Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 16B – 2^nd Sunday in the Season of Creation – Isa 35 4-7a, Ps 146, James 2 1-10 14-17, Mark 7 24-37

Last Sunday, we started looking at Ecological Spirituality. As we did, the word that kept coming back at us was relationship: our relationship with each other, with Earth, our common home, with all life on Earth, and our relationship with the Source of all Being – the God who spoke all of us into being. That’s why we named Genesis 1.3 as pivotal – Then God said – the creative Word that made everything.

As we thought about all these relationships, it became clear that our spirituality exists in our physical life just as much as it does in our emotional and intellectual life. Spirituality has important practical, physical dimensions. That’s why we remembered Paul’s words from Romans 1.20 where he says that God’s power and nature have always been understood and seen through creation. Our physical relationship with creation is critical to our spirituality.

That was underlined as we remembered John 1.14 which says that Jesus – the creating Word of God –came among us as a physical, flesh-and-blood human being. God takes physical existence seriously! We looked at the way Jesus modelled relationship through kindness, compassion and costly generosity – just as we’ve seen in the exhausted Jesus of today’s gospel. And since we are spoken into being by God, the model of relationship of Jesus, the Word made flesh, is our guide to living. But kind, compassionate, generous living is vulnerable living. So what happens when we encounter people suffering the effects of greed, and cruel violence? Jesus’ healing and teaching ministry addressed the consequences of greed, and cruel violence, so responding to those consequences is also our model.

So, all the selfish, destructive evils we witness; the shocking disparities in wealth and influence that deprive countless millions of access to the basics of life? What about them, and the chronic, seemingly unstoppable damage being inflicted on the living planet and its worst effects harming the poor and weak? How does ecological spirituality speak to all this? Our scriptures today speak unequivocally of God’s justice.

In today’s scriptures, we encounter words about God’s anger and vengeance. We comfortable Christians are chronically uncomfortable with these sorts of words. Lots of people tell me they don’t like the God they meet in the Old Testament because of all the angry words. But do we forget that we see Jesus angry with the way power is misused by community leaders? We saw him angered in last week’s gospel by the religious-police-tactics of Pharisees and scribes accusing his disciples for eating with unwashed hands. And we liked Jesus protecting us.

We heard God tell Isaiah today to do something similar. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, don’t fear! Here is your God. He’ll come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. We may get uncomfortable about talk of God’s anger and vengeance. That’s because we don’t hear these words as people who have fearful hearts. But in what politicians call ‘our own backyard’, there are people who hear these words of God’s anger and vengeance as uplifting and hopeful. There are downtrodden people in Australia, around the western Pacific region, and in nearby Asian countries struggling to survive in the face of the juggernaut of exploitation, economic colonisation, and a climate catastrophe that is not of their own making.

These are the people of a fearful heart that God wants Isaiah to address. These are people who find hope in words that declare God’s vengeance and terrible recompense. Today’s Psalm underlines this commitment of God’s to the poor and needy. It’s a litany of God’s love for such people – promising justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, captives set free, the bowed down lifted up, God’s care for the refugee, for the widow and the orphan. And as for the way of the wicked, those who are responsible for all this misery, God will bring it to ruin!

Earth itself is included in Isaiah’s message of hope and healing. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; ⁷ the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Care of God’s creation is an integral part of our call to care for God’s poor, because they suffer most immediately from ecological harm. We have a chance to roll our sleeves up and do something about that after church today. If you’re able, head up to the wetlands and join Heather and the others in the tree-planting that’s happening there. Ecological spirituality without practical engagement is hollow – to paraphrase the Letter of James.

Speaking of James, it’s not just the Old Testament prophets who declare God’s preferential commitment to the poor, the sick and the needy. We heard James say it quite categorically today: ⁵ Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

What challenges do we feel as we consider today’s scriptures? What’s our relationship with God’s world? Are we worried that we find God’s anger uncomfortable when poor people can find hope in it? Are we thinking about new initiatives to grow a more mature faith here? What might our collective faith inspire that could respond practically to the chronic homelessness, epidemic loneliness, failure in closing the gap, and rampant environmental vandalism we see around us; all so patently offensive to the God who loves the people and other creatures who suffer these terrible wrongs? How will our ecological spirituality help bring God’s healing and justice to any of these? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 15  – Song 2 8-13 – Ps 45 1-2, 6-9 – Jas 1 17-27 – Mk 7 1-8 14-23

Three verses underpin our choice to celebrate the Season of Creation. Genesis 1.3 – Then God said… John 1.14 – The Word became flesh… and Romans 1.20 – God’s power and nature have always been understood and seen through creation.

The banner outside the church tells everyone that this month St John’s is exploring ecological spirituality. But what’s that? What do ecology and spirituality have to do with each other? Let’s think about each of them in turn – ecology and spirituality – then see if we can put them together.

So ecology? Ecology is the science which deals with the relationship of living things to their environments. That sounds like zoology; a physical science; not a spiritual one. So am I asking you to imagine David Attenborough squatting beside a hole and a furry little ghost pops out of it? No. So what’s ecology got to do with spirituality? It’s in that word relationship; the relationship of living things to their environments. Relationships aren’t just physical things; they involve much more than our bodies.

So what is spirituality? Spirituality describes our response to the sense that there’s something besides our physical selves; something more to experiencing life in this world than we discover purely through our senses of taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing. Spirituality says we sense that the reality we live in has a cosmic or divine Nature. Spirituality describes our quest to relate to that cosmic or divine Nature.

