Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 7 C: inaugurating the week of prayer for Christian unity.

John 17 and the foundation of the Church of South India: a contemporary Wirkungsgeschichte

Today I want to tell you a story; a story of the way one verse from today’s Gospel passage inspired one of the most wonderful events I can think of in all church history. This verse inspired competing church denominations to put aside their differences and lay down their treasures to work together – to become one church.

On September 27^th 1947 the Church of South India (CSI) was inaugurated. This act achieved something that scandalised churches in Australia and the rest of the world. It united a church that has bishops with other churches that didn’t have them, and they didn’t re-ordain anyone. That’s what would have to happen if I suddenly wanted to be a Catholic priest, or if a Uniting Church Minister wanted to be an Anglican Priest. We’d be re-ordained, because some churches won’t recognise the ordinations of other ones. But not so in the Church of South India; they just did it.

This was their response to the call they heard in Jn 17.21 when Jesus prayed, ‘I ask …²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe …’. Lesslie Newbigin, a Church of Scotland missionary, called the union ‘the great adventure in obedience.’ ^{A South India Diary 22} Newbigin was consecrated a bishop in this inaugural service. You can’t imagine what a change of thinking that required in a Presbyterian.

How did this happen? The idea of this union of churches in South India came from a number of early 20^th century missionaries who found themselves working in the one mission field, but competing with each other. One of them, a Congregationalist missionary called G.E. Phillips, described their experience:

‘I have lived in a station where the Christian Church was represented by a feeble handful despised by the great mass of surrounding Hindus … and that feeble handful broken into … portions … over the communion question. You can scarcely imagine how insane seem our ecclesiastical divisions in those circumstances.’[i]

To complicate matters even further, the different denominational missions found converts in different castes, so that the tiny Christian churches were divided both along denominational lines and caste lines, ^{Diary, 49–50} further obscuring the church as a reconciled and reconciling body.

These missionaries used to head for the hills during times of extreme heat, so they found themselves close together quite regularly. At one of these retreat times, a group of Indian pastors and two of their European friends met in a mission hill-station called Tranquebar on May 1–2, 1919. In 1919, the historical and political context made a fresh reading of biblical passages concerning unity not only possible but imperative. Gandhi had inspired a unity between Hindus and Muslims, and this challenged Christians divided by western denominationalism. The war to end all wars was over; there was a League of Nations in the making. ‘The established order of things was going and gone. No established order had any right to exist. Was that not also true of the Church?’[ii]

So up at the hill-station, it’s no surprise that the leading theme for all their discussions was the text about the unity of the church, Jn 17.21. The conference resulted in the Tranquebar Manifesto. Over the next 28 years, this document would evolve into what ultimately became the Basis of Union of the CSI.

The Basis of Union opens by invoking Jn 17.21 as Christ’s prayer for the unity of his Church. It says that Jn 17.21 names what is the essential purpose and nature of Church – unity. This unity for which Christ prayed is enabled through the Holy Spirit and is therefore ‘fundamentally a reality of the spiritual realm.’[iii] This is a reality that the CSI does not claim to create, but to have discovered through repentance; through turning from disunity to oneness. This raises the issue of relationship between spiritual unity and organic unity – organic unity simply means choosing to unite; to actually become one. As you’d guess, most interpreters focus on spiritual unity, but for the drafters of the Scheme, the one required the other:

‘this unity of the Spirit must find expression in the faith and order of the Church in its worship, in its organization and in its whole life, so that, as the Body of Christ, it may be a fit instrument for carrying out His gracious purposes in the world.’[iv]

This connection between spiritual and organic union profoundly shaped the CSI’s service of inauguration in 1947. Early in the service, John 17 was read by a member of the laity. It replaced the usual recitation of the commandments as an invitation to repentance, and so became the new context for the prayer of confession. The last of the five confessions in the litany which followed was explicit: ‘We acknowledge, O Lord, our share in the sin and shame of divisions in Thy holy Church’[v]

These prayers of confession were followed not by a declaration of forgiveness, but by a prayer for God’s absolution, and then a decisive act of obedient repentance. The 4,000 people in the congregation knelt while the documents of assent to union from the uniting churches were laid on the altar. This was followed by further prayer inspired by a text from Jn 10.16: ‘Hasten the time, O God, when throughout the world there shall be one flock, one Shepherd…’. When the congregation stood, the president, again used words from John 17, declaring the inauguration of the Church of South India.

Dearly beloved brethren, in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, Who on the night of His Passion prayed that His disciples might be one; and by authority of the governing bodies of the uniting Churches, whose resolutions have been read in your hearing and laid in prayer before Almighty God; I do hereby declare that these … Churches … are become one Church of South India.[vi]

The motto of the CSI, That they all may be one, is drawn from John 17:21. It is understood as the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ who prayed not only for the Church but also for the whole world. This universality is expressed by placing these words on its logo (see your pewsheet) in a form of a circle. This understanding has been there from the beginning: the inauguration of the CSI was a beginning.

Newbigin’s private prayer as the service concluded was “and above all keeping before every Christian mind the purpose of our union – ‘that the world may believe’.”[vii]

The response from the western churches was tragic. The worldwide Anglican communion imposed a moratorium, banning any CSI clergy from being licensed to serve in churches outside south India for thirty years. And that charge was led by dioceses in Australia, I’m ashamed to say. We assumed that it would take that long for the bishops and priests whose ordination we didn’t recognise to retire. Then purity would be restored – ordination by ‘real’ bishops would resume. Maybe we forgot that the CofE in Australia had been governed by the Diocese of Calcutta from 1824 to 1836!

