Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 4b – Good Shepherd Sunday – John 10 11-18

Kenneth Bailey’s book The Good Shepherd studies the image of God as our shepherd through the Old and New Testaments. When he gets to today’s Gospel, he reminds us that it’s a parable. He says Jesus told parables because they’re a form of teaching you can give people in a context of powerlessness and oppression. ^p.233 Teaching in parables is a way of protecting the people who hear the teaching, because the authorities can’t prove that what you’re saying is subversive; that you are in solidarity with the people they’re persecuting.

We can tell Jesus’ teaching method here was necessary from the context of his Good Shepherd parable. In the previous chapter, we read that Jesus had given the gift of sight to a man who’d been born blind. But because the religious authorities were out to get Jesus, and the man was completely open about who had given him his sight, the religious leaders drove him out of synagogue-fellowship; a shocking punishment.

By placing today’s parable straight after this story, John the Evangelist is giving us a pretty strong hint who the hired hands and the wolf might be. Jesus’ parable was a picture of the bad shepherds; the type of self-serving religious leaders that the prophets before him had exposed so eloquently. ^{Jrm 23.2, Ezek 34.1-10, Zech 10.2-3} John’s gospel is effectively denouncing as ‘hired hands’ the Pharisees and other members of Jerusalem’s religious establishment who challenge Jesus’ healing work. And quite possibly the Roman governor is the wolf. John is the evangelist who tells us that Rome alone had the legal power to pass a death sentence. ^18.31

And Jesus is talking about himself in this parable too. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. Kenneth Bailey says this is the closest John’s Gospel gets to Jesus telling his disciples of his coming passion and death. And it says a lot more than that too. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. Jesus is saying that we have a relationship with him as intimate as the relationship he has with the Father. We see this in the commitment of the good shepherd to the sheep. And this relationship is possible because of the cross. ^p.231 I am the good shepherd, says Jesus. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

But what’s the point? What’s the use of a dead shepherd? Aren’t the sheep more vulnerable than ever if the shepherd dies?

It’s definitely not pointless. We experience suffering as a part of being mortal – it’s a part of who we are. We don’t like suffering, but without it, we aren’t real people. Suffering is the great leveler – it comes without fear or favour. Whether someone hits me on the head or I forget to drink enough on a hot summer’s day, the end result is the same; I go to bed with a headache, like anyone would.

If God sent Jesus as a bodyguard who took away my attacker’s club, it may save me from a headache. But that doesn’t change anything really. The world stays the same and God is still remote. The bodyguard, Jesus, is immune, and while I’m spared, many other people aren’t. A god of that Jesus would be choosey. That god would have favourites. That god isn’t the real one.

So, no big Jesus the bouncer. Instead, God came to us in Jesus as someone who was just as vulnerable to a beating as we are; someone who probably also got dehydration headaches on those long sessions when he was out caring for the crowds. The real Jesus is at one with us in our vulnerability; and I’m so grateful that he is. Because then, even the tiniest child has a God who knows what it feels like to be them in their hard times; helpless and blameless when someone or something hurts them. As the shepherd who’s willing to lay down his life for us, Jesus is saying he has compassion for us. He’s in our situation, feeling what we’re feeling. He won’t let us face our pain alone.

Our pain is not a weakness; it’s an integral part of who we mortals are. When Jesus says he’s the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, he’s telling us that in our pain, in our fear, in our danger, in our brokenness and our indignity, he is with us. He is an integral part of who we are too.

So he’s not asking us to break bits off ourselves and throw them away. He’s taking us as we are, and asking to relate to us as we are to show us that we can love like he loves. It’s in receiving that love, from Jesus, from ourselves, and from each other that we move towards believing that we are whole and wholly loveable. That we can change and grow because we are together with the one who knows and loves us most deeply – the one who can transform our wounds and fears into wellsprings of compassion and love just like his.

Jesus can help us discover that it’s in our vulnerability to pain and mortality that we discover compassion, and in our compassion that we discover ourselves as made in the image of the lovely God who is the real one – that we can be agents of God’s healing too. Praise be to our God who sent us Jesus the Good Shepherd! Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 3b – Luke 24 36b-48, Acts 3 12-20

The Emmaus travellers have just got back to Jerusalem and the various disciples are exchanging their stories. They even say Peter has seen Jesus alive! Everyone’s saying the Lord has risen indeed! And then Jesus himself stands among them and says, Peace be with you. But now when he appears among them, they take him for a ghost!

