Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 2 – Jn 2 1-11 – The wedding at Cana 

Many families have their ‘awkward-drinks-moment-at-the-wedding’ story. At Anna and Chris’s wedding last year, they thought they’d arranged everything perfectly for their reception – having taken a deep breath and gone for The Platinum Catering Package. But closer to the big day, they read the fine print a bit more closely and discovered that The Platinum Catering Package only included what you might call The Electroplated Drinks Package. They were horrified! It would mean such disgrace before all their friends and family. So they took the necessary steps to avoid such shame.

If you think we’re hyper-sensitive about the honour and shame attached to hospitality, just travel in a so-called developing country and see how central hospitality is. A poor family will put everything they have for the coming month before a stranger. But like the steward at the wedding at Cana, we can be blind to the love and care that lies behind the good things set before us.

So maybe the fact that Jesus begins his public ministry in John’s Gospel with an act of extreme hospitality should be no surprise. I was talking with a friend who thought there must have been plenty of other, higher causes looking for divine intervention. – but there you go; hospitality was the choice.

Water to wine at Cana is the first of Jesus’ seven signs in John’s Gospel ^{(water to wine, 3 healings, feeding 5,000, walking on water, and raising Lazarus)} – signs pointing beyond themselves to reveal his glory; signs to alert us see, to hear, and to believe. Ancient prophecies ^{Amos 9.13 and Joel 3.18} named an extravagant abundance of wine – the mountains dripping with wine – as being a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age. So for any with eyes to see, what happened at Cana that day dripped with significance.

Still, there are puzzling aspects to the story of Jesus’ first sign. One is the peculiar conversation with his Mother which sets it in motion. He’s not being rude when he answers her, Woman, what’s that to you and me. He’s just being clear about who does call the shots. God. And that strange expression – My hour has not yet come – will only become clear later on. Then there’s the fact that only the servants know what’s happened and where the wine came from. For everyone else, even the steward in charge of all the arrangements, the sign is only experienced by him and the guests as the mysterious, providential arrival of 500-700 litres of top-quality wine right when it’s needed. Why the secrecy?

Later in the reading, we get to hear that the disciples did know what had happened; ¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. So this sign did its work – albeit only in a pretty muted way. It pointed beyond itself to the revelation of God in Jesus, to help us truly see, hear, and believe. The disciples saw and believed. Now it’s our turn.

But what do we see and believe? We’re confronted by this story of extravagant abundance in a world plagued by poverty, disease, injustice and hunger – so often of human making. So we might look at this sign and get hung up on whether miracles happen, whether this made any difference to the big picture – any number of logical concerns. But that means we miss the main thing this sign points us to. And what’s that? It’s the fact that our in world, we’re frequently blessed with unexpected grace and we don’t recognise it when it happens. We may be looking the other way. That’s why the mindfulness movement these days is such an important idea. We need to have our eyes open to the signs, and see God’s love as the source of life’s good gifts. We need to see to believe.

We might also become aware of the power of prayer to make a difference even to a seemingly hopeless situation. Jesus’ Mother joined those dots; her prayer was simply to say what was wrong. And for God, the mutual honour of hospitality was a good enough reason to respond. So let me conclude with a prayer written for today in another seemingly hopeless situation; this time, one of abused hospitality.

A Prayer of Defiant Hope – Written by Safina Stewart for Aboriginal Sunday 2025

God of Justice, help us engage.
This land is stained with blood and tears,
But your love defies all apathy and despair.
God of all time, help us believe.
This vast and ancient land sings with defiant hope,
Reveal the pathways to healing, connection and true community.
God of Mercy, help us hear.
The old people inspired and dared us to take a tangible stand,
Our First Nations family call for we, the Australian church, to uplift and pray.
God of Grace, help us represent.
Shine your guiding light on our nation’s darkest moments
That we might be a part of the freedom story in your mysterious kingdom.
God of Hope, help us grow.
Sink our roots deep to weather any storms
Help us stand in our birthright and inheritance
as we sing with defiant hope of your faithfulness and love. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

The Baptism of our Lord – Isa 43 1-7 Lk 3 15-33

John’s baptism of repentance meant crossing the Jordan River. ^{Jn 1.28} African-American spirituals about that crossing are about entering life in God’s nearer presence – receiving God’s gracious rescue from the oppression of slavery because God loves them. And that’s what John’s baptism offered; a return from alienation into true belonging, embraced in God’s love. (We had an experience of unexpected grace when we crossed the Jordan – fee-free border crossings!)

There is a crossing of the Jordan referred to in today’s reading from Isaiah which promises freedom from slavery. And the reason for this offer is again God’s love. You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you, says God. Today’s passage from Isaiah has been crafted with amazing care to focus the whole speech on this one, central message… “You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.” Such a focus; such an emphasis! Why?

The oracles from this part of the book of Isaiah ^{(40.1–44.23)} are set in a time when the Hebrew people had been in exile as captive slaves in Babylon for about forty years. Into this hopeless situation, the prophet Isaiah speaks these words of comfort and blessing. But how can a demoralised people hear such words? Isaiah goes to great lengths to make sure they do. 43.³…I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. ⁴Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you, I give peoples in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. But why? What for? I can’t help worrying about how the Egyptians, the Ethiopians and other North Africans fare in this arrangement. And nor can I help thinking about all my Palestinian friends and colleagues preaching on this passage later today with Gaza at war and over four million of their compatriots in their eighth decade of exile from the very same homeland. Is this passage as exclusive and élitist as it sounds?

