The Rector's Page

Here, now and still to arrive!

2012-01-24T14:26:00.000+11:00

Sunday 22nd January - The Second Sunday after Epiphany

It is still the season of epiphany, and our theme is still the revelation of Jesus Christ as Messiah, Son of the Most High God, our Saviour and Lord. I suppose really that the whole of the church’s message throughout the year proclaims Jesus as Lord, but during Epiphany we look at Bible passages which make that declaration.

Our first reading is from the book of Jonah, the reluctant prophet. We all know how Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he didn’t really believe God and he was frightened that the people of Nineveh would kill him. Jonah tried to run away from God; was swallowed by the whale and was spewed up on the shore. God spoke to Jonah a second time and this time Jonah listened, went into Nineveh and delivered the message.

The way he did it was as if he was a messenger from a foreign nation, or from a king who had decided to attack Nineveh. “You’ve got forty days to surrender, or the city will be destroyed.” And much to Jonah’s surprise and disappointment, the King of Nineveh surrendered, declared a fast and ordered the people to behave as if God was their ruler, turning from their wicked ways and doing good. And lo and behold, God accepted their surrender and did not destroy the city.

The second reading is from St Paul. He is giving the message to the city of Corinth, which was a seaport where they took ships out of the water and dragged them by a sort of railway over the isthmus of Corinth from the Ionian Sea on one side to the Aegean Sea on the other. Corinth was therefore full of bars, brothels and gambling dens. There were temples to all sorts of gods from all over the world as well as fortune tellers, oracles and crooks of every kind.

Obviously St Paul had a low opinion of the city and in this letter to the Corinthian Christians he tells them, “Time is running out! The present form of the world is passing away! Corinth will be destroyed and rebuilt as a city of God! Drop everything and be ready!”

Paul was a devout and learned Jew who knew the scriptures well. I think, and so do the lectionary compilers, that Paul was comparing himself with Jonah and Corinth with Nineveh. He was urging the Corinthian Christians to fasting and prayer. They were to give up all family and business dealings and put themselves in God’s hands. Even if Corinth was destroyed by the wickedness of its inhabitants, at least the Christians would be saved if they repented and believed the good news.

Now we come to the Gospel, where we hear that Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

The first thing that I notice is that Jesus says the waiting time is over. Jonah said that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days; St Paul said, “The appointed time has grown short.” But Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled! No more waiting. The kingdom of God has come near.” John the Baptist used the same words, “The kingdom of God has come near.”

If you look at other translations of the Greek words, like the King James Bible, it reads, “The kingdom of God is at hand!” In other words, it’s so close that you can reach out and touch it! Now, this is the good news that Jesus is proclaiming. The kingdom of God is right here, now, in the midst of you. Wake up; open your eyes and see; open your ears and hear; smell, taste, touch. Open your minds and believe, open your hearts and love. The kingdom of heaven, which you have been waiting for, is right here, now, in the midst of you.”

What Jesus proclaimed then, so I proclaim to you now. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, closer than you can imagine. If we think of the kingdom of heaven as a country, then we are citizens. No tourist visas, no student visas or any other sort of permit or pass. If you like the idea, Jesus Christ is our passport, a passport which can never be lost or cancelled or revoked or changed in any way. Nothing can separate us from the love of God or the kingdom of heaven.

This is good news, The Good News, in fact; and Jesus urges us to believe it. So, there is plenty of work for the citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Jonah told the people of Nineveh to reform their lives. “Forget the way you’ve done things according to the old regime of wickedness; God is taking over this city and you have forty days to comply with God’s rule of righteousness and love.”

Paul told the Corinthian Christians, “Concentrate on the kingdom of God. God is taking command of your heart, it is time to bring your mind and body under God’s control.”

Jesus says, “You are now living in the kingdom of God. Go and make sure you gather everyone else into the same blessed realm. Go and fish for people.”

We would do well to listen to these wise words. Whatever race or language, we belong to God now and it is for us to live up to that. Jonah and Paul and Jesus are right, each in their own way. Belonging to God, living in the kingdom of heaven means that God is our ruler who commands our obedience; God is our lover, and where the heart goes, mind and body follow; and God’s love includes all people regardless of circumstances, we need to tell others the Good News.

How would you like to be introduced? - Sunday 8th January 2012

2012-01-14T07:39:00.000+11:00

Each of the gospel writers introduces Jesus in a different way. St John, for example, begins at the beginning of time, with the word, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” John introduces Jesus as the word of God made flesh.
Luke, however, introduces Jesus as a baby. It is from Luke’s gospel that we get the most intimate and human picture of Jesus. Jesus is born in a stable and worshipped first by the shepherds. Away in the heavens the angels were singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to all on earth.” But Jesus is introduced to us as a baby in a stable, wrapped in cloth.
Matthew’s gospel, which I hope you read last Sunday, at Epiphany, has no shepherds or angels, instead the wise men from the east introduce Jesus through the gifts they bring – gold for the Prince of Peace, Frankincense for the Son of the Most High God, and Myrrh for the one who will give his life for his friends.
Today we hear how St Mark introduces Jesus to his readers. Mark does not mention Jesus’ birth at all, no angels, no shepherds, no inn-keepers and no wise men. St Mark begins with the baptism of Jesus by John. This is how Mark establishes the identity and authority of Jesus of Nazareth.
St Mark tells of an event, a baptism in the river Jordan, where along with people from all over Judea and Jerusalem, Jesus was baptised. One person among many. But them something happened which made this baptism unlike any other baptism. Jesus had a vision. The Greek words translate literally, As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens in the process of being ripped apart. Something awe inspiring was happening, terrifying almost, as when Mark reports later that the veil of the temple was ripped apart from top to bottom, when Jesus died. What has been sealed up is now torn open – The prophet Isaiah prayed “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Well now Isaiah’s prayers have been answered.
The second part of the vision is the Holy Spirit – coming like a dove to settle on Jesus. We can understand the Greek to mean that the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove, or that it moved, fluttered and settled in the same way a dove does. It reminds us of the Creation, when the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters. In the translation we heard today, a wind from God swept over the waters. Here again we are reminded of the heavens being ripped apart by a mighty wind – the voice of the Lord which breaks the cedars of Lebanon and whirls the dust-storms of the desert of Kadesh – it is the wind of the spirit which came rushing on the disciples at Pentecost, but which also brooded over the waters when the world began and came to Jesus like a dove descending.
The third part of the vision is the Voice – the Word of God which calls all things into existence. At the beginning of time, the Word said, Let there be light. And there was light and God saw that the light was good. Now in Mark’s gospel the Word says, You are my Son, the beloved – and God saw that this was good and said, With you I am well pleased.”
In Mark’s gospel, unlike Matthew and John’s account, both the vision and the voice are for Jesus alone. Nothing in the text suggests that anybody else noticed anything. The reader is let into the secret, but Mark’s unfolding story is what reveals the identity of Jesus to the world. At the end of the Gospel, the centurion who saw the way Jesus died on the cross will confess publicly what we are told privately: Truly, Jesus is the Son of God!”
Now most of us here have been baptised. We have been splashed with water or immersed, either when a baby, or as an adult; and the world has continued as before. A bit like the Millennium really, (remember that?) there are still twenty four hours in a day and seven days in a week, and so forth. Nothing different really, just as Jesus’ baptism was no different from the baptisms of all the people from Jerusalem, we might think.
But there is a difference. Just as the baptism of Jesus establishes for him his identity, just as his baptism affirms who he is – in the same way, our baptism establishes who we are. Jesus is who God says he is. So also we are who God says we are. At our baptism we are given a Christian name, and we claim for ourselves our identity as sons and daughters of God, just as we are marked with the sign of the cross to show that we belong to Christ for ever.
And so our story, like Mark’s gospel story of Jesus goes on. By listening to what Jesus says and watching what he does, others come to know who he is. And when others listen to what we say, and see what we do, they will come to know who we are.
I want people to know that we are followers of Christ, that we are who he is, children of God. Let us pray that we may live lives true to who we are.

Mysterious Midnight - Christmas 2011

2011-12-30T22:54:00.000+11:00

What are we doing, here at St Luke’s church, in the middle of the night? Obviously we are celebrating Christmas. As Christians we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Saviour. According to our calendar, he was born about two thousand and eleven years ago, and according to the Bible he was born in Bethlehem in Judea. He was born, like any other human, and his mother’s name was Mary. These are unremarkable facts – every human being needs to be born and being born happens at a certain time in history and mothers give birth to babies. In this way, Jesus is no different from you or me. In fact there are many people who share Jesus’ birthday just as we might share the birthday of Queen Victoria or Alexander the Great.
Well, then, why don’t people all over the world gather to celebrate our birthday, or the birthdays of Queen Victoria and Alexander the Great? Obviously, because there is something different about Jesus.
If we look through our readings today we hear the Prophet Isaiah saying that a wonderful child is to be born – a son who will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. At once we are caught up with words that are hard to understand. We might expect a person to be a wonderful counsellor, with the wisdom of Solomon. A person could also be Prince of Peace – there are peacemakers alive today whom we might describe as Princes or Princesses of Peace. But how can a human boy be a Mighty God or an Everlasting Father. No human can create the world and no human lives for ever. But Isaiah says that his authority shall grow continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and for evermore.
So here is a puzzle for us and for anyone curious about Jesus Christ. We could say that there is something mysterious about this boy Jesus. Mysterious means that there is something we can’t understand, something we can’t see or touch or feel or taste or smell. We can’t measure mystery and we can’t describe it completely. Somehow this boy Isaiah is telling us about is mysteriously truly human and truly God. A child has been born for us, says Isaiah. This baby has been born so that we can know and love him, he’s been born for us, not for someone else, but for us. What is more, Isaiah continues, a son has been given to us. Not just some boy somewhere belonging to parents we don’t know, but a son who is our son, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. My son and your son. One look at him and it’s like looking in a mirror – there’s no doubt who his parents are – you and me.
All these things are not unremarkable facts like the ones we started with – these are mysteries we just can’t understand.
St Luke, writing in the gospel, wants us to understand the facts about Jesus and the mystery as well. In the first half of our reading we have lots of things we do understand. The Emperor Augustus is a historical person, born on 23 September 63 BC, ruled the Roman Empire from 27 BC until his death on 19th August 14 AD. Quirinius really was governor of Syria; Nazareth is in Galilee and Bethlehem in Judea is also known as the city of David. And Jesus was born in a stable, wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger, because there was no place for them at the inn. There – easy to understand.
And St Luke goes on. Shepherds in the fields we understand, and keeping watch over their flocks by night – that’s fine. But an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were terrified. Of course they were! Angels are not unremarkable facts; angels are mysterious and terrifying. You can’t ignore an angel and the glory of the Lord is completely outside our understanding.
And the angels echo the words of Isaiah, “to you is born this day, in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Anointed One, Christ, the Lord.” Do you notice that the angel says to the shepherds, the boy is yours? Jesus the Christ has been born to you. The baby belongs to you – you are his parents as of now! The baby belongs to the shepherds, to Mary and Joseph, to the Wise men from the East; even King Herod and the Emperor Augustus are the parents and custodians of the Saviour.
And so are we. God has entrusted to us the mystery of Jesus the Christ. The Christ belongs to us and is one of us. The Christ lives as one of us and we are one with the Christ. The Christ lives in us. St Theresa of Avila said,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Tonight we came face to face with this mystery. The baby born in Bethlehem has grown up, has suffered and died and has risen in glory. Tonight we gather because we are part of the mystery of Christ and the salvation of the world. Let us accept the gift with both hands, eagerly, joyfully, with open mind and heart. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Gaudete! Gaudete! Christus est natus, ex Maria Virgine

2011-12-15T07:21:00.000+11:00

The Gospel is like a diamond, which reflects the light differently depending on how you look at it. There are four gospels in the New Testament, with four Gospel writers. Each writer tells the story of Jesus in a different way. Matthew describes Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark sees the crucifixion as the most important event in history. Luke shows us a more human Jesus, born in the same way we are born and living and dying like one of us. John, whose Gospel we heard today, sees in Jesus that God is at work in the world. For John, Jesus is the word of God in human form; Jesus is the light of God coming into the world.
In the reading John the Gospel writer makes that very clear.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” We call him John the Baptist or John the Baptiser, but St John the Evangelist calls him, “The John who was sent by God”
And this John was sent by God for a reason. According to the Evangelist, God sent John to bear witness to the light, so that all might believe through him. Listen to what the Evangelist says, “John was not the light, but he came to testify, to bear witness to the light.” End of paragraph.
Then the Evangelist tells us what the testimony is. He tells us what John said when the Jews sent Priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?”
John’s answer is that he is not the Messiah, he is not the prophet Elijah, nor is he any other prophet. The Priests and Levites don’t want to know who John is not, so they demand an answer, “What do you say about yourself?”
And John tells them what we already know, John is a messenger, a fore runner. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the Prophet Isaiah said.” St Mark, in his gospel which we heard last week, describes John the Baptiser as a messenger and the one who cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” The way St Mark tells it, we are to prepare ourselves for the Good News, the Gospel and we are to make a straight path in our hearts so that we can be baptised with the Holy Spirit.
The way St John tells it we must be ready for the light of God which is coming into the world. Jesus is the light of the world, says St John, a light which will drive away every trace of darkness. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. In the old King James Version it says, that the darkness did not “comprehend” the light. The darkness couldn’t understand the light and the darkness could not put the light out. This is the true light, which gives light to everyone, coming into the world.
And this light reveals everything. In the light of Christ, nothing remains hidden. The secret places of the world, the secret places of our hearts are filled with light and God shows us exactly what those secrets are. Some secrets are shameful and disgusting, but other secrets are bright and wonderful, only needing the light to bring them to life. The light of Christ will burn away all that is evil and wrong, but everything that is righteous and good will shoot up like a fountain of new life.
The message of the John sent by God as reported by St John the Evangelist is for us to get ready for the light by putting away the works of darkness and making room for the good things to grow.
Isaiah the Prophet, although he was speaking five hundred years before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is also speaking as if he was a messenger for God.
Listen, says Isaiah, The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because God has sent me to bring good news, gospel to the oppressed, the broken-hearted, the captives and the prisoners. Throw away your ashes and put flowers in your hair, wipe the oil from your faces and sprinkle perfume instead, don’t go creeping around in the corners, put on your best clothes and dance and sing to the Lord.
Isaiah is telling the people to be ready to praise the Lord God, who is their God, just as they are God’s people. And Isaiah give himself as an example. He says, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom puts a garland of flowers round his neck, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sone in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations.
Today I am telling you what the Lord God told Isaiah to say; I am reminding you of what John the Baptist said. Today is not a time to be miserable, it is a time to rejoice, for God is coming to you to save you and to bring you joy.
God has given us salvation through Jesus Christ, and God will make us new in Christ so that we will be perfect at the coming of the Lord. What Isaiah and John who was sent by God are saying is, “Be prepared for your salvation, be ready to meet God. You need to be willing to change, to turn from doing stupid and evil things. God is bringing hope and peace and joy to give to us freely. God offers robes of righteousness, garments of salvation, garlands of hope and jewels of faith.
This is the light which is coming into the world, the light which John the Baptist announced, the light which will shine in our darkness and make our lives bright with joy.
Let us pray that we may be ready to step out of darkness into light and meet Christ in the glory of the holy angels..

Is St Luke's a Talent?

2011-11-15T10:23:00.002+11:00

Sermon for Sunday 13th November 2011
Next Sunday is the feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the church’s year. On this day we celebrate the final triumph of good over evil, the second coming of Jesus Christ, and the end of all time and history. Nobody knows when this will really take place or what it will be like. Plenty of people have dreamed dreams about the end of time and there are plenty of false prophecies. However, Christ himself urged us not to worry about the future or the final plans which God has for the world. It is enough to know that we will be in God’s safe care and keeping.
Apart from Jesus, a number of wise people over the years have said, learn from the past, live in the present and prepare for the future. This is exactly what St Paul teaches and what we find when we read Matthew’s gospel. Today we have one of the three parables about those who are living in the present while waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ.
In the first parable Jesus speaks of “the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time. Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.”
This parable is usually interpreted as applying to the leaders of the Christian community whose task is to give the members of that community nourishing spiritual food while they wait for the coming of Christ. A good church leader is rewarded, but a lazy and corrupt leader will be, according to the parable, “cut in pieces and put with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The second parable is the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Ten virgins were waiting for the bridegroom, five wise virgins who had filled their lamps and had more oil with them in case the bridegroom was delayed. The foolish virgins had no spare oil so that when the bridegroom, that is, Christ, arrived; only those with brightly burning lamps actually went into the wedding banquet, while those whose lamps had gone out found the door of the kingdom shut.
This parable is usually applied to all followers of Christ. The oil could stand for faith which must be constantly renewed. If we do not strengthen our faith then we will lose it, and without faith we will lose our way and perish.
Thirdly there is the parable of the talents, which we heard today. Again, the parable looks towards Christ’s coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The master, going on a journey entrusts his property to his slaves. In the same way, Christ has entrusted the gospel and the community of the gospel to us. Each person is given exactly the amount that they can deal with. Five talents, two talents or one talent, to each according to their ability. A talent is an enormous amount of money, equal to about twenty years’ worth of wages. Matthew wants us to understand that the gifts God has given us are incredibly, unbelievably valuable. We are often tempted to say, “Oh, I’m not really clever.” Or “I can’t contribute much.” But, in the parable the least of the gifts, one talent, is worth at least half a million dollars. So even if we feel totally inadequate, what we have is infinitely precious in God’s sight and beyond value when we use it in the service of God and God’s community, which is the church.
Anyway, we all know how the parable goes. The slave with five talents makes five talents more and the slave with two talents makes two talents more. These slaves are welcomed into the joy of their master, not because they have made lots of money, but because they have used what they had in the best way possible. Their work has been good for the property, good for them and their master and good for their community.
The third slave buried the talent in the ground and gave it back to his master unused and unchanged. The master calls him wicked and lazy, strips him of whatever possessions he had and has him thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Now, if this parable is about us, how shall we make sense of it. We usually think of the talents as individual gifts or abilities that God has given. We might think of people who can sing, or play a musical instrument. We might think of teachers and carers, people who are good at whatever they do. You could have a talented plumber or a talented painter; we might say that someone is a wonderful parent or a wonderful friend. All these abilities are talents which can be used for the benefit of all. In our church we think of how we can use our own abilities to serve others in the congregation and fellowship. In this we include those who are generous with time and money. Our church community needs time and money to grow and give back to those who support it.
But consider also what a great gift all of us have in common. God has given us the community of St Luke’s as a gift. St Luke’s is inclusive, loving, faithful, and supportive. It is an example to others, a light on a lampstand, a city on a hilltop. It is Christ’s body which is the priceless piece of property which our master has given us to care for.
St Luke’s community is our present, it is where we are now, and as we look to the future we must decide what to do with such a generous and priceless gift.
Will we work with it and grow it, improving and strengthen it, leaving it to those who come after us in better condition than when we began. Will God commend us for our stewardship?
Or will we be like the third slave who was too afraid to invest time or effort into his talent. Will we bury our faith community in the corner of our lives?
Over the next six months we’ll be doing some serious thinking about our choices to build a future. We’ll start with the Op Shop at a special meeting of the Parish Council on 14th December, to which you are all invited.
Our Diocesan Synod wants us to look towards the year 2050, which is great, but I would make some more talents by the next Annual Vestry Meeting in March.

Keeping up with the Jones's

2011-11-11T13:47:00.000+11:00

The parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)has been used every time a church needs more volunteers.
Some people find this annoying, or boring. They just switch off and hope that someone else will do it.
The point of the parable is that the church ALWAYS needs more volunteers! People, faithful people, do grow old or tired. They may move out of the parish or they may want a change.
The problem is that we want our church to run and to provide good services and to be available when ever we need it.
A bit like public transport, really.
But, like public transport, the church needs paying passengers.
The public transport needs people to buy tickets and to actually travel on their trains, trams, ferries and buses.
The church needs people to give money and to actually take part in the life and work of the church.
The church is different from the public transport because when you buy a bus ticket you expect the STA to employ drivers, conductors, administrators and mechanics; whereas the church needs you to do the work!
The difference is that the church is not a service provider, it is a living community.
A bus driver steers the bus to take the seated passengers where they want to go; a parish priest needs at least some people to be more than passengers. The church hasn't got a 11.43 litre 6 cylinder diesel engine under the floor somewhere. It relies on people power - people like you and me.
The Diocesan Synod has decided that its target will be 2050. At St Luke's our target is not just tomorrow but all our tomorrows. We are a church that looks to the future.
Over the next few months, we at St Luke's will be looking forward. The Op Shop, Evangelism, paid Ministry, Parish Council, Education and Building Maintenance will all come up for review so that when we hold our Annual General Meeting in February, we can say, "Here is what we will be doing!"
So I guess this little blog is to ask you what you will be doing for God and God's church in 2012.

Returning From Holiday

2011-11-01T12:02:00.000+11:00

Dear Friends,
Sue and I have just returned from our holiday in the Northern Hemisphere.
We spent our time with our children and their partners; Aneurin and Joyce in the Netherlands and Gaynor and Chris in the UK.
This was also an opportunity to re-establish old friendships with the people we knew in Papua New Guinea; to discover relatives like my cousin Anna and to make new friends in the families of Joyce and Chris. We even struck up a continuing friendship with the woman sitting next to us in the plane on the way to Bangkok. She had an interest in community development and sustainability.
St Luke's Church is a community where people meet people, re-establish old friendships and discover new ones, often with surprising and interesting results.
There is an added dimension, though, because St Luke's meets in the name of Christ and we are a Christian Community. This means that have a heart felt belief and a yearning to be as Christ-like as we possibly can. We look to Jesus as a perfect example and we long to be perfect as well.
Of course we are not perfect and can't be perfect, no matter how hard we try. And, it must be admitted, some try harder than others.
Our aim is to share God's unconditional love and acceptance of all people. That's what we want to do.
Our mission statement says "we strive" to share God's love; which means we want to share God's love, we are trying to share God's love and we will do whatever we can to share God's love.
Most difficult of all, we desire to share God's love with people we don't like and people who we find a nuisance. People we wouldn't want to sit next to on the plane, people we would rather not be related to, ugly people, smelly people, annoying people. What a task we have!
This is why we gather on Sunday to set before ourselves the wonder of Christ's passion, death and resurrection which breaks down all the barriers of prejudice and mistrust, the barriers of sin and death.
As we put our trust in Jesus we find ourselves strengthened in what we are trying to do as Christians.
All those things which separate us from each other and from God, all our sins, have been destroyed by Christ's death, and there is nothing in all creation which can separate us from the love of God.
There is nothing to stop us from sharing that love with others.

August 14th - Mary, Mother of Our Lord

2011-08-14T19:08:00.003+10:00

The usual date for the church festival we are celebrating today is August 15th, but we have chosen to move it to the nearest Sunday. It is the remembrance of the day on which Mary, the mother of Jesus, was received into heaven. It is sometimes known as Mary’s Heavenly Birthday. However, the festival has several different names according to which church is doing the celebrating. This is because there are different beliefs about what happened when Mary reached the end of her life. Those churches who believe that Mary simply died like any other human may choose to call it Mary, Mother of Our Lord.
Others who believe that Mary died like any other human and that her soul was received into heaven when she died, but that, on the third day her physical body was taken up into heaven, may choose to call the festival the Dormition of the Theotokos, which means “The Falling Asleep of the Mother of God.” This is the way most Orthodox Churches celebrate Mary.
There is another way of understanding Mary’s Heavenly Birthday. On November 1, 1950, by Pope Pius XII solemnly declared:
“By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”
Some Roman Catholics believe that Mary did not die a human death, but was carried bodily up into heaven by angels, but many affirm that Mary did die and was then carried, body and soul into heaven. Pope Pius was wise enough not to go into details.
However, Pope Pius XII included in his statement the four infallible Roman Catholic Church teaching about Mary. These are teaching which Roman Catholics are required to believe. Anglicans do not have to believe these teachings, but many find them holy, helpful and Godly.
Pope Pius XIII referred to Mary as “Immaculate”, which is the belief that Mary was the natural daughter of Joachim and Anna, conceived and born in the usual way, but born without any desire or tendency to anything but follow God’s will. This does not mean that she wasn’t a naughty little girl sometimes, but it does mean that she knew exactly what it means to do God’s will. I always struggle to understand God’s will, but Mary didn’t. Pope Pius would say that I was born with Original Sin and Mary wasn’t.
Pope Pius XII called Mary, the Mother of God. This understanding of Mary was reached at the Council of Ephesus in the year 431. I have no problem with this understanding. I truly believe that Mary was the human mother of our Lord Jesus Christ who is true God of true God, begotten, not made, as it says in the Nicene Creed. Some people say that Jesus was adopted by God at his Baptism n the River Jordan, but I believe what John teaches in his Gospel that Jesus was God, or God was in Christ from the moment of his conception.
The third infallible doctrine is that Mary was a virgin and remained a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus. This is the oldest of the four doctrines and has been around since the fourth century. The oldest statement was written in the second century where it claims that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were from a previous marriage of Joseph. I think, and it is my opinion, that this was written because the writer was horrified that the virginity and purity of Mary could be stained by her having sex and bearing more children. I support the words of St Mark where the crowd is reported to have said, “Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" There is no evidence or reason that Mary and Joseph had no more children after Jesus. And according to the gospel according to Matthew, they certainly had sexual relations after Jesus was born.
The fourth church teaching about Mary is that she was taken up into heaven, body and soul, at the end of her earthly life. This is where my sermon began. We are commemorating the end of the earthly life of Mary, mother of our Lord.
In the end, each and every Christian must make up their own mind about Mary. There is only one thing which we need to proclaim. Mary was the Mother of Jesus. Every human being must have a mother, and God chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus so that Jesus would be truly human. God came into the world in Jesus Christ, a baby, born in the same way that we are. Today we honour Mary because she had the courage and faith to say “Let it be to me according to your will.” to God. When she said “yes” did she have any idea of what was going to come of the birth of her child? My guess is that Mary is like us, when we try to say “yes” to God. When we say, for example, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” We are asking God to inspire us. When we say “Send us out in the power of the Holy Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.” We are taking courage from Mary’s example. God may not be inspiring us to bear a child for him, instead God is asking us to do everything that we do for him, from the lightest word of kindness to the greatest work of divine love and charity. We don’t have to be immaculate or ever-virgin or the mother of God. We don’t have to be taken body and soul into heaven at the end of our lives. All we need to do is be ourselves, as honestly and as truly as we can, loving our God and our neighbour as ourselves. And for God, this will be enough.

Pentecost 2. Child sacrifice, slavery and a cup of cold water.

2011-06-28T14:33:00.004+10:00

Our readings today are about obedience and disobedience, sin, righteousness and free choice, which is a big topic for one little sermon. However, as we read the Bible, we find that most of the stories are about obedience and disobedience, sin, righteousness and free choice.

So we’ll begin with Abraham. God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

This is a terrible thing for God to ask Abraham. God knew perfectly well that Abraham was faithful and obedient. This is why God gave Abraham and Sarah a son in the first place. God had no need to test Abraham, and certainly not with such a terrible testing as this. For us, living in the twenty-first century, it is an appalling case of child abuse. But, in those days, a man could do what he liked with his wives or his children, and the writer never criticises Abraham for his actions. Instead, the writer lets us know that this is the very worst thing Abraham could be asked to do. “Take your son, your only son Isaac.” Isaac is the only hope that Abraham has for the future of his family. Has God given Abraham hope for the future, only to take it away again? But there is worse, for Abraham loves his son, Isaac. Does God, our Father in Heaven, expect a loving father to kill and burn the son he loves?

These are not the questions the writer wants to answer; what the writer wants us to understand is that Abraham is utterly committed to God and will do anything that God demands. The angel said to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Abraham has chosen absolute commitment and obedience to God over any other consideration.

We do not know what might have happened if Abraham had said, “No!” to God, but St Paul explores the possibility that some people in the Roman church may have said, “No.” to God.

Paul describes sin as if it was a slave owner which owns its slaves and demands obedience. Selfish human passions, if followed slavishly, are sinful. Destructive passions like wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. – the seven deadly sins, if you like. Let me make is clear that God has given us humans the gifts of anger and strong feelings, the desire for a good comfortable life, the need for rest, a proper self esteem, sexual love, an appreciation of the gifts of others and the capacity to enjoy good food. However, if these gifts become our masters, then they become destructive and sinful. The reward we get for misusing God’s gifts is death, as St Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.”

