Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Michaelmas – Ezek 1 4-12, Ps 138, Rev 12 7-12a, John 1 45-51

I felt a bit puzzled about where to begin with connecting the Season of Creation (SoC) and the feast of Michael and All Angels. But then I remembered a popular saying that ancient Jewish sages wrote in the Midrash. They said, There is not a single blade of grass on earth below that does not have an angel in the heavens above that strikes it and says to it: ‘Grow! ^{(Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit 10:6; Zohar, part I, 251a – https://www.sefaria.org/Bereshit_Rabbah.10.6?lang=bi)} If a blade of grass gets such angelic attention, it bodes well for the rest of us!

I’m a literalist when it comes to angels. I think they’re with us and they’re active. Our Guardian Angels work to help us grow deeper into God, who is both the source of our being, and our destination. I believe that for us and for any living creatures, to be whole, to thrive and to grow, we have to be connected with God who is the source of our being. Plants in the soil are icons of that spiritual reality for me. They grow from the source of their being who they find in the Earth, in water as a gift from the Heavens, and, as they grow towards the source of their being, in Sunlight.

I believe all of life’s connection with God is both a biological and a spiritual reality. We are physically connected to God through the created order which sustains our bodies every moment. We’re also connected by it spiritually to God. And angels play an active role in sustaining that connection. They act as spiritual messengers and much more. Angels work to connect us with the source of our being – the source of all life and growth – and to prepare us for the next steps on our journeys.

This is not to overlook our principal way of knowing and connecting with God through the Bible. The readings and hymns at Michaelmas can make us feel like tourists in an ancient, exotic world, untouched by the passage of time. ^{[OED ‘obs!’]} These readings and hymns seek to express this divine connection both literally and through myth – and there’s the same truth in both. It’s a connection with a reality greater than just ourselves – a connection through and alongside creation, and aided by angels and archangels – a connection with the divine source of our being. I think you’ll grant that this must call for extraordinary language and imagery.

So today, we travel in a realm of cosmology and imagery that we people in the so-called developed world find alien and bewildering. We’ve just seen Ezekiel’s vision of angels who follow the movement of the Spirit around a fiery throne. Each of them, with their four faces, represents both human and non-human life in the divine presence. I can understand how Ezekiel would sit as though stunned among his people for seven days after having this vision.^3.15

In this Season of Creation (SoC), I notice that the ratio of human to non-human life in Ezekiel’s vision sets humans among, rather than above, the lion, the ox and the eagle. We caught that same sense three weeks ago in Gen 2 as the various animals and birds, along with the woman, were created as partners to Adam rather than underlings. In Ezekiel’s vision, the angels represent non-human life in God’s presence alongside human life; not beneath us! That’s a SoC principle to embrace!

It all sounds glorious and positive, a living triad; God and earth-creatures and angels all getting along swimmingly. But we know that’s not the reality. Our planet is taking a hiding from one species. And it’s so severe that it seems Earth’s part in this living triad is in danger of collapse. How can this be happening on our watch?

Whether we think of this triad as something literal, or as a myth given to help us name the tragedy that’s unfolding doesn’t really figure. The tragedy is unfolding with such power and speed that nothing and no-one seems able to stand in its way. This week we see even the UNO is helpless. Malign forces are at work ruthlessly careless of the suffering and destruction they cause. AI is their latest embodiment. We fear that our time is getting shorter, and we’re already grieving for our children and grandchildren and the fellow creatures that we’re passing such a world on to.

Revelation says this is a cosmic battle that Christ wins. The forces of self-interest, deceit, accusation and rage, represented by the dragon and its messengers, are cast out by the power of self-sacrifice, community and faithful courage, represented by Michael and his angels and those redeemed by Christ’s blood. But Revelation also tells us that although victory has been won in Heaven, the battle is still being fought on Earth. We Christians are citizens of the already but not yet. Greedy self-interest, vengeful rage, false accusation and deceit are the enemy’s weapons that Earth now faces. We see these forces at work in exploitative systems and in the callous power-plays of would-be dictators; all brazenly on show at the UNO this past week.

So we struggle for ourselves and our neighbours, human and non-human, and indeed for life on Earth itself, which is under direct threat. We are aided by angels and archangels in this battle which is as much spiritual as it is physical. So on the one side, our calling is to become daily more like Christ; a self-giving, faithful people committed to his kindness, justice and truth in love. The natural outworking of that on the physical side is that we humbly live out our first calling which is to serve and preserve the Earth which has been given to all creatures. Because it’s here that we find God, in whom we live and move and have our being.  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Season of Creation 3 – Exod 16 2-15 – Matt 20 1-6

This wonderful parable turns our world upside down. It challenges our notion of fairness. That notion comes from our world where everything is exchanged. We like to see a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay; a fair price for things on sale. But our parable describes the kingdom of heaven as like this landowner, who is recklessly generous, regardless of anyone’s worthiness. This is Grace. And it’s shocking to us, because we tend to identify with the workers who toiled all day!

So what is it about our world that this parable turns upside down? It’s our idea that other people should earn their keep. Other people should be worthy of what they get. I get several emails a day from someone who writes to all the city churches reviling homeless people and charity collectors for being lazy parasites; people who don’t deserve their pensions or commissions. This attitude is getting spruiked on a national level now about refugees and Indigenous people being given undeserved handouts – as though it’s us who are being disadvantaged by this!