The CSI has seen sustained growth. It’s now just about four times the size it was in September 1947. Ironically, that’s about the same amount by which we overseas churches who opposed its organic union have shrunk in the same time.

This story of the CSI union shows that Jn 17.21 has inspired unity when historical and political circumstances have made Christians bold enough to make this verse our own. A unique church was born out of the blending of the Episcopal and non-Episcopal traditions as a gift of God to the people of India and as a visible sign of ecclesiastical unity for the Universal Church.

The question this raises for me, and I hope for all of us, is what Jn 17.21 can achieve in this broken and divided world if we are willing to embark again on ‘the great adventure in obedience.’                                            Amen.

 [ii] Sundkler, Church of South India, 88

[iii] Scheme of union: including the basis of union as adopted by the uniting churches, the constitution of the Church of South India, and other documents (Madras: Christian Literature Society for India, 7th edn; 1949) 1.

[iv] Scheme of union, 1.

[v] Order of service, 2.

[vi] Order of service, 4.

[vii] B. Sundkler, Church of South India: the movement towards Union 1900–1947 (London, Lutterworth Press 1954) 28

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Ascension: Acts 1 1-11, Ps 110, Eph 1 15-23, Lk 24 44-53

How do you say goodbye for the last time to someone you love? Is there a right way? Or do you just do your best when the time comes and pray that it won’t hurt too much?

How do you say goodbye for the last time? Is there a positive side to goodbyes? Good-bye? What’s good about it? It often feels more like a cut; a burn; a wound. But of course the old OED sets us straight. There I find that our word goodbye began life as a contraction of God-be-wy-ye —God be with you.

Doesn’t that transform it utterly! It’s not a final leave-taking after all, but a blessing; not a threat of loneliness, but a reminder of our deepest relationship of all; our mutual belonging to God, which binds us together forever; beyond distance, beyond time, beyond even death. Goodbye is a blessing and a promise. God be with you. Blessing and promise: this is the goodbye Jesus offers today as we celebrate his Ascension. It’s the last time his friends will ever see him in the flesh; but he makes the focus of this parting a blessing.

The book of Acts sets Jesus’ final parting from his friends forty days after his resurrection on Easter Day. For three years on the road together, they’d become closer than family. These friends had been through the horror of losing him to the Cross; and now through the incredulous joy of reunion with him after he rose from the dead.

But today, it’s goodbye again. Yet not goodbye in the final leave-taking sense. No; it’s in the God be wy ye sense. Jesus promises them that they will receive power from God (Lk 24.49); the Holy Spirit will baptize them soon and they will become Jesus’ powerful witnesses from here to the ends of the earth (Acts 1.8).

Of course they don’t understand this straight away; these poor battered disciples. Who could? Their hopes had been dashed, then raised again, and now Jesus is again taken from their sight. But in a very short time, we will see them changed. A frightened huddle of outlaws one minute; the next, they burst out of hiding. Filled with that promised gift of spiritual power, they will go out, reckless and passionate, with a transforming message about Jesus. And just as he said they would, starting right outside their door, they will press on, healing and preaching to the ends of the earth.

Ascension is the story of Jesus’s body going from the here-and-now to the always-and-everywhere. That’s a pretty fine summary of our human experience of Jesus’ Ascension – again, it takes our view beyond the resurrection where our attention can so often stop.

The here-and-now? Before his crucifixion, Jesus’ ministry was confined mostly to the place he happened to be at the time (healing the centurion’s servant boy without going to his home in Lk 7 is an exception of course). But after his resurrection Jesus seemed less confined. He’d appear to disciples who were a long way apart from each other, yet without needing time to get from one lot of disciples to the others in any normal way. He wasn’t a ghost; he ate with them and they touched him; he had the wounds of his crucifixion – but he was different. He was somehow even more extraordinary than he’d been over the few years of his ministry with them.

This ‘different’ Jesus was a promise of more to come; much more. Today, as we’ve seen him ascend to the right hand of the Father, that difference between Jesus and us is taken to a whole new level.

And this reminds me that I talk and think so often of Jesus the human being that I risk forgetting to balance this by proclaiming that he is the ruler of everything – that he is our God. The Ascension puts my focus back on the big picture.

The Ascension is the fourth of the Church’s five most important celebrations of Jesus: there’s Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Ascension is goodbye, but only so that a different, more universal hello can begin – and we’ll be looking at that new beginning on Sunday week – Pentecost.

Then we’ll realise again the full meaning of our word goodbye; how it began life as a contraction of God-be-wy-ye —God be with you.

As long as we live, in the goodbye of the Ascension, we are given the gift of God with us, closer than our own skin, for all eternity.

Amen.

Commitment prayer: Risen, ascended Jesus, we are now the bearers of your God-be-wy-ye blessing. You want everyone to receive the blessing of your reconciling love? We know this blessing, and we’re ready to share it. We pray that you may make us bold to speak of you. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 6 C: Acts 16 9-15, Ps 67, Rev 21 10-14 22-25, Jn 14 23-29

God calls the most diverse strangers imaginable to become one Christian family.

The first National Sorry Day was held on May 26^th, 1998. It was the first anniversary of the day when the Bringing them Home report was tabled in the federal parliament. This was a report which documented the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families; the children we now know as the ‘Stolen Generations’.

It’s called Sorry Day because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples use the word ‘sorry’ to say how we feel when we lose someone we love; usually when that person dies. So the expression ‘Sorry Business’ is used to describe the preparations and  ceremonies associated with laying a loved one to rest.

National Sorry Day keeps us mindful of the sorrow of the Stolen Generations; the grief and loss experienced by the parents, families and communities cut off from their children who were forcibly removed; the sorrow of the Stolen Generations survivors themselves, cut off from family, community, country and culture.