St Paul uses this figure of speech because the Romans understand slavery and how slaves are bought and sold and have to be obedient to their masters. He says, “I am speaking human terms because of your natural limitations.”

So then, Jesus Christ has bought these people who were once slaves to sin. Christ has bought them by his death on the cross, or as we could say purchased them by his blood. So these Roman Christians, who were once slaves to sin are now slaves of Jesus Christ and, as St Paul says, must be obedient to him. Paul says, ‘having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.” And near the end of our reading, “you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God.”

Our Evangelical brothers and sisters call this “two ways of life”. One leads to death and the other to life, and we can choose either way.

Now, if St Paul were speaking to us, here and now, he might make his argument using a different figure of speech because slavery is no longer legal. When we hear that Jesus has paid the price of sin on the cross we are very happy to say, Jesus died for me so I am set free. Whatever figure of speech we use we are happy to accept the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. It’s a good Biblical idea and we like the idea of freedom. In the letter to the Hebrews we read, “We have perfect freedom to go into the most holy place by means of the death of Jesus.” And St Paul says, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

But there is one aspect of Paul’s figure of speech which is important and easily overlooked. To be a slave is to be obedient. Our commitment and faithfulness to God means that we must be obedient to God. Which brings us back to Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham’s commitment and obedience brought him to the point of killing his only beloved son, sacrificing his love, his hope and his future.

What is God’s command to us? In the gospel reading Jesus speaks of welcoming others as a way of obedience. Whoever welcomes a prophet or a righteous person will receive a prophet’s reward or a righteous person’s reward. Even the gift of a cup of cold water can be enough to show obedience to God. Our utter commitment and obedience to God does not have to be the same as Abraham’s.

Finally, I have chosen a hymn which completes the sermon. We have sung it before, but not very often. It is a song to the Holy Spirit, the Wisdom of God, Hagia Sofia, the enemy of apathy. Apathy means not caring, not feeling. It means taking the freedom which Christ has won for us and then doing nothing. Mother Wisdom is the wind and fire of the spirit which wakens our consciences and inspires us to the good works which God has prepared for us to walk in. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (Ephesians 2:10)

Sunday 29th May 2011 - St Augustine, King James and Archbishop Cranmer

2011-05-29T15:46:00.001+10:00

Our story begins not 400 years ago with the King James Version, nor 462 years ago with the first Book of Common Prayer, but 1,410 years ago when the missionary monk Augustine was made the First Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine had been sent by Pope Gregory to convert the heathen English and he settled at Canterbury which was the capital of the kingdom of Kent. King Aethelbert was cooperative and became a Christian and the mission expanded rapidly. However, when Augustine was made Archbishop he expected the Celtic bishops to accept his authority. They did not.

The celtic bishops saw St Augustine as a fellow Christian and were friendly and respectful. However, they had their own way of doing things and they didn’t want Augustine rules about the tonsure, the observance of Easter, asceticism, missionary endeavours, and how the church itself was organised. There were also political matters – the Welsh refused to accept a bishop who was supported by a Kentish king.
Of course the matter was settled fifty years after Augustine died, at the Synod of Whitby. King Oswy of Northumberland, Cædmon, the poet, St. Hilda, the abbess of Whitby, St. Wilfrid, Abbot of Ripon and other notables came to a political and ecclesiastical agreement.

There was no argument about the lordship of Christ or the Bible, the discussion was about the human organisation of religion, in this case, English Christianity.

900 years later, in the year 1549, two years after King Henry VIII died, the English Parliament passed an Act Of Uniformity which ordained that the First Book of Common Prayer was to come into use in all the churches in England on the feast of Pentecost, which was June 9th, 462 years ago. And the preface began like this, “There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted, as (among other things), it may plainly appear by the common prayers of the Church.”

The writers and compilers of the Book of Common Prayer wanted to make the worship of God and the reading of the Bible simple, understandable and appropriate. They wanted it to be in English so everybody in England could understand. They wanted the book to be used in every church so that all the Christians in England would worship God in the same way. And they wanted the readings from the Bible to follow the same pattern all over the country so that everybody would hear the whole Bible read all the way through.

They did this because they believed that after 1500 years, the church worship had become corrupted and needed to be restored to its original simplicity and sincerity. One passage of scripture that they may have taken to heart we heard today. From the letter of James, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” They asked the question, “How can we be doers of the word if all we hear is in Latin?” and “How can we understand the story of salvation if we only hear parts of the bible and even then, in the wrong order?”

The Book of Common Prayer was designed to put this right. But three years after the first book scholars from Europe raised some objections to the book – they thought it was too Catholic and they wanted to make it more Protestant. So Parliament issued a new Book of Common Prayer in 1552, but they were still arguing about it when the boy King Edward VI died, and Queen Mary abolished all the prayer books and insisted that the Roman Catholic worship should be followed. Then, after the Roman Catholic Queen Mary died in 1588, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First restored the prayer books and kept the peace by combining the Catholic and Protestant Prayer Books into one.

Now I hope that you understand that all the prayer books that were ever written reflect the politics and history of the time they were written. They reflect the struggles in Parliament and in the Church and are never perfect, however beautiful the language may be. There is always room for improvement.

The same sort of history lies behind the King James Version of the Bible. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, the last of the Welsh Tudor monarchs. James Stuart, who followed her, was James VI of Scotland and he became James I of England.

Not everybody was happy that a Scottish king ruled in England, so James, among other things, encouraged a new translation of the Bible which he hoped everyone in England would read. It was and remains a beautiful and careful translation. All the old scrolls and parchments and papers were studied by a committee of learned scholars, but James insisted that the translation should reflect his ideas of the King as a person chosen by God to rule over the people. The translators were honest, scholarly and careful, but they lived in a country which had a new king and the politics of Kingdom and Church influenced the words they chose.

Again, the King James Version is one of the most influential books ever written in English. It changed the way the English people spoke by giving them new words and new ways of expressing themselves. And because it was used throughout England, it meant that Englishmen learned to speak the same version and English and could understand one another.

But I must say, for all its good points, the King James version is not perfect. It can’t be. No translation can ever be perfect because the original writers, the translators and the readers all live in different times and places and will understand the words differently.

When you get home, compare the bible readings you’ve heard today with a modern translation and you will find that there are some surprising differences, even though both translations are careful, scholarly and Godly.

So what are we going to do? Does it mean that we can’t trust the bible we read? Of course not! We remember that the kingdom of heaven is like a person who brings out of their treasure things old and new. Our task is as the writers of the Authorised Version intended; our task is as the writers of the Prayer Book intended. They wanted people to meet the Risen Lord Jesus, they wanted people to be stirred up to godliness, they wanted people to profit more and more in the knowledge of God and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion. (BCP Preface)

All our prayer books and bible translations are like the figures of speech which Jesus used in talking to his disciples. The King James Version uses the word “proverbs”.

The news and the promise of the kingdom of God are greater than any words can express so Jesus used figures of speech or proverbs. But in today’s gospel he says to his disciples, “These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.”

Here at St Luke’s we use figures of speech and proverbs; we use clothes and candles, we use stained glass and holy water; we use liturgical movement, singing and incense. We rejoice in these things in the same way the Prayer Book Society rejoices in the BCP; we rejoice in these things in the same way as we rejoice in the different translations of the Bible.

We are human and we cannot see God or meet God face to face. As humans we are limited and we relate best to words and story, pictures and action, and what we can sense with our five senses. But we live in the hope that we will one day see beyond these things to the reality of God. One day we hope to be able to exclaim with the disciples, “Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. By this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

Lent 4: Just how blind can you be?

2011-04-04T06:59:00.002+10:00

(Note: I'll get the spacing right one day!)

Last week our Gospel story was about Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The image which fills that story is the image of water, dark, still water in the well of Jacob and the bright gushing water of eternal life.

Today our image is about light and darkness, blindness and seeing. The disciples asked Jesus a question, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Today some people have been asking, “Were the Japanese people so sinful that God sent a tsunami to wash them away?”

Jesus said to his disciples, “Neither this man or his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” God is not cruel or stupid and did not make the man blind so that Jesus could perform an impressive miracle. Blindness is a disaster and the healing shows God’s work shining like light in darkness. In the same way Jesus might answer, “Neither the Japanese or anyone else sinned, God did not send the tsunami. The tsunami is the dark background which reveals God’s works.”

And so the story of the man who was born blind is continued; Jesus makes a mud with spittle and smears it on the man’s eyes; the man washes in the pool of Siloam and came back able to see. This is the first part of the drama – the glory of God’s works is revealed in the man’s new sight.

The second part of the drama unfolds when the Pharisees refused to see God at work. First of all they say, “This is not the man who was blind!” Then they refused to believe that Jesus could possibly have healed him. “This man Jesus is a sinner! How could a sinner do such things?”

Next they decided that the man had never been blind and the so-called healing was all a trick. So they called his parents who declared that he had in fact been born blind.

Still the Pharisees refused to see that Jesus was the Messiah who had healed the blind man by the power of God. The man whose eyes had been cleansed then gave his testimony. ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’

Still the Pharisees refused to see what was happening right before their eyes. They refused to see that the man had born blind; they refused to see that his parents were telling the truth and they refused to see the wonderful work of God.

No wonder they wanted to get the man out of their sight, and they drove the man out of the synagogue.

This is a story about blindness; but not the blindness of someone who cannot see because their eyes are damaged. If you like, you can compare the blind man to a sighted person who has never seen the light of Christ. After meeting Jesus, washing in the pool of Siloam can be compared to baptism, and his witness to the Pharisees is this man’s testimony. We could compare the man’s story with our own.

But when we come to the Pharisees, their blindness is the blindness of people who refuse to see. They are religious people and they could see if they wanted to, but they refuse to see. Some people call this spiritual blindness.

Spiritual blindness is really serious, because the people who are spiritually blind often think that they can see clearly.

The Pharisees who spoke to Jesus were puzzled. “Surely we are not blind, are we?” And Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin.” That is, if your eyes were damaged and you could not see, then who could blame you for not seeing the wonderful works of God? Then he said, “But now that you say, “we see”, your sin remains.” In other words, “If you claim to be able to see God at work, and you refuse to see what has been done right before you, then that is wilful and wicked.”

Take a little look at the picture after the gospel. This is a modern illustration of the gospel. On the left is a rich man in a smart suit wearing trendy sunglasses. Behind him is a beggar, thin ragged and starving. If he wanted to, the rich man could turn around and look at the beggar.

He could see the rags, he could see the hunger and the pain. He could see the need of the poor man and he could, if he wanted to, show us one of the mighty works of God. If he gave the beggar food and clothing, even if he turned and spoke to him, even if he treated him like a fellow human being. Even such a small thing as that would be a mighty work of God. But our rich man in his trendy sunglasses sees nothing but a beggar.

When he says, “Yep, there’s a beggar all right!” he shows his spiritual blindness and he remains selfish and hardhearted, as sinful as ever.

Now, Christians are children of the light, as St Paul told the Ephesians, they have their eyes wide open and they are always looking for a revelation of the wonderful works of God. Blindness and earthquakes are two of the works of darkness, and against them the works of light shone out clearly. Christians have their eyes open to human need and the ways in which God works in the world.

Let me give two examples of the fruit of the light, which Paul says is found in all that is good and right and true. One is the Fred Hollows Foundation which, through a simple operation costing about $30, quite literally opens the eyes of the blind. The second example is the courage and devotion of the nuclear power plant workers who, regardless of their own safety, are working to secure the Japanese power plants to make them safe for countless others.

Not everyone who donates to the Fred Hollows Foundation is a Christian, and I doubt if any of the nuclear power plant workers are Christian, but surely what they are doing is pleasing to the Lord, as St Paul says.

How much more then, should we, as professing Christians, be aware of the light of Christ which shines in our hearts. Let us pray that our eyes of our spirit may be open to see where light is needed, even in the smallest work of God’s love and mercy.

Let us be ready to see the light in all that is good and right and true and to live in that light, to the glory of God. Amen

Lent 3: He told me everything I've ever done!

2011-03-29T12:37:00.001+11:00

What were you thinking as you heard the gospel today? I guess that some of us were not really paying attention and might have been thinking of other things, like O gosh, how long this reading is, or I hope I remembered to switch off the oven when I left home this morning. If you were thinking these things, don’t worry. Just forgive yourself and move on. But you might have been thinking about the meaning of the story. Why has St John included it in his Gospel? Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t say anything about this Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well of Jacob. Or you may have been thinking of the details of the story. Why was the woman coming out to draw water at mid-day? Women usually collected water in the morning or the evening, when water was needed for cooking or washing. This woman was all alone, there was no body at the well except Jesus. Why did she come alone? Was it because she had had seven husbands? In the Old Testament, the book of Tobit’s daughter Sarah had seven husbands, all of whom were killed by demons on their wedding night. Or what about the woman who married seven brothers, one after another as each one died. The Sadducees wanted to know which of the seven would be her husband at the resurrection. Clearly there is something odd about a woman who has had seven husbands. Or perhaps the comparison between the deep, dark, still waters of the well and the clear bright gushing water of eternal life caught your imagination. It is like comparing the polluted and deadly waters of a tsunami or a flood with a sparkling fountain or the sea in the tropics. Maybe even you compared the murky life without faith to the hope-filled and confident life in Christ. Another point made in the story is about worship. Obviously the Jews and the Samaritans were divided about where it was right to worship God; Mount Gerizim in Samaria or Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Jesus’ answer is that it doesn’t matter where you worship, as long as you worship in spirit and in truth. Again, there is the astonishing revelation to the woman that Jesus is the Messiah. She says, “I know that the Messiah is coming.” And Jesus answered her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” I can’t think of anywhere else in the Gospels where Jesus so plainly and clearly says that he is the Messiah. In the other gospels there is plenty of evidence. When John the Baptist’s followers asked, Jesus told them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” By Jacob’s well, Jesus tells, not a Jewish man, as we might expect, but a Samaritan woman, that he is the Messiah. “I am here, talking to you.” All this is good. Those who study the Bible need to explore the readings carefully to get as much as possible out of the text. A good preacher should find two or three important points to emphasise, and those who listen do well if they take those three points home with them. As I have said, teaching is good, but there is another way of reading the Gospel stories. The Samaritan woman convinced the townsfolk by saying, “He told me everything I have ever done!” But after the townsfolk had met Jesus for themselves they said, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.” In the same way, my advice is that each person needs to read the Gospels for themselves. If I had the eloquence of Billy Graham, the dream of Martin Luther King and the learning of John Stott then I could teach hundreds of people about the Gospel. But it is only when those people meet the Messiah and hear for themselves that they come to know that this is truly the Saviour of the world. May I suggest then, that you take the pew bulletin home with you, or find the passage in your own bible. Then find a quiet place. It may be outside or it may be in your own room. It may be in a public garden or in a church. It could even be on a train or in the doctor’s waiting room. C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia Chronicles, had his moment of revelation riding upstairs in a double decker bus. Read the passage carefully, listening to the words in your mind. You may even imagine the scene. In this case, the dusty road, the weary traveller resting at the well and the woman carrying her water jar. Then listen to what Jesus is saying, as if he is saying it to you. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman to give him a drink. What might he ask you to give him? And what would be your response? Are you someone who might expect Jesus to talk to you? Or are you someone like the Samaritan woman, who thought that the Messiah would have nothing to do with you? Jesus challenged the woman to go and get her husband. How might Jesus challenge you? And how would your conversation go? How would Jesus deal with your confession? In this way, we can read the passage slowly and lovingly. Maybe you don’t want to ask all those questions I have suggested. That is fine. Some people have other ways of hearing Jesus. Read the passage slowly and lovingly, paying careful attention to the voice of Jesus. Perhaps this passage is not the right one for you. Try another. My task as a preacher and teacher is to help you meet Jesus and welcome him as Saviour. I would be absolutely delighted if someone said to me, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is the Saviour of the world.”

Lent 2, Sunday 20th March, Labour Pains and being Born Again

2011-03-23T14:49:00.001+11:00

Last Sunday my granddaughter Rhiannon was born. Her parents were not quite ready for her, after all, she was only 35 weeks in the womb, but Rhiannon was very active and wriggly, she really wanted to be born. So, last Sunday, in church, the waters broke and Bonnie and Rhodri hurried off to the hospital. By six o’clock in the evening Rhiannon was getting impatient so she was born by emergency Caesarean section. She weighed 2.15 kilograms, which is nearly five pounds. She is doing very well, and Sue is over in Adelaide to give the family some help.

This is rather appropriate, since the gospel reading is about being born. The Pharisee Nicodemus went to see Jesus. He went at night because he wanted to keep his visit secret. And Jesus said a very strange thing. “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Now Nicodemus did know where babies come from so he began to laugh at Jesus. “Do you expect me, a grown man, to go back into my mother’s womb to be born a second time?”

Obviously not, because Jesus told Nicodemus, “No one can enter the kingdom of heaven without being born of water and the Spirit.”

Nicodemus was even more puzzled. “How can these things be?” he asked.

These days, of course, we know the answer to that. Jesus was talking about baptism, where the symbols of water and fire stand for the new birth a person has through baptism. A new birth through water and the Holy Spirit. It sounds really simple, and it is.

The trouble is that we often don’t understand what it is to be born again. Some people use the name Born Again Christians to describe Christians who speak in tongues or show obvious gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some people think that one must be born again suddenly, in a twinkling of an eye.

However, for most of us, that is not how it happens. The process of birth is long and often painful. St Paul writing to the Romans, uses the metaphor of childbirth to describe the process of redemption. First of all he says, “Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” So all God’s creation is like expectant parents who are waiting to meet their new child. Or, in my case, a grandfather who longs to meet his granddaughter.²⁰ St Paul continues, and now compares us with the woman in labour. “²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now” says St Paul, “²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” In other words, the process of being born again has begun, but is not yet completed. We are all still struggling to give birth to our born again selves.

Nicodemus would have been absolutely astounded to discover that in order to be born again, we must give birth to ourselves.

Jesus and St Paul use the image of the woman in labour to show that being born again is not something easy to do and it is not something to be treated lightly.

The other reason that this image is used is because to be born again is to start our lives again. Not only that, we start with a new life. Once again, St Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” St Paul is saying that our old life has ended and a new life has begun.

This is what happens to people when they allow Christ and God’s Holy Spirit to be part of their lives. As we live this earthly life, we find ourselves changing, becoming more and more like Christ, more and more like the people God created us to be.

And this is the reason that we belong to a church. We are not perfect, far from it, but we wait with eager longing for the transformation of our lives.

Jesus, in the gospel, uses another way of describing this re-birthing, this transformation. He says the Holy Spirit is like the wind which comes and goes as it pleases. The person who is born of the Spirit will find themselves changed in wonderful and unpredictable ways. We don’t know where the wind of the Spirit will blow us. Most people find it very hard to let the spirit guide and change them because it is so very much like being born. We must leave the comfort of our mother’s womb and emerge into a world which is utterly unfamiliar. The Holy Spirit will most certainly move us from where we are comfortable and it may blow us into places where we think we would rather not be. Being born again needs courage and hope because we do not know how the Holy Spirit will influence us. Being born again needs a willingness to accept change and a willingness to take risks. Being born again means seeing the world with new eyes and hearing with new ears. We will certainly lose some things we wanted to hold on to, but what we gain is infinitely more precious.

In John’s gospel it is described this way, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The question for us, as it was for Nicodemus, is, Are we prepared to be born again? Are we ready to let God change our lives from perishing to eternal? Are we courageous enough to let God save us by changing us?

Lent 1, Sunday March 13th; Adam and Eve in the Garden

2011-03-15T18:06:00.002+11:00

I suppose that the story of the Garden of Eden is one of those which have passed into general knowledge, like Noah’s Ark and David and Goliath. Many people don’t know that the stories come from the Bible, and there are many Christians who think they now the story but have never read it carefully. Christians tend to rely on the New Testament and the teaching tradition of the Church and we neglect the Old Testament. This is a pity, because there are some real surprises in the Old Testament, good ones and bad ones.

The Garden of Eden has some surprises in it, but we miss them because St Paul has most carefully interpreted the story for us in his letter to the Romans, which we heard today. St Paul was a well educated Pharisee, and, like all good preachers, he read and interpreted the Bible to make it speak to the people he was addressing. It may be interesting for us to back to the original story and see what it speaks to us. How do we meet God in the Garden?

I will use three words suggested by an Old Testament scholar called Walter Brueggemann. The words are Vocation, Permission and Prohibition. It’s all in the first three verses.

In the first verse, Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it. God entrusts his garden to humans. The human creature is to care for and tend the garden. The two words “till” and “keep” might make us think of the work of a gardener who tills the soil and the work of a shepherd who keeps the sheep. Either way, work belongs to the garden, and work which is cares for and conserves the garden is good. From the beginning of human destiny, God is prepared to entrust the garden to this special creature. From the beginning, the human creature is called, that is, given a vocation, and is expected to share in God’s work.

In the second verse, Genesis chapter 2 verse 16, God gives the humans permission to use the garden. Eat freely of every tree in the garden, says God. The humans are permitted to go wherever they like in the garden and to use the produce of the garden for food, and, I would guess, for clothing and shelter as well. God gives us permission to use creation creatively. But we must also remember that our vocation is to care for creation with the same care God gives it. Exploitation and wanton destruction are not permitted.

Which brings us to the third word, in verse 17, which is a word of prohibition. God commands his humans to care for the garden and to use it but there are limits. “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.” The bible does not tell us much about the tree of knowledge except its name and that the woman saw that it would make one wise. But it is not important what the tree is or was. What counts is the fact that God has set limits. What counts is that God speaks authoritatively, not requesting, but commanding. God expects to be obeyed.

These three verses tell us a great deal about God and about human beings. God has given us a vocation, a calling, work to do. God has given us permission to come and go, to do this and that. And God has given us a prohibition. Some things are not permitted. There are limits to our freedom, there are limits to our work and our vocation. This is how we, as humans, stand before God, as God’s creatures, called by God, permitted and empowered by God and given limits by God.

The next part of the story we have heard today is about the disobedience of humans. The serpent, however you might like to think of it, is the voice which disturbs all human beings, it is the voice which urges us to cross boundaries, to stretch the limits of permission. Notice that God is left out of this conversation. The characters talk about God as if God was an optional extra in life. God’s gifts are treated with contempt, as if God had gone home from the party and we didn’t like what he had given us. As the woman and the serpent talk, the gift of vocation is not mentioned, the prohibition is broken and the permission is perverted. The humans have no energy for tilling and keeping the garden, their energy is focused completely on themselves, on their new freedom and the terror that comes with it. Instead of trusting God, the humans are afraid, they are ashamed and they feel guilty. “Who told you that you were naked?” God asks, and Adam might have answered, “I did.” But of course it was the voice which we all hear, the voice which urges us to cross boundaries, to stretch the limits of permission. That same voice is also our accuser, declaring us to be guilty.

That accuser is the same voice which spoke to Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew calls it the tempter or the devil, but it challenges Jesus in the same way it challenged Adam and Eve.

We can make some comparisons here, but it is not clear which temptation challenges Jesus’ vocation and which challenges the permission has from God and which challenges him to break the limits and boundaries God has set.

The voice firstly asks Jesus to step beyond the boundaries by using magic to feed himself. Make these stones into bread, says the tempter, and feed yourself. But stones and bread are not the same. Jesus will not disturb God’s creation for his own benefit.

The second temptation asks Jesus to use his heavenly power to command the angels to catch him in their hands so he will not be dashed to pieces by falling from the top of the temple. We know that Jesus has permission to use his heavenly powers. Think of the miracles, if you like. But Jesus is not prepared to pervert the permission he has. The miracles are for the benefit of others, not himself.

And the last temptation is for Jesus to change his vocation. Instead of serving God, the tempter urges Jesus to serve himself and be ruler of the world. But Jesus’ vocation is too strong to be shaken. The voice cannot make him disobedient.

Jesus is prepared to trust God absolutely, even if death and resurrection are beyond human understanding. Jesus, the Christ, accepted the limits of being human, limits which neither we nor our ancestors are prepared to accept. Jesus is prepared to be obedient to God, even to the point of dying on the cross. This obedience strained his trust in God to the limit, but it was never broken.

And this is our salvation, this is how we are saved. St Paul says the same thing, but he’s very hard to understand. I hope I have helped in some way.

Sunday 6th February 2011: Shine, baby, shine!

2011-02-10T10:17:00.000+11:00

On the front page of the pew bulletin there is a little picture of a saint holding a lantern in his hands. I chose it because of the famous passage we have as our gospel where Jesus describes his disciples as “the light of the world, the salt of the earth and a city built on a hilltop.”

I chose the hymns on this theme as well, the theme of light, or the light of Christ.

And when I chose the hymns I noticed that many of them had another theme, the theme of justice and mercy and good works done in the name of Christ.

You may remember that last week we heard the passage from the prophet Micah where has asks, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” That’s where our first hymn came from. We’re talking about justice, mercy and lives full of righteousness.

This is also what Isaiah is talking about in the first reading we heard. The Lord told Isaiah to shout, with a voice like a trumpet, to tell the rebellious people of Jerusalem how their lives had gone wrong. “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

In the same way the psalm is a call for right living, for people who delight in God’s commandments. “Light arises in the darkness for the upright; gracious and merciful is the righteous one.” The message is plain to read. Act generously, give to the poor, guide your lives with justice and mercy. Do these things, says the psalmist, and you will be blessed by God and everybody will see that you are blessed by God. Those who are wicked will be consumed with envy and rage; they will die, eaten up by malice, eaten by their own evil thoughts.

And back to the gospel, listen to Jesus’ words. “Whoever breaks one of the least of God’s commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

As you know, the scribes and Pharisees knew the whole Law of Moses inside out. There was no little rule or regulation they did not know. Every moment of every day was taken up with obedience to the commandments of God. And Jesus says we have to do more. We have to do more or else we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

I could sum up this message by saying, “Do what is right and you will live; do the wrong thing and you will perish miserably.”

But if I said that, I would be wrong. The crucifixion of Jesus makes me change my mind. I cannot speak about rewards for good behaviour and punishment for bad behaviour any more. Jesus’ death on the cross was so utterly unjust that it makes our ideas of justice sound ridiculous. St Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, which we heard today, says, “I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God with lofty words or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, and him crucified. I came with weakness and fear and trembling.” If anyone thinks that they can completely explain the crucifixion of Jesus, using human wisdom, then they are wrong. The crucifixion is like a cyclone which comes roaring in from the sea and rips our ideas and our wisdom and cleverness to pieces and leaves us weak and fearful and trembling, like St Paul, calling out for help.

St Paul says that our help comes from the Lord through the Holy Spirit, for, he says, the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. It is only the Holy Spirit who can make sense of the crucifixion of Christ. Many people who have been through a flood, or a fire, or a cyclone have a different way of looking at life. Things which were important before are now of little value or interest. Their lives take on a new value, a new meaning. Relationships with family and friends grow in importance and significance. Very often the way people behave is changed, there is a new understanding of community, of working together, of trust, of what it means to be neighbours. Of course, this does not happen to all cyclone survivors, I am comparing a cyclone to the crucifixion to show that both disasters can be change people’s lives for the better.

I want to make the point that the crucifixion can change the way we think about good deeds and righteousness. Paul says that “no one completely understands what is truly God except the Spirit of God.”

And, he says, we have been given this same Spirit of God “so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” Perhaps Paul should have said that the Spirit brings life to the gifts God has given us. Instead of using our God given gifts because that’s what we’re supposed to do, we can use our gifts because we like using them, we use them with love and joy.

Those people in the psalm who gave freely to the poor did not say to themselves, “If I give to the poor, then I’ll get into heaven.” Instead they were saying, “Hey! I’ve got all this good stuff! Here, take some and see for yourself how good it is!”

The people in Isaiah’s prophecy who were “pointing the finger” at those who were different would stop and say, “What’s to prevent us being friends and working together?” Christ’s crucifixion and God’s Holy Spirit can change our lives so that we shine as naturally as a lamp on a lampstand, giving light to all in the house. Jesus says, let your light shine out. Rejoice in your gifts, have fun, be playful, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify to your Father in heaven.

