Time for something different: A draft

Once upon a time...

In a forest...

A big forest... 

I mean... a REALLY big forest...

where there were lots of animals... 

and trees that grew so tall they cast shadows as far as the eye could see. 

It was in this forest, amongst all the other animals, there lived a duck named Bella and her companion, Sparks the rat. Bella was a curious duck, for as long as anyone could remember she had always been asking questions about everything and working out why things happened the way they did. 

One day, while all the animals were sitting around the gathering rock in the middle of the forest, eating mushrooms and sharing stories, Bella got to thinking about all the places she had been in the forest and how she had never seen past the edge of it all.

Bella looked at Sparks, who was reluctantly chewing on a mushroom while listening to the fox talk about how playful her litter of pups were. "Sparks?" she said, laying down on the grass beside them "what do you know about the edge of the forest?"

Sparks raised an eyebrow as she turned to look at her, "The edge of the forest?" said Sparks, "only that it's a long way off, and that we don't really need to go any further than it". 

"Have you ever wondered though? what it looks like? what's on the other side of it?" Bella was half daydreaming as she talked about it, almost losing herself in what she imagined it to be like. "We should go!" she said to Sparks as she pounced on them, knocking the mushroom from their hand.

"Alright, let's go!" Sparks said, grabbing some extra mushrooms for them to eat on their way to the edge of the forest. "What do you think we will see when we get there?" they asked

Bella grabbed Sparks’ hand as they walked, "I have no idea..." said Bella excitedly, "maybe it's a place where a giant dragon lives!". Sparks giggled along with her.

The pair had been walking for half a day before they could see the last line of trees in the distance that signalled the edge of the forest. Hunny and Bella looked at each other and grinned. They were so excited!

"Are you ready?" Bella asked Sparks... but as she finished her question a raven squawked nearby. They both turned to see the raven sitting on a branch in a tree near the edge preening itself.

"Must go alone Bella..." the raven squawked... "Must go alone..." and it flew down and perched itself on the ground beside Sparks. "Don't worry bout Sparks... we will talk, they and I, while you look over the edge"

Bella looked at the raven and then to Sparks, a bit scared of going out there alone. On all her big adventures Bella had always had Sparks by her side. How odd it was to have to do something and not have them with her.

"Okay..." Bella said, not being able to resist what was waiting beyond the trees. "I will tell you all about it when I come back!" Sparks walked over to Bella and hugged her tightly, and then she was off, walking the last few steps to see what was over the edge of the forest.

As Bella passed the last tree she took a deep breath. She had never seen anything like it. At the edge of a forest was a great lake of crystal clear water. "Wow!" she said as she looked out over it, her eyes catching sight of fish leaping out from the rippling lake.

But as she got used to what she saw, she caught sight of something in the distance. On the other side of the great lake was a forest, much like the one she had just come out from... and at the edge of the forest looking out across the great lake at her... was a duck... that looked identical to Bella

Bella stood there and thought for a few moments about what she was seeing. "How completely strange!" she said to herself, and all of a sudden it made perfect sense. She laughed to herself, then waved to the duck on the other side of the great lake, and as it waved back at her she turned and walked back to Sparks and the raven.

When she got back to the patch of grass where she had left the raven and Sparks, she saw the most curious thing. They were both rolling around on the floor, laughing so hard they couldn't stand up.

"What's so funny, you pair?" she asked, walking over and grabbing one of the mushrooms Sparks squirrelled away.

"Raven here was telling stories about how all of the other animals came to the edge of the forest and refused to go any further..." Sparks chuckled and walked over to Bella, giving her a huge hug.

When they got back home to the middle of the forest, they sat around the rock listening to the others tell their stories. Sparks looked at Bella and put their arm around her, "So what did you see at the edge of the forest?"

Bella smiled and kissed Sparks on the nose as she leant her head on his shoulder, "I saw that all I will ever need, I have right here with me... I saw another duck as well, on the other side of a great lake... she looked an awful lot like me..." as she closed her eyes she smiled at Sparks... "One day, we will cross that lake, you and I"

Sermon - Advent 1 2018(?) - Hope

“From the pain come the dream
From the dream come the vision
From the vision come the people
From the people come the power
From this power come the change”

Peter Gabriel’s ‘Fourteen Black Paintings”. It’s a simple song. Five lines long. But it ties in so perfectly with the theme of today; the first week in Advent… Hope.