Is this what days of terrible grief make you do; avoid easy hope; avoid risking further pain? Jesus shows them he is physically resurrected. Just like he did at Emmaus where he broke bread, food is involved here too. He eats with them.

At the Easter day service, I mentioned a strange thing we keep being told about the risen Jesus. On the one hand, his closest friends don’t recognise him, but on the other, they twig to who he must be when he eats with them – or says their name. He’s the same person, yet somehow very different.

In John’s gospel, we’re told that the risen Jesus somehow gets past locked doors. And in John, as in Luke, he eats with his friends. In both Gospels, he’s not recognised, then he is. What are they telling us? Is he spirit or is he body? Are the gospel-writers describing some different order of being here? It looks like it.

Whether we take the resurrection story of Jesus literally or metaphorically, the story is that in Jesus, the God who is spirit, took on a physical body, lived a physical life, died a physical death, and in whatever form, rose again as a physical being. That’s a profound affirmation of physicality – reaffirmation really, because the biblical story also tells of God as creator of a physical universe.

This says that an idea we’ve absorbed from our culture that spirit is pure and godly, whereas physical is somehow inferior – this is not what the scriptures are telling us. Yet, I think it’s a belief that has long distorted the way Christians have thought about ourselves, and the way we’ve thought about creation too.

Sometimes the Church seems to let people believe that our physical life and physical environment are not the really important parts of our existence. Have you ever seen funeral notices with the epitaph Called Home?

What’s that meant to say about what this life here has meant? And what does it say about our planet home – this creation? Temporary; some sort of waiting room?

I think this has a lot to do with the fact that the Christian world is deeply responsible for the mind-set which has permitted the destruction of the natural world. In fact committed Christians are often the loudest voices lobbying for its continued exploitation because they think the Bible says we’ll get a new one.

The resurrection narrative tells us again that God always was, and still is, vitally connected with the physical creation; committed to our nurture and restoration, and to the nurture and restoration of the whole creation. That has serious implications for the way we treat each other and our earth. It’s something we need to explore together. It reminds me of that famous charge from St Teresa of Avila …

Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours,  ours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, ours are the feet by which Christ is to go about doing good    and ours are the hands by which Christ is to bless others now.

I want to finish by making a few observations about the change in Peter from the Gospel story to the way he behaves later on – the way we see him in today’s reading from Acts. Before Easter, we saw what he was like; blustering and over-confident, then completely overcome with terror – committed to self-preservation at any cost. But in the gospel today, we saw him set out alone to check the women’s story. The change is under way.

So in Acts, we meet him with John brazenly going to preach in the Temple – apparently on a regular basis. Doing that is what got Jesus killed, and now Peter’s doing it. What an astounding change. Something’s changed him utterly. What does that mean for you and me? What would it take for you or me to risk so much?

We’re told in painful detail how reluctant Jesus’ disciples were to accept the truth of his resurrection. And yet, a short time later, the book of Acts shows them utterly transformed. Their new unparalleled hope is the Easter message that has rung out down the ages. And now ours are the mouths that have this message to proclaim in a world that is daily in more desperate need of hope. May we be so bold and do so! Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2  – John 20:19-23

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

A friend of mine had been badly mistreated – betrayed really – betrayed by a person who should have been trustworthy and caring – one who claims a Christian faith, but who’d acted like a vicious bully. My friend didn’t want to retaliate, but 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 to forgive. If means that on one side of you, you have an unrepentant bully, and on the other, a God who apparently, without caring if you’re safe or not, demands that you simply forgive the bully. Did Jesus give us forgiveness to make us vulnerable to abuse? I can’t claim to have a clear statement about this, but today’s gospel helps us to explore this question.

Jesus’ friends had closed themselves away in a safe place together. They feared for their safety – the same people who persecuted their master might well start on them now. They didn’t feel it was safe for them to be out in the community – they were cut off. So like the friend I was talking about, security for them lay in a closed door – a barrier between them and dangerous enemies.

Into this situation, the risen Jesus came and stood among them. He gave them a blessing of peace, and then showed them the wounds of his crucifixion. And we’re told that at this, the disciples rejoiced.

Some commentators have read this to mean that the disciples felt sudden relief that Jesus wasn’t angry with them – angry with them for having denied him or deserted him. But the gospel doesn’t tell us that. It says that they were frightened of Jesus’ persecutors; not of him. They rejoiced at seeing him again – disarming the power of their fear. It happens when Jesus comes, gives them his blessing of peace, and shows them the marks of his suffering and death.

