A sermon preached by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward
at the Church of Unity, Orpington
Sunday 27 September 2009, 16 after Trinity, Proper 21, year B
Readings: Numbers 11.4-6, 10-16, 24-29; James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50
Does one person’s success mean another person’s failure? Does one person’s prosperity mean another’s poverty? If one person is rich, does that necessarily mean that someone else is poor? For every winner there is a loser, for every first there is a last, so it seems in our world. Resources are limited. Sometimes one person having plenty does mean that others do without – look at Zimbabwe and the ostentatious wealth of those in power will the people descend into more and more extreme poverty – here is a case where no doubt the wealth of the rich is literally made up of what the poor should be receiving. Or on a more parochial level think of a buffet supper – what happens if the first person to fill up his or her plate takes all the cheese? There is nothing left for the rest. One person having much means others do without.
There are however lots of areas of life where this law of limited resources doesn’t apply. And one of those is the kingdom of God. God’s spirit isn’t a bowl of grated cheese. A feature of the kingdom is that there is enough for all, there will be enough for all. But Christians don’t believe that God only has good things for us in the future - God gives us good things now, we have hints of the future kingdom. And one of those hints of the kingdom is the fact that God does give us some things that don’t run out. In fact, he gives us something which – paradoxically – seems to grow and grow the more you use it.
Imagine a bucket of water, and each time someone takes some water out of it, it is then even more full than when it began. Eventually the bucket will be overwhelmed and the water will flow out in a cascade – so long as someone keeps taking water out! This is a bucket where the more you take out, the more there is in there. It doesn’t make any sense, unless we’re talking about God – God’s grace, God’s spirit. It’s one of those things – where the more grace you receive from God, somehow the more you are able to receive.
God’s grace is something we don’t need to compete for – quite the opposite – it can come in the most unexpected places. Ann Morisy, who gave a lecture for Churches Together in Orpington last year, talks about ‘cascades of grace’. Her experience is that sometimes when people in faith work together to do some good thing that cascades of grace start to flow. One example of this is a church which ran a homeless day centre, where homeless people could come, get a meal and a cup of coffee and a bit of company. One day a churchgoer volunteered to help with this, and to be honest, the heart of the co-ordinator sank. Because this lady who was volunteering was herself an anxious woman, and the co-ordinator wondered whether she would really be able to cope with the rough men who came to the centre. On top of that, this woman was blind. Nevertheless, the co-ordinator didn’t say no.
So this lady turned up to do her volunteering, and what she did was to go into the day room and simply sit with the men and get to know them. Several remarkable things happened. She discovered a gift of listening and being with these folk. Indeed, she was better at this aspect than the sighted volunteers, because she didn’t try to do anything there but sit and listen – she wasn’t busy tidying or serving food or anything else – she could not be distracted. In addition, her vulnerability led the men to be compassionate to her, to discover a gentle side of themselves. They found themselves caring for this little lady, they found a relationship, which in term helped them to build relationships with each other and the other volunteers.
This is a cascade of grace. An unpromising situation, where God’s grace flows and magnifies itself. And one of its key features is that this central character – the blind lady (and also the homeless men) – was someone who seemed on first sight to have nothing to give. God’s power was all the more evident in her weakness.
God’s grace isn’t something which runs out, it isn’t something we need to be competitive about – there is more than enough for all. The limit to what we can receive from God isn’t to do with him, but is to do with our willingness to be open to him. This, I think, is what our Bible readings today are about. We heard in the Old Testament reading about a really significant change in the way things worked. Up until this point, Moses was the one who was responsible for the welfare of the people. He was a solo player – it was about God and Moses and the people.
And we witness, I think, Moses on the verge of a breakdown. Moses says simply: “I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once – if I have found favour in your sight – and do not let me see my misery.” Those words, thousands of years away, are full of relevance for anyone who has seen someone – especially someone in Christian ministry - become broken through over-work. But Moses does the right thing – he says to God, this can’t go on. And it doesn’t. At the Lord’s command, Moses gathers seventy elders to assist him, elders on whom the people will also be able to depend. The unpromising situation of Moses being on the verge of a breakdown is transformed into an outpouring of God’s spirit on many people.
There are two who don’t make the meeting, but nevertheless they receive God’s spirit. And this is the point. Moses doesn’t want them to be stopped, even though they haven’t done things quite by the book. Similarly, Jesus in the gospel reading is happy for someone to cast out demons in his name, even though he hasn’t been hanging out with Jesus. They still have God’s spirit – and that is not something to be jealous or envious of. There is enough to go round. It’s as though the disciples are still thinking of God’s spirit as a bowl of grated cheese, rather than an overflowing bucket, a cascade of grace.
There is an obvious lesson here about Ecumenism – about working together with people from different Christian denominations. Indeed, one of the features Ann Morisy sees in situations where you find cascades of grace is that they often involve people from different denominations working together. We don’t need to compete for God’s grace - there is enough of God’s grace for all and it comes in all sorts of cascades and ways we don’t expect – God’s grace grows the more you use it. What matters most is that we are ready to look for it, to co-operate with God, to see be open to his working even in the most unpromising of situations – and may we pray that we may be ready to receive and recognize that grace wherever we find ourselves.
Comments