Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christ the King Sunday Year C: Jer 23.1-6, Lk 1. 68-79, Col 1. 11-20,  Lk 23. 33-43

‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom’

That second criminal’s prayer sounds as if Jesus’ Kingdom is in the future. ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom’. But Jesus tells him it’s today. ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’. He and Jesus will both be in paradise today. The New Testament speaks of a life after death with Jesus in two different ways; one is immediate, as we read today, and the other is in the future; death will be a time of sleep before the second coming and the general resurrection. ^{eg 1 Cor 15.17-20} The New Testament speaks similarly of God’s Kingdom as coming with the coming of Jesus, ^{eg in the preaching of John the Baptist in Luke 3,} and as here and now. ^{eg Lk 17.20-21} On Christ the King Sunday, the emphasis is God’s Kingdom here and now; Christ is with us, so the Kingdom is too. Today you’ll be with me in paradise.

Over the past year, there were two other times we heard the word today in Luke’s Gospel. Let me remind you of them.

The first was the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke 4. He went to synagogue in Nazareth, and the attendant gave him the scroll so he could read out one of the scripture lessons. He was given the Isaiah scroll. He chose a few verses to read out from it, ^{(Isa 61.1, 2 & 58)} then he stood and read them out.

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

²⁰ [Then] he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down [to preach]. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”     Today!

This release from captivity, recovery of sight, freedom from oppression, and God’s favour is precisely what we just heard Jesus offer the criminal who was crucified with him: Today you’ll be with me in paradise! The crucified criminal only asked to be remembered by Jesus, but Jesus gave him citizenship in the Kingdom of God. If only secular sovereign rule were so gracious!

The only other time this today word comes up in Luke’s Gospel is in a story we heard three weeks ago in Lk 19: Jesus looked up at Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree and said ‘…hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today…’ And when he saw how Zacchaeus’ heart was released for service to the poor, ‘…Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house.”…’

This change of life-direction – turning from a former way of living to a life face to face with Jesus is what we call repentance; a new start in life; rebirth. We saw that happen in the heart of one of the criminals crucified with Jesus in today’s Gospel.

The repentant criminal told the other one; 23.⁴¹ We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds…’ And then he turned to Jesus to ask him, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.’

What we are privileged to see here is the turning of a human soul from condemned criminal to saint – in an instant. He names what he has been; he renounces it and he turns to Jesus. He calls on Jesus’ name and asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his Kingdom. There is nothing else he can do; it’s not as though there’s scope for him now to amend his lifestyle. And Jesus receives him immediately – takes him at his word and receives what he offers. Today you will be with me in paradise; restored to freedom, restored to the fulness of life.

This is an astonishing scene. True to character, the people Jesus keeps company with here are crucified criminals. So none of us should ever imagine ourselves beyond the reach of Jesus’ love, and never imagine ourselves beneath his notice.

In pastoral ministry, I come in contact with people who’ve become convinced they’ve been forgotten or locked out of God’s love. Aboriginal Australians and refugees quite understandably feel like this. Others with psychological or emotional issues are similarly plagued by this sort of exile. Often their cyclical bouts of depression and highs make them and their supporters all but lose hope.

I am constantly shocked by the terrible burdens so many people carry in life. So many people on the cross. My job is to point out Jesus to them; Jesus on a friendly, neighbouring Cross.

If you’re on the cross yourself, often your suffering will be made worse by feeling that you’re cut off from everybody. You’re stuck with your pain while everyone around you seems to be free to go about their lives. When I find someone is in that sort of pain – and their pain is made worse by feeling so isolated, the only person who can help is someone who knows the same level of pain. And they need to know that person is right there beside them.

So I may talk with them about this scene in Luke’s gospel. Maybe that criminal who turned to Jesus could only have turned to someone who knew what that pain and despair felt like; could only have turned in that moment – and if he’d not been welcomed there and then, he might have sunk back into the torpor and hopelessness of his torture and died alone.

I think there’s something we need to draw from this scene. It has to do with our discipleship to Christ our King – our imitation of his example – choosing to live as welcoming fellow citizens with that criminal crucified beside Jesus. Are there guidelines Jesus gives us to follow? Yes. First, Jesus didn’t go looking for pain. Someone else inflicted that on him. If we want to follow Jesus, we don’t measure our success by how much pain it costs us. We measure it by the choices we make: by our hospitality, by our commitment to the poor, the captive, the outcasts of our community; by renouncing spiritual blindness – but most of all, by doing it today.

A plaque on the entrance to the old Epworth building in Pirie Street says this; ‘I expect to pass through this world but once, any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now, let me not defer it, nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”     TODAY!              Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost 23 C:  Isa 65.17-25; Isa 12.1-6; 2 Thess 3.7-12; Lk 21.5-19

Children’s time: straight after this Stir-up Sunday collect.

Lord God of all the ages, the One who is, who was, and who is to come: stir up within us a longing for your kingdom, keep our hearts steady in times of trial, and grant us patient endurance until the Sun of justice dawns.

We’re just about to hear words from the prophet, Isaiah. He’s speaking to people who’ve had a terrible time – so terrible that you could hear weeping all over their city. (Weeping is the sort of crying that means you can’t do anything but cry. And when it stops, you’re so exhausted, you can’t do anything except sleep).

But Isaiah’s telling the people about a dream God’s given him – a dream that everything will be new and good again; so good there won’t be weeping any more.

God gave them a dream. What happens when you dream? Do you wake up and find that your dream has really happened? What do you think happens with God’s dreams? Maybe they won’t happen straight away, but I think you can be sure that when it’s God’s time, they will happen.

Isaiah wanted people to dream God’s dream – to dream what God was dreaming. People who know how it feels to weep and weep have always understood what Isaiah means, and they’ve made songs so that people can dream God’s dreams, and give each other some hope. Here’s one of those songs

Peace / love / joy is flowing like a river, flowing out through you and me; spreading out into the desert; setting all the captives free.

Eg of the tune – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB_7KtgxhOs

We might not see God’s dream happen straight away, but maybe some people who weep will hear us singing God’s dream for them. And that might just help them. But now it’s time for us to hear the readings.

Sermon

… we didn’t eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labour we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. ^{2nd Thess 3.8}

Where I was a child, you didn’t have to go to the shops to buy bread; the baker came to our street in a small van. And every time he opened the back door of his van, it smelt beautiful – the smell of freshly baked bread. He’d load a basket and walk from door to door with the basket over his arm. And he didn’t knock or ring any doorbells. He’d just get to the door and call out ‘Bake!’

Our baker didn’t just bring bread; he also brought news from around the neighbourhood. One day, before he came to our house, he must have stopped at a house where some missionaries were guests – perhaps they were back on furlough. I imagine he found out about them when extra bread was unexpectedly needed.

Our baker shared news and he also shared his opinions. So when he told us about the visiting missionaries, I remember him adding, ‘Those missionaries come back home and tell us they live on faith; what they really mean is living on other people!’