Sunday 30th January 2011. A few words to Irene

2011-02-04T09:54:00.000+11:00

Irene, today we welcome you into our family. You have really been a member of our family since you were born. Even since before the world began, before the sun and the moon and the stars were made, even before God’s mouth opened to say, “Let there be light!”; even before there was a beginning, you were chosen to be part of this world, and part of this family.

Today is very exciting for your mum and dad, your godparents and for us. Today we are doing what God has been waiting for us to do. Today we thank God for your birth and your health. Today we thank God that Tonka and Bell have come together as husband and wife to share in God’s work of creating new life. Today we thank God that Linda and Wit and Raboom have offered to care for you specially; to teach you to love God and to help you to be the person God intends you to be.

We’re going to say a lot of words today, Irene, in English and in Thai, but may be you are too little to understand. What is most important is what happens, what we do.

Irene, we will pour a little water on your head. This water we bless so that it can be used for the mystical washing away of sins. You know how your mum washes you with warm water to make you all clean and beautiful? Well, that’s what we will do for you today. The water of baptism washes away all the things which might spoil your life.

We will sign you with the sign of the cross to show that you belong to Christ and his death and resurrection give you life for ever.

We will give you a candle to remind you to shine with the beauty of God, and we will promise to love you in the same way that we love God and we hope that you will love us and love God as well.

The Bible says a lot about love, and how to love. For example, in our first reading, the prophet Amos says, what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? We will do our best to be kind, courteous and respectful towards you. We will try to be patient and joyful. We’ll try to be gentle and faithful and we hope that you will learn these things as you get to know us, for these are the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

We hope that you will join us and come to know and love God. This might seem difficult at first because no one can ever tell you or show you what God is. Nobody can describe or define God. God is beyond our imagination and our thoughts, our poor brains are simply not able to cope.

We can say what God is like, but we will never be able to say what God is.

We can call God “Father” as we do in the Lord’s prayer, but that’s because in the love of a parent we can see something of God’s love. We can call God our rock, because a rock is solid and doesn’t move. We can feel safe when standing on a rock and we can feel safe with God. We can say God is like a baker woman who mixed yeast into her flour to make bread. Maybe God mixes good things into the trouble of the world so that we can find joy in our struggle with life. Irene, perhaps you might like to say that God is like a mother or a midwife who brings you to birth. God has taken you out of the womb and brought you into the world. It is warm and comfortable, but a bit cramped inside your mother, and when God brings you out things are very different. You must learn to breathe and to see and to eat. Being born brings many changes.

God does this to all of us, every day. When we are comfortable things change; we learn new skills and face new challenges all our lives. God brings us to birth every waking day.

But there is a special place where we come to know God better. It’s called the church, and this is where we learn a little bit about God, but it is here we can experience God and begin to feel God changing our lives.

Everything we do points to God. By gathering together we know that God wants to include us. By singing we know that God rejoices in our joy. By reading the Bible we can become part of the story of God and God’s story becomes part of us. By sharing the peace we see God in the eyes and faces of friends and strangers. When we take the bread and wine we know that God is with us, as close as eating and drinking, and we form a circle around the altar and find that God is not far away but in the midst of us. When we are gathered in God’s name, we find God with us.

In this place we try and turn our closeness to God into action; we care for each other and for our church community. And when we leave this building, God is still with us, we are still the church, the body of Christ and we keep on caring for our neighbours, our friends and our world.

Irene, I hope this will be true for you. St Paul says that God chooses the weak to teach the strong and the young to teach the old. Your name, Irene, means ‘peace” and you are with us to teach us how to be peaceful towards each other and the world. Peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is the action of building community, strengthening relationships, drawing closer to God and to each other and to the people around us. The children of Israel have a special word for this kind of peace. The word is “shalom”

Irene, Jesus said that the peacemakers would be blessed and called God’s children. Today we baptise you in to the ‘shalom” of God and pray that we may be children of God with you.

Surprise after surprise - Epiphany 2

2011-01-15T16:08:00.001+11:00

Today is the second Sunday after Epiphany. Its other name is the Second Ordinary Sunday. I don’t like the name Ordinary Sunday, because the word ordinary to me means dull and boring. The same old hymns, the same old prayers, the same old readings, the same old sermon and the same old ordinary people. Some people don’t come to church because they say it’s boring and ordinary. They want excitement, surprises and all that sort of cool stuff and the church hasn’t got it.

How wrong they are! Ordinary Sundays are not ordinary at all. God is always the God who surprises us. Even after two thousand years of Christianity, there are still surprises galore.

Let’s look at the readings. The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

You can imagine the people around saying, “What are you talking about? Jesus is not a lamb! He may belong to God, but how can he take away the sin of the world?”

John answered them, saying, “Remember what I said about him? After me comes one who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”

And the people might have said, “I beg your pardon! How can Jesus be after you and before you at the same time? You’re obviously mad!” And then they might have hurried off, muttering to themselves about the mental health system in Judea.

The surprise is that what John says is true! Jesus the Lamb of God, Jesus who is both after and before, this man, Jesus the carpenter, is going to turn the world on its head. He is going to do things which will make the hair on the heads of those mutterers stand straight up with shock. The blind will see, the lame will walk, those possessed by devils will be set free, and then, and then Jesus will be killed, nailed to a cross. And here’s the surprise. This is the way Jesus will take away the sin of the world! How surprising is that? And the church is still puzzled after all these years. How does Christ save us? Is Jesus like a lightning conductor for sin so that the cross drains all the sin out of the world? Or is Jesus on the cross breaking through the barriers of this world into the Kingdom of God? Or is Jesus like the sacrificial Lamb whose life is poured out to save the lives of God’s people?

There are many ways to understand the cross of Christ, but however we think of it, the crucifixion was and is a shock and a surprise. St Paul said, “You might expect someone to give their life for a very good person, the surprise is that Jesus Christ gave his life for everyone, sinners and righteous together.”

Now I could go on to speak of the greatest surprise of all, the Resurrection. Even though Jesus told his disciples that he would be raised again on the third day, they did not believe him, so the resurrection took everybody by surprise. There are still people today, good faithful Christians, who are asking, “How on earth did it happen?” In fact I would be worried if we weren’t asking questions. But those are the questions for Easter Day, in April.

Today God has a whole box of surprises for us. One of the surprises is the way that the living LORD Jesus is right here among us, and that through the bread and wine we are made part of him and he becomes part of us.

But the surprise of the day is found in the book of the prophet Isaiah. Listen to me, he says, pay attention! I am going to tell you something which will make your ears tingle! The LORD called me before I was born; while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. The LORD said, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

Why should this announcement make our ears tingle? Who is the LORD God talking to? Who is it that is called before they are born? The first answer is that the LORD has called the prophet Isaiah. After all, the words are Isaiah’s words, Isaiah says, “The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb the LORD named me.” This makes good sense. The LORD did call Isaiah.

But the prophecy also refers to Jesus. The LORD sent the angel Gabriel to tell Mary that she would have a child, Jesus was called before he was born. And while the child was still in his mother’s womb, the same angel announced his name, Immanuel, which means God is with us. And if we read Isaiah’s prophecy a little further on, the LORD says to his servant, “I will give you as a light to the nations; that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Does this sound like Jesus? It certainly does! No surprises here, we all know that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, so that God’s salvation could reach to the ends of the earth.

But let’s look even more closely at the words of the LORD. “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” The LORD names his servant Israel. So, who is Israel? Well, for a start, Israel is the name given to Jacob by the angel, when they were wrestling by the river Jabbok. But Israel is also the name of all Jacob’s descendants. They are called the children of Israel, or the Israelites, or simply Israel. They are also God’s chosen people. And when we hear of God’s chosen people, we know that God is talking to us. We are God’s chosen people and God is talking to us.

The LORD has called us before we were born; while we were in our mother’s womb the LORD named us. St Paul takes it further when he writes to the Ephesians. Not just before we were born; Paul says, “Before the world was made, God had already decided to call us to himself in Christ.” So here is the surprise! We are the ones who have been given to be a light to the nations so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. Every baby who is baptized here is given a candle and told to shine as a light in the world to the glory of God. And if we ask the babies to shine, we’d better do some serious shining ourselves.

But some might say, “I can’t” or “I don’t know how to.” or “I’ve tried hard and nothing worked.” That’s okay, that’s not a problem. Isaiah said, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” And Jacob, do you remember that he wrestled with the angel until the angel gave him a blessing. As for Israel, it would be hard to find anyone more cross grained and recalcitrant than the Israelites, God’s chosen people. Even Jesus himself prayed, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”

God’s answer to all these complaints is the same, “Do not be afraid or surprised. I will be your God and you will be my people. I have great plans for you, plans for your good and not for your harm. Do not look at your mistakes or the things you cannot do. I am your strength and your honour. Your plans may come to nothing, but mine will come to fulfilment. It is my plan that all people shall see the Glory of the LORD. Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy one of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Let us now come before the LORD our God with praise and thanksgiving and pray that God will give us the knowledge and wisdom and power we need to shine to God’s glory in the world.

St Luke's Day 2010 by The Very Rev Sarah Macneil

2010-10-19T10:34:00.002+11:00

ST LUKE 2010 St Luke’s, Enmore Sarah Macneil, October 2010

Jeremiah 8:22 – 9:3

Ps 145: 10-18

2 Timothy 4: 9 – 17a

Luke 10: 1 – 9

In the name of God, who brings us to wholeness.

Thank you for the invitation to be with you today I bring greetings from the congregation of St Peter’s Cathedral, Adelaide, on the occasion of your patronal festival. And what a patron saint you have!

Two for the price of one – that’s what we get with St Luke. A wonderful Gospel, dripping with hospitality, with forgiveness, and with challenge. And, to add to the riches, the Acts of the Apostles – that rip-roaring yarn of the early days of the church. Luke has given us some of the most powerful parts of the New Testament.

Some of the things we would not have if we didn’t have this Gospel are the parables of the good Samaritan, the lost coin, the prodigal son, the dishonest manager, the rich man and Lazarus. We would not have the accounts of the healing of the crippled woman on the Sabbath, the cure of the man with dropsy (also on the Sabbath), the cleansing of the ten lepers, the acceptance of Zacchaeus. We wouldn’t have some of the stories of Jesus’ childhood, the interplay between Mary and Martha, the foretelling of Peter’s denial, the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus, nor indeed Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem. And if that was not enough, there is also more!

Part 2 of Luke’s work, the Acts of the Apostles, gives us an extraordinary insight into the journey made by Jesus’ followers as they moved from disappointment and inaction to building communities of faith. It traces for us, in a way that the Pauline letters only hint at, tensions and disagreements between the various factions of the church, it offers encouragement as we see the obstacles faced and overcome, and it holds out a clear witness to God’s action in the world. In Acts we see a group of people facing difficulties similar to the ones we face today as they wrestled with what it meant to be church. Factions, differing views on property, money problems and disputes about the appropriate directions for mission – it’s all there. I’ve just spent a week at the national General Synod and there it all was – still: factions, differing views on property, money problems and disputes about the appropriate directions for missions.

At one level this could be immensely depressing – 2000 years on and we still haven’t sorted it out! But in another way it is enormously encouraging – despite our inabilities to sort these things through, God is present, offering wholeness, acceptance, peace and life to us, just as God was present to the earliest church.

The Lucan texts take a very particular slice through the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus and I would like to take some time to explore this a little. The Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles can be read to be historical rather than theological. Indeed, the beginning of the Gospel encourages us to do just this when it says in Chapter 1, verse 1:

‘Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.’

But to take this as a purely historical account would be a mistake. Luke’s Gospel is theologically loaded – he had a couple of theological points he really wanted to make: Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one; and what he did, said and suffered both had and has enormous significance in human history.

The author shows his hand clearly in Acts 4:12 when he puts into Peter’s mouth the words: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among human beings by which we are to be saved’.

Luke’s insistence that salvation comes to human beings through no other name under heaven may well reflect his awareness of the contemporary custom of ascribing it to the Roman emperor and other ‘benefactors’ of humanity who happened to wield power at the time. He is making it clear that salvation comes through Jesus and no one else.

But what does salvation mean here? The concept of salvation is fundamental to the Christian understanding of Jesus’ incarnation. After all, his name means salvation. But what is it? What does Luke think it is all about?

It is clear from the gospel and from Acts that Luke is not thinking of salvation and atonement in terms of what we now call penal substitution. This view uses the logic of retributive justice and argues that it was Jesus’ death on the cross that saved us from our sins and brought us into right relationship with God. A debt had to be paid for human sin and disobedience in order to satisfy God’s demands of justice. This is what made Christ’s death upon the cross necessary. In his great love for us, Christ is therefore said to have taken the punishment deserved by all humanity upon himself.

This rather mechanistic and grim understanding of atonement, prevalent not so very far from here, was not part of early Christian thought and clearly not part of Luke’s thought world. Nor does Luke regard Jesus’ death as a sacrifice or as an expiation for sin. His focus is more on Jesus’ life and on the wholeness that is brought to humanity through contact with the suffering Messiah.

There is no doubt in the gospel that Jesus is the Messiah, no doubt that he will suffer and die, but the wholeness that comes to people because of him, comes from their encounter with him.

Jesus’ presence is what brings life, peace, forgiveness of sins and right relation to God.

The Greek word sothr and its associated words (or cognates) are often translated into English as ‘salvation’ and its related words such as ‘saved’, and ‘saving’. But it is a multilayered word which basically means ‘healing’ and ‘making whole’ – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Luke’s gospel uses sothr and its cognates often and in a wide range of senses, denoting deliverance from such evils as sickness, infirmity, sin; Its relation to faith is often noted. ‘Your faith has made you well.’ The stories in Luke also suggest that Jesus is biassed towards the marginalised, the disabled, the oppressed – be they lepers, tax collectors, women, or any other group who were regarded as being less than full citizens. His contact with them brings life, healing and wholeness. It brings them into the fullness of humanity.

Salvation for Luke means deliverance of human beings from evil, physical, moral, or political. It implies a victory, a rescue of them from a state of negation and a restoration to wholeness or integrity. And this wholeness to which human beings are restored is both their own wholeness as human beings and a sound relation to God himself. Think of Zacchaeus, rescued from his life of corruption as a tax collector; the lepers, rescued from their lives of disease and marginalisation; the Gerasene madman, released from the bondage of psychiatric illness.

This approach to salvation, which focuses not so much on our sins and the burden of guilt, but on our capacity for wholeness and right relationship with God, is deeply enriching and liberating. It looks forwards, not backwards. It looks to the best that we can be, rather than the worst. It contains within it the challenge for us to live as whole people, to move beyond our sinfulness and to understand that the incarnation is all about a reconfiguring of the relationship between humanity and God, a reconfiguring which opens up hope, joy and the treasure of the knowledge of the presence of God living among us and transforming creation. This is a liberating message, good news indeed! What a great patron saint you have! Amen.

Possessed by possessions. 10th Sunday after Pentecost

2010-08-01T17:08:00.001+10:00

As usual, each of our readings today is worth a sermon in itself. The Prophet Hosea compares his own disastrous family life to the disastrous relations hip between the faithless Israelite and God. In the second reading, St Paul is urging the Colossians to make their behaviour match their faith. It is important that Christians proclaim Christ in their lives and actions as well as their words.

However, I’d like to take the gospel today and explore the story of the rich fool, as it is called.

Jesus has just said, “When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say.” Then suddenly, out of the blue, someone in the crowd shouts to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

Someone has not been paying attention. Someone’s mind has been somewhere else. Someone in the crowd is very worried – worried about money.

So Jesus answered with a parable. And in all the commentaries I have read and all the sermons I have ever heard people interpret it like this.

The greedy rich man spent all his time making more money and collecting more crops and possessions. However, he died, and all his wealth was given to someone else. It is a lesson to show how pointless it is to be greedy. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” says Jesus, “because your life is not measured by the possessions you own.”

This is a good message and worth taking to heart. When we come to confess our sins, most of us could confess to wanting too much. We want more money, we want a bigger house, we want to be the boss. We want a perfect body, we want to be young for ever, we want to be attractive to other people. The magazines by the checkout in Woolies or Coles tell us all the things people want more of. Jesus’ story reminds us that our lives in this place will eventually come to an end, and we can’t have everything we want.

The message we hear is, don’t collect earthly treasures, but gather treasures that mean something in the kingdom of God. Jesus himself said, “Don’t gather treasures which can be eaten away by moths or rust; the treasures you gather in heaven will never decay or be eaten.”

And the treasures Jesus is talking about are listed by St Paul in his letter to the Galatians; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are the treasures most valuable to Christians.

But there is another way of looking at this passage. Right down near the end, what God said to the rich man, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” We assume that the rich man died and left all his wealth behind. But in Greek God’s words say, “You fool! This very night your soul they demand of you.”

They demand your soul from you. That’s how the original Greek reads. So who are they, that are demanding the rich man’s soul. Well, the way it reads, the rich man’s grain, goods and barns are demanding the man’s soul. The man becomes possessed by his possessions.

Somewhere deep inside, we all know that Jesus was stating a powerful truth. Everything we own also owns a little bit of us. If we own a house or a car, then we are under an obligation to earn money to pay for the house or car; we have to take time to see to it that our house or car is cared for. We are no longer quite as free as we were before.

The rich farmer made the mistake of believing that he really possessed his great wealth, although Jesus said that the reality was that it possessed him. Movie magnate Sam Goldwyn, on being told that he couldn’t take it with him, replied, “Well then, I just won’t go.” But that is not an option. We can’t take it with us, nor can we refuse to go when it is our time. And neither can we really possess, only hold in trust. Today’s possessions become tomorrow’s garage sale treasures.

So, Jesus concluded his parable of the rich farmer by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” He had stored his wealth in earthly barns, even though he had had the opportunity to store it in heaven.

Wealth is not wrong or sinful, but it is problematic. It is not wrong to want to have a big house or lots of money, but the want can turn into greed and become the focus of our lives.

The spiritual problem of wealth is that it anchors our hearts too firmly in this world, rather than in God’s kingdom.

St Paul warns the Colossians that there are other things which can possess us, he mentions greed and adds fornication, impurity, passion and evil desire. These are things which can control people; alcohol, pornography, gambling, drugs.

St Paul says that we must get rid of all such things. That’s easy to say. It is hard for those who are controlled and owned by some form of behaviour. It is not always easy to see or understand. It is not a matter of just saying, “No.” Nobody wants to be controlled by their behaviour. The solution is not simple. To break the control is as painful and brave as starting a new life. St Paul says, “You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourself with the new self, which is being renewed according to its Creator.” The rich fool may have found salvation that very night when his possessions demanded his soul. This might have been the lowest point of his life. He may have wanted to relax, eat, drink and be merry, but his greed would not let him rest. His only help was to seek help, help from others, and above all, help from God, who gives new life, a new beginning, a new community, a different sort of wealth, a life where the old behaviour is no longer important.

Let us pray for those who are struggling to take control of their live and those who are helping them. Let us pray that we may help those who come to us to find new life, new hope, new freedom in Christ Jesus. Amen

A fragile clay pot

2010-07-25T13:59:00.002+10:00

James and his brother John were fishermen, the sons of Zebedee and Salome. Matthew and Mark record how Jesus called Simon Peter and his brother Andrew to “fish for people”. Immediately afterwards Jesus saw James and John and their father, preparing their fishing nets. Jesus called James and John and at once they followed Jesus, leaving their father Zebedee sitting in

the boat. The bible does not say what Jesus said or how he called James and John. It just says, “Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat.”

Mark says later that James and John were called Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, but he doesn’t tell us why. We know that Peter and James and John were leaders among the disciples and that they were present at the Transfiguration but not at the Crucifixion.

The last we hear of James is that he was killed with a sword at the orders of King Herod Agrippa.

It is all seems very mysterious. What did Jesus say to James and John? Why did he call them Sons of Thunder? Why were they witnesses to the Transfiguration? And why did their mother ask Jesus to put James and John beside him in glory?

Some scholars think, using the gospel of John, that Salome was the sister of Jesus’ mother, so that James and John were his cousins. That explains why they were so ready to follow Jesus and why Salome was bold enough to ask her nephew Jesus for a favour for her sons, James and John.

I think that there is a more important reason why James and John were so keen to follow Jesus. In the gospel of John, some followers left Jesus and Jesus asked the disciples if they wanted to go as well, but Simon Peter says to Jesus, “Where can we go. You have the words of everlasting life.”

And I believe that it was “the words of everlasting life” that took James and John from their nets. It was the words of everlasting life which put the Thunder into the Sons of Thunder. Even in the gospel, which is rather negative about James and John, when Jesus said, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink” – it was the words of everlasting life which gave James and John the courage to say, “We are able.”

In his second letter to the Corinthians, (which we’ve just heard) Paul says, “We have this treasure in clay jars.” If you go back a couple of verses, Paul describes the treasure in this way, “God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made this light shine in our hearts to give us the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus.” God’s first words in the bible are, “Let there be light!” and for Paul, the words that God spoke at the beginning of time, words which became flesh in the face of Christ, these are the words of eternal life.

What we are hoping for, as Christians, is to have eternal life in Christ Jesus. We want to live in him and we want him to live in us. We hope that we will know the glory of God and that the glory of God will shine in our hearts and in our faces so that others will share this amazing treasure.

Of course we are not perfect, yet. We are like clay jars, very fragile, and some of us are more cracked than others. Like clay jars we can be chipped, cracked or broken in many ways. Illness and death are never very far away, says Paul, but the eternal life we have in Christ can never be destroyed. Even if we die we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us and will bring us into the true presence of God.

Let me tell you a true story. There was a young man who had committed a terrible crime and was sent to prison for a long time. In prison he was disobedient, rebellious and difficult. He fought against the prison officers every step of the way and was known as one of the worst prisoners in the system.

One day, however, he saw that he was spending his whole life fighting. He realized that if he wanted to make anything of his life, then he would have to work with the custodial officers and not against them. He began to study, taking every course that the prison offered. And he discovered that he was intelligent, resourceful and could be a great help and inspiration to others. He now has a master’s degree and is working towards a PhD. He is working hard for the benefit of others as an example and mentor, showing others how it is done.

And what has inspired him and given him the courage and perseverance to continue is the knowledge that there are people who believe in him, who trust him and support him, who know and who have always known that he is a wonderful human being.

St Paul might say to him, “Yes, God has given you everything for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

Of course you don’t have to be a criminal to be saved, the words of eternal life are for everyone. You don’t have to be afflicted, crushed, perplexed, persecuted or struck down to carry the death and life of Jesus in your life. God will take what is good and make it better by his grace. To be a Christian is to realize that God has created us to be special, to be a unique gift to the world. Chipped and cracked like a clay jar, but precious and loved in the sight of God. The gift God give us is that God believes that we are precious enough to die for.

Our response is to treat ourselves and each other in the same way, using every resource available, the church and its community, the worship and study of the bible, schools, universities and TAFE courses, the wisdom of professional carers like doctors and psychiatrists, pharmacists and counselors. God has given us everything for our sakes so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flash. This gift has been given to us, and to all people to transform our lives, now in this earthly time of our existence and into the future beyond death wherever life in God may lead us.

Good and Bad Neighbours - July 11th 2010

2010-07-11T16:04:00.002+10:00

A lawyer stood up to test Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “What do you think? You tell me. You know the law, tell me what you read.” The lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And Jesus said to the lawyer, “You have answered rightly, do this, and you will live.”

But the lawyer, wanting to justify himself asked, “Who is my neighbour?” so Jesus told him what we call the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is read and discussed in every Christian church and even many people who do not go to church know the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is the story of three men who came across someone who had been left half dead by robbers. Two passed by on the other side and one stopped and helped the wounded man. Jesus asks “Which of these three proved neighbour to the one who fell among thieves?” The answer, “The one who showed mercy.” is correct and Jesus replies, “Go and do the same.”

The lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” and Jesus told him. And as well Jesus said, “Go and be a good neighbour in the same way.” I could stop right now and say, “You’ve heard the parable; you’ve heard Jesus’ words; now it’s your turn to go out and help those who need it.” That’s a good message and one that we need to hear, but I would like to dig a little deeper.

Let’s start with the lawyer. He stood up to test Jesus by asking him a question to which he already knew the answer. And Jesus took the question seriously, asking the lawyer for the answer. The right answer is that to inherit eternal life one must love God and love your neighbour. Jesus has passed the lawyer’s test – they agree.

But the lawyer had another question. He wanted to make sure that he was doing the right thing – he wanted to justify himself – so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”

That is a really good question. If God says, “Love.” I need to know who God is talking about and I need to know how to do it. The lawyer wanted an explanation. I need an explanation. You and I are human beings and we are not perfect, we need some help with this loving business.

So Jesus has given us this parable. We call it the Good Samaritan, but there are other characters – the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, the robbers, the Priest and the Levite, the Samaritan and the innkeeper. We call the story the Good Samaritan but we could call it Good and Bad Neighbours.

Obviously we can dismiss the robbers as bad neighbours. Robbery with violence is a crime in most communities. Jesus does not tell us why the robbers were so violent, but we might ask, why did they rob and wound? Why were they bad neighbours? Could they have been good neighbours? Are robbers always bad neighbours? Were they kind to each other? Did they have families to feed? Perhaps we should not write them off so quickly.

The next two actors are the Priest and the Levite who saw the man and passed by on the other side. Jesus does not tell us why, but even if they did not help the wounded man, they did have reasons. The body by the roadside could have been put there by the robbers as a trap for travellers. And if the man was dead and priest or the Levite had touched the body, they would have been made unclean and disqualified from their temple duties. The priest and the levite had a hard choice. They had to choose between their duty to the temple congregation and their duty to help the needy. If the man was dead, then they couldn’t have helped him and they couldn’t have done their duty at the temple. Can we blame them for making that choice? Haven’t we all had to choose between one duty and another? If a beggar rings my doorbell when I’m halfway through writing a sermon, is it sinful to ignore the bell and write the sermon instead?

I’ll leave the Samaritan for a moment and look at the innkeeper. His instructions were, Take care of him, and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Now I think it was very generous of the innkeeper to agree to do that. True, the bible does not say that he was faithful, but the Samaritan trusted him and Jesus mentions him as one of the people who cared for the wounded and robbed man. The innkeeper kept a house for people to sleep in safety and comfort, a place where animals could be fed and sheltered, and if we think of another innkeeper, they sometimes provided mangers for babies to sleep in. Innkeepers provided hospitality for a price. Caring for a wounded and penniless man was not part of their job description. Sure, the Samaritan left his credit card at the inn, but the innkeeper was neighbourly enough to care for the man above and beyond the call of duty. I think we can identify with the innkeeper. I am sure we have been generous in our life and our work, doing a little extra out of the goodness of our hearts. It is a good neighbourly thing to do.

The Samaritan is of course the neighbour from heaven. As a Samaritan he was unacceptable to the Jews, ceremonially unclean, socially and outcast and religiously heretical. But this man delayed his own journey, expended great energy, risked danger to himself, spent two days’ wages with the promise of more and promised to follow up on his activity. My commentary says that such a profile is not easily matched.

I can imagine that the lawyer who wanted to make sure that he was being a good neighbour would have been absolutely aghast, bowled over, struck dumb by such an example. Jesus provides him and us with a perfect example of neighbourliness, and example of eternal life. That Samaritan has eternal life welling up within him like and ever-flowing stream. I do not think that I could ever match his example, any more than I could match Christ’s love shown on the cross. God alone knows what I could do if God asked me, but at least the parable has made me think of the possibilities.

Sermon for 4th July 2010, 6th after Pentecost

2010-07-06T14:42:00.001+10:00

Our first reading today is about Naaman the Syrian, a national leader, the commander of the Syrian army. we hear about his illness and his journey of faith and healing.

It is interesting that in Australia there has been some interest in the faith of our leaders – Kevin Rudd was shown as a regular church goer, and often gave interviews after church. Christina Keneally has studied theology and we heard on television how her understanding of the Christian faith affects her views on gay marriage and adoption. Tony Abbott is a Roman Catholic and many of us would be aware of the activities of the Christian Lobby Group who met with Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott to make their views known. And now it appears that Julia Gillard, our new Prime Minister, does not identify with any religious group.

I think it is interesting, too, that today is the Fourth of July, American Independence Day when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The United States of America has always prided itself on its Christian heritage and many Presidents have boldly proclaimed their own Faith in Jesus Christ. So perhaps it would be good to reflect on Naaman the Syrian and his encounter with Elisha the Prophet.

