Archbishop Geoffrey Smith

Lent 5B – Jeremiah 31.31-34, Hebrews 5.5-14, John 12.20-33

English can be a tricky language to learn for a number of reasons but including because one word can have more than one meaning. There is an example of that in today’s gospel reading: the word ‘see’. See, that’s s-e-e not s-e-a, (that’s another challenge with English-different words can sound the same).  S-e-e can describe process of seeing with our eyes, or it can describe understanding , as in ‘oh now I see what you mean’. It can be tricky.

Today’s gospel passage from John’s gospel has some Greeks, that is people from Greece, likely to be non-Jews or in other words gentile people, who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, finding the disciple called Philip and saying-‘we wish to see Jesus’.

The passage then has Philip telling this to Andrew and the two of them telling Jesus.  Presumably they said to Jesus, ‘some Greeks want to see you’. There is no record of the Greeks having a face-to-face meeting with Jesus. What follows the communication of the request to Jesus is a long passage where Jesus reflects on the meaning of his death and resurrection and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  The people from Greece want to ‘see’, that is meet Jesus, but the response Jesus gives is about seeing who he is, and seeing the meaning of his death and resurrection and understanding what following him entails.

The Greeks want to see Jesus, but Jesus wants them and the disciples to understand what he is all about.

This play on seeing and not understanding is a bit of a theme in John’s gospel. There is a contrast between the religious people who should recognise Jesus but don’t see who Jesus is, and often the people who aren’t religious specialists who do see. Who do get it. Who do understand who Jesus is.

So instead of ending up with a face-to-face meeting with Jesus where the Greek enquirers eyeball Jesus, we end up with the most concentrated teaching on the meaning of Jesus death and resurrection in the whole of John’s gospel. This is to help us to ‘see’, to understand, to follow and so have life.

John’s gospel tells us what the purpose of the gospel is: ‘so that we might come to believe (or continue to believe) that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name’ (Jn 20.31).

So, it seems important then that we have a look at this block of teaching and see what it might have for us on the fifth Sunday of Lent.

First, Jesus’ crucifixion was not some unfortunate mistake or tragedy where Jesus’ life was taken from him against his will. His whole life was about service. In his ministry we see him offering himself for the good of others. His life was a life of love. Jesus’ death was the final and most dramatic example of that. Jesus didn’t have some macabre death wish but a sense of his vocation of service. As he says in verse 27-‘should I say-father save me from this hour?’. (That is the hour of his rejection and suffering and death). ‘No’, he says, ‘it is for this reason that I have come to this hour’. Jesus’ whole ministry led to his offering of himself for the life of the whole creation. This is love. This is service.

Second, in Jesus’ offering of himself, the world has been judged. All the priorities of the world, those who think they have power and influence, the forces of evil themselves have been shown to be false. Here in Jesus offering of himself do we have real meaning, real purpose, real power. The world and its priorities and what it thinks is valuable has been judged and shown to be lacking. The ultimate power of evil is overcome in the offering of Jesus himself and his death on the cross and the true way of life and living has been highlighted.

Third, Jesus’ offering of himself on the cross, his great act of love, will lead to reconciliation. He says, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself’. His death is enough for all people. Through his death all the people of the world are invited to him. All the people of the world are welcomed by him. All the people of the world have the opportunity to know him and be at peace with God through him, and receive his life. This is the answer to the word of God through Jeremiah in the first reading: ‘for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more’. This through the offering and death of Christ.

It is important that we notice the word ‘draw’-I when I am lifted up will draw all people to myself’. There is the sense of a positive energy. Not only is the door to Jesus and his life open but there is an attraction to Jesus as people see the power of his loving service on the cross and realise how wonderful that is.

There is a tension in John’s gospel in that so much is on offer to the whole world, but there is the need to accept what is on offer. To respond to Jesus’ loving service. To believe and trust in him and follow him. People need to accept and believe but the way is open to all.

Fourth, those who ‘see’ who Jesus is are called to follow him. He says: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life’.

To love our life is the antithesis of Jesus style. Jesus’ style, his example is to give away his life in service. To expend himself for the good of others. Not to preserve himself or save himself but to spend himself. To hate life in this context is not to despise our life, but to be loyal to Jesus. To follow his example. To serve others as Jesus did.

What it means to serve Jesus is seen clearly in the foot washing which comes in the next chapter. There Jesus takes on the task of the lowliest servant in the household and dirties himself in the process of making the disciples clean. Its only their feet but it is symbolic of cleansing all of them. That is what it means to follow Jesus. To give of ourselves for the good and healing and benefit of others.

This ties in so clearly with the mission of Jesus which is the healing of all things. The bringing good to everything. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what his followers do.

And finally, verse 26, ‘whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also’. Where is Jesus to be found? Jesus is found among those lost from God. Those who are marginalised and in need. The sinners and the sick. Those who might be breathing but are short on life. That’s where Jesus was to be found in his ministry and that’s where his followers will be found today. Bringing hope and healing and life to those who are running short of those things.

We are all in the process of ‘seeing’ Jesus. We are all in the process of understanding him and understanding the implications of his service for us. Lent is a good time to move that understanding on, but also to hear again his call to follow. To follow his style. To follow his priorities. To be where he was and still is.

What this means for us in comfortable middle-class Australia requires some thinking as it can be challenging for us. The whole narrative of our society is opposite to the idea of self- offering and service in the style of Jesus. The narrative of our society goes the other way, so we as followers of Jesus need to think about what it means to actually follow the one who washed his disciples feet. Who dirtied himself to cleanse others. Who gave his life so the whole world could have more life. Who died so that the whole world could be healed. And then we need to act, because that’s what following Jesus always means.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4b Mothering Sunday – Num 21 4-19, Ps 107 1-3, 17-22, Eph 2 1-10, Jn 3 14-21

Introduction to the readings for the younger people

We’re about to hear an episode in the adventures of the Israelites that doesn’t appear in many children’s Bibles.

After God rescued the Israelites from being slaves in Egypt, they often grumbled about things on their journey – especially about the food. Today, they even grumbled against God and against their leader Moses.