It looks as if the Thessalonian Christians may have had a few unsympathetic social commentators like our old baker watching them. In the first letter to the Thessalonians, ^(5.10-12) we read that some of their recognised hallmarks as a community were the care they showed – not just to each other, but to Christians throughout their region – and that they themselves were dependent on no-one.

So had something changed since that first letter was written, that today we heard them being warned to be tough on people we Australians call bludgers?

We don’t have much access to the specific circumstances this letter addressed, but it’s not too far-fetched to think that as the Christian community’s reputation for charity and care spread, some greedy people might have come out of the woodwork who were only too pleased to live off their kindness. Having charlatans and leeches twisting Christian charity into a personal cash-cow and pretending to help the poor is a very bad witness. It’s the sort of thing that has many people these days saying that the church is full of hypocrites.

So are we in a no-win situation? Does being kind and welcoming – even risking being taken for a ride – mean that our care is seen as stupidity? Or on the other hand, does being tough and discerning mean we’ll be seen as uncaring? Which way do we turn?

The answer in this passage and the others we’ve read today is that ‘discipleship is not about waiting passively for God to act, but rather anticipating God’s action through our own actions of compassion and mercy.’ Even in the gospel, with its descriptions of the end-times, the heart of its teaching is about perseverance in doing what Jesus does; ‘By your endurance you will gain your souls.’ ^{(Lk 21.19)}

The main reason for the two letters to the Thessalonians was to teach about readiness for the end-times. The part we read today asks the question, ‘Are the people of this church going to spend the last days witnessing to the transforming power of Jesus’ love, or are we going to be gullible, indulgent laughing stocks?’

The message is clear: no matter what the local baker may say about us, no matter what portents and calamities may threaten us, our ministry of care for each other and for the world is the priority – living out of the Holy Spirit’s dwelling within and amongst us.

We are not to be distracted from this – we are not to be discouraged. Isaiah challenges us to live constantly in a way that proclaims the end of weeping; to live guided by the most important thing; the promised joy and blessing of the prophecy. This is something which can transform a community. People may suggest that we’re living in a fools’ paradise when we live that way. They may see works of kindness among us and run us down as dreamers, naïve do-gooders, or hypocrites putting on a front. But what sort of world are they choosing for themselves then?

What does God want from us ­ really? Quite simply, trust God; love one another; turn the world upside down.

This is the theological context for the pastoral care that I see flourishing in this parish. It is something that involves all of us. It is something that simply happens, and for no tangible reward, because the reward has been given to each of us already; God’s grace. While we were still a long way from God, Jesus came and suffered the consequence of that alienation in order to destroy its power to imprison us and anyone else. We didn’t ask for it; it was given before we were even born.

We love because—not so that. We believe that God already loves us. We don’t have to set about earning God’s love. So our love – our care – is a response; an act of gratitude. It’s not a work seeking a reward; we love because. We also believe that God already loves our neighbour. So there’s no sense in waiting for our neighbour to earn our care before we offer it. Who are we to withhold what God has already given? We’re often God’s means of showing that care. Someone’s kindness may well have been how we first experienced God’s care ourselves.

This is what it means to live God’s dream for us, and by living it, to discover that it is real. God is creator, and anything God dreams or imagines is instantly real. If we don’t recognise that, it’s us who are living the illusion. Living God’s vision for us is to discover reality. Living God’s vision is to reveal that reality to our neighbour, and so to enable that neighbour to live in the new creation as well.

Next week, Christ the King Sunday, the focus is the Kingdom. Back in Luke 17.^20-21 we read one of Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among / within you.”

Our task as Christ’s body is to reveal that Kingdom in our physical bodies by living as citizens of that Kingdom. That task is the thank-offering we call our lives. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 22 C:  Remembrance Sunday – Haggai 2, Luke 20

Haggai 2.4b take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, 5 according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.

Kids: An introduction to Puddleglum. My can’t-do attitude.

***

Today we remember that war is a terrible thing. Today’s passages from Haggai and Luke help us realise that God is with us in challenging times – and always has been. Both books were written by people faced with a most daunting challenge to rebuild their culture and themselves. Each passage was shaped by war; two disastrous wars more than five centuries apart. Each war saw the Temple of Jerusalem destroyed.

Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians who carried Jerusalem’s elite into exile. Now Haggai encourages their descendants – the returned exiles to get on with the job of re-building that temple. After it was finally rebuilt by Herod the Great, it became the power base of a wealthy group of religious leaders called the Sadducees. In today’s Gospel, Luke remembers the Sadducees taunting Jesus about the resurrection of the dead; something they didn’t believe in.

By the time Luke’s gospel was being written down, the Second Temple had been destroyed by the Romans. Knowing this gives the Sadducees’ opposition to Jesus’ teaching about resurrection a bitter poignancy. As Luke wrote this Gospel, it was the Sadducees themselves who were in the most desperate need of resurrection. Their power base and their identity disappeared when the Temple was destroyed.

But let’s turn back to a time a little bit earlier than Haggai. Ezra 3 tells us the story of the laying of the foundations of the new temple. Some who were present for that ceremony were old enough to have known Solomon’s temple, and they were adamant that no re-build could be as good as the old one. (Proto-Anglicans?)

It seems that their can’t-do attitude prevailed, and work stopped for some time. Today’s reading from Haggai parachutes us into the story seventeen years after Ezra. Now God calls Haggai to stir the people up to resume rebuilding. We just heard him trying to convince them not to worry about the gold and silver and all the ornaments that people remembered. They should just get building with what they have and God will provide the rest. As Haggai put it, 4…take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.

“Take courage” A lot depends on the way people choose to see things, doesn’t it. When the Israelites found themselves facing Goliath, most of them thought, ‘He’s too big to kill!’ But David thought, ‘He’s too big to miss!’ David’s positive attitude – coming from his faith in God – made all the difference. Haggai’s way of encouraging people to trust God was to get them to remember how God had been faithful to them in the past: 4btake courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, 5according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.

What promise did God make to Moses? In Exodus 3:12, God said, simply, I will be with you. Apart from that promise, Moses had no hope. He had no army to force the issue; no money to buy the people’s freedom. He only had one thing; God’s promise to be with them. That promise was all he needed. God makes this same promise, through Haggai – My spirit abides among you; do not fear. God called discouraged people to build what they never believed they could. Work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts. And they did. And the rebuilt Second Temple would end up to be the equal any of the great buildings of antiquity.

Through the Gospels, Jesus calls discouraged people to build too. But not to build with stone and mortar. Jesus calls us to build new community, and our materials are people, faith, hope and love – and, like Haggai got the people of his time to do – to base our confidence on God’s track record of faithfully being present with us.

Over the centuries, where people of faith have been tempted to despair, when we’ve opened ourselves to God, the Holy Spirit has always come and brought renewal. This has never ceased. In parts of the world where people have nothing but faith, hope and love as building materials for their Church, it’s thriving; growing at an astonishing pace. The greater the obstacles, it seems, the faster the growth. Sadly, we’re a bit challenged for this kind of faith because of our comfort and prosperity.

