Wounded World and Broken Church Sermons towards healing

The Rev Dr Keith Rowe, former President of Te Hahi Weteriana o Aotearoa, The Methodist Church of NZ, and Principal of Trinity College, has published a collection of sermons, divided into five sections. The book warrants a wide and ecumenical readership. The term ‘ecumenical’ embraces an interfaith focus, reflecting the author’s contribution to the interfaith journey over several decades.

Wounded World and Broken Church focuses on the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and the life and teachings of Jesus. Each chapter starts with a Biblical passage, the lectionary reading for the day.

The audience for any published sermons requires a more readable text than the solid scholarship written for and within an academic institutional framework. Each chapter can be read within 15 minutes, as we hear the speaking voice of the writer, mixing the idioms of conversation with the heightened rhetoric of a storyteller and poet. The spirit of the preaching is clearly stated in the introductory words to the fourth section, titled ‘Stewards on the Way Pioneered by Jesus’. This is the first of two extended quotations illustrating the eloquence of the preacher:

The four Gospels differ for they arose within and served the needs of different communities or clusters of house groups. Each treasured particular memories of Jesus that helped them in their desire to follow in the Way of living he pioneered. As they heard, explored and discussed these words, they felt they were in touch with the living Jesus. It was as though they were in conversation with him and with the truth he lived. It is often the same with us – we read the words, we puzzle over them, we allow them to question us, our minds leap ahead asking what it might mean for us if we were to live within this wisdom, this lifestyle, this horizon. As we continue to meditate on what we have read, it is as though we are in conversation with the man who first spoke these words. The words we have read begin to mean more than when they were first spoken and remembered. They are spoken to us and into our world.

The sermons are a challenge to go deeper into the biblical texts. Those preparing for the Sunday service are given the background and time/place context for the words and actions around the life and teachings of Jesus. Integrated within the exposition of the Bible passage is the relevance for our ministry and mission today.

There is a prophetic voice in these sermons, sadly missing in mainstream churches today. Truth to power, yes! The author wrestles with the ‘wounded’ world and ‘broken’ church:

· In the world, the weakening of the democratic voice, the widening chasm between rich and poor, cutting back welfare services while increasing armament expenditure;

· In the church, failure to have a public theology to empower congregations to speak and act for the poorest and ‘forgotten’ of society, retreating into castles of an individual piety of the self-assured, and statistical ‘number-crunching’ and endless reviews of the denominational ‘temple’ – even as its foundations are crumbling.

Despite all the gloom and doom, the closing words hold on to the Way of Jesus as a pathway through ‘wilderness’ times for the world and church:

The discussion goes on for, in the end, Jesus fits no formula. There will never be agreement as to how Jesus should be named. We’ll always name him according to the need and the challenges we face – Lord, Shepherd of Comfort, Liberator to the Poor, Feminist, Creator of the evolutionary world-view, Great Ancestor to some African Christians. What does continue is the invitation ‘to do’ Jesus, to so live that his renewing energy is set free in our ailing world (‘God so loved the world’ –not the Church). The future of the church, of the Christian adventure and, I think, of humanity, requires that there will always be a people in whom the Way of Jesus is growing and who by whatever name they call him continue to build the road for which he laid the foundations.

The book can be ordered online from Pleroma Books, Otane ($39.99). order@pleroma.org.nz