God sent fiery serpents among them and lots of Israelites were bitten and died. They realised how wicked they’d been. They said they’d been wrong to complain, and they asked Moses to pray that God would take away the serpents from them. Moses did pray, but God didn’t take the serpents away. Strangely, God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole. Moses made one out of bronze and set it up on a pole, and from then on, if anyone was bitten by fiery serpent, they had to look at this bronze fiery serpent and then they wouldn’t die. One person said that this means ‘… Israel can’t become so terminally ill that God isn’t able to heal them’. ^{(T B Dozeman, NIBC II – The Book of Numbers, p.167)}

In today’s Gospel story, Jesus reminds someone about this old snake on the pole story. Jesus meets a man who’s wondering about becoming his follower – a man called Nicodemus. He’s a Pharisee; a Jewish religious leader. Jesus tells Nicodemus, I will be like the serpent set up on the pole. He means that when we see him up on the Cross – which is a sign of death – we’ll see that he’s the way the world can be rescued from death.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that he came to rescue the world – not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Nicodemus listened to Jesus, and even though he was very secretive that night, he would become one of the bravest of Jesus’ followers.

We still remember the danger of death leading to life in the Church when we are baptized. We go beneath the deep waters of death as the way Scripture tells us we enter abundant life in God’s Kingdom.

Sermon

If Moses had prayed the way the people asked him to, he would have asked God to take the serpents away from them. Maybe he did pray that. But God didn’t remove the snakes; people kept on getting bitten. But when they looked at Moses’ bronze serpent, the bites didn’t kill them any more. Is this a story about that eternal question of why a loving God allows suffering, or is it a story about a merciful God who sends healing into a world where our mortality means suffering is inevitable – God so loved the world that he gave his only Son … is that what it’s about?

These questions were still hanging around when Jesus talked with the Jewish leader called Nicodemus. Jesus linked the serpent on the pole with his crucifixion: ^14…just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The Gospel tells us when we can really see, we’ll know Jesus gives life where logically there should be death.

Nicodemus had come to Jesus secretly that night to avoid being noticed. You don’t let on that a dangerous radical has captured your imagination if you value your social standing. Yet we know Nicodemus openly became a disciple soon after. We’ll soon find him speaking up for Jesus against his fellow religious leaders. ^{Jn 7.50-51} And we’ll meet him again on Good Friday when he comes to his Lord again – this time to embalm him for burial. ^{Jn 19.39-42}

Nicodemus had been baffled just before, when Jesus told him he had to be born again. Today we come into that conversation as Jesus tells him about the Son of Man being lifted up like that bronze serpent Moses made. But still on Good Friday as Nicodemus risks everything to bury his Master, he doesn’t yet know that his eyes will see Jesus again ‘lifted up’ – from the grave, and finally from human sight at his Ascension; such knowledge is a privilege that we only have with hindsight.

So has our journey been travelled for us by Nicodemus and the other earliest Christians? Have they tackled all the questions of pain and suffering and healing in a world of mortals, and left us with the answers? No, they certainly haven’t. The questions are new again in every generation. But we can learn from their journeys.

In today’s story, Nicodemus is at one stage on the journey we’re all travelling. He’s come to Jesus to dip his toe in who knows what; to step over the edge of the certainties of his faith world. He’s come secretly to visit someone who challenges his world; threatens to turn it upside down. What is it in Nicodemus that senses his yearning; and why him particularly, and not one of his fellow Jewish leaders?

Last week, we heard how the Holy Spirit lives inside us – places God’s wisdom right on our hearts – hears the deepest yearnings of our hearts, and speaks them for us to the heart of God. In our listening prayer, we hear that conversation between our own hearts, and the fathomless love of the God who bends to hear us. As we hear our yearnings go out, our call is to follow them towards God. Like Nicodemus was called, the Spirit beckons to us as well. Will we also hear and follow?

Today, we’re called to explore the paradox that we are at once the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and yet we and all creation live embraced in God. This Mothering Sunday, our collect prayer sees this embrace from inside: Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being. It’s like an unborn baby might experience life in the womb. Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being. God holds the world in a loving embrace; an embrace so nurturing that it’s like a womb.

On Mothering Sunday, one image we’ve inherited is that the Church is our Mother. This echoes something in the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. Jesus had told him you can’t see the kingdom of God without being born again. Might that be where we fit in? Are we, the Church – called the bride of Christ – are we the living sanctuary, the womb, where God nurtures people’s life and movement and being so that they and we may be born anew from here – from this community?

I think it means that on this Mothering Sunday, we remember that our mission as a church is to be a place, a people, of nurture, of nourishment, of warmth and welcome both for each other, and for anyone who is called to be born again into God’s Kingdom, through this community. We nurture life and movement and being.

Today, may we lift up our eyes with Nicodemus to discover the paradox that we are at once the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, yet we are also embraced inside the journey of gestation in God. We live and move and have our being in God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 3 b  Ex 20 1-17 Ps 19 1 Cor 1 18-25 Jn 2 13-22

I was given a birthday card some years ago which had a picture of a very muscular looking young man on the front. Its caption reads – ‘I know my body’s meant to be a temple, but I think of it as more like a well-managed Christian youth-club.’

It’s not a card you forget quickly. It echoes a saying in 1 Cor 6.19 where Paul writes – Don’t you know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you’ve received from God? You are not your own. Paul’s just been writing about things people who belong to Christian youth clubs probably shouldn’t be doing with their bodies. So it’s always been a much-discussed verse in those settings. … But I digress.

I know my body’s meant to be a temple. This also echoes the saying we just heard in John’s gospel; Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body. And of course, it relates to something we say together here every Sunday – We are the body of Christ: His Sprit is with us. So today we have the symbolism of this body–temple image in the Gospel to explore – both its implications for us as individual, living temples of the Holy Spirit since our baptisms, and for us as St John’s collectively embodying Christ, whose Spirit is with us.