The first-hired workers told the landowner he’d made the last-comers equal to them. Was that really an outrage? How can people who have what they need want others to miss out? This parable challenges us with God’s grace. And in this Season of Creation, it’s time for us to take a step back and know that the Creator has placed us all on this bountiful Earth with no precondition that we’re worthy of it. Earth gives far more than anyone can desire or deserve; work all day or just one hour.

I’ve met people who do get this parable. I’ve said before that I used this parable to see if I could get an ESL class talking. It sure worked. Many in the class spoke; outraged at how ‘unfair’ and ‘arrogant’ the owner was to humiliate all the all-day workers. But then an elderly Vietnamese student stood up and said this. The owner of the vineyard knew that every one of the workers needed a day’s pay to feed their family that night. He gave to them all what each one needed. He was a good man! Need was met with scandalous Grace. The only natural / adequate / decent response can be gratitude.

What our readings say in this Season of Creation is that self-righteous entitlement and greed blind us to the Source of our Being, and so blind us to the purpose of our life here. In the Exodus reading, people who’d willingly chosen to follow Moses to freedom suddenly turned on him. But they’d seen the plagues sent on Egypt. The miracle of their escape through the Red Sea was only a couple of days behind them. They were loaded with gold and silver Egyptians had given them. They were freed slaves! And yet they whinged; where’s our food Moses? Where was their gratitude?

Their attitude of entitlement was deadly back then. And right now, industrial-scale greed and contempt for God’s miraculous gift of creation threatens the survival of life on Earth. Greed and entitlement shape our scandalised reaction to the parable, they’re a tragedy in the Exodus story, and they’re ruining life on Earth today.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. But our patron St John, in his first letter, refers to something called mortal sin. ^{1 John 5.16-17} He doesn’t give examples, but Church history has worked with this idea. Catholic teaching says mortal sin is 1. A serious trespass 2. which a person does with eyes open to what they’re doing, and 3. yet deliberately goes ahead with it. Mortal sin destroys charity in the human heart and turns us away from God, who is our ultimate end. That’s serious.

Two weeks ago, we saw in the creation story that our end – our purpose is to serve and preserve creation, and that we’re all in this. It’s perfectly clear what our sin of greed is doing to God’s Earth. And its consequence is that it turns us away from God. St Paul writes ^{Rom 1.20}, Ever since God created the world, God’s invisible qualities, both eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. And in her last book, Vicky wrote, As we allow the diminishment of species and ecosystems, we diminish our ability – and the ability of future generations – to perceive the glory of God. So what do we do?

The Church – and I mean all traditions in the Church – the Church is calling us all to join in Caring for our common home. That’s the title of a document the Catholic Church published two weeks ago on Creation Day – September 1. It argues that the way we care for Creation reveals and shapes our relationship with God.

What our parable today, and the story from Exodus say to me is that we can begin this care from a position of gratitude. Grateful people change their world by blessing those around them. If gratitude is our starting point, then a reverence in our hearts for what we’ve received can transform us and those around us. And because we Christians are nearly a third of the world’s population, and we have kindred spirits in all the other major religious traditions, we can transform our world.

So in a few moments of silence, please think of Creation’s beauties and wonders and abundance and quirkiness. What warms your heart? What makes you give thanks? What do you want to share with others about the creatures you’re thankful for? How do those creatures praise God? How does their home – our home – praise God? What does this do for your commitment to care for them? Thank you God for revealing yourself in Creation, and thank you for entrusting us with its care. Amen

Rev’d Dr Elizabeth Mc Whae

Season of Creation 2, Pentecost 16 – Exodus 14 19-31, Psalm 114, Romans 14 1-14, Matthew 18 21-35

Introduction: This morning in this season of creation I am going to focus on WATER. In part because of the reading from Exodus, but also because the topics of water and creation seem to be very inter-related. All created beings are dependent upon and made up of water. The food we eat requires water to grow. Manufacturing industries require water. We travel on water. In fact, it is fair to say that our world can not survive without water.

So let’s see what we can learn about water, creation and faith.

Point 1:The reading we have just heard from Exodus 14, is the foundational story of Jewish faith. As Christians we forget just how foundational it is for the Jewish people. It is a story about God, good and evil, faith and fear, and pilgrimage. And it involves water, a lot of water.

So let me refresh your memory of the events that have led us to this reading. We have reached the point in the Exodus narrative where the final act of saving the Israelites from the Egyptians is revealed. Gone are the happy days of Joseph, who was second in the kingdom after Pharaoh. Other Pharaohs have come and gone and the Israelites  are now regarded as unwanted refugees to be used and abused by the Egyptians. The current Pharaoh decides to treat them as forced labourers and oppresses them bitterly. But somehow God hears the cries of the Israelites and a leader is plucked out of the bullrushes called Moses. His task is to lead his people to their Promised Land, but it is not going to be easy.

After 10 horrific plagues in the land of Egypt, sent by God, Pharaoh finally relents and tells the Israelites to leave. So they do just that. But Pharaoh changes his mind again and sends his very superior army after his enemies. This is where our reading starts today. The Israelites are trapped at the Red Sea with the Egyptians advancing. There is no way out. We are told the angel of God and the pillar of cloud separated the Israelites and the Egyptians. Moses stretched out his hand and the Lord drove the sea back on either side, so the Israelites could cross on dry land. The Egyptian army followed and chaos ensued, because God caused the Egyptians to panic and their chariots became clogged. They interpreted this as “the Lord fighting for them against Egypt.” The end result was the death of the entire Egyptian army. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians,  ….. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Point 2: Now this is a great story if you are part of the people of Israel and part of the Christian tradition. But it is a terrible story if you are part of the Egyptian army. The method of destruction here is water and presumably drowning. It is not pretty. God and the creation have used water to terminate life. My point being that water both sustains life but can also end it. We have seen this most recently to devastating effect on the Tibet/Nepal border. And we have seen it to a less devastating extent in our own country at times.

