A couple of weeks ago a work colleague mentioned that making a curry is too hard: they don't like the stuff that comes in jars because it's bland, and they don't like how fiddly it is to measure out all the different ingredients to make it from scratch. But they love eating nice curry.
So I mentioned that I buy these curry spice blends from a place where we used to live in Sydney, and Penny and I really like them. I actually buy big bags of these blends, so I offered to bring in enough to make a curry to see if they liked it. The next day I was delivering to them a little sachet of red powder sufficient to make a kilo of chicken tikka masala. They were very excited.
Why did I do this? There are lots of reasons why people do things, even good things like giving away curry mix. Am I secretly a shill for the curry industry? Does the spice mix company pay me a referral fee? Or perhaps I am trying to curry favour with my workmate? (See what I did there?) The good action itself doesn’t actually tell you why I did it.
There’s a famous quote that is often, and apparently incorrectly, attributed to St Francis of Assisi, “Preach the good news at all times; use words when necessary.” (For your interest, some think this saying is inspired by a line from the Franciscan Rule, which says - in gender neutral language - "Let all preach by their deeds.") And I agree. Our words and our actions should absolutely line up as best as we can make them do so. For many of us, the ‘good news’ is that we can have a relationship with Jesus: God who came as a human to make that relationship possible. And for many of us, our relationship with Jesus includes loving our neighbour, standing up for the poor and oppressed, standing up to injustice, and showing mercy and compassion to our enemies.
But if we think about our relationship with Jesus simply as a bunch of rules that we have to follow, then we need to be especially righteous, we need to have everything together, we need to be sterling examples of Christian purity and virtue before we could ever talk about Jesus with anyone else. This might be what Paul was talking about in his letter to the church in Rome when he says Moses talks about righteousness coming from the law, saying: "The person who does these things will live by them".
But that's not Paul's model. In contrast, Paul ties everything he is proclaiming to another verse from the Jewish scriptures. It's the other verse he quotes from Moses that starts at verse 6. And this quote from Deuteronomy 30:11-14 is, in my reading, the absolute heart and soul of this bit of Paul's letter.
First, Paul makes it clear that the word we proclaim is Jesus, not some system of rules. Second, he says when we talk about our relationship with Jesus, the Word we proclaim isn't far from us. We don’t have to reach up into heaven to find Jesus. We don’t have to reach into the abyss of death to find Jesus. Jesus is not that far away! No, Paul says the Word is near you; in your mouth and in your heart. The Word is Jesus, the Jesus we have a relationship with right now. That's the word of faith we proclaim.
And it needs proclaiming – I mean speaking out with words – because even though we may do all the things out of our love for Jesus, simply doing them may not make clear to someone else why we do them. They might think we’re trying to show we’re better than them; or that we’re judging them for not doing things; or that we have underhanded motives.
In Namibia I once got mistaken for a human trafficker when I was helping run a food program for school children. Only when I explained, “I’m from the bible college in the city; I’m working with a church in your neighbourhood” did they realise I was not there doing seemingly good things for underhanded reasons. The words explaining ‘why’ mattered.
Okay, so we need words. What words do we use? This passage in Romans is full of expensive words and expensive phrases. Righteousness. Faith. Righteousness that comes from faith. Confess. Believe. Lord. Raised from the dead. Salvation. Never put to shame. Call on. Good news. All these phrases mean something important about God and our relationship with God, and God's relationship with us. And what these words mean is the subject of extensive thought and consideration, and even argument and disagreement. You see, expensive words cost a lot to understand.
But all these words are there to describe our relationship with Jesus. And if we have a relationship with Jesus, then that is something that is not far away from us. Jesus is near to you. He's in your heart, in the very source of your life. He's yours in a way that he will never be mine, because you are you. I think part of the reason there is so much thought and consideration and even disagreement about these expensive words and what they mean is because we all experience our relationship with Jesus differently, because we are different people and Jesus relates to us in different ways. But he is not far from us; he is near us. He is in our hearts, even if all our lives look different.