So where does that impetus come from? Can even a pessimistic, or complacent people find the enthusiasm to build for a future which seems beyond them right now? I wonder this because Bp Denise last week, and the Archbishop a few weeks earlier challenged us to develop a Mission Action Plan – to prayerfully look at the world around us and listen to the Spirit. What is God up to that we might join in on? – and again prayerfully together, to work out how we might do it.

We may not be pessimistic. We might be complacent though – we might be pretty satisfied with what our parish is doing in the world. We just had St John’s Youth Services AGM and listened with delight to the stories of what this child of our parish is achieving out there in the world. But what’s next for us? What are the issues of our time and place, and how does God call us to respond?

Has our creation care focus over September inspired us to action? Do our close ties with the refugee community suggest anything to us? Does the systemic racism that oppresses Aboriginal Australia cry out to us? We might think we lack expertise; that these issues are too complicated for us. But that’s what people told Ezra and Haggai. Yet they went on to build a wonder of the ancient world. God was with them, and we pray every week that God be with us. Is one of us busy with a mission that requires a team to work with them? A common rejection of the call to a new Mission Action Plan is, I’ve done my bit; I’m old and tired, so let someone else have a go. Do we look God in the eye and say that, or do we remember God is with us, remember the miracles, and ask the question, What’s next Lord? Amen

The Rt Revd Denise Ferguson

Hab 1:1-4, 2:1-4, Ps 119:137-144, 2 Thess 1:1-4,11-12, Luke 19:1-10

Holy God open our minds to know your wisdom, our hearts to embrace your love and our mouths to speak your word. Amen.

Good morning everyone, it is a delight to be with you as we worship God together. Thank you for your warm hospitality.

I am Denise Ferguson and since 21^st July I have been an Assistant Bishop for the Diocese of Adelaide.

As this is my first visit I thought I would give you a brief overview of who I am, and a taste of some of the ministry I have been involved with.

Until four months ago, and for the previous five and a half years, I was a parish priest and archdeacon in the Diocese of Brisbane.

My parish was diverse and busy with six centres and nine churches – all active and with diverse worship styles. Everything from 1662 BCP to a Family Friendly prayer and praise service called SHINE.

The parish itself covered an urban, geographic area of 481sq km – most of it in South Moreton Bay. North Stradbroke Island was one of the centres. When I mention North Stradbroke Island most people have a better idea of the area I am talking about.

By now you will probably have guessed that it is only recently that my husband Mark and I moved to Australia.

Yes, we are Kiwi’s. I was born, raised and ordained in Aotearoa New Zealand. I am the first born, trained and ordained NZ woman to be made a bishop.

Prior to full time ministry I was a Finance and Administration manager for the New Zealand Defence Force (Army), which is where I met Mark. We have been married for 38 years, have one daughter, Cara and one granddaughter Bella, who is 15months old. If you attended my consecration you would have heard Bella interject from time to time.

I was ordained Deacon in 1999 and priest in 2000 so I celebrate my 20^th anniversary this month.

In New Zealand I served a curacy in a semi-rural multi centred parish, was Vicar in two suburban parishes, Canon of three cathedrals, Archdeacon in two Dioceses, Bishops Ministry Chaplain for Ministry Discernment and a Diocesan Registrar and Manager.

Yes, my ministry experience has been very busy and diverse, but I share this with you not so much to provide a resume of that ministry, but to show you that I know how challenging ministry, and in particular Parish Ministry is in today’s environment. I pray that I never lose that understanding and sense of connectedness.

Enough about me for the moment. I am very happy to continue the conversation with you after the service.

 Today we have one of the many delightful & transformative stories of Luke’s Gospel.

Today’s passage follows immediately after the healing of a blind man, and as Jesus is passing through the city of Jericho, to the northeast of Jerusalem, where he will come to the end of his journey.

Even while Jesus face is ‘set toward Jerusalem’ todays Gospel reminds us that he is not so preoccupied with his own fate that he cannot take the time to notice others.

The central figure in the passage is Zacchaeus, who, Luke tells us, was a chief tax collector, and as a consequence would have been very wealthy. This is the only reference to a ‘Chief Tax collector’ in the Bible.

Tax Collectors were not popular in Jesus day.

How often do we hear the Pharisees condemn Jesus for mixing or eating with ‘tax collectors & sinners’? They were considered to be the lowest of the low, actively avoided and despised by their fellow-Jews.

Tax Collectors made contracts with the Roman authorities to collect taxes and made sure they acquired what we might call generous “commissions” in the process.

Apart from forcing people to part with their hard-earned money, they were considered to be traitors to their own people by taking their money and giving it to the pagan Roman colonialists occupying their country. We can see how Jesus would cause great offence by sitting down and eating with such people.

Zacchaeus heard that Jesus was in town and he was very curious to see what this itinerant preacher and healer was like.

Remember, this passage follows directly on from the healing of the blind man, and already we have an echo of that story, because Zacchaeus too wants to see.

However, at this stage, it seems to be only a sense of curiosity. He wanted to get a glimpse of this person of whom others were talking about. He may even had heard that this Jesus mixed with people like him – social outcasts.

Zacchaeus, the Gospel tells us, was a short man. He could not see over the large crowd of people surrounding Jesus. So he ran on ahead and climbed into the branches of a Sycamore tree to get a better look.

It could have been any tree that Zacchaeus chose to climb, as long as it enabled him to see what was going on. But he chose a Sycamore, a tree that in Israel symbolized regeneration, and in particular spiritual regeneration or rebirth.

Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he did not expect that Jesus would see him. He must have practically fallen out of the tree with surprise when he realised Jesus was looking in his direction.

I wonder what he was thinking when Jesus spoke those life changing words “Zacchaeus, hurry down. I want to stay in your house today.”

This is the only time the New Testament recalls Jesus inviting himself into someone’s home.

Zacchaeus could hardly believe his ears. He rushed down from the tree and delightedly welcomed Jesus into his house.

Immediately those around began to grumble. “He has gone to a sinner’s house as a guest.” Of all the people in Jericho, Jesus invites himself to the home of the one person in the town who was regarded as a social and religious outcast.

But, as usual, Jesus sees beyond the public image to the real person. Zacchaeus has experienced the spiritual rebirth – symbolized by climbing the Sycamore tree, he is offering half of his property to the poor and, if he has cheated anyone, he promises to pay them back four times what they lost.

This in itself is significant.
Fourfold restitution was demanded by Jewish law, but only in respect to the theft of a sheep (Exodus 21:37). Whereas Roman law demanded four-fold restitution from all convicted thieves.

While we assume that Zacchaeus’ spiritual transformation happened when he encountered Jesus, the original Greek translation is ambiguous and may indicate that Zacchaeus had already begun the process of restitution.

Therefore, is Jesus seeing beyond the social stereotype of the outcast Tax Collector? If so, he was not going to the house of a sinner but to the home of a good man.