With those marks, Jesus showed them that he knew what their fear and grief felt like – and because of the gospel, we know that he understands our fears and griefs too. In this, I find forgiveness; but what does this forgiveness consist in? Is this an inflexible demand that people remember their duty, or is this a setting free?

And is this greeting of peace offered to oppressors – to bullies – or to their frightened victims? When I read the Hebrew Scriptures, I hear the prophets telling oppressors that God’s heart is for the poor and downtrodden. In today’s gospel, I see that heart revealed most perfectly.

Forgiveness does not turn a blind eye to wrongs. But it sets us free from their power. So it calls us back from isolation into community; it meets our woundedness not with power, but with wounds of its own; it meets our fear with compassion, our turmoil with peace. What a gift; what a lovely gift.

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. The second greeting of peace at this point – directly connected with the sending saying – tells me that the peace Jesus has brought them from God is the peace that they, and now we, are meant to hand on.

Jesus then gives them that peace tangibly by breathing on them – giving them the Holy Spirit. This passage is often called John’s Pentecost. But what else does it make you 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. Is this the new life which raised Jesus from the dead now being breathed into those disciples who had believed themselves in danger of their lives? And again, if what you receive is what you must pass on, is this our mission too?

Obviously it is. It’s into this context of life-giving – or life-restoring – breath that the teaching about forgiveness comes. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. I believe this might well cause us to think of forgiveness more as freeing people from bondage than binding them in obligations – more as a gift to the poor and oppressed than a free reign for bullies – more focused on release from unnatural debt than turning debt into guilt.

But I think I’ll leave it there with questions left hanging, because we should talk about this together at some length; not just take things as read. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2024: John 20.1-18

Early – so early that it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. And in the early-morning gloom, Mary sees that the massive, flat-based wheel of stone has been heaved back from the entrance. She can only imagine one reason; the violation of his precious body has continued. It must have been grave robbers. Suddenly, there’s something she can do for Jesus again; get the others and recover his body.

She brings them and what they find is strange. The linen wrappings are lying on the body-bench in the tomb, and the cloth that covered Jesus’s head is in another place. Would grave robbers leave these cloths behind? One of the disciples sees all this and believes, but what he believes, we aren’t told. Then the two men go home.

Magdalene stays. Again, she’s alone in her grief, weeping outside the tomb. Then stooping to look inside again, she sees two angels sitting one at either end of Jesus’s body bench. They ask her, Woman why are you weeping? She tells them her new grief, but then turns to find him standing there. But she doesn’t recognise him. He asks her the same question the angels did, Woman why are you weeping?

She assumes he’s the grave-yard caretaker – the only person you might find there so early – and she asks him if he’s removed Jesus’ body. Why doesn’t she know it’s him? … There are other times in the gospels after Jesus has been raised where his other close friends don’t recognise him. It’s something about Jesus himself; at once different, yet very much himself. We’ll see this over the coming weeks.

Magdalene is the first to confront this bewildering mystery. One moment, she’s consumed with grief; the next, Jesus calls her by her name. Suddenly he’s got his hands full managing her joy. Stop holding on to me – trying to prise her loose.

The Gospels are written by eye-witnesses who couldn’t believe, but then they did. They tell us that Jesus rose from the dead physically. Some people have no trouble believing this; that Jesus rose and you could physically touch him; sit down and eat with him. Such faith exists; it’s not escapism or empty-headed naivety. It’s a gift. Some can’t risk believing it, though; knowing what death is; knowing the empty pain after someone precious is ripped from our life. How could we risk hoping for anything again when we fought to hope but in vain? The Easter Gospel tells us that because of Jesus, we can risk such hope.

I find it strange that the perspective that isn’t often represented in the Gospel stories of the resurrection is this simple, immediate belief that Jesus had risen as he said he would. No-one in today’s Gospel twigs to it at first – unless the disciple whom Jesus loved did – the one who reached the tomb first and saw and ‘believed’. But we’re not told what he believed.

So he and Peter have gone home, and Magdalene’s still at the tomb, alone again. But everything changes. Mary – My teacher – Stop holding on to me.

It began very early – so early that it was still dark. But for Mary Magdalene, the shadows parted at this moment. The agony was over! He tells her to stop holding on to him and to go and tell the others he was going to ascend to his Father and our Father, his God and ours. She’s the first apostle, and her message is astonishing Tell them I’m taking mortal life into the fullness of risen life with my God and your God; I’m connecting all of you directly and for ever with the source of your being!