Our quest to relate – there’s that relationship word again. So ecology studies living beings’ relationship to their home, and spirituality describes our relationship to a greater reality – some call that reality the Source of Being. So, ecological spirituality? Do physical life and spiritual life have a relationship with each other – apart from a body providing a spirit with temporary accommodation? That’s the popular way to describe it. But aren’t spirits pure and bodies gross? Isn’t this like trying to mix oil with water? Is the idea of ecological spirituality trying to force an artificial link between our physical and spiritual life? Is this just religion trying to force imaginary values on us – so it can tell us what we should do with our own bodies?

I can’t pretend some Church leaders don’t make loud public comments about what people can and can’t do with our bodies. Religious leaders of every persuasion have been doing that forever, it seems. We saw it happen in today’s gospel. We saw the Pharisees and scribes, the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ people, challenge Jesus because they saw some of his followers hadn’t washed their hands in the prescribed way before eating. Those spiritual leaders saw a definite link between what we do with our bodies and our spiritual integrity. But I’ll get back to them in a minute.

The Law they were proclaiming talks in one place about people’s wrong behaviour violating the land, and the land reacting by vomiting them out. ^{Lev 18.26-30} That might sound a little bit extreme, but what’s understood here is a complex relationship – and there’s that relationship word again – a complex relationship between what we do with our bodies and our spiritual health, and what we do with our bodies and the effect that has on the health of the land we live on. A relationship between our actions, our spiritual health and the health of the land where we live – that sounds like it has a lot to do with ecology, doesn’t it; ecological spirituality?

So let’s get back to today’s Gospel and those Jewish religious leaders challenging Jesus because some of his followers didn’t wash their hands before eating. It reminds us of that extraordinary time just a few years ago when we had to treat each other and ourselves as if we might infect each other with a deadly disease. Back then, doing the right thing meant avoiding each other’s possible dangerous uncleanness. And violating the land? I’m reminded of last week’s God Forbid programme on ABC RN where Professor Auntie Anne Pattel-Gray spoke about the relationship between Aboriginal people’s language and their ancestral land. They couldn’t take land from a neighbouring nation because they didn’t have the words or songs to understand it and care for it. She described environment and people’s actions, understanding, values and spirituality as intertwined in a living relationship which shapes nature and identity.

The ancient scriptures seemed to get this, but the Pharisees and scribes were so fastidious about what people did with their bodies that they missed the point that relationship lies at the centre of the law’s teaching. That’s what Jesus tried to get through to them. Our spiritual life is healthy if we act not out of fear and knee-jerk judgement, but out of love and commitment to good relationship and belonging.

So what do we do with all this – this interwoven relationship of ourselves, our neighbours, our common home, and the Source of our Being? We don’t need to be reminded of what’s going wrong; that’s plain enough to see. Ecological spirituality challenges much that is damaging that interwoven relationship right now, and it demands that we do something about it right where we are. Heather’s going to give us a few pointers in the notices today about how we can start right here and now.

Today we’re called to turn from fear and isolation, and turn to hope and belonging. We choose to follow Jesus who we saw today brush aside the fixation of the religious leaders on purity, and instead calls us to nurture our neighbours and our common home, drawing strength from the Source of our Being. That’s living ecological spirituality.   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 14 – 1 Kings 8 22-30, 8 41-43, Ps 84, Jn 6  56-69

Today is the Sunday when the General Synod calls us to a day of prayer for refugees. So it’s particularly appropriate that our first reading is the part of Solomon’s prayer dedicating the new Temple where he prays that God will hear and answer the prayers of foreign visitors just like God hears the prayers of Israelites. When a foreigner comes and prays towards this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you. It was always a part of the Hebrew Law that the sojourner in the land should enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as citizens. And this spills over in surprising and delightful ways in scripture; as we’ve seen in Solomon’s prayer. Your journey of faith – your pilgrimage of hope – deserves to be honoured, whoever you are.

Today’s Psalm (Ps 84) is one we call a Psalm of pilgrimage. The pilgrim Psalms are intensely emotional songs which tell us how the journey to the Temple of Jerusalem could lift people’s spirits from the deepest gloom to glorious heights of joy and hope. I wonder if that’s something any of us has experienced – if this Psalm resonates with our culture – if any destinations have ever had that effect on us. Can you think of any? I have a friend who used to experience this on an annual hike in the Australian high country. We don’t have much of a tradition of pilgrimage in Australia, though it’s growing now ^{(eg, Portland Vic – Penola SA; Subiaco – New Norcia WA)}. We’ve gone to Spain to walk the Camino, or to the Holy Land, or to sites of terrible battles.

But we’ve journeyed here to St John’s this morning. So maybe our pilgrimages are of a different scale. We come here to experience God’s beauty, peace and care in the family liturgy; to revive in the ambience of the hundred and eighty-five years of prayers offered here – prayers infused into the fabric of this building. I’m glad to say that visitors often comment on the peace they experience here.

So today’s Psalm is a pilgrim song; a song people would sing as they went up to the Temple of Jerusalem – the first Temple. We just heard Solomon dedicate the Temple with a prayer focussing on God’s hospitality. The Psalm takes it to another level – including sparrows and swallows – most appropriate as we prepare to enter the worldwide Church’s Season of Creation. I’m struck by the Psalm’s opening words; ¹How lovely is your dwelling-place: O Lord God of hosts! And I’m struck that what draws pilgrims towards the house of God’s presence is desire; longing; rejoicing. It’s a safe place; even birds are safe to nest there in its inmost sanctuary.

People had a sense of God as an honoured guest with them in their own homes and villages. They responded to God who reached out to them; they came to God’s house to offer thanks; to experience the hospitality of God who dwells with us; to sense God’s strength sustaining us on our life’s journey, through good times and bad. ⁵Blessed are those whose strength is in you: in whose hearts are the highways to Zion; ⁶Who, going through the valley of dryness, find there a spring from which to drink: till the autumn rain shall clothe it with blessings. … (The soft green fuzz carpeting the Judean wilderness straight after the first autumn rains).