First of all, Naaman lived in Damascus with his family and attended worship at the pagan temple with his master the King. The bible says that the King of Aram would go into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on Naaman’s arm, and when the King bowed, so also would Naaman. It was simple, if Naaman wanted to keep his job, he had to worship with his master the King in the temple of Rimmon in Damascus.

But after he came to visit Elisha and was cured of his leprosy he declared, “Behold, I now know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.” Naaman no longer worshipped Rimmon, he worshipped the Lord God of Israel. So he took with him, back to Damascus, two mule loads of earth so that when he prayed he could pray to the Lord God of Israel, as he knelt on the soil of Israel. He would not stop going to the temple of Rimmon with the King since that was his job, but he asked God’s pardon for doing his duty, since his heart belonged to the Lord God and not Rimmon.

Now we can turn to the Gospel, where Jesus sends seventy people, two by two, to visit the towns where he himself intended to go. His instructions were simple – take no purse, bag or sandals, and don’t stop to talk to anyone on the road. Say, “Peace to this house!” and accept their hospitality if they welcome you. In the towns, too, if people welcome you, accept their hospitality, heal the sick in that town and say, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” And, even if the towns reject you, still tell them that the Kingdom of God has come near.

There are three connected groups here. Firstly the Christian Leaders of Australia, Prime Ministers and such; and the Christian Leaders of the United States of America. Secondly there’s Naaman and Elisha, and thirdly there are the Seventy messengers sent out by Jesus.

They are all judged by what they do and not by what label they carry. The Christian leaders of the nations; and the Muslim leaders as well; are judged not by whether they say they are Christians or Muslims, but by how they behave. In Saturday’s paper, Julia Gillard said, “Do not judge me by how I got here, judge me by what I do. Naaman asked Elisha not to judge him because he bowed down in the house of Rimmon, but to accept him because his heart was true to the Lord God.

In the same way, Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd, Christina Keneally and Julia Gillard will be judged, not by their declarations of faith, or lack of it, but their actions will show us if their hearts are true to the Lord God. When Jesus sent the seventy people out, two by two, he did not tell them to declare the Lordship of Christ. He told them to bring peace, to accept hospitality, to heal the sick and then say, “See? We have just shown you that the kingdom of God has come near.” And those who are ready to accept Jesus Christ will turn to him and be saved; they are the harvest which is ready to be gathered in. As for those who do not accept, they are to be left to God – but even to them the kingdom of God has come near.

St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, is talking to ordinary Christians like you and me. All that God requires is a sincere heart, a true heart like Naaman’s. Paul urges the Galatians to be true to Christ crucified. “Make no mistake! You can’t fool God!” he says, “If you pretend to be a Christian when you don’t mean it, be warned, it will end in disaster. But, if you sow to the Spirit, as Paul says, if you sincerely desire to follow Christ, if your heart is right, then you will succeed and all people will see that Christ is at work in you.

This is how evangelism works; this is how we are judged by those around us; not by the labels we carry for they tell people nothing. Christian mission shows the Holy Spirit at work when true hearted people who love God and other people work together for the good of all, and especially, as St Paul says, for those of the family of faith.

Let us pray today for all the leaders of the nations, those who make and administer our laws, especially those who profess to be Christians. We pray that they and we may be true to God in our hearts so that the works of the Spirit may show in our lives so that you may be glorified in Jesus Christ our Lord and that those who have eyes to see may see the Christ-light in our lives and turn to Christ and be saved.

Sunday 27th July 2010. Keith Mascord

2010-06-27T15:56:00.002+10:00

Truth and Unity

John 16 12-15; John 17:1-13

I’d like, this morning, to look at a promise and a prayer of Jesus; the promise in John 16 and the prayer in John 17. I want to look at what has become of this promise and prayer; and also what they mean for us; what are their implications … for us and for our journeys of faith.

The context of both passages is the final hours of Jesus’ life. He is on the cusp of being killed. And John’s Gospel has Jesus spending these last hours with his disciples, sharing the last supper with them, giving them last minute instructions – praying for them, encouraging them.

In John 16, verses 12 and 13, Jesus says this:

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth …’ REPEAT

That is the promise. The prayer that Jesus prays (one of a number in these chapters) is found in chapter 17 of John.

In verse 11 of that chapter, Jesus prays,

‘Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in the name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.’

In verse 22 and following, Jesus prays this:

‘The glory that you have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’

The prayer is that the disciples would be one. The promise is that they (that we) will be led into all truth – by the Spirit of Christ.

Unity and truth! Having the truth and being united. That is clearly what Jesus wants for his disciples (for us).

The trouble is it doesn’t look like we have got it; neither the prayer nor the promise appears to have been answered or honored.

Looking back into church history all the way back to the first century, and then looking around us at the great variety of Christian beliefs that that history has produced, it doesn’t look at all like we’ve been led into all truth. We certainly are not united in our understanding of what is true.

How do we deal with this? How do you deal with this as a congregation? I am guessing that there is a range of beliefs & passions & convictions & priorities within this congregation (as is definitely the case at Holy Trinity). How do we deal with our differences?

And you are different and we are different to churches down the road and around the suburbs of this city – including within our own denomination. We are all very different; and certainly not very united as Christians, no matter which way we look.

I had this illustrated for me just recently. Earlier this year, my mum passed away. It was very sad. I am still sad, but what was good was that all of mum’s children, most of their spouses and many of the grandchildren could be here in Australia for the funeral.

My brother from Portland, Oregon came out; as did my sister from Calgary, Alberta, along with my younger sister from Melbourne. We could all be here to honor mum’s memory and to grieve together. It was very special.

But we are all very different to each other theologically – very different!

We differ in all sorts of ways. We differ along the Calvinist/Arminian continuum, some of us Calvinistic, some of us not. We differ on the way we read the Bible. Some of us are more literal; others of us are more comfortable with metaphor & myth & mystery. We differ on our understanding of the future. One of us thinks that after Jesus comes back he will reign for a thousand years on earth, the rest of us think differently or are skeptical about this whole way of thinking.

We are so very different in the way we understand our Christian faith; in the way we understand the Bible – reflecting our up-bringing, reflecting the churches we have become part of; reflecting the fact that half of my family is in North America and the other half is here in Australia.

And those differences are found within just one family. What about your families?

My family is at least united in being Protestant. We are not Roman Catholic or Orthodox.

I grew up thinking that Roman Catholics weren’t Christian. I know of Orthodox people who don’t think we are Christian (Catholics or Protestants) – that if you are not Orthodox you are not Christian.

We are SO disunited, are we not … so not at one in our understanding of what is true?!

What has become of Jesus’ promise and prayer?

Before trying to unravel and resolve it, let me sharpen the problem a little further.

If you are already a bit depressed, let me make you a little more depressed – before I try to apply some medication!

There are one or two strange paradoxes about this issue of truth and unity.

One is that they seem to work against each other. It seems that those who are most committed to the truth … who put the biggest emphasis on the truth – are the least interested in unity, or they are only interested in unity with those who think like them!

Because truth matters so much to them – and, in many cases, they have decided what is true – they are not very interested in being associated with those who differ from them.

Passion for the truth can make people less inclined to pursue unity, except on their own terms.

Another (related) paradox is that those most convinced that they have the truth – all bottled and sewn up – almost certainly haven’t.

Jesus promised that his Spirit would lead his disciples into all truth, but ironically, those who believe (and perhaps trumpet the fact) that they have come closest to this ‘all truth’ – very often are a long way shy.

I was speaking at Prison Fellowship’s National Conference a month or two back – and they have recently adopted the Nicene Creed as their International Statement of Faith – and a reason for that is that in Eastern Europe most of their workers are of Orthodox background, in South America, Roman Catholic – and they have gone for a statement of faith that can unify them.

But there is a contrary tendency often at work within churches to keep adding to the list of core beliefs that would make you acceptably part of their fellowship – with this adding of extra beliefs often used as a means of excluding others and stifling differences of opinion.

And the more that happens the more likely it is that these churches become sectarian. Throw in a strong leader or two – and you can end up with a cult.

You’d think that the desire to nail down the truth would get us further along the road to all truth – but too often it seems to have the opposite effect.

What does that do to Jesus’ promise and prayer? Does it not make it even harder to see how it could be honored and answered?

Well perhaps. It does seem to make it harder.

Is there a way out of this dilemma? Is there a way that we as Christians can be united on the way to all truth?

I think there is.

Let me make 4 suggestions that might help to get us there; 4 guiding principles that, should we follow them, would unite us on the way to all truth.

The first guiding principle is that we need to see this as a process, perhaps even a never-ending process, something we will need to always be engaged in – certainly in this life. Jesus said,

‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth …’

That side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his disciples had much they didn’t understand, much that they weren’t in a position to understand – but even after his death and resurrection, the disciples had a lot of processing to do – a process that took years and it continues to this day.

The New Testament (which was written over a period of 50 years or so) tells the story (explicitly and implicitly) of this unfolding process of understanding & appropriation.

Every generation since that first generation; every people group to whom the gospel has come has had to do the same – to read what we now have in the Scriptures and to understand it (as best they can) and to appropriate and internalize it … and externalize it in forms of liturgy and service.

We don’t stop. We never stop – interrogating and being interrogated by the story of Jesus and what that means for us.

It is not surprising that this process has produced the often wonderful and enlightening, although sometimes frustrating and misleading variety of responses down through history and around the world. We can learn much from that variety – if we are open to learn.

A second guiding principle that might help us understand and appropriate Jesus’ promise and prayer is that all truth is God’s truth.

We all want to know what is true. We all would like to be guided into all truth (into as much of the truth as we can find & grasp & embrace).

We want this promise to be fulfilled for us.

In terms of the conservative/liberal spectrum … literalistic fundamentalists down this end --- highly skeptical & hardly-recognizable-as-Christian liberals way down the other end … most people on this spectrum are committed to truth (in one form or another).

Some think that we can’t know the truth, but even they believe that is true.

We all want to live in the light of what is true.

And there are pitfalls at both ends of that spectrum aren’t there – and in the middle and all the way through?!

Conservatives down through the years have too often resisted the truth (when it comes from sources outside of the Bible) even when that truth becomes plain and well-evidenced. They have held out for a flat earth or an earth-centered universe or a young earth or slavery or apartheid or patriarchy. They have even been known to lie for God – in trying to hold onto beliefs when the evidence keeps mounting up in the opposite direction … and they have to twist the evidence to make it fit their view.

Liberals, on the other hand, although they are more open, in principle, to following the evidence wherever it leads, too often have just given in to the latest fads and fashions; without being critical, as they should be, of many of these trends.

But my point is that we don’t have to be afraid of the truth – whatever its source; whether geology or psychology or history or archaeology or physics. All truth is God’s truth – and we need to be open to reading and re-reading our Scriptures in the light of all we know to be true.

We won’t be led into all truth – unless we are always open to the truth – no matter how inconvenient or unsettling.

A third hopefully helpful guiding principle is love. Jesus, in praying that his disciples would be united, spells that out in terms of love.

Unity of belief is important and is something we can strive towards, but in Biblical terms more important than belief is love.

In the context where Jesus prays for unity he says this (and notice that he also mentions knowledge), verse 25 of chapter 17 of John:

‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

The sort of unity that Jesus has in mind here is the unifying presence of God’s love; more than that it is the unifying presence of God – who is love.

In John’s first Epistle, he puts it this way, in chapter 4, verse 7:

‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.’

Verse 12:

‘No-one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.’

It is possible, you know, to love even those we disagree with – even those whose understanding and appropriation of the Christian story is different to ours – even if we think they could do better – if they came a bit our way!!

The truest or deepest Christian unity is the unity of love.

And a good reason for that can be seen when we consider one final and most important guiding principle.

There is every good reason to think that when Jesus promised his disciples that the Spirit would lead them into all truth, the ‘all truth’ that he was referring to - primarily, if not exclusively - was the truth about Jesus.

Jesus, in John’s Gospel, IS the truth. Jesus is the truth about God. In the quest for truth, Jesus is the primary referent. He is the major destination.

Where would the Spirit lead the disciples? The Spirit would lead the disciples back to Jesus … always.

The Spirit of God never-endingly leads us back to Jesus – to this amazing Word of God (revealer of God) – full of grace and truth … full of love, for God is love.

Do you know something, and this is probably true for you as well, in all of my 57 years, throughout all of my Christian life – filled with many turns, filled with many paths – often away from understandings I had had as a child – through many incarnations of faith; sometimes this way, sometimes that way, sometimes backwards, sometimes forward, sometimes doubtful, sometimes more certain – I have always been led back (time & time & time again) to Jesus – to this wonderful man, to this wonderful God in human flesh.

Jesus’ promise has proved true for me – and it is this Jesus and his love and grace that keeps me united – despite our many differences – with my brother and two sisters and with a host of other people I know I don’t see eye to eye with.

When I spoke and my siblings all spoke at my mum’s funeral just over two months ago, we were united in our love for our mother (who knew and loved this Jesus), we were united in our love for each other, we were united in our love for Jesus – who keeps on teaching us the meaning of love; who keeps on showing us the Father, whose Spirit continues to produce Christ-like love in each and every one of us – as we continue to be led into all truth.

It is by his Spirit that you at St Luke’s are united and can stay united (despite your many differences) as you and I (and all of us) continue along that road towards all truth.

Amen.

Sunday 2nd May. Love one another if you can?

2010-05-03T17:11:00.001+10:00

You and I know that the old days of certainty are over. The things we relied upon are no longer reliable. The Global Financial Crisis has shaken our trust in Banks and insurance companies. Governments and politicians who make firm promises and then break them have lost our trust. The terrible revelations about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Europe have shocked the faithful. Sporting clubs by their behaviour seem to have stopped being good sports. Full time employment is no longer something we can take for granted and even big firms can suddenly decide that the Australian branch is not profitable and hundreds of people can lose their jobs overnight.

Is it any wonder, then, that people are confused. Some will try and find things that don’t change in a world that is changing. They scramble for something that is trustworthy and true, only to find that what they seek is changing too.

For most people, then, it’s a matter of keeping your options open, being ready to move when necessary to a more secure place. For many people it means looking after number one – making choices which will bring the greatest benefit to them. A person might drop their job, their marriage, their place in the community all for the sake of finding something which they think will be better for themselves.

There is a sense that any relationship is something you enter into is a kind of temporary contract and you only stick to it if it serves your own interests. The idea is that everyone is entitled to chase a certain kind of happiness and relationships are only the tools we use to find our self fulfilment and happiness. We become subject to ourselves alone, and not subject to the claims and bonds of others. Commitment ceases to exist. Ask any church leader, any leader of a service club, sporting club or other voluntary association. People will come to the big events, the celebrations, the parties, the things that give them easy happiness, but they disappear when there is work to be done.

In the gospel today we hear of the very opposite. Jesus tells his disciples that the only way to be true to Jesus, the only way to be a disciple of Jesus, is to be committed to other people. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus’ disciples are those who live to be in relationships. The relationships themselves are what fulfils a person. Self fulfilment and happiness are to be found by maintaining relationships through thick and thin. The claims and bonds of others become a vital part of our formation as people.

If we find that our relationships are faulty, we are commanded to work at them. We should try to establish relationships even with those who want to harm us. Love your enemies and do good to those who harm you. In today’s world we are taught to avoid our enemies and leave those who harm us. Jesus commanded his disciples to stay in relationships and transform them into something good. In today’s world we are taught to get out when things get tough.

There is real stress here. We live in what we call the real world, but we live in the kingdom of God as well. Can we do both?

Some Christians would say you have to choose one or the other. If you want to be a true disciple, they say, you must abandon the false values of the world, withdraw from the rat race and live a true Christian life among other Christian people. There is nothing to trust in the world, so leave it and find a group of people who think the same way as you do. Alas, this is a recipe for disaster. This is where fundamentalism and cults develop, and where they collapse and fail.

Other Christians are more realistic. I hope that we fall in this category. We recognise that there is a tension between our Lord’s commands and the ideas of the world. There will always be a struggle between the demands of the gospel and what goes on in the real world.

We confess our sins and receive the forgiveness of God, we share the bread and wine which is the body and blood of Christ, so that we should be filled with grace and peace, freed from our sins and united with our saviour in faith. The truth is that the week will be hard, we’ll forget our promises and ignore our relationship with Christ.

But Christ’s death and resurrection is God’s promise of good and our hope for salvation even in the struggles we face. Even the most loving human relationship is not perfect. The reality is that sometimes relationships do break down. For us, death is the most complete breaking of a relationship. For us, the death of a relationship, whether it be a marriage, a friendship or a partnership is painful and agonising. For us, it is a betrayal of all our hopes and expectations and the breaking of Christ’s commandment to love one another.

I believe that Christ was betrayed and was crucified to show us that God understands these things. Christians live in a real world where pain and suffering are real, we betray others and others betray us. Relationships die and we are crucified.

God knows this and God shows us, in Christ, that after betrayal and death, there is a resurrection. God knows that sometimes the most loving thing to do is to accept the death of a relationship in the promise and hope of a resurrection.

This, for me, is what loving one another is about. Life and love, love and pain, pain and death, death and resurrection, resurrection and new life.

Today we renew our commitment to both Christ and the world, building community and building faith, learning to live with each other and inviting others to join us, sharing what we can with those who share the struggle. By this everyone will know that we are Christ’s disciples, that we have love for one another.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, St Mark and ANZAC Day

2010-04-25T15:55:00.001+10:00

Today is Sunday, the Day when the church remembers Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. It is also St Mark’s day when we remember the writer of the shortest Gospel. And it is also ANZAC Day which is also a time for remembering.

It is hard to remember something which happened before you were born. I don’t think that there are any original Anzacs left. My mother, who is 95, was sixteen days old on the first Anzac Day, too young to remember anything much. Historians and soldiers, politicians, journalists and archaeologists have all written books about ANZAC trying to remember and to work out what it’s all about.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and it refers to the 60,000 Australians and 18,000 New Zealanders who were part of a larger British force which set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in order to open the Dardanelles to the allied navies. The ultimate objective was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey), the capital of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany.

The ANZACs landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula at dawn on the 25th April and found they had been landed in the wrong place. They were told to expect a flat beach and few enemy. Instead they faced steep cliffs and a Turkish army determined to defend their homeland.. Around 20,000 soldiers landed on the beach over the next two days. Thousands of Australian and New Zealand men died in the hours and days that followed the landing at that beach. They were there for 8 months without making any progress. The ANZACs were evacuated on 20 December 1915. By then, 8,141 had been killed or died of wounds and more than 18,000 had been wounded. Among the dead were 2721 New Zealanders, almost one in four of those who served on Gallipoli.

It was a military disaster and a human tragedy caused by human error and arrogance.

A year later, some of the survivors met to remember their fallen comrades and to recall their experiences, both good and bad. So, year after year, ANZAC day is remembered.

But of course each new generation remembers ANZAC day in a different way. The earliest memorials and honour boards often had, “For God, King and Empire” inscribed on them. Even before the first anniversary of ANZAC, people were using Jesus’ words, “No man hath greater love than this than to lay down his life for his friends.” to describe the young people who had been killed.

Those words are from John’s Gospel and John’s gospel was possibly written about 95 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. All those who had known Jesus were now dead. That’s why the gospel was written, so that people would remember and believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this they may have eternal life. John’s gospel is about a victorious Christ who has been given the power to lay down his life and to take it up again. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is always in control. On the cross Jesus said, “It is finished!” and gave up his spirit. In those early commemorations of ANZAC, the young soldiers chose to give their lives for their God, their King and his Empire. They made, so it was said, the supreme sacrifice.

But there is another way of looking at ANZAC. My generation are the children of survivors of the second world war, and many of us hated ANZAC day. For some, ANZAC day meant seeing old soldiers getting outrageously drunk and hearing pompous speeches about “our glorious dead”. We have lived through the Vietnam War and many were conscripted and were sent against their will. The war was unpopular and returned Vietnam Veterans were often treated shamefully. There was no talk of dying for your country, no talk of making the supreme sacrifice.

We could compare my generation to the generation of St Mark, who we remember today, the Mark who wrote the second Gospel, although it is probably the oldest. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is not the willing sacrifice. In Gethsemane sudden fear came over him and distress. He prays, “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me.” And it is Mark’s gospel, not John’s that we hear Jesus cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For people who hear Jesus’ cry of despair, ANZAC recalls the futility, waste and stupidity of war

Nowadays ANZAC day is more popular than ever and people are remembering it in a different way. John Howard and Kevin Rudd have both said that the ANZAC spirit is the spirit of Australia. Mateship, a contempt for authority and giving each other a fair go seem to be part of it. In a religious magazine I read that Melbourne Storm have betrayed the Australian spirit of egalitarianism. What they have done is an offence against one of the values that Australians hold so dear, especially at Anzac Day: a fair go. There are some young people who have never known war and the death, so they have do not understand that part. ANZAC for them is a reminder of the Spirit of Australia, mateship, larrikinism, freedom of spirit and equality. ANZAC can be a time to remember all the good things about life in Australia and how precious they are.

Unhappily, ANZAC Day can also be a time when a dangerous form of nationalism runs riot. Patriotism is love and affection for one’s country and is good. I compare it with nationalism which says, “My country’s better than yours and if you don’t agree I’ll knock your head off.” This attitude has nothing to do with ANZAC or patriotism. In fact is the very opposite of what ANZAC is about.

Maybe this could be what ANZAC is about. For many people, especially those who actually make the journey to Gallipoli and keep clear of the crowds, it is a time to remember that those who died were people, with relatives and friends in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Turkey. The bones that turn up from time to time once spoke and laughed and loved and cried. There are British, Australian, New Zealand, Turkish and other nationalities there in the bones. Seeing them together we may remember that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Maybe the mingled bones of Gallipoli can remind us that forgiveness and reconciliation are the purposes of giving oneself for one’s friends.

Mustafa Kemal, one of the Turkish commanders of the defence of Gallipoli and later one of the founders of modern Turkey met the first group of British, Australians and New Zealanders to visit the Gallipoli battlefields, in 1934. He said this;

Those heroes that shed their blood
And lost their lives...
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore, rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side,
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries...
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom

And are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
Become our sons as well.

Lent 3. The Mother Hen and her naughty Chickens

2010-03-07T21:07:00.001+11:00

Jesus was not a theologian. He knew the Jewish Scriptures well and could discuss them with the learned scribes and Pharisees, but he never tried to tell people all the facts about God. Instead, he told stories, which we call the parables, and he used images. Jesus never says who or what God is; rather Jesus tells us what God is like and what God does.

Luke reports that one of Jesus’ favourite introductions is, “The kingdom of God is like…” The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed sown in a garden which grows into a tree for the birds to nest in. The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. The kingdom of God is like the owner of a house who opens the door to those he knows. The kingdom of God is like a marriage feast or a shepherd and sheep, or like a woman who has lost a coin, or a father who welcomes his prodigal son home again. God is like a growing tree, or a baker woman, or like a guest house owner. God is like a dinner host, a searching woman or a loving parent.

The Pharisees might have been upset by these homely images. I don’t know. They were certainly used to comparing God to other things. God is my rock, my fortress, my heart, my shield and defender, my judge, my king – all these were familiar to the Pharisees.

But when we look at today’s gospel, it must have made some people stare when God was compared to a hen and her chickens!

But the image is a beautiful one and well worth thinking about. Jesus, like the old prophets and those whom God sent to Jerusalem wants to bring them the love of God. God wants to gather his people together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Under there the chickens are warm and safe. They can feel their mother’s heart beating and her breathing. They can rest their tired legs and even sleep until they are strong enough to face the world again.

In the same way, God wants to renew our lives. When we are worn out with our sins and foolishness, when we have lost our way and God seems very far away, we can either try to find our own way out of our troubles, or we can turn to God and to the people of God and find among them the help we need. This is called repentance, because repentance means finding our way home. And the warmth and the closeness of God, the beating of God’s heart and the sound of God’s breathing; I call that forgiveness.

And salvation? This is when we have learnt from the mother hen enough wisdom and strength and self confidence to realize that our true life is to stay with God and not to wander off on our own.

Jesus reveals what they should already know, God wants to draw all people to himself. The mother hen will not be content until she has all her chickens safe. I don’t know if you have watched a hen and chickens, but you will see the chickens diving in and out of her wings and feathers. Sometimes their little heads stick out; sometimes it’s their feet you can see or a little feathery wing. The mother hen will not rest until all the chickens are gathered in and totally safe under her feathers. It doesn’t matter how many she has in her brood, not one must be missing.

The other thing I’ve noticed about chickens is that they will try and be a mother to any offspring whom they have hatched. Farmers used to put duck’s eggs under broody chickens because the chooks were more reliable sitters. The hen never bothered with the difference between her own chickens and the baby ducks. For her there was just one thing – all those whom she has hatched belong under her feathers.

From the hen we learn that all God’s creation belongs in the love and care of God. Chickens or ducks, it doesn’t matter, our differences mean nothing to God. Repentance does not mean that we must change before God will love us and care for us. Repentance is the simple act of running under God’s feathers when we are called. Forgiveness is God’s expectation that we will run to him

The tragedy of Jerusalem is that she has consistently refused the offer of forgiveness and salvation. God has sent prophets and wise people again and again to call God’s people home, and time and again they have misunderstood. In the days of the prophets the people followed strange gods and the rich and powerful oppressed the poor and weak. In Jesus’ day the religious leaders were concerned more about the outward observance of religious life than about what religion was all about. Religion is about bringing people together – not just the people who are like us or people who are good or people who people who will fit in. Religion is like the hen’s feathers – designed to include all the chickens or ducks or swans or whatever.

The tragedy of humankind today is that we seem to refuse the gracious offer of God to be included in God’s plan for salvation. Atheists refuse to believe in anything and some Christians demand that we believe too much. Atheists refuse to believe that God exists or that each of us is dearly loved and vitally important for the future of all that is. Some Christians insist that the door is narrow and that only those who want to go in must believe the right things and say the right things and behave in the right way.

The God I believe in is a God who will welcome all who turn to him in faith, all those who repent, in other words. It is enough to raise our heads and look for God, for God will come running to meet us with forgiveness for the sins of the whole world. I believe in a God who will not rest until all creation is gathered under her wings. I believe in a God who will hold us and care for us and change our fear into joy, our pain into health and our loneliness into belonging.

First Sunday of Lent; Food, power and Superman

2010-02-21T21:10:00.003+11:00

It is the first Sunday in Lent; we have begun our forty day count down to Easter and the greatest celebration of the church's year. During those forty days we are encouraged to think about who we are and what we do as Christians. This forty day period of reflection is not a new thing. Christians have been doing it for centuries, following the example of Jesus. And when we think about the forty days Jesus spent in the desert, we recall that Moses spent forty days on the mountain without food, as he considered his role in the revelation of the Law to the people of God, we are reminded of Elijah, who fled from the anger of the king for forty days until he came to the mountain of God and heard the still small voice which revealed God to him. The other thing we remember is the forty years that the people of Israel spent in the desert, wandering from place to place until they learned what it was to be the people of God, and only then did they enter the promised land.

So when Luke tells us that Jesus spent forty days in the desert we know, even before the devil appears, that this is a time of testing. Jesus, like Jacob, had to wrestle with God to find his future.

I say this because we read that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit, and that it was the Holy Spirit who led him in to the desert. There Jesus was tempted by the devil. On one hand there was Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and on the other, the devil, who represents for us the power of evil in the world, in ourselves, or some cosmic power set over against the will of God. No matter how we see the devil, as a person or as a force, we recognise what it stands for. When we use the word “devil” we recognise that there is in us and among us a strong opposition to love, health, wholeness and peace. St Luke uses the word “diabolos” from which we get our word diabolic.

The contest takes place when Jesus is alone and hungry in the desert, he has not even begun his ministry. The whole temptation story is the story of Jesus struggling with what it really means to be about God's business. Consider the devil's first words to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God..." Jesus is being asked, "Just who do you think you are?''

And look at the temptations; they are so subtle and so cunning. Jesus is attacked not at his weak points, but at his strengths. The devil knows perfectly well that Jesus will never do anything despicable, so he asks him to do something good. "Turn these loaves into bread." Can you imagine the rejoicing if Jesus had simply fed the hungry. The hungry were hoping for bread, the devil tempts Jesus to supply it. And we know that Jesus could have done so, and where appropriate he did do so. One snap of his fingers and there would be no starvation anywhere in the world. But Jesus knows that this is a trap. Let me tell you a story.

