Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Good Shepherd Sunday C – Jn 10 22-30

My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me. ^{John 10:27} Jesus knows us and loves us.

When you think about it, how many people really know you, warts and all, and still love you anyway? We deal with lots of people every day – people who don’t know us, but want something from us – or we want something from them. Most of those relationships are superficial. How many people in our lives really know us and love us anyway?

Caro spoke to parish council last week about the many people in our community who are so isolated that it’s a significant health risk to them. Their loneliness is up there with obesity, smoking and heavy alcohol use as a mortality risk; particularly younger people! Why are people in any community so isolated that it puts them at risk of dying? How many people really know them? Who do they love? And who loves them? For these people, isolation is a matter of life and death. And yet their situation can be improved so simply –with genuine friendship.

Eugene Petersen describes a moment when … someone enters our life who isn’t looking for someone to use. They make time to find out what’s really going on in us. They’re secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or to attack our strengths. They recognise our inner life and understand the difficulty of living out our inner convictions. They confirm what’s deepest within us. They’re a friend.  ^{Eugene H. Peterson ‘Leap Over a Wall’}

Who really knows us? We just heard Jesus say My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. ^{John 10.27} Jesus declares his friendship for us as being of that very rare quality we’ve been thinking about. ‘I know them.’ To let anyone get to know us at a really deep level, we have to trust them; trust them with our deepest feelings; know we’re safe with them even when our most embarrassing weaknesses are disclosed; trust them to deal gently with our very strongest convictions; our greatest passions. And that goes both ways.

Perhaps you know the very beautiful little poem of W.B. Yeats: ‘He wishes for the cloths of heaven’.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, / Enwrought with golden and silver light, / The blue and the dim and the dark cloths / Of night and light and the half-light, / I would spread the cloths under your feet: / But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Yeats somehow captures the beautiful, vulnerable friendship that Jesus our Good Shepherd offers us – where he’s as vulnerable as we are. Whatever predicament we’re in, he’s in it with us; shivering in the cold; wilting with heat and thirst; facing our fears with us.

We’re completely safe offering Jesus our feelings, our weaknesses and our passions because he knows us and yet he loves us anyway. He knows how dangerous we can be to a friend, and yet he’s come to be that friend. He hasn’t come to condemn us, but to save us. ^{John 3.17} We’re safe with him.

He’s entered our world in utter vulnerability as the baby. He’s faced our shame and helplessness as the naked man hanging on the cross. He has come fully into our world so that we might enter fully into his.

Jesus, our good shepherd, calls out to us to follow him on the path that leads to that place of green pastures and still waters, to a living hope in the face of danger – even in the face of death.

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. ^{John 10:27}

Follow. We had that word in the 23^rd Psalm too. Jesus the good shepherd calls us to follow him. King David tells us what will happen when we respond to this call – Surely your goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Prayer

Jesus our Good Shepherd, we know your voice. You call and we follow you. Jesus, gate of the sheepfold, you are our doorway into life. You are the doorway through death into eternal life. You call and we follow you.

Jesus our Good Shepherd, you have laid down your life for us. There is no greater love than this. You know us – you know the danger – and yet you love us. Grant us the courage to love like you do, and to do it bravely in your precious name. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Acts 9 1-6, Psalm 30, Revelation 5 11-14, John 21 1-19

There’s a recurrent theme in the today’s scriptures. In the readings from Acts, the Psalm and the Gospel, we see a person being brought back from the brink to a place of safety and healing. That’s central to the issue we’ve been called to focus on today. We’ve been called to think, pray and act on the horrifying epidemic of domestic and family violence against women and children. And we have to make sure this parish is a place of safety and healing for anyone who needs us.

Domestic and Family Violence is abusive behaviour that’s used to control or harm someone in an intimate relationship. It endangers their safety and well-being. It has many faces: coercive control, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, financial abuse, psychological abuse, spiritual abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. And a child witnessing Domestic and Family Violence is suffering child abuse.

Domestic and family violence is rife in Australia and around the world. There’s a world-wide social-media epidemic presenting misogyny and the sexual degradation of women and children as normal; undermining their dignity and their humanity. We Australians export it to more traditional societies through tourism, the internet, and even through some distortions of our Christian teaching. This must stop!

Domestic and family violence is a terrible cause of suffering for many people in the Australian community, and we know the Church is not exempt from this. In fact, a 2021 survey revealed that in our churches more than one in three women and one in seven men report that they have experienced violence. That’s in our churches! And women are far more likely to be impacted by sexual and physical assault and sexual harassment. And yes, this is in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Some church leaders compound the abuse suffered by survivors of domestic and family violence because they wrongly counsel these people to stay in their abusive marriages – telling them to go back and forgive; try to prevent the violence.

Forgiveness should never mean accepting the continuation of violence. And nor is it anyone’s duty to manage how another adult expresses their anger. Everybody feels anger. But to express that anger through violence is a choice. So domestic violence is emphatically not the responsibility of its survivor. It’s the choice, the action and entirely the responsibility of its perpetrator. No ifs or buts!