Psalm 84’s pilgrimage is about a deep and abiding experience of God’s loving care all along our life’s journey. And as people have been singing this Psalm for 3,000 years, it’s been fairly infused into us.

When you think of Solomon’s dedication prayer for this new Temple he’d had constructed – the way it’s to be open to foreigners and sojourners, it’s clear that its doorkeepers were meant to be welcomers; not bouncers. That’s a call we have inherited. Because Solomon knew what God is like, even we foreigners are welcome! As doorkeepers and custodians here, we are called to prepare this place for others. And when we see ourselves as greeters and welcomers, we prepare ourselves to share the excitement of what is here for the pilgrims who are coming.

The Church exists to provide hope for those who need hope, to provide peace in the midst of chaos, and comfort in the midst of distress. We are here to participate in the costly hospitality God offers to everyone, to renew and strengthen them. And by being that beacon of hope, peace and comfort – of Godly hospitality – we are meant to be salt and light to transform the wider community of Australia and beyond.

That’s the discovery we heard Peter make today when Jesus challenged the twelve with the difficulty of the pilgrimage they would have to walk, and that now we must walk. After seeing so many others desert him, Jesus asked the twelve – Do you also wish to go away? The answer was immediate – Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. And look at what they did with that belief! They worked to make the Church a welcoming community who have opened our doors to the whole world.

What can we do to open our doors wider? Let’s begin by praying as General Synod asks; praying for refugees. Inside the back cover of our service booklet. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 10 B – John 6 1-21

Jesus feeding the 5,000 and walking on water: in our reading last week from Mark’s gospel, those two miracle stories were left out. Well today we’ve got them, but from John’s gospel; not from Mark. And John gives the miracles a very different setting from Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Mark, we’ve tracked with disciples sent out on mission, Jesus ferried around the lake to escape the crowds, and dealing with John the Baptist’s murder by Herod. But John’s gospel is different. John sets the miracles straight after Jesus has been arguing with the religious leaders about having healed someone on the Sabbath. And after the two miracles, he’ll be teaching everyone that he is the bread from heaven. We’ll hear about that over the coming weeks.

At the recent commissioning of the new priest at Burnside, Lyndon Shakespeare, John’s story of the feeding of the five thousand happened to be set as the reading. So the Archbishop preached on it. He focussed on a challenging aspect of that story. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle story that appears in all four gospels, and John has some interesting differences from the others. Abp Geoff focussed on one of those differences. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the weary, hungry disciples come and ask Jesus to send the crowds away so everyone can buy food for themselves. And when they do, Jesus challenges them to feed the crowd.

But Abp Geoff was struck by the fact that in John’s Gospel, Jesus looks up and sees the crowd, and he asks Philip where can we buy bread for everyone? Philip is astounded and wonders where all the money’s going to come from. A commentator ^{(Karen Yust FotW B 3 284)} has fun describing the way modern church committees might deal with this sort of request from Jesus, just like the disciples try to – it’s not in our mission budget; we don’t have that sort of cash; what do you want? A miracle?

Jesus looks up and sees the need and he’s determined to respond. That’s what the Archbishop noticed; Jesus looks up and sees the need. And Abp Geoff challenged the good parishioners at Burnside to do the same, just as he would no doubt have challenged us here. Do we as followers of Jesus look up and see the need around us like Jesus does. And do we hear Jesus ask us what we’re going to do about the need when we see it? That funny commentator would imagine us turning our pockets inside out, looking helpless and whispering that our cupboard is bare. And it’s true; like many churches, our mission budget is always something of an afterthought. So is there something we can do about it? As the Archbishop’s gaze swept back and forth over us, by this stage, we were all feeling pretty uncomfortable.

But then he asked us to look at what the disciples had readily available – five loaves and two fish – and what eventually happened when it was offered to Jesus for him to share out. Jesus wasn’t asking for more than we have; he just asked that we make available what we do have, and trust in his help for the rest. They started with just five loaves and a couple of fish and however you want to explain it, look what happened; everyone fed, and loads of leftovers. What’s needed, and what can we start with?

So; the need. As I wrote in a recent weekly, we keep being reminded of an epidemic of loneliness in the Australian community. Despite being connected with each other via social media and myriad electronic communication options, we’re realising that there’s no substitute for actually being together in person.

The Covid experience has supercharged an epidemic of loneliness, isolation, depression and anxiety in people. Children are refusing to go to school in record numbers. People don’t want to be at work in person if they can work from home. They want to avoid the tension of being in work situations where people really don’t behave well with each other, not to mention hours of lonely, frustrating commutes. But the electronic modes of being in touch are sometimes even more dangerous – and particularly for our children and grandchildren. ^{cf Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation}

Here we are a small community with a wonderful, abundant resource. We’ve spent a long time as a community where being kind, thoughtful, gracious, patient, generous and gentle is the normal way to be. We have ethical standards which are intended to make this community a place of safety and fulfilment and belonging for everyone. In our gospel story, we’ve seen Jesus look up, see a need, and challenge us to meet that need. And we are being called to address a deep hunger in people right now.

Our loaves and fish? I’m glad to say that we’ve begun something that answers this call, and that’s the children’s choir. The choir is a safe, delightful place for children of different ages to connect with each other in a way that’s not electronically mediated; a place to enjoy each other’s company in a safe, loving environment. Learning to sing together can help fix loneliness and anxiety; and singing itself is a lifelong skill and joy.