Whatever the interpretation, we can see that, though Zacchaeus may have belonged to a discredited profession, his heart was in the right place, in a place of compassion and justice.

And so Jesus tells Zacchaeus that “salvation”, wholeness and integrity has come to his house. In spite of his despised profession he is “a descendant of Abraham” because his behaviour is totally in harmony with the requirements of the Law, and in fact goes well beyond it.

Jesus reminds us that social status is not a precursor to salvation.

Rather, to be a “descendent of Abraham”, is to be a loving, caring person full of compassion, with a sense of justice, and not just a keeper of ritualistic observances.

Remember I talked about there being echo’s of the healing of the blind man in the story of Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus had originally only wanted to have an external glimpse of Jesus. He has now come to see Jesus in a much deeper sense. A seeing that changed his whole life as it did that of the blindman in the preceding story.

Jesus confirms this when he states “The Son of Man has come to search out and save what was lost.”

 As we read this story, there are a number of things we could reflect on.

• We too want to see Jesus in the deepest possible sense. Only then can we truly become his disciples.
• Jesus is saying “I must visit your house today.” Are we opening the door and welcoming him?
• Jesus is reminding us to be careful in judging people from their appearance or their social position or their occupation. In fact, reaching out to the least, the last and the lost is at the heart of our calling as Christians.

 We live in a world of change and challenge. A world where Christianity was once at the heart of community but now, too often sits at the fringe.

Despite the challenges, this parish has been offering Gospel hospitality to the wider community for 180 years; seeking out and caring for the least, the last and the lost. Listening and learning from the words of Jesus.

I want to thank you for your faithfulness, and encourage you to continue to live out the heart of Jesus’ Gospel message: to Love God and Love your neighbours:

May you continue to be a loving, caring compassionate community of faith, with a heart for justice for all. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Michaelmas 2012 A & C: Kids: Angel Windows – connection

The message of our Gospel for the feast of Michael and all Angels is quite simple; tell people about Jesus, and call them to meet him. We saw this acted out right before our eyes where Philip found Nathanael and told him, We have found Jesus—the promised one. When Nathanael seemed doubtful, Philip said, Come and see. And he took him to meet Jesus. That’s today’s message. Tell people about Jesus, and encourage them to meet him.

Why? And what’s it got to do with Michael and all Angels? Angels are messengers: that’s what the name angel means. Philip brought a message to Nathanael, so by definition that made Philip an angel – a messenger. And as he called Nathanael to Jesus, that also made him an evangelist – something Jesus tells all Christians to be. We are to call people to belong, with us, to Jesus.

Who is this Jesus we are introducing people to? He’s the most important person we know; he’s our teacher; our example, our Redeemer and our Saviour. The Christian message is that telling people about Jesus is the same as telling them about God, the source of our being. And that, astonishingly, the source of our being chose to be born and live among us, die our death and rise from the dead, so he’s alive now.

Because Jesus was born and lived our life, died and rose again, we who know Jesus, and anyone we introduce to him, can connect with the source of our being at any point in our life – birth, times of joy, suffering, fulfilment, despair, hope, love, compassion, loneliness, need, fear – and we remain connected on beyond this life. That’s some connection. And when we tell of Jesus as our Redeemer and Saviour, we’re also talking about this connection with Jesus helping us to confront the power of things that attack and divide us: hatred, slavery, greed, apathy – and again, even death. That’s an extraordinary message to carry; it’s a great privilege to be called to carry this message – to join in the work of the Angels.

If people – all living creatures – are to be whole; to thrive; to grow, we need to be connected to the source of our being, like a plant in the soil and sunshine. It’s both a biological and a spiritual necessity. Throughout history, the messages that angels bring are all to do with connecting us with the source of our being – the source of all life and growth. The ancient Jewish sages wrote There is not a single blade of grass on earth below that does not have an angel in the heavens above that strikes it and says to it: ‘Grow!’ ^{(Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit 10:6; Zohar, part I, 251a [on Gen 18.1])}

We people of the book have developed several quirks over the millennia, and we have the joy of encountering plenty of them today. Some of the readings and hymns at Michaelmas can make us feel like tourists in an ancient, exotic world, untouched by the passage of time. As today’s tour guide amongst words and images that the OED labels obs, I want to focus on the centre of all the readings and hymns: our sense of connection with a greater reality than just ourselves – with the divine. I think you’ll agree that this calls for extraordinary language and imagery.

We travel in a realm of cosmology and imagery that lots of people in the developed world find alien; bewildering. What do we make of Daniel’s white-haired Ancient One enthroned in the heavenly court? Isn’t that precisely the picture of God that western thinkers have used to caricature the Church since the eighteenth century? Those same thinkers have also told us to see the cosmic battle in Revelation between Michael and Satan as nothing but an ancient metaphor for the struggle between good and evil.

It’s up to each one of us to choose whether we see these visions and images as literally real, or as metaphors for our connection with the source of our being. I don’t think it makes much difference which we choose. But if our experience of life is to have any depth, we need to venture into that connectedness, and also to respectfully explore both ancient and contemporary ways of naming and expressing it.

Christians believe that the fullest experience of that connected life is to be found in this community that Jesus called into being: the Church – a community where we can and should share our experiences of God’s messengers, and let those messages shape our lives.

One of our most important roles as connected people is to teach our children how to live connected, full, rich lives of belonging. Kindy teachers are experts in this. They get kids singing funny old songs together, playing together, making things together, co-operating and caring. These are time-tested ways in which we hand down our civilization – our belonging – to successive generations.

They are also significant ways we live out that connection as adults. How do we see that at work here? I see a community that learns and treasures the words and tunes of the hymns; I see people singing together; meeting together; praying together; rejoicing together; grieving together; running a community store together; gardening together; learning together, being a multi-generational community where we know each other’s families, children and grandchildren; founding / supporting Christian work like SJYS and the Magdalene outreaches: the list goes on.

I’m conscious that all these treasures we nurture and hand down are things that our secular world is increasingly reluctant to value or support. Our schools and university systems are less and less funded to pass on our history, our wisdom and our deepest values. So it falls to the Church to do this – as we have done in other dark ages. One of the most important jobs this parish has is handing on the legacy of spiritual connectedness that God has given this community. We are a connected community. We are built on the bedrock of God’s love for us. We experience that most perfectly in the love that unites us in Jesus Christ. When we introduce our friends to Jesus, as Philip did with Nathanael, we connect people with God’s love for them, and we offer to share the ways we experience that love in our lives. So go to it Angels!                                                                                                    Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

2C : Job 38, Ps 104, 1st Cor 1, Lk 12

As children, we grew up in something of a botanical menagerie. Mum filled the yards with trees, shrubs, bonsais, mosses and ground cover, and her glass house was stocked with an incredible variety of plants and cuttings taken from roadsides wherever we walked or drove. But even that wasn’t enough for her. She and a like-minded neighbour would lie in wait until any local house went on the market. The moment it was vacant, they’d launch a green-thumb commando raid, planting all manner of things in those gardens too. So our old street now looks utterly different from its surrounding streets; they look like desert wastes by comparison.