Sorry Day is a call to all Australians to feel compassion – to find room and courage enough in our hearts to share the sorrow of loss and grief that so many Aboriginal people carry today – to remember our common humanity with these fellow children of Earth.

This call to oneness with Aboriginal Australians is particularly incumbent on us as Christians. This is because God has offered the very same compassion to us. Our entire identity is founded on the compassion which God feels and shows for us. We see this most profoundly expressed in Jesus. He was born to become one of us; he died to destroy our separation from God; and he rose so that by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, we might be drawn with Jesus into oneness with each other and with God.

Today of all days, I’m struck by the fact that God’s Son, Jesus, endured painful separation from his home community too. He came to us so that he might call us – people who didn’t belong – foreigners – to call us to belong in his family. Jesus being born in Bethlehem is God becoming one of us – God’s flesh-and-blood compassion for us – that we might come to belong with him.

This confronts us with a question. If we are followers of Jesus – imitators of Jesus –do we know what to do about this? That’s where our scriptures today can come to our help. They don’t present us with a ten-commandment-style workshop manual; rather they present us with stories of people who were able to hear God’s call and overcome entrenched cultural fears and prejudices to follow that call.

One thing that strikes me particularly about today’s readings is how multicultural and even multi-species they are. Look at the Psalm – let your ways be known upon Earth; liberating all nations; all the peoples judged with integrity (for once); all the ends of the Earth blessed. And Revelation also includes the nations in the final salvation – ‘the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations’. God calls the most diverse strangers imaginable to become one Christian family.

We see the beginning of this multicultural emphasis in our first reading from Acts today. We arrive at the moment when Paul has been to Jerusalem and is now returning to all the places he’d been preaching before with some wonderful news to tell them. The Apostles in Jerusalem had given him a letter for them; a letter which said that new Christians who had no Jewish backgrounds did not have to comply with Jewish religious laws the way Jewish Christians had done until then.

This was a totally new thing; something the Church had only just realised, because they learned from the stories Peter and Paul brought back to them that the Holy Spirit was incorporating people into the Church family who’d never heard of these rules; non-Jews – Gentiles.  God calls the most diverse strangers imaginable to become one Christian family.

In today’s reading from the book of Acts, we just heard how Paul was called to sail across to Macedonia – northern Greece – to bring even more culturally and religiously diverse people into the family of Christ – and not on the basis of common customs or culture, but simply because these people’s hearts were open to be transformed by the Gospel of Jesus. And a detail we might not notice without a bit of prompting; the first church to be established on European soil was founded and headed by the woman we meet in this story – Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth.

We need to note this very carefully – God is coming to all people – just as we know happened in the coming of Jesus – and God doesn’t demand that we fit a particular cultural or gender profile, nor that we comply with a set of religious rules – God is coming to where we are and inviting us to belong to the family.  God calls the most diverse strangers imaginable to become one Christian family.

In these stories, we are given the pattern for our own style of relating to the world. God bridges divides, so that’s the way we should act – we should seek to bridge divides. This is challenging. It’s hard to connect with people whose personal circumstances confront us. Yet that’s nothing to what God has done for us in coming as a helpless baby. Remember, we are with God who calls the most diverse strangers imaginable to become one Christian family.

This brings me back to Sorry Day. Trying to turn black people into white people via cruel abductions and a crazed eugenic breeding programme – trying to force them to become us – is the absolute antithesis of the way we see God at work in today’s scriptures. The Aboriginal People of Australia are us; these people are our family. These peoples’ sorrow is our sorrow. Today is a day for us as children together; children of our loving, bridge-building God – today, let’s re-commit to our solidarity with these dear ones still sorrowing for such a grievous wrong – our sisters and brothers. Real lives are blighted by an unimaginable separation which time cannot heal. God wants you and me to help build bridges.  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 5: Acts 11.1-18

Old fashioned hospitality: new vision: God has visited us

Throughout the season of Easter, and until the feast of the Trinity, our Sunday gospel readings all come from John. Even so, we do retain a connection with the Gospel of this year, Luke, because we use his next volume, the Acts of the Apostles, as our first reading on each of the Sundays in Easter.

Today, hospitality is at the heart of both of those readings – and hospitality is God’s challenge to us. The setting of our gospel reading is a meal table, and the reading from Acts has Peter telling the Church in Jerusalem about his revolutionary new understanding of the mission of the Church; an understanding that came to him when God told him to eat unclean food with foreigners.

John the evangelist’s setting of the new commandment has Jesus and his friends gathered for a meal a long way from home. You could say they are all guests. And you’ll remember from Maundy Thursday that this is the meal where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. So we have one guest at a meal doing something you might have expected the host to do; it’s unsettling; confronting. It’s a challenge to see things in a different way.

The Jesuit scholar Brendan Byrne says that Luke also presents the life and ministry of Jesus as a challenging visitation by God. It’s a visitation that invites us to become – a visitation to transform our lives. Everyone in the gospel – and everyone who reads the Gospel – is challenged by Jesus to grow and develop. We all feel ourselves to be under Luke’s gaze; as we read his gospel, we feel the eyes of the good doctor examining us – watching how we are responding to this visitation.

So as we saw in John’s Gospel today, Luke often presents Jesus as the visitor who becomes the host – and in the Book of Acts, it is the Holy Spirit who does this. Amazed, we find God at our table inviting us to receive him; Jesus inviting us to discover our true humanity; The Spirit inviting us to find salvation in the response of our own hearts, and so in our heart of hearts to find ourselves truly at home – and all because of this visitor whose very arrival is an invitation.

