Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 2A .  John 4 1-17, Gen 12 1-4a, Ps 121, Rm 4 1-17

We’ve heard stories of two people today who risk everything on the basis of an impossible challenge. There’s Abram/Abraham who leaves everything, trusting God, and Nicodemus, who visits Jesus in the night. Nicodemus is our subject today.

Like everyone else in Jerusalem, Nicodemus had seen the signs Jesus performed. He may well have been right there when Jesus cleared the Temple of the money changers and the people selling birds and animals for sacrifice. Fascinated by this man, he visits Jesus. But Nicodemus isn’t game to be publicly associated with Jesus. Imagine Jesus cleansing the Temple today. What he did would have been called a terrorist act these days – or the act of some fanatic from a religious fringe group. Nicodemus visits Jesus, but only secretly, at night.

Nicodemus is just like many people here – educated, committed and faithful, and with a respected position in the community. He has a reputation that he’s taken decades to earn. Who here would visit a revolutionary new spiritual teacher like this in broad daylight? Would you meet with a notorious troublemaker at Cibo’s for coffee after church? You might be noticed! What would they say?

So like we would, Nicodemus visits Jesus under cover of darkness. John’s Gospel makes a lot of the symbolism of light and darkness. In the verses after today’s gospel, Jesus says, ‘the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ Was Jesus is challenging Nicodemus: reminding him of the way he’d come to see him; not during the day; only by night?

Maybe he meant Nicodemus chose to come in from the darkness; into the light of Jesus. Whichever is right, Nicodemus got much more than he bargained for.

No sooner had he paid his respects to Jesus than he was utterly confounded by that saying about being born from above / born anew / born again. He took it literally. And who wouldn’t if you didn’t have a lifetime of Christian teaching about baptism. Jesus leads him to another understanding of being Nicodemus – about being a person who is not just born not of his mother, but also born of the Spirit. We don’t get to see if Nicodemus understands this.

Whether he and Jesus meet again, we’re not told. But we meet Nicodemus twice more. The first time, he risks his reputation, challenging his fellow Pharisees when they want to haul Jesus before a kangaroo court ^{(ch 7)}. The next time, he joins Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus’s body. And by doing so abandons his ritual purity ^{(ch 19)} so he won’t be able to participate in the Passover the next day. For a Pharisee to do that would be like one of us on Good Friday deciding not to celebrate Easter.

But by then, Nicodemus had given up as any pretence to secrecy. He’d become so deeply a follower of Jesus that even after the crucifixion – when most other disciples were running away and hiding in fear and doubt, particularly the men – Nicodemus abandoned whatever social standing he had to pay his last respects. The wind – the Spirit – had done just what Jesus said; breathed where she chose. And she chose Nicodemus. Nicodemus was born anew; born again; born from above.

But all that takes us several weeks down the road, doesn’t it. What about now? As we journey down that way? Does Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus in the night have something to say to us? We’re like him in so many ways that I think his story must speak to us.

It’s really tricky for us to have our faith identity and our social identity open to view at the same time. They don’t necessarily match. Where do we get our identity from: our family, our faith community, our nationality, our career, things we have, things we do with friends, our language, where we live, things that we’re passionate about, things we love about people and things we hope people love about us?

It can be quite a mixture, can’t it. And we protect these things; we don’t want them laughed at or called into question. An attack on the things that make us who we are is really threatening.

Sometimes our faith identity and personal identity can contradict each other. Look at how our national identity and the plight of fellow Australians who are Aboriginal are so deeply at odds. Our ABM studies over the years have given us the chance to hear stories from faithful Aboriginal Christians; to read the same scriptures as these sisters and brothers through their eyes. That sort of experience brings us all into the presence of Jesus together – whether we come by night, or if we’re bold enough to come in broad daylight.

But this coming together is the point. Jesus came for us all – for the whole world. Jesus calls all of us. We heard him say it this morning: ¹⁶ ‘God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷ ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

No-one is left out of God’s love; God sent Jesus in order that the world might be saved. All of us.

Was it this insight which made Nicodemus choose to risk his identity – his career, his friendships, his social standing – to rethink his people’s whole reason for being?

This son of Abraham made the same choice as his ancient forbear. Like Abram / Abraham, Nicodemus left everything to follow God, even to unthinkable places –wherever the breath of the Spirit might lead him. God’s purpose was the same: that all families of the Earth – the whole world – might receive God’s blessing.

May we be courageous enough disciples to follow these very clear examples! It’s all about God’s Grace; God’s Love, that everyone needs it, and we are the chosen vessels. What will we do with this treasure that has been entrusted to us? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1 a. Gen 2 15-17 & 3 1-7, Ps 32, Rom 5 12-21, Mt 4 1-11

Today we’ve heard two very familiar stories from the scriptures – a pigeon pair – about people tempted to abandon their loyalty to God. The story from Genesis often gets described as the story of “The Fall” – or the story of “Original Sin”. It’s about the first humans being tempted to ignore God’s warning about forbidden knowledge, and then what happens when they give in to that temptation. So it’s about humanity’s loss of innocence; about our expulsion from paradise – becoming strangers to God, and about the origin of death. We might call it the story of becoming strangers.

A Canadian Theologian, William Danaher wrote that in this Genesis story, human flourishing is compromised. It’s a tragedy. Trust is eroded, loyalty is abandoned – people who were faithful people, faithful friends, suddenly become strangers, not only to God, but to each other and even to their own selves as well. When we act on a choice like this, somehow we stop being the people we knew we were only moments earlier.

It’s a terrible spot to get into. Betrayal always leads to destructive silence; a secret loneliness that alone we have no strength to overcome. As the Psalmist says, whilst I held my tongue; my bones wasted away … your hand was heavy on me day and night. Yet we’ve heard today that there is a way back from it. Paul stressed it again and again today. No matter what lie has been told; no matter what a stranger we’ve become to those we love and who love us, and even to our true selves, the free gift of Jesus’s integrity and grace offers us the way back.

The joy of this experience is beyond normal language to tell, but as ever, the Psalmist knows the words; whoever puts their trust in the Lord, mercy embraces them on every side.