In the case of the exodus tradition God is clearly identified as causing the creation to act in a way that is both sustaining and destructive. And this is not a one off event. Think back to the great flood narrative and the story of Noah, another example of how water was both sustaining and destructive in the world.  Now I would never suggest that all floods and drownings are an act of God.

I would suggest, however, that God is active in the created world. The recent events in Nepal raise many questions for me. Why did this happen? Who lives and who dies? And how as people of faith do we respond to an event like this? Who would ever have imagined that water and the creation could be so destructive?

Point 3: But getting back to this idea that God acts through creation and uses creation as a means of revelation. This I think is extraordinary. Because it tells us that God is not separated from the creation, but fully engaged with it. The best example we have of God’s link with the creation is the birth of a baby in Bethlehem, who grew up and revealed God to the world, who was crucified, and yet still lives.

In one way or another we have encountered God in Jesus who has shown us that God is engaged in our world. That God wants us to live peaceful and good lives and treat this world with love and respect. God took the time to enter into the world we live in, to show us that the creation we live in, our world, and each one of us, whether human or animal, are loved and precious in God’s sight.

Our dependence upon water to survive and our vulnerability to extreme amounts of water I find quite fascinating. We live in a country that is surrounded by water. We have fabulous beaches, which can also be treacherous. We need water to fight bushfires. And yet parts of this country flood regularly and these floods are sometimes deadly. Other parts of this country suffer drought, from lack of water. What does this teach us about faith and God?

Conclusion: I do know that God wants us to care for our water resources, to beware of its power, to be aware of our dependence upon it.

When we think about the Season of Creation it is really the season of God’s creation. We are part of God’s creation. A creation that God chose to enter in the form of the Son of God. And isn’t it interesting that the symbol we use to signify our new birth into Christ is water, the water of baptism.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Gen 2 4-25, Ps 148, Acts 17 22a-28, John 1 1-5

‘People are not changed by ethical urging, but by transformed imagination’ ^{Walter Brueggemann}

Dear God, there are hard things to hear in the Season of Creation. But I pray that what I say today can be something which works at the level of transforming imaginations rather than coming across as mere ethical urging. Because the Season of Creation reminds us that we must change. Please make this possible! Amen

This year’s theme for the Season of Creation is Immersion in Living Water. It’s based on Ezekiel’s vision of a river flowing out from the Temple; a river which so personifies the creating God, that it enables super-abundant life to flourish where once there was none; even bringing the waters of the Dead Sea to life. ^{Ezek 47 1-12} It’s a vision of healing, on-going creation and blessing. God’s presence is known in this water that brings life to where it had been despaired of. It’s a vision we need very much now.

Yet I can’t talk about living water without acknowledging the deadly flooding tragedy that’s struck the poor people of the Nepal-Tibet border region, and the very real fear that it will happen again soon. So we greet our living water theme from a very sombre place. That terrible river of death which has caused such grief and destruction feels like it mocks Ezekiel’s living water. And we’re told its most likely cause is human-induced global heating. So that speaks directly to us humans.

Humanity is relentlessly causing this damage. That’s why, we need a vision as stupendous as Ezekiel’s healing, living water if we’re to face this tragedy and inspire all God’s people to hope, to advocate and to act in God’s world for the protection and healing of Creation. The worldwide voice of all people of faith needs to be heard in all lands where the halls of power crawl with lobbyists who use threats and disinformation to manipulate decision-makers. The lobbyists’ effect is undeniable: governments, industries and corporations everywhere seem unstoppable in their race to sacrifice Earth’s future on the insatiable altar of endless economic growth and wild consumption.

So how to respond? Only an alternative world-wide voice from people who answer to God can address this slow-motion calamity. The Church of the so-called ‘developing nations’ have been doing this for a long time. And they’re calling us to stop being slow-boiling frogs ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog}, and join them to challenge the human-induced disaster that they are suffering first-hand. We must answer their call; join our voices with theirs, and act together for the sake of God’s Creation.

Our warrant for this action is found in our readings today. They’ve been chosen to inspire us, and if necessary, convert us; to get us ready to speak and act together as God’s people in God’s world, where the worship of money and power is having such a disastrous effect. The international Catholic-Protestant body called the ‘Consultation on Common Texts’ chose the readings we’ve heard today. It’s the first change to the Revised Common Lectionary in over 40 years! These texts give us the name they’ve given to this morning’s service The Feast of Creation in Christ.

