Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Good Shepherd Sunday – Acts 2 42-47, Ps 23, 1Peter 2 19-25, Jn 10 1-10

Budget night approaches and big questions are being put to government about their commitment to the poor and down and out: housing; jobseeker; tax cuts – what’s their legacy going to be? Anglicare’s been in the news with ACOSS and other agencies confronting government with these questions. That’s their job and ours; speaking up for the needy. We’re mindful of this today, Good Shepherd Sunday, as the readings are about caring leadership. In today’s Gospel, John the Evangelist reveals Jesus as the Good Shepherd. John contrasts Jesus’ leadership of wisdom, loving kindness and willing vulnerability with the negligence, stubborn blindness, pastoral insensitivity and political fearfulness of the established leaders of his day.

Nowadays, where leadership is routinely under the microscope, it seems fair to ask what history makes of the leadership of Jesus. Is the legacy Jesus left behind enough to prove that he really was the Good Shepherd? You can best tell how good a leader is by the legacy they leave behind; not just how things were when they were around. So did everything good about Jesus’ community depend on his being physically there? Did he only keep up the quality and momentum of his movement by his personal charisma and skill? Did everything fall in a heap once he was gone?

Or did Jesus leave us a legacy of more inspired, skilled leaders? Did the people who took up his mantle keep up the good work he modelled? Because that’s the measure of a true leader; what happens once they’ve moved on. Today, in our reading from Acts, we get a chance to look at just that. It’s a short reading, but it’s got a lot in it. It’s a picture of the new-born Church in the days after the first Pentecost. So what was it like? In Acts 2.42, we read that the new believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

So four things made up the foundation-stones of the community life of Jesus’ earliest followers; learning together, sharing fellowship together, breaking bread together, and praying together. These are foundation stones which have served us for twenty centuries. And where these foundation stones are present, we truly experience Jesus’ care of us. The extraordinary is somehow possible. So we read in the next verse, ⁴³… awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. Wonderful; but is that where it stops? It could be quite inward looking and cosy, couldn’t it. But what actually happens?

I’m struck first by the extraordinary inclusiveness of this community. Just before today’s passage, we’re told it numbers about 3000 people ^v.41, and that it’s drawn from ‘every nation under heaven’ ^v.5; 15 regions are named. And today we see this new, multicultural community spontaneously assume care of its needy members.

We’ll do it for a family member: but for some strange people from far to the east of the Holy Land, or way down in Africa; people we’ve never met before? They’re Jews too, but even so, this is wild. And it gets wilder. ⁴⁴… all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.

They’ve only just met! I’d say the Good Shepherd lives on here; wouldn’t you?

Another thing that strikes me is the way the new-born Church doesn’t huddle together in a ghetto and hide from confrontation. And heaven knows, with what happened to their founder, they’d have every right to be cautious. But no, they’re out there in the general community, even in the Temple, enjoying each other’s fellowship and hospitality, and making a positive impact wherever they go. ⁴⁶And day by day continuing with one mind in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, ⁴⁷praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. ^NAS

This is no reclusive cult, is it. Again I’d say, the Good Shepherd lives on in these people. The good things they enjoy, they receive with gladness and share with open hearts. They make themselves vulnerable to strangers by doing this. And their impact is all the more powerful because they do. Jesus’ legacy lives on.

It’s perfectly clear from these few verses that Jesus is the Good Shepherd: that his good leadership practices of wisdom, loving kindness and willing vulnerability left an astonishing legacy. They were taken up consciously and passed on by his followers. So the Church’s gifts to the world include hospitals, pilgrim hostels, soup kitchens; care offered to total strangers often at great cost and risk.

These gifts the Church passes on came to us first through those four basic practices the new-born Church inherited as Jesus’ legacy all those years ago; ⁴²… they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Learning together, sharing fellowship together, breaking bread together, and praying together. I delight in the fact that this legacy lives on in us – in our commitment to Christ, to each other, to others, to the various missions and causes each of us supports, to the care we offer together through St John’s Youth Services. The Good Shepherd calls us on.

So I wonder what’s next? Any one of us could be the bearer of our next mission. What do you hear him calling us to do next? His legacy lives on in us. Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!    Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 3A – Luke 24.13-49

Kids: The Horse and his Boy: CS Lewis; Ch 11 p.157f ‘The unwelcome fellow traveller’

The Emmaus Walk is a journey which means something different to each of us. For some, it’s an eyewitness account of the risen Jesus. For some, the fact that Jesus eats with the two disciples is a witness to his physical resurrection. Other people respond more to the disciples’ hearts set afire by Jesus’ teaching. It echoes how the teaching of Jesus has opened up new life for them.

For many people, though, the Emmaus Road is a journey that all of us travel again and again, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to parenthood to retirement to dependence. These changes are often marked by significant changes in central relationships, or the endings of those relationships. Every stage begins with a mixture of loss and emptiness and fear. But later on, God willing, we’ll always look back with quite a different perspective. Philip Newell captures this in a lovely prayer.