In a poor part of the city, the local council decided to make money available to those who needed it for food or other urgent needs. They invited parish clergy and social workers and counsellors to have a cheque book so they could distribute the money. It was a great success! People claiming to be poor and needy came flocking for this relief. 95% of them were genuinely in need. But the more they used this system, the more they came to depend on it. They didn’t try anything else. They were trapped by the council’s generosity. And not only they, the clergy, the social workers and the counsellors were trapped. They found themselves spending more and more time giving out money. It was a disaster. Jesus could have told them that, bread (or money) alone will never be enough.

The second temptation is also a trap. Jesus sees before him the possibility of power over the world - take political control urges the devil. Make the nations obey you; make them obey justice and mercy and righteousness. The devil is appealing to Jesus’ passionate desire for justice and peace, but this is another diabolical scheme. The devil tells Jesus so, “All this power and authority is mine and I will give it to you, except that you must do it my way.” The power of the world, the power to command, the power to be obeyed unquestioningly, this is devilish, and there are many in governments and churches who need to be taught that lesson. But Jesus saw through the devil’s plot, he did not see equality with God as something to be exploited, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave.

The final temptation is another trap. By leaping from the top of the temple, Jesus' claims to be the Son of the Most High God would have been settled forever - Jesus' power and authority would never be doubted, his reign would be supreme, and all the nations of the earth would worship him. Jesus would be set apart from all other men, idolized, worshipped, and in the end, ignored. Jesus knew that to be truly loved, he had to become like us ordinary folk. He was born like one of us, lived like one of us and died as cruelly and painfully as anyone in the world. A Jesus who jumps off temple tops might be idolized, but would never be loved. Jumping off the top of the temple would prove once and for all that Jesus is God, but it would never save anybody. Angels could have saved Jesus from the cross, but we would have been abandoned.

Jesus was in the desert for forty days. The struggle was between God’s will and the diabolic will. The diabolic will puts us as the centre, controlling people by making them dependent on us, or overpowering them or by being different, separate, mysterious and terrifying. God’s will is to show us the possibilities of life lived "full of the Holy Spirit, and Led by the Holy Spirit." Jesus always gives the initiative back to the people; he did not take it away. When he healed someone, he did not say, look what I've done, but he said, your faith has healed you. Always, in whatever he did, he used the power of the Holy Spirit to build other people up. The devil wanted Jesus to make people dependent on him, so that Jesus in turn would be trapped Jesus knew he had come to set people free, and to be free himself, no matter what that cost.

I believe that time of testing in the desert was a good time for Jesus. Far from being weakened by the temptations, he was strengthened because he had lived and grown through them. After the desert experience, Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, to Nazareth, where he stood up in the Synagogue and read from the book of Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." This confident declaration tells us exactly who Jesus is and what it means for him to be the Son of the Most High God. He will not dominate or control, he will set free. The devil has got an answer and scurries away.

So, during the next forty days, during the next forty years, what are we going to answer when we are asked, "If you are a follower of Christ...: You call yourself a Christian, what does that mean?" The question is a good one, whether the devil asks us or the person over the back fence. And the answer will be different for each one of us.

“Do our lives as Christians set us and those we love free?” might be the question Jesus asks us. And when we start looking for the answers they may make us uncomfortable - and we are reminded again of Moses' struggle to understand the Law, and Elijah's struggle with his doubts and fears, and the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years, and the temptations of Jesus. We know then that we are in good company, and we know that the experience can strengthen us, and when we remember that it was the Holy Spirit that filled Jesus and led him to explore his faith, then we too can thank God, that we can do the same, in the power of the same Holy Spirit, who with Jesus our saviour and God our Creator lives in perfect harmony and freedom for ever and ever, Amen.

Wines and Spirits at Cana of Galilee

2010-01-17T16:38:00.001+11:00

Cana in Galilee will always be, for most Christians, the place where Jesus turned the water into wine. The wedding which took place is remembered as the feast at which the wine ran out - we’ve forgotten who was getting married, but we do know that the catering department let them down.

It is a favourite story of the church and an important one, well worth a closer look.
First of all, lets think about where it is in the church’s year. First we have Christmas, when the Word of God became human flesh in Jesus, revealed to the shepherds by the word of an angel. Next we have Epiphany when the Christ became known to the three wise men by the leading of a star. After that comes the baptism of Jesus, where John recognises him as the Christ by the voice from heaven. Today we have the sign of the water changed into wine, where Jesus glory is revealed to his disciples.

Next week we will hear how Jesus declared himself in the synagogue of Nazareth, while January 25th celebrates the conversion of St Paul, where Jesus is revealed to him on the road to Damascus in a blinding light.

So our wedding is part of a series of revelation stories, how Jesus was shown to be God incarnate in the world. That is the purpose of the story, so lets dig a little deeper, because all John’s stories about Jesus, so deceptively simple, are full of symbolic meaning.

We might like to see the wedding feast as a symbol of the Eucharist, and wine, we know is important at any party - here it might stand for the Holy Spirit. Without wine, the party falters, the laughter stops and the guests start thinking about leaving. Without the Holy Spirit, the church’ s celebration is merely words, words without meaning, and people start wondering what on earth they are doing.

When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine” and Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Jesus, at Cana of Galilee still has many miles to travel before his revelation on the cross at Jerusalem, he still has many hours to go before the hour of his death, and we now understand that the final hour of Christ’s revelation is not yet here, the end of history is not yet.

But Mary provides a response to this problem, “Do whatever he tells you.” she says to the servants at the feast. Whatever stage of history, whether Christ is among us as flesh or spirit, we, who are the servants of God have one responsibility, and that is to do whatever Christ tells us to do.

Do you see how the story that John tells is not only the story of the wedding at Cana, but the story of our own community and its celebration?

At Cana, the servants responded to Jesus command by filling up the six stone water-pots used for Jewish purification rites - they were filled to the brim with water, a total of 810 litres. And this water is transformed into wine, and not just ordinary wine, but the very best wine available. That’s 1080 bottles of wine. And the disciples saw this as a sign of the revelation of the glory of God and believed in Jesus Christ.

John remembers this story because it shows Jesus revealed in the middle of ordinary life. A family wedding is a time of celebration and joy, whether in the first century or the twentieth. John reminds us that Jesus reveals himself now as well as then, in our celebrations as in those of the people of Cana. It is also possible, now, as then, for the wine to run out. It is possible for the church to lose sight of the Spirit of God and to lose its direction. What then, what if we have no wine?

We might look at our own church, here at St Luke’s and ask the question of ourselves. Is the party in full swing? Are people coming to ask what is going on? Is there joy here, is there the Holy Spirit, is Jesus in our midst?

These are not easy questions to answer, neither are they as simple as they sound, and we would be very wrong if we answered “no” to any one of them. However, if we want to answer a resounding “yes” to those questions we, and the whole church, will need to set ourselves again to follow Jesus’ mother’s advice - “Do what ever he tells you.”

The shepherds left their flocks in the field and went to the stable, the wise men journeyed from the east to Bethelehem in Judea, the servants at the feast had to leave their other duties to fill water-pots. All God’s servant must do the same.

And God’s response is always astonishing. At a wedding feast in a little place like Cana of Galilee, God produced 810 litres of the finest wine, and that was when the party was half over anyway. If anyone has the courage to respond to God they will find the same - not perhaps 1080 bottles of Grange Hermitage, but in other ways surprising and generous. Now I don’t want the wine to run out in Enmore and Stanmore any more than you do. So we’re setting up the party, it’s called Digging Deep, and it starts on Tuesday. And there will also be our Lenten Studies and the Annual Vestry Meeting, both of which are opportunities to listen to Jesus.

Let’s take a message from the people of Cana and have the courage to look carefully at what we are doing, drop everything that is not important and try doing what Jesus tells us. It worked for the people of Cana in Galilee; is there any reason why God should not do the same and more also in Enmore?
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Epiphany with T.S.Eliot

2010-01-02T21:07:00.003+11:00

The Three Kings, Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar are welcomed to the stable by an angel.

Detail of nave mosaic in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, depicting the Three Magi in leopard-print leggings.

The mosaic is Byzantine (c.560), but has been heavily restored.

Today the season of Christmas comes to an end. We can pack away the crib and the shepherds, the tinsel and the Christmas tree, Mary, Joseph and the Kings from the East. Next week, the white frontal will have gone and we’re back to green vestments and decorations until Lent comes with purple and no flowers.

But before we leave the season of Christmas, I’d like to reflect a little on these wise men from the East, who came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” First of all, the bible gives us little information – they are wise men, in Greek, “magoi”, mages, which probably means, astrologers, stargazers. After all, they had “observed his star at its rising, and had come to pay (him) homage.” But that’s all the bible says – we don’t even know how many astrologers there were.

But these strange visitors and their exotic gifts have captured our imagination – poets and painters have been inspired to write and to paint what we call “The Adoration of the Magi”. We call them kings because we’ve read psalm 72, which talks about the kings of Tarshish and the Isles, of Sheba and Seba, bringing gifts. And these kings have names – Melchior, king of Persia; Gaspar, king of India; and Balthasar, king of Arabia – names mysterious and magical, and, for the people of Europe, kingdoms where the buildings have domes and arches, where there are exotic animals, things like camels and elephants.

In the same way, the gifts they brought to the Christ child were given spiritual meaning. Gold was associated with royalty, so the gold proclaimed Jesus as the King of the Jews, great David’s royal son. According to the book Exodus, Frankincense was the holy perfume used in the sanctuary of the temple, and no where else – so frankincense reminds us that in Christ dwelt all the fullness of God – the gift declares Jesus to be the Son of God. The third gift, myrrh, is used for anointing. The kings of old were anointed with myrrh at their coronations, the high priests were anointed with myrrh at their consecration, and throughout the ages, the dead were anointed with myrrh for their burial. This last gift points sharply to Jesus as the Christ, the Anointed one, the one who is hailed as the king and high priest who died on the cross for our salvation.

But these kingly gifts draw our attention away from the kingly visitors themselves. What affect did the visit have on them? After having travelled all the way from the mysterious East, what memories did they take back with them. How did the sight of the child change their lives? We don’t know. Certainly the sight of the star was enough to make these rich and powerful people leave their homes and journey to a place they had scarce heard of. It reminds me of Abraham, who left the comfort of his home in Haran to cross the desert to the strange land of Canaan. It reminds me of people who have made a journey of faith. People who have discovered the Christ child and left their comfortable thoughts and quiet minds, and gone in search of meaning and purpose, seeking a relationship with the God in whom we live and move and have our being.
Matthew contrasts the “magoi” with King Herod, who was so insecure in his power and so blinkered by his own narrow viewpoint that instead of seeking God in the Christ Child, he sought instead to kill him, thinking that this way he could control his own life and the lives of those around him. The “magoi” allowed themselves to be caught up in their faith, led out of their comfort zone, and changed in ways they could never have foreseen.

We all have the choice, as individuals and as nations, to allow God to work with us and change us as we work with God to change the world. Or we can insist on our own way, and resist any possibility that our lives might be changed, and ignore the needs of the world and its people.

The poet, T S Eliot thought that the Journey of the Magi changed them and their world and the way they saw their lives for ever. Here is the poem he wrote. You might like to think how the birth has changed you and your life.

Journey of the Magi
'A cold coming we had of it,
just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore‑footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night‑fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water‑mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine‑leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
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"What's this thing called, Love?"

2009-12-25T22:25:00.001+11:00

In every year, we find that Christmas means different things to different people. For example, the shopkeepers and the advertisers have been urging us to spend our money on Christmas goods because they see Christmas as a good time for business. All over Australia people are travelling to be with their families for Christmas, to share good things and good fellowship. They feel that Christmas is a good time to be with family. On the other hand, there are those who find that Christmas is not a good time at all. It can be time when people remember what they have lost, or what they never had. Christmas can be time of loneliness and grief for those who have lost family and friends during the year. It can be a time of frustration and pain for those who cannot afford the celebration. But Christmas is also a time of generosity, when people remember that not everybody has enough, and the Christmas Bowl and the Salvation Army and Anglican Community Services are busy distributing Christmas hampers and toys to those who need them.
For those who are Christians, Christmas is all these things and more, for here we are in Church. Today we gather, with Christians all over the world, to celebrate the birth of Jesus. From the greatest of cathedrals to the smallest of bush churches, from congregations of thousands to two or three gathered in the name of Christ. The songs we sing have different words and different tunes, and the ways we worship are many and varied; and yet we have all gathered to give thanks to God for the birth of this one child, Jesus. No other person in the history of the world has had such an influence on the world and its history, nobody else has aroused such strong feelings. And every year, we struggle to understand what Christmas is really about, and why this particular child should be so special.

Perhaps we should start with a baby, and try to remember what it is to hold a new-born child. They are so small, so fragile, that we feel compelled to hold them and care for them. There is something about babies which moves us all. We look at a baby’s hands, and the tiny, perfect fingernails which they have; we see the miracle of a new beginning of life; and we find ourselves using baby-talk and growing sentimental and clucky.

Perhaps this is part of the message of Christmas, that God is making his appeal to us in a way that we cannot resist. Jesus was born with the same start in life as any other human - God committed his love to us in the hope that we would care for it and bring it to full growth.

The mystery of the birth of God is not to do with the angels, the shepherds and the wise men with their gifts - that all came later. In the birth of Jesus, God is telling his people “whenever you see a baby, remember me, for this is important.”

It is good to remember that it is not only the baby Jesus whom God has brought to birth, but each of us and every one we meet is born of God, and bears the image of God into the world.
When we think of Christmas we should not forget the prosperity this time brings to the shops, neither the family get-togethers and reunions. Care for those who need it is vital at any time; and compassion for those who are in sickness, grief or any other trouble is always important.

The Christian traditions, too, are well worth celebrating. The mystery of the Virgin birth, the stable in Bethlehem, the Star in the East - these things are important in their own way. But at Christmas it is good to bear in mind that the miracle of the Incarnation occurs in every human being, each one made in the image of God, each one infinitely precious and beloved by God. This is really important.

Whenever we see another human being, our friends, our family, the people we pass by in the street, even the reflection of our self in a mirror, let us see God reflected in each, and remember.
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"Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words!"

2009-12-25T22:22:00.001+11:00

Christmas Midnight 2009

I am about to preach a sermon. The word “preach” comes from a Latin word meaning “to proclaim”. “Sermon” is also Latin and it means “word”. So I am about to proclaim the word.
I love words. I love to play with them, to build them up into great sandcastles, or perhaps word-castles. I love to let them trickle through my fingers or my brain. I love the feel of words.

Words are things which only humans have. Animals can talk to each other with great expression and feeling, but only humans actually make words. They have been making words for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions and billions of words.

In the book of Genesis, when God created the world, all the animals were brought to Adam so that he could name them – he gave each one a word – elephants and tigers, snails and worms, eagles and ducks – each one had a word to be its name.

Also in the book of Genesis, when humans were trying to build a tower up to heaven, we are told that God gave each one a different language, a different set of words, so that they were no longer able to understand each other. Trillions of words for humans to puzzle over and to argue about.

And, of course, humans started using all these words to talk about God. According to Muslim tradition, God has ninety nine names known to humans. All these names, and more, and to this very day we are no nearer to a true understanding of God. It is said that only the camel knows the true name of God and so far they have not shared it with us.

The Jews, very wisely, refuse to say any name for God. They use four letters, YHWH, as the name revealed to Moses at the burning bush. YHWH cannot be pronounced so that no one can use God’s name lightly or foolishly. The Jews, again wisely, refuse to try and capture the being of God in a single word.

The Bible, which Christians believe to be the revelation of God, contains 181,253 words. It was written by a hundred or so different people in at least four different languages, but even the Bible cannot fully describe God or even God’s plan for the world.

The Bible is inspired by God and God caused it to be written, but it is written in human language by humans. It is translated by humans, read by humans and interpreted by humans. 181,000 human words to reveal God to the world – you might think this is enough, but God thinks otherwise. God’s love for the world is so great that words are not enough.

There is only one way for the fullness of God to be revealed in a way that human beings could understand, and that is for God to show God’s true self as a human being. Every person in the world has had some experience of being human. We have been hungry, thirsty, tired and bored. We have been greedy, thoughtless, selfish and careless. We have been generous, kindly, loving and giving. The human experience includes knowing what it is like to have fingers and toes, what it is like to have arms and legs, eyes and ears. the pleasures of the body, like eating and sex, the pleasures of the mind like thinking and talking and being in love.

These are the ways that God seeks to reach us, through anger and fear, weakness and strength, loving and grieving and, of course, living and dying.

Jesus, in his earthly life, was a great preacher and teacher, one who could draw five thousand people away from their villages and keep them spellbound until night began to fall. Some of that preaching and teaching has been recorded for us in the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Sermon on the mount, the Beatitudes, the Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John are three of the most wonderful passages of writing in the world along with St Paul’s sermon on love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which we hear at many weddings.

I love words, as I have said, but I remember and worship what Jesus did, and what he was and what he is more than I remember what he said. Words cannot feed the hungry or heal the sick. It was Jesus’ touch which made the blind see and raised the dead to life. Jesus certainly used words for example, when he took a dead girl’s hand and said, “Talitha cum.” which means, “Little girl, get up.” but it was his touch of the dead girl, so horrifying to the Pharisees, which restored the girl to life.

And no words could possibly do what Jesus achieved by dying on the cross. Death is the last barrier we come to as human beings. Only a fully human Christ could turn the barrier of death into a doorway to life, giving us the best good news, the best Gospel, we can possibly receive
St Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words.” There’s a Godly truth in that saying.

God did not use words, instead he sent his Word with a capital W, God’s Word in human form, to live our life with us to the end and beyond. Tonight we celebrate the beginning of life. On this night we proclaim that Jesus begins his life as a human being, born like one of us of a human mother. Tonight we the beginning of our lives as children of God.
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How to give birth to God.

2009-12-20T06:16:00.002+11:00

The Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 39 to 45

When we tell the story of Christmas and the birth of Christ we go to the gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke and we try and fit their stories together. Mark and John say nothing about the birth of Jesus, so we take some parts of Matthew and some parts of Luke to make our story.

According to Matthew, Joseph found that Mary was pregnant before they were married. He assumed that the baby was some other man’s child and wanted to divorce her quietly. However, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told Joseph not to be afraid, but to go ahead and marry Mary.

Matthew goes on to describe the visit of the Magi, the wise men, from the East and how King Herod wanted to kill Jesus. However, an angel warned Joseph in a dream and he took the child and its mother and fled to Egypt. King Herod then had all the babies in Bethlehem killed.

In Matthew’s version of Christmas, it’s all about what the men did, Joseph, King Herod, the Wise Men. Mary is not recorded as saying anything.

But when we turn to Luke’s Gospel, which is where our reading comes from today, we hear nothing from Joseph; and King Herod and the Wise Men are not mentioned at all. Instead, the Angel Gabriel, Mary and her kinswoman Elizabeth do all the talking. And there is no talk of divorce, or anyone wanting to kill anyone else, or escaping as refugees to Egypt. Luke’s gospel is about what the women did and said. It is about pregnancies, Elizabeth’s and Mary’s, it’s about love and joy and life and hope rather than scandal, murder and fear.

Our reading is called the Visitation because it is about Mary visiting Elizabeth. Elizabeth was old, and her son, John the Baptist will be the last prophet before Jesus. Mary was young, and her son, Jesus, will begin a new age, an age of forgiveness and salvation. It was perfectly natural that Mary would want to visit Elizabeth, but Luke records it carefully because he wants us to see that the old must give way to the new. John, as he himself said, must decrease, while Jesus increases. John the Baptist is a prophet, but Jesus is the revelation of God.

And the baby John, even inside his mother’s womb, hearing Mary’s voice, leaps for joy. The Holy Spirit of God is stirring and inspiring both Elizabeth and John, and this is where the joy comes from. Those of you who have read my Christmas letter may remember that I said, Joy is not just freedom from care. Joy is not just happiness. Joy is not just lightness of heart. Joy is not just hope for the future. Joy is all of these and more. Joy is the knowledge of the presence of God in our lives. Joy is the knowledge that we are an essential part of creation. To be joyful is to know that we belong in the world. To be joyful is to know that the Maker of all things lives in solidarity with Creation! To be joyful is to know that the Life of all lives with us and in us. To be joyful is to now that the Future of the universe includes us!

This is exactly why John the Baptist jumped for joy, exactly why Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words, “Blessed art thou among woman blessed is the fruit of thy womb!” And it is exactly why Mary burst into song and sang the Magnificat. That was Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s joy. We ourselves sang the Magnificat for the psalm, and we’ll sing it again at the end of the service.
Mary begins by singing her joy that God has chosen her to be part of the salvation of the world – all generations will bless Mary because she was chosen to give birth to the Saviour of the world.

The Orthodox church gives Mary a special title – Theotokos – which comes from two Greek words, Theos, meaning God and Tikteiv, meaning “to give birth to” so that Theotokos means she who has given birth to God or bearer of God. So Mary praises God and her spirit rejoices in the God of her salvation, because God is working the future of the world in her, in her womb, in her child, Jesus.

The rest of the Magnificat, after the first three verses, is all about God at work in the world. Mary sings that the work begun in her will continue until all the world is transformed and made new. Mary has been chosen to give birth to the future of the world. No wonder that Elizabeth cried out, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord!” in other words, “Happy and joyful is she who believes that God’s promise to the world will be fulfilled in her.”

The article I read about Theotokos – remember it means God-bearer – said that all Christians are Theotokoi – god bearers. This does not mean that we will give birth to the Saviour, but it does mean that we carry the Christ-child around with us in our own bodies. This is what it means when we say, we are the body of Christ; his spirit is with us. Jumping for joy inside us like a child in its mother’s womb, is the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.

So Mary is an example for all of us, men, women and children. Mary committed her life to the fulfillment of God’s promises. If she had said, “No.” to Gabriel, who knows what would have happened.

Now God is asking us to do exactly the same thing.

The angel Gabriel comes to us either in our waking life or in a dream saying, “Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!” and we are given the choice to say, “No. I won’t take the risk. I will hide the child away, never to see the day, never to be born, never to grow to maturity.” or we could say, “Yes, I will bear the Christ child for you into the world. I will show in my body that God is made flesh. I will show in my actions that the Holy Spirit is still at work. I will be as Christ to the world today.”

Let us pray to God that we may choose to make the right answer.

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What to do with rotten fruit

2009-12-16T08:00:00.000+11:00

There are four Sundays in Advent, and each one has its own theme or subject. We light our four Advent candles to remind ourselves what those subjects are. The trouble is that no one is quite sure which subject goes with which Sunday. Natalie Sleeth wrote an Advent song where the four Sundays brought us Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. We used those ideas one year and the words, printed out and laminated by Rachael Reddy, are displayed in the foyer.

If we look at the Candle prayers we have, the four Sundays bring us, Abraham and Sarah, the Prophets of the Old Testamant, John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, in that order.
But some preachers like to use another set of ideas – the Four Last Things - DEATH, JUDGMENT, HELL and HEAVEN. Maybe we can use that scheme next year!

But this year, let’s say that today is for John the Baptist. I just note in passing that the Collect for last Sunday all about John the Baptist and so was the Gospel.

Never mind, here he is again, on the Third Sunday of Advent, speaking to a great crowd of frightened people who have come out to hear him. Something has made the people anxious about the future – it may have been rumours of war or famine – in our day, the things that frighten people are nuclear war, terrorism and climate change. What ever it was that frightened them, the people have come out to see and hear John the Baptism.

John does not give them a nice comforting message. First he compares them to a crowd of poisonous snakes – You brood of vipers! he says.

Secondly he questions their motives. Why have you come to me? Who warned you to run away from your fears? What do you think you are doing, running around and calling for help? What were those people expecting when they came out into the wilderness to look for John the Baptist?

Thirdly, in five words, John tells them what they must do. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” In simple words, John says, “Do things which show that you have abandoned badness and chosen goodness.” Another way of putting it is to say, “Behave as the true children of God.”

And this brings us to John’s fourth point. “Don’t even think about saying, We have Abraham as out ancestor.” The Jews, the children of Israel, were proud to say that they were the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. God had promised that Abraham and Sarah would have children as numerous as the stars of heaven or the sands of the sea. It is true that the Jews are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah – DNA evidence certainly points in that direction.

But John is saying, this is not enough! It’s not enough to have Abraham and Sarah’s DNA – you need to have their faith and devotion to God as well. In other words, “If you say that you are descendants of Abraham and Sarah, then show me by the way you live your lives.”

John makes the point with two little jokes. The Hebrew word for ‘son’ as in male child, sounds like the word for stone, so if the sons of Abraham are no good, God can turn the stones into sons. The second joke is about Abraham’s family tree. God will cut down Abraham’s family tree if the fruit it bears is rotten people.

And the crowds asked John, “What then should we do?” and he answered, “If you claim to be children of God with the faith and devotion of Abraham flowing in your veins, then you must behave with justice and integrity, share your clothes and food, don’t cheat the tax man, don’t extort money. If you are a rich man – be a good rich man. If you are businessman or banker – do it with integrity. If you are a soldier or police officer – obey the law.

And all this, says John, is just the preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Baptism with water is a preparation for baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Holy Spirit will blaze with God’s glory in those who are ready, but it will burn those who are not ready to ashes.

Now it is time to think about our response to this message, which is, as we are told, good news.
I guess that we need to look at our motives. What are we looking for? Why do we come along to church? What are we expecting to happen? There are many answers, but some of them we know – hope, peace, joy and love must be part of it. Justice for the disadvantaged, good news for the poor, respect and care for the environment, a community where all can belong and all can be encouraged and befriended.

No doubt you can think of the bad things of the world which must be fought against, sexism, racism, addictions, homophobia, discrimination and exploitation as well as our own attitudes of greed and selfishness. These are the rotten fruit on Abraham’s tree which will need to be cut off and thrown in the unquenchable fire.

The church exists as a community centred on God, the maker, sustainer and saviour of all that is. The church exists to be an encouragement and an example of the righteousness of God, in the same way Christians are Christians to show the fruit of God’s power, love and strength.
everything we do, in church, publicly or privately, is to affirm, encourage, equip and bless the people of God who ask the question, “What then should we do?”
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Baptising Rohan and the Birth of Samuel

2009-11-15T14:57:00.000+11:00

The world has changed a lot in the past three or four thousand years. All those years ago life was very uncertain. There were no hospitals and no doctors – perhaps the very rich could afford a doctor, but their knowledge of human illness was very small. People died of all sorts of diseases that we don’t have to worry about. Only the very tough and the very lucky lived to a ripe old age. So one of the things that women had to do was to have lots and lots of children.
Peninnah, one of Elkanah’s wives, had sons and daughters which meant that she could despise Hannah for being childless.

The reason for Hannah’s childlessness is given to us. In fact we hear the reason twice in the first two sentences. Hannah was childless because the Lord had closed her womb. The writer wants us to understand that the Lord God is in control. It is the Lord God who decides when a woman is to be childless and when she is to conceive. Year after year Hannah went up to the temple to pray for a child, and although Elkanah, her husband, loved her, they could not conceive, and year after year Peninah teased and provoked her.

The change came when Hannah was desperate. She went to the temple and prayed for a child. “Give me a child, O Lord of hosts,” she prayed, “and I will give him back to you as a servant, a nazirite.” This meant that although Hannah might have a child, she would have him only until he was weaned, and then she had to give him away for ever. He would serve in the temple and see his parents once a year. Hannah was so desperate for a child that she was prepared to give birth to a son who she would have to give away.

Eli, the old high priest, was getting old, and his two sons, Hophni and Phineas were disobedient and corrupt. Eli was going blind and getting a little deaf, so when he saw Hannah praying, he thought she was drunk and spoke to her sharply. This shows that Eli had no idea that the Lord God was at work. Hannah was praying for a special child, one who would serve the Lord God all his life, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, and Eli thought she was drunk. The priests of the Lord could not see that God was at work.