But that’s only the half of it; I also mentioned a menagerie. I remember as a ten year old conducting an audit of wildlife at our place. Twenty-two budgies, ten pigeons, four bantams, seven sleepy lizards and a big bluetongue, five guinea pigs, two turtles, a rabbit, a cat forever having kittens, a fat old Labrador, another budgie that sat on Mum’s shoulder everywhere she went, a ringtail possum that ate apples in our bedroom each night then tucked itself in with one or other of us at dawn, a bustling fish tank, and in my sister’s wardrobe, a rogue colony of silkworms. Our cousins out on the farm kept us in touch with our larger hairy brothers and sisters too. Mum has never altered her priorities to this day.

So flora and fauna Sunday is something of a homecoming for me. I love the close observation of wildlife that we just heard in Job and the Psalm; I resonate with the way the writers marvel at it all; particularly at the interconnection they see so clearly between wild creatures, flora, Earth, Sun and Moon, light and darkness. You’d think seeing that interconnection is a bit of a no-brainer really. But then you find that a book like The Secret Life of Trees comes as an utter revelation to people when its author Peter Wohlleben shows how an entire forest is connected by underground networks of fungus to form a massive, diverse, unified organism so mutually loving that it keeps even ringbarked trees alive.

Last week we began to consider the significance of connection as a major theme in the Season of Creation. And you may remember that its opposite, alienation, is a working definition of what the church calls sin; alienation from God and from each other. That’s why connection with each other, with interconnected wildlife and landscapes is so important. It makes the divine tangible; it connects us with God.

Today, on Flora and Fauna Sunday, the natural world presents us with herself; a miracle of interconnection, symbiosis, co-operation and balance; characteristics which are the deepest hallmarks of the natural order. Nature’s interconnection is far more profound than we imagine. By contrast, the competitive, winner-takes-all theories that we have imposed on the natural world have shackled our thinking about nature – as if they explain it entirely. Our theories have blinded us to the centrality of nature’s symbiosis. Of course, these theories have a great deal of truth to them; no-one should deny evolution. But they are nothing like complete enough.

Today I wonder if the doctrines of ‘natural selection’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ – the so-called ‘cruelty of nature’ – have done something more than just skew our understanding of what is natural; done something more than prevent us from seeing the interconnection that sustains everything living. I wonder if our competition doctrines also shape the way we see ourselves; how we experience community.

Do native flora and fauna have something to teach us about community? What is an ecological perspective on society – an ecological spirituality? The key words seem to be relationship, symbiosis, interdependence, harmony – in a word, Nature.

A few of us met to think through the themes and priorities we wanted to cover in this year’s Season of Creation. Again and again, we found ourselves talking about the harmony of Indigenous peoples with nature. We are sitting helplessly now watching on as the Indigenous people and creatures of the Amazon rainforests are being burnt out of their homes by farmers, just as happened here over the first 150 years of European colonization; just as continues more subtly today. ^{Eco-Rant alert.}

I turn again to Bruce Pascoe’s remarkable book Dark Emu. He cites documents from European explorers and pioneers describing wide-scale Aboriginal agriculture and storages of surplus native grains and yams big enough to support permanent settlements of three or four thousand people between harvests. This was achieved through heavy, co-operative work, but without any need for irrigation, fertilizer or herbicides. Astoundingly, many witnesses have documented a vast, pan-continental ‘grain belt’ thousands of kilometres north of the Goyder line. (Map on p. 28) Our grazing animals ate it all to the ground and uprooted it virtually upon arrival. Their hooves compacted (and still compact) the Indigenous people’s carefully cultivated soil so these native food sources don’t grow there any more. And the original people and wild animals – the competition – disappeared behind euphemisms designed to cover up what we Christians don’t want to know about ourselves.

We don’t live in harmony with nature. We don’t spend time in it; we live, work and travel in climate-controlled silos that interact harmfully with nature. Our economically driven priorities won’t cherish anything we can’t put a money value on. We’re living a lifestyle that destroys anything we don’t value. It turns out we don’t value Mother Earth. We may as well say it plainly. We’re afraid of losing what we have, and so we fight and ignore and vote to protect it – never mind that it costs the Earth. That is true alienation; true sin, and we must repent of that sin.

Christians believe in repentance: it’s not grovelling and apologising, but turning from wrong and amending our ways. It’s easy to remember as a four step process.

1 Acknowledge wrongs we are doing, wrongs done in our name, and wrongs we benefit from. That’s what this sermon is trying to help us do regarding ecology.

2 Renounce those wrongs; stop them. That’s clearly imperative.

3 Turn and resolve before God and each other to try to repair the damage we have caused – seeking help from God and each other to do this, and helping others trying to do this. Students’ Global Climate Strike 20 Sept, 12.00 Victoria Square.

4 Getting on with the repair job, and so returning to a right relationship with our community, in this case the Earth community, and so with God.

We’re each at different stages on the way in this process. But what can we do? In notice time, Nicola will report on an organisation – the Foundation for Australia’s Most Endangered Species that we might choose to support as a community.

It’s one of many that we could choose from, but on this Flora and Fauna Sunday, it’s good to focus on rescuing members of our Earth family from extinction – family members dying out not because they’re a danger to us or to anything else, but just because we don’t seem to care if we never see them again.

That is true alienation; true sin, and we must repent of that sin.

I pray that our descendants will be able to know what Jesus is talking about today – what ravens and lilies and grasses are. I pray that our descendants will be consciously connected with all the wonders of life on Earth which reveal God’s eternal power and divine nature ^{(Rom 1.19)} so that they can come to know God.

Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

1C: Job, Ps 104, Eph 1, Lk 5

I find the ocean to be a restorative wonder. When I sit on a cliff top or walk on a beach to the accompaniment of the slow, rolling crash of the waves, the way they roll towards me, ceaselessly pounding the shore, then thunder past, off into the distance; I don’t know how or why, but it has a life-giving effect on me. Even an hour at an ocean beach with its steady heart-beat of crashing waves can have a wonderful renewing effect, somehow connecting me with the Infinite.

The Pacific islanders we met in Fiji say that the ocean unites their islands – it doesn’t separate them; the ocean is what connects them. That’s different from our usual way of viewing large bodies of water as barriers or dangers to be negotiated.

I think I get it – that for island people, the ocean forms a connection, not a barrier. And for these people, the ocean doesn’t just supply their material needs; it’s a daily spiritual necessity. The Fijian Methodist minister, James Bhagwan told us how his daily prayer always has to be on the water. Swimming or paddling or simply floating, he finds his deepest connection with God in the gentle embrace, the rhythmic movement, and the playful, refreshing power of the ocean. I thought about James floating in prayer when I saw this morning’s reading from the book of Job. – that startling image – ^38.8 the waters of the sea burst out from the womb. Just sit with that for a moment; the [primordial] waters of the sea burst out from the womb. Whose womb?