It’s a message for us. My God and your God … means we’re directly connected with Jesus. And maybe shockingly that means we’re not going to be saved from dying – he wasn’t. But it does mean we can be set free from the hopelessness that imagines everything stops at death. It means we and our loved ones are freed like him to rise; to be, even now, God’s agents of new life and growth and nourishment for the nations; for the whole Earth that he came to live and die for.

Over the centuries, we whom Jesus has called by name have found this hope in ourselves – in our own callings – come to be convinced of it; so convinced we’ve faced their own deaths in his name; not as fanatics who take our own lives and the lives of others for reasons of their own, but as women and children and men so free that we can give our own lives in the service of others so they might live in his hope, his joy, his love.

Easter is the time we celebrate this gift to the world; the resurrected, ascended life that God always holds out to the Earth community. To find it, we have to be ready, like Jesus was, to let go of it. But that’s alright; you can see what became of death in his hands. That’s what he intends for us; for us, his loved ones and for ours; for the whole world. …  Easter means this: God loves us to life. And nothing, not even death, can stand in the way!   Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Maundy Thursday 2024 – John 13 1–17, 31b–35

The Last Supper that we read about in John’s Gospel happens on a different day from the Last Supper stories in the other Gospels. ^{(Mt 26.17ff, Mk 14 12ff and Lk 22.7ff)} For them, it’s the Passover meal. But in John, the Passover was not going to be eaten until the following evening – after Jesus’ crucifixion. ^{(cf Jn 19.31f)}

So on Maundy Thursday, the choice of John’s Gospel suspends the symbolism of Jesus as the sacrificial lamb which is so present in the other Gospels, and instead, we’re asked to focus on some of his final teachings.

Those teachings are given in the best possible way – first by example, and only then with words.

First, Jesus washes his friends’ feet – the steady friends and the flaky ones. He does this to show that genuine leadership in the community of Jesus’ followers is expressed not through domination but through humble service.

And while they, and we, are still in shock at what’s happened, then he says that that humble service is something we are not to express out of a sense of duty. It’s only real when it springs from genuine love; like his love for us.

We still find footwashing confronting and awkward. As it’s happening, maybe we’re a bit too bewildered about what it means to think about this as our love for each other – never mind for strangers.

Maybe we’re just meant to go ahead and do humble service, and over the years, to discover in ourselves that it’s the way we love. Maybe it does that for us.

I must say I puzzle about how we teach this to our children and to people exploring Christian faith. I can see no other way than involving them in it directly. I’m sure some young people might find it pretty gross. You have to be careful who you pair them up with. And people from some other cultures have very strong views about feet and heads.

We’ve just seen Jesus do what the servant of a middle-eastern household was expected to do for guests. What’s an equivalent today? Take a job below your station? Do community service? Volunteer for something you find embarrassing? Is this how we are to discover the love of Christ within us?

I don’t think we’re meant to overthink this. Self-forgetting for the sake of others seems to be a good starting point. So maybe this is where I should stop talking as we prepare to answer Jesus’ call, when he said to us – 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.        Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 5 B – Jrm 31 31-34, Ps 119 9-16, Heb5 5-14, John 12 20-33

Today’s gospel reading takes us a little bit out of sequence. Just before today’s scene there was Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we’ll mark next Sunday. That scene ended with some exasperated Pharisees grumbling to each other: ¹⁹ …“You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!”

They didn’t know how truly they spoke, says John. In the very next verse – the one we began with today – we’re told that ‘…among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.²¹ They came to Philip … and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ These Greek Jews don’t come directly to Jesus, they go to Philip. And Philip doesn’t go straight to Jesus either. He goes to Andrew.

Is this a chain of access through social secretaries; the birth of Church bureaucracy? No, there’s more to it than that. Philip goes to Andrew with the foreigners’ request to see Jesus. What’s so special about Andrew? In John’s gospel, Andrew’s the first-named disciple of Jesus. ^{John 1.40} He’s one of those two disciples of John the Baptist who were first to follow Jesus. He was also the first disciple to recognise Jesus’ true identity. In Jn 1.41, we see him find his brother, Simon Peter, and tell him, “We have found the Messiah.” Going back to Andrew, the gospel writer has taken us back to the beginning; to where Jesus was first recognised for who he was. Why?