This has a particular focus in Lent, our cleansing time, which is why we have this story of Jesus cleansing the Temple – and on healing Sunday. How I wish, when I pray for someone’s healing from an aggressive disease, that Jesus would knot a cord of ropes and drive the illness out of the temple of their body!

There’s so much in all this that only a story can help us to navigate it. So let’s get our Gospel back in front of us. Jesus arrives at the Temple in Jerusalem when Passover is near; the great Jewish festival which happens around the time we Christians celebrate Easter. Like Easter, Passover remembers a sacrifice through which God saves many people from a death that would otherwise have afflicted everyone. But arriving on the Temple mount, the scene confronting Jesus shocks him deeply. It looks like a marketplace. We might get a sense of this shock when we think of the way hot cross buns and Easter eggs appear in our shops almost before the Christmas tinsel comes down.

In the lead-up to Passover, extra stalls had already mushroomed on the Temple plaza. Some stalls catered to the extra demand for animals and birds to sacrifice at Passover. Others catered to pilgrims who needed to pay their annual Temple tax. They had to exchange their common secular money for silver Tyrian half-shekels; the only coins pure enough to be accepted in payment of the Temple tax.
So what provoked Jesus when he came to the Temple is something we’re quite used to; the grotesque commercialisation of a sacred festival. But for him, the trade wasn’t out in the shops like it is for us. The shops had taken over the Temple plaza itself. Imagine if someone suggested sales of hot cross buns and chocolate rabbits during services in this church as a fundraiser for Lent – imaging vendors marching up and down the aisles crying their wares. How would we react? Not on our watch!

That’s how all the trade in the Temple affected Jesus. This was where God dwelt among the people – where people encountered their God; the Holy of Holies. Brazen commerce in the Temple was something. Jesus took very personally; Jesus; the Holy God embodied and living among the people. There was only one possible response; Jesus cleansed the Temple.

The authorities challenged Jesus to justify his actions, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this? He replied, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ They didn’t understand his response at all. Taking him literally, they said ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But as John has told us Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.

There’s that body-equals-Temple saying again. It comes alive for us today on this Sunday in Lent and in our prayers for healing. Today, we are called to grasp the connection between John’s story of Jesus cleansing the Temple, and the way we, the body of Christ whose Spirit is with us, seek cleansing from all that cuts us off from God. We ask this in a particular way today in our prayers for healing – that Jesus may cleanse us and those we love, that he might heal us of what afflicts and grieves us.

I see Jesus’ passionate reaction to the abuse of the Jerusalem Temple today, and I know that he’s just as passionate about us too – passionate to cleanse us of what mars his image in us. Jesus is passionate about you and me and all people because we too are created in God’s image to be temples of the Holy Spirit like he is.
Jesus is passionate about us as St John’s too; how we represent him in this place. His Spirit is with us so we might provide justice and mercy and faith in the world he died for. Jesus sees how vulnerable people and groups have their sacred places and spiritual connections violated by outside interests that seek only wealth and control – and we only have to think as far as Western Australia for a recent example of this. And he calls us as his body to oppose these abuses – to get rid of these abuses. That’s what the image of cleansing the Temple says to me.

If any are hindered from approaching God by such grotesque forces, or oppressed or sick, this won’t get cleansed just by the well-managed Christian club of my birthday card. Jesus calls us, the Body of Christ who have the Spirit with us, to do what he showed us how to do; his is a call to action. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Wondering with children inside an egg: Mark 8.31-38 – Lent 2 2021

Have you ever seen a bird hatch out of its egg – a bird or a crocodile or a tortoise or a caterpillar? It’s a big change for them, isn’t it. One moment, tiny living space, next minute, the whole world!

Imagine if you were in an egg and it was time for you to hatch. Everything you know is inside your shell. It lets light in from outside, and warmth and cold. That’s all you feel and see inside your egg – and probably you don’t know you’re going to be in a world bigger than ever you dreamed possible. Your imagination is shaped like the inside of an egg. I wonder how it’ll be just after you’ve hatched. Your world has been replaced – your imagination has cracked open – open to forever.

We’ll hear two stories today about people hatching out of their imaginations. God tries to tell Abraham and Sarah what’s outside their shells. And Jesus does the same with us. We don’t understand all that well, but God is patient; Jesus is patient.

Abraham and Sarah are both very old, but God tells them they’re about to become parents anyway. You might just hear them chuckling in their shells.

Jesus’ friends had heard him talking about God’s Kingdom. They hoped Jesus would become their king, because he was good and kind and wise; much better than the one they had. They knew what a king should be like. But they didn’t understand what sort of king Jesus is, or how amazingly different his Kingdom is. They hadn’t hatched out of their thought-shells yet.

Today, we’ll hear Jesus help to crack their shells for them so he can show them what God’s Kingdom is like. Even though he’s their king, he’ll be treated badly, crucified and killed – but after three days, he’ll rise again. They don’t like the sound of this. It’s not like they imagine. They try to shut their shells again and stay inside. But it won’t work. God’s Kingdom doesn’t wait for us to break out of our eggs. God’s Kingdom breaks in, and shows us that we live in something much more wonderful than we could ever have imagined. So let’s hear these stories.

Lent 2 – 28-2-21 Genesis 17 1-7, 15-16 – Mark 8 (22-30) 31-38

Lots of people have trouble reading the Gospel set for today. What Jesus says is really confronting – confronting for us just as much as it would have been for the original twelve. Here, Jesus calls himself the Son of Man – one of the titles of the Messiah – God’s anointed – the one who, in Daniel 7.13-14, is proclaimed as everlasting sovereign of the Earth. But Jesus says this Son of Man is going to be tortured, killed and then raised from the dead. In saying this, he dumps everything they’d grown up thinking about the one they expected – the Messiah. No wonder Peter reacts like he does, and no wonder Jesus has to reject so forcefully the temptation of Peter’s contradiction. He knows what his path is; self-denial and utter loyalty. And he knows its cost – for him, and for any who would follow him.