And to complicate things more, it’s one thing preaching to a downtrodden, exiled people about their divine right to their homeland – that’s what Isaiah did, and it’s what my Palestinian colleagues will do later today too. But it’s quite another thing for me to be preaching on the subject of divine right to a land in a situation where we’re on the other side of the fence.

And yet both of us – oppressed and oppressor – are addressed by the same scriptures; all of us must listen for the voice of God speaking to us, even through passages like this, abused in the name of Apartheid, militant Zionism and colonial Australia. How can we hear God’s voice – all of us?

In the Bible, there are some passages which we call normative; key passages which unlock the rest of the scriptures. The key passage in this case is Genesis 12:1-3. ¹Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The Land is one of several blessings God promises to Abram’s descendants. And among this list of blessings is the reason for them – I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will (imperative) be a blessing … in you all the families (species) of the earth shall be blessed. God let the Hebrew people cross the Jordan River into the land after the Exodus from Egypt so that [they would] be a blessing; so that in [them] all the families of the earth [would] be blessed.

And this is the key which unlocks today’s passage from Isaiah. Through the prophet Isaiah, God promised the Hebrew people that they would return from the exile in Babylon; that again, they would cross the Jordan River. ^43.2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. The reference to the crossing reminds them of the purpose of God’s rescue. They may return so that [they] will be a blessing; so that in [them] all the families of the earth [will] be blessed. God’s purpose for this people that he loved, and loves, remains the same; that ultimately, through them, the divine love which God has for all families of the earth might be revealed.

And that brings us to today – the feast of the Baptism of our Lord Jesus. Baptism was a Jewish initiation ritual which John the Baptist made a restatement of those earlier entries into the Promised Land. To receive John’s baptism, Jesus and others had to go to the other side of the river. John’s baptism meant bringing Jesus back from this symbolic exile through the waters of the Jordan again; back into the Land.

Jesus and John did what they did in fulfilment of God’s command to Abram. This Baptism – this entering the Land – was a gift from God given so that all families of the earth would come to know God’s blessing. And it is the constant prayer of the Church that we will fulfil this destiny. The birth, upbringing, baptism, ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus say he enters our exile so that by following him, and leading others to do so too, all families of Earth might enter the Land of God’s promise; that is life in all its fulness, and with all its attendant blessings.

As far as my beloved Palestine and Israel are concerned, I ask your prayer that the three descendant tribes of Abraham who call that Land their home, Jews, Muslims and Christians, can hear God’s word to them, and particularly to each other: “You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.” And “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” And the reason, again, God’s love for each of them, and all of us. Amen

Rev’d Elizabeth McWhae

Feast of the Epiphany Sunday – Isaiah 60 1-6, Psalm 72 1-16, Ephesian 3 1-12, Matthew 2 1-12

Today is the feast of Epiphany. How many of you I wonder are thinking to yourselves what does epiphany mean? It is derived from the Greek and means manifestation or appearance. Since the Sth century the feast of Epiphany has been celebrated in the church as the feast which marks the manifestation of Jesus to the non-Jewish world, signified by the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem. Contrary to popular opinion the Magi were not kings but rather astrologers, dream interpreters, magicians and priests from a tribe of Medes in Persia. Bidden by their astrological findings they set out on a journey of faith to find the king who had been born king of the Jews. They did not come empty-handed but bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Let’s look a bit more closely at their gifts.

POINT 1

Christian tradition would have it that these 3 gifts are symbolic. The first gift of gold is a gift for a king. It thus symbolizes Christ’s kingship. He is king of the Jews. The second gift of frankincense is a gift for a deity. It thus symbolizes Christ’s divinity as the Son of God. The third gift of myrrh is a gift for one who will die. Thus it symbolizes the redemptive suffering of Jesus on the cross. To my way of thinking there should have been one more gift given, a gift that symbolized Jesus’ humanity, but I suppose that was obvious to the Magi as they worshipped the baby who was born of Mary.

POINT 2

What are we to make of the Magi’s visit? Surely they must have been a bit taken aback, finding this baby with his parents not in a palace, but in a humble dwelling, not born of wealthy and prominent parents but from peasant stock. I can’t help thinking that they must have had second thoughts. Maybe they thought they had followed the wrong star. But this doesn’t appear to be the case. We are told that when they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house they saw the child with Nary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Now this was an act of faith of great magnitude. How did they know that this baby was the king of the Jews? Where there any Jews there celebrating his arrival, apart from his parents? No. Was everyone flocking to see him? No. Where were the scribes and the pharisees who were expecting their long awaited Messiah? Nowhere in sight. It must have been a peculiar scene when you stop to think about it. Apparently these Magi could see with the eyes of faith what the Jewish religious elite could not see. That the Son of God had come into the world as a powerless, dependent baby who would in time grow and mature in wisdom and favour with God and with men and women.

POINT 3

And isn’t life often like that. Just when we are not expecting it, God pops up in the most unlikely of places. Where do we encounter these moments of God’s epiphany in our lives? Are we like the Magi who are able to correctly interpret God’s manifestation to us? Or are we blind to the many and varied manifestations of God in our midst, like the scribes and pharisees? Is there any room for the mystic in us or are we cold hard skeptics who will only believe something if we see it for ourselves. The scribes and pharisees saw what the Magi saw and yet they did not see. Why? Because faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The Magi had this sort of faith. Is this the sort of faith that we have?

