Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter Morning – Acts 10 34-43, Col 3 1-4, John 20 1-18

Today is the perfect day for the Anglican Church of Australia to enter the Season of Hope. Hope! Everything about today’s celebration of Jesus who rose from the dead tells of our hope as his followers. The fire is both the ancient symbol of God’s presence with us, and a symbol of the new life that raised Jesus from the dead. And the church is filled with flowers to remind everyone of God’s gift of life in all its astonishing diversity. Their myriad colours and fragrances, and the joy of gathering them in harmony celebrates God’s delight in their diversity, and ours. Our hope is alive!

The Easter Candle, sharing its living fire with each one of us; the way it’s marked to bring together infinity and time; the way its depiction this year of eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly speak to us of apparent death being nothing more than the start of life in a new and more striking form; all this says too that our hope is alive! We sing this hope; we walk it in pilgrimage together, following the One who – as we said at our gathering – passed over from death to life. Our hope is alive!

Let’s think about that hope? We’ve gathered this morning to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ ‘passing over from death to life’. It’s a staggering reversal of what we think is normal! We’re gathered to celebrate this miracle, and the hope it gives us.

I remember those whose feet he washed just a few days earlier. After he did it, he told them he’d go and prepare a place for them in God’s house; that he’d come back and take them to be together with him in that place of life. ^Jn14 That’s a promise we remember whenever one of us has died. It’s our certain hope that Jesus will come and take them with him. And they’ll be with him, ready to greet us when it’s our time. We can hope that because of what we celebrate today; Jesus passed over from death to life. Jesus is alive. Our hope is alive!

Maybe it’s hard for us to visualize how this hope might affect the way we live now. For me, we’re given a way to understand that effect in today’s Gospel – in what we just saw happen for Mary Magdalene. She was lost in the despair of Jesus’ death on the cross, and now, weeping before the confusion of a tomb that it seemed to her must have been desecrated. She was utterly gutted of hope.

Then suddenly, the living Jesus calls her by name. One minute, nothing to live for; everything that had given her life any meaning gone. And the next minute, she’s literally got hold again of her living, breathing Jesus. He’s come for her, and she’s fully back in the land of the living. She has hope again. Jesus tells her to go and share that hope with all the others. She’s alive again in a totally new way – and it’s happened for her on this side of death. It has for us too. This is the hope we’re given to live now!

Mary’s experience of renewed life is reflected in our reading from Colossians. You have been raised with Christ … for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. This happened to Mary; one moment, as good as dead in her despair and horror, and the next, raised to life again by the risen Jesus. In the reading from Acts, we saw a transformed Peter too. Only last Friday we saw him cowed and hopeless. Today, we see him doing as Mary did; taking the hope of Jesus’ resurrection to bring the hope of new life to others.

Jesus’ resurrection is our hope, and it’s a hope the world desperately needs. Today we see that clearly. Death is something people fear; something people do all they can to ignore. It can bleed people of hope. Some use this fear of death to manipulate other people. But if all the poor, frightened, threatened people knew the hope that we share, that in Jesus, our death has already happened, that our new life is in Christ; that we have been raised with him here and now, they could be transformed by that hope.

Nothing prevents physical death from happening for anyone. But people who belong to Jesus have hope because he is alive. People who belong to Jesus have a living hope that’s built on trust in his integrity, built on his love for us, and his call to us to a life that has meaning and purpose. It’s also built on his promise that at our death, our risen Lord will come for us – call us by name, Life is wonderful with this hope. And with a world in such need of this hope, it’s vital that everyone of us shares it.

We were commissioned for this at our baptism. We were called to share with others, by word and example, the love of Christ and his gospel of reconciliation and hope. ^{APBA p. 69}

As we renew our baptismal promises now, let’s re-commit to that. Let’s put this new life of ours at the service of the One who gave it to us – that same hope – and share it with others. Because he was raised for them too. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Maundy Thursday – Ex 12,  Ps 116,  1 Cor 11  Jn 13

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.

The Church calls us to read this story tonight because it connects with our Christian story. Our Christian story 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. 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’s letter links the imagery of Exodus and the Psalm as he describes the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. Jesus is the sacrificial lamb and his blood is our protection. And Paul also names the fourth cup 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 ^13.1.

In John’s Gospel Jesus will die on the day of preparation for Passover ^19:31. That’s the time when Passover sacrifices began in the temple.  So in this Gospel, Jesus is the sacrificial lamb––the Paschal Lamb––the Passover Lamb––the Lamb of God who takes away the sins – not only of Israel, but of the world. This is the same as Paul’s understanding; that Jesus’ blood will save us.