Some church leaders give wrong advice to stay in an abusive marriage because they read, in a simplistic, literal way, four or five passages from the New Testament. ^{1 Cor 14:34-35, Eph 5:22-23, 1 Tim 2:11-12, 1 Pet 2:18-3:7, Matt 19:3-12} On the basis of this handful of first-century Mediterranean cultural teachings, some church leaders insist that even where there’s domestic violence, wives should submit to their husbands; should forgive; should obey. We know this is often lethal advice. The 2021 survey showed that domestic violence is actually worse in some church contexts than in the wider community, often in the name of these scriptures. If this advice to submit and forgive has ever been given to you or to anyone you know, please hear my apology on behalf of a very fallible Church. Jesus would never have done that to you.

The patterns of Domestic and Family Violence tell us that it is not a one-off matter of the perpetrator losing it or snapping – doing something out of character. No, it’s part of a pattern of controlling, belittling, abusive behaviour; an attitude which is the choice of the perpetrator. It’s a reflection of the perpetrator’s true character.

Domestic Violence is a vile thing and it has no place in any family or relationship – ever! And that goes even more emphatically for the Church, which must be a place of safety and healing. We know how Jesus cared for abused and suffering people. He defended them and challenged their abusers. We are committed to follow his example and teaching; called to follow him, as we saw in today’s scriptures.

We are called by Christ to be communities of healing, of safety, of generosity and respect; called to believe and advocate for survivors of this violence. And we are called to defend survivors from perpetrators, and to challenge perpetrators to turn from the attitudes and actions that they’ve chosen to live by. We are called to help such people re-form their characters into the image of Christ – just as we should all be striving to do with our own lives.

The Anglican Church’s Families and Culture Commission have launched this first Domestic and Family Violence Awareness Sunday to call everyone in the Church to shine a light on this issue. Because abuse thrives if it can hide in shadows. If we turn our backs and say it doesn’t have anything to do with us, that’s to condone it. And we know all too well what happens then. The Church has done that for years to innocent children. We have to make sure the Church is not a safe place for abusers to hide. No, we must be a safe place where survivors are believed, supported, healed and protected; given back a chance at wholeness and hope. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2 – Acts 5 27-32, Ps 118 14-29, Rev 1 4-8, John 20 19-31

I once spent a few unplanned hours in a laundromat. I didn’t have a book with me, and the only reading materials I could find were magazines strategically left there by a religious group. Some of them studied characters from the Bible. I read one about Abraham. Other magazines discussed practical life-questions. I read one about how and why we should discipline our children. In each magazine, any questions that came up were answered by reference to passages from the Bible. The Bible was to be read as the final authority on all questions of personal character, and on the many day-to-day decisions people need to make.

These magazines were produced by a conservative group whose leaders keep a tight rein on the lives of each member. Their articles of faith are very clear and fixed. Deviating from them means a visit from the leaders. If they can’t turn you back to the straight and narrow, then it’s very likely that your membership will be terminated.

In traditional, conservative societies, this is quite common. But in 21^st century Adelaide, it feels strange. Once we leave school, we don’t often have a sense of how serious it is to risk being an outcast. Our mobility and relaxed social ethics give us hundreds of options for finding a place to belong.

So I wonder if any of us can grasp the extreme bravery of Peter and the other Apostles in today’s reading from Acts. They’ve been building a new community of people who share everything in common and publicly proclaiming their message about Jesus’ resurrection of the dead. We come into the story as they’ve just been arrested for a third time and brought before Jerusalem’s religious authorities.

The threat against them is complete exclusion from the religious and social life of their nation. Can you imagine that? It’s like being forced to wear a yellow Star of David in Nazi Germany. Yet Peter – the one who, just weeks ago, we heard denying Jesus three times – Peter takes the role of spokesman, and defies his lawgivers to their faces again. They’re released after a flogging, and yet every day after that, in the Temple and in their homes, they don’t cease to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.

It’s a very powerful witness to the truth of what they’ve experienced. A simple person like Peter doesn’t change from being a grief-stricken, frightened liar into a powerful, defiant rebel leader unless something absolutely life-changing has happened. Whatever was the worst thing he feared before – death or social ostracism – it has utterly lost its power over him now.

Death certainly has lost its sting; Peter has seen Jesus overcome it. And for him and the others, it’s made the threat of social ostracism irrelevant. Reading this section of Acts, this new community is growing like a bushfire. Peter fears nothing; he and the others who ran away at the crucifixion are utterly transformed people. No fear; nothing but joy and an overflowing message of hope that will not be silenced. Their message is that once Jesus arrives in our lives, we are resurrection people.

This astonishing change in Peter is not the only transformation we witness today. It happens to the other disciples too – and in the Gospel we witness the moment and the manner of that transformation. We come into the Gospel today to find the disciples hiding together behind locked doors for fear of the same religious authorities. But suddenly Jesus is among them – Peace be with you. That fear? Let it go. Here are the wounds they gave me. Even killing me, they couldn’t stop me coming back to you. And he breathes on them: the breath of resurrected life. Receive the Holy Spirit. Together with this astounding blessing of new life, Jesus gives us a very curious gift: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. A precious gift won at such a cost to him – now it’s entrusted to us even though you could hardly say we were ready for any responsibility – cringing behind a locked door.