POINT 4

You see, the Bible is not just a book of stories about events that happened long ago. It is much more than that. The story of the Magi is meant to do much more than remind us of a time in the past, it reminds us of the present as well. We live in what people are now calling a post-christian civilization in the West. Increasing numbers of people do not know Christ or live as though he ever existed. Religion is of little interest to them. So the West has become alot like Herod in our story, it wants to pretend interest in the newborn king, but really it wants to eradicate him. Those of us who maintain faith in this Jesus are in the minority, we are like the Magi who go to worship him and hopefully bring what gifts we have to offer, our lives, our time, our resources. But there are only a few of us. Meanwhile the rest of society is busy going about its own business. They probably think that we’re a bit odd at times, and no doubt we are, taking this God stuff far too seriously, they say. Well, somebody has to, don’t they. That’s what the Magi were on about. And that is what we are on about. God did not manifest Godself to the world two thousand years ago in the baby born at Bethlehem and then exit this world. No, God made an epiphany, a manifestation, an appearance then, and God is still making manifestations now, in this day and age. Like the Magi who were on a journey of faith, so too are we. And like the Magi, we too should not be all that surprised if God does the unexpected. God is in the habit of doing the unexpected, whoever expected the incarnation. And like the Magi, we too are called to worship the very same king of the Jews that they worshipped. Only we are more fortunate than them, in that we know much more about this king than they probably ever did. We know that this king is still alive. That crucifixion and death could not put an end to him. That he offers us life in all its fullness. That he teaches us about reconciliation and hope and justice and peace and that he will never leave or forsake us.

CONCLUSION:

So the story of the feast of Epiphany is that the story never ends, instead it goes on and on. Two thousand years after the event wise men and women still come to offer their worship and their gifts to this Jesus. And this Jesus is still made manifest in our lives, and the communities we live in, and in our world. With the eyes of faith, given to us by the Christ child, we too can have an epiphany.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas 1C – 1 Sam 1, Ps 148, Col 3 12-17, Lk 2 41-52

It’s been a very busy week in the Church calendar. Wednesday was Christmas, of course, and you’d think that was plenty for one week. But the next day was the feast of Stephen, that feisty new deacon who preached such a confronting sermon that his listeners killed him for it, making him the Church’s first martyr. Then Friday was the feast of our patron saint, John, Apostle and Evangelist. And yesterday was Holy Innocents’ Day – recalling all the babies in Bethlehem that Herod ordered to be massacred in the hope that Jesus would be one of them.

In our time, where that same sort of intolerance and violence is such a real threat in so much of the world, the Church still has to confront much that is wrong. And our faith needs to be mature enough and articulate enough to confront it both effectively and transformingly. We have to be able to call out intolerance and violence with integrity. And we need to convince so many people to resist it with us, that vulnerable people are given real hope for change. We’re called to embody and proclaim a robust message of peace and justice. … But I’m not confident that the Church in our type of country is up to this; nor confident that we’re conscious it’s part of our job description.

That’s why, in my weekly, on St John’s day, I asked the question, What do you think St John would want this parish to be when we grow up? It’s helpful that two of today’s readings have us subconsciously asking the same question about the young boys we met in them. We just spent some time with the little boy Samuel whose mother left him, dedicated to God’s service in the shrine at Shiloh with Eli the priest. We also read about Jesus failing to join his family on their journey home from Passover in Jerusalem. Instead, for three days, he sat in on the theological debates of the Temple teachers, astounding them with his understanding and his answers. What on earth were these boys going to be when they grow up? What would you predict from the information we’ve got before us today? Damaged delinquents? No. Luckily, we know what follows.

Sometimes when you do a self-development course, the facilitator will give you a task of mapping out the highs and lows of your life or your occupation. We’re meant to think about the ways those highs and lows have shaped the way we’ve turned out. I’m not sure Samuel would have given a high watermark to the day his mother delivered him to God’s service at Shiloh, pretty well as soon as he was weaned. Yet he grew up to be an extraordinarily feisty, courageous prophet who confronted kings and crowds. He could recall a nation to their duty to God and to each other, and get away with it.

And what about Jesus – would he have marked his three days debating in the Temple as a high point?

I’ve sat in on a Rabbi preparing young people for their transition to adulthood and it’s no picnic. The give and take is something that makes parliamentary question time look pretty tame. It’s part of forming young people into adults who can truly give an account of their convictions. The only convincing parallels I’ve experienced in the Anglican Communion are in the Church of South India and in Mandarin congregations. But our culture tends towards a softly, softly approach. And we don’t have young people being presented here for spiritual formation at the moment anyway.

So the question remains for us: What do you think our patron St John would want this parish to be when we grow up? If he asked us to map the highs and lows of our parish’s 185 odd years of existence, there’d be many. But for the moment, I think of something from our more recent history. Fr Don Wallace opened up the rectory and the hall to homeless boys back in the ‘60s and ’70s. It wasn’t without its hiccups! It led to the building of the shelter in the 1980’s and the growth of St John’s Youth Services, now forming about 70 young people in apartments in the city, and the foyer at Port Adelaide.

