, to this unexpected benediction.”

Seamus to me sounds a lot like Jesus . . . who meets us on the road . . . who is to be found in community . . . who loves us . . . who heals us . . . and who promises to walk with us always . . . even to the very end of the age,

Amen.

To close and bring these thoughts together about being open to the many different parts of the journey, I wanted to finish with a poem that Sylvia Sandeman sent to me many years ago:

Desert Dreams

All my bright dreams,

crystalline,

lie shattered,

mocking the evening sun.

Dream no more crystal, soul.

Risk no more broken edges,

jagged

to cut bare feet.

Dream paper -mache.

Dream Indian rubber.

Dream mud.

No, dream on in crystal, soul.

Gather these shining fragments carefully

and build wind chimes:

fragments of haunting failure

making melody

to move the evening sun.

(Linda Felver)