Creation in Christ! How can the whole of Creation fit inside Jesus? There’s quite a lot in today’s liturgy that talks about this. Today’s collect prayer begins: O God, in whom we live and move and have our being, in Christ you created the worlds. That first phrase, in whom we live and move and have our being comes from our reading from Acts. There, we see Paul with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of ancient Athens debating the nature of God. To assert that God is creator of all, Paul quotes one of their own Stoic poets who described God as the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

But our sentence from Colossians says that in Christ all things were created. ^1.16 And the Gospel speaks of Christ as God’s creating Word, through whom all things came into being. That’s where the second phrase in the collect prayer comes from: in Christ you created the worlds. It recalls the first creation story ^{Genesis 1} where everything came into being at God’s word – Let there be light … and light was. In God’s Word is all things that are. The world and you and I and all creation are in the Word – in Christ. I know it’s bewildering to think of the whole creation as contained in that kind, loving man whose stories we share. But it says we’re all in him, together. If that’s so, ‘How should we then live’?

I find some very important guidelines in the Psalm and in the reading from Genesis. The Psalm declares that everything in Creation exists to the praise of our Maker. How could it be otherwise? The intricate, interconnected unity of Creation – this world of wonder and symbiotic diversity, forever evolving and adapting – is a magnificent witness to the nature and love and patience and glory of God. Creation praises God by its very being. It’s a priceless treasure to be cherished for all time.

And that’s where we humans fit in. You’ll notice in our reading from Genesis, there are two footnotes to verse 15. When this verse was first translated into English, the relationship between people and Earth predated the destructive, industrial way it’s abused now. Till and keep the land’ just meant growing plants in harmony with the natural cycles of seasons, and giving the land periods of rest – letting it lie fallow.

But the Hebrew translated as till literally means to serve or minister. And today, that’s a much more appropriate way to translate it. Particularly together with the other word – to keep the garden/land – which is really meant in the sense of protect, preserve or guard the garden/land. We, God’s people, are called to serve and protect Earth; and that means to oppose the wholesale loss and pollution of soil, the rape of forests and eco-systems, and the exploitation and abuse of Earth to the point of collapse. At a local level, we’re engaged in that battle now with the threat to the parklands. We, all God’s people, are called to serve and protect Earth.

The other guideline is one I find in verse 20. It’s about valuing each other equally as partners in this work.

The verse reads, for the man, there was not found a helper as his partner. In a patriarchal world, verse 20 has always been read to imply that the woman is of lesser significance. But the word translated helper occurs 22 times in the Hebrew Bible. In 20 of those, it refers to God. But in this case, it refers to the woman.

That’s extremely significant. The unwarranted denigration of women – half of created humanity – is a wilful blindness – a deliberate sin. The devaluing of our fellow creatures, likewise. And for that matter, the unwarranted denigration of any people or nation by another is not the way we’re created to be.

The suffering of so-called ‘developing nations’ from the ecological vandalism of the so-called ‘developed nations’ continues because racism and nationalism means we are able to turn a wilfully blind eye to the effect our lifestyle has on the well-being of the other. It’s a post-colonial hangover that we sustain – an artificial us and them – where we act as if the other – like our Pacific neighbourhood – is somehow lesser; less worthy; maybe even hysterical about their experience of climate change – to remember a useful old misogynistic catch-all.

The primordial first relationship between man and helper was anything but hierarchical in any way. The word helper is used 20 times for the relationship humans enjoy with God. The only human to receive the same honour is the woman. In God’s Earth, there’s no place for lesser and superior – woman and man – chosen and outsider. There’s just God’s call to humanity to serve and protect creation.

Together, we are all called to live out our first vocation; to serve and protect all of God’s Creation. Imagine that!  Amen.

‘People are not changed by ethical urging, but by transformed imagination’ ^{Walter Brueggemann}

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 14 A  –  Exod 3 1-15, Ps105 1-6 & 23-26, Rom 12 9-21, Matt 16 21-28

Twenty-five years ago, in July 2001, General Synod declared that the last Sunday in August each year should be a day of prayer for refugees. It was extraordinary timing! On the last Sunday of that August ^(26-8-01) a Norwegian freighter, MV Tampa, rescued 433 Afghan Hazara refugees from a distressed fishing boat off Christmas Island. To prevent the possibility of any asylum claims, our government sent SAS troops to ensure the ship didn’t enter Australian territorial waters.

Just over a fortnight later on September 11 – the twin WTC towers went down, and populist politics took their campaign into overdrive to make refugee a synonym for terrorist. Three weeks on, Australian government ministers using doctored photos made false claims that refugees on another boat, Siev 4, had thrown their children into the sea to force a rescue. These lies were never retracted. All this would lead to Australia’s aptly named Pacific Solution; the harshest anti-refugee policy in the world at the time. It continues to this day.

Back then in 2001, the UNHCR was concerned for the welfare of about 20 million displaced persons. Tragically, that number has since grown by another 100 million. So each year, as we observe this day of prayer for refugees, it’s ever more important that we do. We Christians particularly remember that the baby Jesus and his family were themselves forced to seek asylum. God is with refugees!

Refugees flee war; they escape places of natural and artificial disaster. These people desperately seek entry to countries where they and their families might find safety, and a way to know community life again. But just as desperately, destination countries seek to prevent them from entering. Sudanese refugees escape a crazed and barbaric civil war and trek across Africa to try their luck at a Spanish enclave, only to be ejected. The people of the drowning islands of Tuvalu and Kiribati contemplate a possible future in Australia. Refugees the world over are desperate. But loud voices online, in the media and in parliaments depict them as a threat. These loud voices falsely claim they are defending us against dangerous people.