Fr Don is still remembered about the district doorknocking in his black cassock to raise funds to keep the parish afloat. And yet, moved by compassion, he took the risk he did with the homeless boys. And not just through the church. Around 1960, he and his first wife Gwen adopted 12-year-old Harold Thomas into their family when St Francis’ House at Semaphore closed. We still have the table in the dining room where Harold designed the Aboriginal flag. Our parish history says the SSM arrived and ‘saved the parish’ from closure. But look at what was achieved when we were on our knees!

Some people are still here who remember this, but most of us are latecomers, and so the question is a new one for us. What do you think our patron St John would want this parish to be when we grow up? Samuel was dedicated to God’s service before he was even conceived. And twelve-year-old Jesus stunned his parents with his declaration of God’s prior call on his time. What’s it to be with you and me – with St John’s?

Our collect prayer says God is ‘God of community’. God’s community is one which embraces – it doesn’t exclude. That’s why the Psalm has us calling the whole creation into communion with God. That’s why the reading from Colossians is so focussed on the empathic, welcoming, forgiving choices and decisions we need to make to treat another person with respect. Because that’s what it takes to build a transforming, Christlike community. We Christians are called to grow into outward-looking people who can bring the peace of God to the world. We are to commit to inclusive, open, creative community. We’re called to have open borders with wonderful gifts to share and receive, and a genuine desire to do just that. What do you think our patron St John would want this parish to be when we grow up?  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas Day 2024 – Luke 2:1-20

Come rain, hail, shine, heatwave or flood, babies will be born. They’re not going to stop for anyone or anything. It’s as if they’re telling us: Here I come, ready or not. If you don’t think you have that world outside ready for me, now’s the time! So let me place that order once more. When I get out, I need one promising future, one safe environment, lots of good food and one loving community. Got all that?! Now you’ve got fifteen minutes to get it organised, ’cause here I come!”

It’s shocking so many babies don’t get those good things. We could despair at it all; tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do about it. But the birth of Jesus, born as one of a subject people in a land under military occupation tells us to think differently. Christmas demands that we change our perspective. Christmas calls us to see the birth of a child as a defiant word from God: a defiant assertion of hope where we fear to hope; a defiant assertion of trust in humanity, even where we’re afraid to trust; and a defiant assertion of love, even where we’ve come to fear that love won’t really change anything. Christmas demands that we change our perspective.

Every baby is a word of hope that God speaks to the world; a word of trust that God speaks to the world. And a baby is patently someone that God loves. We might fear that nothing’s changed. We might feel like giving up. But God won’t. Just as the sun shines and the rain falls on everyone alike, God sends babies to be born to us regardless of our circumstances. We might focus on the tragedy of a birth in a refugee camp or a war zone. We might ask God why this is allowed to happen. But the only answer we get to that question is more babies. A most eloquent answer.

Isn’t God paying attention? Maybe not, because God is busy being with the baby as it’s born. People often ask where God is when all the catastrophes and suffering of the world are allowed to happen. That birth of a refugee baby is God’s answer. This baby’s birth tells us that God is right in the thick of the world’s catastrophes and suffering; God is there, crying with all the defiant self-righteousness of every baby that ever had the right to embraced and comforted in a peaceful, loving place.

Bethlehem’s baby tells us that God will never listen to pragmatists. God is too busy trusting us; trusting us to care for the vulnerable and the weak. God is so determined that we’ll come good that God becomes one of us. God becomes that vulnerable baby Jesus and through him, reminds us to work for a world that’s fit for any baby!

In a world where so many millions of infants are born in such conditions as Jesus was, we can hear in his story a story which changes our perspective on all of them, and brings a word of hope? Where is God? Today, God meets us, born as a human child.

God is born in the infant Jesus. His birth is a defiant word which confronts things that we seem to accept as inevitable for ourselves and many of our fellow creatures. The baby Jesus confronts the fact that we live in a world plagued with poverty and hunger, oppression and warfare, genocide and environmental destruction. We hear world leaders – we hear our own leaders – talking of these evils as though they are somehow inevitable. We sometimes even get told that it might hurt our national interest too much if we were to confront these evils frankly for what they are.

This baby, and through him every baby, is God’s word of truth to us that such evils are not inevitable. They can be confronted. And not with fearful caution, but with the reckless kind of determined hope that sends a baby to be born in a land under military occupation. The birth of Jesus under such conditions calls us urgently to confront the evils and injustices of our world. Because every baby’s birthright is to receive the love of God through the nurture of others; not to suffer and die at the whim of some alien, anonymous power. Every child, every animal or bird or reptile that is born, every plant that grows is a word from God which says what can be. We were each born to be a sign of God’s love, hope and truth. Our divine birthright is to make this real through the respect and love we afford all God’s creatures.

The golden flame of the Christ Candle at the centre of the Advent Wreath – the tiny beacon we’ve been waiting to see – it’s a symbol of hope which defies despair. It’s a sign of trust which God has cherished for each of us as babies, and still cherishes for us now. Today, we have shared this light of hope, of trust and love. We’ve read and sung its story. And today when we go out, we’re commissioned to do so with the purpose of carrying this light of hope, trust and love to God’s world.

