Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 6: Jer 17 5-10 Ps 1 1 C 15 12-20 Lk 6 17-26

Michael Leunig once pictured a person telling a priest about terrible mood swings: ‘Reverend Mother … One minute I’m up, the next minute I’m down…’

The priest replies, ‘You must pray to the patron saint of ups and downs, St Francis of a See-Saw’

There are plenty of ups and downs in today’s scriptures. Jeremiah is down on people who think living without God is an option, and then praises the life of faith to the skies. Psalm 1exalts the faithful, then comes down hard on the rest. Luke does the same in Jesus’s ‘sermon on the plain’ with its blessings followed by the woe sayings.

There are also physical ups and downs. Just before today’s passage, Jesus goes out to a mountain where he prays through the night. There, he calls his followers to come to him, and chooses the twelve from among them. Today, he goes down with these disciples to a plain, to a great crowd of his disciples and other people who’ve come from as far afield as Judea and Lebanon to hear him; many of them seeking to be healed. We’re told that all who came to be healed received that healing. Then when he’s done that, Jesus looks up at his disciples, and begins to teach.

I wondered when I read it whether Jesus was looking up from the side of the last sick person he’d just ministered to, or whether he’d sat down to teach in the customary way of Rabbis. Whatever the case, he’s gone from a high place of prayer to a low place where he offers his ministry. That’s where Jesus leads his disciples; from a high place of calling and prayer down to where the need is. He doesn’t keep them up the mountain to give them special, private knowledge. His model of leadership is the apprenticeship model. No sooner has he chosen the twelve than Jesus takes them down to where the people are so they can start work immediately. And we should note the order in which he works. First Jesus attends to the sick. Then he teaches about God’s love for the down and out.

And what have we, his apprentices learned? By beginning on the mountain where he prayed, then going to the plain where he heals, Jesus has shown us that we should first seek God’s strength for our work, and then go among the needy as hands-on care-givers. You’ve heard the saying ‘people should practise what they preach.’ Jesus does it this way; first seek God’s strength, then serve, and then teach about God’s love; how that calls us to respond to the needs of God’s world.

Jesus’s teaching is straightforward and challenging. He talks to the poor, the hungry, the grieving and the outcast, and declares them blessed now; blessed in the sight of God. And because they’ve either been cured and cleansed, or witnessed it happening to others, they’ll know personally how trustworthy his words are.

Amongst that crowd stand Jesus’s disciples – us. Jesus is talking to us at the same time as all the others, as if we’re also poor, hungry, grieving and outcast. By including us – addressing us in this way – Jesus is calling us as apprentices to identify with these suffering ones; to love these people the way he himself does; to come among them and look after them just as we’d want to be treated if we were poor or hungry or grieving or outcast. No surprise then; five verses on from today’s passage comes the golden rule. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

But on the way to the Golden Rule are the woe sayings – woe to the rich, the full, the frivolous and the popular. These are extremely strong words – inescapable in their meaning. Luke has a real thing about the right use of wealth – it’s still part of Mediterranean culture to view the accumulation of wealth with deep suspicion. The pie is only so big. In Luke’s culture, someone who has lots while anyone else goes hungry is nothing but a thief.

This is a very clear ethical issue in a traditional culture where a village is the normal size of a community. You can see who buys up the land of a neighbour who’s fallen on hard times. You can see who builds bigger storehouses while poor people beg for scraps.

Sometimes, you can shame a person like that into changing. And when you do, the rich man is somehow set free, like Zacchaeus was by Jesus. But what does it mean for us in a globalised world? Burning palm oil as so-called renewable-diesel. You may be able shame a rich village sheikh into changing. But can you shame a global trade system which trashes the lands of the poor and destroys nature so that rich countries can prosper even more? The trouble with this sort of inequity is that it’s pretty well invisible to much of the developed world; we’re blind to it.

Jesus and his disciples were surrounded by the poor, the hungry, the grieving, the sick and the possessed, just as we are today. The reason Jesus’s teachings carry the weight they do is that his teachings are perfectly reflected in his life. And the reason the Church has been able to pass on those teachings authentically is because, in every age, there have been some people and communities who have modelled their lives on the life of Jesus. Just like him, they’ve also put their lives on the line.

Throughout our history, there have always been people and communities who have heard today’s Gospel as if for the first time. By the Holy Spirit’s gift, they opened their lives, and let themselves be transformed by the Gospel.  