I was tempted to do that thing where we find our favourite writer or theologian and talk about their perspectives on a certain time of year or idea. Instead I thought I’d be selfish and rant a little about how I have been seeing things in the lead up to Christmas.

I was also tempted to do the easy thing today and talk about how coming up to Christmas and how exciting it is that we’re close to the time of year Jesus was born. There’s all this joy and mirth, talk of goodwill, and for the most part people really try to make good on that talk. It’s a beautiful time of year, so full of optimism. Of Joy. But it’s hard to do this, or appreciate it completely unless we see it in its context.

Imagine over here we have Jesus; amazing person, we gush about how great He is all the time, and all the things that He brings. Bright, wonderful, a light that outshines all others. This is what Christmas is for a lot of people.

But, imagine over there… there is this place beyond the light. It’s cold, it’s lonely, and sometimes for people who find themselves here don’t know whether they are able to trust the person who walks past them because it’s possible they are either there to verbally abuse, torture, or turn them in to the authorities. Unfortunately, this is what Christmas is for an increasing number of people.

This is the world we’re living in. The brexiteers, Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson… Peter Dutton. All of them targeting people who are most vulnerable, the sick, the unemployed, those seeking asylum, the LGBT community. We’ve been at war in another set of countries since around 2002 / 2003, bombing the countries that asylum seekers are coming from for more than ten years. Our government has the audacity to tell them they can’t come here, thrown in torture camps that probably equate to Guantanamo Bay.

Our leaders.

I wondered how this would fit in with the Matthew reading… it’s all very doom and gloom. I mean, as I speak there is a clock that indicates that we are three minutes from proverbial midnight. The closer to midnight this clock moves, the more likely we are to bring about our own destruction. Not since 1981, at the height of the Cold War have we ever been so close.

I find it harder and harder every day to not get caught up in this whole “end of the world” thing, the signs are there… but the same signs have been there throughout human history, really. Point to a period in time and I’m pretty sure you’ll find someone with their boot on the throat of someone else.

We really don’t know, though. Jesus says to keep watch. The Son of Man will come when you least expect Him.

It’s here I think we need to look back at the two sides of this situation, the one around hope. The light of Christ on one side, the darkness on the other, and from this point of being able to glimpse it, to feel just the slightest breath of cold, and to imagine the despair of someone lost in this place even for a moment, it grants us a perspective on how truly crucial and incredible hope is.

Jesus is that hope.

But more than that…

We are that hope.

Because we can be better people. We can forgive. We can welcome. We can love.

Jesus is the role model we should aspire with all our hearts to be.

But we need to understand that it means getting dirty. Sitting with the sick, the lonely, the outcast. Being fearless and speaking truth to power. Speaking up and telling people that their god is not our God… that a God of love and hope would never condemn creation the way theirs is happy to. We can’t just pray and hope things will get better.

It’s time for us to be like Peter and walk out to Jesus on the water, and I feel like we don’t use this example of Peter nearly as much as we should. It’s in those moments where Peter for the briefest of moments achieved what was possible for humanity and *became* like Jesus, and in that moment he shows us that everyone is capable of taking that radical ministry to the streets.

We aren’t an impossible distance away from embodying this... it’s a choice, it’s a decision, to believe not just in yourself but something bigger. Whether you believe Jesus and Peter actually walked on water isn’t the point, even if it’s just a metaphor (and the gospels are full of them) for that transformation or purification of something into something *better*, like Jesus turning water into wine, the point is that at the heart of all of these things is a message to people about their potential.

Our potential to love.

Our potential for change.

Our potential embrace those on the edge and lift them up out of poverty.

Our potential to liberate the oppressed.

Our potential to call out systems of injustice and demand change.

I’d like to finish by quoting someone else, and I’ll give a cookie to whoever can tell me who penned it:

"Cause love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is ourselves under pressure"