Lives made whole: Giving thanks for thirty years of the Ministry of Healing

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Healing Ministry at Sr Paul’s Cathedral on 27 October 2015:

‘The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs, to every town and place where he himself intended to go’, we just heard in our Gospel reading. And I wonder what the emotions of those newly-appointed ambassadors would have been like when Jesus sent them away? No doubt there would have been a sense of excitement, certainly, a sense of new beginnings, perhaps even adventure. But there would have also been a sense of bereavement, of sadness of leaving behind familiar surroundings, friends and family. And then there would probably have been a sense of awe, perhaps even inadequacy, of feeling ill equipped for the daunting task that lies ahead: the task of being an Apostle, of being sent out.

What was it that went through the disciples’ minds as Jesus directed them away from the familiar surroundings of their Galilean home to travel away from Nazareth and the cities around Lake Galilee? For many of them, the Lake had been their breadwinner. As fishermen, Peter and Andrew, James and John relied on the Lake for their livelihood, while Levi collected the road tolls on the main trading route—the Via Maris—that encircled the lake. Most of the people whom Jesus called into discipleship were Galileans; many had a home and family in the harbour town of Capernaum. Until now, they had remained in the landscape and among the people that had been their home, and which had been so familiar to them. And now Jesus sent them abroad: away from their Lake, their families and friends.

Unlike St Matthew’s parallel of tonight’s gospel reading, which tells us that the disciples are to go ‘nowhere among the gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans’, St Luke does not explain in detail where it is that Jesus sends the disciples—‘every town and place where he himself intended to go’ covers a huge area. In order to fill in the gaps, we need to take a look at the previous chapters of Luke’s Gospel. A few chapters before today’s reading, in chapter 6, we hear how ‘a great multitude from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon’—the heartlands of the Jewish faith and its neighbouring territories, came to hear Jesus at the lakeside and to seek healing. And in chapter 8 we hear how Jesus himself travelled across the Lake to ‘the country of the Gerasenes’—still on the lakeshore, but no longer Jewish.

As the disciples are being sent away from Lake Galilee, they are instructed to seek out the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’, are told to proclaim Jesus’ message of repentance and healing to the very people who had already travelled so far to seek out and hear Jesus’ teachings. Because that, I am sure, is what Jesus means when he encourages his disciples, ‘wherever you enter a house … remain in the same house. … Do not move from house to house’—‘when you travel, stay with those who have already come to hear us, and share with their friends the news they themselves had travelled to hear’. Here then, we reach a watershed in the Gospel, as the good news travels far beyond the lake counties, the home of Jesus and his friends, and the seedbed of his message.

This is therefore no ordinary journey. And so, as they set out to bring back into the fold of faith the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’, Jesus firmly instructs his disciples not to rely on their own strength and resources but orders them to ‘carry no purse, no bag, no sandals’. Jesus’ directions to his ambassadors of the message of reconciliation and lives made whole here match the instructions for entry into the Jerusalem Temple as laid out in the Mishnah, the orally transmitted ritual law of the Jewish faith (Mish. Berakoth, 9.5). Just as no one was allowed to enter the temple with provisions, or money, or ornate clothing, so Jesus’ disciples also are to travel as if they were on pilgrimage, as if they were journeying to the Holy of Holies—light and taking only the barest of necessities.

Jesus instructs his apostles to travel as if they were pilgrims approaching the Temple Sanctuary, because he believes that the place where God’s presence can be discerned is not only located in Jerusalem, but rather that it can be found within the souls and bodies of those who hear and respond to his message; all who are willing to have their lives transformed. Our reading of the Gospels shows that his own relationship with the ritual temple cult was ambivalent at best, which is surely why he asks his disciples first to seek out those people who respond to his message with generosity—the ‘living temples of the faith’, as it were.

Certainly St Peter later spoke of mission in those terms, when he explained that we all are ‘living stones’ called by God to be formed into a spiritual temple on the foundation that Christ himself has laid (1 Pet. 2.5). Today’s Gospel reading illustrates well this principle: on the foundation of Jesus’ words and works, the seventy messengers are to build up into a spiritual home for God people throughout the Jewish world: That’s why Jesus tells his disciples in our Gospel first to seek out the ‘living temples’, those whose interest for the good news is already awakened, whose faith can be discerned, and stay with them awhile as they make known the Gospel in their towns and villages.