But what about the anxious, lonely adults out there? Let’s share ideas. What invitation can I put on our notice board that might help meet a need you know of? I remember knitting groups making beanies for the desert people in winter, and ambulance care bears in the summer. We already have a group greening the parklands together. We have centring prayer groups. But what else to offer – it only need be as humble as five pitas and a couple of fish? What can we offer? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 9b – 21-7-2024 – Mark 6 30-34, 53-56

Look in the mirror and find Jesus, a goldsmith, purifying us – the gold – with fire, crucible, and skimmer. Skimming over and over until his face is reflected perfectly.

Today’s Gospel passage is startling for what gets left out – two iconic miracles; Jesus feeding the five thousand, and Jesus walking on the water. Today, we only read the verses before the miracles, and then the verses straight after them. So what we’re looking at today is like a frame without a picture in it.

The frame is Jesus’ compassion – as ever, for the crowds, but first, his compassion for the apostles. They’ve worked so hard they haven’t even had time to eat. So he took them away in their boat to escape the constant demands of the crowds.

One lesson many followers of Jesus have drawn from this is that discipleship must balance times of service with time for physical and spiritual renewal – food, rest and prayer. St Vincent de Paul said, Be careful to preserve your health. It’s a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything. Another interpretation might be that the disciples learn about compassion by being on the receiving end of it. I think we need both insights.

Jesus took his apostles away in their boat to get away from the constant demands of the crowds. No chance of that. People guessed where they were going and ran on ahead of them. A great crowd had gathered to meet the boat by the time it landed. What’s a reasonable reaction to this? What should Jesus have done? He and the disciples had every reason to be dismayed. They hadn’t eaten, and they’d needed rest even before bringing the boat here.

We’d expect tired, hungry people to respond with frustration to this unexpected, extra demand on their ebbing energy. Mark doesn’t tell us how the disciples responded; maybe Jesus did let them rest. But he does tell us that Jesus has compassion on the crowd, because they were “like sheep without a shepherd”.

Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The theologian Douglas Hall sees in this verse an answer to two huge questions. The first question; how does God view the world? And the other, how does God want us to view the world? He says that the answer to both is to be found in this verse.

How does God see the world? Like Jesus does; with compassion. And how does God want us to see the world? Like Jesus does; with compassion.

This might seem pretty straightforward; almost so obvious that it doesn’t warrant talking about. Except that it’s not just a feeling that Jesus had on a few occasions when he was confronted with people who were suffering badly. It’s his life and death witness. Compassion demands everything. It’s much more than just pity or sympathy. Pity is something you can manage from afar – at a once-remove! Not compassion. You do not have compassion, really, unless you suffer with [them].*

Compassion means knowing the same experience as another person who is suffering – suffering it with them. And in this morning’s Gospel, we can see that it also meant Jesus deciding to put aside his own comfort so that he could care for the needs of that great crowd – and of course, that other crowd later who greeted him at Gennesaret after the two miracles.

So it’s a frame we’ve been given in today’s Gospel – no picture, but a frame of compassion. This frame calls us to look where the picture would have been, and see ourselves, as in a mirror, and ask what we would have done.

Compassion – the wounded healer – underpins the Church’s healing and teaching service. It makes them authentic. What we say and do are integrated when we follow Jesus, and he calls us into the danger area of compassion. Can we see ourselves willingly entering the experience of those Jesus sends us to serve? Jesus came to seek us out. We know what that compassion has done for us. The call is to offer that gift to the next one we meet. It’s painful to enter that space, and yet it transforms the world – and us – like nothing else.

What about that image of the goldsmith skimming off the dross?

It’s one picture of the pain, the cost of being compassionate. It hurts. It wouldn’t be real if it didn’t. But it transforms us with every decision we make to share someone else’s pain. It cleanses us of the dross – the fear, the self-centredness, the deliberate blindness and so many other barriers we have to risking compassion. But with every new decision for costly care, we come closer to truly reflecting in our own being the image and likeness of God in Jesus.  Amen

^{* Hall, D. J. (2009). Theological Perspective on Mark 6:30‒34, 53‒56. Feasting on the Word: Year B (Vol. 3, p. 262)}

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 8B – Mark 6 14-29 (Parallels Esther 1 & 5, 1 Kings 16)

We’ve just listened to a horrible story. But we finished by calling it the Gospel of the Lord: what Mark calls the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mk1.1 So where’s the good news in it? Is there something we didn’t hear? Herod heard it. He heard people talking about Jesus’ deeds of power and he said, This is John, whom I beheaded. He’s been raised from the dead. A strange thing to say. What’s it all about? Before we look at the story itself, it may also strike you as strange that just after Mark tells this horrible story, without any change of pace, we’ll suddenly be back with the twelve again who’ve just returned to tell Jesus about their mission. 30 [They] gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

And then off they’ll go with Jesus for a rest – which gets interrupted by the feeding of the five thousand. So although good news is actually something we don’t meet in today’s story, Mark has made Good News the context of Herod’s violence – the frame. Today’s violent story is surrounded with stories of healing and love and care. That’s often something quite true to life. Where is God when terrible things happen to good people; I mean really good people? Mark’s answer to that question is the context – the frame – he puts around this story. The good news is that God is still out there in good people doing kind, healing things. In a world of cruelty and malevolence, there is still a different voice; a voice that won’t be silenced.