This baby is God’s defiant assertion of hope where we see none. This baby is God’s assertion that trust will live even where deception protects injustice. This baby is the Word of God’s love spoken to each of us, calling us love each other. In Christ’s birth, God became one of us, and reminds us that every atom of creation is charged with the divine hope, trust and love that God reposes in us. So where is God? Here in us. That’s what we discover anew as we greet the Christ child today. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas Eve 2024

We’re here to reconnect tonight. Some have come a long way to reconnect with family and faith-community – to reconnect with a cherished tradition and sing much-loved carols – maybe even to reconnect with ourselves after the demands and upheavals of a busy year. All this reconnecting happens because God has reached out to us – over and over again – but most completely in the one whose birth we’re here to celebrate tonight; Jesus; Emmanuel; God with us.

The Christ-child, Jesus, is God who has come to be with us. Jesus is the reason for all our journeys to this place. God’s gift of the Christ-child lies behind the spirit we say characterises Christmas-time – a spirit of loving generosity, of hearts opened wide in care and good will, hearts opened wide in hope, and some hearts re-opened to the healing work of grief. What is it about God coming to us in Jesus that can set so much goodness loose? It’s all in the story, so let’s see what Luke’s told us.

Jesus is born in a little province ruled by far-away Rome. Roman imperial rule was all about power, control and taxation. It’s a startling backdrop for tonight’s story; because God comes to be in the world with us as one of Rome’s victims! As Rome is sucking power into itself, God gives power away by coming as a fragile infant. While Rome is busy dividing people to conquer them for its own gain, God comes to be with us in person, to connect with us, and to free us to connect with each other.

Jesus is our way to know God because he is God with us; God who calls us to freedom. The story of his coming begins before his birth. His birth under Roman rule echoes ancient Israel’s repeated grief – living under foreign domination, but hoping for God’s promised Messiah to come to free them. Luke’s story connects Joseph and the pregnant Mary with the town of Bethlehem, whose famous child, the shepherd boy David, had become Israel’s most revered king 1,000 years earlier.

Connecting Jesus with David echoes huge expectations. Think of what we just heard in Isaiah 9.⁵…all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. ⁶For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;…⁷His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness … It’s a prophecy for our time! What a dream! Down-trodden, colonised people all over the world light up with hope at these words. A mighty warrior will lead us to freedom from our oppressors!

But as soon as Luke has raised these tremendous hopes, he seems to dash them, telling us that the baby is born in astoundingly humble circumstances. …she laid him in a manger because there was no space/room in the room/inn. For the royal child that Isaiah expected, it’s a hard beginning to swallow. What Luke’s saying is that God came to connect with real people living real lives; God showed no interest in royal power, wealth or privilege. Luke underlines this with the angel announcing the birth to some nearby shepherds – not to the lord mayor of Bethlehem; not to high religious officials; but to shepherds! Shepherds were generally regarded as dishonest people because they grazed their flocks on other people’s lands. They were prohibited from being judges or witnesses. So God’s not fussed with social acceptability either, or even the credibility of the first witnesses to Jesus’ birth.

God has come in Jesus to connect with real people living real lives. God doesn’t wait for humanity to get it together and be good or godly. God has come to connect with us regardless. To call us to become ourselves; God’s beloved children – people who aren’t measured by our success or our wealth or our importance or our social acceptability. Our true selves are measured by our relationships – particularly how we care for the little people that God loves; how we look after each other.

The rescue we heard Isaiah prophesy tonight was read to mean rescue from external enemies – like the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Romans. The Christmas message is that Jesus has come to rescue us from something deeper; from our reflection of God’s image. We’re born to reflect clear images of what God is like – the way Jesus does. But that image is incomplete in us. I’ve heard us described as like jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces or pictures that’ve been through a shredder.

Jesus was born to help us identify and place the missing pieces of our jigsaw. Jesus is our patient friend who knows what the original of the shredded picture looks like. So he can help us assemble the shredded pieces to be whole. We see what the true picture looks like in his life. He has come to be with us so we can work together and reconnect the bits; the full picture of ourselves, shaped and coloured by his kindness, generosity and shared love. At its heart are the warm colours and lights of care and good will – colours that give hope to this broken world he came to save.

God gave us the baby Jesus to save us from alienation and brokenness – to help us truly reflect the perfect image of God’s love for the world. And we reflect that when we humbly and simply give ourselves to him to let him reconnect us with who we are, with each other, and with him, our God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Advent 4 C –  Lk 1 46-55, Lk 1 39-45

Today’s message is that God works most powerfully in our weaknesses, not our strengths. It’s a core teaching of the Church. But even in Christian communities, I hear people being told to focus on their strengths if they really wanted to succeed. Yet we’re told God works most powerfully in our weaknesses, not our strengths. I find it’s true, particularly in ministry. Great moments can come if I stop thinking my gifts are indispensable to what God wants to get done. I’m set free to listen to God. When I acknowledge my weakness, another way might become apparent to me, or I step back and the way opens for someone else to do what comes naturally.

In parish life in practical terms, for me it means I try not to be controlling or managerial. That would confine the parish’s ministry within the horizons of my vision. Instead, I try to encourage a culture of openness to God’s values where we all risk God’s leading. So we study Scripture together to become people who recognise and respond to God’s promptings; promptings that might come to any of us. Do you wonder if Scripture tells us that God works through weakness and not strength? Remember the central symbol of our faith is our crucified Saviour. And we see this God-is-most-present-in-our-weakness theme throughout the story of Jesus’s life – even from before his birth. It’s what we see in today’s Gospel.