Just as Peter spoke for everyone in Acts, Thomas gives many among us a necessary voice. This bold, outspoken character says what needs to be said for us, who’ve not seen and yet have come to believe. Thomas’ faith is born of doubt; something far richer than a faith based in certainty. Jesus doesn’t reject Thomas for his doubt. Jesus invites Thomas to express his doubt, and to belong out of love; not fear. And Thomas’s great heart responds with the most profound confession of Jesus: My Lord and my God! He and the others saw their Lord risen, and that inspired their journeys of proclamation and baptism to the ends of the earth.

Faith based in certainty is stagnant and dead. But a faith where the possibility of doubt is accepted and taken seriously is something else. Today we’ve seen the beginnings of how that was a crucial part of nurturing a living, growing community of faith. We meet a small group of people who would go on to face decades of suffering and ostracism, and even so, they’d spend the rest of their lives spreading the hope they had in Jesus’ resurrection. Uncertain faith in our Risen Lord Jesus – in the strength of his love – still inspires people to share a hope far richer and far more adventurous than any certainty we might ever have dreamt possible. Can you share this with anyone you know; this uncertain faith?

Think about us as a ‘family’ suitable for ‘Social Prescription’ that a medical professional could consider for people needing community.

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter Morning – Acts 10 34-43, Col 3 1-4, John 20 1-18

Today is the perfect day for the Anglican Church of Australia to enter the Season of Hope. Hope! Everything about today’s celebration of Jesus who rose from the dead tells of our hope as his followers. The fire is both the ancient symbol of God’s presence with us, and a symbol of the new life that raised Jesus from the dead. And the church is filled with flowers to remind everyone of God’s gift of life in all its astonishing diversity. Their myriad colours and fragrances, and the joy of gathering them in harmony celebrates God’s delight in their diversity, and ours. Our hope is alive!

The Easter Candle, sharing its living fire with each one of us; the way it’s marked to bring together infinity and time; the way its depiction this year of eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly speak to us of apparent death being nothing more than the start of life in a new and more striking form; all this says too that our hope is alive! We sing this hope; we walk it in pilgrimage together, following the One who – as we said at our gathering – passed over from death to life. Our hope is alive!

Let’s think about that hope? We’ve gathered this morning to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ ‘passing over from death to life’. It’s a staggering reversal of what we think is normal! We’re gathered to celebrate this miracle, and the hope it gives us.

I remember those whose feet he washed just a few days earlier. After he did it, he told them he’d go and prepare a place for them in God’s house; that he’d come back and take them to be together with him in that place of life. ^Jn14 That’s a promise we remember whenever one of us has died. It’s our certain hope that Jesus will come and take them with him. And they’ll be with him, ready to greet us when it’s our time. We can hope that because of what we celebrate today; Jesus passed over from death to life. Jesus is alive. Our hope is alive!

Maybe it’s hard for us to visualize how this hope might affect the way we live now. For me, we’re given a way to understand that effect in today’s Gospel – in what we just saw happen for Mary Magdalene. She was lost in the despair of Jesus’ death on the cross, and now, weeping before the confusion of a tomb that it seemed to her must have been desecrated. She was utterly gutted of hope.

Then suddenly, the living Jesus calls her by name. One minute, nothing to live for; everything that had given her life any meaning gone. And the next minute, she’s literally got hold again of her living, breathing Jesus. He’s come for her, and she’s fully back in the land of the living. She has hope again. Jesus tells her to go and share that hope with all the others. She’s alive again in a totally new way – and it’s happened for her on this side of death. It has for us too. This is the hope we’re given to live now!

Mary’s experience of renewed life is reflected in our reading from Colossians. You have been raised with Christ … for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. This happened to Mary; one moment, as good as dead in her despair and horror, and the next, raised to life again by the risen Jesus. In the reading from Acts, we saw a transformed Peter too. Only last Friday we saw him cowed and hopeless. Today, we see him doing as Mary did; taking the hope of Jesus’ resurrection to bring the hope of new life to others.

Jesus’ resurrection is our hope, and it’s a hope the world desperately needs. Today we see that clearly. Death is something people fear; something people do all they can to ignore. It can bleed people of hope. Some use this fear of death to manipulate other people. But if all the poor, frightened, threatened people knew the hope that we share, that in Jesus, our death has already happened, that our new life is in Christ; that we have been raised with him here and now, they could be transformed by that hope.

Nothing prevents physical death from happening for anyone. But people who belong to Jesus have hope because he is alive. People who belong to Jesus have a living hope that’s built on trust in his integrity, built on his love for us, and his call to us to a life that has meaning and purpose. It’s also built on his promise that at our death, our risen Lord will come for us – call us by name, Life is wonderful with this hope. And with a world in such need of this hope, it’s vital that everyone of us shares it.