Let’s picture James; floating on that ocean which burst from the womb to envelop him in prayer. His prayer enacts something we need to know about; a connection with this vast life-bearing body of salt water and so with God – the embrace of the water around him connects with the prayer that wells up from within him. For James, ocean and prayer together embody connection with the source of our being; floating in prayer; a respite that takes us back to the safety of time before our birth. I wonder do salt-water baptisms recall the amniotic fluid of our physical birth?

Rev James helped me explore the spiritual significance of the ocean as the medium from which God called, and still calls life to emerge. And what life! I’ve always been lost in wonder at its teeming life; the giant kelp forests and seagrass fields, the lesser-known lungs of the world; and every shape, size and colour of living being, ranging from the bacteria around hot-water vents, vast shoals of tiny plankton and innumerable krill to the great whales – the largest animals ever to have lived.

I wanted to speak about the ocean today in that sense; the sense of its partnership with God both as a revelation of God’s majesty and of God’s creative delight in the diversity of life and in sustaining it through evolution. I wanted to speak of the ocean’s divinely inspired partnership with wind, sun and moon in the provision of a life-giving and life-sustaining biosphere of staggering power, beauty and diversity. I wanted us all to sit and watch David Attenborough shows together and simply bask and float in all these wonders. But there are other things needing saying too.

I didn’t want to give an environmentalist’s rant, but it’s part of the truth. I won’t make it long. The past week has brought more stories of our civilization’s abusive attitude to the ocean; two reports, one downgrading the Barrier Reef’s health, and another about its water quality,* and then the secretive handling of the Australian chief scientist’s report into prospective oil drilling in the Bight. They come on top of new studies of the ‘great Pacific garbage patch’, an island of plastic garbage almost the size of Queensland**; studies showing that micro-plastics are now measurable across the entire food chain – including us; reports of plastic bags mistakenly eaten by turtles, birds unwittingly feeding their babies bits of plastic so they starve to death; dolphins and whales snared in discarded fishing lines and nets drowning in senseless unseen agony; ocean acidification, oil disasters, gross over-fishing, super trawlers turning the seabed into a desert, all in addition to rising seas inundating island nations. The litany goes on, and we must not let it be silenced. We know where silence leads. The ocean is an expression of God’s love, and it’s being systematically killed as we watch.…There, that’s the end of the rant for now.

It is right that the ocean should supply us with food, just as Lake Galilee did for Jesus and his friends. But there is no place for the sort of abuse and greed that lies behind what I’ve just catalogued. There’s a thoughtful observation about today’s Gospel story by an Indonesian pastor in a village Bible study group. He said ‘In vv 6-7, we see a case of income equality and a spirit in Peter that shows no egotism. But if he hadn’t shared with his friends, his [boat] would have sunk and [he and] his friends would have had no fish.’

A woman in the group responded, ‘it seems to happen just the other way round in our society. For instance, foreign employers drain our fish and our properties for their own profit without sharing or making any adequate compensation.’ *** The people at the bottom of the heap know what’s going on, and we should listen to them.

One more story. I had the chance to read Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu recently. Using the documentary evidence written by early explorers and settlers, he describes Aboriginal agriculture and river and ocean aquaculture before white settlement. In a chapter on aquaculture, he writes of their vast fish traps off the shore near Bermagui and Pambula (p. 70-1), and off Wellesley Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria (p. 90-1). But for me, the most astounding account is of a whaling partnership between the Yuin people (southern coastal NSW) and Orcas. (p. 71) There’d be a regular ceremony begun by a man on shore where the orcas responded by herding a whale inshore. The people would kill the whale, and then share it with other clans and with the orcas – who always got their favourite bit, the tongue. The partnership ended instantly and for ever when a European man shot the lead Orca.

If there’s a take-away message for Ocean Sunday, it’s partnership – connection. Our civilisation is alienated from nature, and so inevitably from God. And we are spreading our alienation – proclaiming our ‘standard of living’ as an end in itself, completely disconnected from its consequences for Nature.

This is a profoundly spiritual disease which we as God’s people are called to name and to challenge.

Alienation from God is a pretty good working definition of sin – living as though God is not there; as though God doesn’t notice what’s going on. And a telling sign of that alienation is our growing disconnection from the natural environment which sustains us and all life – our steady destruction of Earth.

I believe the call of Ocean Sunday is to reconnect with life’s Mother, the ocean;

to care for her and let her care for all the life she sustains;

to speak for her where her voice is being ignored;

to support and protect others who are speaking out, and to refuse to let them or ourselves be silenced.

Let’s commit to pray together with Rev James and today’s Psalmist

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it!                                                        Amen.

 

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 11C : Jrm 1 4-10, Lk 13 10-17

We’re constantly renovating and upgrading things around the parish. Naturally, we Anglicans do that reluctantly. You know the one about how many Anglicans it takes to change a light bulb? All of them; one changes it, and everyone else reminisces about how good the old one was. But one of the frustrating things about renovating is that you go through storms of dust and weeks of inconvenience only to emerge at the end with something that looks normal – something that looks no better than how it should.

But that’s not necessarily so bad. Today, we saw Jesus, the renovator. He laid healing hands on a woman and set her free from a crippling ailment so she could just be the way she should have been for the last eighteen years. We see this happen, we don’t think; ‘Well big deal, she only looks normal now!’ No, we marvel. Or maybe we’re a bit wistful; ‘Why couldn’t it happen for our friend?’  But one person in the story doesn’t see a woman restored to her God-given form; far from being inspired, all the leader of the synagogue can feel is outrage that she was healed on the Sabbath.

There’s none so blind as those who won’t see. The leader of the synagogue doesn’t get that this woman’s been released from her burden on just the right day. The real offence against the Sabbath would have been to let her keep on struggling under the burden of her illness. That Sabbath, Jesus set the woman free from her burden of life as painful drudgery – as work; a life where simply doing what passed for normal was hard work. Jesus set her free to be the woman she truly was. And immediately, she showed who she truly was by leading the Sabbath worship. 13.¹³… immediately, she stood up straight and began praising God.’

Psalm 22.³ says God dwells in the praises of the people. When she praised God, this healed woman’s praises revealed that God lived inside her. She was truly God’s daughter. Her truest self was now plain to her and to all with eyes to see.

She’s God’s child; her joy reveals the family resemblance. And rediscovering God living in her sets her soul free to rest – to truly Sabbath in company with God who dwells inside her. But at that same moment, the leader of the synagogue unwittingly breaks the Sabbath. He sets to work defending a nit-picking legalism that closes him off from the true blessing of the Sabbath. It’s an idol to him because it blinds him spiritually. He can’t see God in the woman’s healing.

Don’t get me wrong; he’s a very faithful man – following the Law to the letter as he understands it. But he shows us that there’s danger as well as blessing in religious discipline. Properly used, disciplines like Sabbathing – stopping to open ourselves to God – can lead to spiritual growth. But imposed obsessively and legalistically, they can enslave people. What should be faithful behaviour becomes driven and neurotic.