The Gospel story of Jesus’ temptation in the Judean wilderness is the pigeon pair to the story from Genesis – a mirror in which much is reversed. Where there was the lush Garden of Eden, now there’s a harsh, dangerous desert. There, two people with all they needed; now Jesus alone and at the brink of survival. And the temptation to ignore God’s words is more sophisticated; now it’s presented as a temptation to hear God’s words falsely; to imagine they’re only about personal gain. The packaging is more sophisticated, but the basic temptation is the same; forget your loyalty; forget your integrity; forget your honesty and go for self-sufficiency, invulnerability and power and glory.

If we go down this path, can we see how it will lead us away from our own humanity? Everything precious to us is shared with our loved ones; it’s received with grateful joy, or suffered in the embrace of compassion. Outside of relationship, none of it has meaning. Knowing this, it’s clear how gross and destructive each of the temptations in the wilderness actually is. Each demands the abandonment of trust, of loyalty, the abandonment of being in relationship – in short, the abandonment of being truly human. And in the wilderness, Jesus withstands them all. We might call this the story of sticking with your friendships. ^{(v/s becoming strangers)}

But for now the wilderness is the image we need to stick with. The desert is lonely and dangerous. Yet it is an essential place for us.

It’s the place we end up when we’ve succumbed to temptations which all derive from the temptations we’ve heard today – and they all lead to isolation. The emotions out in this wilderness are likely to move from bitter sadness through angry self-justification to overpowering self-pity – then back again. We’re tempted to give into those feelings – blame others for what we’ve done; choose to cut ties and go it alone – imagine how sorry they’ll be. It’s a place where we have to choose between becoming a monster, or going back and owning up to the fool we’ve been.

The Spirit led Jesus into that wilderness – and he went.

This is not the only time Jesus went into the place of our weakness; our vulnerability. It’s the story of his life – his birth and his death. And we need to keep most firmly in view what those choices of his were for. If the Genesis story is one about becoming strangers to paradise, Jesus’s desert story is about seeking us in the wilderness. As soon as he’s been baptised and commissioned, he follows the Spirit’s lead straight out to our wildernesses – our desert – opening our eyes, un-stopping our ears, calling us back a sense of who and where we are. The desert isn’t something we can avoid or ignore. It’s part of every human life. We discover it in Lent as a space God allows – that God creates – where we can receive God’s grace without hindrance. It’s our meeting place with God.

In the ABM Lenten desert reflections, Celia Kemp writes; …there is no space that God opens up in our lives that God doesn’t fill. The challenge is to leave the busy surfaces of our lives and enter the desert at our heart in the wild hope that a way may be prepared for us to see God. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Transfiguration A.  Mt 17 1-9

I want to tell you a story about a special friend who I saw transfigured at a time when he was desperately ill; a Luritja Man from the remote community of Papunya in the Northern Territory, true Dad to our Shekayla.

He was transferred down here to hospital, and after many weeks, he was still in an intensive care bed; his condition still critical. For over a month, they’d been trying to get him back on his feet. Throughout that time, we’d been on the phone with the family back in Papunya trying to keep them up with what was happening for him – he was such a long way from home. There were times when he’d say how he was worried – lonely. I saw him often. Yet how could you help him enough with so much worry, such a distance from country and family; such profound loneliness?

But on one particular day, I got there and something had changed. All the busyness around him was still going on, but about him there was a stillness; a peace. In his eyes, there was all of a sudden something like a great depth or maybe it was a vast distance; a kind of timelessness. We talked normally, joked. But he looked different. There was an ancient dignity. He was oblivious to the busy intrusion of intensive-care medicine. He was looking at something I couldn’t see – he could see way further than I could. I think of that time when I hear today’s gospel story. I think I have some idea of what Peter, James and John saw – a friend transfigured; someone I knew and loved suddenly become so much more than I’d ever imagined.

I didn’t have any idea what he could see now with his great, deep eyes. After he died, his other friends and I would piece together our conversations with him, and each of us added new dots to a picture which grew steadily in clarity; a pattern coming into view. It’s a picture of someone accepting that his death was coming. His pastor in Papunya spoke with him daily on the phone. They didn’t name it to each other, but the day after he died, his pastor wrote to me, ‘Looking back, I think he sensed he was dying.’

He must have. I watched as gently, he set about putting relationships in order. In his last week here, he was on the phone with his family for most of each day; absolutely there with them as far as he could be – adjudicating disputes, giving counsel, telling people how we belong to each other.

And when Shekayla came back to Adelaide for school, in the last two days he was here, when they were together, her Dad’s priority was to focus her on her school life, and on her relationship with us as her family here in Adelaide.

The whole time he was here, he had his Bible with him. From time to time, he’d ask me to get him some different strength reading glasses, so he could keep up with his daily Bible study. Every time we spoke, in person or on the phone, he’d make sure we prayed together.

At some moment, he’d changed. He’d entered a place of stillness; of peace. His vision deepened with a distance, with a timelessness, with an ancient dignity – he’d gone somewhere I couldn’t see; I had a glimpse of someone I’d never even vaguely known. He was transfigured. And his transfiguration keeps coming into view – now that he’s gone. It was coming into view up in Papunya at the sorry camp and the funeral, in our prayers and our sadness down here, and in our deepening bond with his family. We’re still discovering his transfiguration.

That’s something like what we saw begin on the mountain in today’s Gospel; it begins for Peter, James and John. Jesus is transfigured before them. But he knows they won’t begin to comprehend it until after Easter – until its full meaning can begin to be gathered. How could they understand that they’ve kept company with the God of all time and space? His transfiguration frightened them so badly they collapsed in dread? How do you make sense of such a vision? But then he touches them so normally; tells them get up; don’t be afraid. The whole majesty of God, and then a gentle touch of encouragement; can we grasp that?