We were commissioned for this at our baptism. We were called to share with others, by word and example, the love of Christ and his gospel of reconciliation and hope. ^{APBA p. 69}

As we renew our baptismal promises now, let’s re-commit to that. Let’s put this new life of ours at the service of the One who gave it to us – that same hope – and share it with others. Because he was raised for them too. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Maundy Thursday – Ex 12,  Ps 116,  1 Cor 11  Jn 13

Tonight, we’ve heard again how four of our ancient, sacred traditions began – the Feast of the Passover, the Lord’s Supper, the Christian principle of Servant Leadership – shown by washing each other’s feet, and the New Commandment – to love each other like Jesus loves us.

From Exodus, we heard the story of the first Passover – the final rescue of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt began with a meal where people ate standing up and dressed for travel – ready to flee at a moment’s notice. It’s called Passover for a strange reason. Before this meal, each household had to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb and roast it over a fire. They had to daub their front door frames with blood from this lamb. The blood would be a sign to protect the household. God was sending the angel of death on Egypt to kill all the first-born in every household. But if the front door frame of a house was marked with the blood of a lamb, the angel of death would pass over without killing anyone within it. A short time later, the Hebrew people were delivered from slavery through the Red Sea.

The Church calls us to read this story tonight because it connects with our Christian story. Our Christian story tells of the blood of a perfect man being the means of our rescue from slavery. We remember this every week at Holy Communion.

Passover meals are happening this week. Jewish people celebrate their rescue and thank God. They drink three cups of wine at this feast: the cup of sanctification celebrates the special bond they have with God; the cup of praise celebrates God rescuing them from captivity; and the cup of redemption celebrates God redeeming them so they are no longer slaves.

In this evening’s Psalm, we read about another cup; the cup of salvation. The Psalmist wants to offer it as a new sacrifice – a sacrifice of thanksgiving, offered by someone who knows freedom in God.

Paul’s letter links the imagery of Exodus and the Psalm as he describes the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. Jesus is the sacrificial lamb and his blood is our protection. And Paul also names the fourth cup of salvation, which proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes.

Into this mix, the Church also gives us John’ story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. It also happened at a meal – but not at the meal we might first think of. The meal where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples in Mt ^26:26-29; Mk ^14:22-25 and Lk ^22:7-20 was the Passover meal. But in John’s gospel the meal where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet happened before the Feast of the Passover ^13.1.

In John’s Gospel Jesus will die on the day of preparation for Passover ^19:31. That’s the time when Passover sacrifices began in the temple.  So in this Gospel, Jesus is the sacrificial lamb––the Paschal Lamb––the Passover Lamb––the Lamb of God who takes away the sins – not only of Israel, but of the world. This is the same as Paul’s understanding; that Jesus’ blood will save us.

But Jesus adds something new to all this. During the meal, he takes off his outer robe and, clothed only in a loincloth, he ties a towel around his waist. Thus dressed as a slave, he washes his disciples’ feet. And afterwards he says, “… if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

So Christian ministry is defined for all of us: the Christian is always a servant, and service is always given for love. It’s summed up in the New Commandment. We care for others like Jesus does as a sign to all people. It’s the reason God’s people were freed from slavery in Egypt, and it’s the reason we’ve been set free from slavery to futility and despair. We are set free to give hope; set free so we can tell people that God loves them. And we are to show them that by serving them and serving each other in love. 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.

This night, we remember Jesus’ blood; we drink it in the Eucharist; Jesus’ blood offered to protect us and all the world from the angel of death. We are given a picture of Jesus as the lamb who gave himself to be sacrificed for us; to free us from slavery; to lead us into a community of freedom and love; to build us up into a people set free to shine in the world’s night, like a bonfire of hope burning on a mountaintop, guiding lost travellers to hope, to safety, to welcome, to love – to Jesus. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4 C – Lk 15 The parable of the lost sons

It helps us to know who was there when Jesus told today’s parable. There seem to have been some notorious sinners and tax collectors. They’d come to hear Jesus’ teaching. And watching on were Luke’s version of the morality police – some Pharisees and Scribes. They were grumbling loudly enough for us to hear them complain that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. ^{Lk 15.2} Gate keepers can be a bit passive-aggressive like that.

Jesus responded with three parables; the parable of the lost sheep rescued and the rejoicing that caused, the parable of the lost coin found – and more rejoicing, and then today’s one. But the parable of the lost sons breaks the pattern. Yes, sons. The bitter, self-righteous, older son was every bit as lost as his younger brother had been. He wouldn’t come home to join in the rejoicing, and that hurt his father terribly. Ironically, this gate-keeper contrived to shut himself out.

Jesus was telling the religious officials in three different ways that the tax collectors and sinners who’d come to learn from him were very valuable. This parable says they were like his own children. But they’d got lost. Jesus had come to find them, and they’d come to find him. So they weren’t lost any more. Party time!