And this is the voice we can hear surrounding today’s story, despite all attempts to suppress it. This voice exposes evil for what it is by declaring there is another truth. Some people try to stop this voice being heard. For Herod and Herodias, silencing John should have ended the matter, shouldn’t it? What upstart tells the first family what they can and can’t do; who’s running the place anyway? So Herod locked him up. But even so, we’re given some strange things to ponder. 19 Herodias had a grudge against [John], and wanted to kill him. But she couldn’t, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When [Herod] heard [John], he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

What’s going on? A Jewish historian of the time, Josephus, (Jewish Antiquities XVIII.v.1 – LCL 433, 77f) tells us that Herodias and Herod Antipas first met when he was on a trip to Rome. At that time, Herodias was married to his half-brother, Herod Philip (who was incidentally her uncle). Our Herod, Herod Antipas, had stopped at his brother’s house on his journey, and while he was there, he fell for his sister in law Herodias (who was his niece too). He proposed and she accepted, but on condition that he dump his current wife. He agreed, and soon after he returned from Rome, that condition had been met. Then they were an item. So much for the table of kindred and affinity!

People who value their safety are careful who they speak to about the indiscretions of their rulers. But that’s never an option for a prophet. John was busy preparing the nation to receive the Messiah; calling people to repentance. He had to speak truth where it counted. John the Baptist had to tell Herod personally that he’d done wrong. But where Herod would normally have killed John without compunction, we’re told that he protected John from his wife’s anger. As we know, when Herod heard John, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

John’s message, which so enraged Herodias, called out to something deep inside Herod. It was at once a mystery to him, and yet a magnet. There was hope. But this was a pretty sick family. Herod threw a birthday party in his own honour – inviting his courtiers, officers and the leaders of Galilee. At formal banquets in that part of the world, men ate in one area and women ate in a completely separate one. That was what civilised people did. That’s why the daughter had to go out to speak to her mother. Yet Herod had his daughter in the men’s dining room dancing for them. That was not civilized. And then despite his reverence for John, Herod compounded his shameful behaviour by sacrificing John to his twisted sense of personal honour. Herod was a slave to what his cronies thought of him. John’s proclamation brought this into the light, and it cost the world his precious life.

29 When [John’s] disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. John’s disciples were more courageous than many disciples of Jesus would prove to be. But Mark will leave the story there and in the next sentence, take us straight back into the story of the mission of Jesus disciples. 30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

Dreadful things happen in the context of God’s mission; bad things happen to very good people. Yet the way Mark has set this out, it’s the healing love of God that surrounds this evil and sets the ultimate agenda; not a frightened politician’s knee-jerk destruction of truth. Mark’s community was not the only one to live in a time when it was all too easy to lose hope. We live in a time of fear and uncertainty now. But this story tells us that those dangers are not our true context.

Instead, we are called by this story to create a context of truth that surrounds the wrong and sets people free; to offer love that heals people, and generosity that meets their needs. We are called to live another agenda; to take up the mission that Jesus sends us out to accomplish. This story is a call to us to tell and live out good news stories; to surround the suffering with God’s love and show them that the context of all that happens really is the love of God. That’s why Mark can have us say even this story is part of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 6b – Cor 12 2-10 Mk 6 1-13

When things are looking grim out there on the field, there’s nothing like an inspirational moment for getting things back on track, is there. A fresh player comes on, scores that sensational goal, and the dejected team suddenly springs back to life. Enough Olympic gold may even lead to elections being called in some parts of the world. What do they say – nothing succeeds like success?

If you weren’t here last week, you missed some inspirational stories. A woman who’d suffered from bleeding for twelve years was instantly healed when she managed to touch Jesus’ clothing. And just after that, Jesus called Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter back from the dead. Inspiration, compassion, power.

Logically, I’d expect the gospel writer to use miracles like these as the launching pad for today’s story of the disciples being sent out on their first missionary journey. Wouldn’t that give them a boost!? But that’s not what happens. Instead, there’s the strange episode where we read about Jesus being rejected by the people of his home town. All the excitement of the last few chapters, his profound teaching and his miraculous deeds of power all brought crashing to earth in this humiliating homecoming. He could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief

Now he sends out his disciples. But hasn’t Mark shot himself in the foot? What sort of launch is this for the disciples’ mission? It seems so weak. Where was Mark’s editor!? … How important are the miracle stories of Jesus to you? Do they inspire you? Are they very important for how you understand Jesus, or is there something else about Jesus that really gets you interested in him? What is it that really draws you to Jesus? Let’s ponder that in silence for a bit – or chat with a neighbour.

I don’t think it’s ever struck me so clearly before, how this part of Mark’s gospel focuses on weakness as the heart of Christian mission. Jesus is weak in the face of his scandalized townspeople. Jesus sends out his disciples with practically no equipment for their journey – no chance of self-sufficiency. And next week, Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist will be executed by King Herod. What is Mark doing here? How can this be ‘the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’?

Mark is teaching us something about the meaning of faith. We sometimes talk about people having strong faith, and maybe we admire them. But what Mark says here is that faith is not about being strong for God. Quite the opposite. It’s about deciding to open to God’s leading, God’s strength; being ready to respond to God.

It’s about risk – not confidence. So Mark is saying that faith is something we receive when our hands are empty, because then they’re free to catch it. God throws us an opportunity – and we must learn how to know when that happens – and we have to choose to drop what we’re doing and catch hold of what God sends us. Faith means we put our agenda to one side so we’re available for God. It means we let go of our security blanket and walk away from it; walk vulnerably into the future that God holds before us. Have you done this, or met someone who has?

However we look at it, it’s uncomfortable; I know. So many of us are used to being in control. Or else we think we don’t want to put God to any unnecessary trouble on our account. We’ll just call on God in emergencies. But normally, we’ll be adult about our faith and look after most things ourselves thanks very much.

Can you hear how ridiculous that is? We heard Paul wrestle with just this question.

You remember Paul thought he had a handicap that was bad for his mission. He was sure he could do a better job if God fixed it. But God didn’t, and instead, answered Paul’s prayers in a very interesting way. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. That’s what God said to Paul. . My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.