And as he sends them on their mission Jesus pairs up his seventy ambassadors—so that each disciple will have a companion who walks with them. He ‘sent them on ahead of them—in pairs’, we read. Again, the reason for Jesus’ action probably has its roots in Jewish law. As we know from the reports of the trial of Jesus and our reading of the Old Testament, in a court of law valid testimony requires two witnesses (Deut 19.15). His disciples are clearly sent to be such witnesses—faithful observers who speak of the wisdom, his works of making people whole, and his deeds of power that had astounded so many in Jesus’ homeland. Yet they are not only sent as witnesses who will testify to another’s deeds—mere ‘hearers of the word of God’, as it were—but rather they are sent to witness to Jesus’ power by their own deeds—‘are doers of the word of God’—when they themselves cast out demons, and heal the sick.

Being sent to speak of Jesus’ deeds to others forms the foundation of Christian ministry, today’s Gospel reading makes clear. We are all called to be ready to be make known what we have witnessed of God’s work in those places into which he sends us. We are all called to be God’s ambassadors, speaking of our experience of the work of God among us, and the hope we have for that work in future. As we give thanks for thirty years of the ministry of healing here at St Paul’s, we acknowledge the many faithful ambassadors of the message of Jesus Christ: lay people and clergy who called others into friendship with Christ, who shared his good news with those who were broken hearted, or broken in body or soul. Faithful ambassadors who reached out to this city in prayer and compassion. People who longed to share with others their experience that this Cathedral is being transformative in their lives, how it has offered a place of welcome to them and many others, without judgement or prejudice, how St Paul’s is growing to be a place that hopes truly to be a home church for the people of this city and diocese, and a place where people can share in the ministry of reconciliation and be made whole.

In an age where the bad news about Church so often dominate public understanding of the Christian faith, it is doubly important that we take our role as ambassadors of Christ’s work seriously. That we tell others—especially those friends of ours who don’t share our commitment to the church–the good news about our own faith, that we share our hopes for our church for the future. And, that we don’t just talk about our faith, but also work on our faith. Work to become a community that truly will welcome and include all—a Cathedral and church community, in short, we‘d not only be happy to talk to our friends about but, more importantly, a place we’d be happy to take them to!

Ours is the calling to be ambassadors of this good news; people who are sent out to make known how Christ’s healing power can transform real lives and communities—our lives and our community. Ours is the calling to be ambassadors of Jesus, sent so that many others may hear about, and come to experience, the love and transformative power of God in this Cathedral and diocese. As we give thanks for the faithful ministry of our Healing Ministry, and consider its future, I want to encourage you to pray about what it may be that God is asking you to do as you seek to serve him, and continue to make known Christ’s good news of lives restored and people made whole, in this place.

© Andreas Loewe, 2015. All rights reserved.

Remembrance: the God who takes up our brokenness and makes all things whole

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at Holy Trinity, Hampton Park, on Remembrance Sunday 2014:

This morning’s readings (Ezekiel 37.1-14 and Matthew 26.17-19, 26-30) assure us that God remembers each one of his own who has died; that he will bring together, at the end of all ages, all those who have lost their lives; and that it is by our corporate remembrance, our active recalling of those whose lives have been lost, that we can share in that assurance of lives restored.

Our word ‘to remember’ is the direct English equivalent of the Latin verb ‘re-memorari’. The second part of that word—‘memorari’—comes from the noun ‘memoria’, from which we derive our word ‘memory’. The Latin prefix ‘re-’ often means ‘again’ or ‘back’. To remember a person or an event, therefore, means to have an intensive awareness of someone or something in one’s mind: to be intensely mindful of someone.

That is one, and the most conventional, way of looking at the word. Now imagine the same word with a hyphen. If you add a hyphen between ‘re-’ and ‘member’, the word suddenly changes its meaning altogether. To ‘re-member’ may look very much like our first word, but has very different roots. Yes, it shares the Latin prefix ‘re-’—‘again’ or ‘back’—but its second part comes from the Latin ‘membrum’—‘limb’ or, somewhat archaically, a ‘member’.

To ‘re-member’, then, means to bring together, reassemble, members and limbs. It means to bring to life someone or something that was broken and therefore is the direct opposite of the word to ‘dis-member’. This morning’s readings invite us to put our communal remembrance of the conflicts, wars and acts of terror that have brought us together this morning, in the context of both of these words.

Our first reading, a momentous vision from the prophecy of Ezekiel, illustrates well the second—the hyphenated—meaning of the word re-member. The prophet finds himself in a vast plain, surrounded by dismembered, dried out bones; a valley full of dead bones without any hope of life. At first he is not told where these bones come from, God’s hand simply leads him around the bones. Ezekiel may be standing in the middle of a mass grave, or a place where generations of the dead have been placed; at this point the prophecy doesn’t tell us more about their provenance. All we know is that there ‘are very many bones lying in the valley, and they were very dry’ (Ezek. 37.2).