But the older brother in the parable – the judgmental, bitter one who grumbled about his father giving a feast for this son of yours! – does he remind you of anyone? He welcomes sinners and eats with them! Yes, the Pharisees and Scribes feature in this parable, don’t they. Just as Jesus reached out to the tax collectors and sinners through the younger son, he reached out to the Pharisees and Scribes through the tragic story of the older son. We never find out what happens to him, or them.

Jesus annoyed the Pharisees and scribes by eating with sinners and tax collectors; he publicly treated these socially ostracised people as if they were legitimate members of the community. But the Scribes and Pharisees thought they were the arbiters of who belonged and who didn’t. Jesus obviously thought differently. This parable says the sinners and tax collectors who came to him were his lost children, who’d been found. Social convention had given them up for dead, but now they were alive again with him. These kin of yours were dead and have come to life; they were lost and have been found. ^{Luke 15.32}

This is the absolute heart of the Gospel. The Gospel explicitly identifies the lost younger son with Jesus himself; dead, but alive again. ^{Luke 15.32} Like that younger son, Jesus left his father and came here squandering his inheritance among people like us to the point of giving up his life. Jesus who died, given up for lost by his friends, Jesus was raised to new life, gave those friends and us another chance at life, and leads us to the Father’s house ^{John 14.2} where the party is being prepared for us all.

Don’t we see Jesus in the Father running out to embrace his son? Can we hear him whisper in our ear that we are safe now, because we’re with him? Come home; come into the eternal, joyous banquet of unconditional, welcoming love!

Jesus came that all might have abundant life ^{John 10.10} – including people we find really difficult to deal with; people who offend against all our instincts and values. He came that all might have abundant life.

Even us? The Gospel is showing us, as we enter this parable, that we – even if we’ve given up on ourselves as lost – even if other people – even sisters and brothers have given us up for lost – we can see Jesus running out to us, to embrace us and clothe us in the robes of unquestioning belonging; unconditional belonging.

The three parables of the lost tell us how God values us. They tell us how God risks giving us the freedom to learn how valuable our relationships are by experiencing what life is like without them. But they also show us how God has chosen to be vulnerable to us in the love that will brave righteous anger to defend us.

That’s the love he calls us to show in our own lives too. Praise God for such scandalous love!  Amen.

Mothering Sunday Cake and Posy Blessing

Father and Mother God, giver of all joy:
we ask that you bless this cake and these posies,
so that they may be to us
symbols of our communion with you and with each other.
As they were once scattered over our land
as blossoms and blooms,
grasses, vines, trees and cane,
yet are now one,
so let us in our diversity
be your one redeemed people,
and your delight.  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 3C – Luke 13 1-9

Oscar Romero was Archbishop of the city of San Salvador from 1977. At that time, his country, El Salvador, had a terrible government. Most of the people were kept very poor by a greedy few. But they were frightened to complain, because anyone who complained was arrested and tortured – often killed. Romero spoke out against all this until he was assassinated by government soldiers in 1980. They shot him when he was at the altar during communion as he raised the chalice of wine before the people. It’s like today’s gospel story; his blood and the communion wine were mingled at the altar. And five days later the soldiers opened fire on the people who had gathered for Romero’s funeral.

People came to Jesus today with a story that was just as terrible. Some people from Galilee had come to the Temple – they’d come to offer their sacrifice to God. And just as they were offering their gifts, the soldiers of the Roman governor killed them, right at the altar. The soldiers mingled their blood with the blood of their animals and birds that were sacrificed on the altar.

When the people told Jesus about this, he heard them ask a very complex series of questions. We may have just heard people tell him some terrible news. But Jesus heard them ask, ‘Why did this happen to people who were doing good? Were they really secretly bad people, pretending to do good, and God punished them? Does God strike people down like that? Do you have to be really terrible for God to do that, or could it happen to us too? Why would God let this happen to people who were doing something good?’ I think Jesus heard all these questions; they’re the questions people ask when bad things happen. ‘Why them? Why me? Why now?’ … We often ask questions like these when we get very sick, when we don’t seem to be getting better, or when terrible things happen to us or to people we love.

Jesus answered the unspoken questions of these people with a question of his own: ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were any worse than all other Galileans?’ Then he answered his own question: No! … ‘And’, Jesus told them, ‘the same went for the eighteen people who accidentally died when that building fell on them.’ If I tried to give his answer in different words, I’d say this. ‘Just because something bad happens to a person, it doesn’t mean they’ve been any worse than the next person. When you’ve lost someone you love, you deserve to know at least that!

What happened to these poor people could happen to any one of us at any time. So I’m really glad that Jesus said what he did. I’m glad to be able to tell grieving friends and family that Jesus said fatal accidents and fatal illnesses are not things God does to people. In this parish there are many who carry the sadness of the untimely death of loved ones. I’m glad to be able to assure you that illness and tragic accidents and the evil acts of dictators are not God’s punishment.

Jesus tells us these are not signs of God’s anger, but; just that we’re mortal. ‘So’, he warns us, ‘be ready – to turn to God.’ Why should I be glad to preach that? What’s good news there? Once again, the answer comes from Jesus; ‘…Unless we repent, we will all perish as they did.’ That sounds pretty ominous, but only until we consider how those people perished – completely unexpectedly. They had no idea it was coming. What might they have done if they knew they were going to die?