Hannah knew that God was at work. After her prayer she was cheerful again, she started eating and drinking again. She went home with her husband and in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She called him Samuel, because she had asked him of the Lord. This is to help us see that the Lord God is in control, answering Hannah’s desperate prayer because it was in God’s plan for Samuel to serve in the temple and to be a great prophet.

The story of Samuel is that he was a prophet of God and a judge of the Israelite people; he made Saul the first king of Israel and afterwards deposed him and appointed David as king instead. Samuel’s story is part of God’s plan for the salvation of the world, because we know that King David was the ancestor of Jesus.

However, the story we hear today is the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother. It is the story of her faithfulness and prayer, her trust in God. She had great trust in God because when she could cope her childlessness no more and when Peninnah’s teasing was driving her mad, in her desperation she turned to the one she could trust – God. And when at last Samuel was born, she entrusted her first born son to God as she had promised in her trouble.

It is good to remember this story because it makes me think of the importance of baptism. Anthea and Ron have brought each of their children, Ronan, Veronica and Rohan to be baptized. God has given them the gift of children and have come to dedicate their children to God. When we baptize Rohan we will make the sign of the cross on his forehead. I will say, “Rohan, I sign you with the sign of the cross to show that you are marked as Christ’s own for ever.”

Ron and Anthea, Rohan’s godparents and all of us here today proclaim that God is at work in the lives of these people. Rohan is a gift from God and today we commit him to be part of God’s plan for the salvation of the world. Who knows? God may call him to be a prophet. God may call him to be a doctor, or a lawyer. God may call him to be a plumber or an electrician. God may call him to drive a truck or work in an office or to be Prime Minister. Whatever the future may hold, we want to see God at work in this new life.

And just as Samuel was sent to serve in the sanctuary at Shiloh, so today we commit Rohan to serve in the household of God. Through our meeting together, through our saying the creed, through the sprinkling of water on Rohan’s body and heart, we follow the advice given in the letter to the Hebrews. We “approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

Today Rohan is being brought into the household of God just as Samuel was brought into the house of God at Shiloh.

Now it is our task to bring Rohan to a mature faith in Christ so that he can make for himself the promises we are making for him today. We are going to help him grow into the life God wants him to live – whatever that may be. We’ll need to encourage one another to love and good deeds, to meet together, to pray together to trust the promises of God, for God’s promises are faithful and true.
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23rd Sunday After Pentecost - Generosity is the name of the game!

2009-11-08T21:12:00.001+11:00

Once upon a time, there was a preacher who boasted that he could preach a one word sermon which would include everything in the readings for the day. I don’t have that gift, but I would like to use one word to describe today’s readings. The word is generosity.

The first reading from the book of Ruth is the story of a widow called Ruth who became King David’s great grandmother. Ruth was not an Israelite, she was a foreigner from Moab, but through the generosity of Naomi, her mother in law, the generosity of Boaz, Naomi’s kinsman and through the generosity of Ruth herself, she married Boaz and gave birth to Obed; the father of Jesse, who was the father of King David.

The psalm is also about generosity, but this time it is the generosity of God. We usually use this psalm at baptisms because it is about children who are the heritage of God. But it is more than that. In the psalm, it is God who builds a house for his faithful ones, it is God who watches their city, God who give them honour and sleep, God who gives children and happiness. The psalm says that all good things come from God, who generously gives them to humans.

The second reading is about the generosity of Jesus, who gave his whole life and body and all that he had as a sacrifice for the sin of the whole world. The writer of the letter says that in the olden days, the Hebrew priest has to offer the blood of animals, year after year, using blood which was not his own. On the other hand, Jesus Christ gave his own blood, his own body, his own life all at once, so that the sacrifice would never have to be repeated. Jesus was generous enough to die for all people, good or bad, those already dead, those living and those not yet born.

This generous gift, freely given, once for all, is enough to give everyone the gift of heaven.
The gospel is also about generosity as well. Jesus ands his disciples were watching the people putting money into the collection box. It was a big solid wooden box, not like the little bags we use. There was a priest on duty to watch what people did, and each person had to announce their name and the amount they were putting in. The rich people gave large amounts of money to the temple. So Simon ben Adam, the wealthy Pharisee would say, “Simon ben Adam, one hundred gold pieces.” and all the people would say, “Well done, Simon!”

Then the poor widow, Anna, the daughter of Eve, came along, announced her name, and put in two tiny little copper coins. The people said nothing, but Jesus noticed. He called to his disciples and said, “Simon the Pharisee put in a hundred gold pieces, but he still has thousands of gold pieces in his house. Anna has given God everything she has. After giving the two coins, she has nothing else to give.”

Let me tell you a modern parable that tells the same story. Once upon a time, two friends, a pig and a hen, watched as the poor people came to St Luke’s Church on a Monday to be given a free breakfast. The pig said to the hen, “What a good idea, we could give the poor people a meal.” And the hen said to the pig, “Yes, let’s give them eggs and bacon. I’ll provide the eggs and you can provide the bacon.” “Just a minute” said the pig, “for you the eggs are just a contribution, but for me to give the bacon would mean total commitment.”

The hen could go on laying eggs for the rest of her life, but the pig would have to give his life to provide the bacon. Simon the Pharisee could come back next time and give another hundred gold pieces, but Anna the widow would have died – she had already given her whole life.

Jesus understood what was going on. After all, in a very short while, he himself would have to decide whether to give his life for the sake of the world. Jesus knew that Anna the widow had given everything, he was about to give everything. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down their life for their friends.” said Jesus. Jesus and the widow, whose name we don’t really know, show how generous humans can be.

Now we come to the point in the sermon where we apply the teaching to ourselves. Sometimes the preacher might say, “Go and do the same thing.” but when we are talking about generosity we know that generosity cannot be forced. You can’t force anybody to be generous in the same way that no one, not even God himself, could force Jesus to offer his life.

What we give to God, or to the church, or to other people is a matter between us and God. The widow freely gave her last two coins because she loved God more than life itself. Jesus freely gave his life for us because he loved us more than life itself. You know the quotation from John’s gospel, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.”

The widow’s generosity, Jesus’ generosity, God’s generosity and our generosity are not measured in dollars and cents, generosity is measured by how much sincerity we have, how much we care, how much we love.

And when we wonder who is going to measure our generosity, then it is not other people because they just can’t do it. We can’t measure our own generosity because our selfishness gets in the way. It is God who measures our generosity, because it is only God who knows how sincere we are, how caring we are and how loving we are.

Jesus criticized the Pharisees because they tried to measure their own generosity. Let us be as generous as we can with whatever we have, leaving it up to God to do the measuring.

All Saints - Sunday 1st November 2009 - Money makes what go round?

2009-11-02T12:41:00.002+11:00

The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has just held its annual Synod. For those outside the church the most exciting item on the agenda was the loss of $160 million from the money controlled by the Glebe Administration Board. You may have been following it in the paper.

Every article, every letter to the editor, every opinion piece had a viewpoint to pursue. Some said the church had been greedy, others said it was bad management. Fingers were pointed, at the church, at the Board, at the Synod, at God – the loss had to be somebody’s fault. The Archbishop said that he felt grieved at the loss, and anger and puzzlement. He told the Synod that we would have to cut back on various projects, including Youthworks and Anglican Media. The Regions would no longer have Archdeacons, except for Wollongong which will have an archdeacon, but no bishop.

Let me tell you, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

In the end, however, the Archbishop and Synod agreed that although the loss was huge, there were other more important things.

I heartily agree. Money is very useful, but it is not indispensable. Instead of travelling by Rolls Royce, we’ll have to ride a bicycle, or walk. The real point is that we must keep moving, we must keep doing the important stuff.

I divide the work that people do into Kingdom of God work, and other work. Kingdom of God work is anything that works to make the Kingdom of God real in the life of the world. Telling the Good News of Jesus Christ is Kingdom of God work, proclamation, praise and worship, baptism and the Eucharist. Even preaching and teaching can be Kingdom of God work if it’s good and helpful. St Paul gives us some lists of Kingdom of God work: He gave the Galatians this list: love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There are eleven other lists in the new testament, all much the same. Paul calls them, “the fruit of the spirit, or sometimes, “the ministry commended by God”, “a thanksgiving to God”, or “the fruit of light” and “the imitation of Christ.” I call all these good works, the work of the Kingdom of God. Jesus used the Kingdom of God to describe the work he was doing. He said to the disciples, “As you go, proclaim the good news, The Kingdom of God has come near. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

And when John the Baptist sent his disciples to find out if Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus answered, Go and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.” In other words, if you want to know if the Kingdom of God is active – look and listen – what you see and hear will tell you.”

Now, today is All Saints Day, when we particularly give thanks for the lives of St Luke, St Augustine, The Blessed Virgin Mary and all those who have been called saints, from St Barbara, who may not have existed, to Oscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who certainly did exist. We call them saints a word which means holy or hallowed. God’s name is hallowed, or holy, and last night was Halloween, the evening before All Hallows, all God’s Holy One’s. So Halloween is a Holy evening.

The reason we call people like Luke and Augustine and Oscar Romero and Mary Mackillop holy is because they did their very best to put the kingdom of God work before anything else. Of course they were human, and had many of the human failings that we share, but by the grace of God and their own love of God and their willingness to serve God, they did manage to put the Kingdom of God first and everything else second.

We remember them and honour them not because they were perfect, nor because they performed miracles, but because they showed by their words and actions that the Kingdom of God is near. “Go and tell what you see and hear.” said Jesus. We remember what the saints said and did, and we know the Kingdom of God has come near to us.

Now the question is: Will people know that the Kingdom of God has come near when they see and hear what we do and say?

Money is an important thing in our world today. The Diocese needs it to pay the Bishops and the staff of Church Office. It is needed for mission programs, for Anglicare and overseas assistance. We need money her at St Luke’s to pay the rector, to restore the Organ, maintain the church and to give to ABM, the Al Ahli Hospital and the other missions we support. People know we need money and they expect good stewardship. They get pretty cross if they think the church is wasting money.

But what people really do expect to find in the church is the Kingdom of God. The kingdom is, of course, the core business of the church, as Jesus said, proclaim the kingdom by word and deed. This is what the saints did, the holy people of God and when we say, “We are the body of Christ.” we make it our task too. And people expect us to be doing the work of the kingdom.

If people see kindness, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control that is good, but unless we speak the words, they will not hear that the Kingdom of God has come near. And if we say, Behold, the Kingdom of God! how will they know what that means unless they also see kindness, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

So, as we go about our daily work, we need to do care for ourselves and our family and those around us; our money is needed to feed us, clothe us and shelter us, as well as to keep the church running. October has been a month of high expense and low income, so generosity is called for.
But the example of the saints shows us that it is the work of the Kingdom of God which is most important; the “show and tell” where we, who want to follow Jesus, show people the fruit of the spirit in our lives and tell them that the Kingdom of God has come near.
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21st Sunday after Pentecost - 25th October 2009 - Blind Bartimaeus

2009-10-29T18:50:00.000+11:00

The truth is that I cannot imagine being blind. I cannot begin to think what it must be like to have no eyesight; never to see the sky, or the trees, or other people. I once watched a blind man walking along the footpath. He came to an intersection and there had been some road works. With his white stick he tapped on the kerb, and then set off – into the middle of the road. Two or three cars came driving along and went round him. The blind man reached out with his stick but found nothing he recognised. He turned around, but could not find any landmark. In the end he shouted out, “Will someone help me get out of the road?” And someone walked out to him and helped him on his way.
Today we meet another blind man, Bartimaeus, the beggar of Jericho.
Jesus is on his way to his Passion, Death and Resurrection. He told his disciples three times that “the Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands and they will kill him and three days after being killed he will rise again.” But the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying.
They could not see what following Jesus meant. The could see the healings, the miracles, the teaching, but they could not see the salvation.
And now, today, they have reached Jericho, which is twenty kilometres from Jerusalem. It is a very steep and winding road from Jericho to Jerusalem, a dangerous road, for it is the road where the traveller in the good Samaritan parable fell into the hands of robbers. And at the end of this road lies Jerusalem, where Jesus will die.
Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho, and the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. The amazing this was that although he was blind, he saw better than the disciples! The disciples were on the road to Jerusalem, but they couldn’t see why. But the blind beggar knew – this was Jesus the Son of David, the one who comes in the name of the Lord. And he began to shout, “Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.” The crowd tried to silence him, but he shouted all the louder, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”
Of all the people in this section of the gospel it was an outsider, a blind beggar who could see best of all that Jesus was the one who could give him his heart’s desire. Bartimaeus could see salvation.
So when Jesus called him, he jumped up and came to Jesus. Now, in those days, professional beggars like Bartimaeus would have little place set up beside the road. Sometimes you see the same sort of thing in George Street. Bartimaeus had a place by the roadside, away from other beggars. He had a cloak that he wrapped around himself to keep out the cold at night, he might have had some food and drink, perhaps a begging bowl. This was his security. In his dark world, when he had his cloak, his bowl, his familiar place, he knew where he was.
But Bartimaeus sprang up and came to Jesus. That was a dangerous thing for a blind man.He left his place by the roadside – he couldn’t see to find his way back. He left his cloak – he could never find it again. He might have been going in the wrong direction, he might have tripped over a stone or he might have run headlong into some other person. Bartimaeus abandoned all that kept him safe and came to Jesus. His eyes may have been blind, but he knew exactly where he was going.
And Jesus tested him, asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” Quick as a flash the blind man said, “My teacher, let me see again.”
Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way. John’s gospel records that Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Here Bartimaeus, when you compare him to the disciples, knows that Jesus is the way and follows Jesus. Jesus did not ask him to follow. Bartimaeus is the blind man who could see, he could see better that all the others what it meant to be a disciple of Christ.
I wonder how clearly we see Jesus. If we are honest we will admit that we all have our blind side. None of us can see perfectly, St Paul says it is like looking in a murky mirror.
Every one of us likes to feel secure, safe, protected. It could be said that we too have our place by the roadside, with our cloak and begging bowl.
And, like Bartimaeus, we are calling out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Let us pray that we may be more like Bartimaeus. May we see clearly the promise Christ has for us. May we see clearly the road in front of us. May we spring up with courage and take the road.
And when, at the end of our worship together, we say, …, let’s throw away our cloak, leave our place by the roadside, and with true sight restored, follow Jesus on the way.

Patronal Festival St Luke’s Day 2009

2009-10-29T18:49:00.001+11:00

Sermon by the Reverend Barbara Bonifant, Priest-in-charge of the Parish of Mallala Two Wells, Diocese of Adelaide

Thank you Fr Gwilym for inviting me to preach on this special day. It is a privilege indeed to be invited to preach on a Patronal Festival. My parish of Two Wells and Mallala send their greetings to you all.
As you will all know St Luke is the Patron Saint of Doctors and as a doctor’s wife of 40 plus years standing, I have attended many, many St Luke’s day services, and I feel as if St Luke has been part of my life for a long time. In our home we have a beautiful Icon of the three medical Saints, Luke, Cosmos and Damien and it has served to remind us of where healing starts and ends – with God.
So what about Saint Luke? What do we actually know about him for sure? Not much. Luke was a physician, a close friend of Paul and a Gentile. The general view is that Luke was Greek who came from Macedonia, but another tradition associates him with Antioch in Syria. He travelled widely with Paul and it may be that because Paul had a personal physician in attendance, so to speak, that Paul was able to do all the things he did, and to survive the multitude of privations with the assistance of Luke’s skill and loving care. In the Epistle we heard the rather pitiful statement from Paul “that only Luke is with me.” It does make Paul sound quite human, low and miserable but it also gives us one recorded instance of Luke’s whereabouts.

Luke is also traditionally recognised to be the author of the Gospel of Luke and its continuation the Acts of the Apostles. Luke’s literary style was based on classical writing and the books he wrote show that he was an artist with words and a clever wordsmith. It is notable that he gives prominence to the women in his gospel and the teaching of Jesus about the poor and the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. I think that these are qualities that every doctor should demonstrate.
The main reason that Luke is writing at all is that the “message” of Jesus has spread far and wide, way beyond the communities in the regions that Jesus knew and travelled through. Peter, Paul and others have carried the message in all directions and doubtless there were garbled, muddled and misleading versions circulating. Remember that this was a time of oral tradition and we all know how stories change with the telling. The 8 inch fish becomes almost 9 and so on. It doesn’t take too many retellings to have a very different story. I remember as a child playing the game of Chinese whispers. As 8 year olds how we laughed at the outcome but as adults we realise that there is a scary side to such bending of the truth. Perhaps Luke with a scientific background wanted to write the truth to put a stop to the scary claims and the over the top claims that were being made on Jesus’ behalf.
Luke would have known that the story of Jesus was already being put on paper for a Jewish audience but the audience that he had in mind is a much wider group. He was thinking of an educated, intelligent and enquiring public.
The gospel of Luke starts with these verses – “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed”. And so the gospel begins as he says at the very beginning with the birth of John the Baptist. The “most excellent Theophilus” that the gospel is addressed to, may have been a real person, perhaps a Roman governor or a local official, whom Luke has become friendly with. It could be a literary device, a way of addressing any one and everyone who has heard about Christianity and who is a ‘lover of God’ (that is what ‘Theophilus’ means in Greek). Luke does imply that Theophilus has already been officially taught something about Jesus and what it means to follow him, so perhaps he intends it for recent converts who are eager to learn more.
Another event which may have influenced Luke in writing things down was that there was a horrendous war going on in Palestine at that time. The Jews rebelled against the occupying Roman forces, until finally after a long siege, Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE. The result was that many of the villages and towns that Jesus knew, and that knew Jesus, were decimated. Not only was the generation that lived in Jesus time dying out but the communities that had continued to follow in his footsteps were being scattered far and wide. The stories that had depended on a peaceful, stable society for their continued telling were in danger of being lost, so it was necessary to take steps to write them down. It would seem that Luke was concerned that these stories were handed down to the next generation. He, like all the early Christians had a passionate belief that the historical events of Jesus’ life had changed the world and so the stories were too precious to just be treated in a cavalier fashion and needed to be presented as unambiguously and as clearly as possible.

His gospel is different from the other 3 and does include a number of “stories” that do not appear in the others. Perhaps that is because of his interest in healing, together with his non Jewish approach. Whatever the reason we owe him gratitude today. It is hard to think that he would ever have imagined that we would be still reading his words in the year 2009 or that we would be honouring him as a Saint of the church.
So many healing institutions bare his name and when we think about Luke we think about the healing ministries of the church which continue in many forms. So today we give thanks for his skill as a physician and also give thanks for his eloquence and for his recording of the many healing and other miracles which give us guidance and hope today.
We honour Luke as a martyr although we know nothing of what happened to him after the death of Paul in Rome. One tradition has him returning to Boeotia in Greece where he died at the age of 84.

So let us give thanks for the life Luke and the heritage he left for us some 2000 years on.

In Jesus’ name Amen

Money, faith and disaster.

2009-10-15T15:54:00.001+11:00

Sermon for Sunday 11th October.

At the end of our celebration today, we will have the opportunity to donate some money towards the ABM appeal for the relief of tsunami, flood and earthquake victims. These disasters may seem far away, but no one is immune from pain and death. All humans worry and wonder about these things. We need to make sense of our birth, our relationships, the things that happen to us during our life, and eventually, our death. Human beings are made like this, they can’t help thinking about things and believing in something.

Some beliefs can be helpful, and enable us to live our lives in a positive and useful way, or they may be harmful, and lead us to despair and an early death, but we all believe something, and religion is our human attempt to make sense of our world.

For the children of Israel, and Job in particular, the events of the Exodus are basic beliefs. The covenant that God made with his people at Sinai - I shall be your God, and you shall be my people - this is the background to which Job interprets his life. The gracious promises of God that faithfulness will bring blessings from God, prosperity, wealth, children, peace - this has given Job his understanding of his world. This same belief supports the Israelites today and gives shape to their life as a people and a nation.

The whole book of Job is an exploration of what happens when that belief is challenged - when Job, a man noted for his faithfulness to God, is suddenly reduced to poverty. All the things which he thought were the rewards of his faithfulness to God are taken away. How does he make sense of this disaster? How does the agony of his life fit in with his beliefs about God?

There are two things he can do. Firstly, he can reject his faith and decide that he has been deluded, tricked into a false belief. His world has fallen apart, so his faith collapses. In the words of scripture, he could curse God and die. But Job’s faith is stronger that that. Job believes in God so firmly that he takes the second path - he must find God in his situation. Job has friends who try to comfort him, but he turns away from these so-called comforters, as he begins a new search for God in space and time. Could he find where God is, he might find a hearing, but he finds only terrifying darkness. Were God to appoint times of judgement, the cry of the oppressed would be redressed; but God hears nothing. Today that is as far as we go with the story of Job - the challenge to his faith brings him to terror and darkness. But it is not the terror of unbelief, nor the darkness of no belief - it is God who terrifies, and God who is hidden in the darkness.

Psalm 22 reminds us of another darkness, the darkness of the crucifixion, when Jesus was brought to the same point of terror. Jesus’ faith was far greater than Job’s and yet even he cannot find God at this point. God has tested him to destruction and all his faithfulness seems to bring nothing but death. Jesus is tempted to reject God and die, but by calling out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He actually affirms his belief in God. In his questioning, in his challenge to God; by naming God Jesus still believes in Him. At the point of ultimate testing, Jesus recalls how God saved his people - “In you our ancestors trusted, and you delivered them, to you they cried, and they were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.” - why, then, do you not save me?

God’s answer to Jesus was the resurrection - an answer far beyond anything anyone could have expected - and an answer on which we rely to this day. As Christians, we still look back to the Exodus event, but first of all we recall Christ’s death and Resurrection and this becomes, for us, the basis of our faith - this becomes the background against which we see our birth, our live and our death.

But that does not settle the matter, we have our testings too, there are times when the resurrection seems unreal and God seems to have forgotten his promises, times when we challenge God to be present and find nothing. And our temptation is more subtle now - perhaps the devil has learned some new tricks - we are not tempted to despair and death - we are tempted instead to explain God away. A few words from a scientist, an article from a psychiatrist, a doctor’s diagnosis and we say that God does not exist. God has gone so far from us that he is no longer part of our lives. We are not prepared to bear the pain like Job or Christ - it is easier to transfer our faith and belief to something human, which, after all, we can always change if we don’t like it.

But the reading from Hebrews and the Gospel remind us that the pain, the struggle, the difficult decisions are not unfortunate accidents - they are the very stuff of belief. Job and Jesus call on God at the very point when God seems faithless - that’s what God is for. As the writer to the Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Our faith works best when it is challenged, questioned and tested. Fair weather faith is like a fair weather friend - it is easy to trust someone or something when there is no trouble about.

The story of the rich man who wanted to follow Jesus is a story about riches and our attitude towards them; it is also about the cost of discipleship and what we must give up to follow Jesus, but today we hear it as a story about the test of faith and what it is we believe in. The rich man was a good man, he had always done what was right, treating his neighbours well, and loving God. But when it came to the test, when he was asked to declare what he really believed in as the background of his life, he failed. For he believed in wealth, he had many possessions - he was shocked and stricken with grief - and in that moment of pain, chose his riches rather than God.

Today we are asked the same question. We are not asked, perhaps, to part with all our worldly goods - although that may be part of God’s challenge to us - but we are asked to decide what it is that we believe - what is it that gives meaning to our lives, our birth, our relationships, our troubles and our death. This is important, for we see about us others who have declared their belief by filling their lives with material possessions, or filling their time with video games, or gambling, or dulling their senses with drugs because there is nothing else they believe in.
By coming to church we declare ourselves as Christians. By our baptism and our sharing the Eucharist we declare our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So far, so good. But are we prepared to test everything in our lives against that standard? At the beginning of the service we prayed to God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden. We asked God to cleanse the thoughts of our heart by breathing into us his Holy Spirit. We declared our desire to love God perfectly and to declare God’s glory in our lives. As we remember the testings and challenges that we have been through and which lie ahead, let us pray that our faith may be strong enough to search for God even when God seems nowhere to be found.

All good things around us.

2009-09-02T08:12:00.002+10:00

Last week I was reading a book about life on earth by an eminent scientist who, on about page nine, said, “The universe made itself.”

This is an amazing thing to say. In the world of science, nothing makes itself. It is utterly impossible, according to all the theory of science. So, for this scientist, it is a very unscientific thing to say, “The universe made itself.”

Later on in the book he was puzzled by the beginning of life. He had no difficulty with the heat and light and chemistry making a sort of organic soup right back at the beginning of the world, but he could see no explanation of how that chemical soup could come alive. For about the last fifty years, scientists have been able to make this sort of chemical soup and, by using high voltage electricity, they have been able to make proteins and other organic chemicals. They have all the ingredients to make a living something, but the spark of life eludes them.

For us, and for the Jews and the Muslims, there is no difficulty. The book of Genesis, which all three faiths read, calls this spirit of life God. For us, life is not something that came into the world when the first organism started living. For us, life is the starting point of the universe. Our Bible begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” We know that our God is a living God, the God of life. Where God is, there is life, even if there is nothing but the darkness before creation. We hear that the Spirit of God, the Breath of God, hovered over the waters. We are being told that God’s life brings all things into being. And that includes the stars and planets, the ground beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the water we drink. It also includes each one of us. We can look in the mirror and say, “I am alive because God lives. The living God means that I can live as well.”

This is why I have chosen the hymn, “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above; then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for such abounding love.”

St James, in his letter, says, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” Another way of putting this would be to say that everything that is life-giving comes from God.

This reminds me of a story you’ve all heard before. During a terrible flood, a man took refuge from the rising waters by climbing to the roof of his house. And he prayed, “God! Save me from the flood!” In a little while a boat came along and the people on the boat said, “Come and get into this boat. We’ll save you!” But the man said, “No, No, God will save me.” so the boat went on. The waters rose and rose until the man had to stand on the very top of the gable of his house. Then along came a helicopter, and the people on the helicopter let down a rope and called to the man to grab hold and be rescued. But he said, “No, No, God will rescue me.” So the helicopter went away. The floods rose higher, the man was swept away and drowned. Up in heaven he went straight up to God and said, “You promised to save me! I put my trust in you and you let me drown! What kind of God are you?” And God said, “I sent a boat and a helicopter, but you refused their help. What more did you expect?”

The first reading is from the Song of Songs, and it is a love song. It is a celebration of sexual love and the book is very erotic – all sorts of images and pictures are used to celebrate the way in which humans express their sexuality. The book is included in the Bible because the gift of human sexuality is one of those generous acts of giving, a perfect gift from God. It is right and proper to rejoice in human love and sex.

We know that humans can misuse this gift – a glance in the paper shows domestic violence, rape, and the kidnapping and mistreatment of a girl by a man and his wife. I won’t go into details, you know how humans misuse God’s good gift of sexual love.

The psalm is also a celebration. This time it is the celebration of the coronation of a king in Israel. From the psalm we note that the king is young and strong and loves righteousness and justice. He is a man of peace – he has married the daughter of the king of Tyre and he has trading links with the land of Ophir. He is prosperous with scented clothes and a palace with walls inlaid with ivory. He and his wife have a daughter, but no sons yet. The future is full of promise.

The point the psalmist makes is that all the good things come from God, the king’s good looks, his eloquence, his righteousness, the peace of the land, the king’s happiness – all these come from God. Because these gifts are God’s gifts of power, wealth and peace they are to be cherished and used well. Of course we know how rulers can become corrupt and unwise. God’s gifts can be misused.

We see that the misuse of God’s gifts is life-destroying and the good use of God’s gifts is life-giving, because that is exactly why God has given them. God is the life giving God and God’s gifts are intended to give life.

And this is the argument that Jesus had with the Pharisees. Jesus always argued that the Law of Moses should be respected and observed. The Law of Moses, given by God on Mt Sinai was intended to be life giving. But even the Law of God could be twisted and misused. Jesus said, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” In another place he said, “You put a tax on mint and dill and other herbs, but neglect justice and mercy.”
Jesus uses a very earthy parable to explain to his disciples. All the good food we eat, delicious, wholesome and given by God as a gift to sustain our bodies, comes out as dirt which is flushed down the drain.

The point of Jesus’ parable is that no matter what good gifts God gives us, “it is what comes out of person that defiles. For it is from within, from choices and decisions humans make, that evil intentions come.”