But Jesus adds something new to all this. During the meal, he takes off his outer robe and, clothed only in a loincloth, he ties a towel around his waist. Thus dressed as a slave, he washes his disciples’ feet. And afterwards 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.”

So Christian ministry is defined for all of us: the Christian 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. It’s the reason God’s people were freed from slavery in Egypt, and it’s the reason we’ve been set free from slavery to futility and despair. We are set free to give hope; set free so we can tell people that God loves them. And we are to show them that by serving them and serving 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 Jesus’ blood; we drink it in the Eucharist; Jesus’ blood offered to protect us and all the world from the angel of death. We are given a picture of Jesus as 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 set free to shine in the world’s night, like a bonfire of hope burning on a mountaintop, guiding lost travellers to hope, to safety, to welcome, to love – to Jesus. Amen.

Palm Sunday 13-4-2025 – Phil 2.5-11, Luke 22.14 – 23.56

^{Phil 2.5-8} Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

Our study group last Tuesday was deeply struck by these words from the Philippians hymn that we just heard read to us this morning.

The Creator and giver of Life empties himself of all power, eternity and majesty – lets go of it. And instead, takes up a simple, mortal existence. And today we see him give up even that; give up even the simple, mortal life that remains to him, in order to ensure our life; my life, your life.

Jesus is the Lord of Life; the Creator. Yet from his own lips in the Passion Gospel, we heard him say just now that he chooses utter humility. And that’s what he wants the powerful among us to do too. In our time of even more than usually hubristic leaders, his words send a very special message to our world.

^{Luke 22.25-27} The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over those people are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

Jesus put himself at the mercy of all the arrogance and self-delusion of humans who wielded power and absorbed it in his loving humility, exposing its emptiness for all to see. Then he took it with him to the Cross so it should die with him.

His call to his disciples – and they would soon wield great authority – his call to them and to us was always to take the role of the new kid on the block. To work from a posture of humility; to live naïve in the strength of his love. Most of all, he called those of us who are given any authority to let go of the delusion that it gives us any rights or privileges. Instead, he calls us to take hold of the responsibility it lays on us to love humbly. To turn to the sinner on a friendly, neighbouring cross and tell them how they can also be with Christ in paradise today.       Amen

Lent 5C 6-3-2025 – Isaiah 43 .16-21

On one of Richard Fidler’s conversation programmes, he talked with Andrew Harper; a cameleer who took people into the desert for a month at a time. Andrew described how, at the end of each journey, as they walked back into Birdsville his fellow travellers would become sad. Andrew talked about the sadness of ‘leaving my best self back there in the desert’; of his longing to be back there in the silence and the clarity of what’s truly important in life. He described our life in civilisation as a place where we just can’t get that sort of clarity.

This Lent, we’ve been reading scriptures that have taken us into the desert. This Lent has directed our focus at the three aspects of desert spirituality for us. There’s the literal desert that covers much of this Land and shapes what we think is our national consciousness. Then there are metaphorical deserts. The dry times of apathy and loneliness inside us which threaten to consume our life away. And then there are desiccating, enervating setbacks in our community and family life; things like selfishness and indifference.

Our lectionary this Lent has given us weekly Bible stories about people in the desert. Those people have shown us how, when you find ourselves in a desert, you can find a place where you learn to depend on God. One insightful friend told me, the desert isn’t about the absence of God; it’s about depending on God. That’s what we saw first this Lent. We went with Jesus after his baptism as he was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted for forty days. In the face of temptation, Jesus’ response of utter loyalty to God showed us how to stop depending on the transient supports of our everyday life, and instead, depend on God who is faithful.

The next week, we joined Sarai and Abram who’d returned to the Promised Land from Egypt. They felt confronted by their advancing age and the prospect of dying childless and forgotten. God’s response to their prayer happens to be the reason you and I are gathered here today. The desert isn’t about the absence of God; it’s about depending on God. Two weeks ago, we read in Ps 63 how young David was driven into the Judean desert by Saul’s jealousy; the king’s soldiers were ordered to kill David. But there in the desert, he was revealed to us and to himself as the amazing person God had known he was all along.

And last week, it was the Prodigal Son strutting off to his new life in a foreign land. He left his parents in a desert of grief and his brother in the dry place of righteous indignation – never mind the spiritual wasteland he sold himself into.

But amidst his tragedy, Jesus’ parable revealed the beautiful nature of God’s love and grace. That loving grace was the only hope for that family, for their village, and it is our hope too. And it’s there for each to discover in our own private deserts.