We’ve been thinking over the past couple of weeks about the cruel, dehumanising language that populist politics uses to represent other people’s need as a threat; a threat that only they can effectively repel. It’s a cruel lie they peddle for electoral gain. It persecutes innocent people who are already on their knees. It’s nothing new. Western politics has been consumed with this for a long time now. And Christians and people of other faiths have steadfastly spoken out against this travesty.

Our scriptures all speak of hospitality to strangers. Paul’s letter to the Romans today puts it in black and white – ¹³ extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. You know the line from the Servant Song that’s based on this verse: I will weep when you are weeping. Singing that regularly at Inverbrackie detention centre was a consolation to the detainees.

This is very personal for me. I spent the first 12 years of my working life teaching within a schools, AMES and TAFE system that was supportive of refugees. We didn’t lock people away in detention centres. They lived freely among us, supported to live and study. We sought to equip them with the best possible tools to enable them to bring their skills and insights into the upbuilding of this, their new home.

Extend hospitality to strangers. It’s a simple command, and today it stands defiantly against the tidal wave of paranoid disinformation and confected hostility that washes constantly over us. It moves me deeply that this community of St John’s has stood against that grotesque tidal wave for decades. St John’s support for refugees is courageous, tireless, generous and effective. And by refugees, I mean both fellow humans seeking asylum from brutal conditions overseas, and also young, homeless, South Australians who need us to believe in them, and to give them the tools to find a place they can call home. Extend hospitality to strangers. That’s the mindset of St John’s as a parish, and St John’s as a Youth Services provider. I came home when I returned here.

In today’s first reading, we meet Moses again. And again, we’ve jumped several years. Last week he was the baby who really was put in the water, but in a tiny basket the Bible calls an Ark. He was drawn from the river into an altogether new life. Now we witness his call from God to become himself a sort of Ark for his people who will see them safely across the deep waters of death at the Red Sea.

The Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them. … ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’

It feels ambiguous on this day of prayer for refugees, because we know that this escape will eventually see the children of Israel join the ranks of the displaced for forty years. But despite their often dreadful behaviour, God journeyed with them – something I believe God does for every refugee – God as one of us all!    Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 13A- Ex 1 8-2 10

Last week, we looked at readings that helped us challenge and heal the way some people dehumanize others. This theme stayed alive for me during the week when I read an article in the Médecins Sans Frontières magazine. An MSF volunteer in Ukraine met a man at an evacuation centre. He’d walked there with his two dogs and two cats. He said his animals had saved his life on that walk. “There were drones above my head, but they didn’t attack me because they saw I had animals with me.” Isn’t ‘humanity’ fickle! Isn’t enmity ridiculous! The drone pilots would kill a man, but not his cats and dogs!

This ludicrous dehumanizing comes up again in this week’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. We’re back in Joseph’s story A few weeks ago, we saw him sold off by his brothers to slavery in Egypt. Later he’d call those brothers and his parents to join him there, saving them from a catastrophic famine along with his adopted Egypt. Today we’ve moved on about 400 years in the story. Joseph’s descendants still live in Egypt. But from a clan of 12 households, they’ve become a numerous people. There’s a new Pharaoh, and he sees foreigners in such numbers as a security threat. He doesn’t care that they’re the people of Joseph who saved his country from ruin. Hidden in the translation, he seems to call the Israelites a racist name; ‘apiru. It sounds like Hebrew, but it doesn’t mean Israelite. Across the Near East, ‘apiru was a word that meant non-citizen, refugee, fugitive, fringe dweller. It’s like one of the many phobic slurs around today.

400 years! Today’s story is part of a grand historical sweep. But unlike other grand historical narratives, it doesn’t spend much time on the comings and goings at the palace. Nor does it tell of militant operatives running an underground resistance movement. No, we zoom in on five women. Inspired by them, I call this sermon Bad girls for God! We first meet two Jewish midwives who conspire to save life rather than obey the Pharaoh’s order to kill baby boys. They conspire to pervert the course of injustice. Their names are Shiphrah and Puah. ^{(Fair and Splendid)} Then there are Moses’ mother Jochebed, sister Miriam and the Pharaoh’s daughter.

Midwives Shiphrah and Puah expose the Pharaoh’s bigotry brilliantly; the mind that lies behind dehumanizing a vulnerable, innocent people. When the Pharaoh confronts the midwives with their failure to obey his order and kill the ‘apiru baby boys, their reply plays on his racism. When he asks, Why have you allowed them to live, they reply, Because the ‘apiru women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. ^(v.19)

They play on his assumption that these foreigners – ‘apiru – are not like ‘normal humans’. And this difference is obviously going to show in the way ‘apiru women bear children. The Pharaoh would never question a statement which implies that ‘apiru are more like vigorous breeding animals than human beings. And of course his other prejudices are that these ‘apiru midwives wouldn’t possibly be smart enough to try to trick the Pharaoh with a lie, and they certainly wouldn’t be brave enough to engage in real civil disobedience!

The Pharaoh digs himself in deeper and deeper, and in the process, exposes his own heart as the place of real sub-humanity. He tries again. If these ‘apiru boys must be spawned, then let’s throw them in the river; drown them like the rats they are. Who’s the real inhuman one? The story tells it all. And so we read on to the part we all know so well – Moses in the bullrushes.

We see baby Moses drawn from the Nile – born again from the river sometimes called the Mother of Egypt. A child ‘abandoned’ in a basket on the river according to the letter of the law, is drawn from the river alive in defiance of that law – but by an enemy! Death is turned to life. It’s an image we remember at baptisms. It’s also a parable of salvation history written from the perspective of the freed slaves.