We probably don't even use a lot of these expensive words to describe our relationship with Jesus anyway. I don't know the last time I described anyone as 'lord' (except my landlord), or described someone as 'righteous' (except when watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid in the 80s). I'd say our own words are the most real way we can describe our relationship with Jesus, because our own words are, well, they’re ours.
Last week Steve asked, “Where have you seen God this week?” It would be crazy if everyone had the same answer, right?
I can’t describe your relationship with Jesus to you, I can only describe mine in my own words. Jesus is the Word, and the Word is not far from us; it is near us. It is in our mouths, even if all our voices sound different.
And Paul says when it comes to us being different, Jesus isn't just tolerant of our differences. Jesus isn't just accepting of our differences. No, Paul says "there is no distinction; the same Lord [Jesus] is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him." When it comes to relating to who we are where we are, Jesus is generous!
A few weeks ago, Belinda gave a couple of cracker sermons on some of Jesus' parables about sowing seeds in fields. She painted a picture of God being liberal and generous and even reckless in spreading that seed, that good news about Jesus, regardless of whether the ground is hard, or thorny, or rocky, or good soil.
That’s the picture we see here too. Jesus is generous with us, and in two ways. First, he is generous in that he gives us his very self, he comes close to us personally, he lives with us in our hearts. Jesus is generous to us.
But secondly, Jesus is also generous with us in that he gives us to others. When Paul says, "How are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?" he's not talking about a church commissioning or a missionary fundraising program. He's saying every one of us can proclaim Jesus because we are all sent by Jesus. Jesus gives us everything we need, because our relationship with him is what we proclaim. He's the Word we are proclaiming. We carry Jesus in our hearts and in our mouths not just for ourselves, but also for others, because just as Jesus loves us and is generous to us, he loves others, and he is generous to them by giving them us.
In God's eyes, we are all uniquely special, and God is uniquely and specially generous with each of us. Jesus gives you a relationship with him that is exactly for you, that fits exactly into your heart, that can be best described in your words.
But there is some overlap. I use my own words to describe how I met Jesus, how I walk with him, how my life is different because I know him. But other people understand those words, and they may understand your words better than they understand mine. Jesus translates himself into something that other people can understand, and each of us are his translators into our own language.
When I say ‘translation’ and ‘language’, I don't just mean into different national languages, although that's a great start. If you don't have a shared language with someone, communicating is incredibly limited. Even if you do have a shared language, you are limited to the vocabulary of the least proficient speaker, and that can be tough. An Indian colleague at work tried to share with me a recipe for a curry they made for me to try (I assure you this sermon is not sponsored by Big Curry!). But they simply didn't know the English words for some of the ingredients, and my Hindi is unhelpfully non-existent. We were left with "Indian vegetables" as the best understanding we could reach. If we had both spoken the same language with the same proficiency, I would know what was in that curry!
But even if you share a language, cultural differences are as important to communication as language. When we first got to Namibia – where the national language is English – I paid for something at a shop using PayWave. But I didn’t know that PayWave was brand new to the country, like had only been introduced that week. The checkout assistant said “You need to insert your card” and I said, “No, I don’t” and waved my card. They said, “You need to enter your PIN.” I said, “No, I don’t.” Suddenly it was approved and they looked at me shocked and said, “How did you do that?” And me, fresh off the plane from Australia, said sarcastically, “Magic.”
But in Namibia ‘magic’ has a very different and significant role in culture. She thought I was using muthi, evil magic, to pay for things without money, which is a claim muthi users often say they can do. She suddenly got very visibly frightened of me, she recoiled, and I realised my mistake and quickly apologised and explained I was from Australia and this technology is normal there. A huge blunder on my part, because even though we were both speaking English, I did not understand the culture.