Have you ever seen anyone transfigured? Did they do something, or say something, or did anyone tell you something about them which utterly transformed the way you know them? Often it’s close to their death, or after it – stories at their funeral that we’d never imagined; their transfiguration changes us – sets un on a new path that they could see, and we’re only now discovering it. Some of these moments we call mountain-top experiences; like the ones in the Bible. They bring us clarity and vision that we seldom find apart from the closeness of death. My hopes and prayers for a medical miracle blurred my vision of my friend’s epiphany and transfiguration – they hindered me from entering into it with him. But God is patient.

Matthew gets that across to us today. It’s amazing how we people can be so blind – how we try to domesticate something transcendent. Jesus is dazzlingly transfigured on a mountaintop there with his close friends. Moses and Elijah appear with him, and Peter says I’ll pitch three tents for you. Let’s contain this in something we can comprehend. Matthew shows us how bizarre our reaction to the transcendent can be. But then he can afford to be knowledgeable; he’s writing this after Easter.

The season of Epiphany opens with the light of the star of Bethlehem, and it closes with the light of the Transfiguration. It’s the time of the light of God’s presence – God revealed among us, vulnerable and gentle, touching us and saying, ‘get up; don’t be afraid’. It’s the light by which, if we truly look, we can see people being gently transformed into God’s likeness.

I’ve been learning that I’m in God’s presence when people are open to God. I mightn’t necessarily notice until it seems too late. But God makes sure it’s never a too-late time. I’ve watched Christ transfigure limitations – even death – into a vision of God’s Love. I’ve seen a man in Christ’s image accept his death and gently prepare his family and friends for what they would face.

The light of the world calls us to transfigure lives and set the captive free: hallowed be his name! Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 6A. Deut 10 12-22, Ps 119 1-8, 1 Cor 3 1-9, Mt 5 21-37

Kids: You go to the fridge; just a little something sweet would be so nice. You open the door, you search for something – anything. Then you see it – hidden at the very back behind a large jar of beetroot – a beautiful punnet of the most perfect strawberries you’ve ever seen. You look behind you – nobody there. You think, Just one; I can re-pack the punnet so it looks full again. You reach out, careful not to move the beetroot jar – they’d notice that. You tap the strawberry punnet sideways to where you can grab it safely. But then you see the sticky yellow label; the boldly written words: Don’t even think about it! Is there really any harm in thinking about it? What might be better?

Adults: We hear Jesus tell people today that even thinking about doing something unkind can do harm. Jesus wants us to love; to decide not even to think about doing harm: to decide not to despise; if someone hurts us, to decide not to plan revenge – but instead to decide to think about how to make things better – to decide to think about how to end fights and not to win them.

I’m saying the word decide a lot, because real love is not so much something we feel as something we decide. When people get married, when we ask them all those questions about looking after each other, they don’t answer, O sure, that feels right; they answer, I will – and those two words mean I promise this because I’ve decided to, not just because I feel like it. Your feelings can change with a little disagreement; your decisions; your promises are things you stick to no matter what you feel like. Real love is both a gift and a decision that we will hold to; just as real faith is a gift, and choosing to exercise it is also decision we will hold to – and those decisions make people reliable – committed, loving and reliable – they shape the people we are.

But isn’t it enough just to live a life where you don’t actually hurt anyone else; isn’t that enough? Jesus says no, it isn’t. He warns us that we might do nothing wrong – we might obey all the laws and do all the good things we’re meant to. But even then, if we’re in the habit of thinking we can judge and condemn other people, it can cause great harm and hurt our relationships. People know if we don’t respect them; people know if we don’t trust them – if we don’t approve of them. And who are we to judge anyway?

No-one wants to be around a grumpy, disapproving sort of person. We won’t work happily for a boss who never trusts us – who never seems to think we’re trying hard enough. But for an encourager – a boss who starts from a basis of trust and respect, you’ll do work you never thought you were capable of. It’s the same in a sports team; in a choir or orchestra; in a church. If you feel trusted, valued and appreciated, you’ll work miracles. Imagine missing out on that! Jesus is telling us not to miss out on the miracles that love can work.

This is the perspective of all today’s scriptures. Trust, faith, optimism, good will and love are the best foundation for a community; for a family. Jesus tells us to make them habits of mind; to decide to cultivate love for each other because, as he says twice in this gospel, love is the fulfilling of the Law.

Just two chapters on from today’s passage, Jesus says: In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the Law and the Prophets. ^{(Mt 7:12)} And later in the Gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. ^{(Mt 22:36-40)} And he’s quoting from the Old Testament when he says this; the God of the Hebrews is the same as Jesus. This is nothing new.

When people you care for are thriving, it’s really lovely. And it’s even better when people you care for get on well with each other. That’s what makes good parties so much fun. All your best friends are there, and they like each other – of course you knew they should, because you like them all; you know they’re all special people.

But imagine if a fight broke out – a really bad fight – how you’d feel. As a child, I never understood how awful it was for my parents when my brothers and sister and I fought with each other. It was always worst in the car – locked in that confined space together – it only took one finger over an invisible line on the back seat to start it off. Parents love their children. They protect their kids from anyone who might hurt them. But when the kids start hurting each other, it’s just awful. The malice and the anger that parents try to protect their children from have come right inside – like an unwanted visitor. And it was invited in by something as small as an unkind thought; a selfish impulse. Jesus teaches us today how we deal with that sort of problem.

The readings today all focus on it. Maybe when we heard them, we thought they were all about laws and rules; do-s and don’ts. What they’re really about is love and care; how to nurture love and care in families, communities, societies and organisations. So we heard Moses say that God gave the words on the two tablets of stone  ‘…for your own well-being…’ because ‘…the Lord your God set his heart in love on … you…’^{Dt 10.13-14} We heard the Psalmist declare blessed those who ‘… keep [God’s] commands and seek after [God] with their whole heart.’ ^{Ps 119.2} Paul tells the Corinthian Christians to put their differences aside and realise that ‘…we’re God’s servants working together…’ ^{1 Cor 3.9} We are presented with a vision of ourselves as a world-healing community. We’ll pray for this as we meditate on these scriptures this week.

Two Wolves – A Cherokee Parable

An old Cherokee chief was walking along with his grandchildren when they saw a wolf on a cliff high above them. Pointing at the wolf, the old man told the children.