Today we met two first-time mums-to-be; Mary and Elizabeth. Now if God were in the life-coaching business, I’m pretty sure consideration would have been given to choosing experienced mums for today’s two babies, John and Jesus. There’d have been a worldwide search for mums with a proven track-record of raising A-grade gifted and talented children; supermums fit to raise tomorrow’s little leaders. But that’s not how God operates. Elizabeth and Mary had no prior experience of raising their own children. Mary, maybe shell-shocked, set off on a four-day journey to be with Elizabeth. There’s the God’s-strength-in-our-weakness thing. In Mary, God picked a woman who knew she couldn’t go it alone; she looked for connection with someone else; she found strength by being with someone else in the same boat.

So lesson one for today: this God’s-strength-in-our-weakness thing reveals its true meaning when we’re in community. Lone-ranger spirituality is just silly. Our full humanity is only found in relationship; in community. The quality of our life is not measured in our personal accomplishments, but rather in our belonging.

That’s a message it’s almost impossible for people in our developed-world societies to hear. We live in a media world that tells us home and family are really just a launching pad from which we rocket off into a stellar career, armed with all the competitive edges we need to carve out status for ourselves. That’s incredibly unhealthy. The real heart of being human is found in belonging – like we belong here – among the people who know our weaknesses best. Mary set off to face her predicament together with someone who’d know it from the inside.

So Mary went to Elizabeth’s home. And when Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, her baby leapt in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’ Mary responded by saying, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.’ They were clear it was God who’d done something wonderful; not them. God chose to work these wonders through these ordinary, very vulnerable women.

But it’s not going to be easy. The woman who’ll cradle her newborn in a feeding trough will also see that child of hers die on a cross. And that’s the other lesson about this God’s-strength-in-our-weakness thing. Letting go and letting God might sound easy, but it’s not. Accepting God’s calling doesn’t stop the death of our loved ones; it doesn’t give us the power to stop a world system where the strong seem to crush the weak; where the proud and mighty bray as though the Earth is theirs, and where, at least for a time, it almost seems as if their delusion will prevail.

But our Gospel opens us to the Advent hope. Jesus, who swallowed up the power of this evil once and for all in his death; this same Jesus rose from the dead, and he will return and bring forth in us the resurrection life he has nurtured and cherished in our hearts. He’ll bring it forth throughout the Earth – and our hearts will leap for joy like Elizabeth’s baby on the day of his coming. … So we approach the close of the Advent season in the knowledge that we’re waiting; we’re keeping watch; we’re staying awake; we’re getting ready to meet him on the day of his coming. Today’s lesson from Mary and Elizabeth and God is that none of us is too old, too young, too weak, too silly, too unqualified or inexperienced to be called by God to change things here on Earth. When God calls us, if we can believe that even we can answer and be ready to say yes, then we’ll have used this Advent season well.   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Advent 3C – Luke 3 7-18

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, You offspring of vipers! Imagine being greeted by your preacher like that. Sometimes you’re confronted by street preachers in Rundle Mall; preachers who yell at passers-by and hold up placards telling how hot it is in hell; preachers who attack the lifestyles and life choices of particular groups in our community and pronounce harsh words of judgement on them – preachers who present themselves as prophetic voices.

But prophets in the Bible preached moral standards more for the benefit of people inside their faith community. They told their people to be loyal to God, and to look after others with justice and mercy; both insiders and outsiders. ^{Eg Mal 3.5. Ez 47.22-23} So if I were listening for Biblical prophecy on the street, I’d hope it would champion sad, needy and lonely people like refugees and outcasts. You’d want these people to hear on the streets that in the community of Christ, they’ll find belonging and care; that in the community of Christ they’ll find people who support them in their need; God’s people, trying to live according to the example of Jesus.

If we forget we’re called to be that sort of community, preachers have to remind us to turn back; to repent. A major lesson in today’s Gospel is that we can all start over again from exactly where we are; no matter how messy. We can turn to live a more God-centred life. God meets us where we are, ready to transform us and lead us into a fuller life. Today this message of repentance – turning back to God – gets fleshed out in very direct language. John the Baptist preached this repentance in three ways.

He began by warning of potential judgement and he called us insiders to bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. ^(7-9) John’s preaching assumed that the people who came down to hear him were insiders; believers; or should be. John says our faith must shape what we do with our lives; it must result in our lives bearing fruit so we can nourish and strengthen the lives of people around us – both insiders and outsiders.

The second aspect of John’s preaching concerned the ethics of power and responsibility. He told powerful people that they should live justly and not misuse that power for their own enrichment or to put others down. ^(10-14) He specifically addressed tax collectors and soldiers. So we can imagine the sort of people he’d speak to today; people who can influence the stability and security of needy people’s lives. John was speaking to people like you and me.

Finally, John told them who it is that we must turn to face in our repentance: Jesus, the one who is to come; the one who will baptise us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ^(15-18) Can we wonder for a moment what it would feel like to turn to face Jesus?

The people who went out to receive John’s baptism were insiders, and they seemed full of hope. But was their hope in tune with John’s message? John had called them into the wilderness to remind them how Moses had once led God’s people into the wilderness. Following Moses freed them from slavery, but it was a rocky road. Would John be like that? Would God use John to free them from the Romans? For an answer, John meets them with those shocking words. You offspring of vipers! Did they come to John with the wrong questions – the wrong expectations?