What would I do if I thought this year was going to be my last? If I were that fig tree in the parable, and I heard the gardener pleading for me to be given just one more season – I’d fix back-burner relationships first, then … what would you do?

Like many people I’ve journeyed with, in just that situation, I might set about putting my life in order. And I’d try to make sure I was better prepared to meet God face to face. I’d realise pretty quickly how silly it is to worry about what’s wrong with other people. I have plenty to do fixing myself up. And I have God’s love to tell other people about; that’s a hope that everybody needs.

Doing what Jesus says has far-reaching effects. When Oscar Romero was first made an Archbishop he was a government supporter. Then just three weeks later, a close friend of his was one of three people assassinated by soldiers for helping the poor. Romero said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path’” Romero repented; he turned; he left behind what was comfortable and safe, and he followed the same path as his friend; he turned, and truly followed Jesus. He only had three years more to live; what a blessing he turned when he did!

Jesus is telling us, don’t leave it all to the last few minutes.

The lovely poet and preacher, John Donne, put it very memorably:

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity

or washed clean at night by repentance. ^{(Sermon XI, Lent, 20/4/1630 before the king)} Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 2 C – Gen 15 Ps 27 Phil 3 Lk 13

As we focus on the fate of a boat-person’s family today, it’s instructive to reflect that today’s readings present us with a world where everybody’s in the same boat. In church-language, it’s called a state of sin. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s some sort of spiritual criminal. What it means is that humanity is in more or less of a state of alienation or separation from God. We’re not necessarily in that state by choice; but we’re all in it, and it’s painful for everyone.

Everyone? It’s not just people who want nothing to do with God that suffer from this. It also afflicts people who love God, who seek God with every fibre of their being. Today’s readings show this. Look at Abram, the model of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims. He’s a person who’s left everything behind to follow God’s leading. Yet today we see him as a man who has clearly lain awake worrying about what it was all for. Can that be true? Abraham, the model of faith, tormented by doubt?

And the Psalmist; someone who writes poetry that sings of God’s care, nevertheless cries v.10 “My heart has said of you, ‘Seek God’s face’: your face, God, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me”. Do not hide your face from me?! Even in our spiritual teachers, we find anxiety where we want solid faith; uncertainty where we expect confidence. My heart has said… That’s the telling phrase. Every spiritual seeker of every tradition talks of something deep within us that cries out to connect with the divine who is both the source of our being, and the end of our journey – our goal. But here is the Psalmist, a giant of faith, praying that God will not hide; praying to find God’s face.

Abram and the Psalmist, faithful people, experience the pain of separation from God. So it’s no shame on us that we do too. We try to find out why. Is it something I did; is there something wrong with me. Other people have strong faith; they seem blessed. Why not me?

If we react badly to the question of our own suffering, we’re worse when we see other people suffering. Sometimes when people have something terrible happen to them, others can try to rationalize their misfortune by wondering what they must have done to ‘deserve’ it. We know that’s rubbish; we know, or maybe we don’t know, that we say things like that because we’re afraid of the cost that being really compassionate might exact from us.

A sign of how badly we react to other people’s pain is that suffering people are often left alone. Few people can cope sitting with anyone who is in agony. It’s that cost of compassion thing again; we can’t bear to sit with it. And the sufferers know it; they send people away; they say they’d rather be alone. They don’t want to be a burden to anyone. They become the carers of people who can’t cope with their pain.

Our alienation from God – our sense of isolation from others, our physical or emotional suffering; they’re all part and parcel of the one experience; they’re simply part of being mortal. And there is no way out of that, regardless of our faith. But the coming of Jesus challenges the inevitability of that separation. We couldn’t be ‘one with God’, so coming in Jesus, God dealt with it by becoming ‘one of us’. God goes the whole way; birth, suffering and death. Suffering? In the coming weeks, we will hear again of the agonized breakdown in Gethsemane; the cries of anguish from the cross, and we’ll know they were real experiences of separation from God; the alienation which is the cost of sin.

But that sin doesn’t mean criminality. Jesus was sometimes asked to judge between people; to apportion blame. Instead, he names the basic malaise; alienation from God. He aches for us. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! As followers of Jesus, our purpose is mapped out. We are to be there for people who suffer. We are to be Jesus for each other. The alienation people experience should never be compounded with cruel, needless loneliness born of judgement and exclusion.