“A fight is going on inside me.” “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

“One is evil – that wolf is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

“The other is good – that wolf is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The children thought about it for a minute and one asked, “Grandpa, which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”

^{Author Unknown (possibly a Cherokee parable, and going back probably at least to the 1950’s in print – but unconfirmable)}

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 4a. Lk 2 22-40

In every one of our families, we have stories of the first visit to the baby health centre; particularly that nerve-wracking first visit with a firstborn child. Some of those baby health nurses could be pretty daunting people to meet. But I doubt any of them could hold a candle to what awaited the first outing of a baby boy in the first-century Jewish community. On his eighth day, he was taken to be circumcised and named by the Rabbi; a pretty rugged outing. But for Jesus, it didn’t stop there, because he was also a firstborn child.

This meant that forty days after Jesus was born, and as soon as Mary was able to rejoin public life among her people, she and Joseph had to bring Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. This was Law for every Jewish family with a first child; a command that came out of the Exodus story: a reminder that God rescued all the first-born Israelite children from death in Egypt.

We remember how the last of the plagues sent on the Egyptians killed all their firstborn – humans and animals. The Israelites had been warned beforehand to sacrifice animals and mark the doorways of their houses with the blood. The Angel of death ‘passed over’ all the houses marked in this way – didn’t go in – and so none of the firstborn in those houses died. This was the first Passover.

In Jesus’ time, families of firstborn children went to Jerusalem to make offerings on the fortieth day after their child’s birth; an offering for the mother’s purification, and they also offered their child to God, and then redeemed him – symbolically bought him back: a very profound ritual, laden with history and significance. We’ve just read that the holy family went to offer the best an average family could manage, two doves or pigeons for Mary’s purification. They were also there to present Jesus to the Lord. And they should also have paid five shekels to ‘redeem’ him. ^{(Num 18:15-16)}  But Luke doesn’t mention this – some suspect deliberately. “Jesus is never ‘bought back’, but belongs wholly to the Lord” ^{(Farris, 302)}

Every family across the length and breadth of the Land travelled to the Temple to perform this ritual; there were probably several families arriving every day. But things didn’t happen in quite the straightforward manner that Mary and Joseph might have imagined it would. As they came, they were greeted by some very old people who seemed to expect them; Simeon and the old prophet-woman Anna.

We read that the Holy Spirit had once revealed to Simeon that he wouldn’t see death before he would see the Lord’s anointed—the Messiah. And today, guided by the Spirit, Simeon came to the temple finally to meet the one God had promised; the one who would bring God’s blessing to all nations. Simeon took little Jesus into his arms. He gazed on the face that Jewish people had been praying to see for thousands of years. Out of all those devout, prayerful people, Simeon was one who saw his prayer answered. Simeon, as did Anna. And then Simeon sang:

Now, Master, you let your servant depart in peace, according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.

Simeon tells God, ‘you’ve done it! Just as you said you would! And I’m not just seeing the one you always said would come; I’m holding him in my arms. He’s in my arms, so now I can know the whole world is safe in your arms. Now my life is finally complete; I can die in peace; happy; content.’ In our tradition we sing or say Simeon’s beautiful song at the end of each day, and also at the end of every funeral. In the presence of Jesus, with Simeon, we may also welcome death with peace. And with Simeon’s insight into Jesus, we see light given to all who are lost in shadows of fear and hopelessness. That’s why today is called Candlemas.

And Anna was a prophet; a very old widow. She never left the Temple day and night, but worshipped there with fasting and prayer. When she saw Jesus, she too prophesied about this child to all who looked for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Think of their decades of waiting; Think of the turmoil of the world around them: an invading army; a king as bad as Herod the Great; a religious establishment obsessed with power and wealth; so many people missing the point.

Yet here were two people who didn’t seek power or wealth; they didn’t fear death. Simeon had longed for the moment which would herald his death. And today, when that moment came, he welcomed it as the mark of a life fulfilled – he saw only peace and hope in it.

Simeon and Anna had lived very long lives of faithful service to God. For them, this was at once a moment of exultation and of release. They could let go; they could die in peace; somebody else could carry the load now. It takes the eyes of age – the experience of years – to be able to trust that all this hope can possibly be left safely in the hands of a baby. It takes the certainty that God is involved.

Simeon’s song is called the night-prayer of his life and it remains the Church’s night-prayer; handing over to God the troubles of each day. Simeon and Anna give us a vision of that moment as a sign of new birth – fulfilled hope – joy and peace; an insight into our death as a sign of God’s coming to us; of God’s love for us.

How does this connect with you or me? Is there a Simeon or Anna here, and is there someone here to hand over to? M.K. Gandhi revived a classical Sanskrit expression Satyagraha – holding on to truth – whose power he demonstrated in the campaigns he waged. We have faithful seers and servants here, people who’ve held onto faith for a very long time; people who received the gift of faith from their forebears, and who, by God’s grace, have borne its light aloft for many years.

Faithful fathers and mothers of our church, I address you. Your children and grandchildren must hold the light aloft in a different world. What do you see ahead of us? Maybe you can help us better understand how to hold on, knowing that the life of faith is just as vulnerable and exposed as anyone else’s life. How, in the Christ Child, can we see God with us in those trials and joys?            Amen.

 A hymn for Candlemas – Ephrem of Syria (4^th Century Deacon and Hymn-writer)

Praise to you, Son of the Most High, who has put on our body.

Into the holy temple Simeon carried the Christ-child and sang a lullaby to him:

‘You have come, Compassionate One,

having pity on my old age, making my bones enter into Sheol in peace.

By you I will be raised out of the grave into paradise.’

Anna embraced the child; she placed her mouth upon His lips,

and then the Spirit rested upon her lips, like Isaiah

whose mouth was silent until a coal drew near to his lips and opened his mouth.

Anna was aglow with the spirit of his mouth.

She sang him a lullaby:

‘Royal Son, despised son, being silent, you hear;

hidden, you see; concealed, you know; God-man, glory to your name.’