John the evangelist is saying that with the request of foreigners to see Jesus, we’re at a new beginning in our understanding of who Jesus is; we’re at a turning point in the Gospel. By doing this, John helps us see what Jesus’ enigmatic answer might mean. ²³ … “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Earlier, Jesus puzzled us by telling his mother – my hour has not yet come. ^{2.4 –at the wedding at Cana} But today, he says his hour has come. And it has something to do with foreigners seeking him. Now Jesus’ mission broadens as he starts to become available to the wider world. But just how he’s going to be glorified is going to challenge us all. ²⁴ Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Jesus is telling his friends that it’s soon time for him to die. It must have bewildered them. Buoyed by the great triumph of the Palm Sunday procession, the disciples would have been filled with hopeful expectation. No-one would stand in their teacher’s way now! But suddenly they’re confronted by some of Jesus’ most solemn pronouncements. And they’re not just pronouncements about Jesus.

There’s the grain of wheat saying, but what Jesus says next calls his followers to join in his path to passion and death too. ²⁵ Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Following Jesus means turning from our priorities to his; choosing the way of Jesus over the way of many instinctive choices we might make. We are disciples, students, followers of Jesus. In fact, together, we are him. He will die; he will give up everything – to bring life to the lost. And we who follow him need to be prepared for the same.

The call to be a disciple of Jesus is utterly uncompromising; but we can miss seeing that. We look back at all this through the great triumph of Easter. Easter filters our vision; it makes the passion and death of Jesus somehow less terrible for us; less demanding of us. But we can’t let that happen. We can’t pretend that any more than we can pretend that the suffering and evil of our time makes no call on us.

Greeks to Philip to Andrew to Jesus, John took us back to the beginning to alert us to a new beginning. That’s what we do each year as a Church at Holy Week and Easter. We go back to our beginning; to our sharing in the Cross of Christ at our baptism, where the power of evil to own us was broken, and we committed ourselves to let Christ’s goodness to work new life through us. That’s our new beginning, and we must always return to it. We heard Jeremiah describe it as a new covenant.

Let’s consider all this in words taken from the Church of South India’s covenant service. Christ has many services to be done: some are easy, others are difficult; some bring honour, others bring reproach; some suit our natural inclinations and material interests; others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves; in others we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. Yet the power to do all these things is given us in Christ, who strengthens us. Therefore let us make this covenant with God our own, trusting in the eternal promises and relying on divine grace. Let us pray: Lord God, in baptism, you brought us into union with Christ who fulfils your gracious covenant; and in bread and wine we receive the fruit of his obedience. So with joy we take upon ourselves the yoke of obedience, and commit ourselves to seek and do your perfect will. … I am no longer my own, but yours …

I remind myself that this is the prayer of people who, when they pray the Lord’s Prayer, literally ask only their bread for this day. Are we brave enough to make such a prayer our own?   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4 / Mothering Sunday – Num 21 4-9, Jn 3 14-21

I remember Victor Borge talking in one of his skits about his grandfather who invented a cure for which there was no disease. Back to front ideas like that are puzzling and arresting. They certainly grab people’s attention.

There’s something back to front in this morning’s readings that seems to have a similar effect. God tells Moses to fashion a bronze image of a serpent, a creature scripture names as cursed. ^{Gen 3.15} We heard Moses was told to raise a bronze serpent on a pole so people who’d been bitten by snakes could look at it and live. It worked, but on the face of it, it seemed like a reverse hair-of-the-dog remedy.

Jesus took up this image and compounded its strangeness one night when he was visited by a Pharisee called Nicodemus. Nicodemus was one of the most senior Jewish religious figures at that time. He visited Jesus at night presumably so that no-one would notice. Jesus was someone the religious authorities were doing all they could to sideline and silence. To be caught visiting Jesus was not good public relations for a Pharisee. Nicodemus was taking quite a risk. In Jesus’ position, I think I’d have been relieved that at least one of the authorities might take me seriously and try to deepen the friendship. But not Jesus.

After baffling Nicodemus with his teaching about being born again, Jesus went on to confront him with an image of himself as being just like the cursed serpent of Moses up on the pole. He’s talking about his crucifixion, and the fact that his being raised on the cross is a means of healing for anyone who can truly see. Nicodemus certainly can’t truly see at the moment, but he will understand later. We know this because Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and the women will be the only followers of Jesus brave enough to claim Jesus’ body from the cross and lay him to rest.