When Jesus turns to talk to the crowd – and that means us too – he claims the same self-denial and loyalty from us – even to the point of losing our life for his sake. He challenges us head on. As one writer puts it, We too are scandalized by a crucified Messiah. We too look upon discipleship as a fulfilling and pleasing life-style. We too expect success and approval rather than defeat and ignominy. We too want to raise the approval of our faith in the eyes of the world, and enable the church of Jesus Christ to be a seen as a positive and admired institution. ^{Leonard Vander Zee} So these words are as hard for us to hear as they were for their first hearers

We’re being challenged to wake up to an unfamiliar faith journey today. That’s why I talk with the children about hatching out of an egg. It’s the closest analogy I can come up with for what Mark is saying today. Jesus is asking us, his disciples to follow him out of the world as we see it and into a Kingdom we cannot yet see. He is asking utter trust and courage from us; the sort we met in Abraham and Sarah.

We get a vivid image of this transformation when you remember the last things we saw in this chapter of Mark’s gospel before we rejoined Jesus and his disciples on the road today. (Mark 8.22-30) It’s when Jesus gave sight to a blind man. It’s a beautiful story.

When Jesus and his disciples arrived in the village of Bethsaida, the locals bring the blind man to Jesus and ask if he might touch him.

Jesus does better than that; he takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village. Then he puts some saliva on the man’s eyes, lays his hands on him, and asks the man if he can see anything. The man looks up and says, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees walking.’ Jesus lays his hands on his eyes again. The man’s sight is restored and he sees everything clearly. Then, sending him home, Jesus tells him not even to go into the village.

Today, Mark challenges all of us to leave behind our settled ways of seeing things – and by that, he means our spiritual blindness – and to open our ears and our eyes to what has been proclaimed since the beginning of this gospel; ‘The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.’ ^{Mk 1.14} Repent means to turn around; walk the other way. To walk the Christian path means a complete 180^o turn from the type of power we humans currently honour. Mark makes this point by setting today’s story … in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, a city built by Herod Philip to honour the emperor who’d given him this area to rule … a city built to celebrate worldly power. ^{Leonard Vander Zee}

In this of all places, Jesus decides to tell us that he and everyone who follows in his way must turn from what such a city represents – the self-focussed pursuit of power and influence. We must turn from that, pick up the Cross of Christ, and tread unashamedly, in his footsteps; tread the path of caring for others, walking alongside the poor, the outsider, the vulnerable; revealing the Good News of God’s love.

It’s not always straightforward; not always crystal clear. Like that blind man after Jesus first touched him, we may well also see walking trees, or be seen as walking trees. (cf The Land of Walking Trees by Michael Hansen – a book of meditations for people suffering chronic illnesses) But Jesus can see so much more than we can, and stays with us to help us see just as far – just as well.

Remembering our egg analogy, we don’t often willingly break out into the Kingdom to take hold of these things, so the Kingdom breaks in to us – gently. Like Jesus did with that blind man – breaks in so Jesus can give his sight to us as well. Thanks be to God for loving us so dearly.                                Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1b – Gen 9 8-17, Ps 25, 1 Pet 3 18-22, Mk 1 9-15

Last Tuesday evening – Shrove Tuesday – many traditional Christians would’ve finished clearing their pantries of sweets and delicacies, and, with the odd pancake or ten, eaten them up before Lent. We clear things out that might distract us from the focus of the fasting time. That focus is the simple truth that ultimately, we rely on God alone. Churches pare down too – no flowers; ornaments veiled, violet robes and hangings. With distractions out of the way, life is more austere and basic. Then that essential truth can come more easily into focus; we rely on God alone.

On Ash Wednesday, we thought about the way fasting from food has the effect of changing our experience of time. Our days are no longer partitioned into the spaces between meals, snacks and sleep. Instead, our days stretch out into an unfamiliar, trackless emptiness. Each day is then an obstacle-free space for God to find us.

We can achieve the same effect as fasting from food by fasting from overwork, from compulsive shopping, from over-consumption of news and media, from obsessive hobbies or passions (eg., worry). We can fast from speaking – inhabit the silence. Each is a chance to make obstacle-free space for God to find us.

For a long time now, the wider community has been bewildered by this sort of practice – if not downright hostile towards it. And that’s understandable. Our ‘quality of life’ is conventionally measured by how much we consume and how full our social and working calendars are. Fasting from such things questions this measure of life, and many dislike such indisputable standards being challenged.

Yet communities of faith – all faiths – have always valued fasting as a spiritual exercise. So what do we discover in this self-emptying process? What does it do for our spiritual health? There’s more to it than that silly joke about banging your head against a wall – that it feels better when you stop? Today’s collect prayer seems to me to point to what’s happening – particularly the way it links the waters of the primordial flood with the waters of our baptism. It recognises that at the same time as these waters are bringing death, they’re also germinating new life.

God of the new and eternal covenant, as the forty days of the great flood swept away the world’s corruption and watered new beginnings of righteousness and life: grant to us, who are washed clean and born again in the saving flood of baptism, the wellspring of your grace, that your gift of new life may flourish once again; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer

The flood story is about washing away the wickedness and evil that had come to characterise humanity – ^{Gen 6.5} every inclination of the thoughts of [human] hearts was only evil continually. Selfishness and disloyalty lay behind the human violence that so grieved God. The community on the Ark sheltered as much from those evils as they did from the waters of the flood.

And the story of Jesus’ baptism sees him immediately after his baptism going to the people-free ‘ark’ of the wilderness – to be with wild creatures and angels, rather than humans – and await his call to mission.

Both the Ark community and Jesus emerged from a fast – a retreat from everyday life where God could come near them – where they could experience the utter dependence of all life on God alone. And when they finally left that wilderness, the Ark community and Jesus emerged in obedience to God’s command to restore life to Earth – to reaffirm the reign of God on Earth.

Lent is the time for the Church to rediscover, reaffirm and reinforce our basic values of love for God and neighbour. Lent is the time for the Church to remove ourselves from the prevailing climate of entitlement – and we’ve always been complicit in that – and re-equip ourselves for the self-emptying life that we see yet again modelled in Jesus today.

Jesus didn’t go down to the river to take over from John the Baptist; he went down there just like everyone else to receive baptism. That is our model – rely on God alone, assume no entitlements, make obstacle-free space for God to find us.