The barren woman Elizabeth cried out as she was accustomed,

‘Who has granted to me, blessed woman,

to see your Babe by whom heaven and earth are filled?

Blessed is your fruit that brought forth the cluster on a barren vine.’

Praise to you, Son of the Most High, who has put on our body.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Australia Day 2020

I wrote in my weekly that today we wouldn’t use the readings set for Australia Day. They are scriptures which were used by the deeply religious Apartheid regime in South Africa to justify their exploitation of that land, and their treatment of its First Peoples. Such cruel irony is not appropriate to a worship service.

Tony Wilson replied to my weekly yesterday with a story. He wrote ‘Years ago on the farm, one of my employees was a native, Herbie Lovatt. He was one of ‘nature’s gentlemen’. The white employees liked him, and our young children adored him. He was a returned soldier. I have [a copy of] a neatly hand-written letter of Herbie’s, applying for a returned soldier’s block of farm land. He was refused because he was black!’

The readings we are using – those set for the third Sunday after Epiphany – are far better for a day as ambiguous as Australia Day. The readings from Isaiah and the Psalms are prophetic words of hope for the people of Israel. They were themselves a colonising people. They’d taken their land by force, but now they’ve been colonised and exiled themselves. Isaiah offers words of hope to this people who fear God has forgotten them, this people who live with the fear and shame of being controlled and exploited by foreigners. Isaiah’s words also speak to us who carry the burden of our own colonial heritage. They call us to hear Aboriginal Australians with more compassion.

I often hear people say they find the Old Testament difficult; that it’s so violent. But our story as colonisers of this land is very much the same. Ours is a too-little told story of continent-wide, calculated mass murder, theft and cultural genocide.

And it still continues today both physically, and in its bureaucratic form. In August last year, the Queensland government extinguished native title to a part of the Galilee Basin so its traditional owners couldn’t impede proposed mining developments there.

It’s still happening; we are still taking the land, we are still disregarding its spiritual significance to its traditional owners, and we are still turning a deaf ear to demands for common justice.

This is why many First Australians are so desperately hurt by our celebration of the day when all this horror began for them. It’s also why many First Australians read today’s prophecies in Isaiah so differently from the newcomers. The people who walked in darkness – on them, light has shined. … For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken. Imagine reading that literally; reading it as a promise that your people’s undeserved suffering will end; that God will do justice.

What’s our response? While I was away, I read some of Stan Grant’s recent book, Australia Day. An Aboriginal Australian, Stan Grant starts by focussing on his time as an Australian journalist working overseas. From that perspective, he is able to share the pride and delight we all do in Australia’s beauty, in our freedoms, and in the relaxed, friendly nature of our culture. An Australia Day barbeque is a lovely break from the tension of a journalist’s overseas posting. So he knows how we feel about the wonderful things that bind us together; how rightly proud we are of the sort of humanity and compassion we’ve seen time and again – and most recently in people’s compassionate response to the recent bushfire disasters.

Yet when he’s back in Australia, Stan Grant is deeply aware of First Australians being shut out of this beautiful community on a daily basis. He tries desperately to balance what there is to celebrate with what there is needing change.

So he reminds us of the 17-year mortality gap, reminds us how football crowds persecute Aboriginal players and commentators deny that it’s racist behaviour; he reminds us that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up only 2% of the national population, yet constitute 27% of the national prison population; he reminds us that frequent Aboriginal deaths in custody continue; and he reminds us time and time again that we are better than this.

So our first job as Australian Christians is to make sure we can be better than this; that the Church offer leadership to the wider Australian community. And we’ve been offered a clear path to follow.

The National Constitutional Convention held at Uluru in 2017 gave Australia the Statement from the Heart so that we might have a way to be better than this. In its last paragraph, it says this. In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. So listening is the first step.

In 2017, the Anglican Church of Australia responded to the Statement from the Heart. General Synod backed its call for a constitutionally-entrenched First Nations’ Voice to the Commonwealth Parliament and asked that study resources be prepared in consultation with the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council. The result was a study book called A Voice in the Wilderness. ^{https://www.abmission.org/resources.php/163/a-voice-in-the-wilderness} Last year, Vicky and I joined with a group of young parishioners to listen to this wonderful statement by using this book as a study guide. We’d welcome the opportunity to do so again this year with any of you who may be interested.

The next step after listening is to allow ourselves to be changed – to repent and do things differently. In today’s Gospel Jesus interpreted our reading from Isaiah in his own words. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. He interpreted it like John the Baptist did before him; he called people to repent – to turn from our present life in the shadows and to follow him into the light. Next, we saw him put that straight into action; he called Simon, Andrew, James and John to drop what they were doing and follow him on that journey into the light. And they did.

Can the Church follow this call? The Uniting Church in Australia did so in 2009-10. It added a preamble to its constitution which affirmed something about Aboriginal Spirituality that, until then, every church had rejected.

Paragraph 3 of this preamble reads, The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways. In short, the Uniting Church repented of its former views, and acknowledged the truth of God’s recognisable presence with Australian Aboriginal people since time immemorial.

Following Christ’s call can be hard. We’re asked to take risks, trust, and step into the unknown. Sometimes, we have to leave the familiar behind. Sometimes, our actions may make us look foolish. Following God may require us to admit and face our fears. Yet, we remember that we are all God’s children; we are never alone.

So may God give us courage to bite this bullet, to trust and to offer leadership to Australia. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany 2020. Isa 60 1-6, Ps 72 1-7, 10-14, Eph 3 1-12, Mt 2 1-12

We’ve celebrated something very special at our church door this morning: Epiphany is the festival which tells us that God is for everyone. Born as a baby, God offers a hand of trustful, vulnerable, curious invitation to everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you think, what you’ve done – or what you think you’ve done – God holds out a hand of trust and welcome to you. Epiphany says that God isn’t interested in a system of insiders and outsiders. So that means God also wants us to invite – to include, to trust – and not to lock out. Everyone belongs – here is your home; this is the Gospel message of Epiphany. Everyone belongs – here is your home.