These private deserts are part of everyone’s life journeys; places where there seems to be no nourishment or hope; where grief, unforgiveness or disappointment control us. This Lent surprises us as we discover God’s healing love in such dry places. Each desert story has been about the transforming renewal of whole communities; and ultimately about making Earth the place that it should and can be.

The challenge is huge and counter-intuitive. Thinking of dry places on a community-wide scale, many of us will remember the millennium drought. Talk was all about dredging the Murray mouth as we franticly tried to keep the river and the lakes alive. Talk was also about the selfish disregard people from this or that state showed their fellow Australians. It was a bitter time – the water more bitter by the day; the constant to and fro of bitter accusation and angry refusal to turn from the desert of blind selfishness tore at the soul of our national community.

But back to our scriptures. After the past four weeks of temptation, doubt, fear, foolishness, grief and anger, today’s passage from Isaiah 43 is a wonderful refreshment. God is doing much more than just breaking a drought. Thus says the Lord, I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert … to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise. We mustn’t miss the fact that the people still have to cross the desert. But God is with us; making a way, giving us water to drink, sustaining and helping us do what God’s people are always called to do; to offer that water to the world.

Our call is to leave the comfort and security of the familiar and head into the desert, because the desert is the native habitat of our souls; where we can truly be present to God. From there, our praises arise from lived experience as we become instruments of God’s desire to quench the thirst of all the families of Earth.

We don’t have much more time in this year’s Lenten desert. As we prepare for the season of Hope, let’s savour every moment of the clarity we know here in the desert. Those people Andrew the cameleer led back into Birdsville all feeling the letdown of leaving the desert; they’d given the desert a try, and something really important happened. It’s worth us giving it a try too! The desert isn’t about the absence of God; it’s about depending on God.                                              Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4 C – Lk 15 The parable of the lost sons

It helps us to know who was there when Jesus told today’s parable. There seem to have been some notorious sinners and tax collectors. They’d come to hear Jesus’ teaching. And watching on were Luke’s version of the morality police – some Pharisees and Scribes. They were grumbling loudly enough for us to hear them complain that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. ^{Lk 15.2} Gate keepers can be a bit passive-aggressive like that.

Jesus responded with three parables; the parable of the lost sheep rescued and the rejoicing that caused, the parable of the lost coin found – and more rejoicing, and then today’s one. But the parable of the lost sons breaks the pattern. Yes, sons. The bitter, self-righteous, older son was every bit as lost as his younger brother had been. He wouldn’t come home to join in the rejoicing, and that hurt his father terribly. Ironically, this gate-keeper contrived to shut himself out.

Jesus was telling the religious officials in three different ways that the tax collectors and sinners who’d come to learn from him were very valuable. This parable says they were like his own children. But they’d got lost. Jesus had come to find them, and they’d come to find him. So they weren’t lost any more. Party time!

But the older brother in the parable – the judgmental, bitter one who grumbled about his father giving a feast for this son of yours! – does he remind you of anyone? He welcomes sinners and eats with them! Yes, the Pharisees and Scribes feature in this parable, don’t they. Just as Jesus reached out to the tax collectors and sinners through the younger son, he reached out to the Pharisees and Scribes through the tragic story of the older son. We never find out what happens to him, or them.

Jesus annoyed the Pharisees and scribes by eating with sinners and tax collectors; he publicly treated these socially ostracised people as if they were legitimate members of the community. But the Scribes and Pharisees thought they were the arbiters of who belonged and who didn’t. Jesus obviously thought differently. This parable says the sinners and tax collectors who came to him were his lost children, who’d been found. Social convention had given them up for dead, but now they were alive again with him. These kin of yours were dead and have come to life; they were lost and have been found. ^{Luke 15.32}

This is the absolute heart of the Gospel. The Gospel explicitly identifies the lost younger son with Jesus himself; dead, but alive again. ^{Luke 15.32} Like that younger son, Jesus left his father and came here squandering his inheritance among people like us to the point of giving up his life. Jesus who died, given up for lost by his friends, Jesus was raised to new life, gave those friends and us another chance at life, and leads us to the Father’s house ^{John 14.2} where the party is being prepared for us all.

Don’t we see Jesus in the Father running out to embrace his son? Can we hear him whisper in our ear that we are safe now, because we’re with him? Come home; come into the eternal, joyous banquet of unconditional, welcoming love!

Jesus came that all might have abundant life ^{John 10.10} – including people we find really difficult to deal with; people who offend against all our instincts and values. He came that all might have abundant life.