The way that works out as a call to us, particularly today, is a call to solidarity with refugees – aliens here and in foreign lands. It’s foundational to our faith. Last week, we heard Moses giving his final instructions to his people about thanking God for what they’d been given. Dt 26 What’s really striking about these instructions is that they applied equally to the citizens of the Land, and the aliens who resided among them! Refugees had the same rights, the same responsibilities, and were explicitly entitled to the same inclusion – as full citizens. Jesus gave us this same principle again in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

That used to be our way in Australia up until the mid-90’s. We were compassionate, inclusive and supportive. Refugees received humane, just treatment. Today, as we proclaim our support for Farshad, we invoke again the ancient Biblical principle that underpinned – and should again underpin – our treatment of those who seek shelter among us. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1C – Luke 4 1-15

Today we saw Jesus subjected to temptations that attack mutual dependence – the trust and faithfulness we need in each other; the temptations we face that attack our life as a community, and our life with God. Today, we saw Jesus confront three of these temptations after he’d been fasting for forty days in the wilderness. At his baptism, God told Jesus, ‘You are my Son, the beloved; I am well pleased with you.’ ^{Jn 3.22} This didn’t start Jesus’ public ministry though. First, the Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness for forty days of solitude, fasting and temptation.

Today, after those forty days, we hear the devil’s sneering taunt, challenging the now famished Jesus to prove God’s words true; ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ ^{Jn 4.3} God’s declaration about Jesus as his Son is challenged. Prove it mister! What’s this got to do with us?

I must say this one hits me hard. I can have the most fabulous experience of God’s strength and presence in my ministry one moment, and then the very next, I’m tempted to imagine it may have had something to do with my skill or ingenuity. And without sensing the movement, I’m duped into wondering – Could God have done it without me? And then where’s the logical next step? Poor God is so busy. Could I do this even without God? CRASH!!! I’m lost in a spiritual wilderness with only the fruits of self-delusion and self-importance to eat.

Temptation is false food. These days, we’re bombarded with images of people who are happy, fulfilled, successful, popular, secure and attractive. The implication is that they’ve got that way because they drink some particular high-sugar, high-caffeine drink or eat some particular salty, oily food. The further implication is that we can be the same as them if only we consume this sugary, oily, salty stuff too. In fact if you eat this, wear that, drive one of those or live there, with just the power of your money you can create a whole new self – not to mention a whole new admiring fan club.

The advertising industry has stopped simply telling us of the existence of a product. Instead they make us the product that’s being sold – or at least, an image of us. We will suddenly be the type of people we never dared dream we could be: attractive, confident, successful, powerful – once we’ve tried this life changing junk food. This is what the serpent did to Eve and Adam in the garden – you’ll be like God if you eat this. In fact, God will be redundant if you eat it, because you’ll become gods yourselves. Think of it – you; a god. Just take a bite. It’s what we just saw the devil try on Jesus in the wilderness; ‘If you’re the Son of God, come on, fulfil your destiny with a do-it-yourself dinner. The power is all inside you anyway, so it must be okay. It’s meant to be!’ Jesus refuses the temptation of false food.

Temptation of a false God complex. Never doubt the rightness of your perceptions or your motives. That was number two for Jesus today: ‘All this could be yours; rule it; fix up all the problems from a position of strength. You know it’s what they expect of you. If that’s how they want it, can that be so bad? It’ll all go so much more smoothly like that.’ But no; we’re going to watch Jesus do it the hard way over the coming months. He’ll do it from the position of a servant, not a ruler. Depending on God and others reminds us we don’t know it all.

Temptation is also to manipulate; and that’s number three for Jesus today. Jump off this pinnacle of the Temple and force God’s hand: make God keep the promise to send angels to save you. Imagine the public-relations coup that would be with the whole religious establishment watching on! Every time Jesus refuses; he chooses to rely on God’s provision, to respect God’s sovereignty, to believe in God’s love – he chooses to be one of us; to depend on others; to show us that it’s possible to be a frail mortal and still be real, loveable and loved, for all our faults.

False Bread. When we’re tempted to insist on self-reliance – on being independent – it cuts us off from each other. Particularly, it closes us off from love: God’s love, and other people’s opportunities for showing us love. Dominion. When we seek to control through our power, it insults God and demeans everyone else involved – as if this world is more ours than theirs. Manipulation. And when we test God to see if our Creator cuts the mustard – we also demean our community, like any shabby sociopath would.

Jesus shows the alternative to each of these temptations. This man, who never wrote a book, has shown with his life, his humility, his companionship, his love and his vulnerability that we are made for community, and that community is built on respect, service and humility – in a word, Love. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

World Day of Prayer – Ps 139: The Cook Islands ‘I made you wonderful’ / DV.

In 2019 I attended a gathering in Fiji involving the Pacific Conference of Churches. The Cook Islands Christian Church and the RC Diocese of Rarotonga are PCC members. The very issues we’ve been called to pray about today – the climate and pollution emergency, and the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children – were the main focus back then too. At that gathering, just like today, the focus was on the islanders’ suffering because of rich countries’ inaction on climate change and sea-level rise, and because of the various forces at work driving the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children across the Pacific.

The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service have called us to draw strength with them from three teachings in today’s focus Psalm. Ps 139 tells us with infinite tenderness that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. But, today, these women also call the world churches – call us – to pray with them against forces which defile these glorious blessings.

Greedy, malignant forces are ruining life for innocent and vulnerable people; cutting them off from experiencing God’s gifts to them. This is a theme that runs right through scripture. It may surprise you to know it’s also present in today’s beautiful Psalm. There are four verses in today’s Psalm, 139, which in the Australian Anglican Church are almost never read in public worship. Our lectionary makes it optional to read them out. And we haven’t read them today.