Like an infant’s open-eyed wonder and the insights of a wise grandmother, like a young man’s vision for justice and the vitality that shines in a girl’s face, like tears that flow in a friend bereaved and laughter in a lover’s eyes, you have given me ways of seeing, O God, you have endowed me with sight like your own. let these be alive in me this day, let these be alive in me. ^{J Philip Newell Sounds of the Eternal}

The Emmaus Walk is a journey of farewell to old certainties; a journey through times where expectations abandon us. We suddenly journey without direction; we stumble blindly. And then, just as the emptiness threatens to swallow us entirely, we’re found. And in being found, we’re given a new perspective. Once everything is new and hopeful again after this Emmaus Walk, in hindsight we see that it’s in clear continuity with all we’ve ever been.

The Emmaus story represents the human journey beautifully. Just as we seem to be walking away from all we believed most real and it feels like hope and truth have abandoned us, we’re given a new, transformed way of seeing.

The Filipino artist, Emmanuel Garibay, offers one such new way of seeing in his picture on our service booklets. He writes, I have a different image of Jesus, which is that of woman, a very ordinary-looking Filipino woman, who drinks with them and has stories to tell. The idea of laughing is very common among Filipinos – to laugh at their mistakes. It’s all part of understanding the culture, and it’s also part of contextualising the concept of faith within the culture. ^{https://www.miat.org.au/jesus-laughing-ex/emmaus.html}

A healthy faith needs to be open to evolve. So is it strange that a healthy faith can necessarily involve times of walking away, despondent and sad, from cherished certainties? Sometimes, the old, fading truth we’re clinging to can seem impossible to let go – far too precious. But unless we can let go, we can’t be reborn. We’ll be like a chrysalis that never becomes a butterfly.

What were Cleopas and his friend talking about so sadly? It was the greatest hope of their lives; the redemption of Israel. But it all depended utterly on Jesus living on in the way they’d known him to live until then. That hope had been dashed. Anywhere they went now was away; away from that lost joyful hope. But Jesus came to accompany them – gently to teach them again – to prise open those wounded hearts and eyes to reveal a deeper hope; a hope so deep in them that they had to learn how to recognise it. But even so, they could feel it. Talking about it later, they told how their hearts had been set on fire by his words.

There was nothing inherently bad about their old hopes and dreams. But their old hopes and dreams depended on the continuation of Jesus’ earthly life, and so they were inadequate to the bigger picture that Jesus’ death and resurrection opened up. Walking sadly away from Jerusalem was a necessary part of their faith journey. The Emmaus Walk was the part of their journey where the unrecognisable, risen Jesus would meet them and give them what they needed to see him. Then they could go back and give new heart – new eyes to the others – and now to us. The Emmaus Walk isn’t only a personal healing journey; it’s the way along which God begins the transformation of communities – through you and me.

You’d think spiritual renewal might only come to those who are actively seeking it. But what we see here is that it comes looking for those who least expect it. And it comes in a category different altogether from what we’d normally imagine possible.

A delightful part of this enigma is that the exact location of Emmaus isn’t known. Abu Ghosh is traditional, but Emmaus may be anywhere. Hearts burning and eyes opening aren’t confined to just one place, either geographical or spiritual. Nor is spirituality confined to one way of doing things or seeing things. Emmaus comes into sight wherever a path has led us into a new communion with God; whenever we recognize that the risen Christ has been among us. That’s just like the Holy Spirit; you can never quite catch her, but you can always tell where she’s been.

Have you had an Emmaus Walk? Has Jesus come to travel with you when you least expected him to? Did he tell you something you need to run back and tell us? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Kids: Aslan breathing on the petrified Narnians and restoring them to life.

Easter 2A —John 20 19-23

Jn 20.23: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;  if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

I remember speaking with someone who’d been badly mistreated—betrayed really—betrayed by a person who should have been trustworthy and caring—a person who claims a Christian faith, but who acted like a vicious bully. My friend didn’t want to retaliate and spoke instead about having a duty to forgive.

When you’re in a place of injury and fear, it’s a terrible burden to think you have an obligation to forgive. If means you have an unrepentant bully on one side of you, and on the other, a God who, apparently without regard for your safety, demands that you simply forgive the bully. Did Jesus give us forgiveness to be a burdensome duty? Today’s gospel helps us to explore this question in a helpful way.

Today we meet Jesus’ friends locked in a safe place together. They feared for their safety. The same people who persecuted their teacher might well start on them now. They didn’t feel safe to go out in the community—they were cut off. Security for them was a locked door—a barrier between them and dangerous enemies. The risen Jesus came to them in this situation, and stood among them. He gave them a blessing of peace, and then showed them the wounds of his crucifixion. At this, the disciples rejoiced. Then he repeated his gift of peace, and sent them into mission.