James, in his letter, says the same thing, in a more positive way. He urges us to receive the life-giving gifts of God with wonder and gratitude and then to use them to give life to others. That’s what he means when he says, “Be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

Our readings today show us a new way to find out if we are doing the will of God. We find out if we are doers of the word if our actions are life-giving. It’s a simple test. James gives us one example. He says, “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”
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Please may I come in?

2009-08-24T16:26:00.001+10:00

On Wednesday, I had a telephone call from the parish of Croydon. Would I go out and collect the stand for the Connect09 material? So I did, and here it is. The idea is that you take some of these gospels and give them to your friends and tell them the good news of Jesus Christ. This is a really good thing to do, even if we feel shy about sharing our faith. I know that some of you have already done it, and that’s great. The books will be on this stand for a while. But then something else will happen. We are posting 2,500 of these gospels to all the street addresses in Stanmore. We’re just waiting on Australia Post to tell us when to give them the books. Who knows, maybe someone will be called by God to visit us at St Luke’s.

On Thursday, John Burns, Jenny Winton and I met to talk about St Luke’s, the Welcoming Church. We are setting up a Welcoming Church Forum for the 20th September. Of course we all know that St Luke’s is a welcoming church, in fact, the last National Church Life Survey said that we welcome people well. But there’s always room for improvement. John and Jenny and I stood in the foyer and thought how we could make the church building more welcoming. We had some ideas, so yesterday, without consulting anyone; I moved the furniture about a bit, to see what people think. I put the welcomers closer to the door and I made a sign to show visitors where the front door is. You can offer your criticisms at morning tea.

You will hear more about the Welcoming Church Forum over the next few weeks, but today I would like to why it is important.

The first reading is the prayer which King Solomon prayed at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, a thousand years before Jesus. It is a really good prayer and worth reading yourselves.

King Solomon begins with the words, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no god like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love with your servants.” Solomon is saying, firstly, that God really does exist and that God is faithful and true. It is a bit like the beginning of the Lord’s prayer when we say, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Then King Solomon praises God for the great things God has done, that is, making a covenant of faith with King David and keeping that covenant and promise to Solomon, David’s son.

Then Solomon makes his request. Firstly, that God will bless the Temple and let his name live there. Secondly, that God will hear the prayers of Solomon and the people of Israel, to hear and forgive. And thirdly, which is the point I want to make, Solomon prays that when a foreigner hears of God and comes and makes his prayer towards the house of God, Solomon prays that God will hear the foreigner’s prayer and “do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the people of the earth may know your name and fear you.”

The point is that foreigners are important. They are to be welcomed into God’s temple and included in God’s blessing. The message for us is that all visitors are to be welcomed into God’s house of St Luke’s Enmore, and included in God’s blessing. God has brought them to our church and entrusted them to our care.

And the reason that God has brought them here is that God wants them to share in the community of Christ, that is, those who eat Christ’s flesh and drink Christ’s blood. Jesus really said, “If anyone eats me, they will live because of me. Anyone who eats ordinary bread will die, but those who eat this bread will live for ever.”

This means that our Welcoming Church must also offer visitors what God has called them here to receive, that is, Jesus’ words of spirit and life, which Simon Peter calls, “the words of eternal life.” That’s what people come here to find, and part of our hospitality will be to offer them the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Of course some of them will say thank you and go away and we won’t see them again. That’s only to be expected, after all, “many of (Jesus’) disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” But those who come to believe, through our encouragement, those who come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

And that, of course, bring us to the third reading, St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. St Paul was trying to encourage the Ephesians to develop and grow in their faith and he wanted to use a picture which would help them understand. He chose a soldier, or a gladiator, and used that picture. This Christian soldier wears the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness. The soldier is armed with the sword of the Spirit and is protected by the shield of faith. It’s not a complete picture, but that doesn’t matter. The real message is that every Christian needs to carry the equipment needed to face life as a Christian. And this, of course, is what the church is for – to equip the saints.

So the work that we have to do is this. Firstly, provide a heartfelt welcome for strangers and visitors, a welcome that makes them feel included. Secondly, to encourage each other as well as those whom we have welcomed. We want to be able to talk about our faith in a way that is not scary or confronting or incomprehensible. Thirdly, every Christian needs the equipment; faith, hope and love, and we need to help each other to be more faithful, more hopeful and more loving.
This is the way we build the kingdom of God. On the 20th September we will begin by considering St Luke’s Enmore, The Welcoming Church.
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My son, the terrorist!

2009-08-14T08:10:00.001+10:00

In the last week, we’ve heard that terrorist leaders in Indonesia and in Pakistan have been killed. Some people will be glad because the terrorist group will be leaderless, and their attacks will be reduced for a while. The terrorists will be enraged and looking for revenge, or they might be disheartened by the loss of their leader. But there will also be people who will mourn. The family and friends of these killed people will weep because they have lost someone they loved. Terrorists or not, Noordin Top and Baitullah Mehsud were people whom other people cared about.

The reading from the second book of Samuel is particularly appropriate then. It is the story of King David, when his son Absalom rebelled against him. You could almost say that Absalom set up a terrorist group against his father David.

David called out the army to deal with the problem. The leaders of the army were Joab, Abishai and Ittai and when David sent them out he asked them to spare his son’s life. “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.” The scribe writing the story says that all the people heard David saying this.

The battle went against Absalom and he was chased through the forest. But his head caught in a tree and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on. And we hear that Joab ignored David’s orders and killed Absalom. Joab considered that Absalom was no more than a terrorist and deserved to die. Joab was the king’s soldier and the king’s soldiers’ task is to kill the king’s enemies. So Absalom was killed.

The messenger thought that he was taking good news to David because the chief terrorist was now dead, but David wept and mourned because Absalom was his son. David loved his son, whether he was a terrorist or not. David wept for Absalom like their families wept for Noordin Top and Baitullah Mehsud.

Now the whole point of the story is not Absalom’s wickedness, or Joab’s disobedience, the point is that David loved his son and would rather have died instead of him. If Absalom had not been killed, David would have forgiven him a thousand times. No loving parent would want their children to be killed, no matter what the children had done. David was a loving parent and did not want his children killed.

We call God a loving parent. We usually call God “Our Father in heaven” but it doesn’t matter if you call God father or mother – the point is that God is a loving parent to all of us and does not want any of us to be killed, no matter what we have done.

King David said, “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son.”

I think that this thought is in the heart of God, too. St John in his gospel teaches us that Jesus, God’s Word in human form, was God coming into the world, not to kill or condemn, but to give life. Where King David said, “If only I could have died instead of you, my son.” God has come to us in Jesus Christ to share our death so that we can share God’s life.

This is a really hard thing to understand and it’s even more difficult to explain. I have just been reading a book which says we only know God is true through our experience of God.
In John’s gospel, Jesus uses a piece of everyday life, a piece of everyday experience so that people will know what God means to us.

Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread that came down from heaven, so that you may eat of it and not die. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

We all know that the bread that came down from heaven is nothing like a loaf of Wonderwhite dropping out of the clouds. We all know that however much bread of any kind that we eat we will eventually die; of old age, we hope. And we all know that the bread that Jesus is talking about has got nothing to do with eating human flesh. And the eternal life that Jesus promises to those who believe is to be enjoyed today, now, as much as it will be enjoyed when we are raised up on the last day.

What Jesus is talking about is a feast, a banquet, an ordinary meal shared with friends. It can be a fifteen course banquet with cake and sweets or it can be a tiny scrap of dry bread dipped in wine. The whole purpose of this feast is to bring people together in community. The whole purpose of Jesus Christ is to bring people together in community. The community is to be lifegiving, wholesome, exciting, wonderful, kind, loving, generous, supportive and unifying, making people one in Christ. When Jesus describes himself as heavenly bread he means that he is the community, he is the conversation, he is the host, he is the feast itself, he is the laughter and tears that we share, he is the life which we have and he is the death which we will die one day.

What we do on Sunday or at any Eucharist is to remind ourselves what Jesus means to us. The rest of the time we should be living that meaning. Jesus says to us, “Here, I am the bread of heaven, I am the way and the truth and the life. Now, just as God and I are one in life and love, you go out and be one with all the world in life and love.

Poor King David! He would have died instead of Absalom. But nobody can live someone else’s life or die their death. Not even God. God can’t live our lives for us, but even better. God is already part of our lives and yearns for us to part of the life of God. And not just life, but life, death and everything else.
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Pentecost 4: It's your money they're after!

2009-06-29T14:15:00.001+10:00

Wednesday, July 1st is the Financial New Year. It is time to fill in our income tax forms and all the other forms which the Taxation Department requires of us. Today is the day when we reach our last planned giving envelope and it is time to take some more.
The most appropriate reading for today is from the New Testament, St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. All Paul’s letters were written to church communities to help them deal with problems they were facing. Today he says, “We want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.”

The generous undertaking was the money collection being made for the church in Jerusalem which was very poor, while the churches in Macedonia, Achaia and Corinth were rich.

Paul wants the churches with plenty of money to support the churches who do not have enough.
He points out that our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, richer than any human being could possibly be. Jesus was in perfect love and had perfect faith in God. Jesus was at one with the creator of the universe, being part of the glory of God. do you remember that Satan tested Jesus by reminding him that he could turn stones into bread, he could rule the nations with a word and he could call the angels to carry him even if he was falling from the top of the temple.

Jesus refused to use these Godlike gifts. Instead, he gave them all away and became like on of us, a human being. The miracles that Jesus performed, like the ones we read about today – the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead, and the healing of the woman with a haemorrhage, - these miracles are told to convince us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. They show us that Christ could have come down from the cross, he could have called up an army of angels, he could have blasted his enemies with fire and brimstone.

Instead, he gave it all away, power, glory, even life itself. No one could possibly be so generous. And no one could be so poor as Jesus, abandoned by humans and God, powerless, dead on the cross.

St Paul compares the incredible gift of Jesus with the giving of money to the church. It is like comparing the brightness of the sun to one of our altar candles. It cannot be done. Money cannot compare with Christ’s sacrifice.

But if we want to make a serious comparison, if we want to take what St Paul says seriously, we need to look a few verses further. Paul makes no command to give, just as God made no command for Jesus to die. The measure that Paul uses is the measure the God uses – it is the measure of love. Paul says, “I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others.” St Paul is not telling the Corinthians to give more because the Macedonians have been generous, not at all. Paul is saying, “Love inspires generosity, so if you are loving, show me how.”
St Paul’s practical advice to the Corinthians is that they keep on doing what they wanted to do last year. This would be my advice to you. From our little graph we can see that over the year our income goes up and down. We look at our graph and we see it is pointed upwards. This is great! So let us take St Paul’s advice and build on last year’s experience. It would be great if our graph could reach the top of the scale and stay there. That’s where we’re aiming, let’s do it! This, St Paul might say, is the generous act which we put our minds to this year.

But if we look closely at what St Paul actually wrote, we find that although he is talking about money, money is not the real focus. There are words like “genuine love” and “eagerness” which occurs three times in nine verses and a Greek word which Paul uses to describe the collection. The word is karis which means “grace”. In other places Paul uses it to describe the free gift of love which God has given us in Jesus Christ, but here it is translated as “privilege”, “generous undertaking” (three times), “generous act”, “thanks” and “blessing”.

This is why Paul says he will not command the Corinthians to give to the collection; their gift must be a free gift, a gift as free as God’s grace. Eagerness he asks for, but any gift is acceptable if it is given with eagerness, any gift is acceptable if it is given with grace, graciously.

Paul knows perfectly well that some people are wealthy and others are not – we are to give what we can afford. In verse thirteen he says, “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you.” We are being asked to have the grace to give what we can and to give it with joy.

I know that we are in a time of economic difficulty. Some people have lost their jobs – for example, look at all the restaurants which used to employ students, our own Christian brothers and sisters among them. Now there are people in our congregation who can afford only a little money. In Africa they would say, “I have only a little, but I give it with both hands.”

There are many hopes we have for St Luke’s. We want to make sure that we pay the rector and the diocesan cost recoveries; we must pay the rent on the op shop; we would like to offer to God worship which is worthy of our best with our beautiful old pipe organ in full voice. I would like to increase the number of hours for which we can pay Mac, our Thai pastor, and I am sure there are other things on our wish list.

I will finish with what St Paul said to the Corinthians in chapter 9, after the bit which we heard read today. He said something like this, “If you give only a little, then only a little can be achieved; if you give a lot, then much can be done. The most important thing is to give with grace and joy, giving as you have made up your mind. No one will force you or expect you to give more than you can. Giving with a joyful heart multiplies the gift many times over, not only for you, but for the church; and not only for the church, for your joy will overflow in giving glory to God.”

Pentecost 3 David and Goliath

2009-06-20T21:30:00.002+10:00

On Saturday night on Channel 2, there are three programs; New Tricks, The Bill and Foyle's War. They are all police and detection dramas, one is about retired police officers, one is about an English police station and one is about Police Detection in the Second World War. Tonight, of course, there is Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, an old lady solving crimes which baffle the police. All these are variations on the theme of the fight between good and evil.

The story of David and Goliath and the life of Christ are also about good and evil, but there are many differences. My own opinion is that the world of TV is our way of escaping to a world where we know the goodies are going to win and the baddies are going to lose.

The Bible, on the other hand, is a book about our world, the one we live and die in, where it's harder to tell the difference between good and evil and the goodies don't always win.

This means that when we hear of miracles, like the calming of the storm, we can’t just say, wasn’t that clever of God, and move on to the next book. We are forced to ask questions, like, What is going on here? And what is God trying to tell us? And what does this mean for me?
It means that every story can be read many times over and explored to many depths of meaning, and it will speak differently to every generation and to every situation.

So how do we read David and Goliath, today? First, the setting is the perennial battle between the Israelites and the Philistines for the possession of the land – a real setting, now as it was in David’s time. We might be reminded of the perennial struggle between good and bad, between justice and oppression, between riches and poverty, greed and necessity.

Then Goliath is described, whose height was six cubits and a span. We are told about his impenetrable armour, his invincible weapons and his determination to defy the ranks of Israel. No wonder the Israelites were afraid, and we call to mind the things of which we are afraid – terrorism, drought or disease.

By contrast, David is a youth, a shepherd, handsome and with beautiful eyes. It is obvious who will win any trial of strength. And while we may not all be young in years and physically beautiful, David’s vulnerability reminds us of our own.

But when the fight comes, David refuses to use the same weapons as his adversary, no shield or armour, no weapons of mass destruction – just a few stones from the creekbed, and a sling.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Goliath is completely outmanoeuvred; David doesn’t even try to fight on the same terms, and so gains the victory. So we could say that cunning David outwits clumsy Goliath. But that is not the point of the story. The victory is not David’s victory at all, but God’s. David has fought in the name of the living God, and the victory is achieved to show both Israel and Philistine that the Lord does not save by sword and spear. By the wisdom of the Lord justice is achieved.

When I read the story of David and Goliath I saw God offering a new approach to peace and justice. Peace and justice are not reached by fighting with the weapons of war. Both the terrorists and their opponents are wrong here. Destroying buildings and lives simply escalates the problem. God’s wisdom always seeks to make weapons useless. God seeks to act against the cause behind the conflict, not to engage in the conflict itself.

Perhaps this is better illustrated by the gospel for today. Jesus and his disciples are in a boat when a storm strikes. The disciples, skilled fisher-folk, remember, used to dealing with a boat on this lake, are terrified. We could compare them to the skilled warriors of King Saul who were terrified when confronted by Goliath. The disciples are terrified when confronted with the power of the storm. Their sailing skills are useless, so they turn to Jesus, asking him to help.
Jesus wakes and he does not make the disciples better sailors, nor does he strengthen the boat or man the pumps. Instead he outmanoeuvres the disciples’ fear and removes its cause, by calming the sea. The disciples no longer have to struggle and fight and fear – the Lord has saved them, not by sword and spear, not by fight and struggle, but by wisdom.

For me, these stories remind me that God is always ready to astonish me, as God has always astonished people.

These stories also encourage me, because it suggests to me a way of dealing with the problems that I face and that the world faces. I know that God will not come like some great wizard and clean up the whole mess with a magic spell. Instead I look for the unexpected ways in which God’s wisdom works, working around the edges of problems, catching them unawares, if you like, outmanoeuvring them, using unexpected weapons and strategies.

And you and I, with discernment and courage, may find ourselves part of God’s action in the world. Indeed, I believe that, as followers of Christ, we should be looking for the way of God’s wisdom and committing ourselves to it. There seems to be no end of fearful and confronting problems, God invites us to be part of the answer and the way ahead.

The Holy Spirit - To be loved by a cyclone.

2009-05-31T21:26:00.000+10:00

Last week I was watching my grandson learning to push a little trolley around. As I watched him I thought, “How on earth am going to tell people about this?” I could tell you that he was the cutest baby in the world, but that wouldn’t tell you much. All grandparents say things like that. I could say he had a grin from ear to ear but that might just be because he has a huge mouth. I could say that he was so proud of himself, but I am note sure about that. I know his parents were proud of him and I know that his grandparents are proud of him, but how do I know what he is feeling? It is just not possible to put into words the miracle of a baby learning to walk.
So how do we Christians tell people about the Holy Spirit? In the book of Genesis we hear that the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters. In my imagination I think of a great, dark mass of thought, churning like a thundercloud, waiting to burst open with life, so that light and darkness, day and night, dry land and oceans, all the plants and fish and breathing animals and humans come pouring out like a roaring flood of creativity.
Or maybe we translate those same words as, “The wind from God moved over the face of the waters.” Again my imagination takes over and I can see the dark waves stirred like a storm, the foam flying and the dark curving surface of the waves rising and falling in the force of the wind. Creation is at work and soon the universe will come into being as God’s voice roars over the water-flood – LET THERE BE LIGHT!
What I have just described could be made into a film – I am always amazed by what they can do with special effects. We can see fires, earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes on the television or at the movies and after we’ve recovered from the shock we smile and look around and the world is the same. We turn away from the TV and our room is still the same. Special effects have no real power.
But God’s Holy Spirit does have power. God’s Holy Spirit is not just a special effect. Ask people who have been caught up in the creative forces of the earth, a tsunami, a flood or a bushfire. A burst water pipe can make a mess of a road, but a tsunami can sweep a whole community away. We’re talking about forces which humans cannot control. With all our knowledge and skill, with our computers and flights into space, the forces of creation can terrify, overwhelm and destroy us.
We are never going to control God’s Holy Spirit any more than we can walk naked on the surface of the sun. The people of the Old Testament knew this very well. They knew that if they saw the face of God then they would die. “It is a terrible thing,” they said, “to fall into the hands of the Living God.”
Let us remember that God’s Holy Spirit is not given to us to play with; it is not a toy; it is not a tool for us to use; God’s Holy Spirit is the power of God and God alone understands and uses it.
The New Testament readings show God using the Holy Spirit. The disciples knew perfectly well that God could overwhelm them in a moment in a storm on the Sea of Galilee. They knew that God could send down fire to consume them. But here in the reading from the book of acts we see something unexpected.
The fire comes, but it is not to destroy. The fire comes to give power from on high. The Holy Spirit of creation comes to be the creative spirit in the lives of ordinary humans. God’s Holy Spirit, which binds together all creation, is seen now as the key to human communication. Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phyrgia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, and we could add, Enmore and Stanmore, Liverpool and Hurlstone Park as well. All these people can hear the good news of God’s mighty deeds of power in their own language. Pentecost is a wonderful, powerful, amazing and joyful proclamation. God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.” And to emphasisze the power of God’s Holy Psirit, the prophet Joel reminds us that this is the power of creation at work, heaven and earth are shaken, there is blood and fire and smoky mist.
And yet this awe inspiring power comes not to destroy but to save, to comfort and to clarify. The Holy Spirit testifies on Christ’s behalf to give us faith and confidence and hope. The Holy Spirit proves that our old ideas about sin and righteousness and judgement are wrong and misguided. The Holy Spirit comes to lead us into all truth. God knows that what we call truth now is only like a murky image in a dull mirror. The real truth is so bright and glorious that it will be an everlasting joy to know.
St Paul tells the Romans that they are like orphans in an orphanage, groaning with longing for a family to adopt them. At first the Holy Spirit shows us the possibility of everlasting joy, then we receive hope. Can it possibly be that I am going to receive new life? Is it possible that those who are caught in bushfires or floods or tsunamis will be restored? Is there any hope for them?
The Spirit answers, “Of course” because the Spirit helps us in our weakness, prays for us and keeps us in the mind of God. The truth that the Spirit brings is that every one of God’s children is kept safe in the heart of God, even those who are destroyed by the disastrous powers of creation.

Easter 6 - It's all about love.

2009-05-18T20:08:00.003+10:00

A couple of years ago I was talking with someone. It was in the Emmaus Room, I know. And I was talking about love. I can’t remember why, but I was. And the other person was a bit tired of what I was saying and they said something like, “O phooey! You priests are always talking about love.”

Now that was three years ago, and I can still remember what was said. So, today, when we have readings from the bible which are all about love, especially the Gospel, I am a little worried about what I should say.

Our little gospel today follows on from last week, when we heard about the vine and the branches. I talked about Earn and Bell and Nok as if they were branches, joined and grafted on to Jesus, so that the life that flows through Jesus can flow through them. Jesus describes this by saying, “Abide in my love.” I think I also said that “Abide in my love.” means “Make your home in my love.” And this is what our gospel today is about – being at home in Jesus.

I hope that everyone here has a good friend, a friend with whom you can be yourself. You know the prayer at the beginning of the service which starts, “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden…” This is the sort of friend I am talking about, someone who takes seriously what you take seriously. Someone who knows what is important to you, someone who knows what you really want, someone to whom you don’t have to pretend. Someone who you know will never misunderstand or betray you. This is serious friendship, abiding friendship, friendship where you are completely at home.

This, of course, is the friendship that Jesus is talking about; the Greek word is agapé, which is translated as love, but what it really means is a close and intimate personal friendship.

Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” Love starts with God. God’s heart is open to us, God’s desire if for our wellbeing, and God is completely sincere in this. God does not want see us in pain, or hungry or thirsty or lacking food and drink, God does not want to see us trapped and helpless. It is comforting to know that our Father in heaven wants to forgive our sins and give us our daily bread. And it is good to know that God will not change his mind about this. St John says, God is love, and he means, God is forgiveness of sins and the giver of daily bread. All good things come from God.

The problem is that there is so much bad that gets in the way. All the horrors of the world stop us from seeing that God is light, in whom there is no darkness at all. (That’s St John again.)
The only way for God to reach us with the message of his concern and love was to send Jesus. And Jesus is not just a messenger, Jesus is the Word of God, the message of God, born as a human being, just like us.

This has changed the world for ever. We don’t have to look up to the sky and say, “I wonder if God cares whether I live or die?” Jesus is here in the middle of us to show us God’s care. He says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” God’s love is not up in heaven where we can’t see it, it is right here on earth where we can touch and feel and see and smell. By sending Jesus to abide with us, to make his home with us, God is saying, “I am much more than your Father in Heaven, I am your lover and friend, your constant companion in joy and sorrow.” Or if we use the words of the prayer again, God is saying, “My heart is open to you, my desire is abide with you and all the secrets of your joy and pain I know and suffer.”

These are the most important things to God, so important that Jesus died on the cross.

And in the last line of today’s gospel Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” I will say that another way. Jesus says, “This is what is important to me, I want you to be true friends to each other, honest, kindly, generous, patient, perceptive, forgiving and faithful. I have given you an example, I have been a true friend to you. But more, I have been true to those who tell lies, I have been kind to the cruel and generous with the miserly. I have forgiven the unforgiving, I have kept the faith with those who have deserted me, and I have given my life for those who do not value it.”

Well, that is a hard act to follow. None of us can do what Christ did. But we are gathered here, as we gather every Sunday to remind ourselves that as Christians, as followers of Christ, then we know how we should be behaving. We are here to encourage each other in the task, we are to honour Christ’s death on the cross, to commit ourselves to his friendship and love, and to hope for the resurrection to eternal life.

Easter 5 - God is still at work in us.

2009-05-10T17:04:00.003+10:00

(Holds up a copy of the 2009 Lectionary) This little book is the Lectionary. It tells us what readings from the Bible we should read every day. Today it tells us that we have a reading from the book of Act, a reading from the first letter of John, and a reading from the Gospel according to John. And here they are in front of us.

But they are also perfect readings for a baptism, and we have three baptisms today. Let’s have a look at the readings. The first reading tells the story of Philip, and how he baptized an Ethiopian man, an Africa who was the treasurer of the Kingdom of Ethiopia.

The story starts, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “get up and go to towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he got up and went. There are two important things already. Firstly, Philip was told by an angel, a messenger from God, to go down the Gaza road. And secondly, Philip got up and went.

Somehow, a message from God reached Philip and he did what the message said. The bible says, an angel, but that just means “messenger”. Philip could have been talking to the man next door, or the woman in the fruit shop round the corner, or it might have been a glorious glowing angel, with wings like drifted snow, fresh from the presence of the Eternal God.

I’ve never seen a real angel with wings, but God has used men, women and children to send me messages and instructions. And I have been a messenger myself. When Mac first came to St Luke’s, I said to him, “Get up and go down to Marrickville Road.” And sure enough he got up and went.

What happened next? Well, Mac went down to Marrickville Road, and a lot of other roads as well, and there he found people from the Thai community, Kai and Earn, Nok and Bell. This is exactly what Philip did when he went down the road towards Gaza. He found an Ethiopian, the Queen’s treasurer. So, Philip found the Ethiopian and Mac found the Thai people.

The next part of the story is that Philip found that the Ethiopian was reading the Bible. He didn’t understand it, but he was reading it. This tells us that God was beginning to work in the life of this African man. If you start reading the bible and thinking about God, then it shows that God has started to work in your life. The story also tells us that the Ethiopian had been up to Jerusalem to worship – this is another sign of God working in his life.

And God is working in the lives of Earn, Bell and Nok. How do we know? We know because Kai has been bringing Earn to church ever since she was born, and Bell and Nok have been coming here to worship. They have been thinking about God and hearing the Bible read to them for a long time. They are just like the Ethiopian man, reading the Bible and thinking about God.

The bible story tells us that Philip began to teach the Ethiopian, starting with the scripture and telling him the Good news of Jesus Christ. And in our story about the Thai Community, Kai has been teaching Earn, and Mac has been telling Bell and Nok the good news about Jesus.

The end of both stories is the same. The Ethiopian man stopped the chariot and asked to baptized, and today, Earn, Bell and Nok have come here specially, to be baptized.

This is really interesting that the story of Earn, Bell and Nok is the same story as the Ethiopian man who was baptized by Philip. There is a gap of over one thousand nine hundred years between the two stories, but today we learn that God works in our lives, the same way he worked in the lives of those people so long ago.

It must be very important if God is still doing it and we need to find out why it is important. The Gospel reading tells us why God is still at work, touching people’s lives and bringing them to baptism. Baptism is many things. It is new life, it is getting a new name, it is starting on a journey of faith, it is the washing away of sin, but most importantly it is being made a part of the body of Christ. When we become part of Jesus we are his arms and legs, his eyes and ears, his mouth and heart so that Jesus can touch and walk, see and hear, speak and love in the world today. If you want to see Jesus, look around you.

The Gospel compares Jesus to a vine and God to the vine grower. We are like branches which God the vine grower takes and grafts on to Jesus the vine. Grafting is where you take a branch from one plant and fix it to another, so that the branch can share the life of the plant. By itself the branch will die, but if it is joined to the plant, it will live and bear much fruit.

Today, Earn and Nok and Bell are being grafted on to Jesus so that they can share his life and bear much fruit.

How do we know that we are joined to Jesus and how do we know what fruit we should bear?
It is so simple. John, in his first letter says, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” He also says, “If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made perfect in us.”

So if our lives are full of kindness, gentleness, understanding, hope, joy, perseverance and self control, then we can be pretty sure that God lives in us. If we are not sure, then other people will tell us. We’ll have to work hard, because we are not all kind, gentle, wise, hopeful, joyful, persistent or self controlled. God’s Holy Spirit helps us, and without God we can’t be loving, and if we are loving, then everybody will see that we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to us. “The commandment from God is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

If being Christian was against the law, would there be enough evidence to arrest you?