One fascinating detail that I absolutely love is that his basket is called תֵּבָה (te.vah) – a word we’d normally translate as ‘ark’. ^{(Gen 6-9)} Baby Moses’ basket very rightly has its name from the vessel God told Noah to build; an ark to save life on Earth.

Do you need to be a slave to enter this story? Do you get included in the story – like the midwives and Jochebed and Miriam and the Pharaoh’s daughter did – by being midwives to a new and risky rebirth? These women got under the guard of the regime and served God’s purpose – ultimately to set a whole people free. Do we face anything like they did? Are there stories like this where we can join in with these women? Or are we meant to be more like the Pharaoh’s daughter – privileged, and compassionate? Could one act of our compassion have such consequences?

We Australians also have stories of so-called illegal aliens and dangerous waters and vulnerable children. These stories are with us more than ever. I remember in the 1990’s there were about 25m displaced people in the world. Now UNHCR says it’s 120m – about 1 in 70 of Earth’s people, each with a shocking story to tell.

The women of today’s story show us that God’s little people are called to subvert power that dehumanises. We are called to act in a way that helps vulnerable people who need safety and dignity to find it. Today’s story challenges our Pharaohs when they turn bigoted stereotypes into ‘truth’; seek to discard their victims somewhere where people can’t learn their real names or hear their true stories; places like Gaza, Nauru, or Cox’s Bazaar. But today we learn that God does know their stories, and that we are to work to rescue them and help make their stories heard.

If we accept without question that dehumanised people and their stories get irretrievably locked away, this has spiritual consequences. We must respond to the love in the women’s defiance and be encouraged by their wit and their bravery. A three-month-old baby was hopefully entrusted to the river by his mother and sister, launched to a new future in a tiny ark tevah תֵּבָה and watched and prayed for.

An ark is God’s way of preserving the future against calamity. Our role in this sort of rescue mission today is to build arks – or even become arks ourselves – for the ones whose stories are systematically silenced – refugees, Aboriginal people, unemployed and homeless – and because of the Noah reference, our duty extends to rescuing endangered species and endangered ecosystems. This story calls us to be like the two midwives and the three other women, to turn fearful bigotry on its head so life may be honoured and preserved. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 12 – Gen 45 1-15, Ps 133, Rom 11 13-36, Matt 15 21-28

Our readings and prayers today challenge the awful politics of grievance. Its demonising and dehumanisation attack the world’s social cohesion, and mean crimes against humanity can proliferate. The politics of grievance ‘creates’ an enemy – an ‘other’. It names groups or people, and falsely makes a scapegoat of them to blame for things we don’t like about our life together. It demonises and dehumanises that ‘other’, so people won’t oppose the confected enemy being attacked in the most shocking ways – even to the point of genocide. The politics of grievance is driven by a desire for power, wealth and influence; it is murderous selfishness on a mass scale.

Our readings and prayers call us to model an answer to this scourge. They call us to live in unity and to embrace reconciliation at a personal level; to show the world that God’s justice and God’s gift of liberty are intended to bless everyone. It’s our job to meet lies with truth, to counter self-centredness with compassion, and most particularly, to disempower feuding by choosing forgiveness. The sentence of the day says that God’s people are to maintain justice, and do what is right. The prayer of the day fine-tunes that. We pray for grace to dedicate our freedom to God’s service so that all people may know the glorious liberty of the children of God.

So with the sentence and prayer giving us a focus on maintaining justice, on doing right, and on dedicating our freedom to helping others know God’s liberty, what do we see in today’s readings?

The reunion of Joseph and his brothers sets the tone. Last week, we watched his brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt. The chapters we’ve missed between then and today tell of his rise to power as the Pharaoh’s right-hand bureaucrat. Because of Joseph, Egypt was the only land to prosper during a seven-year regional famine. Now his brothers have come to Egypt, cap in hand, to buy food. And who do they have to ask for help but Joseph. He chooses reconciliation with his brothers, even though they’d sold him down the river. We are here because of Joseph’s choice!

The Psalmist sings that reconciliation like this is the stuff of eternal life – ⁴For [in this harmony] the Lord has commanded his blessing: which is life for evermore.

But it’s hard work. In his letter to the Church in Rome, Paul brings home the fact that freedom, truth and reconciliation need just as much vigilance within the Church as they do in the wider world. He’s writing to Rome some time after the death of the Emperor Claudius. Claudius had decreed that all Jews must be banished from Rome. He made no distinction between different groups of Jews. So Jewish Christians got exiled as well.

This meant the Church in Rome, which had been a mixture of Jewish and Gentile converts, suddenly became a Gentile-only body. Abruptly, all decisions fell to this group, and the Church’s culture shifted away from its Jewish origins. Can you picture this happening here? Imagine that we share this building with Lutherans, and suddenly, one day, all Anglicans are banned from Adelaide. Off we go, and only five years later, when the anti-Anglican regime has been replaced, we return in dribs and drabs to our beloved churches. But things have changed. If we want to worship here, now we have to sit down for the hymns and stand up for the prayers, and communion only happens every few months.

Paul is writing as Jewish Christians return to find a church which they barely recognise. It seems from this passage that each group is running the other down in a power-struggle to control the Church culture. Paul’s message to them is that a power struggle over control of the Church is ridiculous. At the end of the day, only God’s grace counts. If God loves someone, who are we to exclude them, or their lifestyle, or the way they offer their worship to God? Paul’s letters to churches are often written to settle disputes. Reconciliation is a major theme of his writing.