John says they were frightened of Jesus’ persecutors. ^{v. 19} So is this sudden joy they feel a freeing from that fear? What did the sight of the living Lord, and the sight of his wounds do for them? ^{v. 20} In showing them his wounds, Jesus showed them two things. Firstly, that he knew what their fear and grief felt like. And thanks to the gospel, we know he understands our fears and griefs too. Secondly, he showed them that the danger they feared does not have the last word; it is overcome.

It’s in his two gifts of understanding and release that I find Jesus’ forgiveness. This forgiveness is not expressed as a demand that we remember our duty to forgive. It’s a liberation; a setting free. Jesus sends us to offer his understanding and his release to people. But we have a choice—to forgive or retain that release. ^{v. 23}

We see Jesus’ greeting of peace offered to frightened, vulnerable people. But what about the people they’re frightened of?

On Good Friday, we heard that Jesus died for us while we were yet enemies. So that means that the bullies and the powerful are to hear the message too. In the Hebrew Scriptures, I hear the prophets telling such people that God’s heart is for the poor and downtrodden. And in today’s Gospel, I see Jesus offering peace and freedom through his experience of being downtrodden. What does a bully make of that? What does a dictator make of that? What do we do with this?

Forgiveness doesn’t turn a blind eye to wrongs. It names them and offers a chance to change. It calls wrongdoers back from isolation into community. Forgiveness meets people’s woundedness not with power, but with its own wounds. Forgiveness meets fear with compassion, and turmoil with peace. Peace be with you, he says.

In our Judeo-Christian tradition, it’s understood that a disciple learns the faith and receives the gifts of God in the expectation that they/we will hand them on. This is made explicit in today’s gospel. Jesus repeats his greeting of peace to his disciples, and then says that as God has sent him so he sends them/us. The second greeting of peace is directly connected with the sending saying. ^{v. 21} So the peace Jesus has brought them from God is the peace that they are sent to hand on, and now in our turn, that we are sent to hand on; hand on to all who need it—and who we pray can receive this peace. But what is this peace?

Jesus gives it to his disciples tangibly by breathing on them—giving them the Holy Spirit. ^{v. 22} This passage is often called John’s Pentecost. But what else might it make us think of? For me, it evokes the story from Genesis ^{Gen 2.7} where God forms the human being from the dust of the earth, and then breathes into its nostrils the breath of life. In today’s Gospel, we see the resurrection life which raised Jesus from the dead being breathed into his disciples. People who had believed they were in danger of their lives went out as he sent them. They passed on his new life and it has come ultimately to us. What we have received is what we must pass on.

It’s in this context of life-restoring that Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness comes. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. We are to think of forgiveness more as freeing people from bondage than binding them in obligations—as giving a chance at free, new life; as transforming the hearts of the powerful, so it’s a gift to the poor and oppressed. Forgiveness is a joy; not a burden; something we long to do; not a mere duty. As God has sent Jesus so Jesus sends us. May we go freely and joyfully and share his new life. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Jesus died for us, then rose from the dead – and his rising is also for us.

He dies for us – dies in our place. It’s as though a bullet’s coming at you or me and a total stranger suddenly jumps in the way to take it in our place. An astounding thing to do. ‘So what!’ says the existentialist. ‘It’s a kind thing to do. But it’s easy to get sentimental about it. It’s pointless; it only postpones the inevitable. We all die eventually anyway. What’s the difference?’

The difference is that Jesus rose again. We just heard Peter telling the household in Jaffa how he and the other witnesses ate and drank with the risen Jesus; how the risen Jesus commissioned them to proclaim a new hope to everyone.

Our existentialist got something wrong. Jesus’ rising again – like his dying – was for us too. And his rising changed death itself; for us and for all life. Jesus changed death from the existentialist’s inevitable end point into a transition; a transition from mortal life to abundant life. Abundant life with God, and with all whom we love.

I’ve been meditating over the past week on a sentence from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 5.10

Enemies!? We are a warlike, planet-wrecking, prejudiced, self-serving species. Fair judgement of those characteristics of ours would be to leave us to suffer their consequence: unimaginable suffering and utter extinction.

Jesus puts himself between us and that extinction. He dies our death, and rises again to offer us abundant, eternal life. The life we received when that stranger took the bullet for us – it’s much more than what would have remained of our earthly life. It’s abundant, eternal life, no longer overshadowed by its mortal end. And it’s given by Jesus, who for many is a perfect stranger. Christ is risen, Alleluia! Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

The Cross, as we picture it, is in its completed form. The upright has the Cross piece fixed to it near the top to make a shape like the lower case letter ‘t’. That’s the Cross we see on the walls of churches, on the tops of church buildings and hanging from chains or strings round our necks. The only difference we notice is whether it is an empty Cross or a crucifix—a Cross with Jesus depicted on it.