And God charges Ezekiel to prophesy to these very many, very dead bones. God commands him to proclaim his word to them. And as Ezekiel makes known God’s word to the assembly of dried up dismembered bones, we hear him speak words of resurrection: ‘Thus says the Lord God to these bones’, Ezekiel proclaims to the valley of dry bones, ‘I will cause breath to enter in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord’ (Ezek. 37.5). Immediately, at the very time that Ezekiel proclaims God’s message of resurrection to the dispersed bones, they are re-membered: ‘the bones came together, bone to its bone’ (Ezek. 37.7). As the prophet speaks the words of resurrection, the disconnected bones become assembled, limb to limb, member to member, in this divine act of re-membering. And, as he continues to prophecy the words that God gives him, suddenly ‘sinews were on them, … flesh had come upon them; and skin had covered them’ (Ezek. 37.8). A valley of bones, re-membered, re-clothed with sinews and skins standing before Ezekiel, ‘but there was no breath in them yet’ (Ezek. 37.8).

And now Ezekiel is commanded to call on the breath, to fill the empty bodies with life. He calls on God’s spirit, speaks into the four corners of the earth—wherever their breath had been scattered—to fill the bodies, blows on them as one would kindle a fire, in-spires the empty bodies ‘that they may live again’ (Ezek. 37.9). And as God’s spirit filled them, the bodies stand and live, and God reveals to the prophet that the vast multitude before him is the whole house of Israel, a people once dispersed and dead, now re-membered and resurrected.

Yet although they stand, looking to all intents like real people—with fresh skins on their dead bones and the breath of life within their bodies—deep down they remain people who remain disconnected from one another and from God, we read. They tell the prophet: ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are lost completely’ (Ezek. 37.12). And the word of God spoken by the prophet addresses them in their hopelessness, prophecies how God will bring them back, not only from their graves, but restore them to the heavenly kingdom that he had promised; how God will put his spirit within them, so that they may live. And all so that they may know that the Lord alone is, indeed, their God.

God will bring life, even in the midst of death, the prophet tells the vast army of the people of Israel. God has re-membered them, and will not forget them either. Another Dean of another St Paul’s Cathedral, John Donne of London’s St Paul’s, reflected on this hope like this in one of his sermons:

God knows in what part of the world every grain of every man’s dust lies … and he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints and, in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements, is sat down at[ the right hand of God, in a glorious resurrection (Sermon LXXXI, 19 November 1627).

God re-members, brings together, his broken people, by remembering, recalling each one that has been lost to death.

Just as our first reading proclaims God’s mighty works of re-membering, of putting together again those who were broken, wherever they may rest, so our second reading shows us how we, too, can engage in the work of remembrance. For at the heart of our gospel reading from St Matthew stand words that form the centre of our own worshipping life, as we gather round Christ’s table: ‘This is given for you; do this in remembrance of me’ (Mt. 26.26, Lk. 22.19). Do this, so that you may remember me, Christ says, and points to the broken bread that symbolises his body, the body that is about to be broken on the cross.

And so our daily sharing in the broken bread becomes not only the ultimate act of remembrance—a time when we recall intently the work of our salvation and the fulfilment of God’s promise that all may one day come to share in the promised heavenly kingdom—but also is meant to be a share in his work of re-membrance, of bringing together the members of the body of Christ, however dispersed, however disconnected from one another and from God they may feel, however broken they may be. At Christ’s table, as we come to remember him, we are all re-membered, are brought together, are given a share in God’s mighty work of deliverance in the death and resurrection of Christ. At Christ’s table, we make present this deliverance in our midst, and we do so by our act of remembering, as each individual member of his body shares in the bread and wine and we, ‘though we are a many, become one body, because we all share in the one bread’ (1 Cor 10.17).

We stand at Christ’s table not merely as a living assembly of humans—like the multitude of dried bones, now covered in flesh and given breath though still without hope, that once filled the valley of Ezekiel’s vision—but as living members, as limbs of Christ’s own body, connected to him, sharing in the pains he feels in the hope that we, too, might come to share the risen life he brings. As we remember him breaking the bread, the sign of his body, at table with his disciples, we also re-member—bring together—his broken body, become members one of another and of Christ; all by doing this ‘in remembrance of him’ (Mt. 26.26, Lk. 22.19).

On this Remembrance Sunday, as we remember the centenary of the Great War and the enormity of its cost, I invite you to share in the remembrance that both recalls in our minds and brings together again what has been broken by illness, suffering, war or hatred. I invite you to remember—to recall—how by letting his own body be broken on a cross, Christ has taken up in himself all brokenness in order to make it whole. And as you receive the bread and the wine of Holy Communion I invite you to re-member—to build up and become—his body on earth: be re-connected with one another and with Christ himself, as members of his body, so that together we may make known the work of his healing, wholeness and redemption in an age still marred by conflict and war.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.