Lent is our chance to return to the wilderness – to remove ourselves from all that numbs our spiritual senses – and wait for God – to wait upon God.                  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Transfiguration – Mark 9.2-9 

Sometimes at the end of a very cloudy day, just when you think you’re headed from one depth of shadow into the even deeper shadow of night, the sun appears under the clouds just before it sets. Suddenly its glorious, golden light transfigures everything; forest treetops shake off their dull grey-green to reveal a sparkling copper crown that shimmers for as far as the eye can see. Old stone buildings seem to come to life. The world feels caught up into a holy moment, and you soak it up while you can, because you know it’ll only last for moments.

Mark frames the moment of Jesus’ transfiguration just like this. Just as the shadow of thick clouds and the deeper shadow of night can frame a glorious moment of sunset, Mark frames the transfiguration with worrying stories – shadow stories.

Three times in this Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples of his coming death and resurrection and their reactions are very disappointing. On two of those occasions, Peter, James and John are named as the disciples who just don’t get it. Before today’s reading, Peter rejects the thought and tries to talk some sense into Jesus,^8.32 and after today’s reading, James and John ignore what he says as they obsess about their own future eminence.^10.35-37

The transfiguration is a momentary glimpse of Christ’s true glory, but even here, Peter, James and John just don’t get it. These three are its privileged witnesses, but they’re utterly unable to comprehend it. It really jars, and it’s meant to. Jesus’ dazzling transfiguration should transform them, and all of us, like those special sunsets do to a cloud-shadowed world. But in that moment, it doesn’t; the full wonder of it is only accessible to them – and to us – in the light of Easter. So what’s going on?

A while before today’s story, Jesus had said, Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power. Now, six days later, for these three, Peter, James and John, that’s just what happens. Jesus takes them up Mount Tabor, Moses and Elijah appear with him, and the disciples see that the kingdom of God actually has come with power. The kingdom has come in the person of Jesus.

So what do they do? Peter wants to put Jesus, Elijah and Moses in boxes. His motives are good; it’s what the Jewish people had always done with sacred things; put them in a safe place so nothing can defile them.

Even though they witness the transfiguration, Peter, James and John don’t have the full picture. They have no idea that the Messiah can die, far less rise again.

So Jesus tells them to keep quiet about what they’ve seen until after he’s risen from the dead; don’t tell the story until you can tell it all. You can’t say who I am until you know the whole story. They wander on, wondering what it can mean; this rising from the dead business. And yet there’s this memory of an incredible vision that they’d never shake off; a vision of life beyond our ‘natural’ one. A glimpse of something more that they don’t seem ready to understand yet.

We’re in a similar spot to the disciples. Every now and then, we can also have a profound encounter with Jesus; feel as if we get who he really is. But like his first disciples we’re on the learning journey with him too. Where his words about rising from the dead were a mystery for them, for us, I wonder if it’s the mystery that he said he’s coming again, and that we will be raised from the dead with him.

What does the transfiguration say to us? Jesus’ transfiguration reveals who he really is. And just as the first disciples grew into a deeper understanding of who Jesus actually is, we travel the same road they did.

On Ash Wednesday this week, we turn with them to follow Jesus on the cruel, mysteriously providential road to Jerusalem. And as we learn more about him, we pray to learn more about what he calls from us. Sometimes, other people can see that there’s more to you or me than we know ourselves. Sometimes other people are given the gift of telling us who we really are. Sometimes we are given that gift ourselves for fellow pilgrims; transfiguration moments of light at work in each other; we’re like that forest set aglow at sunset.

I remember as a very new Christian I’d done something stupid, said some hurtful things, and I felt ashamed of them. When my priest asked me to help in the church, I said I didn’t think I should, because I wasn’t a good enough person. He didn’t agree. He said those hurtful actions and nasty words weren’t who I really was; that deep down, there was a more real me.

The real person was the one who could see those actions and words for what they were; the one who wanted to do better; leave old ways behind. In a way he held up a mirror to me; held it on an angle that shone transfiguring light on me.

Just as Peter, James and John were not prisoners of their bad choices and mistakes, I didn’t have to be either. Jesus transformed their lives, and Jesus transforms our lives.

I pray that this is our gift to each other, and to our community. May we be compassionate, transfiguring people who reveal/reflect each other’s deeper inner lives: reveal/reflect the indwelling of God in each of us; reveal/reflect to the world Christ in whom even death is transfigured into new life.    Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 5 – Healing Sunday – Mark 1.29-39

Jesus heals Peter’s Mother-in-Law and she gets straight up to serve everyone. I remember years ago reading this story and feeling as if she got a bit of a raw deal. And I must confess to having harboured this misgiving until recently. I disclosed this misgiving to a notable Biblical scholar who reminded me of something Jesus said later in this Gospel – ^10.45 the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve’. It’s a teaching we see in two of the other gospels ^{(Mt 20.28 and Jn 13.1-17 footwashing)}, so scholars see this service teaching as ‘normative’ – as essential to the nature of Jesus and his followers – as a standard by which we understand other parts of the Gospel.

What that means in today’s case is that for Peter’s Mother-in-Law, being healed and enabled to get up and serve identifies her in the Gospel as someone who is like Jesus; as someone who serves. Her healing by Jesus restored her as someone who provides hospitality – an extremely high value in her culture, and in the Gospel. Her healing by Jesus restored her honour and dignity to her, and affirmed her ministry. That’s healing – it’s far more than a cure.

This particular sort of healing still happens today. I want to tell you about someone I used to visit in the burns unit of the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He’d been badly burnt in a house fire – he’d gone back in to save his dog. During these visits, there were three things that I marvelled at. The first was the bed he was on. The second was the eternity it seemed to take for the healing process to inch forwards. But most amazing was the honouring of this man’s humanity and dignity that was so much a part of his recovery – or as I see it, his rebirth.