A true spiritual discipline – fasting from food, from speaking, from only finding life’s meaning in work – connects us with creation; with people; connects us with God; gives us a life lived in communion. But a simple twisting of the reason for a spiritual discipline can make it a soul-destroying work; something that builds a barrier between ourselves and God; between ourselves and our neighbours.

We see two different responses to God in this story. Both are intended as faithful responses. But their difference tells us that responding to God isn’t without its ambiguities. The woman who was healed seems unconsciously to have got it right, while the leader of the synagogue with all his good intentions and diligence seems to have got it completely wrong.

Our sense of God reaching out to us, calling us, also seems to be a variable experience. Hearing Jeremiah’s clear call, we might grumble, ‘If only I had a call that was so cut and dried, then I’d know what God wants me to do with my life!’ But reading on into Jeremiah’s life story, we’d probably be relieved it wasn’t us. Anyway, we wouldn’t be called to transform a whole nation; we’re so small. … But isn’t that the sort of thing Jeremiah said? ‘I don’t know how…I’m only a child.’

I’m putting the cart before the horse today. I’ve talked about how you express God living in you once you’ve sensed God calling you to a special vocation. But I haven’t talked about how you can be sure whether God has called you in the first place. I think it’s worth putting this particular cart in view first though. Because we need to know that the best picture of God’s call and a right response to that call is the release of the woman who’d been bent over for eighteen years. The best picture of how you might respond to God’s call is the vision of her standing upright and praising God.

The old collect for peace in the Morning Prayer service has these words in it: O God, the author and lover of peace … whose service is perfect freedom. We saw a woman today who proclaimed the kingdom of God as she responded to her unexpected new freedom. The Kingdom broke into her life and instantaneously, it broke forth from her in praise of God.

Just one thing about the Sabbath; it was ordained not just as a day of rest, but as a time when debts were to be forgiven; when people, animals and the very Earth were released from the obligation to work so that all could rest in God’s perfect peace. On this Sunday when we pray especially for the eighty-million people in the world who experience life as exile, let this woman’s liberation on the Sabbath – the time of release from burdens – let her praise be our inspiration. Jesus wishes these people’s freedom; wishes them justice.

I said that renovation is frustrating: that it only makes things look normal. Well maybe normal is actually spectacular; maybe it’s something to sing about. And if you and I experience good health, enough to eat—if you and I belong to a community that could make a difference, maybe God is reaching out to touch us, to get us to help extend the Kingdom, so others can stand up straight, and praise God, just because they can.                                                                            Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + :  Isa 1 – Ps 50 – Heb 11 – Lk 12

Today’s readings offer us two of western society’s pet aversions; the first is the angry-sounding God, and the other is the call of Jesus to sell our possessions and give the money to the poor. It’s good to tussle with these issues. What do we do with the wrathful God we meet in the prophet’s writings and in the Psalm; how can we integrate this God with our idealised image of the God who loves us all unconditionally? And secondly, what do we do with Jesus’ command to give?

The eighth-century prophets we’ve been reading lately link these issues through their two deepest concerns: being faithful to God, and social justice. What links them is that for the prophets, being faithful to God meant living a life of complete loyalty to the God of the Exodus: the God who had brought their ancestors up out of slavery in Egypt. In the Exodus, God had shown an absolute commitment to the Israelites, even though they were nobodies – they were slaves. In the view of the prophets, the natural response to God’s love and kindness was to respond with love and faithfulness/loyalty of our own.

Yet everywhere the prophets looked, they saw idolatry and injustice. They had to teach the people to show love and loyalty to God. But how might the people best express this? The prophets taught that the best way to express loyalty to God was by practising social justice. They taught that a loving, faithful response to God was best articulated by dealing kindly with the nobodies in their own society, just as God had dealt with them when they were nobodies in Egypt. And this was to be their proclamation to the nations – we are a just and kind society because our God is just and kind.

Like all the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures, these three intertwined themes of the prophets – loyalty to God, social justice and proclamation – these themes draw their meaning from God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12.1-3:

¹ Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Here’s the whole reason for the Hebrew people: God chooses them, loves them and blesses them so they will be a blessing to all families of the earth; so all creation will know the blessing of a union with our creator, just as God’s people enjoy union with the creator.

This is why social justice lay at the heart of the prophets’ preaching. The chosen people were to reflect God’s universal love to all creatures first by living it in their own society. This is where Isaiah of Jerusalem is coming from when he cries out: ¹⁷ learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.

Perhaps now we can approach the writings of the prophet without our wrath-proof goggles on. As it happens, the words wrath and vengeance don’t occur in the passage we’ve heard this morning, and yet there are undoubtedly some of us who heard these words, even so.

The God who is revealed in the prophets is admittedly upset. But God has a repertoire of emotions that’s far wider than just love and anger, and so our response is correspondingly invited to range far wider than just adoration and fear. The God we meet in the prophets is more often than not a God who feels humiliated and shamed by the public conduct of the chosen people; a God who feels injured and betrayed and misrepresented. How can creation come to know the creator if the witness borne by the chosen people is corrupt and hypocritical?

And yet this God perseveres with them: ¹⁸ Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

God remains determined that these people who any other self-respecting authority would dump will be the means by whom all families of the earth are blessed. God will see this through whatever the cost! So when Jesus, in today’s gospel says: ³²Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. … there can be nothing of which his listeners could be more certain.

But it’s what Jesus teaches us to do with this certainty that’s at once most predictable and most bewildering. ³³ Sell your possessions, and give alms. His message is the same as Isaiah’s. Social justice is the way for God’s people to proclaim who God is. It’s predictable because it’s the same message as has always been preached among God’s people. Yet it’s bewildering to us because it’s a message founded on certainties revealed in the past – God’s promise to Abraham; God’s rescue of the chosen people from slavery in Egypt. It looks to the past.

Paradoxically, we live in a society where would-be prophets and gurus tell us the certainties that count must be future certainties. They tell us the search for security must focus on the future – to rock-solid investments and superannuation schemes that will keep us going when the pension system as we know it has dried up. We even sell things called futures, whatever they are.

And it’s here that Jesus’ message becomes most challenging of all – most counter-cultural. ³³Make purses for yourselves that don’t wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is a challenge to us as individuals to live out, but also for us to speak out as a direct challenge to the would-be prophets of our time – powerful political and commercial interests that always want to direct our eyes to the future; or, at any rate, their vision of the future. The future can’t be predicted, and yet they want us to trust them to shape it. Their advertising and slogans portray the future as a dangerous place if we don’t enter it under their protection. And we follow, generally. Is it any wonder God is upset?

Jesus’ words call us to resist these false prophets: to catch a vision of the love God has shown us and all creation, and to respond by living out of that vision, defiantly and joyously; to be empowered by this vision, and to express it through social justice. Because this vision shows us how much God loves us, it can free us to give; to give in defiance of the fear our modern prophets would trap us in. We can even capture a completely new vision of what treasure actually is.