John and Luke ask how we receive this visitor; ask if we are truly at home in our heart of hearts; if our own hearts are fit to offer hospitality to Christ’s poor. These are challenging questions; all the more challenging and confronting because they are being asked of us, the converted – us, the believers.

Luke’s writing, like John’s continually challenges us to new conversion. The day we were baptised; the day we gave our heart to Jesus is not enough for the long haul. On that day, we invited a guest who, for our whole lives, is going to dwell within us and continue inviting us to explore our own humanity; to search deeper and deeper in our hearts to find there the heart of God. It’s confronting; it’s uncomfortable. You just think you’ve reached a point of comfort and security in your faith, and the Spirit beckons you on to something you’d never dreamt of.

That’s what we see in the reading from Acts today: believers converted to a richer understanding of the size of their faith, and of the scope of their mission. This happened to Peter as an individual, and today, we hear how he had to report on this, and to convert the church in Jerusalem to a new sense of their identity and mission.

He arrives in Jerusalem, but the news has preceded him; the scandal – Gentiles have actually become baptised Christians. You’d think the Church leaders in Jerusalem would be elated by this news. But no; they criticize Peter for eating with Gentiles. They’re locked into a view of faith that is expressed only in time-honoured rituals; the rituals they grew up with. The dears sound almost Anglican.

But Peter responds by ‘explaining to them cathexes (in order)’ what had happened. This setting out in order / step by step word cathexes is looks innocuous. But Brendan Byrne observes that it is the same word Luke used at the beginning of his Gospel: “I have decided to write an orderly account.” It sounds mundane, doesn’t it. But when Luke uses this word, he’s telling us that what follows will be an experience that will transform us; that we are going to understand ourselves completely differently after we’ve heard this. So to Peter’s orderly explanation.

He’s going to need to do much more than win an argument here. Until a few days earlier, he’d have been at one with the angry reception committee that awaited him in Jerusalem; indignant at the Church being brought into disrepute. No; he doesn’t have to win an argument here; he has to transform people; he has to convert people who already believe so that they can believe differently. That’s a tall order.

He does it by showing that what’s happened is actually God’s work; God’s doing, not his. God has given visions; God has sent angels; God has caused people to give and receive hospitality, and at the table, they’ve had to discover entirely new things about themselves and each other. If God has given the Gentiles this same gift that we received, who was I to hinder God? Asks Peter; how could I refuse to eat with them when God told me there was no barrier?

Even though we aren’t a traditional society any more, who you eat with is still an extraordinarily personal thing. It still says a great deal about who you belong to, who you like, and who you are.

It doesn’t matter how young or old you are—think about who kids included and excluded at your school lunch times; think about who you eat lunch with now – at work or when you’re eating in company; how often you eat lunch in company at your place or someone else’s. We don’t eat with strangers as a rule. Communion helps us do it sometimes; but maybe it’s asking us to take it further. Are there different ways we could share communion than the private way we do now? How do you feel when you think about that? (Silence) What do you make of those feelings?

In this time when we are preparing to formulate a renewed vision of our mission as a parish, to imagine what new hospitality God might be calling us to, I want you to search your hearts for thoughts and impulses you might have had – particularly thoughts about how our fellowship might become more accessible to wider groups of people. Have you had these thoughts, and have you talked about them with anyone? Or have you sat on them quietly, and hoped they’d go away?

 

I’ll give you a few moments to think back now. Then at morning tea, I’d invite you to talk with someone about these impulses. Test them, and perhaps send them to Parish Council in the next little while. God may well be speaking to all of us through your heart.                                   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Good Shepherd Sunday C: Acts 9 36-43, Ps 23, Rev 7 9-17, Jn 10 22-30

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. The image of the Lord as the Good Shepherd is one of the most treasured in our tradition. It expresses God’s commitment to stand by us no matter what. The Good Shepherd is our nurturer – the one who feeds us; the one we cry out to when we’re feeling threatened or betrayed – or when we’re overwhelmed by grief or loneliness. This is the shepherd we meet in Psalm 23 today, and equally in Isaiah 40 – He shall feed his flock like a shepherd and gather the lambs in his arms.

But there’s a shadow side to this. The two other major prophets, Jeremiah ^{(2.8, 12.10, 23.1-4, 50.6)} and Ezekiel ^(34.2-16) cry out against false shepherds of God’s people – priests who betray their positions of trust; who, instead of guiding their flock in the right paths, abandon them to danger; who, instead of feeding God’s flock, eat them alive. These prophets give voice to God’s disgust at any who take on the role of shepherd of the people only to use it for their own self-gratification. We are hearing this voice again today crying out against a church which is inexcusably guilty of protecting false shepherds and turning a blind eye to abuse they have perpetrated.

This contrast between the Good Shepherd and false shepherds is in front of us again this morning in our reading from the Gospel of John. In John Ch. 10, where we find the Good Shepherd Discourse, Jesus is revealed as the model shepherd. I say model because the example of Jesus’s own words and actions and priorities calls us as the Church to pull together and work for the care and nurture of God’s little ones too.

John the Evangelist does what the prophets did before him; he weaves the Good Shepherd image in with a contrasting image of bad shepherds to emphasise his message. The Good Shepherd Discourse comes after the story of Jesus healing a man who was born blind. In that story, the Pharisees reject the person who was healed and they reject Jesus as a healer.

The Pharisees are some of the official shepherds of God’s people – but for John the Evangelist, they stand in the tradition of the blind, bad shepherds that the prophets warned against. Even though they have testimony from the man’s parents that he was born blind, they tell the man that Jesus cannot be from God. John is effectively asking, Who is so blind that they would reject the healing itself as a lie?

