Trinity 18: Numbers 11: 4-6, 10-16, 24-29; James 5: 13-20; Mark 9: 38-50

Fr. James Harris

 

You could’ve heard the yelp in Piraeus.

 

There was I, wandering along to Bazaar with the two girls in tow to pick up some groceries; when, at the sound of the said yelp, I turned round to observe Rosa, our youngest, sticking out of a manhole in the pavement, one leg in, one leg out, her flip flop dangling precariously into the void below, eyes wide with the shock of it (understandably) and totally unable to extract herself from her predicament.  The cover of the manhole was missing; she had not ben looking where she was going as she toddled along behind me and had stepped straight into it, her momentum carrying the rest of her forward.   She escaped with only a grazed shin and it’s the sort of thing I’m sure we will laugh about in the future – do you remember the time Rosa disappeared into the pavement? – but I recount it this morning because of what happened afterwards, which I think speaks into our Bible readings this morning.

Nearby on the pavement that afternoon was a Greek family – Mum, Dad and a toddler safely in a pushchair. Seeing the incident unfold, the Dad leaped into action, helping to extract Rosa, delving into his bag for antiseptic wipes, stuffing some waste cardboard into the hole to prevent further mishaps and even going into the shop to remonstrate with the staff as to why they hadn’t reported the hole or done something about it themselves. (I must admit that made it slightly awkward when we then had to limp in there to get our shopping!)

Our relative respective Greek and English were not good enough to have a long conversation but I could tell that he was deeply embarrassed that such an accident should happen to a visitor to his country, perhaps ashamed that money is so tight that the pavements could be left to fall into such disrepair in the first place, and most of all, deeply concerned for Rosa and her wellbeing. She could have been his child. And I think his reaction expressed an understanding of community that meant that, in a way, she was his child – in the sense that all of us belong to one another in some way, we are all each other’s responsibility, each other’s delight, each other’s concern. We are all, after all, children of the same heavenly Father.

 

I have seen this particularly with children in Greece – they are public property are they not? – and it is endearing and hugely affirming to experience. It’s not something that one experiences in quite the same way in the UK where, for all sorts of reasons, life is more ‘privatised’.

 

 

The idea that we should all be each other’s responsibility, each other’s delight, each other’s concern is, it seems to me, the very essence of what the early Christians believed Jesus had instructed them to be as his Church, his Body on earth. More than that, it was what God wanted for his people from the start-  even in Genesis we read that it was not good for Adam to be alone; in fellowship and community was the way God created humans to live.  All three of our readings today, in different ways, have something to say about this notion of community, I think – and I want to draw out a few points of interest which may help us learn how to live as this particular community of St Paul’s here in the middle of Athens today, or the communities from which we’re visiting.

 

Numbers:

The people of God had been wandering for two years by now and they are fed up already despite all the examples of God’s faithfulness and his leading. We were better off in Egypt, they moan, the food was better.  Moses is frustrated by their whining and cries out to God who comes to his aid by commissioning or anointing 70 of the elders of the community to share the load with him. We are told that he shared out the spirit – the ‘ruach’, or wind, in Hebrew – among them, anointing them, marking them out as a particular group of chosen people with a job to do.

It was that same spirit – now described of course in Greek as pneuma – that fell on the believers at Pentecost to mark them out as the Church and it remains true for us today – it is the Holy Spirit at our baptism which seals our identity as members of a very special community. The Holy Spirit is the glue of the Christian community.  This is important – because it reminds us we’re not supposed to carry on in the same way as we had been doing after we become followers of Christ; we are marked, identified as part of a new community, a community with a spiritual perspective which certainly is not immune from the troubles of the world (which of us can say that?) but which can look beyond those troubles to a bigger vision and respond to them in a different way, with the gift of the eyes of faith.

 

The Israelites had lost that perspective. Their concern was entirely earthbound – cucumbers, melons, leeks and onions – and God had to act to remind them who they really were – a spiritual community.

 

James:

The final verses of St James epistle offer us a slightly different take on what it means to be community.