The bed. On one visit, he invited me to sit on the bed because there wasn’t a chair in the room. For a little while, everything seemed normal. But then, very gently, a wave seemed to go under me. It lifted me up and tilted me to one side. It felt like being in a rubber boat on the sea. I didn’t like to mention it at first, but it happened a few more times, and when I’d developed a bit of a list to starboard, he saw the look on my face and explained it to me. His bed did this all the time, so that no part of his skin would have to bear the pressure of his body-weight for longer than a few minutes.

Eternity. I marvelled at how much time it took his skin to heal. From one visit to the next, his progress seemed unbelievably slow. He seemed to be cut off from time, cocooned in a room by himself, receiving the most frequent, and the most unbelievably painstaking care you could imagine. From visit to visit, with a sort of time-lapse photographic view, I watched his hands and arms, his scalp, his chest and his back being progressively given back to him.

Rebirth. But I said he surprised me too. It surprised me that he got well again at all, considering how he’d looked when things started. He came to talk often about how he’d come to understand that God wanted him to stay around for a bit longer. And he wanted to find out why; what was it that God wanted him to do. I believe an important part of what moved him to this point was the way the burns-unit staff treated him. They didn’t know who or what he was in life (he was on an invalid pension and lived in a housing trust unit); they simply devoted themselves to this human being’s comfort, and to his recovery.

For the rest of us looking on, these staff were the way God answered our prayers for our friend. Their conduct spoke clearly of how God wanted his dignity and significance as a person to be honoured. And he was given much more than his old sense of self by this. He was cured, but also healed – past wounds of the soul were also addressed by the respect and care he was given.

The time, the patience, the delicacy of each change of dressings, the bed designed to preserve him from the degradation of further agony – in all this, he came to know that God cherished him, and wanted him to stay alive. And his life from then on became a quest to figure out what God want him to do with it. Healing is more than a re-instatement of what was; it’s a furthering of the process of creation. So our friend was given something more than he had before he was injured – he was given a new life. And he decided to dedicate his new life to God who gave it to him; he committed himself to do whatever it was that God wanted of him. And he sought that purpose within the context of a community of friends he knew loved and cared for him.

I pray God’s continued blessing on our regular healing ministry.             Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Septuagesima  – Mt 20 1-16

(Kids: The professors’ table in Hogwarts’ great hall is called a ‘high table’.) One night at high table at a Melbourne uni college hall, somebody had been to chapel, and today’s parable was the Gospel reading. They were incensed by it, and decided to tell one of the theological teachers how unfair they thought it was. It became quite a heated discussion; something almost unheard of at high table. Soon the people on either side of them got interested, and the theolog had to tell them the parable too.

Then it was on; you should have heard the outrage. Suddenly there weren’t two, but six people arguing about it, then ten, then twelve, and eventually, all twenty-four people – respected academics from the whole range of disciplines – and all arguing furiously about the rights and wrongs of this parable. I had never seen that normally bored, urbane gathering at high table get so animated about anything before.

Back then, my day job was to teach English to refugees and recent immigrants and I was always on the lookout for things that would inspire my students to practise their conversation. That night at high table, I decided this was the very thing for them. Could this happen in my classroom too?

It did, and spectacularly. So I used it with lots of my classes. It was fascinating how different national groups reacted to it. Engineers fresh from the solidarność uprising in Gdansk despised the landowner. Paying latecomers the same as the all-day workers was an injustice to them, because, naturally, they saw themselves as the morning crew. Latin Americans saw the landowner using his wealth to inflate his own ego, and humiliate poor, honest workers. Others were disgusted by the owner’s insensitivity – paying the late-comers first made the ‘real workers’ hope in vain for better. My French students would never speak to such a person.

But each time, when everyone had reported back and the hubbub finally died down, the eldest Vietnamese man in the room would stand to speak for his people on this weighty matter. And was always the same message.

He’d say, ‘We think the landowner is a good man. He understands that everyone needs enough money to give their families food and clothes, and he gives it to all of them. He is a good man. The latecomers to the vineyard had been waiting all day for work, and so it was wonderful that their hope was rewarded.’

For some of the other students, this understanding might as well have come from a different planet. But the Vietnamese students always felt a deep kinship with the labourers who’d waited all day for work and were last to be hired. So they always rejoiced with them in their good fortune. That was what life had become for them in Vietnam – no bank account; no job security; no dole; only paid for piece-work if and when it suited an employer. And that’s what life’s still like for huge numbers of people who can never be sure where the next meal’s coming from.

So, back in another thought universe, at high table, scholars argued about justice, and Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans spoke of honour, equality, and just deserts But this parable takes us with those values into the realm of grace; into the Kingdom understanding that everything is a gift – everything is given in love, and love cannot be confined to our judgements of people’s worth or what they deserve.

Vicky and I were blessed to meet this story in the flesh in Jerusalem. At about 5.15 each morning, the call to prayer would wake us, sounding from the minaret just down Nablus Road. Morning Prayer in the cathedral was a bit later, so we had a time of quiet meditation to contemplate the sounds of the waking day. One sound always came just after the prayers at the mosque had finished. It was the sound of hundreds of feet; men walking wordlessly from their mosque down towards the old city.

They were headed down to an open market place on the corner of Sultan Suleiman Road and Prophet Street, over the road from the Old City’s Damascus Gate. Every day, they waited there from early morning, hoping to be hired as day labourers.

We passed this market place often. We saw the way the men were hired. A truck or a car would pull over to the kerb, and one of its occupants would bellow out the number of labourers they needed. Then several of the job-seekers would run over and jump aboard, and off they’d go.

Where people live under military occupation, large gatherings of men are not viewed favourably. So several times each day, a truckload of young, conscripted soldiers would drive onto the market place and give the would-be labourers a hard time, demanding to see their papers, searching them, shoving and kicking them around. It was all part of a daily ritual of humiliation and oppression.

But still the men came – every day. And many were still there waiting late in the day. Staying all day is dangerous; humiliating – it must have sometimes seemed futile. But they had no other way of providing for their families.

I hear this parable and always imagine what it would mean for those men if a land-owner came back every few hours to rescue more of them from their plight. I imagine what their families would think of such an owner, paying enough for daily bread even to the last ones hired, regardless of the hours worked.