Even us? The Gospel is showing us, as we enter this parable, that we – even if we’ve given up on ourselves as lost – even if other people – even sisters and brothers have given us up for lost – we can see Jesus running out to us, to embrace us and clothe us in the robes of unquestioning belonging; unconditional belonging.

The three parables of the lost tell us how God values us. They tell us how God risks giving us the freedom to learn how valuable our relationships are by experiencing what life is like without them. But they also show us how God has chosen to be vulnerable to us in the love that will brave righteous anger to defend us.

That’s the love he calls us to show in our own lives too. Praise God for such scandalous love!  Amen.

Mothering Sunday Cake and Posy Blessing

Father and Mother God, giver of all joy:
we ask that you bless this cake and these posies,
so 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 Peter Balabanski

Lent 3C – Luke 13 1-9

Oscar Romero was Archbishop of the city of San Salvador from 1977. At that time, his country, El Salvador, had a terrible government. Most of the people were kept very poor by a greedy few. But they were frightened to complain, because anyone who complained was arrested and tortured – often killed. Romero spoke out against all this until he was assassinated by government soldiers in 1980. They shot him when he was at the altar during communion as he raised the chalice of wine before the people. It’s like today’s gospel story; his blood and the communion wine were mingled at the altar. And five days later the soldiers opened fire on the people who had gathered for Romero’s funeral.

People came to Jesus today with a story that was just as terrible. Some people from Galilee had come to the Temple – they’d come to offer their sacrifice to God. And just as they were offering their gifts, the soldiers of the Roman governor killed them, right at the altar. The soldiers mingled their blood with the blood of their animals and birds that were sacrificed on the altar.

When the people told Jesus about this, he heard them ask a very complex series of questions. We may have just heard people tell him some terrible news. But Jesus heard them ask, ‘Why did this happen to people who were doing good? Were they really secretly bad people, pretending to do good, and God punished them? Does God strike people down like that? Do you have to be really terrible for God to do that, or could it happen to us too? Why would God let this happen to people who were doing something good?’ I think Jesus heard all these questions; they’re the questions people ask when bad things happen. ‘Why them? Why me? Why now?’ … We often ask questions like these when we get very sick, when we don’t seem to be getting better, or when terrible things happen to us or to people we love.

Jesus answered the unspoken questions of these people with a question of his own: ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were any worse than all other Galileans?’ Then he answered his own question: No! … ‘And’, Jesus told them, ‘the same went for the eighteen people who accidentally died when that building fell on them.’ If I tried to give his answer in different words, I’d say this. ‘Just because something bad happens to a person, it doesn’t mean they’ve been any worse than the next person. When you’ve lost someone you love, you deserve to know at least that!

What happened to these poor people could happen to any one of us at any time. So I’m really glad that Jesus said what he did. I’m glad to be able to tell grieving friends and family that Jesus said fatal accidents and fatal illnesses are not things God does to people. In this parish there are many who carry the sadness of the untimely death of loved ones. I’m glad to be able to assure you that illness and tragic accidents and the evil acts of dictators are not God’s punishment.

Jesus tells us these are not signs of God’s anger, but; just that we’re mortal. ‘So’, he warns us, ‘be ready – to turn to God.’ Why should I be glad to preach that? What’s good news there? Once again, the answer comes from Jesus; ‘…Unless we repent, we will all perish as they did.’ That sounds pretty ominous, but only until we consider how those people perished – completely unexpectedly. They had no idea it was coming. What might they have done if they knew they were going to die?

What would I do if I thought this year was going to be my last? If I were that fig tree in the parable, and I heard the gardener pleading for me to be given just one more season – I’d fix back-burner relationships first, then … what would you do?

Like many people I’ve journeyed with, in just that situation, I might set about putting my life in order. And I’d try to make sure I was better prepared to meet God face to face. I’d realise pretty quickly how silly it is to worry about what’s wrong with other people. I have plenty to do fixing myself up. And I have God’s love to tell other people about; that’s a hope that everybody needs.

Doing what Jesus says has far-reaching effects. When Oscar Romero was first made an Archbishop he was a government supporter. Then just three weeks later, a close friend of his was one of three people assassinated by soldiers for helping the poor. Romero said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path’” Romero repented; he turned; he left behind what was comfortable and safe, and he followed the same path as his friend; he turned, and truly followed Jesus. He only had three years more to live; what a blessing he turned when he did!

Jesus is telling us, don’t leave it all to the last few minutes.