This notion of what a Cross is meant to look like has shaped a lot of graphic art over the centuries. It’s particularly shaped the way paintings, and more recently, movies about the crucifixion have shown Jesus carrying the Cross from his prison to Calvary. They tend to show him carrying the familiar small-‘t’-shaped Cross over his shoulder, with the long, heavy upright dragging along behind him.
This is in spite of the fact that scholars have known and taught for a long time that it is unlikely that the real thing looked like this traditional image. What they tell us is that the upright of the Cross would probably have been at Calvary already, set in the ground and probably equipped with a winch on the top. So as Jesus walked through the streets of Jerusalem, he would have had the cross-piece lying across his shoulders, and his arms would have been lashed at the wrists to each end of it. They also tell us that he would most likely have been naked.

When you walk through the narrow stone streets of Jerusalem, particularly when they are crowded, it is clear just how vulnerable he’d have been in this position.

Onlookers were viewed with deep suspicion if they didn’t throw things at condemned prisoners, and taunt them or spit at them. The soldiers escorting a prisoner through the streets would shove their charges and bully them with that gratuitous discipline bullies like to inflict on their victims; maybe trip them over a few times along the way. If you fell with that wooden beam across the back of your neck and your arms outstretched, tied back to it, when you fell your face was driven into the road by the weight of the wood. You couldn’t save yourself.

The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish captured this, and also named the present experience of many of his own people, in his poem, You are mine, with all your wounds. He asks Jesus,
Did your feet,
dirty and swollen,
have to pick their way over these smooth stones,
covered with the usual debris
of rainwater and rubbish—
watched by some bored soldiers
who were passing the time of day?
Did your feet,
dirty and swollen,
have to take the long route
right around the road block,
picking their way
past puddles as large as lakes—
watched by some bored soldiers
who were passing the time of day?

It gives you a different perspective when you get a local person’s view. It makes you see that for Mahmoud Darwish, what happened all that time ago, was as immediate for him and his friends as it is for them today; he personally knows the person it happens to. And it could just as easily be him.

The Cross says that this sort of compassion—this shared pain is deeply true of God. I remember a shocking story about a young girl who was bullied at school—bullied so hideously that she gave up her will to live. What the Cross says is that the violation, the shame, the fear and the torture that were inflicted on that child are something that God knows from personal experience.

We know that God doesn’t stop people doing terrible things to others. God has a different answer. In the way of the Cross, we find God who will never allow us to suffer alone. Where was God in that young girl’s horror? Right with her; God suffered with her in her fear, her grief, even her death—as any parent would who wants to take their child’s suffering on themselves instead.

On the Cross, we see God helpless; we see God who is the one who represents all of us who know pain, despair, loneliness, fear, mental breakdown, or who suffer from bullying. On the Cross, we see in God all of us whom God aches to embrace and soothe and comfort and heal.

Of course, we also see the terror; we also see the cruelty. But overriding all of it, in the Cross we see God’s love that seeks to heal both perpetrator and victim. In the Cross, we see God’s love, that alone can offer abundant life where otherwise there is only a way to death.  Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Tonight, we’ve heard again how four of our ancient, sacred traditions began—the Feast of the Passover, the Lord’s Supper, the Christian principle of Servant Leadership—shown by washing each other’s feet, and the New Commandment—to love each other like Jesus loves us.

From Exodus, we heard the story of the first Passover—the final rescue of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt began with a meal where people ate standing up and dressed for travel—ready to flee at a moment’s notice. It’s called Passover for a strange reason. Before this meal, each household had to sacrifice a perfect, unblemished lamb and roast it over a fire. They had to daub their front door frames with blood from this lamb. The blood would be a sign to protect the household. God was sending the angel of death on Egypt to kill all the first-born in every household. But if the front door frame of a house was marked with the blood of a lamb, the angel of death would pass over without killing anyone within it. A short time later, the Hebrew people were delivered from slavery through the Red Sea.

We’ve read this story tonight because it connects with our Christian story. Ours tells of the blood of a perfect man being the means of our rescue from slavery. We remember this every week at Holy Communion.

Passover meals are happening this week too. Jewish people celebrate their rescue and thank God. They drink three cups of wine at this feast: the cup of sanctification celebrates the special bond they have with God; the cup of praise celebrates God rescuing them from captivity; and the cup of redemption celebrates God redeeming them so they are no longer slaves.

In this evening’s Psalm, we read about another cup; the cup of salvation. The Psalmist wants to offer it as a new sacrifice—a sacrifice of thanksgiving, offered by someone who knows freedom in God.

Paul links the imagery of Exodus and the Psalm to describe the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. For him, Jesus is the sacrificial lamb and his blood is our protection. And Paul also names a fourth cup for remembrance of salvation, which proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes.