Like many a good teacher, John is very tough from the word go. These people might think of themselves as the children of Moses and Abraham, but John interrupts their complacency to tell them they’re actually living like descendants of the serpent; the tempter of the Genesis 3 story – that’s why he calls them You offspring of vipers! Reminding them of the temptation story warned them against presuming on God’s grace; the idea that we’re God’s children, so whatever comes from God is simply ours for the taking. It’s an attitude of entitlement which John tackles head on.

His style of preaching is very difficult for us to hear. He gets right in your face. Nowadays, if people come to us to ask for baptism, we smile and speak gently to them. But is John a bit more direct than we are? He warns that God requires honest repentance, transformed lives and fruitfulness. We say all that in our baptism services too, and our candidates for baptism and their sponsors say they’ll fulfil all those requirements in the context of the church community. But so many are missing now? Have I failed to make sure they get the seriousness of what they’re promising? Should I try out John’s preaching style on my next baptismal family; You offspring of vipers!? I don’t know that it’d work.

So is there a solid lesson for us in today’s Gospel? Yes. There is a definite message today. First, we’re God’s community. Not our own; God’s. And second, God calls us to keep on bearing fruit for those who need it. God knows we can – God believes in us. And we can; and it’s always a team effort. None of us is exempt. We have to grow and multiply our missions because the needs are growing and multiplying. But before that can happen, we have to turn to God and honestly face both those needs and our abundance, and decide together to respond. There is no other option.

Advent reminds us that everyone in need bears the image and likeness of our God. We meet Jesus, the child of God, in each of these we’re called to serve. We must be ready for him to come to us, today and at any time; ready with our fruit, grain and water ready to share. For we never want to see him arrive here to find a barren tree or an empty plate or cup. We could never leave any child in such need, could we? Amen

Rev’d Ben Falcon

Advent 2 (2) -Malachi 3:1–4; Luke 1:68–79; Philippians 1:1–11; Luke 3:1–6

Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell!

These are the Four Last Things that traditionally set the themes for the Four Sundays of the Advent Season. Most churches nowadays theme their Advent Sundays as Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love – slightly less intimidating topics!

But we do see in our Advent readings an echo of these weighty, intimidating themes of old.

“Prepare the way of the Lord,” cries John the Baptist, “hills are being flattened, valleys are being raised up”.

Confess your sins and be ready to meet your God!

Being ready to meet God is a heavy thing! We’ll hear more from John the Baptist next week, but already we’re getting the message that he has no time for complacency or self-satisfaction. There is an urgency to his message and ministry.

Malachi in our reading from the Old Testament warns that God is like a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap. God will refine us like Silver and Gold is refined.

And here the harshness of judgment is tempered – we see the balance of God’s love and judgment. There is no room for glossing over our brokenness, no room for self-satisfaction and self-deception. But there is no reason to wallow in miserable self-abasement and self-pity either. God sees the silver and the gold in us. God wants to bring that beauty to its full perfection. God can see that we are truly made for Goodness and Godness, and God wishes to burn away all that obscures that Godness in us.

In one sense the warning words of John the Baptist in our gospel reading are directed at us, we need to repent to receive the forgiveness of sins that God freely offers. In another sense, we are here to channel John the Baptist to those around us. We are to, in the words of our canticle, ‘Go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.’

And the canticle finishes with these exquisitely beautiful words,

In the tender compassion of our God:
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death:
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

It’s not doom and gloom about God coming to punish us. God’s judgment is needed on our world and on us as imperfect individuals. But that judgment is purgative not  punitive, merciful not malicious.

God is a God of tender compassion, bringing the warm, welcoming light of dawn to dispel the darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace. There is no escaping that light. It will flood our world as surely as every sunrise does each day. Things will be revealed as they really are. We will see ourselves as we really are. The brokenness of our society will be seen as it really is. This is a serious thing but a joyful thing, a hope filled prospect. Our world is broken. It needs the warmth of God to flood it. It needs the cleansing fire of God’s judgment to burn away the bad and bring to full lustre the good, the true, and the beautiful that we glimpse now behind the dross of sin.

I was telling a colleague earlier this week about the moment I first realised our society didn’t do enough to support people in need. I grew up naively thinking that if someone lost their work or became homeless there was always a government agency or charity like Anglicare to help them out and get them back on track. I am one of seven siblings, and whilst mum often used to bellow at us to stop wasting water and get out of the shower, we didn’t have a materially deprived childhood. There was always enough food, mostly bought in bulk, and we never had to worry about a roof over our heads.

In one of my first jobs (I think I was just 18), I used to catch two buses to work. I’d get one bus from the Paradise Interchange and ride the O-Bahn into the city, then catch another bus from Currie Street out to my workplace west of the city in Flinders Park.

Anyway, one morning I was standing on Currie St waiting for my second bus and noticed a teenage boy sitting with piece of cardboard asking for money. So I bobbed down and chatted to him, asked what was happening for him and why he was stuck on the street. He told me he’d had to leave home because of family violence, and he couldn’t go back. I asked if he’d been to Hutt St Centre or Anglicare, that there must be someone who could help him. But he said he’d tried everywhere and no one had somewhere safe for him to go. My bus pulled up so I hastily gave him the cash I had on me, and jumped on the bus. And then I sat on my bus seat and cried. I had never before been confronted with the harsh reality of poverty or the harsh reality that our society doesn’t do enough to help people in real crisis.