Today, Nicodemus shows us how embracing a change that you fear might spell your end is a decision that leads to new life, new purpose and new possibility. International women’s day on Friday celebrated many women who’ve demonstrated that to us; few more powerfully than Lowitja O’Donoghue, whose life was celebrated with a state funeral on that day. Today, we see Nicodemus risk his standing in his own community for the sake of an instinct that this dangerous Jesus might just be the one he should follow. … And of course, God took the risk too, loving us this way; he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. Risk-taking is our calling and that calling comes from our risk-taking Lord. I pray that we open ourselves bravely to this adventure. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 3b

Before the readings

Our Bible readings today sound like they’re all about rules and regulations. That makes me start thinking about the trouble I get into when I break rules.

But then I think how big sisters and brothers protect little kids when a bully tries to break the rules. So I remember that rules are not to stop us having fun; God gave rules to protect little people – poor people, hungry people, sick people, working people, old people, refugees – little people. God gave us rules to remind us to help these little ones; to make sure they know God loves them.

So when we start with the big rules today – the Ten Commandments – maybe we can hear them saying God loves everyone – especially people who need help; people who aren’t safe. There are 603 other rules in the Hebrew Bible that started from those ten, and lots of them are about looking after little people. God loves little ones very much. That’s really something to think about.

Some people already have. That’s why today Psalmist wrote a love-song to the Law. That’s why Jesus got so wild when he saw people using the Law wrongly and making the Temple more of a business than a place for people to come and be with God. We’ll hear that story last. But now let’s listen to the readings.

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

Sermon

The collect prayer of the day: Lord our God, by your Holy Spirit, write your commandments upon our hearts, and grant us the wisdom and power of the cross, so that, cleansed from greed and selfishness, we may become a living temple of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 This is a beautiful, rich collect prayer; a string of wisdom’s pearls which gathers the themes of today’s readings and also threads through other Biblical themes in a remarkable way. It opens with the invocation Lord our God. It’s a simple but amazing statement that our life with God is one of mutual belonging and trust; and this gives meaning to everything else.

By your Holy Spirit, write your commandments upon our hearts. Linking Holy Spirit and our hearts recalls Rom 8^26-27 where we learn how the Spirit lives within us, praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words, and that God, who knows the heart’s secrets, understands these prayers. ^{(J B Phillips tr.)} It’s a beautiful picture of how our mutual belonging with God finds expression – it’s an utter gift of God.

Here we ask the Holy Spirit to inscribe God’s commandments on our hearts; very different from how God’s commandments were first given. As we just read, they were first given through Moses to the people of Israel – a written covenant of mutual care. In Ex 31¹⁸ we’re told they were written by the finger of God on tablets of stone and given to Moses.

But in our collect prayer this morning, we prayed that God the Holy Spirit might inscribe them not on tablets of stone, but directly onto our hearts. This recalls the new covenant in Jer 31, where the Law of God would be inscribed onto the very hearts of the people of Israel.

Can the finger of God touch our hearts? We’ve just prayed in confidence that this should happen. What will this do for us? Will it grant us the wisdom and power of the cross? The collect prayer links the touch of God’s finger on our hearts with blessings of wisdom and power. Here, it echoes the Psalmist’s love-song to God’s Law. Psalm 19 celebrates the way God’s commandments revive our souls, how they give us wisdom and joy, clear our vision, and purify us, leaving us with the sweetest taste in our mouths – so much more than much fine gold can do for us.

Is that an odd move for you? The Psalmist contrasts the gift of the Law with another standard measure of value, fine gold, which comes off a poor second. Law or gold – relationships or wealth – represent the two sets of values competing for us. Do we begin to hear the distant chink of coins falling from the money-changers’ tables here?

Paul gives us a contrast too; wisdom or power. He contrasts the wisdom of the Cross and the other wisdoms it confronts: the empirical proofs of signs, and the idolising of rhetorical prowess and learning. Here, he speaks directly into our time. Our time worships wealth and influence – and those who wield them gag and belittle any challenge to their power. But Paul knows that they don’t speak with anything like the power of God’s love; the love we encounter uniquely in the Cross of Christ.

So our collect continues – Grant us the wisdom and power of the cross, so that, cleansed from greed and selfishness, WE may become A LIVING TEMPLE of your love. Cleansed. The collect prayer now links us to the Gospel, where Jesus cleanses the Temple of commerce. Here is the same Law and wealth contrast that we heard in the Psalm. Now we hear the love of God expressed in the crash of falling tables, the lowing, bleating and clattering hooves of startled beasts, and the anguished outcries of Jesus, the sellers of the birds and animals and the outraged money changers.

Cleansing greed and selfishness is a roaring battle which Jesus fights for us and with us. It’s an inner battle. And today, we see a dramatic picture of it in his cleansing of the Temple.