Can we open ourselves to this parable from the late-comers’ perspective? Could we receive that vital gift and have it set us free from the fear that we don’t really deserve it? have it set us free from the fear that it’d be taken away from us if only someone knew the truth about us? have it set us free from the fear that we’ve let the side down somehow, and we’re not really worthy?

That’s the emotional challenge of this parable. But our faith is not determined by our feelings; because feelings don’t determine what is real; God’s love does that. The job-seekers who wait all day with no job must feel wretched – failing their needy families. And yet their will to stay all day is a courageous act of faith; that there’s always hope. That’s a gift; the strength to stay; the refusal to leave. That faith has been given to them, just as their life has been. God’s love is what’s real.

The Kingdom of heaven is like this landowner…the Kingdom which operates on the principles this land-owner works by is a Kingdom which the world desperately needs; a Kingdom where a life is valued for itself; valuable regardless of works or background or length or dis/ability or feelings.

Those poor, desperate day labourers and their families are precious. But unless the one in the car calls out, they have nothing to give – like that thief on the cross beside Jesus who prayed that Jesus would remember him when he came into his Kingdom. Even when these job-seekers can’t fulfil their side of our social contract, this parable promises them the gift of abundant life because God cherishes them – cherishes all.

When people get this, it’s amazing. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/this-doctor-gives-free-health-care-to-struggling-temporary-visa-holders-in-australia

So we pray with Jesus – let the Kingdom come here too.  Amen

Insights from the commentators noted by Ulrich Luz.

Since the Mishnah calculates that a person needs a minimum of 200 denarii per year in order to exist, this income presupposes that a day laborer was able to find work at least 200 days in a year and that he furthermore did not have to support a family. One denarius could buy 10 to 12 small, flat loaves of bread; 3 to 4 denarii 12 litres of wheat (from which one could make about 15 kilograms of bread) or a lamb; 30 denarii a slave’s garment; 100 denarii an ox. In view of these prices the day laborers had a hard life (M. Šeb. 8.4; m. Šeqal. 4.9; m. Menaḥ. 13.8; m. Arak. 6.5). ¹

As the farmer dealt with the last workers, so Jesus deals with those who by normal standards have no claim on God. In the name of God he affirms the sinners who do not keep the law; the women and the poor, who for various reasons cannot keep the law in its entirety; the sick, who are excluded from the community; and the unlettered am ha aretz (people of the Land), who are ignorant of the law (Luz).²

The parable is most likely directed against human efforts to link God’s justice and God’s graciousness in such a way that one becomes the standard for the other. In that case either God may no longer be gracious, since the principle of justice forbids it, or he must be gracious to all, since the principle of equality dictates that all have an equal claim to graciousness. Thus the parable is focused on a just God’s freedom to be gracious. It does not offer a new system of unmerited graciousness that will take the place of the normal standards of a justice that grants to all what they have earned. Instead, the standard values are “disrupted” by the appearance of God’s love, and they thereby lose their deadly universal validity. “I came not to call the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17). This description of Jesus’ activity neither denies nor excludes the righteousness of the righteous. It simply brings God to those who need him, the sinners.

Finally, the scope of the parable includes a new attitude toward one’s neighbor which the experience of grace makes possible. Those who make God’s justice the dominant principle and do not permit his graciousness to appear alongside it are incapable of solidarity. With his direct question in v. 15 the owner of the vineyard makes the “spokesman” aware that the principle of achievement leads to arrogance toward those who have earned less and envy toward those who have earned more or who have been rewarded unjustly. Part of the parable’s point—not as the result of a theoretical insight but as a practical consequence of one’s own experience—is a new sense of solidarity with those who are not well off but to whom God is gracious.³

Every “human claim shatters on the freedom and the greatness of God’s grace.” (Bornkamm) Even earlier H. J. Holtzmann had said: “This remarkable parable deals a death blow to the concept of reward by making use of it” and by letting concepts such as reward and achievement “sink under the weight of a religious idealism to which all reward no longer appears as legal recompense but only as a gift, as overflowing grace, as the reward of grace.” Finally, for Joachim Jeremias two worlds are at odds in this parable: “the world of merit, and the world of grace; the law is contrasted with the gospel.”⁴

^[1] Luz, U. (2001). Matthew: a commentary Vol 2. (H. Koester, Ed.) (p. 530). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.

² Luz, p. 533.

³ Luz, p. 534.

⁴ Luz, p. 527.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 3b – Jonah 3 1-10, Ps 62 5-12, 1 Cor 7 29-31, Mk 1 14-20

In a little while, the younger people among us will be heading off for a new year at school or kindy. When you start something new – a new school year, a new job, or if you move to live in a new place – you often feel you’re not ready yet. You need more time, more training; somebody should prepare you for it. Maybe you just don’t want things to change. I feel like that when I’ve just arrived on the beach – that moment of decision; should I go in now or wait ‘til I’ve warmed up a bit? How cold is that water? But what if somebody suddenly yells out that they’re in trouble; that they need our help!’ What do we do then? To heck with the cold; in we go!

Today’s OT and Gospel stories both start on the beach. For Simon, Andrew, James and John, it’s the umpteenth time they’ve been there. They make their living out of fishing. For Jonah, it may only be his second beach experience. The first was just after God asked him to go to Nineveh. He dashed down to Joppa ^{(which we call Jaffa)} and took a ship to Tarshish ^(Sardinia); as far from Nineveh as he could possibly get. Jonah’s second beach experience – when the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed him out – was far to the north of Jaffa, so not too far to travel to Nineveh when God called him the second time. For all of those beach people, the Galileans and Jonah, today’s experience on the beach was a call to do something they probably felt completely unprepared for. But just like a call to rescue someone who looks like they’re in trouble, the calls they heard weren’t something they could ignore.

