Sideways through Sandstone

I reflect today on how life’s journey can resemble bushwalking through narrow passages—sometimes we must let go of burdens to find true freedom. Drawing on the Gospel, Isaiah, and Hebrews, I invite us to examine what holds us back from living fully in God’s grace. We’re called to strive for transformation, letting go of habits and attitudes that weigh us down, so we can enter more deeply into Christ’s life and the Church’s community. I encourage everyone to spend time in prayer, seeking God’s freedom and preparing for the joy of his kingdom.

00:00:00 One of the qualities or characteristics of the Australian bush is often, when going around bushwalking, you’ll get to a point in the track where there might be a very narrow fissure between these two huge sandstone walls, and sometimes when you get to one of those those points, you can’t just go walking straight through. It’s just the gap is is too narrow. You know, if you’re carrying a backpack, you’ll have to kind of take that off and you have to maybe kind of slide your way through, pull the gut in and breathe in to be able just to squeeze your way through the vision. But often you know, the scene that might away to on the other side in the valley might suddenly open up and you’ll be able to see this scene of incredible beauty, this amazing sight. You know, it’s worth getting rid of those things that can hold us back and prevent us from making our way through it. Sometimes in our lives, we need to remember that. That we need to get rid of those things that prevent us from finding a space and a freedom.

00:01:07 You know, when Jesus is asked this question, how many will be saved? Will there be many who are saved? No, he doesn’t answer the question. That’s the first thing. He’s not good at answering the questions that are posed to him. You know, we know that the answer’s very few. Only a handful of questions. As he directly answer most of them. He will give some advice or he’ll ask another question. And so when he tells us, and the Jerusalem is a bit a bit fuzzy by saying, try as hard as you can, the word is agonistic. It’s the sense of of striving, battling, really moving all that we can to be able to be free to embrace this possibility, this, this chance to do this, this gift of being able to be free. And again, there is this incredible offer that he says, you know, there will be this feast that is laid there, and the vision is as Expansive is the final chapter of the prophet Isaiah that we read from as our first reading today.

00:02:17 In this final section of the Book of Consolation, after the exile, after the people have lost all hope. Isaiah has this vision of everybody being able to come to the table of the Lord. This expansive sense of the generosity, the graciousness of God. It’s not foreign to the vision of the Lord. You know, we know that when Abraham was called, he was told that you will be a blessing not just for his family, not just for the family that he would establish, not just for the extended community, the tribes, the the nation that Israel would become. But he said that you will be a blessing for all of the nations, all of the communities. Everybody on earth is destined to be blessed through you, through your gift, through your openness, through your desire that this vision that Isaiah sees of all of the nations gathering, all these different people coming and all the different modes of transport, everything that is available to them, their gathering, their coming together to be fed and nourished by the Lord.

00:03:32 That’s his desire. That’s what he wants. And yet he tells us that there is a limitation. There is this sense that there is a place where we need to be free. We read in the Gospel of John when Jesus gives us that, that image of saying that I am the good Shepherd. He also tells us that he is the gate for the sheepfold, and that anybody who comes in or out of that gate has to come through him into that sheepfold, has to be changed into him. And it kind of suggests that the only way that we can get through that fissure in the rock, the only way that we can get through that gap, is to get rid of anything that is not of Christ, anything that is not of God. The second reading from Hebrews gives us those words of consolation and this gift of the Lord, wanting to discipline us, wanting to correct us, wanting to to get rid of anything that would prevent us from living in freedom, to call us into that grace and to the Lord will discipline us, not because he doesn’t like what we are, but he loves us so much that he’s wanting us to be so free that we need to get rid of anything that will prevent us from loving anything that will not allow us to find that freedom and that life.

00:04:58 Because so often we do tend to settle in the church. We think that communion is enough, but communion requires conversion. It requires a change of heart. It requires us to experience what God is inviting us in freeing us for this life of goodness, this life of grace, this life that does require at times that agonize thy, that striving, that trying to do all that we can. To be able to conform ourselves to Christ. He does the work. He does the very huge bulk of the work. All that we need to do is just to make this profound. Yes, of our hearts and our lives. To strive to surrender, to strive to be loved, to strive to let go of all of the decisions that we’ve made. You know, as we think about our lives and we think about the kind of the backpack that we might be carrying, the different elements of our lives, the the different habits that we’ve formed, those relationships that are in our lives that are a bit rocky, where we know that I need to really apologize to that person for what I said.

00:06:13 There’s that attitude of heart that I hold against that other person that I need to let go of. I need to surrender, that I need to let go of that resentment, acknowledge my own fault, and acknowledge what I did in that there are all kinds of different things that we keep piling into that backpack, preventing us from being free, but God is inviting us into. Freedom. Not just to be associated with him. Not just to kind of come to church. You know, it’s often been said that just because you’re in a garage doesn’t make you a car, that just because we’re in the church doesn’t make us automatically Christians. We need to to live the life of Christ. We need to be called more deeply and more powerfully into that experience. So some of that will be taking things off, removing the garbage, removing the things that encumber us, removing the things that prevent us from living that life of freedom. So the activity today might be before we go to bed tonight, just to spend some time just sitting in prayer with the Lord, to really just sit in his love, to sit in his grace, and just to ask that question, Lord, what have I got in my backpack? What are the things that are preventing me from living this life of freedom? How can I surrender more deeply to you? How can I be more conformed to the image of Jesus.

00:07:39 How can my life be more like his and less like my own, so that I can be free, so that I can come to that celebration where people from north and south, east and west will be gathering with all the nations at this great feast and festival. What is the area of discipline that I need in my life right now? What are the things that I need to let go of? Is there a phone call I need to make? Is there an invitation I need to make? Is there something that I need to to let go of in order to find that freedom? So to take that time tonight just to maybe to write it down. Maybe it’s something we need to bring to confession. Maybe it is that that phone call, or maybe it is that invitation to somebody else, whatever the Lord might place upon our hearts. Let’s just really have that desire to be free. To get rid of that backpack so that we can enter in through the gate of Christ, to find life in the Kingdom of God, and celebrate with all the nations gathered in the festival around the table of the Lord.