We know this, because when the officials ask him what sign he can show them to justify his outrageous behaviour, he tries to teach them that the cleansing is the sign. It is a sign of the inner cleansing we all need, so we might become a living temple of God’s love – a worthy temple of the Holy Spirit who we’ve asked to inscribe God’s Law on our hearts. And have you noticed that the collect only mentions one temple? All of us together are the living temple – not each of us individually. We are his body. And in Jesus’ name, in this prayer, we ask God to do this in us.

So let’s remember what we’ve seen Jesus do in the Temple today and ask that he might do it in and for us in this Lenten time of cleansing. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 2 B – Mark 8.31-38

8.³¹ … the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus is saying that whatever he was sent to do, it necessarily involves him going through terrible suffering. And he doesn’t just say it once. This is the first of three passion predictions Jesus makes in Mark’s Gospel. ^{(9.31 & 10.33)} The other two times, his closest friends respond selfishly – arguing about which one of them is the greatest ^9.34 and asking to sit at his left and right hands in his glory? ^10.37 So we can read Peter’s response today as trying to defend some personal ambition of his own.

Where did these ambitions spring from? The answer I grew up with was that people who witnessed Jesus’ ministry up close hoped he might be persuaded to take on a more political role and lead a Jewish uprising against the Romans. And as chosen, close associates of the next head honcho, these disciples nursed ambitions about their own importance come the revolution. But Jesus talks about having to suffer, be rejected, die and rise again. So much for their dream of a military revolution.

To be fair, Peter and the others were speaking for everyone who wanted an end to foreign occupation. They echoed the prophets who’d condemned the arrogance and selfishness of empires and bad rulers; who called for a more just rule, where widow and orphan would receive care. So is Jesus’s message somehow different from these messages of the prophets’? Maybe. We understand the disciples. We see wrongs in our world today that we wish God might solve with a show of force.

We often hear people – including professed Christians – calling for strong-arm solutions to social and political ills. Is that still the delusional voice of Peter? Because Jesus rebukes Peter. He reminds Peter and the others that God’s priorities aren’t there to serve ours. It’ll take a lot for Jesus to get Peter and the other disciples to see and ‘think the things of God’. Jesus’s message has to cut through.

³⁴ [Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, ^{(So Mark’s telling us that this is for us too)} [Jesus] said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.…”

The cross is still some way off, but Mark puts this reference to it here. He does this so we can see this early in the Gospel that we only understand who Jesus is – who we follow – when we know about the cross. Jesus is calling us to join with him and serve a very different order – to challenge the wrongs we see, yes, but know that speaking truth to power comes at a cost. These people bite. There are people here who know that from costly personal experience. But what does that achieve.

Let’s look at the words of Alexei Navalny on the back of our service booklets. It’s part of what he said in court after returning to Russia from Germany after the poisoning attempt on his life.

“If you want I’ll talk to you about God and salvation. I’ll turn up the volume of heartbreak to the maximum, so to speak. The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually rather sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists and I was once quite a militant atheist myself.

“But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier. I think about things less. There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less

clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying. And so, as I said, it’s easier for me, probably, than for many others, to engage in politics…

“ ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.’

I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less and instruction to activity.  And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back [to Russia], or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing.

“On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction, because at some difficult moment  I did as required by the instructions, and did not betray the commandment.”                    ~ Alexei Navalny, 2021

Navalny found strength in obeying the call of Jesus. He heard Jesus tell us to follow him to a life where we’re free to live; free to risk. He took up his cross and followed Jesus, and the people who worked with him, even though they ridiculed him for his faith, I guess they’ve ended up following Jesus too, albeit indirectly through Navalny.

Jesus is telling us that these are not things we achieve in our own strength or by our own work – or that some strong leader can serve them up to us. This freedom and courage are gifts from God alone. When we truly follow Jesus, the Kingdom breaks into us; the Spirit gives us the courage and the strength to serve justice and peace.

There’s one confusion for us western Christians in hearing clearly what Jesus says. We tend to hear Jesus addressing us as individuals. We’re not like the majority world who hear Jesus addressing us as community. Mark’s gospel makes it explicit here that Jesus spoke to the crowd and the disciples; not just to Peter. ^v.34

That means this is a call to this community – our community – to be one which takes risks to speak truth where it’s not welcome, to name wrongs which want to masquerade as something normal, and to listen always for the Christ who calls us to embody justice, mercy and faith.