Into this mix, the Church also gives us John’ story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. It also happened at a meal—but not at the meal we might first think of. The meal where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples in Mt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25 and Lk 22:7-20 was the Passover meal. But in John’s gospel the meal where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet happened before the Feast of the Passover.

In this Gospel Jesus will die on the day of preparation for the Passover 19:31. That’s the time that the Passover sacrifices begin in the temple. So in this Gospel, Jesus is the lamb––the Paschal Lamb––the Passover Lamb––the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This is the same as Paul’s understanding; Jesus’ blood will save us.

But now Jesus adds something new. During the meal, he takes off his outer robe. Now, clothed only in a loincloth, he ties a towel around his waist. And then dressed as a slave, he washes his disciples’ feet. Then he says, “… if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

This is the definitive picture of Christian ministry: the leader is always a servant, and service is always given for love. It’s summed up in the New Commandment. We care for others like Jesus does as a sign to all people. This is why we’ve been set free—it’s the reason God’s people were freed from slavery in Egypt, and it’s the reason we’ve been set free; free from slavery to futility and despair. We are set free so we can show people that God loves them; we show them by serving them and each other in love.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
This night, we remember his blood which is daubed around the doorframe of our souls; his blood which protects us from the angel of death. We remember that he’s the lamb who gave himself to be sacrificed for us; to free us from slavery; to lead us into a community of freedom and love; to build us up into a people willing to shine in the world’s night, like a bonfire of hope, burning on a mountaintop, guiding lost travellers to safety, to welcome, to love—to Jesus.

Grant, Lord, that we who receive the holy sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, may be the means by which the work of his incarnation shall go forward. Take, consecrate, break and distribute us, to be for others a means of your grace, and vehicles of your eternal love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Palm Sunday 

Outside Introduction to the liturgy of the Palms

The Temple Mount looks out east across to the steep side of the Mount of Olives – the triumphal procession down the mountain will be like a slow-moving tableau. The Roman HQ, the Antonia fortress, at the NW corner of the Temple Mount commands a clear view over both the Temple precinct, and the Mount of Olives.

The soldiers will watch everything from their battlements. They’ll know it’s not an insurrection – it’s clear that these aren’t insurgents. More likely it’s a factional battle brewing between groups of religious lunatics.

And the Temple authorities will be watching too, trying to measure the threat; preparing strategies to quench this dangerous new movement. If they don’t stop it quickly, Roman soldiers will swarm onto the Temple Mount and impose martial law before you know it.

The Palm Sunday Gospel calls us to join the crowd of people who surround Jesus, and to choose to walk with him.

Sermon: The people were calling verses from Psalm 118 to Jesus ^{Ps 118.25} Hosanna Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! ²⁶ Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Everyone who’s anyone has gone to Jerusalem – to conquer her, to control her, to rescue her, to avenge her.

David captured it from the Jebusites (1000 BCE) ^{2 Sam 5} – Sennacherib, King of Assyria came to take it from Hezekiah, but was mysteriously turned back (701 BCE) ^{2 Chron 32} – The army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon sacked the city and carried the people off into exile (586 BCE) ^{2 Kings 25} – Alexander the Great took it and moved on (332 BCE) – Julius Caesar’s general Pompey took it (63 BCE) and Caesar came again in 47 – Caliph Omar (Arabian) (638 CE) – Baldwin I Crusader King (1099) – Sala’adin (Sultan of Egypt and Syria) (1187) – The Mamluk Pashas (Egyptians) (1250-1517) – Suleiman the Magnificent Ottoman Sultan (Turks) (1517-1918) – Napoleon’s Palestinian campaign ended with an outbreak of plague amongst his troops (1799) – Theodor Herzl & Kaiser Wilhelm both visited the Ottoman rulers (1898) – The British General Allenby strode in ahead of his troops (Dec 1917) – The Arab Legion marched in (1948) – Israeli forces took it in (1967)

They all rode or strode into Jerusalem – or would have done if they could. How many of these names do we remember hearing about? Among these are the names of some of the most famous generals in history. We can’t say much about some of them, but what can we say about their followers? Lots of them thought they were joining a mission to save Jerusalem from the infidel. But they came to do it with swords or guns or bombs. None of them or their leaders are remembered as Saviour, whatever their motives.

Today, we accompany another who rode into Jerusalem. Today, we join a crowd of ordinary people who line the path down the Mount of Olives to shout with hope and joy: not for a general with an army, but a prince of peace. He’s perched on the back of a tiny donkey that jiggles its unceremonious way towards Jerusalem. Jesus is probably terrified. He knows he’s been marked out as a troublemaker, yet here he is, carrying out a deliberate plan to expose himself to the danger of judicial murder.

And we’re shouting; we’re crying out to him to save us from his murderers and our oppressors. That’s what we’re shouting. We’re bellowing out words from Psalm 118.25-26 הוֹשִׁ֘יעָ֥ה נָּ֑א. And one word in particular: hosanna – the cry of oppressed people – ‘save us, we beseech you’; we’re cheering on this very vulnerable man on a little donkey; calling him to save the people.