What I hear in that is that however God chooses to equip me for a job, it will be enough. And not being good enough myself – and knowing I’m not good enough – won’t matter. God will get done what God chooses to get done. If God calls me to be a part of a job, I’m free to be thoroughly unselfconscious about it: to be in the middle of it all and simply to delight with everyone else at the wonders of God.

Let’s hear how Paul puts it in The Message translation – this wonderful freedom that Jesus gives him in his weakness.

God said, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I stopped focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer; these limitations that cut me down to size – abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

Lord Jesus, may we discover the freedom there is in your love for us as the people we are, and to trust that when you call us, you will work in us and with us so we will rejoice to see the job done. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 6b – 2 Sam 1 – Ps 130 – 2 Cor 8 – Mark 5 21-43

Our readings today take us on a journey through lament, prayer and its effect, and our thanksgiving for that; and finally, they tell us that in the costly love of Jesus, we find the assurance that all these things are part of our faith for a good reason.

Lament: our first reading was David’s song of lament for Israel’s first king Saul and his son Jonathan—David’s beloved friend. If you read back through the story of that first royal experiment with Saul, it was a disastrous mistake. But the rebellious soldier David will now become the new king, and for all his faults, and the failings of most of his successors, he remains an inspiration to this day because of his childlike openness to the power of God’s love.

So out of the depths of despair and grief, God can raise new hope; hope like David’s life has inspired. And that’s what today’s Psalm tells us; something it’s been telling people for a very long time; trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy: and with him is ample redemption. Anyone’s lost-ness can be turned around – we can be found and brought back to safety.

Prayer and its effect – and that happens most astonishingly through prayer. I have a vivid image of the prayer of the Psalms that comes from my times in synagogues and particularly a time at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Many hundreds of people were praying the Psalms of the day, often rocking and weeping as they did. And then a group of young people arrived singing and banging drums and tambourines as they danced their way to the wall. Both of them – the rocking, weeping people and the joyful young people were singing Psalms.

They could have been praying the Psalm we sang today, Ps 130; a Psalm written for when you’re grieving, and which points you to the certainty of hope and joy. It’s an old Psalm of ascents; a Psalm for people coming up to worship in Jerusalem. It’s an old poem, this Psalm. The people at the Western Wall weren’t praying with words they’d made up. The Psalms were made by poets like King David who first sang them more than 3,000 years ago. The Spirit of God gave them these words to sing, and they wrote them down so that we still have them to sing now.

We believe God has given us these Psalms to sing. And when we sing them, we belong to a huge community, thousands of years old, and nearly two-and-a-half thousand million in number today.

It means that when we sing this Psalm together, we know we’re sharing our worries with lots of people, and shared sadness and worry are easier to bear. It also means that with the rejoicing Psalms, we share them with all those people too, and shared joy gets bigger and bigger. And we’re also praying a prayer that we know God hears, because the Spirit of God inspired it in us in the first place. It’s been placed on our hearts. It’s good to learn Psalms by heart like those people at the Western Wall have. Because then, wherever you are, and whatever happens, you have wonderful prayers inside you, ready to pray. You’re never alone; your worries come into perspective, your joy grows; you know you are in the presence of God.

Thanksgiving – So we are grateful – obviously – but what then? Paul reminds the Corinthian church – and through them, us, that God’s gifts to us have come at a considerable cost. He reminds us that Christ, though he was rich, yet for [our] sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty [we] might become rich. And this is the model for us. As Christ-followers, we are called to hand on love and support even when that can involve considerable sacrifice. The redemption, the consolation, the community support that the Psalm enables for us – they’re not meant to stop with us. In Jesus, we find them a model to emulate. We are called to enable those whose souls cry from out of the depths to know that God has heard them. In praying, we open ourselves to being the means of that prayer being answered.

And it’s in the ministry of Jesus that we find all these things – lament heard, prayer heard, and thanksgiving expressed through generosity – all these are part of our faith. And today, we see it all expressed in the Gospel passage we’ve just shared. The exhausted Jesus we met on last week’s boat in the storm still hasn’t had any chance to rest and recover. Immediately upon his arrival over the other side, he had to deal with the Gerasene demoniac and his legion of unclean spirits. And upon his return today, the crowds are back, pinning him to the boat before he’s even had a chance to get out. And yet among all that need, and despite his exhaustion, Jesus finds it in him to redeem two lost people; a woman who had bled for twelve years, and a twelve-year-old girl who had died.

The wonder of this is that we can proclaim a God who is not only committed to justice and mercy and faith in a generalised, in-principle way, but a God who calls us to love and care for each and every one – and particularly for those left behind; those at the margins of everyone’s attention. Pray! You will be heard! … Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 5b – Mark 4 35-41

In 1986, the hull of an ancient fishing boat was recovered from the western shore of Lake Galilee. Carbon dating shows it was from around Jesus’ time. The boat is about 8.1 metres long, 2.3 metres wide, and 1.4 metres high. It was flat bottomed and decked fore and aft, with room for around 15 people, four of them rowing when sails weren’t in use. It may have been in a boat like this that Jesus and the disciples crossed Lake Galilee – Jesus sleeping maybe on the stern deck, or sheltered under it. ^{v. 38}

Today we’re in a boat on Lake Galilee. We’ve set sail for the other side, and all looks fine. We’ve done this so often, it’s just routine; just like starting a new day at school or work. We set our course; we know what to expect; we’ll be fine. But suddenly we’re not; suddenly everything’s different; everything is terrifying. A fearful storm has suddenly blown up, and we feel frightened and cut off. No-one can hear our cries for help; we’re far from safety. How can God let this happen to us? Is God asleep somewhere; does God care?