And who for? Just to take one example of many, there’s an epidemic of loneliness and depression in our community, particularly among young people now. We are the community which Jesus has called into being, called to creatively address such a wrong. We are called to seek out, nurture and to assist with the healing of such people. We are called to be the community that receives and welcomes such dear ones – a community where all know we are loved by God and called by Jesus; serving him together as a living sanctuary.   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1b – Gen 9 8-17, Mk 1 9-15

Four things happen right after Jesus passes through the waters of baptism; ¹ he sees the heavens torn apart, ² he sees the Spirit descending onto him; ³ he hears God the Father call him ‘my Son, the Beloved’ and declare he’s ‘well pleased’ with him. So surely he must be ready for his public ministry now; powerful, blessed and deeply connected with God. But no, there’s something else. Suddenly, immediately, ⁴ the Spirit throws him out into the wilderness for forty days where he’s tempted by the enemy – the accuser – and he’s with the wild beasts, and the angels minister to him.

We need to notice two things here. ¹ The ministry of Jesus is not to come out of his divine power, but out of his human vulnerability. And ² humans are not the whole of God’s plan: part of it, yes; but not all. Once he’s baptised, Jesus goes first to be with creatures other than us: wild beasts; angels. We are not the whole story

Jesus comes out of the water and he’s propelled into the wilderness for forty days; being with beasts. The beasts connect him with the flood story we just heard, and the wilderness connects him with the central story of God’s ancient people; the Exodus. God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt bringing them to safety through the waters of the Red Sea. They got across safely, but found themselves in the wilderness; in their case for forty years.

And at the end of the Exodus story, Joshua (same name as Jesus) led God’s people across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, and suddenly they had to fight battle after battle if they were to keep hold of the land at all. For God’s people, coming up from the water is not a conclusion, but a new beginning – not a statement that from now on, we are self-sufficient, but that here, we rely on God.

It’s not always an easy beginning. We land in a new adventure that God’s been planning for us. We make our landfall only to feel like we’re starting from scratch. Kindy – school – work – marriage – parenthood … Repeatedly, we’re reminded of how helpless we are – utterly reliant; like newborns. Jesus knows this feeling. And that’s good news. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s experience of the wilderness is one of nurture and care; angels minister to him. Temptation is not the centre of Mark’s version; it’s being in a real world and receiving care when you need it. Jesus is one of us; not aloof – not all-powerful; not invulnerable; quite the opposite.

We learn from him that our pilgrimage is a journey into learning to rely on God; learning to discover God’s care for us – and for the beasts and angels – to learn it from experience; not by right.

We learn from today’s Gospel that like Jesus’ baptism, ours was always going to be a signal of testing to come, but that none of us approaches that time of testing alone. Jesus had beasts for companions and angels to meet his needs. Who do we have? Who’s committed to sharing our years of pilgrimage with us; who are our companions? Who are God’s ministering angels in our wilderness times? Animals?

I’m not being flippant. Those wild beasts out in that wilderness; God loves them just as we know God loves us. What we learned from the flood story this morning, and what we can learn from elsewhere in the book of Genesis ^{(1, 8 etc)}, in the Psalms ^{(50, 105, 128)}, and in the prophets Isaiah ⁽¹¹⁾ and Jonah ^(4.11), is that God has a special care for the wild beasts. Scripture says the wild beasts Jesus was spending time with were creatures that God had declared to be good, creatures that God also made a covenant with, creatures who, as the Psalms tell us, praise God by their very existence.

I believe that now, as we grow increasingly aware of our impact on the other families of Earth, a part of every Christian’s pilgrimage must include owning our responsibility for what happens to God’s other creatures. We can be ministering angels of God to those wild creatures, just as we’ve always been protectors of any human beings who, for whatever reason, can’t speak in their own defence.

We can raise our children and grandchildren to know how to choose to be ministering angels of God to silenced people and wild creatures. But we have to make sure those people and creatures survive now, so our children might have them to care for.

And we have to make sure that children can grow up in a way that gives them space and time to experience wilderness – not distracted, but simply in a wilderness – where they can have the opportunity to learn how they rely, at the most basic level, on their God; the God who calls them into existence, the God who loves them, the God who calls them on their pilgrimage with all God’s people as ministers to all God’s beloved.

And finally, should the world change and our own children come to number among those who are silenced by poverty, disaster or tyranny, we have to ensure that these Bible stories are told everywhere – that the Gospel reaches all families of the Earth – that God’s words might go forth. For when they do, they will not return empty. God will call other carers to follow the example of Jesus – to minister not out of their strength, but simply out of who they are.        Amen.