That moment was one of the things that made me consider a job at Anglicare in 2017. As with any human organisation, it has had its good moments and its bad. But it has been a privilege to spend 8 years working for an organisation that tries to embody the love and mercy of God as we have found it in Jesus.

Our overarching vision as an organisation is ‘Justice, Respect, and Fulness of Life for All’ taken from Jesus’ words in John 10:10 “I came that they may have life and have it in its fulness.” So, whilst we do take funding from the government to run many of our services, we are seeking to embody a Christian way of serving those in need. We advocate for and with those whose voices aren’t being heard. We do what we can to respond to those whom society has overlooked, like that poor young boy I met on Currie Street years ago. And we do that work in partnership with the church at different levels and in a variety of ways. Anglicare is your organisation, an Anglican, Christian organisation, here to embody the values we share in Christ.

There are many areas where we still don’t have the resources to respond to some of the intractable issues in our society. We are building new social and affordable homes every year, but we can’t fix the housing crisis on our own. Each year we make available suitable homes for families escaping domestic violence but this program is swamped by demand and we have to regularly turn away people we cannot help. We can’t fix domestic and family violence on our own.

Advent reminds us of these dark problems that remain in our society. Advent helps us be humble, knowing that only the coming of Christ can dispel the darkness in our hearts and the darkness in our world. Our readings today have introduced the ministry of John the Baptist, so let me conclude with John.

We read in John 1, “there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The True Light which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

May we, like John, find ways in our individual and collective lives to bear witness to that light which is coming into the world to enlighten everyone.

In the tender compassion of our God:
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death:
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.  Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Advent Sunday – Year C – Jer 33 14-16, Ps 25 1-10, 1 Th 3 9-13, Lk 21 25-38 

How do you like it when you’re kept waiting unexpectedly? If you’ve made a time to meet someone and they don’t turn up, do you feel inconvenienced? Or do you worry if they’re okay? Or do you wonder if you wrote down the wrong day in your diary? For most of us, how we feel about waiting is what we make of it. We can get annoyed; we can seize the opportunity to get something done; or we can just close our eyes and stop being busy for once. What do we do with our waiting time is our choice. And usually, the delay is seldom a really serious problem for us?

But for many millions of people around the world, waiting is many orders of magnitude more serious than it is for us. In a war zone or where people are suffering from a famine, waiting on decisions made by complete strangers is a daily burden that plagues people’s every waking minute. In the Sudan and in Gaza, right now, both violence and famine are a constant, brutal reality being deliberately inflicted on millions of innocent families – all of them waiting for help, waiting desperately for peace, waiting for someone to rescue them.

And closer to home, Pacific Islanders attended the recent COP29 UN climate conference to tell again their stories of disappearing homes and salt-poisoned crops, only to be drowned out by the hundreds of agents and lobbyists representing fossil fuel industries from countries like ours. Our Island neighbours cry out – How long must we wait? God, who will do something about this? Our own waiting is trivial compared with these good people’s waiting for an end to such shameless injustices.

Advent waiting is about their sort of waiting – the waiting that cries out for an end to tragedy born of greed – greed for money, greed for power – and perpetuated by the determination to keep that money and power, regardless of how it’s been gained, and regardless of the suffering it causes. Advent is about the kind of waiting that is open-eyed to this sin that poisons the world. And yet at the same time, Advent is about a kind of waiting that’s filled with the most extraordinary hope. We heard that in Jeremiah’s words of hope to the exiles in Babylon this morning.

Jeremiah promises exiled slaves a righteous king of their own, one who will govern them with justice back in their own home – the dearest wish of every one of them. But when? For now, the suffering continues. But there’s hope. It’s something that’s profoundly true for people of faith. It may sound tenuous, but it really makes a huge difference. The difference seems to me that with hope, you can start getting ready.

Today’s Gospel speaks like this too. Nature will violently mark the coming of the Son of Man. And we are provoking Nature to do just that now; just ask our Islander neighbours. But even so, in the Gospel, we hear the voice of hope too.

Advent has its roots in the experience of the very earliest Christians. After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, they waited and prepared for Jesus’s second coming. They believed he’d come again in their own lifetime, and at his coming again, all the ills of the world would be cured. 2,000 years later, we tend to respond to the delay in Christ’s return by redirecting our focus. Rather than looking for the healing to come at the end of time, we tend to focus on our own personal end; our death.

So what are we called to do? Roll up our sleeves and get ready, or sit and wait on God? Both actually. We need time to listen, to hear; to wait. And we also need time to get ready. Advent is that time, and we must protect it, so we’re not repeatedly ambushed by immediate, insistent calls on our attention. Silence and listening for God are two rare commodities in the type of world we live in today. But the Church isn’t called just to sit and wait. We’re called urgently to gather others into the family of hope. Jesus said to do that. If our hope is of such significance, then it’s vital that we share it with others who don’t know that hope.

As we wait this Advent for the coming of the Christ child, we’re also waiting for his coming again at the end of time. We’re waiting in hope in a world starved of hope; facing apocalypse. We’re called to share that hope urgently. God calls us to help people get ready with us. We are called to gather others into this family of hope; hope for eternal life; hope for a renewed creation; hope for justice, hope for peace, hope for plenty. So what are we waiting for? What are you waiting for?  Amen