For some of us, the storm might be different. Our storm may come as a sudden, frightening pain in the night; or when the doctor tells us our life can’t be the way we planned it any more. For some, our storm comes suddenly when the job we thought we had is no more. For some children and adults, the storm strikes us when someone we thought cared for us—someone we thought would stick by us—suddenly doesn’t any more, they hurt us or go away. Or maybe someone we imagined was going to live all our life suddenly dies.

But how can these things be called storms? What’s this storm got to do with our lives? This storm can be an analogy for the sorts of things can threaten my life or yours like this storm threatened Jesus and his friends. When storms strike us, we feel alone and vulnerable. We feel like God’s gone away, or gone to sleep. And we ask the question that Jesus disciples asked him as they woke him up. Don’t you care? We’re all going to die!

We’ve heard the story. He does wake up, and he tells the wind and the sea to calm down. Then he asks them why they’re afraid, and do they have any faith at all? But they don’t seem to hear this. They’re wondering about something else. “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?!” I think anybody would ask that question; and there’s really only one answer. Only God can tell the wind and the sea what to do.

But that’s not the whole story. Let’s just go back into the story a bit. Jesus, asleep in the boat, was so tired that even a great storm couldn’t wake him. He’d been looking after crowds of people for days. One day he didn’t even have time to eat. And yet, as he was teaching all those people, there were others telling anyone who’d listen that he was evil. And his family was nagging him to come back home and get real. He’d been fighting an up-hill battle. No wonder he was exhausted.

So we have in our boat the one who can command the wind and the sea; and we know only God can do that. But that same person in our boat is so exhausted, he escapes crowds and then sleeps through a storm that terrifies experienced sailors. And that’s a vulnerable human being. In our boat with us is the God who can command the weather and also in our boat with us is our teacher Jesus, who gets tired, just like anybody else. And they’re one and the same person!

For me that’s the unnoticed miracle in this story; God and you and I are all in the same boat. God is in our boat because that exhausted teacher is asleep in the boat with us; because Jesus chooses to be with us; to be one of us. We tend to think of the miracle of this story being that Jesus calms the storm. But maybe we could think of it as the miraculous story of how God shares our storms with us; how God is in the same boat with us. See this, and our life’s storms are very different things.

There’s a wonderful painting of this story by Rembrandt. I think he painted the exact moment of Jesus’ command to the wind and waves. Jesus is sitting in the back of the boat with a few of his disciples looking at him. It’s a still point in a wild scene. The water around the back of the boat seems calmer than it is everywhere else. The sail nearest to Jesus has relaxed a bit. But at the front of the boat, the storm is still blowing with full force; one sail is drum tight, the other is torn and standing straight out in the wind with a shredded rope whipping around above it. And the sailors there are hanging on for grim death; they look terrified.

What this painting says – what this story says – is this. Jesus came to be with us in the storms of our lives. Know that, and look for him. Jesus knows our storms. Tell him how your storms affect you; he’ll hear and understand. Sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes God lets the storm rage, and calms the child.

Let’s pray. In times of storm and in places of calm, God, we give thanks for being with us. In calls to go and in calls to stay put, God, we give you thanks for being with us. May we trust in your presence; trust your love because of Jesus. Amen.

Sermon for St. John’s Halifax Street on the 54^th Anniversary of my Ordination to Priesthood

Last Tuesday was St. Barnabas’ Day the 11^th of June, and I celebrated the 54^th Anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. Some of you have asked me whether I could speak in a sermon about where I been, and what had happened in my ministry, because you knew very little about me and my origins. So here goes, with a few remarks also about St. Barnabas.

My Early Life

I was born in 1937 in QLD, in an obscure village of about 12 houses called Mungar

Junction, near Maryborough. I had a very loving family, (mother, father and two brothers), and I had an idyllic childhood, roaming free on my bicycle on the bush roads. Every month we made the trip into Maryborough to go ‘to church, and it was at the age of about 8 that I felt a calling to the priesthood.

Next came High School, and then University, when we moved to Brisbane. I gained a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering, and did 5 years post-graduate work, before going to Broken Hill to work underground to obtain my Mine Manager’s Certificate. After that I went to St Francis’ College in Brisbane to study for the priesthood. There, on a College Mission to Charters Towers in NQ, I learned my first lesson — that all visiting, and mission work needs to be placed in God’s hands before you start. Though there may appear to be little result, God has used you to place one more piece or pieces of the jigsaw of faith in someone’s life.

As I move from one part of my ministry to the next, I want to share with you some of the things that God taught me at each step.

I was ordained a priest on the 11t of June, 1970, Ste Barnabas’ Day. Barnabas’ actual name was Joseph, and he came from Cyprus, and there is quite a lot about him in the Acts of the Apostles. However, the apostles nicknamed him “Barnabas” meaning Son of Consolation, or the one who encourages, because of his kind and encouraging manner, his understanding heart, and willingness to take a back seat when someone greater than he came on the scene. As St Luke puts it, he was “good man, full of the Holy Spirit”, You cannot give a person a greater compliment than that! I tried to model my ministry on his, react like he might have, and learn by experience. He was martyred at Salamis in AD 61.

Bundaberg

I was sent to Bundaberg in 1970, where the rector was supposed to have a problem with alcohol. But he had had a stroke earlier in his life, which left one side of his face drooping, as if drunk. So, rumours abounded but he was kind, holy, and prayerful, so I learned not to listen to rumours, or judge from outward appearances.

Once a woman in the parish mis-heard the words of a sermon I preached and refused all attempts of mine to set matters straight. It was crucial that this happen by the next Saturday night, The rector Wd me to pray and believe, On Saturday afternoon I met her and it was as if nothing had ever happened. Thus, I was taught the importance of persistent, believing prayer. I also learned how to handle 5 Masses on a Sunday in a big parish.