That’s a particularly powerful and poignant message today. Belonging and home are such fragile things. We’re regularly reminded of this every time we pray for the eighty-five million displaced persons around the planet – people who’ve been forced to leave the home community they belong to.

But especially in recent days, the horror of their plight has been brought closer to home for us in a way that scientists and emergency-services personnel have predicted for far too long. We have bushfire refugees; we have our own displaced persons – thousands of them, taking refuge at beaches, community halls, ovals, roadhouses – you name it. And there many of them learn that their communities and homes no longer exist. There is no home for them to return to. This tragedy is happening to farm and domestic animals too, and it’s happening to native wildlife. Those poor creatures who haven’t perished in the fire have no habitat to belong to now. Home is gone; dead. Some species will even disappear as a consequence.

How does our Gospel message today address this? Everyone belongs – here is your home; the Gospel message of Epiphany. What does it call from us? I find it very challenging, but perfectly clear. Those of us who have been spared these tragedies are called to offer whatever support we can to those who need it.

Generally, we do this by getting onto a help-line and making a donation. That’s a wonderful thing to do. But are there other possibilities we need to think about?

Many millions of displaced persons around the world – and now in our own back yard – don’t have the option of going home. They’re forced to find another place to call home. Yet communities willing to adopt these people are hard to find. Few countries or households are willing to share what we call our place with strangers. Adoption of any type is a very fraught matter, isn’t it; long-term help is very scarce.

Yet this morning we heard that we’ve been adopted. In the reading from Eph 3.6, we heard that we ‘…Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.’ We strangers to the chosen people have been offered adoption into God’s family before we even knew we needed it: easy to say, but how do we grasp the wonder of this?

The Epiphany story is one of a displaced family just about to be forced into exile to save their child’s life. It speaks to us about the uncertainty of our life. Any moment might lead us out of the world we know; any moment might be our last. I’ve written this sermon with one ear to the fire reports. Life is uncertain: our links to family, community and even nation can change in an instant. The Epiphany story reminds us of that very forcefully—but why? And what are we meant to do about it?

The trauma people suffer doesn’t end when the fire is put out. On-going contact, support and love are essential to people getting their lives back – to belonging, to feeling safe, feeling at home. Thinking of the support we might offer to local people in distress, we’ve already looked at the option of opening our homes to hills parishioners who need to evacuate the night before a day of catastrophic fire conditions. That’s an immediate, short-term, very valuable and practical thing we can do. But there are long-term needs developing right now too. You may not know that there’s an ecumenical and indeed multi-faith programme coordinated by the Uniting Church which trains and supervises chaplains to offer on-going support and care for the survivors of disasters. It’s well worth considering. https://sa.uca.org.au/disaster-and-recovery-ministries/  But enrolling in that programme is a long-term thing. What if we don’t feel we know how to help right now, but would love to roll up our sleeves and do something manageable – how might any of us offer the support we long to give?

A parishioner wrote to me on Friday about one way of doing this. She’d been through the Ash Wednesday fires in the hills as a child, and back then, her family adopted a fire-affected family for a year – in small ways.

As a child, she made cards to send those people, to keep in touch with them for a year or more. Her family sent them gift cards and letters of encouragement. Her grandparents prayed for them, invited them over and helped them with toys for their kids and things like that. Her grandfather also adopted another person who was on their own too; a young person to encourage – so it wasn’t just families.

This parishioner who wrote to me wondered if we could set up something like that; to provide a bit of support to those who’ve lost everything in the fires; a bit like a buddy system and not just to families but to anyone. If many of us did this, it could support a lot of people. Or we might adopt a small church or parish in any of the places that have been burnt – either in South Australia or interstate. We could make contact through their minister or church council or their central body.

And my correspondent also talked about fundraising to help maintain this support. So please talk about this over morning tea, tell the nearest member of parish council your ideas and see what comes of it. It may be this or something else – something small, but a light shining where at present, the only prospect is gloom and pain.

It’s important that we discover ways to embody the Gospel vision of the Epiphany – Everyone belongs – here is your home. Our calling is to embody God’s call which would see light extinguishing darkness, acceptance inviting diversity, and grace welcoming all with love. This may be one way for us to do this. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

St John, Apostle and Evangelist: Good senses

When our lovely friend Christobel Mattingley used to teach children how to write good stories, she used to insist that they describe as fully as possible how things in their stories looked, how they felt, sounded, tasted and smelt. She taught them that this emphasis on our senses was going to draw the reader most completely into the story; it would make the story real for the reader.

The community who handed us down the Gospel of John and the three letters quite obviously shared Christobel’s opinion. We declare to you what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life. The first letter of John thus proclaims the centrality of the human senses to their witness to Jesus. And it’s the same again at the end of today’s brief passage from that letter; God is declared to be light. God – the uncreated light – reveals what all things are really like.

It’s appropriate then that all of our readings chosen to mark St John’s Day are filled with the witness of the five senses. In Proverbs 8, the world’s first bits of soil are about as primally physical as you can get. We hear the voice of wisdom describe her delighted partnership with God in creating the physical cosmos. The Psalm too is an intensely sensate poem, and our Gospel features a foot race!

If we think about it, we only have to consider the name ‘St John’ in the wider community to recognise that an emphasis on physical practical care is central to our heritage; St John’s first aid and St John’s ambulance services for a start, and the ancient Hospitalers of St John; it’s all there.

I’ve always found this parish to be true to the character of our patron, St John the Evangelist. Many of the distinctive qualities of our gatherings and the way we care for this parish environment demonstrate our emphasis on physical, sensual care. We know how things which address the senses can also uplift the spirit.

I think of the weekly touch of the healing ministry, the scent, the beauty and the inviting welcome of the gardens, the care of the buildings, the quality and the abundance of music here, and the impressive culture of hospitality. And even things which in other parishes are private, secluded times – going to the altar for the Eucharist or to the font for healing – here they are times of encouraging embraces and smiles. And as for the sharing of the peace after our prayers each Sunday, you can say goodbye to traditional English restraint! It’s a sheer delight.