The generals, sultans, caliphs, kings, emperors and armies turned people into enemies then captives; into slaves; into subjects; into displaced persons and refugees. They all took what wasn’t theirs. Jesus wasn’t going to do that; he’d be different. Or was he? Strangely enough, in that one respect, he wasn’t different. Like all those others, he also took what wasn’t his: but what he took set people free.

That costly perfume the woman anointed him with; that was for her dowry, or if not, for the poor if the disciples had their way. Judas’s betrayal, he took that too, even though it wasn’t his to take. The authority of the chief priests and Pilate took it right out of their hands by refusing to justify himself to them. He took Barabbas’s execution from him. He took the crowd’s capriciousness – ‘hosanna’ one day, ‘crucify’ the next – took it without comment. He took the soldiers’ boredom and mocking cruelty. He took Simon of Cyrene’s help even though it wasn’t offered. He took Herod’s kingship with the inscription on his cross. He took the contempt of passers-by, of priests and scribes, and of one of the criminals crucified with him. He took our death to set us free. And in death, he took the centurion and his cohort’s confession of belief.

We discover ourselves in each of those people. We discover that we can’t just be bystanders watching Jesus pass by. He’ll take something from us – respect, indignation, shame, dishonour, authority, fear, disbelief, death – and in its place, we will find ourselves transformed; he will be our teacher and we his disciples, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Let’s close our eyes for a few moments and in the silence, imagine ourselves in the crowd by that roadside. Feel the surprise of his passing, so unceremonious, so fleeting, and yet taking something of you with him.

What is it? What does he take; it’s something you never wanted – something you wanted to be saved from – and it’s gone. He’s gone with it. What did he take?

During Holy Week, please stay with this question. I pray that you will see what’s gone, and what possibilities its passing opens up for you. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 5A – Ez 37 1-14, Ps 130, Rm 8 6-11, Jn 11 1-45

Lazarus Sunday has been precious to me for a long time now. Every three years, we hear this story on the Sunday before Palm Sunday. In the Holy Land, the traditional Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem used to begin at Al ‘Azaria – Lazarus’s place – in the Biblical village of Bethany, over the far side of the Mount of Olives. The march began at Lazarus’s tomb – the place where, once upon a time, the people of that district were given a sign by Jesus that God’s love for us – God’s commitment to us – is stronger than death. The people of Bethany have never let the memory of this sign pass from knowledge.

On Palm Sunday nearly 30 years ago, my family walked the road from Bethany to Jerusalem amongst the enormous annual throng of Christians from the various Palestinian churches, and with a great many others who, like us, came from churches of all nations. Tragically, that way is now blocked by the separation wall, so Palestinian Christians who live beyond it can’t join in the march any more.

The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from death to life has had added poignancy for me too since we attended a funeral in Papunya of one who died too young. Just like in the story of Lazarus, the whole community joined with the family, supporting them in wave after wave of heart-broken wailing. I felt myself longing there for the voice of Jesus to cry out again – to call our beloved friend back from death to life.

Jewish leaders and their community gathered with Mary and Martha and wept with them. The shared love and sadness of a whole community is both beautiful and shattering. John’s story tells us that Jesus joined with them in their weeping; that Jesus shares in our sadness as we mourn; Jesus also loves the ones we mourn.

This story also tells us that Jesus risks more than just sharing in our sadness. When he decides to respond to the call of Mary and Martha, his disciples remind him of the danger that confronts him there.  ⁷ [when] he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ ⁸They … said to him, ‘Rabbi, the leaders of the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’

The American Lutheran scholar, Karoline Lewis writes that for John’s Gospel “it’s the raising of Lazarus to life that incites the plot for Jesus’ arrest and death ^{11:53, 57}. In the verses which follow today’s reading about the raising of Lazarus, ^11:46-57, the chief priests and the Pharisees are told what Jesus has done, and from that day on they planned to put him to death. More than that, the chief priests want to get rid of the evidence as well, and they plan to put Lazarus to death since it was on account of him that many of their people were deserting and were believing in Jesus ^12:9-11. It’s Jesus’ claim, I am the resurrection and the life ^11:25 that provokes his death in the Fourth Gospel.”

I attend many funeral services – few like that one in Papunya – but they all share a tension with this story from John’s Gospel. And unless the one who’s died was a person rich in years, the grief always has an element in it which says to Jesus what Martha and then Mary said to him. ²¹‘Lord, if you had been here, this one would not have died.‘ If Jesus loves us, why did this happen?

Into that tumult of feelings, and at the beginning of each funeral service, Jesus’s words cry out to us from this story: ²⁵…‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ He asks us all, and I guess the answer varies for each one of us, from one day to the next.