After the Good Shepherd Discourse, these official shepherds are back on the scene again, grilling Jesus, rejecting what he says, trying unsuccessfully to stone him, and then to arrest him. Jesus escapes from them. And the next thing we know, he’s calling one of his sheep, Lazarus, to come out of the grave. Jesus said ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life … no one will snatch them out of my hand.’ And Lazarus came out. That’s some shepherd!

So there’s the contrast – the Good Shepherd and the false shepherds. We are well warned about false shepherds. And you don’t have to look far to find them. There are many in our world – many in governments, in major organizations; many individuals who abuse vulnerable people, or who neglect to help them. And as we know, most shockingly, there are also false shepherds in the Church. The experience of the prophets and the story about the man born blind that John put alongside the Good Shepherd Discourse tell us that this is nothing new.

So what help does John give us – where should our focus be?

Jesus tells his opponents that his actions speak so loudly that anyone should be able to hear – The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me. And yet they still wouldn’t believe. But others did – My sheep hear my voice … and they follow me.

When I was growing up, the great question was whether the miracles of Jesus literally happened or not. John the Evangelist asks a different question. John asks if we can hear what the works of Jesus actually say. Actions speak louder than words. Jesus’s actions are his voice; his actions tell us what he’s saying. If the Word of God became flesh, then what that physical Word does is saying something to us.

And just before the words about the Good Shepherd, the Word of God acted out of compassion for a person who had suffered from blindness all his life. What do we hear in that?

I hear that God cares for me when I suffer – cares for you;

I hear that God cares particularly for people like the one born blind;

I hear in this care the cries of the prophets who were saying all along that God cares particularly for the sick, the hungry, the poor, the lonely, the oppressed;

And then I remember the Prophets’ angry words – the words those prophets flung at people who showed no care to God’s little ones – and even worse words for those who cheated or oppressed the vulnerable;

And then I begin to hear a call – a call to me to listen to my own words. Are the words I speak in tune with the words of Jesus? Do I hear him that clearly? Do I recognise what he says – what his words in action are saying – and do I respond by following him through imitation of his example?

Because a middle-eastern shepherd leads the flock, and we follow; we tread in the footsteps of the shepherd.

And if we do, the love of Christ is proclaimed.

Three practical outworkings of this to ponder:

In the big picture, the Church – the Body of Christ – is called to be the Good Shepherd: we are to make sure this is true

In this time of election campaigning, we are to listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd: we are called to ignore other voices

And in this time of ecological peril, we are to remember our commissioning as Earth’s shepherds, and we are to measure our words by our actions.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

John, Apostle and Evangelist – Patron of this Parish

Let’s spend some time wondering together – let’s wonder how the choice of St John as our patron has shaped this parish over our hundred and eighty years.

John’s original Hebrew name is יוֹחָנָן (Yochanan). It means ‘God is gracious’ – ‘God gives undeserved gifts’. That’s quite a name to live up to. John’s titles tell a story too. An Apostle is someone who’s sent out on a mission. And an Evangelist is someone who brings good news to people who need it. So all together, John, Apostle and Evangelist means three qualities; gracious, committed and uplifting. That’s what our name challenges us both to be and to continue to become; the Parish of the gracious, the committed and the uplifting. Let’s wonder about those challenges for a little while.

First, our name – St John’s. It calls us to be a community of God’s Grace. Grace is the name of the sort of generosity that gives without being asked for something; grace gives without worrying whether someone is worthy to receive; grace gives without worrying whether they can return the favour. Is this a characteristic of our community of St John – the Grace of God? Is that us? Is that who we are becoming? Yes, I believe it is. I keep on hearing about quiet acts of generosity here that make me very glad.

John’s first title is Apostle; which means sent on a mission. Are we a sending community? Do we know what our mission is? Every week, our worship ends with the dismissal – the sending out; Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Where do we go out and how do we love and serve the Lord?

Jesus’s parable of the last judgement ^{Mt 25.31-40} answers that question; Truly I tell you, whatever you have done for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done for me. That’s how we love and serve the Lord.

Do we send one another out and support each other in carrying out our mission? Do we feel equipped by this community to do this – to go out from here, to be sensitive to needs and to respond to them with loving service?

Do we hear Christ’s call to go with him to love and serve the world he came to save? And is this gathering a home base that we missioners can rely on – where we can be refreshed and strengthened to go out again? Is that us? Is that who we are becoming? Again, yes, I believe it is. There is in this community an active commitment to serve justice and compassion in the world.

And Evangelist – which means a bearer of the Good News of Jesus Christ. In this world where the word news is almost always heard to mean bad news, are we offering the Good News; Good News which reveals the healer to the broken, the shepherd to the lost, living water to the thirsty and the bread of life to the hungry? Is that us? Is that who we are becoming? Once again, I believe it is.

We are on the journey together – learning how to be Christ-followers according to the pattern we’ve learnt from our patron, St John, Apostle and Evangelist. These questions of mission and evangelism we’ve just been wondering about are pivotal questions for us this year; the year when we’ve just begun work on re-appraising what our mission is as a parish over the coming years and decades.

Today, we take the chance to consider particularly the guidance and wisdom we might glean from St John. As it happens, since we are observing John’s feast in May rather than December, we’ve already spent quite a bit of time reading his gospel over the Lenten and Easter seasons. So it’s still fresh in our memories. Let’s think back to two of the moments we’ve shared in John’s Gospel recently.

On Maundy Thursday, we heard the New Commandment which we find only in John’s Gospel: ^13.34-35 A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John treasured this moment and recorded it for us. It’s a central emphasis of John’s that mutual love is the most important means by which we proclaim life in Christ. So the implicit question to us is, do we work together to embody that mutual love? Is that us? Is that who we are becoming? Yes, I believe we’re definitely on that trajectory.