So today is a time for me to take the opportunity to encourage this gifting of the parish. We need to wonder together how we might develop our ministries and our outreach further; particularly our care of people’s physical well-being – our care of people’s ways of experiencing God in the world through the senses. In this time of bushfire emergency and climate emergency, the need is very immediate and urgent.

With John’s Gospel as our guide, we see there’s a crossover between physical care and spiritual care, where we must quite often minister in the symbolic realm. That too is part of our brief if we are people who emulate the discipleship of St John. So let me remind you of some opportunities, guided by moments in John’s gospel where Jesus mixes the sensate and the symbolic in both pastoral care and proclamation. Let’s go through all five senses.

We’ll start with touch. The Holy Spirit touches Jesus at the beginning of his ministry (1.32) and Thomas is invited to touch him at the end (20.27). Both touches proclaim who Jesus is, and both lead to discipleship. And Jesus touched people too; think of him washing his disciples’ feet!? Can a ministry of touch bring people into contact with Jesus here? Certainly healing ministry, but what else? Let’s think…

And sight: there’s so much about this in John’s gospel and as we’ve already seen in the letters of John. See life; never see death (8.51); the spiritual blindness of those who won’t see (8.39). Then in our gospel reading today, the beloved disciple sees Jesus not there and believes!

We think of John as the symbolic gospel, and there’s certainly rich, endless symbolism. Yet it’s through the sense of physical sight that belief often comes. St John’s Adelaide is visually striking; but we need to sit down together and think about how this effect might help people to become disciples of Christ. …

What about hearing? The extraordinary Prologue to the Gospel stretches our senses deep into symbolic territory; how might the Word have a voice? We think a word can’t sound unless it comes from a voice. But here, is the voice secondary? People hear the Word speak; they meet the Word, Jesus, and immediately follow him. In chapter 10.5, sheep follow the good Shepherd because they know his voice; they run away from the voice of a false shepherd. What might all this be saying to us? …

The sense of taste is given a wonderful workout in this gospel, from the first miracle, the wedding at Cana, through the feeding of 5000 to Jesus calling himself the bread of heaven. And then there’s the confronting fact of Jesus feeding Judas in the upper room (13.26f). This all speaks deeply into the table fellowship which we share each week together. We’re always sent out from the table to go in peace to love and serve the Lord. And we know this means ‘care for the needy, support the weak, feed the hungry’. The heavy baskets full of groceries that go out from this parish each week are a sign that we have heard this call. Is it something that we are called to develop further? …

And finally, the sense of smell – particularly poignant with the recent reminder of the smoke haze. Once again, John’s gospel is not backward in coming forward. The two most prominent occasions are the threatened stench of Lazarus’s tomb and the overwhelming fragrance of the perfume that Mary of Bethany poured on Jesus’s feet. Is there something beyond our incense and flowers that we’re called to?

We declare to you what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. What do we do about this witness: what’s the next step for us?  Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas:

Once upon a time, the God of the universe became one of us – a newborn child. I know we’ve heard the story; we know what happened – Mary and Joseph and the baby and the shepherds and the angels. But the heart of the story is this; once upon a time, the God of the universe became one of us – a newborn child.

This is a miracle too huge to comprehend. Like most people, I can only come at it through the story. But even stories are hard if we can’t hear them like a child does.

Our adult concerns mix things up. There he was; the God of all, lying in a manger. The most important person in the world! And we start thinking about things like hygiene or security or privacy or protocol. If he was such a VIP, who was looking after all those things? But the story ignores our adult concerns. Angels invite in a bunch of grubby gate-crashers. There are no special precautions taken – not even considering how young the mother is. No, she’d just had to endure a long journey on foot, or on donkey-back. And she’d had to give birth amongst farm animals.

Once upon a time, the God of the universe came among us as the first-born child of an unmarried teenager, and God took no special precautions for a safe arrival.

Why? Well, it seems that God just wanted to be with us on our terms; you can’t really be with people if you set yourself apart. That would have made Jesus something like a tourist in an air-conditioned bus who never gets out; just waves at us through tinted windows as the bus roars on to the next attraction.

But God didn’t just want to look at us; God wanted to be with us – Emmanuel – to be one of us. So, once upon a time, the God of the universe became one of us – a newborn child.

If a great ruler needed shelter and hospitality from us and asked for it, didn’t order us to give it – that’d make us equals, wouldn’t it; that ruler and us – on the same level as each other.

That’s what God has done for us; the God of the universe came among us as a newborn child, needing shelter, needing food, and not too much later, even needing to flee persecution as a refugee. By coming in that way, God changed us somehow; called us to care for God – to become like God is – givers of love and care. God’s need; God’s vulnerability; God’s helplessness – they call something from us which can heal the world far more wonderfully than power can.

Power is another of those adult concerns we plague ourselves with. With all the problems in the world Jesus was born into, why didn’t he come as a super-hero, stop wars, end social injustice, wipe away the evils of prejudice, dishonesty, greed, poverty, illness and environmental destruction? Wouldn’t that have been better?

I don’t think it would. It’s hard to argue why, but essentially, it’s best demonstrated in the story of the life of Jesus. Once upon a time, the God of the universe became one of us – a newborn child. God is born, grows up, and lives for many years a life that is ordinary like ours; works, eats and sleeps. God takes the time needed to win our trust. God starts doing this in the baby we greet today; Jesus.

You can trust a baby. We can deal with someone who’s just like we are; we know where they’ve come from. We don’t feel threatened; we don’t think they’ll ask too much of us, or think too little of us. This is what God did for us; God took the time and the shape needed to win our trust. And because of that, when Jesus grew up and started telling us about the Kingdom of God, we could understand what that meant in a totally new way, because Jesus spoke in a language that emerged from human experience – think of his parables; Jesus spoke our language.

When he healed and forgave people, Jesus scandalised those in power – and also many of us who prefer to see justice ‘really’ done. But slowly, gently, he taught us God’s way of healing, accepting, life-giving justice, peace and mercy. And we accept it from him because we know him; we can trust him. We can see the depth of his commitment to us.