Martha shared a faith in resurrection which had been nurtured in part, I assume, by our reading from the prophet Ezekiel today. It’s a vision of God’s power and will to raise the dead to life again; to restore us to our families and our friends. Ezekiel records something extraordinary though. Even after the bones have come together, the sinews, flesh and skin have come on them, and even the breath has restored them to life, God still refers to them as ‘these bones’. Ezekiel is telling us that their life, and ours, is entirely and always dependent on God – moment by moment. Without God, we are very dry bones.

In this vision, God addresses us directly:  ¹² Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴ I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” 

Then we will know.

It’s important for us to ponder all these things a week out from Palm Sunday. They raise questions we must face about our own life, and our death. What do we make too of these images and words which have shaped our faith and our values. What is our image of Jesus as we enter the week before his public self-offering? What is our understanding of resurrection?

Ezekiel and Jesus both make a distinction between mere resurrection or resuscitation and the fulness of life. And so we need to ask ourselves what we are doing with the gift we share of the breath of life. Are we only apparently living, like those reconstituted dry bones? If we are, can we hear the voice which calls us by name to come out to life again? Will we come out? Are we open to receiving abundant life? My prayer is that we are, and that we can open ourselves and others to this gift.  Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4 A — Jn 9 1-41

Children’s wonderings

Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’.

Mother Earth – mud

The first human was made from the dust of the Earth – did Jesus make that man new eyes out of the mud?

Go and wash – and he did.

Sermon

A man blind from birth. We just heard how Jesus gave him his sight. Despite the amazing, good things Jesus did, the religious authorities feared Jesus. They said they’d expel anyone from their faith community who followed Jesus. But we just saw the man born blind refuse to be cowed – like his parents were. After his interrogations and excommunication by the authorities, Jesus sought him out – and this second time, he could see him. And far from regretting his new outcast status, he declared his belief in Jesus, and worshipped him. The man born blind willingly chose the life of an outcast – something he’d known as a blind person all his life. That’s what it would cost him to follow Jesus. And he chose it.

It’s very much less challenging for us to follow Jesus. People say we’re God botherers, flat-earthers and fanatics. It’s taken for granted that we want to ram religion down innocent people’s throats; that followers of Jesus want to interfere with other people’s personal relationships; tell people who they can and can’t love. But Jesus wasn’t moralistic or judgmental like that, and for the most part, neither are his followers. We’re called to follow his life-example – his way – not a set of rules. The way he gave us was love. And he taught that way mainly by example.

We’ve seen Jesus meet the man born blind today, and far from judging him or forcing anything down his throat, he’s given him his attention, his time, and his love. That’s Jesus’ example: John gave us a ringside seat – really close – so we could actually feel the tension, then the joy, as his love prised open the shell of blindness and outsider status this man had lived in all his life. We saw all this so we could learn to do the same as Jesus; to give people acceptance, attention, time, love.

Many people carry terrible burdens. We know Jesus wants people freed from the tyranny of those burdens. He’s given us his healing gifts to offer, and his example of how it’s done – as he did for this man born blind, and for so many others. Jesus offers relief from that pain, that isolation, and a chance to start afresh – to be reborn. It’s happened for us. We know all that, and we know lots of people who struggle.

So will we choose to be the means by which they find Jesus’ healing love? The man born blind did it for others before he even knew what Jesus looked like.

He met Jesus, and he even invited Jesus’ enemies to get to know him. Can we consider that? Introduce people to him – or put another way, will we bring people’s questions to the one we know has the time and attention and love to truly address them; the one who takes them seriously when they are crushed by fear and loneliness; the one who will be with them their whole life long?

Let’s help people meet this Jesus – the one we’ve got to know. Let’s help these people meet the real Jesus who has time for people – let’s help these people meet the Jesus who offers acceptance, attention, time and love; Jesus who said he hadn’t come to judge people, but to give us abundant life. Let’s help people meet this Jesus and let his love do it’s healing, freeing work in many more lives. Amen

Mothering Sunday Thanksgiving

Dear God

We thank you for mothers. We thank you for all those who care for us in quiet, often unrecognised ways; we thank you for all those who care for others in patience and love.

We’re sorry for those times when we’ve failed to care for others and we pray that you will teach us to care as you do and that you will hold all mothers and carers in the light of your presence and guide them to you. Amen.

^{This prayer was produced by the Mother’s Union. Used with kind permission.}

 Mothering Sunday Simnel Cake and Posy Blessing

Loving God, giver of all joy: We ask that you bless this cake and these posies, that they may be to us symbols of our communion with you and with each other. As they were once scattered over our land as blossoms and blooms, grasses, vines, trees and cane yet are now one, so let us in our diversity be your one redeemed people, and your delight.  Amen.

