LABOURING TO GIVE BIRTH

LABOURING TO GIVE BIRTH

When I take a walk to our local dam I pass a house where two families live in crowded conditions. The young children come charging out to greet me and are never deterred by my failure to understand their language or remember their names. They are free and open and untroubled by the agendas of the adult world. They seem oblivious of their poverty and just look at me with open accepting eyes.

It is a tonic to meet them but as I walk on I ponder their future. If they get some education it will be minimal. If they reach adulthood without contracting some serious illness it will be a wonder. If they find employment it will be unusual. If they find a husband who loves and respects them and treats them as equal it will be a marvel. Their future path is strewn with obstacles that should not be there.

God’s beautiful creation labours to be born and every blessing seems to carry a sorrow knocking at its door. When Zechariah says, “over the citizens of Jerusalem I will pour out a spirit of kindness and prayer,” it sounds like a blessing and a promise of peace. But he immediately adds, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced,” indicating the passion of Jesus as the way in which that peace will be won.

And when we come to the gospels, we have a moment of breakthrough when Peter recognises Jesus as the “Messiah of God” followed by the awesome prophecy of his rejection, passion and death. It is not a breakthrough to peace but to suffering as the way to peace. And to make it quite clear Jesus then says bluntly, “if anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let them renounce their self and take up their cross every day and follow me.”

There is nothing woolly about that. It is a clear expression of “the way” in which God invites us to labour with him to achieve the new creation. I like the expression, “we make the road and the road makes us.” It is hard work making a road. The earth resists the spade and the bulldozer. But in the end something is created that opens up communication and trade and a person is satisfied by their work.

And so the promise runs through all the labour of creation. We make our new world and our new world makes us through our struggle against the forces that resist us. But how we wish that the little ones should not have such odds stacked against them!

19 June 2016                           Sunday 12 C

Zechariah12:10-11                 Galatians 3:26-29                   Luke 9:18-24