In this baby, we can see how God works. Jesus comes gently to open up channels of communication with us that don’t threaten us. In Jesus, God models love and commitment and understanding and acceptance and everything else we need to become fully human – everything we need to live lives filled with emotional and spiritual security.

The Christ Child has done this – called us to summon up the real resources of our humanity; simply to be there for each other in the same way as we would with a baby – with our compassion, our care, and our readiness to nurture.

God transforms humanity in Jesus; the baby of Bethlehem. In Jesus, God is seen to learn what it is to be one of us so that trust and understanding can be complete. So we’ll let him touch us and we’ll listen when he tells us that there’s a world beyond our minds, our pride and fear and guilt. It is called the Kingdom of God.

So when once upon a time, the God of the universe came among us as a child, needing shelter, needing food, and soon, even needing to flee persecution as a refugee, God changed us all. God our shepherd somehow lifted us from dwelling on our battles and our fears and weaknesses, and made us like shepherds too. God called up our capacity for transforming love from deep within us all.

When I, when you meet this Child, God begins a slow, intricate process of calling from our most profound depths the greatest gifts and the truest strengths our humanity can give birth to. God calls up our true selves, made like this child we worship, in the image and likeness of God. And that’s something no superhero can do.

Once upon a time, the God of the universe became one of us – a newborn child. Glory to God in the highest.

God bless all of you and yours this Christmas.        Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas Eve:  Luke 2 1-14

Welcome home: it’s lovely to see you! We have serious things to consider together.

Somewhere in the world’s many camps and refuges for displaced persons, babies will be born tonight. Turkey, Bangladesh, Somalia, Bethlehem, Mount Barker, take your pick. As the labour-pains intensify, the baby’s mother wills them to stop: ‘Not now; not yet! This is not the world I wanted for you!’ Everyone around her may be filled with the same dismay, they too may be telling God, ‘No, not now; not yet!’ But as those matter-of-fact midwives are so apt to tell us, ‘Whatever happens my dear, that baby is going to be born.’

It’s all too true; whatever the conditions on the outside, babies are born. They’re not going to stop for anyone or anything. It’s as if they’re telling us:

‘Here I come, ready or not. And if you don’t think you have that world outside ready for me, you should have! So let me place that order once more. When I get out, I need one promising future, one safe environment, lots of good food and a loving family and community. Got all that?! Now you’ve got fifteen minutes to get it organised, because here I come!’

We know many babies won’t get any of those good things. We could despair at it all; tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do about it. But the birth of Jesus, a child of displaced parents in a country under occupation tells us to think differently. Christmas demands a change of perspective from us. Christmas demands that we see the birth of any child as a defiant word from God – a defiant assertion of hope even where we can see nothing to hope for; a defiant assertion of God’s trust in humanity, even where we think people have betrayed every value; a defiant assertion of love, even where we think love probably can’t change anything.

A new life is a word of hope that God speaks to the world; a word of trust that God speaks to the world. And a baby is patently a person that God loves.

Nothing’s changed. We might feel like giving up, but God won’t. As long as the sun shines and the rain falls on everyone alike, God will give babies to be born to us regardless of our circumstances. We might focus on the tragedy of a birth in a refugee camp; of a complex birth where the treatment is beyond the parents’ means. We might ask God why this is allowed to happen. But I believe the only answer we’ll get to that question is silence; the most eloquent answer of all.

God isn’t going to waste time answering a question like that, because God is busy with the baby as it’s born. People often ask where God is when all the catastrophes and suffering of the world are happening. Tonight’s birth of a child; this child of displaced parents in Bethlehem is God’s answer. This baby’s birth tells us that God is right in the thick of the world’s catastrophes and suffering; God is there, crying out with all the defiant, self-righteousness of a baby who deserves to be loved and comforted; who deserves to be born in the safety of their own community.

This baby born in Bethlehem tells us that God will never listen to our time-wasting questions. God is too busy enduring the injustice, and incredibly, trusting us; trusting us to step up to the mark straight away and care for the vulnerable and the weak. God is so determined that we will come good that God becomes one of us; God becomes that vulnerable, weak baby Jesus – and every other new life like him, and trusts us to offer care and hope! So in a world where so many millions are born into such circumstances, we can hear, in this account of Jesus’s birth, a story which changes our perspective on all of them; a story which brings a word of hope in a cry for justice. Where is God? Tonight, God has met us, born as a human child.

If God is, indeed, born in the infant Jesus, his birth is a defiant word which confronts things that we seem to accept as inevitable for ourselves and many of our fellow creatures. His birth confronts the fact that we live in a world plagued with poverty and hunger, oppression and warfare, genocide and environmental destruction.

This baby – and through him every baby – is God’s word of truth to us that such evils are not inevitable. They can be confronted – and not with fearful caution, but with the reckless kind of hope that sends a baby to be born into a land under military occupation. God is not a pragmatist. God’s silence only echoes our own.

We must confront the evils and injustices of our world because that child’s birthright was to receive the love of God through the nurture of others; not to suffer and die at the whim of some distant political power. Every child, every animal or bird or reptile that is born, every plant that sprouts is a word from God which says what should be. We were each born as a sign of hope and truth. Our calling is to realise this through the respect and love we share with all created things.

We have shared this hope, this truth and this love tonight. The golden flame of the Christ Candle at the centre of the Advent Wreath – at the centre of our waiting – its warmth spread among us at our gathering; spread among us as a sign of hope which defies despair; spread among us as the torch of trust which God has cherished for each of us as babies, and still cherishes for us now.

Tonight, we have shared this hope, this trust and this love through the symbol of candlelight, through song, and through listening for God’s voice. Tonight when we go out, we do so with the purpose of living out this hope, this trust and this love.

This baby is God’s defiant assertion that hope will spring up where we expect to see none; this baby is God’s assertion that trust will live even where deception protects injustice; and this baby incontrovertibly speaks God’s love to each of us – incontrovertibly demands that we love each other – because since that birth, we’ve known for sure that every atom of our being – and of every created being – is charged with the divine love of the God who became one of us. That’s where God is; God is with us – Emmanuel. That’s what we gather to celebrate tonight.

Amen