The lovely poet and preacher, John Donne, put it very memorably:

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity

or washed clean at night by repentance. ^{(Sermon XI, Lent, 20/4/1630 before the king)} Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 2 C – Gen 15 Ps 27 Phil 3 Lk 13

As we focus on the fate of a boat-person’s family today, it’s instructive to reflect that today’s readings present us with a world where everybody’s in the same boat. In church-language, it’s called a state of sin. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s some sort of spiritual criminal. What it means is that humanity is in more or less of a state of alienation or separation from God. We’re not necessarily in that state by choice; but we’re all in it, and it’s painful for everyone.

Everyone? It’s not just people who want nothing to do with God that suffer from this. It also afflicts people who love God, who seek God with every fibre of their being. Today’s readings show this. Look at Abram, the model of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims. He’s a person who’s left everything behind to follow God’s leading. Yet today we see him as a man who has clearly lain awake worrying about what it was all for. Can that be true? Abraham, the model of faith, tormented by doubt?

And the Psalmist; someone who writes poetry that sings of God’s care, nevertheless cries v.10 “My heart has said of you, ‘Seek God’s face’: your face, God, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me”. Do not hide your face from me?! Even in our spiritual teachers, we find anxiety where we want solid faith; uncertainty where we expect confidence. My heart has said… That’s the telling phrase. Every spiritual seeker of every tradition talks of something deep within us that cries out to connect with the divine who is both the source of our being, and the end of our journey – our goal. But here is the Psalmist, a giant of faith, praying that God will not hide; praying to find God’s face.

Abram and the Psalmist, faithful people, experience the pain of separation from God. So it’s no shame on us that we do too. We try to find out why. Is it something I did; is there something wrong with me. Other people have strong faith; they seem blessed. Why not me?

If we react badly to the question of our own suffering, we’re worse when we see other people suffering. Sometimes when people have something terrible happen to them, others can try to rationalize their misfortune by wondering what they must have done to ‘deserve’ it. We know that’s rubbish; we know, or maybe we don’t know, that we say things like that because we’re afraid of the cost that being really compassionate might exact from us.

A sign of how badly we react to other people’s pain is that suffering people are often left alone. Few people can cope sitting with anyone who is in agony. It’s that cost of compassion thing again; we can’t bear to sit with it. And the sufferers know it; they send people away; they say they’d rather be alone. They don’t want to be a burden to anyone. They become the carers of people who can’t cope with their pain.

Our alienation from God – our sense of isolation from others, our physical or emotional suffering; they’re all part and parcel of the one experience; they’re simply part of being mortal. And there is no way out of that, regardless of our faith. But the coming of Jesus challenges the inevitability of that separation. We couldn’t be ‘one with God’, so coming in Jesus, God dealt with it by becoming ‘one of us’. God goes the whole way; birth, suffering and death. Suffering? In the coming weeks, we will hear again of the agonized breakdown in Gethsemane; the cries of anguish from the cross, and we’ll know they were real experiences of separation from God; the alienation which is the cost of sin.

But that sin doesn’t mean criminality. Jesus was sometimes asked to judge between people; to apportion blame. Instead, he names the basic malaise; alienation from God. He aches for us. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! As followers of Jesus, our purpose is mapped out. We are to be there for people who suffer. We are to be Jesus for each other. The alienation people experience should never be compounded with cruel, needless loneliness born of judgement and exclusion.

The way that works out as a call to us, particularly today, is a call to solidarity with refugees – aliens here and in foreign lands. It’s foundational to our faith. Last week, we heard Moses giving his final instructions to his people about thanking God for what they’d been given. Dt 26 What’s really striking about these instructions is that they applied equally to the citizens of the Land, and the aliens who resided among them! Refugees had the same rights, the same responsibilities, and were explicitly entitled to the same inclusion – as full citizens. Jesus gave us this same principle again in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

That used to be our way in Australia up until the mid-90’s. We were compassionate, inclusive and supportive. Refugees received humane, just treatment. Today, as we proclaim our support for Farshad, we invoke again the ancient Biblical principle that underpinned – and should again underpin – our treatment of those who seek shelter among us. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1C – Luke 4 1-15

Today we saw Jesus subjected to temptations that attack mutual dependence – the trust and faithfulness we need in each other; the temptations we face that attack our life as a community, and our life with God. Today, we saw Jesus confront three of these temptations after he’d been fasting for forty days in the wilderness. At his baptism, God told Jesus, ‘You are my Son, the beloved; I am well pleased with you.’ ^{Jn 3.22} This didn’t start Jesus’ public ministry though. First, the Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness for forty days of solitude, fasting and temptation.

Today, after those forty days, we hear the devil’s sneering taunt, challenging the now famished Jesus to prove God’s words true; ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ ^{Jn 4.3} God’s declaration about Jesus as his Son is challenged. Prove it mister! What’s this got to do with us?