On Good Friday, we were gathered at another moment where that central value of mutual love shone out. It was when Jesus, on the cross, gave his mother, Mary and the beloved disciple, John into each other’s care. ^19.26-27 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ ²⁷ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Mutual love is something I find here in abundance. I find it in the many practical ways you in this parish family express care for each other. I also find it in the commitment we offer to marginalised people – to all who come among us, and also to these dear ones in this part of Adelaide and way beyond.

St John has made sure we will know what taking his name means. Our challenge is to ponder what more that calls from us. I pray that over the generations – as well as now – we who are called by his name will continue on the journey of growing and sharing a Christian faith modelled by our patron John, Apostle and Evangelist – gracious, committed and uplifting.

So you and I who are named gracious, committed and uplifting, like John, let’s accept Christ’s sending, and continue to proclaim our discipleship by growing in mutual love for each other and for all to whom Christ sends us.      Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2:  Hoping Thomas – John 20 19-31

There’s a long-standing negative perception in the Church about ‘Doubting Thomas’. The wonderful thing about this story is that even though John the storyteller might be disgusted with Thomas, he can’t stop Jesus simply offering Thomas what he needs for faith.

 If you think about it, Thomas’s need is a gift to us. We see his unbelief proved wrong. True scientific method is applied; Thomas expounded a theory of unbelief that he wanted to test by a repeatable experiment. The result; unbelief swept aside; bodily resurrection proven by scientific method and Thomas, a sceptic converted by empirical proof.

The other disciples use the same words as Mary Magdalene when she came from the tomb. “We’ve seen the Lord.” Like Magdalene, it took a tangible experience of their risen Lord before they could say “We have seen the Lord.” All Thomas asked was an experience of his own. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

 And Jesus gave him what he needed. [Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not be in disbelief, but believe.”    Thomas’s need was more important to Jesus than any noble reasons we might want him to have for unquestioning faith. Jesus doesn’t run him down; he gives Thomas a sign to enable his belief.

Jesus had done the same for Mary Magdalene at the mouth of the tomb. He said her name to help her break through her incomprehension, and the result was dramatic; she seized hold of him. When he offered Thomas what he needed, the response was every bit as dramatic; it evoked from Thomas the most powerful, complete confession of Jesus anyone had given in the Gospel: “My Lord and my God!” His faith saw Thomas go on to establish churches as far away as south India.

Jesus spoke to Thomas, but actually, his words are very much addressed to you and me; “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That’s us, isn’t it! We are blessed. Jesus reaches out those hands through the Gospel to you and me so that [we] may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing [we] may have life in his name.

These are stories of the transforming moments in the lives of Jesus’ earliest followers. When we read a story and someone touches another, our hand goes out and touches them too, doesn’t it. The gospel today is about a transformation that starts with a profound need being met.

So I believe Thomas is an image of hope, not of doubt.

The other two times we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel, we see in him the loyal realist; rather like Puddleglum in C.S. Lewis’s book, The Silver Chair. We meet Thomas first when Jesus finally turns to that dangerous place, Bethany, where Lazarus is entombed. Thomas… said to his fellow disciples, Let’s go too so we may die with him. ^{Jn 11:16} He knows how foolish it is to go to Judea, but he won’t be left behind.

The next time we meet him is at the last supper. Jesus is saying good-bye to his friends, and he re-assures them: … if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?  ^{Jn 16.3-5}

Trying to get it straight: trying to make sure. But not because of doubt. Thomas needs clarity and he needs to understand. What he does is done out of loyalty. Again, to him it all sounds like foolishness, but he won’t be left behind.

What drives this determination? Thomas needs to see to believe – he wants help with his unbelief. But when the opportunity of proof is right under his fingertips, suddenly it seems that he doesn’t need to go through with it. The Gospel doesn’t tell us that he touched Jesus’s wounds in the end. Jesus challenges him: believe, don’t doubt, and all at once, Thomas answers “My Lord and my God!” This doesn’t spring from doubt: it comes from hope fulfilled at last.

What Thomas manages here is enormous. He moves from his habitual realism and reluctant optimism to genuine hope. What do I mean? Another Palestinian, Marguerite Abdul-Masih says that hope is different from optimism. Hope is centred on God, while optimism is just focussed on reality. Hope says that no matter how bad things may get, every moment we are closer to the coming Kingdom of God. Optimism, on the other hand, just denies facts until it can’t any more, then collapses. ^{(Sabeel – Cornerstone Issue 23 -Winter 2000)}

Thomas stopped having to rely on good old empirical evidence because he could recognise in his Jesus the goodness of God. Suddenly as he looked at his finger above that outstretched hand, he saw his hope poised above the wound. When you know God is so committed to you, you can hope. And that means everything.

When you know the depth of God’s commitment, and you hope in that, you will be transformed into a champion of that hope for other people who suffer. You will be able to teach people with integrity that the God who is to be trusted knows the betrayal that they know. You can point to the wounded hands that were raised and nailed with that betrayal. You can say that those hands seized that betrayal in hope. They and their bearer were raised and honoured by the God to whom they were lifted in hope. And now those hands are our hands: the hands of Christ. Let’s look at our own hands for a while in silence.                                      Amen

St. Thomas the Apostle

“We do not know… how can we know the way?”

Courageous master of the awkward question,

You spoke the words the others dared not say

And cut through their evasion and abstraction.

Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,

You put your finger on the nub of things

We cannot love some disembodied wraith,

But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.

Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,

Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.

Because He loved your awkward counter-point

The Word has heard and granted you your wish.

Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine

The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.

Malcolm Guite

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2019: John 20.1-18

Don’t hold on to me – go and tell them!