The effect of such transformed lives is tremendous. These people have brought the Holy Spirit’s fire of renewal to their Church community in their own lifetimes, and they’ve passed on that heritage to us.

We saw today how Jesus went to the people – regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion or social standing. They came from everywhere; from Lebanon down to Jerusalem. And he simply went among them unconditionally, ministering first; dealing with explanations later – that’s the model he’s given us.

Now it’s our turn; now we are the bearers of his Gospel of new life; new birth into the realm of God’s love for all. May God give us the grace to live the gift of this new life unreservedly, and to hand it on authentically to coming generations. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 5:   Isa 6, Lk 5

The other day, I asked Vicky, “When you have an experience of the divine, do you think it means God wants something from you?” Vicky looked a little bit scandalised. But on reflection, she seemed to concede that there might be something in it. It just needed to be expressed differently. So we tried saying it another way. When we have an experience of the divine, we feel uplifted and transformed. We feel as if we can do extraordinary things. But it’s way beyond our experience, and we think God ought to know what we should do next. So then we ask God what we can do. God’s direction – our response – Chicken and Egg?

Let’s look at today’s readings. If we think about what we just heard from Isaiah, there’s a bit of both – direction and response. Isaiah has a vision of the throne of grace, and sees himself exposed in its light as ‘a man of unclean lips’. Peter’s reaction is the same in the gospel to the revelation of Christ’s power; ‘leave me for I am a sinner’. Two people have a vision of God; in their case, their response is to feel self-conscious and embarrassed.

But God’s response – Jesus’s response – says that’s not necessary; it’s a response that affirms and enables. We see Isaiah and Peter given their life’s calling. Isaiah is called to the life of a prophet; Peter is called to the life of evangelist and apostle. This is a calling which comes both from within them, and from without – it’s a meeting of two lines of music that will accomplish wonderful harmony

I suppose in each case you could still say that God did want something from them. But you might prefer to say that God gave them something – something that many people search for all their lives, but without success. Isaiah and Peter are both given great purpose in life. Their lives are transformed.

That’s a spectacular feeling – at once bewildering and exhilarating. A friend of ours was talking about his son who had just finished a science degree in biology, and landed a job on a research vessel studying blue-fin tuna.

As he lugged another stack of fresh tuna steaks home (surplus to the experiment), he asked his parents, ‘Is it really work, when you’re doing something you love so much? When do they stop the party?’

Neither Isaiah nor Peter ended up having a life you could call a party, but excitement, challenge, purpose, seeing lives transformed, and the world turned upside down – I don’t think you’d turn that down for anything.

So did God ask something of them, or give them something? It’s a bit of both really. It’s something to do with becoming aware of the fact that we share this universe with God, and that we see things differently because of this awareness. You don’t judge yourself in the same way. Isaiah and Peter found themselves in the presence of the divine and automatically thought of themselves as unworthy. But that wasn’t what God wanted of Isaiah – it wasn’t what Jesus wanted of Peter.

Isaiah and Peter only appeared unworthy in their own human eyes. In the divine presence, both of them were given the gift of seeing themselves differently. The Psalmist puts it this way: …on the day I called, you answered me; you put new strength within my soul. ^138.3

So that question I asked at the beginning…does God want something from you…I think the answer is yes.

First, God wants you to see yourself differently; positively.

The other thing about these encounters is that God gives the person a life’s work to accomplish. But it’s worded in such a way that you can see it differently from being simply a command to be a prophet or apostle or evangelist. It’s as though God is looking at you from way outside your life – from its beginning and its end and beyond, yet at the same time, seeing you from within the pit of your stomach – divining your deepest yearnings – and all that at once. So when God asks, ‘whom shall I send?’, you answer that that’s just the sort of person you are.

So in the end, when we have an experience of the divine, it’s one of the two or three moments in life when we are being offered ourselves. Our deepest self is rescued from being unhappy or out of place; rescued from doing something that doesn’t give life; rescued from seeing what we’re doing as being unworthy.

You or I may be given a new way of seeing who we are and what we’re doing. Or we may be given a way to move forward – move on to something that we can only do now, because of the new way we can see ourselves right now.

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 4C:  Lk 4 21f & 1 C 13

With the bushfires threatening Tasmania and Victoria this week, my mind is drawn back up the hill where everyone makes one particular preparation for the bushfire season. They have a little tin box or a small bag near the door containing family photographs, documents, and essential medicines that they want to grab if they ever have to flee a bushfire. Different things are important to each one of us, but it’s striking how small a container can be big enough for the absolute essentials. So many things we think are essential for life aren’t really.