I must say this one hits me hard. I can have the most fabulous experience of God’s strength and presence in my ministry one moment, and then the very next, I’m tempted to imagine it may have had something to do with my skill or ingenuity. And without sensing the movement, I’m duped into wondering – Could God have done it without me? And then where’s the logical next step? Poor God is so busy. Could I do this even without God? CRASH!!! I’m lost in a spiritual wilderness with only the fruits of self-delusion and self-importance to eat.

Temptation is false food. These days, we’re bombarded with images of people who are happy, fulfilled, successful, popular, secure and attractive. The implication is that they’ve got that way because they drink some particular high-sugar, high-caffeine drink or eat some particular salty, oily food. The further implication is that we can be the same as them if only we consume this sugary, oily, salty stuff too. In fact if you eat this, wear that, drive one of those or live there, with just the power of your money you can create a whole new self – not to mention a whole new admiring fan club.

The advertising industry has stopped simply telling us of the existence of a product. Instead they make us the product that’s being sold – or at least, an image of us. We will suddenly be the type of people we never dared dream we could be: attractive, confident, successful, powerful – once we’ve tried this life changing junk food. This is what the serpent did to Eve and Adam in the garden – you’ll be like God if you eat this. In fact, God will be redundant if you eat it, because you’ll become gods yourselves. Think of it – you; a god. Just take a bite. It’s what we just saw the devil try on Jesus in the wilderness; ‘If you’re the Son of God, come on, fulfil your destiny with a do-it-yourself dinner. The power is all inside you anyway, so it must be okay. It’s meant to be!’ Jesus refuses the temptation of false food.

Temptation of a false God complex. Never doubt the rightness of your perceptions or your motives. That was number two for Jesus today: ‘All this could be yours; rule it; fix up all the problems from a position of strength. You know it’s what they expect of you. If that’s how they want it, can that be so bad? It’ll all go so much more smoothly like that.’ But no; we’re going to watch Jesus do it the hard way over the coming months. He’ll do it from the position of a servant, not a ruler. Depending on God and others reminds us we don’t know it all.

Temptation is also to manipulate; and that’s number three for Jesus today. Jump off this pinnacle of the Temple and force God’s hand: make God keep the promise to send angels to save you. Imagine the public-relations coup that would be with the whole religious establishment watching on! Every time Jesus refuses; he chooses to rely on God’s provision, to respect God’s sovereignty, to believe in God’s love – he chooses to be one of us; to depend on others; to show us that it’s possible to be a frail mortal and still be real, loveable and loved, for all our faults.

False Bread. When we’re tempted to insist on self-reliance – on being independent – it cuts us off from each other. Particularly, it closes us off from love: God’s love, and other people’s opportunities for showing us love. Dominion. When we seek to control through our power, it insults God and demeans everyone else involved – as if this world is more ours than theirs. Manipulation. And when we test God to see if our Creator cuts the mustard – we also demean our community, like any shabby sociopath would.

Jesus shows the alternative to each of these temptations. This man, who never wrote a book, has shown with his life, his humility, his companionship, his love and his vulnerability that we are made for community, and that community is built on respect, service and humility – in a word, Love. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

World Day of Prayer – Ps 139: The Cook Islands ‘I made you wonderful’ / DV.

In 2019 I attended a gathering in Fiji involving the Pacific Conference of Churches. The Cook Islands Christian Church and the RC Diocese of Rarotonga are PCC members. The very issues we’ve been called to pray about today – the climate and pollution emergency, and the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children – were the main focus back then too. At that gathering, just like today, the focus was on the islanders’ suffering because of rich countries’ inaction on climate change and sea-level rise, and because of the various forces at work driving the epidemic of domestic violence against women and children across the Pacific.

The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service have called us to draw strength with them from three teachings in today’s focus Psalm. Ps 139 tells us with infinite tenderness that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. But, today, these women also call the world churches – call us – to pray with them against forces which defile these glorious blessings.

Greedy, malignant forces are ruining life for innocent and vulnerable people; cutting them off from experiencing God’s gifts to them. This is a theme that runs right through scripture. It may surprise you to know it’s also present in today’s beautiful Psalm. There are four verses in today’s Psalm, 139, which in the Australian Anglican Church are almost never read in public worship. Our lectionary makes it optional to read them out. And we haven’t read them today.