There’s something we haven’t done today that we always do at other communion services. We didn’t confess our sins to God.

We didn’t confess our sins because today we meet the risen Jesus. Jesus is risen, so everything is different. Jesus rising from death to life changes everything and everyone. Mary Magdalene, sadly weeping outside the tomb would have been filled with confusion and sadness. But her world changed, quite literally. The physical presence of her beloved Jesus, risen from death suddenly, utterly changed everything.

Confusion and sadness, guilt and remorse have their place. But not in the presence of the risen Jesus. His resurrection calls for pure joy. So when Mary Magdalene heard her name on the lips of the risen Jesus, she took hold of him – took hold of her beloved flesh and blood teacher; not some sort of apparition or ghost. She seized him; held onto her real, risen Jesus. Confusion, sadness, fear – all utterly swept away in her joy and adoration.

And that’s how we can experience the risen Jesus too. He is the one who made us, and who continues to re-make us daily in a miracle of gracious reconciliation. Jesus is worthy of our worship and praise.

A friend asked me what the resurrection was really about. Was it all about this atonement stuff; all about guilt and sacrifice and original sin?’ This is a strong tradition in the Christian faith, but I can’t see it having centre stage today – the day of resurrection.

The resurrection gospel says to me that the last word is not about guilt and sacrifice; it’s about joyful reunion, because the last word belongs to Jesus, not to us. The risen Jesus is the first and the last Word. Not only is he beyond the reach of guilt and sacrifice, he calls us beyond its reach too. ‘It’s done and dusted, finished, accomplished’, he said. I’ve dealt with everything. Come with me forever. I love you; I want you with me. The last Word is not about what we do at all, but what God has done in Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t wait until we get our lives straightened out. Resurrection is God seizing the initiative; God showing the way beyond struggle, despair and death to the place of new beginning; real new beginning that lets us turn from all that unwanted baggage we left at the Cross on Friday. The party can begin.

This party is a celebration of God coming from eternity through our death to meet us with a new birth: a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [a new birth] into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [all of us]. ^{1 Peter.1.3-4}

The resurrection of Jesus is the meeting place – the collision point where we learn the full extent of God’s passion for us. God in Jesus has done something incredible to be at one with us; crashed through into the heavy body of our anxiety, fear and helplessness; crashed through into the body of our mistrust and aggression – and become a part of that body. And because such a mortal body can’t possibly contain all the love and goodness and kindness being forced into it, it bursts asunder, and leaves only the new life remaining.

You’d have to think that means death – and it does. But Jesus, out of pure love; God, out of imaginative grace becomes the body which takes that death, and then swallows that death up in new life – in a resurrected body of love and goodness and kindness. A real one, that is here and now.

The afterlife we expect for ourselves and our loved ones? Maybe we expect something vague and different from what we know now; less fear; less suffering; certainly less guilt and remorse.

The risen Jesus today puts paid to all of that – nonsense he says. Don’t wait ‘til the afterlife for what is yours this very day. Real life is yours; real life with your God who loves you so much, right here and now, that nothing, not even death can stand in the way. And Jesus, by dying for us and rising again has ensured that our death doesn’t have to be our gateway to finding it. New life is ours now; new life is for everyone now.

Can you contain so much love? Can you ever imagine feeling worthy of it? These are irrelevant questions. Along with guilt, remorse and fear, feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness are shoved to one side by the warm, loving friend whom Mary Magdalene was the first to embrace upon his rising again.

That’s why we didn’t say confession today; because Jesus is risen. Today of all days, we don’t dwell on that stuff. He’s dealt with all of it. Today of all days, we must know that Jesus loves us just as we are. He didn’t wait for us to be perfect before he showed us he loves us to death and way beyond – to that collision point called the resurrection. He is here now; so let’s worship him – let’s renew our baptismal vows. He is risen; Alleluia!

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Reflections for Maundy Thursday 2019

O Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned in the majesty of heaven, when you came from God, you chose to be one who serves.

We adore you, because you laid aside the garment of your glory, and clothed yourself with the lowest humility, and serve your disciples by washing their feet.

Teach us to know what you have done, and to follow your example; deliver us from pride, jealousy and ambition, and make us ready to be subject to one another, and with lowliness, to serve one another for your sake,

O Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.            Parish Prayers # 231

I found this prayer recently, and loved the way it focussed on the tremendous paradox of who Jesus is, on the one hand, and the really ordinary, practical things he did.  Here’s a very old hymn that I think might have inspired this prayer.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the creator God of power and glory; who sits by right between the cherubim is taking upon himself the form of a servant.

He who is clothed with light as with a garment; takes off his coat and girds himself with a towel.

He to whom all creatures on earth and in heaven bow the knee: is kneeling in humility before his disciples to wash their feet.              From the Armenian

and here’s another

Wisdom, who orders the mighty waters above the sky: who gives the oceans their bounds and controls the seas heavenly wisdom is pouring water into a basin: and the ruler of the universe is washing the feet of the lowliest slave

From the Greek

These are lovely old hymns that take us into the awesome mystery of what was going on in the upper room that night.

But sometimes we can be drawn so far into the mystery that we forget the most amazing thing of all; yet that’s also to be found in these old hymns.

The most amazing thing to me is just how mundane this meal is that we read about tonight.

Certainly it’s a Passover meal, so it’s got all the ritual and symbolism wrapped up in it that we heard about in the Exodus reading. But it’s also something normal people did – and still do. The women would have been there, lighting the candles and saying the prayers. There would have been children there too, asking the old questions about the special foods.

It’s just a moment in some people’s ordinary lives – it could have been anyone’s moment – and he was there; one of them; one of us. He’s here now too – calling us to live out the same, practical, thoughtful love that he did. Just ordinary love.