Near the end of this Psalm’s beautiful meditation on the intimacy of God’s love for us and our delight in that security, these verses stand in shocking contrast to the rest. Here are two of them. ¹⁹ If only you would slay the wicked, O God: if only the bloodthirsty would depart from me! ²⁰ For they affront you by their evil: and your enemies exalt themselves against you. Where’s that come from?! This Psalmist is so sure of God’s love, of a life lived under God’s careful eye. Yet even so, the Psalmist records a personal experience of violence, and calls out its perpetrators.

This sudden contrast comes as a shock to us – security and delight on the one hand, yet fear and loathing on the other. It could well describe the emotions of a people who experience violence against the very Islands they call home. – or of a person subjected to domestic violence. Let’s consider the violence against the Islands.

At the conference we attended, we learned how the Pacific family feels a very deep and personal grief because of the double catastrophe of rising sea levels, and the pollution ravaging ocean, air, land and living creatures in the Pacific region. They are all casualties of our greedy culture of more is better – our relentless generation of plastic waste; our relentless plundering of their children’s future.

I want to tell you about Josefa, a minister from a Pacific Island nation. Josefa told us his family’s story of the rising water that we all know threatens them right now. We know of it but not personally. Josefa gave us permission to share his story.

Josefa’s ancestors raised a large mound on their farm. On that mound, they built their family home. Just before he addressed us, he’d spoken on the phone with his brother who told him the water had now come up to the mound. The unthinkable is staring them in the face. The terrible sadness Josefa feels came home to me when he told us of a traditional family custom on his island. Every year at Christmas time, families go to the cemetery together to visit their ancestors’ graves. He said, ‘We show our love and respect for our parents, grandparents and ancestors by carefully tending their graves, but especially at this time. Then we all return to our family home together and share a wonderful feast of thanksgiving for our family.’

At this point, Josefa fell silent. Then, almost gasping with the effort to speak, he asked, ‘How can we do that any more? They’re saying we’ll have to leave our island soon and find somewhere else to live. But who would we be then? Who would we be without our island? We could no longer be the people of this island. If there is no island, then we are no more.’ The depth of Josefa’s grief was overwhelming; I can’t imagine losing my connection with everything my families have ever been; never able to go back to the place my story happened. That’s death.

And domestic violence? That’s the other evil – here, around the world, and in a particularly shocking way in the islands. We’ve heard and read today how women are significant custodians of islander culture. They are the ones who pass it down to the next generations. And yet the export industry of misogyny and sexual degradation of women and children from outside societies is corroding all that; undermining their dignity and their humanity. We export it through tourism, through the internet, and tragically, through some distortions of Christian teaching.

It has to stop! Some church leaders compound the abuse suffered by survivors of domestic violence when they wrongly counsel these people to stay in their abusive marriages – telling them to go back and forgive; try to prevent the violence.

Forgiveness should never mean accepting the continuation of violence. And nor is it anyone’s duty to manage how another adult expresses their anger. Everybody feels anger: but to express that anger through violence is a choice. So domestic violence is emphatically not the responsibility of its survivor; it is the choice, the action and the responsibility of its perpetrator. No ifs or buts!

Some church leaders will give wrong advice to stay in an abusive marriage because they read, in a simplistic, literal ways, four or five passages from the New Testament. ^{Eph 5:22-23, 1 Tim 2:11-12, 1 Pet 2:18-3:7, 1 Cor 14:34-35, Matt 19:3-12} On the basis of these first-century Mediterranean cultural teachings, some church leaders teach that even where there’s domestic violence, wives should submit to their husbands; forgive, obey. This is often lethal advice. Recent Australian statistics show that domestic violence is worse in some church contexts than in the wider community. If this bad advice has been given to you or anyone you know, please hear my apology on behalf of a very fallible Church. Jesus would never have done this to you.

The patterns of domestic violence tell us that it is not a one-off matter of the perpetrator losing it or snapping – doing something out of character. No, it is a pattern of controlling, belittling, abusive behaviour which is the choice of the perpetrator; a reflection of the perpetrator’s true character.

Domestic Violence is an evil thing and it has no place in any family or any church – ever! And it should stop being exported by influencers, tourists, cultural colonisers and indeed churches.

The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service remind us that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. Today, we affirm that God has made the Cook Islands and the People of the Cook Islands wonderful: that they bear the image of God. And we affirm that we will pray against – and work with them against – forces that would mar that beautiful image.

So to end, let’s return to the Psalm. The Psalmist knows violence and abuse, but as its final word, this Psalm tells us that loving care is the birthright of all people from the strongest to the most vulnerable. God has made the islands and the islanders beautiful and wonderful.

So let’s hear with them the Psalmist’s declaration of God’s care.

Ps 139.9   Lord, if I spread out my wings towards the morning: or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me: and your right hand shall hold me.

God knows us, God is with us, and God made us wonderful. Amen.