Near the end of this Psalm’s beautiful meditation on the intimacy of God’s love for us and our delight in that security, these verses stand in shocking contrast to the rest. Here are two of them. ¹⁹ If only you would slay the wicked, O God: if only the bloodthirsty would depart from me! ²⁰ For they affront you by their evil: and your enemies exalt themselves against you. Where’s that come from?! This Psalmist is so sure of God’s love, of a life lived under God’s careful eye. Yet even so, the Psalmist records a personal experience of violence, and calls out its perpetrators.

This sudden contrast comes as a shock to us – security and delight on the one hand, yet fear and loathing on the other. It could well describe the emotions of a people who experience violence against the very Islands they call home. – or of a person subjected to domestic violence. Let’s consider the violence against the Islands.

At the conference we attended, we learned how the Pacific family feels a very deep and personal grief because of the double catastrophe of rising sea levels, and the pollution ravaging ocean, air, land and living creatures in the Pacific region. They are all casualties of our greedy culture of more is better – our relentless generation of plastic waste; our relentless plundering of their children’s future.

I want to tell you about Josefa, a minister from a Pacific Island nation. Josefa told us his family’s story of the rising water that we all know threatens them right now. We know of it but not personally. Josefa gave us permission to share his story.

Josefa’s ancestors raised a large mound on their farm. On that mound, they built their family home. Just before he addressed us, he’d spoken on the phone with his brother who told him the water had now come up to the mound. The unthinkable is staring them in the face. The terrible sadness Josefa feels came home to me when he told us of a traditional family custom on his island. Every year at Christmas time, families go to the cemetery together to visit their ancestors’ graves. He said, ‘We show our love and respect for our parents, grandparents and ancestors by carefully tending their graves, but especially at this time. Then we all return to our family home together and share a wonderful feast of thanksgiving for our family.’

At this point, Josefa fell silent. Then, almost gasping with the effort to speak, he asked, ‘How can we do that any more? They’re saying we’ll have to leave our island soon and find somewhere else to live. But who would we be then? Who would we be without our island? We could no longer be the people of this island. If there is no island, then we are no more.’ The depth of Josefa’s grief was overwhelming; I can’t imagine losing my connection with everything my families have ever been; never able to go back to the place my story happened. That’s death.

And domestic violence? That’s the other evil – here, around the world, and in a particularly shocking way in the islands. We’ve heard and read today how women are significant custodians of islander culture. They are the ones who pass it down to the next generations. And yet the export industry of misogyny and sexual degradation of women and children from outside societies is corroding all that; undermining their dignity and their humanity. We export it through tourism, through the internet, and tragically, through some distortions of Christian teaching.

It has to stop! Some church leaders compound the abuse suffered by survivors of domestic violence when they wrongly counsel these people to stay in their abusive marriages – telling them to go back and forgive; try to prevent the violence.

Forgiveness should never mean accepting the continuation of violence. And nor is it anyone’s duty to manage how another adult expresses their anger. Everybody feels anger: but to express that anger through violence is a choice. So domestic violence is emphatically not the responsibility of its survivor; it is the choice, the action and the responsibility of its perpetrator. No ifs or buts!

Some church leaders will give wrong advice to stay in an abusive marriage because they read, in a simplistic, literal ways, four or five passages from the New Testament. ^{Eph 5:22-23, 1 Tim 2:11-12, 1 Pet 2:18-3:7, 1 Cor 14:34-35, Matt 19:3-12} On the basis of these first-century Mediterranean cultural teachings, some church leaders teach that even where there’s domestic violence, wives should submit to their husbands; forgive, obey. This is often lethal advice. Recent Australian statistics show that domestic violence is worse in some church contexts than in the wider community. If this bad advice has been given to you or anyone you know, please hear my apology on behalf of a very fallible Church. Jesus would never have done this to you.

The patterns of domestic violence tell us that it is not a one-off matter of the perpetrator losing it or snapping – doing something out of character. No, it is a pattern of controlling, belittling, abusive behaviour which is the choice of the perpetrator; a reflection of the perpetrator’s true character.

Domestic Violence is an evil thing and it has no place in any family or any church – ever! And it should stop being exported by influencers, tourists, cultural colonisers and indeed churches.

The Cook Island women who have given us today’s beautiful service remind us that God knows us, that God is with us, and that God made us wonderful. Today, we affirm that God has made the Cook Islands and the People of the Cook Islands wonderful: that they bear the image of God. And we affirm that we will pray against – and work with them against – forces that would mar that beautiful image.

So to end, let’s return to the Psalm. The Psalmist knows violence and abuse, but as its final word, this Psalm tells us that loving care is the birthright of all people from the strongest to the most vulnerable. God has made the islands and the islanders beautiful and wonderful.