What’s God’s call about? Why would God call Jonah to go to Nineveh, and why would Jonah particularly want to avoid going to that great city? The second part of the question is easy. Nineveh was a great military power, and famous for its ruthless and terrible treatment of their enemies. If you were told to go and preach repentance to a people like that, what would you do? Suddenly Jonah’s response doesn’t look that silly. But it still doesn’t explain why God wanted him to go there. It concerned God that Nineveh was a violent, brutal place. God wanted it to change.

So Nineveh was God’s mission, and God gave that mission as a gift to Jonah. By doing that, God gave Jonah the meaning of his own life – the rescuer of all the people and animals of Nineveh. But Jonah flees from this gift. It doesn’t say Jonah flees from Nineveh; it says he flees from the presence of the Lord. ^1.3 On board the ship to Tarshish Jonah’s sleeping down below. God sends a mighty storm against the ship. It’s not alright by God that somebody sleeps away their life’s vocation.

What the book of Jonah gives us is a parable about our vocation to help people to discover God’s grace. Jonah, like all of us, is called to join in God’s mission. If we can see people cut off from God’s love and compassion, we feel called to do something about it. It’s obvious, but it’s something we’re not comfortable with – our calling as God’s people is to draw others into relationship with the true God. But we don’t jump at it. We stand on the beach. The water looks cold. Out there, flailing in the drink, people are in trouble, and someone nudges us – calls us.

Aunty Betty’s story.

It’s good to read Jonah 3; to see those people of Nineveh actually listen to the prophet and respond. They responded to God’s call and turned from their former lifestyle. And in that turning, they rediscovered their full humanity – and many animals were saved too, says God. I like that particularly in our warming world .

I think we have two jobs to do as a community. The first is to come to terms with the idea that God is most likely to be nudging us – calling us – towards someone. It’s happened before. But who is it this time? Which cry for God’s kindness are we being nudged to notice? We can discern this as a community through prayer and discussion. … The second thing we have to do is to respond – follow that cry; heed that nudge – don’t run from God; remember Jonah. The gifts we bear are not the beads and trinkets of self-interest, but the very love of God. And in bearing the specific gift God has given us – bearing this gift to the ones God intends it for, we discover God’s other unique gift to us; our true selves. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany +2b – 1 Sam 3 1-10, Ps 139 1-18, 1 Cor 6 12-20, Jn 1 43-51

To the one who searches us out and knows us, Amen

Epiphany is the season when we celebrate God’s appearing to all of us outsiders. During this season, our Scriptures call us to notice one special way that God has of appearing to people; by calling them; calling us. A call is one of the more forceful ways God appears to us. But it has to be, because often we don’t hear, or we won’t hear, or sometimes we hear something else and mistake it for God. Sometimes God is direct about it, like with the boy Samuel. Other times, our life as we know it can suddenly, unaccountably fall to bits, and we have to start again on a new path.

We humans are often amazingly slow at recognising that God is calling us. But God persists, and a funny thing is that when we just can’t see it, it’s often quite obvious to even the most casual onlooker. There seems to be a moment in every Christian’s life when someone like the greengrocer tells us that God is trying to get through to us. If we’re lucky, we may even meet two such people in a lifetime.

The obvious thing that today’s Scriptures are saying to us is that God calls people. You don’t need any particular qualifications before God will call you. Samuel’s youth and inexperience show us that age is no barrier. Nor is understanding. Samuel didn’t even know God; he hadn’t learned the scriptures when God called him. Other parts of Scripture show us that people don’t need squeaky clean moral qualifications for a call either – or special piety or even humility. Today’s Psalmist reveals that the Call of God is something that’s basic to being human:

… you have created my inward parts: you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

…You knew my soul and my bones were not hidden from you

when I was formed in secret, and woven in the depths of the earth …

‘I was called by God,’ says the Psalmist; ‘I was called before I was even born.’ In fact, the last line of v.14 suggests that the Psalmist was called from the dust that God drew together to form the first human being. ‘My purpose’, sings the Psalmist, ‘my purpose was thought through by God before time ever dawned.’ At the most basic level, we’re here because God has called us into being; called us to be who we can truly become; called us to be that together. It’s lovely, isn’t it! There must be a catch. Well there is, but the catch is also rather lovely.

The catch is that when God calls us, God doesn’t just call for little bits of us; things like ‘intellectual assent’, or a week’s commitment: God’s not satisfied by these; God’s not necessarily satisfied by a ‘good life’ either: Yes, I’m a Christian; I mean I obey the Ten Commandments.

God, not satisfied? No, I’m afraid we had that other reading today too – from that confronting old apostle Paul. And he’s adamant – like he always is – adamant that God calls the whole person: body, mind, ethics, feelings, loyalties, soul, freedoms, time … the whole lot. That’s quite a catch, isn’t it!

But I did say it’s a lovely catch. The lovely bit is towards the end of what Paul writes. Don’t you know, says Paul; don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s a bit like the greengrocer I mentioned; one of those people with that galling knack of stating the obvious; telling us just how close God is to us … as close as our own mind, heart, soul, body. And we together are the body of Christ.

Think back to your memories of the Samuel story. Samuel would go on to oppose the people when they wanted to replace God’s judges with a king. Then he went on to call kings to account. It’s a dangerous thing to heed God’s call. Samuel spoke God’s mind into his time. He proclaimed God’s opposition to injustice and betrayal – he proclaimed God’s call to people to be just and loyal – to live God’s love.

We, the body of Christ are called, both corporately and individually, to speak that mind of God into our own time too. Whatever God may ask of you or me individually is for us to discover. But there’s no question that God calls us as the Church to confront the issues of injustice and betrayal that plague our time: unjust war; abuse of refugees; avoidable homelessness and hunger; obscene disparities in wealth between rich and poor; the unethical collusion of politics, money and media to create a false world view in the pursuit of power – our particular curse right now.

God calls us to confront these wrongs in Jesus’s name because we are called to be God’s shopfront to the world. Jeremiah taught that we are God’s clothing. Teresa of Avila said, we are God’s hands, feet, face. People are meant to encounter God’s call to justice and loyalty and honesty – to encounter God’s love for them – through the Church. So while an individual call might be very tricky to pin down, corporately, it’s clear who we’re called to be. People who embody God’s love.              Amen