In a one-horse town somewhere in the US of A the local magistrate got an invite to a fancy dress party. He decided to go dressed in a chicken suit. When the evening came he kitted himself out, jumped in his car and headed to the party. The local policeman, fresh out of the academy, spotted a car being driven by a man in a chicken suit. He was sure there was something illegal about that, so with lights flashing and siren wailing he pulled the driver over and demanded to see his driver’s license. Well, it’s not exactly easy extracting a license from a chicken suit so the judge was a little exasperated and said, “Listen son, I’m in a hurry. I haven’t done anything wrong”.
“Are you refusing to show me your license?” said the over-zealous policeman, “That’ll get you an audience before the judge in the morning”.
“Look, you idiot,” exclaimed the magistrate, his feathers now well and truly ruffled, “I am the judge!”
“Right, and I’m Mother Teresa”, said the policeman, “I’m arresting you for resisting arrest”. With that he dragged the protesting chicken out of the car, yanked off his head covering . . . and came face to face with the magistrate!
The moral of the story? Don’t book a judge by his cover.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness . . .
Whenever I have a group of young people preparing for their Confirmation service I always make sure I let them know how easy they have it these days. Oh yes, don’t worry, they roll their eyes as I go off on my ‘old person’s’ ramble about ‘when I was your age’! But, it’s true . . . when I was their age we had to sit a final exam to pass Confirmation class. And, if you were a generation before me you probably had to stand up in front of the whole congregation and be quizzed publicly about what you had learned! Ah, those were the days.
But, I wonder how you’d go if you had to do it now? How would you go if you had to stand up in front of the congregation now and answer questions about your faith? No problem, right? Afterall, you’ve had so many more years of experience and growth in knowledge and understanding since you were a teenager. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do that this Sunday, but, I do wonder how I’d go if I had to stand before God and answer questions about my faith? How about you? How would you go?
There’s a character in the Taika Waititi’s movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople called Psycho Sam. Sam lives out in the bush, as far away from civilization as possible. He wisely wears a colander to prevent the authorities tracking him. He’s a bit of a ditsy, doomsday prepper who hasn’t quite got around to building the bunker that will protect him from the impending nuclear holocaust and his cooking leaves a lot to be desired.
I guess that’s one way to deal with the anxiety about the end of the world. Dig a bunker. Stockpile food. Wear a colander. Look after number one. But Jesus suggests that when you see the signs – in the sun, the moon, the stars, distress among nations, the roaring of the seas – when you see the signs there’s another way of responding . . . and it doesn’t involve a colander!
Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it.
Tachycardia. Bradycardia. Atrial fibrillation. These are all types of arrhythmia. Which is not ideal. It means your heart is out of rhythm. If you have a heart arrhythmia you might experience palpitations, chest pains, fatigue, light-headedness, shortness of breath, anxiety. Probably best to see your doctor. Left untreated arrhythmias can result in stroke, heart failure, cardiac arrest and sudden death. Sounds serious.
I wonder what the diagnosis would be if ‘the world’ were to see a heart specialist?
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. If he was alive today he might have added: ‘and scams’. According to the ACCC, Australians lost $2.74 billion to scams last year. Maybe you were one of them?
Last week I received an email from the LCA IT department inviting me to complete a S.C.A.M 1 Fundamentals course. Sounds helpful, right? The trouble is the email asks me to click on the link! I would, but I don’t know if it’s a scam or not!
The effects of scams go way beyond just the financial losses. Yes, the financial losses get the headlines, but it’s the emotional and psychological impacts that can have the greater and longer lasting effects: anxiety, loss of self-esteem, shame, cognitive impairment, powerlessness, loss of identity.
I guess it should be no surprise that Jesus was ahead of his time and he knew what he was talking about when he said: “Beware that no one leads you astray”.
Are you interested in money? Dumb question, right? I haven’t met too many people who aren’t. Whenever I’m in my local library I browse through the magazine rack. There is magazine titled ‘Money’. There’s a section at the end of the magazine where a successful person is interviewed. One of the questions is: How would you spend your last $50? One person said: ‘I would spend my last $50 on a big breakfast – with as many sides as possible – and a few coffees at a gorgeous Bondi café’. Many others respond with similar comments. Sometimes someone will say they would invest the money, or pay for some sort of lessons to upgrade their skills, or even give the money away to charity! The one thing I have never read is for someone to say they’d give the money to scammers! Well, that would be crazy wouldn’t it?
Factoring in inflation, $50 dollars may not be far off the two copper coins the widow in this week’s Gospel reading puts into the temple offering bowl. It’s her last $50. It’s everything she has. But, Jesus does not have very complimentary things to say about the people who are supported by the temple offerings: “They devour widows’ houses”, he says.
So, who is this unnamed woman? Does she know what she’s doing? Is she crazy?
The serpent said to Eve in the garden: “You will not die . . . your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4-5) Half-truths are insidious. The two half-truths told by the serpent continue to lure us and fascinate us and shape us. We (understandably) look to avoid death and anything that goes with death (pain, suffering, heartache, grief) by ignoring death, denying death, minimizing death, celebrating death (just look at the skeletons and tombstones and ghosts plastered all over fences this week), controlling death and by doing so we think we are being like God. Well, perhaps in some ways we are, but there is a price to pay for trying to be like God. It’s a price we may be willing to pay, but it’s a price God is not willing to pay.
We all love to receive something for free, it brings us great joy. It’s a concept we know and understand, but what does it mean to be set free? Free from what?
Are we, like the Jews who had believed in Jesus, stating that we have never been slaves to anyone? Let’s explore this concept together and see if we can get to the bottom of what it means to be set free, free indeed!
Dr Reverend Tim Stringer
They’re certainly not backward in coming forward, are they? James and John, that is. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” It doesn’t say it in the text, but I can just imagine Jesus rolling his eyes at that one. He knows them well enough. “Sure, what is it you want me to do?”
What do James and John want? Well, just a little bit of the glory action. I mean it’s all well and good tramping around the countryside, following Jesus, roughing it every night, having given up jobs and security and family. That’s all fine, but surely there’s going to be a pay off sometime. And, James and John wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would they? So, they try and secure their place, their place in glory.
I wonder if the other disciples were angry not because of what James and John did, but because the other disciples weren’t quick enough to think of asking first. Now, they were in danger of missing out.
And, I wonder if this isn’t a common fear amongst followers of Jesus?