So let’s hear with them the Psalmist’s declaration of God’s care.

Ps 139.9   Lord, if I spread out my wings towards the morning: or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me: and your right hand shall hold me.

God knows us, God is with us, and God made us wonderful. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Transfiguration – last Sunday after Epiphany – Ex 34 29-35, Ps 99, 2 Cor 3 12-42, Lk 9 28-36

Readers of Harry Potter books will know that transfiguration means change. At one point, the students had to change a teacup into a tortoise. But they were told marks would be deducted if the tortoise’s shell still had a willow pattern on it. And what if a person is transfigured? Many stories explore this idea, like R.L. Stevenson’s story of the good Dr Jekyll and the evil Mr Hyde. He raises the question of how these opposite aspects of a person’s nature might achieve integrity in ways that are true to themselves and safe for the community they live in.

Today, integrity and honesty seem completely up for grabs among world leaders. So the story of our leader, Jesus and his transfiguration is important to ponder. St Luke presents the story of the transfiguration in a rich and challenging way? What’s Luke trying to get across to us? And as followers and imitators of Christ, what are we to do about it? Who is the real Jesus that we seek to follow and imitate?

This is a very densely packed part of Luke’s portrait of Jesus. Just a few paragraphs after today’s account of the Transfiguration, we come to the pivotal turning point in this Gospel. Jesus sets his course towards Jerusalem; towards inevitable betrayal, suffering, rejection, death and resurrection. And over the coming months of Lent, we hear the call to turn with Jesus and walk this same journey.

Today’s gathering here is our last celebration of the Epiphany light which reveals Christ as ‘the hope of all who thirst for righteousness and peace’. But in just three days, on Ash Wednesday, the ashes of our hope will be marked on our foreheads.

Luke’s account of Christ’s transfiguration comes just seven verses after Peter’s famous declaration that Jesus is the Messiah of God – the anointed one, promised down through the centuries. So if they already know his true identity, what’s the need for today’s special revelation of Jesus’ divine nature to Peter, John and James?

The answer is in those seven intervening verses. There, we hear Jesus spell out the true cost of discipleship to him. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow him. If you want to save your life, you lose it. What does it profit you to gain the whole world but lose your very selves? Those who are ashamed to own Jesus and his teachings must know that he’ll be ashamed of them when he comes again in glory.

So Peter’s declaration of Jesus’ true identity – as true as it may have been – in the end, he’s not there yet. His faith is still not enough to survive the rigours of even a routine life, far less one where you have to carry your own cross each day. We’ll be reminded of that in Holy Week.

And of course, we need to remember that Luke was writing for people who knew all about being persecuted.

On top of all these contexts, the account of the transfiguration itself is loaded with connections too. It’s literally at a high point, being on a mountain – like Moses was when he received the Law on Mt Sinai. And it’s also a glimpse into a reality that is usually only seen by faith and not by sight – Jesus physically revealed as he truly is, the beloved Son of God, the Chosen One, the One to whom the Law and the Prophets point. So there with him are Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah, the prophets. And as our other readings have reminded us, Jesus’ own transfigured appearance recalls Moses’ shining face after each time he appeared before the Lord.

So today we see Jesus, transfigured, radiant, glorious, and talking with Moses and Elijah, both also appearing in glory. He’s talking with these ancient ones about his departure – his exodus. And now we know that his departure is the way of the Cross. But Peter, James and John don’t know it yet. So we see Peter’s bumbling reaction – trying to freeze the moment in boxes – a bit like us trying to freeze important moments with our phone cameras. But thankfully the cloud comes – in the Exodus story, a sign of God’s presence in the daytime. The cloud comes, and from it, God’s voice declares, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’

The voice tells them – and tells us – to perceive the significance of Jesus – not just when he looks white and shiny, but just as much when he’s dusty and disheveled. And in perceiving the significance of Jesus, we are to give him our attention, to listen to him. Listen to him. We are the ones called to be transfigured. When we give our full attention to Jesus, we are transfigured. As we heard Paul put it in 2 Cor 3:18, all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

That’s what it has to do with us. We are to be transfigured – to mirror God’s love and joy and peace and beauty. What Jesus showed his disciples was something he intended would happen to them too – to us too. We need it and the world needs it too. It’s how we’ll find out who we really are and become a community formed for what we’re truly called to do and to be. But change is anything but comfortable.

We’re called to risk it today: to prepare for this journey of transfiguration. In all the messiness of life, of discipleship, when we listen deeply to Jesus we will see ourselves and our community being shaped by God’s grace to become what God knows we can be, like it or not. Thanks be to God!  Amen