Communication goes even deeper still! Maybe you're a member of a subculture: a club or hobby or interest group or even workplace that has a special set of experiences or jargon that might be incomprehensible to many people, but speaks deeply to those who understand it. Any regular attendee of Canberra Baptist is a member of a subculture, and you know we have a special spiritual language we use – I touched on it earlier: words like righteousness, faith, baptism, or bible verses can be utterly foreign to those around us.
I was talking with a couple of workmates recently about stress and anxiety, and one of them – who has just recently started attending church – misquoted Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talking about the birds being clothed by God. I said, “Oh it’s that the birds get fed without farming; it’s the flowers that are clothed”. And the other workmate said, “What on earth are you two talking about?” So I took a few moments to explain what Jesus was talking about: that if our relationship with God is good, it can help us to worry less about everything else. They had simply never heard this saying of Jesus.
Communication extends to our whole life experience. When Penny and I were forced to leave Namibia suddenly, we were devastated. We didn't know why we had to leave. We felt uprooted, directionless. When we couldn't return to Australia because of COVID restrictions, we felt homeless, unwanted. It was awful. What made it worse was that no-one we spoke to really understood what we were going through. Many people talked about it like it was a holiday. But then other missionaries started reaching out to us and telling us their stories: how wars, disasters, political upheavals had forced them out of their countries of service, often suddenly and quite frighteningly. They reached out because they understood. They shared their stories with us because they had been through it too. And we realised we weren't alone - in that moment, these were the people who spoke our language. We shared a common tragedy.
Our backgrounds, our interests, our personality and our lived experience - even the bad experiences, perhaps sometimes especially the bad experiences: the struggles, the doubts, the difficulties – they give us a special language that opens doors for communication that might not be available to someone else. When we're talking about our relationship with Jesus, it's something very personal to us, and so of course our language, our experiences will be a part of the words we use.
That might make it obscure to some, but really, really interesting and meaningful to others. Paul says, "How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?" The way Jesus is close to you in your life might be the exact language someone else can really hear.
And if you think, "Well, I'm so unique, I will never find someone who would click with my very strange and different experiences and way of living and thinking and talking", then I've got good news for you! Because while there are some great benefits to hearing from people who have similar language, culture and experience, sometimes it is the difference between us that makes a message heard!
Just this year in NAIDOC week I was struck by how different my experience of knowing Jesus is to that of the First Nations brothers and sisters we heard from in our church service. I am struck by the key role country plays in the faith experience of some First Nations Christians. I have benefited from hearing how actions like deep listening are important to spiritual life. Not only does hearing the stories of people different to me deepen my understanding and connection with those people, it can also serve to deepen my understanding of God and my relationship with God too!
And sometimes it’s not about being the same, and it’s not about being different; it’s just about being there. Paul tells us that those who hear good news think the feet of those who bring it are beautiful. It’s their feet rather than their mouths because it costs something to bring the news. I don’t even mean reputational risk or persecution, I just mean effort, even if that effort was just a couple of steps. Me giving that curry mix to my co-worker wasn’t free – but it didn’t cost me much either. It cost me one serve of curry mix and a zip-lock bag. That opportunity for them to hear only came because I was willing to pay the cost with my feet: to make the small effort to share something I enjoy that they might also enjoy. They really liked it, by the way.
Jesus is near to us. He is in our heart, his Word is in our mouths. Our lives as Christians have probably not been all flowers and sunshine. We live real lives, with highs and lows, like everyone else. I know my relationship with Jesus has been a real relationship, with closeness and with fights. But it means something to me, something unique, something special. And sometimes we see other people in our lives and think there’s an opportunity where they might benefit from that special relationship too. Maybe they want to know how you’ve coped, or why you’re doing what you’re doing. So share it with them. It’s not a huge thing. To refer back to Belinda’s sermons on seeds, it might be just a mustard seed. But from little things, big things grow. Who knows? Maybe Jesus is being generous with you to them.