St George

I was sent to St. George (Q) in 1972, a grazing and cotton growing centre. Here I learned how to accept with gratitude the gifts of grateful parishioners, and not feel that I had to respond in kind. I was taught that there is a God-like innate compassion in folk who never come to church. My brother, aged 21, was killed in a car accident near Seymour, Victoria, and that weekday afternoon, the church was filled with people for Evensong. A man I did not know told me to be ready at 4.00am the next day, and he would drive me to Newcastle so that I could take the funeral without stress.

It was here that I came to understand the charismatic renewal, and was introduced to the church’s ministry of healing, through seeing a woman healed of a brain tumour before my very eyes, in two days.

It was here that, after a disastrous flood which left dead sheep hung on barbed wire fences for miles and miles, that I feared for the faith of a young grazier, who had lost 9,000 sheep. He looked at me and said, “God has left me 1 ,000 sheep to start over again with.” It was here that I was called to a stockman (whom I did not know) in Dirranbandi hospital, 80km away, on a wet and windy night, who wanted to see me before he died of cancer but was hanging on to life. I did not want to go, as the black soil roads were slippery like ice, and I had a very small car and no-one in their right mind would travel that night. But I went, unwillingly, got bogged, sat glumly in the car, and was pulled out by the only car to pass me that night. At the hospital door I took off my mud-caked boots and gave the emaciated man the last rites. As I blessed him, he folded his hands on his chest, and just stopped breathing. I went outside on to the verandah and cried, asking God for forgiveness. I learned then that no matter who we may be, God can still use an unwilling servant. This was to be the greatest lesson I was ever to be taught.

Cunnamulla 

In 1975, as Head Brother of the Bush Brothers of St. Paul, I moved to Cunnamulla, where there were three brothers in the one house. There was a problem with the isolation of the rest of the Brothers whom I was expected to visit regularly. We prayed about it, and it seemed good to us and the HS that we should buy a plane do the job. So, in faith, I learned to fly, and we bought a Cessna 182. We did not actually have the money for the plane, but that year, our income increased through bequests by $20,000, which was the exact price of the plane.

Here I realized that Ecumenism began in the Outback, Because of the lack of young men and women, marriages tend to take place between young people from local cattle stations. Thus, Anglicans and Roman Catholics tend to intermarry, so that there are many blended families. In times of crisis, your neighbours are the only people that stand between life and death, so denominational difference is not an issue in the Outback.

It was also my job to take the Brother at Quilpie to minister to the station people from Quilpie to Birdsville, and to the north and the south. Arrangements were made weeks in advance through the Flying Doctor Radio Network based at the Birdsville Hospital. We would visit three stations a day for 5 days. One for morning smoko, one for afternoon smoko, and one for a Community Mass and a bed for the night. This was not difficult, as the stations were often only about 150 km apart.

Charleville

In 1978 1 moved to Charleville, where I had an episode with peritonitis, and moved to Dubbo as my new base. The Brotherhoods wound up in 1981, and I was asked by Archbishop Rayner to go to a Port Adelaide and make peace between the Catholics and Charismatics. That was not difficult, as both groups believe strongly in sacraments, prayer, love and healing.

Port Adelaide

This was, at last, a settled ministry, with only three churches. It was here that I was taught the importance of not moving until there was unanimous agreement in the parish council. No one wins, no one loses.

It was here that I learned the joy of being part of every family, and the ministry of healing expanded to include exorcism of houses, of which there were many. It seemed as if I could spend the rest of my life here. But in 1988 I was asked to go to Normanton, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, as p.i.c. of a parish with 7 far-flung centres of worship, each 150 km distant from the next. One unfair attraction was that I would be the assistant pilot of the Diocesan plane. I was confused, so I asked the 6 of the most prayerful parishioners to pray about this and ask God what HE wanted. All but one reported back that I was to go to Carpentaria. The last one said he was unhappy with my request to pray about it.

Normanton

So in 1988 I went to Normanton. It was extraordinary. It was part of my job to fly round all the parishes from Normanton to Cairns, and all points north to pick up people from the parishes for Diocesan Council, Clergy Conferences, Retreats and Synods and fly them to Horn Island, the airport for Thursday Island. I had also to fly round all the islands in the Torres Strait collecting reps for these functions on Thursday Island. In my first year, I was also locum at Cooktown, which I visited by plane once a month.

So, I would spend on an average one week in Normanton parish, and the next week piloting the plane, a Cessna 210, a 6seater. I obtained my First Class Instrument Rating at the age of 51 , and so could fly in all weathers whenever required, in relative safety. My most joyful moments, however, were when, after battling  rainstorms for two hours down the QLD coast, in zero visibility, at night, I descended through the clouds to 300 feet, and could see the high intensity runway lights of Cairns spread out before me, welcoming me to land. Thanks be to God!

Aberfoyle Park and Clarendon

Finally, in 1992, I left for AB and Clarendon. That was a wonderful parish in a different way. It was new, having been started by Fr. Gene Bennett, and it had no traditions. All the parishioners were new, or converts from other denominations, so their outlook was fresh and willing to try new things. I had a ball! I retired in the year 2000, and it was then that I developed high blood pressure. Amazing! Since then I have done many locums, both in the Diocese of The Murray and Adelaide, and finally made my home with God’s people St. John’s. I still maintain a quiet ministry based at my retirement cottage for those seeking prayer, consolation and healing.

Thank you for celebrating with me my 54^th anniversary of priesting. I have had a privileged life, and I thank God for all that He has taught me.