2009-04-25T21:20:00.002+10:00

As the days pass, and Easter falls further and further behind; and the newspapers and television fill our minds with all the things that happen in the world, we begin to forget what happen at Easter time. The details blur, and we find it harder to remember exactly what it is all about. We know that Easter is all about the resurrection of Jesus and that God raised Jesus from the dead. We know that it has got something to do with our faith and with the way we live our lives, but what identifying that something is not easy.
Of course, if we stop and think about it, we can give a good account of our faith to anyone who asks, and we can understand better when the rising sun brings another beautiful day into being. But how about standing in a queue for the supermarket checkout, or making sure the children are ready for school, or trying to sort out the bills and accounts.
In these situations, the reality of the resurrected Christ seems far away - the spiritual journey doesn’t seem to fit with the hard realities of life.
St Paul struggled all his life to understand how the resurrection reshaped the world - and every Christian that was ever baptised must make the connection between faith and reality. If we don't make the connections, then we are half Christians, Christians by name only.
Each of the Gospel writers has tried, in writing about the resurrection, to make those connections and to show us a way forward. Last week John described Thomas, who had to discover for himself that the Jesus Christ who stood before him a week after Easter was the same Jesus Christ who had died on the cross on Good Friday - he had to touch the wounds and see the scars. Today Luke describes the same problem. Jesus asks the disciples to look at his hands and feet. “Touch me and see, see that I have flesh and bones. It is really me.” And then he asked for something to eat. And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. Now I think there are few things more ordinary than broiled fish - it as if Jesus had surprised the disciples while they were eating fish and chips over at Watson’s Bay. Can it possibly be that the risen Christ, the triumphant Lord of Life, the Holy and Righteous One, is to be seen eating fast food?
It might seem a little strange to see Luke’s gospel in this light, a little disrespectful, but the point is that the risen Christ has an impact on every part of the world, and that Christ’s impact is real, just as his body was real; and his eating the fish was real. Luke is telling us that the faith of the disciples was grounded in reality and that our faith must be intimately connected with the real world as well.
Very well, let us put this to the test. We can ask big questions like: What does our faith tell us about the world recession, or the war in Afghanistan? But these are too far away and too big. How are we going to stop the recession? How are we going to stop the war in Afghanistan?
Let’s bring the story closer to home. Here’s a joke that Richard Hagen told me. He shared it with the Wednesday congregation but it is worth repeating.
Mrs Eliza Snodgrass was a Christian and she was proud of it. She had stickers on her bumper bars to prove it. There was a fish symbol and one that said, “God loves you.” Well, one day she was late to work and in a hurry. She drove along Stanmore Road and saw that the lights up by the Warren View were green. She could just make it. The lights turned orange – she put her foot down – she could still make it! And then the person in front of her slowed down and stopped at the amber light. Eliza was furious! Real road rage! She tooted her horn and shouted. The driver turned round to look at her so she shook her fist and made rude gestures with her fingers.
Immediately a policeman from the car behind her came running up, clipped the handcuffs on her and took her to the police station where he put her in a cell. In a few moments the policeman came back, very apologetic. “I’m sorry Mrs Snodgrass, I’ve made a mistake. I saw the Christian symbols on the back of the car, but when I saw the behaviour, I assumed that the car had been stolen.”
Poor Mrs Snodgrass, she was only a half Christian, just like many Christians whose journey of faith is private and limited. Such people are content to read their bibles and attend church on Sundays and say, “I believe in God” and who, during the week, ignore God and ignore the trouble in the world around them. St James in his letter to the churches is very scathing about such people. “My brothers and sisters,” he says, “What good is it for you to say, “I have faith,” if your actions do not prove it? Can such a faith save you? If faith exists alone and has no actions to prove it, then it is dead.”
No Christian is perfect, of course, we have all fallen short of the glory of God, as St Paul says, but that’s no excuse for being a half-Christian.
After church today we are going to meet for a parish forum. We were going to call it, Thinking and Planning, but then we said, “No. In the filing cabinets we have boxes and boxes of thoughts and plans – all of them good, and some very good indeed. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Faith is great, and so is thinking and planning, but they are useless unless actions follow. So we’re going to call our forum today, Thinking, Planning and Doing. I invite you to join in.
These are not big plans to change the world tomorrow, they may not even change the parish tomorrow, but I hope they will be things we can do so that people will say, “Ah. Here are Christians whose faith really means something.”

Good Friday - Seriously Bad, Seriously Good

2009-04-11T07:15:00.000+10:00

Good Friday not a day to take lightly. Good Friday is about evil and good, blame and forgiveness, prison and freedom, death and life.
It is hard for us to take these things seriously because they are often used to amuse and entertain us. A film like The Passion of Christ shows in terrible detail the tortures inflicted on Christ on Good Friday. But we know the blood and the screaming is fake, and that the actor will go home and have a good night’s sleep before going to work again the next morning. We can tell ourselves that Christ’s suffering is not real and that after a rest in the tomb he will spring up again on Easter morning, as fresh as a flower and as lively as an Easter rabbit.
Not so. Christ’s suffering is real. On Good Friday the problem of evil is tackled head on by God in Jesus Christ. All the evil in the world seems to be focussed on Jesus today. How shall we understand?
Some people say that God’s justice demands punishment for disobedience. They say that human disobedience can only be wiped out in blood. So God sent his only son, Jesus, to suffer the punishment in our place so that we would live and Jesus would die. There are some good biblical texts to support this argument, especially in the Old Testament and the writings of St Paul, who was, after all, a student of the Old Testament.
What stirs me up is that this idea of justice is totally unfair! It is not justice at all, it is accusation, it is blame, it anger and fear and hurt seeking a victim. The whole story of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus, as we have just read it, shows how justice was twisted and bent to bring about the death of an innocent man. Can this be God at work? Can God work in this perversion of justice?
The Roman system of justice was designed to punish the guilty and to free the innocent. It was not bad law. It may have been harsh, but it was written to keep the peace. Pontius Pilate was hardhearted, but he was appointed to uphold the law. The Jewish High Priests and the Council certainly wanted to keep their power, they may have been corrupt, but the Jewish religious law, the Law of Moses, was given by God to guard and guide God’s people.
What we see is the tragic way that human beings can take what is good and twist it for use in evil purposes. Roman law could not save Jesus; the Law of Moses was powerless to keep him alive. Even Jesus’ own wonderful character, his kindness, his wisdom, his deep compassion and unshakable faith in God could not save him. In the end the whole weight of human sinfulness came crashing down on him and he died.
Jesus knew that his was going to happen, he had told his disciples several times that he would be imprisoned, beaten and crucified. God knew it would happen, it had been revealed to the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before. Isaiah spoke of the suffering servant of God, one so true to God that he attracted human wickedness like a lightning conductor, one who would be so mistreated that he would no longer even look human.
When Jesus was less than six weeks old, his parents brought him to the temple in Jerusalem. There they met Simeon, who told Mary that the child would be “a sign that was spoken against” and that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart as well. As the old hymn puts it, Jesus was born to die upon the cross.
No one is to blame for the death of Jesus; neither Pontius Pilate nor Judas Iscariot nor the Jews not even us. We believe that Jesus bore the sins of the whole world on the cross and this is what he was born for and what he died for.
This is the justice of God, that no one is blamed, not even for the death of Jesus. The death of Jesus sets us free from the need to play the blame game. Everybody is guilty, we have all sinned, we are all caught up in human wickedness, but we are not to be blamed. The death of Jesus put an end to that.
Jesus sets us free to rebuild our lives and the life of God’s creation.
But we find ourselves turning our back on freedom and making new prisons for ourselves. We have to find someone to blame, someone to whom we can say, “It’s all your fault!” We have to find someone to accuse. And if we cannot find anyone else, we blame ourselves.
This is not right. In the bible it is Satan who is the accuser, it is the devil who finds fault and points the finger of blame. Somehow we poor humans have been tricked again. Jesus offers us freedom, and instead we choose a prison.
We don’t have to! We don’t have to make accusations, we don’t have to blame.
God has given us Good Friday so that every year, every Friday, every day of our lives we can be reminded that once for all God has set us free. Set free for freedom’s sake, as St Paul says.
Let us embrace that freedom, let us see if, by God’s grace, by the power of Christ’s death on the cross, we can live each day without blaming anyone.
If we succeed, we will know that we have taken Good Friday seriously.

Maundy Thursday - Happiness and Horror

2009-04-11T07:08:00.000+10:00

I never find Holy Week easy, either to live through or to preach in. For me, these seven days, from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday are too full of human failure to be really happy. We have begun with Jesus, the prince of peace, riding a donkey into Jerusalem – which is happy enough, it is true – but we know that this is the prelude to a week of horror. The living Jesus is anointed as for burial, a beautiful thing, but a foreshadowing of death. On Wednesday the appointed readings deal with Judas Iscariot, a chosen disciple and friend of Jesus, who betrays him for thirty pieces of silver. Today, the fellowship of the disciples is broken at the Passover feast – a feast which celebrates God’s saving love. Tomorrow, the love of God, which holds all the world in its embrace, will take Jesus to the cross, and he will die.
And if this is not enough, the tragedy is fulfilled in the world around us. In Jerusalem, a city holy to the name of God in three great religious traditions echoes to the sound of gunfire mixed with the sounds of joyful worship. In our own country as in so many around the world, strangers are not welcomed, the hungry are not fed, the naked are not clothed nor the prisoners visited, while overseas there are terrorist attacks on innocent people, private armies being raised in Iraq, and the ever-present famine and disease in too many countries in Africa..
Holy Week has been dark for many people this year, as it seems to be, every year.
But holy week is also a time of great joy.
For we who know the story of Christ know that the light of Easter is only three nights away – already we are anticipating the Resurrection. The Paschal candles are ready to be lit, the Easter hymns are chosen, the flowers are ordered and on Sunday, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is to be celebrated with joy and feasting.
But that is yet to come, and we are still here on Maundy Thursday, and the night is coming. Where is the joy, then? We will find it right there with the horror, joy and sadness mixed. God is with us in our darkness, the light is there and can never be overcome.
When Christ’s feet were anointed, there was beauty and love – the whole room was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, just as the whole world is filled with the love. The woman knew she was anointing Jesus for his burial, she was also pouring out the love of the whole world in response to the love of Jesus for the world. God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son; even so, says the woman, let the world respond with poured our love.
But what about Judas Iscariot, can there be joy or love in his betrayal? Certainly we can not say that betrayal is a loving thing to do; nor can we rejoice in Judas Iscariot’s narrow vision of the kingdom of God. But maybe we can see God at work here, taking the foolish and mistaken ideas of human will and using them to bring about salvation. Thank God that there is a possibility that our mistakes and betrayals can be turned to good – even the most wicked human deeds can be used to build the kingdom of God.
Here, perhaps is our triumph and the triumph of the cross. God is never absent, God never deserts us – even the cry of Christ from the cross – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” assumes that God can hear the cry. So we mortals with our own crucifixions can cry, “There is no God!” and God will hear our cry and love us.
No one can believe that God will always keep them from all harm, or always make them prosperous, or always destroy their enemies – God is not there to be manipulated or controlled, God is there to love – to love and to care passionately, always and for all creation
This night it is our turn to affirm this for ourselves and to allow ourselves to be loved and to love in turn. When it comes time for our feet to be washed it is time to recognise the intimate love of God. In Jesus’ time it was customary for visitors to have their feet washed as a sign of hospitality – today it is only those who are too weak to wash their own feet. So for us let it be a sign of our vulnerability – we will allow others to wash our feet in the same way we allow God to love us, and as we wash the feet of others so God loves with our hands and our wills. We might say that foot-washing is foolish and undignified – even if it is, let us be content for God to take the human foolishness and lack of dignity and use them to bring about salvation.
In the same way let God use the bread and the wine to sustain us for our journey to the kingdom. The tiny scrap of bread and sip of wine are ridiculously inadequate to sustain our bodies and yet God uses them to strengthen us for our task to change the world.
And when the meal is over and the altar is stripped and the church left bare and abandoned, we let God work in the darkness as well. In our world, there are many places of darkness, places we do not go to willingly, paths we would rather not take, cups that we would rather not drink. But through Christ, through the events of Holy Week we see that God is at work in the dark places, in the lonely paths, sharing the world’s agony even in the dregs of the most bitter cup, and that, surely, is a cause for rejoicing.

Sermon for Palm Sunday. Bearing True Witness?

2009-04-05T16:42:00.000+10:00

Let me tell you a little about my week.
On Wednesday morning I saw a man sitting on a milk crate by the door to the chapel. I went to talk to him and he wanted to know if I was a Catholic priest. I said, “No” and he began to talk about clergy who had abused the children in their care. He said, “It gives God a bad name.”
On Thursday and Friday it was my privilege to go to a sleepover at Bishop’s Court. Of course it wasn’t just a sleepover, it was a two day briefing on Connect 09 which is a new concept for evangelism in the diocese of Sydney. It was about praying for the people in our streets and suburbs, connecting with them in some way and then expecting God to work in their lives to bring them to Christ and the church. I must say that Peter Jensen was a very good host, a very good leader of small groups and a very good listener to what we said to him.
On Saturday I had breakfast at Scrambled, the café around the corner. While I was eating my poached eggs I heard about a man who was always talking about the way God was working in his life. His conversation was sprinkled with references to Jesus and he said “Praise God” many times. Unfortunately it was found that he had been making false entries in the accounts and defrauding the company he was working for.
But, all during this week I have been thinking about the service book we have been using during Lent, in particular the bit where we say the Ten Commandments. When we get to commandment number nine we said, “Do not tell lies” and “Let every one speak the truth.”
In the bible, this commandment is “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.”
This commandment means you shall not stand up as a witness in a court of law and give false evidence against your neighbour. If you do, the person may be convicted of a crime they did not commit. Or they might escape punishment for something that they did do. At the very least, false witness will damage someone’s reputation. It will damage the reputation of the people involved and it will damage the reputation of the court. These are bad things, but the real crime is against God. God is a God of truth and justice and if anybody speaks falsehood, lies and injustice, then God’s kingdom of justice, righteousness and truth is offended.
But there are other ways of bearing witness than standing up in court to give evidence. We can bear witness to our nationality or our employment by wearing special clothes. A Scot could wear a kilt, a Japanese could wear a kimono and you might expect an Australian to wear an Akubra hat. You’d expect a police officer to look like a police officer, a fireman to look like a fireman, and if you saw a bloke in shorts with a bright orange vest hanging on to the back of a truck then you’d expect them to be garbos and empty your rubbish bins. In other words, the things that a person does bears witness to who and what they are.
The readings we have heard today from the bible bear witness to Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. Jesus has been telling his disciples that the Christ of God must go to Jerusalem, be handed over to the chief priests and the lawyers, and then be crucified. Today and in the week ahead we remember that Jesus bore true witness to the fact that he is the Christ. If Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem with an army, that would have been false witness. If Jesus had come down from the cross he would have amazed the chief priests and the scribes, but it would have been a false witness to himself, to the world and to God.
When Jesus died on the cross he bore true witness to us that he is the Son of God, the Messiah. If he had not died, then it would have been a false witness, and we would not be saved. There would have been no resurrection and we would have no hope. But because Jesus was true to God, to himself and to us, he bore a true witness and we are saved. Death does not save us, but because Jesus’ death was a true witness to God’s love and mercy, then we know that the death of Jesus really does save us.
Which gets us back to what happened to me during the week. When the bloke at the chapel door said that abusive clergy give God a bad name, he was right. They have born false witness against their neighbours in a terrible way. How can people trust God if God’s servants behave in this way? And the accountant who was always speaking of God and Jesus. When he falsified the books he falsified his witness. Would you become a Christian if the only person who told you, “I am a Christian, Praise God” then proceeded to steal your money?
So now we come to the Archbishop and Connect 09. Connect 09 is not a program to follow or an event that will happen only in 2009. It is actually a call for all Christians to bear true witness to their neighbours. The Archbishop didn’t call us over to Darling Point to give orders or to make threats. Peter Jensen sincerely wants us to bear true witness to the faith that is in us.
When we say, “Do not tell lies” and “Let everyone speak the truth” that is not what the ninth commandments says. It says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” And even that is not enough. Jesus, through his life, his words and his actions bore true witness for all his neighbours, that is, all the people of the world.
Now it is up to us. We are the body of Christ, whose spirit is with us. How do we bear witness to who we are as Christians? Will our actions give God a good name? Are we doing and saying what is Godly and Christlike? When we do something, can we say proudly, “I do this to bear true witness that I am a follower of Christ.” I think these are good questions to ask, especially now in Holy Week when Christ is showing us how he bore true witness.

Easter Newsletter

2009-04-04T07:59:00.007+11:00

I think that one of the most amazing things about Easter is that it happens every year! You will probably say, “Of course it does!” And you would be right, It is easy to see it coming, year after year. Wait until March 20th, then watch the moon. Easter Day is the Sunday after the first full moon after March 20. This is why the date moves around a bit, but it always happens!

Why is this amazing? Because we know that Jesus died on the cross about one thousand nine hundred and seventy six years ago, and three days later was raised from the dead. St Paul says that Jesus “died on the cross once, for all”. That is, Jesus only died once and was only buried once and was only raised from the dead once.

But that death and resurrection was for the salvation of everybody, alive, dead or yet unborn.
This is the reason that Easter comes around every year. The Resurrection of Jesus is for all people, in all places, at all times. So, amazingly enough, the Resurrection of Jesus is with us every year, on Easter Day. But Easter Day is a Sunday, which makes every Sunday a day of Resurrection. This is why the church meets on every Sunday – to be part of the Resurrection.
However, imagine that you were alone and far from civilisation. If you went to sleep, and woke up in the morning, how would you know if it was Sunday? Without watches, mobile phones or computers, there is no way of telling which day is which. All days begin with the rising of the Sun and end with its setting.

So every day is a day of Resurrection!
Every day gives us the chance to be raised up to full and eternal life with Christ in his resurrection. The power of the Resurrection means that we can rise to new life every day!
This is why Christians can be so full of life – every day brings the gift of a new beginning.
Jesus died on the cross, once for all, true! But his new life fills every moment of every day from the beginning of time to the end of eternity.
That is what we celebrate on Easter Day.So I would encourage you to make sure that Easter Day is extra special this year. Our program follows this letter…

I hope we’ll celebrate together.

Gwilym

We begin by walking the last week of Jesus’ earthly life in Holy Week.

Day 1. Sunday 5th April Palm Sunday is the first day, April 5th, with a procession of palms round the church, and the reading of the story of the Passion.

Day 4. Wednesday 8th AprilEucharist with Prayers for Healing at 10.am in the St Augustine Chapel

Day 5. Thursday 9th AprilMaundy Thursday celebrates the New Commandment (Mandatum Novum) which Jesus gave us to share the bread and wine of the Last Supper – “in remembrance of me”
Our service begins at 7.30 on Thursday 9th April. We celebrate the Last Supper and wash our feet in remembrance of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The table is cleared and we can spend sometime in the darkened church, waiting with Jesus for the day of his death.

Day 6. Friday 10th April Good Friday, (God Friday) begins with prayer and worship at 9.30 am. The Cross is carried into the church and we use stones to lay our troubles on Christ’s shoulders.
At Twelve Noon we walk the Way of the Cross, following the way of Jesus from his condemnation to his crucifixion and to the tomb where he is laid.
Three O’clock is the hour of Jesus’ death. There is a service of Prayer at the Foot of the Cross.

Day 7. Saturday 11th April Holy Saturday is also called Easter Eve – it is a mistake to call it Easter Saturday – we spend the morning from about 9.30 tidying up the church and grounds ready for the Resurrection.

Easter Eve – 11th April. At 8 pm we gather in the dark to light the New Fire of the Resurrection and to celebrate the New Life of Baptism and the Eucharist in Christ Jesus. This year we will baptise James Barnes and John Lo.
But why 8 o’clock at night? Because the Jewish day ends at 6pm and we just can’t wait until morning to celebrate the third day when Jesus rose again.

Easter Day – the first day of your new life!
Then it really is Easter Day and time for the greatest celebration of the Christian year.
We will have our Easter Eucharist at 9.30am and follow it with an early lunch in the Hall. Please bring food to share and make this a really great day of new life for us and for our guests.

Second Sunday in Lent - not throwing the baby out with the bath water

2009-03-15T14:21:00.006+11:00

The Baptism of Nicholas Mackenzie Fleming

What happens after the sermon involves Nicholas Fleming fairly closely, so I would like to tell Nicholas what we’re going to do. First of all, we’re going to walk down to the font at the back of the church, and we’ll all turn round to watch. When we stand up and pay attention it means we’re doing something important. And that is true, baptism is important, it is the most important thing that we do in church.

I know, Nicholas, that you might not understand all this, so we’ve asked your mum and dad and your godparents to help. Of course, none of us know exactly how baptism works. We know it is a bit like being born a second time. The first time your born into a human family and this time you are being born into the family of God.

When you were born the first time, when you came out of your mother’s womb, you had to start breathing air like your parents. This time you need to start breathing like God, who is your heavenly Father and Mother. God’s breath is called the Holy Spirit so we will pray that you may be filled with the Holy Spirit so that you and God can breathe together.

The next thing we do is prepare a bath for you, because I’m pretty sure that when you were born last time, someone gave you a bath. So Thomas is going to help me fill a bowl with water ready for the baptism. It’s just ordinary water, but we know that God works through ordinary things and we say a prayer asking God to work through the water and wash away all that separates us from each other and from God. If anyone has had the opportunity to wash someone who is too weak to wash themselves, a baby or an old person, you will know that it can be a moving and spiritual act. It washes away the dirt, yes, but it brings you very close. It is one of those intimate acts which God has given us to wash away the barriers.

But we’re not just giving you a bath, Nicholas, we’re not just getting close and personal, we are baptizing you into the Christian faith. We hope and pray that the faith we have in our community will surround you and stick to you. Faith is a bit like baby powder. We sprinkle baby powder to make your skin all soft and smooth. Faith, faith in Christ, is intended to do the same for our character. So we’ll all say the Creed together. This is faith makes us who we are and we want you, Nicholas, to be covered in faith, too. St Paul says we should put on Christ like clothing, so sometimes we dress babies in a white baptismal gown to show that they are now dressed in Christ.

And next, Nicholas Mackenzie Fleming, we will call you by name and baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Just as Jesus told his disciples nearly two thousand years ago. So here you are, all pure and clean and dressed in the life of Jesus.

But we haven’t finished yet – God hasn’t finished with us. God wants you, Nicholas, to be as close to us as he is to God – we need to welcome you into the church. So we receive and welcome you as a fellow member of the body of Christ, as a child of the same heavenly Father and an inheritor with us of the kingdom of God. As from now, you are now our little brother and we are your brothers and sisters. As from now, you are a part of the family of God, as from now you are a part of our lives. That’s what receiving and welcoming means, that’s what it means to be the body of Christ and to be at peace with each other.

So, when we baptise you, Nicholas, we are celebrating new life and giving ourselves more work to do. It’s exactly like being parents. We are promising to love you and to welcome you into our community and worship. We are promising that we will share the good things ad the difficult things of growing up as a Christian. Like all other children without exception, you will do things which delight us and things which make us grit our teeth and shake our heads. There will be times when you will behave like an angel and times when we will wish that your parents will take you home and put you to bed!

But you know, Nicholas, we’re going to keep on welcoming you and loving you. There’s a lesson we can learn from the psalm. Unless the Lord builds the house their labour is but lost that build it. We are a community committed to loving the Lord and to loving our neighbours they way we love ourselves. That’s how God builds the house. If we forget that, then we are wasting our time.
So you see, Nicholas, that God has given you to us as a gift. Soon you will be marked with the sign of the cross to show that you are marked as Christ’s own for ever, just as we are. We are here to help you and you are here to help us to grow into the full stature of Christ. St Paul said that, Nicholas, God wants us to be as perfectly human and as perfectly Godly as Jesus. We’ll give you a candle to remind you of the light of Christ. Look at the candle. That’s called shining, Nicholas, that’s what God wants you to do. In fact that’s what God wants us all to do.

Which is why we finish the baptism with prayer. We pray that we can all keep the promises we have made, you, your Mum and Dad, Craig and Kyria and everybody in this church today.

So now you know, Nicholas, what baptism is all about. Let’s do it, shall we?

The Second Sunday in Lent - those who go down to the sea in ships

2009-03-08T15:40:00.015+11:00

I would like each of you to imagine that you are a ship. You can be a sailing ship, with three or four masts and square sails, perhaps built to take tea from India and China to Europe. You can be a cruise ship like the ones we see in Sydney, huge floating hotel with all sorts of luxury. If you like you can be a naval vessel like the one’s tied up at Cockatoo Island. You can be a ferry, a yacht or a little rowing dinghy. They all have one thing in common. They all have to be taken from the water, inspected and if necessary repaired. If this is left undone then the ship will soon be in trouble, masts will collapse, engines will break down; the ship could even spring a leak and sink. However, if you look after your ship, it will remain useful, durable, smart and safe.

The season of Lent is a time when Christian ships like us have the opportunity to be hauled out of the water, inspected for damage or decay, repaired, repainted and launched again at Easter for another year’s worth of living.

This is one reason that it is a good idea to take Lent seriously and slowly. It is good to stop doing the pointless things that just waste money or waste time, but it is also good to stop doing something which is important to us so that we can take a look at our lives. The most important thing in the life of a ship is to sail from one place to another, but it has to stop sailing and even be taken out of the water to make it fit and ready to sail again. Lent is a reminder to Christians that we need to stop and make sure our lives are in order.

Today’s reading have three important questions hidden in them. The story of Abraham asks, “What does it mean to have faith?” That is explored in Genesis and Paul’s letter to the Romans. The other two questions come from the Gospel. Firstly, “What does it mean to be Christ?” and then “What does it mean to be a Christian?”

Our first reading tells how God made a covenant with Abram and Sarai. A covenant was originally an agreement between a powerful nation and a weak nation. Here it is an agreement between God Almighty and two humans. The Lord said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless and I will make you exceedingly numerous.” It is as if we had taken our little boat down to the sea and the sea says to us, “I am the sea, I could sink you in a moment, but I will make you a promise. Row your boat carefully and honestly, and I will make sure you get to New Zealand.”

Abram and Sarai had their whole lives changed by that promise. They themselves were changed so that they needed new names. Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah. For Abraham and Sarah, having faith meant a relationship of trust and care with the Creator of the world, a new relationship with each other, (they were to be parents of un-numbered descendants), a new meaning to their lives and new names. In other words, faith changes everything. As Christians, we should expect our faith to do the same. By faith we know that we are made and loved by the Creator of all that is, we know we can trust the Lord God to keep us in his heart. By faith we find our lives changing to be more like the one who loves us. By faith we can trust each other, and by faith we are changed for ever. The name we are given at our baptism is a sign of the new life that is in us.

The other two questions arise in the Gospel. Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”

So Jesus begins to tell them what it means to be the Christ. The Christ must suffer many things, and be rejected by the authorities and be killed and after three days, be raised again. Peter was horrified. Surely the Christ was to be worshipped, honoured and adored, not killed and buried. And as so often in the Bible we find that God does not work the way we expect. Human beings want to be worshipped, honoured and adored. I do not think that anywhere in the Bible will you find God or the Christ asking to be worshipped, honoured and adored. The Christ came to be rejected, killed, buried and raised. When we get to Holy Week we will follow Christ through his rejection, his death, burial and resurrection. That is the answer to the question, “What does it mean to be Christ?”

The final question is the hardest because we want to be Christians – I hope we do. Christ warned St Peter to think like God and not to think like a human. Humans desires worship, honour and adoration but God does not desire that. The sacrifice of a broken heart and a willing spirit is what God wants. Jesus says, “Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me?” This means give up your selfish desires and ambition, and live a life which lives and loves and cares until it breaks its heart and dies. That is the way the Christ lives and that is the way Christians live.

At the beginning I asked you to think of yourself as a ship. Now imagine that ship setting out to sea. The waves are huge, twice as tall as the biggest cruise ship or tanker or tea clipper. We have to be very careful to stay afloat, using every bit of our sailor’s skill and cunning.

But Christ asks us not to conquer the ocean waves, or to triumphantly go all round the world in record time. What we are asked to do is to look around us for those who have no boat at all, no faith and no hope. We are asked to let God look after our own journey to salvation or paradise and help those who don’t know where to go. It means looking after other people so that we can all travel together. It is as hard and painful and annoying and frustrating as carrying a cross, but it is the best way to go.