The saint we celebrated yesterday was St Lawrence, a deacon martyred in 258 CE, during the persecution of the Roman emperor Valerian. The emperor had demanded that Lawrence surrender the treasures of the Church to him. Lawrence, feisty like all deacons, gathered lepers, orphans and blind people and bringing them to the emperor, said: ‘Here is the treasure of the Church.’                          Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost +7C: Hosea 1, Ps 85, Col 2, Lk 11

Before we hear Hosea 1.2-10

We’re about to hear a story where God asks the prophet Hosea to marry a shameful woman – he marries Gomer a woman who may be involved in fertility rites connected with worship of the Canaanite god Baal. The marriage is an enacted parable; it’s meant to show the pain of God’s relationship with unfaithful Israel, where many people involved in Baal worship. Then when Hosea and Gomer have children, God tells Hosea to give them names with horrible significance.

Jezreel                יִזְרְעֶאל          I“May God sow” Also the name of a valley famous for the atrocities of Israel’s idolatrous kings

Lo-Ruhamah      לֹא רֻחָ֫מָה      “Not pitied”          God’s mercy is cut off

Lo Ammi            לֹא עַמִּי         “Not my people” You’re not mine! The most fearsome  oracle any prophet had to deliver.

Is it strange of God to ask Hosea to do these things? Does this sound like the God we know? If we want to understand this story, we need to know that the people of Israel were God’s partners, like we are. Yet as God knew, they weren’t behaving like a faithful partner; and they weren’t raising their children as God’s children.

So God asks Hosea to marry Gomer – one of these unfaithful people – and to give their children horrible names. Israel needed to know what it means that people offer thanksgiving and worship to artificial idols instead of the living God who has given them all they have and are: what it means that they dedicate their children to these idols instead of teaching them know the true God’s love. But listen specially for the end of this story, where God’s love is stronger than God’s anger.  READINGS

Sermon:    Today’s readings confront us with the way we see God; the apparent difference we see between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the God of the New Testament. This tension is palpable in the Psalm we read this morning. At times, you could be forgiven for thinking that the psalmist is talking about two different Gods.

The first part of Psalm 85 (vv.1-7) sees God as angry and displeased, and tries to remind God to show us that kinder, gentler side that people knew and loved once upon a time. The second part, (vv.8-13) asserts a God who meets us with words of peace, with the promise of salvation, the intimacy of a kiss, and the good gifts of truth and plenty. So when we recited that Psalm, we sounded as though we were talking about two different Gods: the old fire and brimstone one first, and then the gentle, sensitive New Testament God. That’s a real tension for us.

We also get a sense of this tension in the letter to the Colossians and in the Gospel. Today’s reading from Colossians warns members of that Christian community not to be taken in by people who encourage them to prove their faith through rituals – like adopting traditional Jewish religious customs like circumcision, eating only kosher foods and observing the festivals – as though God wants to be appeased by public piety. No, this Letter tells them that outward signs are not what God wants. Don’t allow these people to make you feel disqualified from the Faith just because you don’t follow all their religious practices. The love you share with Jesus is the only measure of your faith; not getting some arcane religious ritual correct.

There’s a pattern developing in our readings, isn’t there: a theme running through the Scriptures which teaches us that outward show is hollow; that pious religious observance can even take us away from God. But even more disturbing, we may read of the ministry of a Godly prophet like Hosea, and somehow misconstrue what God is saying through him. We can see his portrait of God in the opposite way to what’s intended; and so we may decide that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God revealed in Jesus. But this is not right. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the God revealed in Jesus are one and the same. The message about God in the Scriptures is much more than the means of its delivery. Hosea’s message is more than just a challenge to infidelity and complacency and decadence. Even though that challenge is God’s word given for a particular time and situation, the full message is what lies behind that prophecy.

The full message is God’s commitment to us; it’s the commitment of a God who addresses us not as minions, but as partners – as family. The message is that God’s commitment to us as family is utterly real – to us and our children and to all the families of Earth whom God intends to bless through us.

This family partnership we have with God is the heart of today’s Gospel passage.

¹ Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”   ² He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name.

The first thing Jesus teaches his friends about praying is to call his Father God our Father. This has special cultural significance. In that part of the world these days, I’m called Abu Andrāwus – father of Andrew. I’m named in the expectation that if I ever have a son, he’ll be named after my father. So I am forever the custodian of my father’s good name; his honour depends on me. It’s the same when God’s children bear God’s name; we are the shop-front of the holy Name – the way the world sees God. So it’s important that we faithfully represent God’s character to the world. ^{(cf Jeremiah 13 – mentioned in my weekly – where Israel is represented as the intimate clothing in which God’s earthly presence is presented to Earth)} We’re the ambassadors of the sacred Name on Earth.

The sacred Name; what do we call God? For some of us, the name Father is a difficult issue; what about people who’ve experienced abusive fathers, and so don’t want to relate to God as Father? At the same time, these abused people are misunderstood by others who’ve had positive experience of worshipping of God as Father; who find calling God anything else sacrilegious. It’s tricky.

What today’s Scriptures teach us is that God wants a family partnership with us; not a friendship – a family partnership which cannot be broken by anything. Nothing can stop you being somebody’s child – not even death. And that basic message is not affected by whether we call God Father or Mother or anything else that expresses an unbreakable, trustworthy relationship.

But where does that leave us? There’s still great potential for hurt in that difference of opinion. I think God deals with this in typically humorous fashion. You see, the other thing God does to us by calling us all children is to make us brothers and sisters with each other, and as we all know, brothers and sisters will never agree.

So having set things up this way, I don’t expect God is worried if we never reach a consensus on things like ‘our Father’ or ‘our Mother’. But by the same token, God has also made sure that we can never ignore our differences either. By making us brothers and sisters, God has made sure that the bond between us is one that nothing can break, no matter how much we disagree on things. So we’re stuck with God’s delight in diversity, and with our own various forms of conservatism that make us struggle with it all.

The sense in all this became very poignant for me in a conversation I had with someone who was very worried about being rejected by God: the worry had come up because of a fire and brimstone sermon this person had heard.

Armed with this week’s readings, I was able to illustrate for this person my absolute confidence that absolutely nothing could make God reject them, because we were talking about the God who, in the Hebrew Scriptures forcefully reminds us that we are inseparably God’s partners and children. And in the New Testament, that same God in Jesus teaches us that the first thing we must acknowledge about our relationship with the Divine is that it’s a relationship that cannot be broken. Jesus has done this by giving us the privilege of calling God by the Name which meant most to Jesus himself. In English today, Father is a pretty formal way of addressing your Dad. The way Jesus would’ve said it to his friends was to use his native Aramaic word, Abba; a more familiar, intimate expression than Father. I remember how delighted I was when I first heard a little Israeli boy we know, Jonathan, calling out to his Dad to come and push him on the swing: his word was, of course, Abba!                              Amen.