And the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. As far as we know, Matthew’s community was based to the north of the Holy Land (Syrian Antioch). And so they have heard this story as one of hope for them and their mission. Ulrich Luz says they’d hear this story from within their own experiences of discouragement and illness; from their own context of separation from Israel. They’d hear it speak to them as a faith community amongst Gentiles. This story told them of the power of prayer and faith from the woman’s perspective; that Jesus was there for such as them.

This story also told them Jesus’s influence was not confined within the borders of Israel. His power was as present to them and their Gentile neighbours as it had been in distant Galilee. This was an encouragement to them in their task of living out and telling the Gospel among their Gentile neighbours. So while we’re scandalised about how exclusive the children’s food to the dogs metaphor sounds, for Matthew’s community, it’s a story full of the hope of reconciliation, freedom and truth. We just have to learn to hear it from that different cultural perspective.

So where might the rubber hit the road for us right now? Today, our community is called to model a tangible alternative to the growing cancel-culture of grievance, demonising and dehumanising. The greed and selfishness at the heart of this culture will eventually be exposed. But our commitment to compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness will reveal the glorious liberty of the children of God. That’s our calling. So may God give us grace to dedicate our freedom to that mission. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 10 A – Genesis 32 22-31

Have you ever wrestled with a worry or a problem all night? It might give us a way into compassion for Jacob’s night wrestling the stranger.

Our study group is pretty sure the original authors of Genesis had no access to a public relations editor. Stories of the biblical patriarchs – the great role-models of our faith – are often far from edifying. They are busy lying, thieving, putting wives and kids at risk, swindling parents, siblings, in-laws and strangers for personal gain; the list goes on. If scripture is supposed to draw us to God and make better people of us, why hasn’t somebody cleaned up Genesis and shown a better side of these patriarchs!

It seems a fair question. But it ignores what these stories are really about. They’re about God’s patient, loyal commitment to normal people who are very like normal people today – often self-centred, thoughtless and greedy. These stories are about God’s faithfulness, not ours.

Jacob was not a very nice person. He was a conniving trickster. From birth, Jacob was someone who’d grasp and take hold of what wasn’t his. Later Jacob tricks his brother Esau out of his birthright ^(25:29–34) and soon tricks him out of their father’s blessing as the firstborn. Esau was no angel, sure. But Jacob seemed like something else entirely.

To escape Esau’s revenge, Jacob headed to Haran and made a new life for himself with his uncle Laban’s family. But trickery pursues Jacob. He serves his uncle for seven years to marry Rachel, but gets tricked into marrying Leah first, and Rachel next. Then he marries their maidservants as well. Jacob stays on working as his uncle’s shepherd, but slips back into his old ways. He breeds his uncle’s flocks to his own advantage. He ends up exceedingly rich by diddling his uncle and cousins. In the end Jacob flees with his family and flocks, planning to return to Canaan.

The story we heard today takes place when Jacob has heard Esau is coming out to get him – together with 400 men. Jacob does all he can think of: sending a conciliatory message to Esau calling him my lord, sending a multitude of gifts in multiple droves – 580 goats, sheep, donkeys, cows, and camels. And he prays the longest prayer in all of Genesis ^(32:9–12). He begs God, Deliver me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all. ^(32:11)

But just in case, Jacob sends all his wives and children and everything else he owns across the ford at the River Jabbok. He’s left alone and stripped of everything dear to him. Suddenly out of the night-time darkness, a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ^{(v. 24)} Amazingly, Jacob holds his own; the man saw that he didn’t prevail. ^{(v. 25)} But suddenly, the position is reversed. The man touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and in a moment Jacob is lying there helpless and crippled. Now with the desperate grip of one who has been defeated, Jacob will not let the man go. He demands a blessing from this mysterious figure.

What he’s given is a name change and a blessing. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel. The explanation for the name is that Jacob had struggled with God and with humans and prevailed. ^{(Gen 32:28–29)} But this blessing comes not through Jacob’s wit or strength, not through his grasping for it. That had been his way of operating until then. But no, things have changed. The blessing comes as a gift given to one who’s used up all his strength and resources and been defeated.

Who is this man that Jacob wrestled with? A punishing angel? His own ego or conscience? Or could this story be a metaphor for the whole people of Israel throughout history? Charles Wesley’s great hymn Wrestling Jacob thinks it’s Jesus – the Lord of time could do that, I suppose.

Jacob had earlier been given the promise of God’s presence, but he didn’t live by it. Jacob wrestled with this man using all his own strength, but didn’t get away free and unchanged from his encounter. He’d got away with stealing from his father Isaac, from his brother Esau, and from his father-in-law Laban. But not from God! Jacob’s limping becomes a metaphor for Israel’s life with God. The people of Israel, like Jacob, will struggle and wrestle with God. God will promise and give blessing to Israel, but God will also struggle to tame and break the unruly and often disobedient Israel.

And Jacob, who is now Israel, does some naming of his own. He names the place Peniel, which means Face of God, for, he says, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved. ^{(v. 30)} For the first time, we’re told the true identity of the one who wrestled Jacob – God in human form. And Jacob emerges from this divine encounter with a blessing, a new name, and the sun rising on a new day. But he also walks away with a permanent limp – a reminder of the cost of wrestling with God.