It’s Maundy Thursday – the day we were told to be ordinary, loving people.

Love is the key to the kingdom of heaven: and the path to everlasting life.

Love makes human beings the sons and daughters of God: and heirs to his kingdom.

By love, corrupt nature is purified: and mortality puts on immortality, the earthly is transformed into the heavenly; and we creatures of dust and ashes are  raised to be children of light. From the Armenian

Reflections for Maundy Thursday 2019

O Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned in the majesty of heaven, when you came from God, you chose to be one who serves.

We adore you, because you laid aside the garment of your glory, and clothed yourself with the lowest humility, and serve your disciples by washing their feet.

Teach us to know what you have done, and to follow your example; deliver us from pride, jealousy and ambition,

and make us ready to be subject to one another, and with lowliness, to serve one another for your sake, O Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.    Parish Prayers # 231

I found this prayer recently, and loved the way it focussed on the tremendous paradox of who Jesus is, on the one hand, and the really ordinary, practical things he did.  Here’s a very old hymn that I think might have inspired this prayer.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the creator God of power and glory; who sits by right between the cherubim is taking upon himself the form of a servant.

He who is clothed with light as with a garment; takes off his coat and girds himself with a towel.

He to whom all creatures on earth and in heaven bow the knee: is kneeling in humility before his disciples to wash their feet.    From the Armenian

and here’s another

Wisdom, who orders the mighty waters above the sky: who gives the oceans their bounds and controls the seas heavenly wisdom is pouring water into a basin: and the ruler of the universe is washing the feet of the lowliest slave

From the Greek

These are lovely old hymns that take us into the awesome mystery of what was going on in the upper room that night.

But sometimes we can be drawn so far into the mystery that we forget the most amazing thing of all; yet that’s also to be found in these old hymns.

The most amazing thing to me is just how mundane this meal is that we read about tonight.

Certainly it’s a Passover meal, so it’s got all the ritual and symbolism wrapped up in it that we heard about in the Exodus reading. But it’s also something normal people did – and still do. The women would have been there, lighting the candles and saying the prayers. There would have been children there too, asking the old questions about the special foods.

It’s just a moment in some people’s ordinary lives – it could have been anyone’s moment – and he was there; one of them; one of us. He’s here now too – calling us to live out the same, practical, thoughtful love that he did. Just ordinary love.

It’s Maundy Thursday – the day we were told to be ordinary, loving people.

Love is the key to the kingdom of heaven: and the path to everlasting life.

Love makes human beings the sons and daughters of God: and heirs to his kingdom.

By love, corrupt nature is purified: and mortality puts on immortality, the earthly is transformed into the heavenly; and we creatures of dust and ashes are  raised to be children of light. From the Armenian

 

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Palm Sunday

Today, we march again behind the one who started all the Palm Sunday peace rallies – our King, Jesus. He marched in the face of the greatest military power earth had known. Jesus marched on an occupied city mounted on an awkward little beast of burden instead of a war-horse. And he marched not at the head of an army, but supported by a hopeful rabble of women, men and children.

We join those women, men and children who marched with him then, and the countless millions who’ve done so since. We march with the poor benighted Christians of today’s Holy Land who’d march if they could. But their road is yet again watched by threatening soldiers and now blocked by a wall. And if we can imagine it, we march today in a procession which is embracing the world, hour by hour as the sun rises on a new place; pilgrims, not soldiers, armed only with cries of mingled hope and pain, calling for peace, and after all these years, still calling the forces of violence and oppression to repent.

Like us, those first pilgrims marched with Jesus on the eve of a festival – for them it was Passover; for us, Holy Week and Easter. Their festival celebrated the ancient Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt. Our festival celebrates a rescue from the slavery of fear and isolation too – the very rescue that first Palm Sunday crowd cried out for. But the rescue didn’t happen in the way they expected. They cried out for rescue from the new slavery that oppressed them; Roman soldiers garrisoned beside their temple. They expected armed conflict.

Jesus did confront their oppressors. But instead of meeting violence with violence, he met it with the only thing that could bring about its end. He held firm to an incorruptible reverence for God’s passion for justice, mercy and forgiveness. And in doing so, he embodied the Peace of God.

What Jesus did exposed the shameful emptiness of the addiction to power and influence that still afflicts the world. What he offered us all, even his persecutors, was a vision of a whole human being. He was tortured and murdered but remained whole. Ultimately, by his choice to give his life for all people – for you and me too – Jesus transformed death. The grave could not hold such grace and peace. He rose, he lives, and we follow him.

We follow Jesus because he is the one who taught us how to truly honour life. He did it by giving his life away freely, instead of devaluing it by clinging to it through compromise. We follow Jesus because he is the one who taught us how to break a cycle of violence by letting evil expose itself rather than by meeting it with force. We follow Jesus because he’s the one who cherishes us when we’re brought low; he’s the one who’s with us even when we’re alone. We respond to his love which can adore us even when we cannot love ourselves. We follow Jesus because he loves us, and he calls us each by name.

Responding to his call can seem like that first Palm Sunday. It can seem that he’s calling us to certain failure; calling us to follow him to something that won’t make the slightest difference. Yet when we respond to his call we discover ourselves to be the person he believes us to be. He believes in us. As his disciples, we’ll become more like him; we’ll become whole. If we follow him – let him transform us into the people he believes in – then our wholeness will be his instrument of freeing others whom he calls too.

Palm Sunday marchers are pilgrims on the way to wholeness – on the way to the peace of God. We are pilgrims marching to help rescue all God’s creatures from slavery to fear and isolation. We march as pilgrims in the company of Jesus – our guide, our example, our friend, and our God. Amen