The Christians to whom he’s written are still an anointed spiritual community – note how the elders are still expected to share the oil of healing, another symbol of that Holy Spirit which was given to those original elders with Moses. But here we are reminded that living as community does not mean our experiences are all the same – its not a homogenous existence. At various points, some of us will be down on our luck, others rejoicing, others struggling with our health, others struggling with the consequences of our mistakes. The point is not to think ourselves more or less favoured because of our plight, nor to judge the situation others find themselves in, but rather to encourage and help each other to respond appropriately to God in each circumstance, to share what is going on, to seek support and encouragement from each other so that the whole community may benefit.

 

So if someone has good news, don’t keep it to yourselves for fear of upsetting someone who’s not in such a good place – rather, share it so that everyone might be reminded and encouraged of the joy and hope there can be in life.

– If someone’s suffering, help them to pray, pray with them and for them so that the burden of suffering is shared.

– If someone has made a mistake, reassure them that forgiveness belongs to our God; that there is an interdependence between the forgiveness we receive from God and the forgiveness we share with each other.

 

For James, the message is clear: we’re not supposed to do this stuff on our own; its hard living like this. We are a community living and sharing the whole of life together. We are a community in a particular kind of relationship with one another and with God, a relationship centred on prayer and forgiveness.

 

Mark:

Jesus sums all this up in our Gospel passage, in this collection of, to be frank, quite difficult and seemingly repetitive or disjointed sayings. It’s one of the reasons some scholars think Mark collected these sayings from different times and presented them together in this chapter. Regardless, the gist is pretty clear and uncompromising.   The focus of our community life is Jesus Christ – not allegiance to a particular sect, not preferences for certain ways of doing things and certainly not any kind of superiority or exclusivism. If you call on the name of Jesus, you’re in. ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’.

The spirit which marks us out comes from him; the quality of the shared life we live and the way we deal with the experiences of life is centred on a relationship with him. We are all growing into his likeness day by day and anything that gets in the way of that growth in holiness – what the Orthodox call ‘theosis’, becoming like God – anything that gets in the way of that must be excised.

The symbols Jesus uses to describe this growth are also uncompromising: refining fire and salt. These were images his audiences would have been familiar with.

 

Fire – which can either destroy or purify. The municipal rubbish dump in Jerusalem in those days was called Gehenna and it was a constantly smouldering, stinking bonfire outside the city walls. Fire eats up the rubbish of our lives. But fire also extracts the purest elements. When metal is refined with fire, unlike with a process like smelting which actually changes the chemical composition of the material, the elements that are extracted appear in their purest, essential form, the purest versions of themselves. That’s what the Christian community is in the process of becoming; we, if we choose to get involved, are in the process of becoming the purest version of ourselves. How wonderful a thought.

Salt – equally powerful image and, in days before refrigeration, vital to life and health. In Jewish kosher law, salt was used to drain the impure blood from freshly slaughtered meat. Salt serves all sorts of purposes doesn’t it: preserves what is good in food by drawing out the water which contains the bad bacteria; enables something to last and endure longer than it would normally in hostile conditions; improves flavour by reducing bitterness and enhancing sweetness; releases molecules which allow the aroma of the food to be noticed and shared by those around.

You must be salted with fire, says Jesus, combining the two metaphors. You are to be a seasoned community, identified by the spirit, sharing life and living together in such a way as to witness to a relationship of forgiveness and healing with God, in the process of being purged, purified, preserved, releasing your enticing aroma to those around you.

What are the ways in which your Christian life, mine, our Christian life, needs some fresh seasoning? What will help us individually and together to grow into more of an identifiable Jesus-focused community? Here are a few ideas for you to ponder:

 

– maybe engaging more deeply with the Bible – Fr Leonard hosts a regular Bible study meeting you could join; if it’s full I will certainly consider hosting another.

– I will be starting a series of sessions later this year designed to help us explore what it is we believe, and how we live it out. Come and see me if you’re interested

– Talk to Deacon Chris if you think you are called to offer time to volunteer with some of the projects we support through Apostoli or elsewhere

– Confirmation in February – a public step of faith and commitment

Marked by the indwelling of the spirit, sharing lives centred on a relationship of grace with God, salted with fire. Welcome to the community!