Rev’d Susan Straub

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

 Introduction

Most of us can remember an experience where we reached a moment of truth, a full realisation of our true situation – for better or worse. It usually initiates action of some sort. Consider that moment when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and saw that they were naked. Reach for the fig leaves! We’re seeing ourselves as God sees us – nothing hidden, nowhere to hide – the naked truth revealed because we’re face to face with the living God.

However, we’re God’s people and in a covenant relationship with promises of commitment on both sides. Both may see the truth. Consider that moment when God heard the cries of the wilderness-wandering Hebrews in their thirst, for water … and for faithfulness from their God! God seeing Godself as seen by God’s people, nothing hidden, nowhere to hide. The omnipotent One willing to be revealed. God face to face with lives created in God’s own image:  both thirsting and thirsting for righteousness, impartial justice, and above all, faithfulness. Do the right thing and keep your promise. Stick to the covenant we made. Show your love through faithfulness. Let us trust you: don’t let us down!

Then we have moments of truth which bring joy and delight, so rejoice and show thanks! Consider that moment when a woman of Samaria, that once a great city of the northern kingdom of Israel, met Jesus of Nazareth.  She related to God under the covenant canopy of truth and faith, thirsting for God’s impartial justice.

John 4:5-42

Jesus was travelling from Judea to Galilee and had to go through Samaria. Tired out by his journey, he sat by Jacob’s well at the noon hour. A woman of that country came alone to draw water, and he said to her:  “Give me a drink” and they argued together.  We all know that this was highly unusual: a Jewish rabbi and a Samaritan woman, discussing, debating, arguing.

Then came the moment of truth. The woman became aware that she was known, that he saw her: nothing hidden from him.  ‘Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, “I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true!”’  She was pulled up short. How did he know? Surprised, probably, nevertheless she accepted what Jesus said as the truth: no denial, or dissembling, Her faith stood that test! Then she uttered a truth to Jesus about his people. She put the faith of God working in Jesus to the test, just as the Hebrews in the wilderness had done. “We thirst. Give us water or we’ll die.”

The Samaritan woman said: “Our ancestors (that is, the people of the northern kingdom of Israel) worshipped on THIS mountain, but YOU (that is, the people of the southern kingdom of Judah) say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

In her eyes, the sin of Jesus’ people was that of making the observance of the whole law almost impossible for them. One law broken was the law broken. The Samaritans had the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible containing the law. However, the southern kingdom of Judah centralised sacrificial worship to the temple in Jerusalem, which was a long way for  Samaritans to travel.

She voiced the deep grief and resentment of her people’s loss of this vital part of their identity: taken by the people to whom they were most closely related spiritually. The Samaritans thirsted for recognition from the Jews of the truth of their claim to belong also to the people of God, to Israel.

Most unusually, this woman was not afraid to answer back, arguing with the truth as she saw it to this Jewish man. Jesus said to the woman, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

What has Jesus done for her with his words? He has heard that the Samaritans wanted to pursue righteousness according to the law and given her hope. God’s impartial justice transcended the current realities, ‘neither this … nor that’. He gave a glimpse of ‘beyond’ where things could and would be different. He pointed to a beyond, where neither his people nor her people could claim a religious imperative tied to place.  Nothing would change her historical or current personal circumstances immediately. But she could be inwardly freed from their shackles, transcend them, based on a righteousness of faith, hope, and love. Faith that needs would be met ‘I’ll give you living water’, hope for the future ‘believe … the hour is coming …’, and love ‘… the Father seeks such … as … worship in spirit and truth’, like you, not necessarily those who keep the law alone.

Whether she was guilty of sexual impropriety or had been subjected to the loss of husbands by death or divorce, she was loved and shown a saving way. She could worship the God of Samaritans and Jews in spirit and truth within her current circumstances, in her life, and in any place. Wherever she and anyone else worshipped in spirit and truth, God would be present.  Grasping this saving way, she spoke of the Messiah, and Jesus confirmed her in the truth she thought she saw: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”  He was the sign for her that God was there at the well. Not only that, but the saviour of the Jews was her saviour, too:  just as she was.

Seeing this spring of life begin to assuage her thirst, was food indeed for Jesus: a spiritual food more satisfying than ordinary food.  Letting go of resentment, the woman joyfully took the living, life-giving water now bubbling inside her, back to her city, and told what had happened at the old well. More Samaritans came and Jesus gave them that same spiritual food and drink. Then the Samaritans said to the woman: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.”  He was more than the Messiah for whom his people thirsted. The Samaritans prophesied that Jesus is the Saviour for all persons and peoples thirsting for faith and hope in an uncertain or hostile world – thirsting for loving-kindness that releases spiritual bonds and brings forth joy and right-living.

It is for we who have experienced such loving-kindness to communicate to those who thirst – those grieving, weeping, withdrawn, isolated, shouting, or acting out of their spiritual poverty – that we have met this Saviour and offer them the experience of a certain Samaritan woman at a well on a certain day at noon who worshipped in spirit and truth.