Why is this story important for us? It’s because it reminds us that God actively reaches out to us – no matter what sort of person we might be. We Christians know that vividly from the stories of Jesus reaching out to people whom no-one else would go near: social outcasts, thieving tax farmers, people shunned because they lived outside the public morality of the day. Today, we see the way God blessed Jacob the thieving, selfish con-artist. A challenge, a blessing and a new beginning. Do you see how this reveals the God of the Old Testament and Jesus to be one and the same? God/Jesus reaches out to lift us up from wherever we might have fallen, no matter how far; and helps us become people who can live the promise that through us and all descendants of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, all families of the Earth might be blessed.

Like Jacob we come to God with a life behind us, not all of it good. And like Jacob, we can expect that God will change us – often painfully. But in Jesus, we see God bearing that pain in our place. God remains faithful. God keeps at us and calls us back, no matter how far we’ve fallen. And in Jesus, we know that God takes our fall. Thanks be to God for such grace!     Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 9A – Mt 13 31-34 & 44-58

Today, we heard five more of Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom of God. Two weeks ago the parable of the sower told us the Kingdom of God contains various qualities of soils – that’s us. We bear varying harvests in response to the teachings of Jesus. Last week, the parable of the wheat and the weeds told us unplanned plants grow in the Kingdom. That surprise continues today with the parable of the mustard seed.

Some scholars say mustard was seen as a weed back then in the Middle East. It spread quickly, it was hard to contain and it could choke other crops. Yet Jesus says it’s a gift to the wild birds. What’s going on? Did Matthew’s community record this parable because the Gospel should spread like mustard? Or did some of them feel like the wild birds – strangers to the Jewish faith who found a safe home among the followers of Jesus? If so, this is about the unexpected grace that’s included us wild birds in the Kingdom that opened to us from something as tiny as a mustard seed?

The next parable of the woman who leavens her flour also starts with something tiny that grows surprisingly. We heard that she mixed yeast into the flour. But other translations use different words. They say she hid leaven in the flour. I looked this up and found that the word we translate with the English words – mix or hide – is actually a word we often hear in English today, but in very different contexts: it’s ἐνέκρυψεν  – encrypt. We encrypt access to things we need to protect. Is Matthew’s community remembering that they had to work furtively to fulfil Jesus’ command to proclaim the Gospel? So should we be sneaky and furtive about telling people Jesus loves them, or at least sensitive? The woman didn’t seem to think that way.

She encrypted the flour with a rising agent – actually sour dough – and evidently she had big plans. Three measures of flour is about 20 kg – enough to make bread for 150 people. ^{Luz Mt 8-20} Yet the leaven that would make such abundance possible was inconspicuous enough for Jesus to say its inclusion was encrypted – secret.

There are secret things in the next two parables too. But we’re changing gear. This time, the little things are also very precious. People will give all they own to have them – hidden treasure; a longed-for pearl. If the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven were telling us that from little things, big things grow, are these treasures ways of describing their great value; the treasure we find when we learn of the love Jesus has for us? Are we content to stop with this answer? We tend to think that getting the answer right is finding the treasure – the important thing – as if that’s the goal. As if now we’ve found faith we can relax and get back to normal life.

But it’s not mission accomplished; it’s really only a start. Faith is like that mustard seed: it scatters widely, germinates profusely and it spreads. But as Saint Charles Darwin would have us remember, it has to adapt to live in new conditions.

My story of encountering the unexpected. The first summer school in pastoral care. Faithful life is not about right dogma, but about relationship: care. Youth loves the black and white of finding right answers. But that has its limits. Christmas cake?

So I discovered something really important that wasn’t clear to me before. It was a new beginning; like a new birth. Some leaven got encrypted into me. And the real question ever since has been what I have to do with it today – and tomorrow. It’s been mixed into my life; hidden; encrypted. And it grows and changes all the time.

But this is not just about me or any one of us. These parables were given to all of us to help us become yeast and seeds – to help us welcome, nourish and cherish. They were given to us so we might throw other priorities aside and seek God’s treasures each day. These parables burst us from our personal bubbles. The mustard seed that grows into a bushy refuge, the flour that becomes bread, spiritual treasure that becomes the new focus of our life, the great, indiscriminate catch of fish that reminds us of the variable soil and the weeds – what do they mean when we understand them, when we’ve decrypted them;? And who are we when we have?

What’s the hidden treasure; the pearl of great price? Us! Them! Jesus gave everything he was to have us? When we do understand his parables – when we’ve been discipled into what they mean – we’re meant to see what Jesus is doing for people hearing these stories. These treasures are the new life springing up in us – sources of new life that we in our turn are to pass on to others in ever new ways – like Jesus did. We can use familiar images – small things – to help people consider faith; to sense the extraordinary value and the unexpected shape of the reign of God. God’s way is full of surprises, bringing great things out of small beginnings; a secret treasure, but for everyone! We don’t have to be comprehensive or even feel competent. The smallest thing can keep the rumour of God’s love out there.

Surprising God, make us your indiscriminate welcomers; your secret, transforming leaven. Help us to treasure all your children; to call others to you, no matter who they are; and to accept the setbacks that come with being your followers. As we ponder your reign among us, please demand our attention and inspire us to renew our service to you each day. And as you wake us and renew us again and again, thank you for our vocation, which is to offer your hospitality to all people. Amen.