Those people Jesus offends in the synagogue today; they believed that from a spiritual perspective, they had their essentials in the bag. They were ready for their sudden exit if it came. They were children of Abraham and Sarah, children of the Promise; God’s favoured ones. But Jesus tells them about the time God’s favour was given only to a starving Lebanese widow; and another time when God’s favour was shown only to a Syrian general with a skin disease, and not to the children of the promise; just to people God wanted to bless, regardless of their religion.

Jesus tries to tell those people in the synagogue that being a child of the Promise is not the essential thing; the essential thing is God’s compassion; God’s love for the outsider, the poor, and for those who suffer. If poverty and suffering do come our way, they’re just the occupational hazards of being mortal. But they’re in no way signs that God’s love had dried up. Look what happened to Jesus himself! God’s love was most deeply present in the way he shared our mortality – our occupational hazard!

What if somebody asked you to name the absolute essentials of our being Christian – what it is that sets us apart from people who aren’t Christians?

I suspect one of the first things we’d name is something called faith. And we might also mention hope; that we believe we can bear suffering better than we otherwise might because we have hope. So we might say that faith and hope are two of the absolute essentials of our Christian life – two things we have in that box by the door. But today, did we hear Paul say that they aren’t?

Chapter 13 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church is perhaps the best known of all his writings. We hear it time and time again at weddings and funerals. But as is so often the case with very familiar words, we may not hear what they actually say. Is faith an essential? Paul says, “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing.” Nothing!? So is he saying we don’t need faith in that little box of essentials we grab as we rush out the door? That Lebanese widow and the Syrian general were neither of them of the “true faith”, remember?

The faith and hope we’ve got in that box by the door are really important; don’t get me wrong. But they don’t happen in a vacuum; they belong to the ‘still more excellent way’ that Paul introduces chapter 13 with.

People say to me “I don’t have enough faith”. I say it too. “I don’t see any chance of hope”, we say. Paul tells us that we don’t have to; it’s not our job. We don’t have to be the engine-room that generates these things because God is. Listen again to verse 7: [Love] “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So it’s love that does it – it’s God who does it!

Love bears all things. What we have to carry through life – we don’t have to carry alone, because of God’s love for us, God is carrying it all with us. If we’re hurt, God’s love hurts with us. And faith and hope? What does it mean that it’s not just us but love that does the believing and hoping?

Think about the people who love you. They believe in you, they hope in you because they love you. Their faith in you, the hopes they hold for you are because they love you. It’s not something you’ve done; it’s not something they do. It’s a gift; God’s free gift of love. And today’s gospel tells us there are no prerequisites for receiving God’s love – the people of the synagogue in Nazareth would have seen that Lebanese widow and the Syrian general as outsiders, but Jesus reminded the Synagogue of their stories to tell them that no-one is an outsider to God’s love.

Love believes all things, hopes all things. There they are – faith and hope – bound together with love. Faith, hope and love endure – the absolute essentials; the things we have by the door to grab as we leave. Are we being told today that love is the container for the faith and hope? Or are we the box, and God, in love, puts faith and hope in us? All these are lovely possibilities, yet sometimes we lose faith and hope.

But if I understand Jesus and Paul correctly, it really won’t matter if we look inside and find the box empty sometimes. If we lose faith – lose hope, it’s not the end. Jesus lost both of them too. And even if we feel like we have no faith and hope at all, that can be okay too. God’s love for us looks after that. Remember that Lebanese widow? She had food containers she couldn’t fill during the drought, but God made sure she always had enough oil and meal in them. ^{1 Kings 17}

It’s out of our hands. God’s is the faith; God’s is the hope, God’s is the love. And for some wonderful reason known only to God, God’s love for us means that God places faith in us; God places hope in us. Our part is to recognise this love and to know that it’s ready by our doorways – by all our doorways – to grab, not for ourselves alone, but to share with everyone we meet – because it’s theirs too. It’s not emergency survival stuff for us; it’s love; it’s meant to bind us together. It will never run out; it will never be withheld. We’ll be okay. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 7C: Gen 45 3-11, 15, Ps 37 1-11, 40-41, 1 Cor 15 35-50, Lk 6 27-38

Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery. Today, we saw his gracious reunion with them. That story is a chilling reminder of just how bad sibling rivalry can get. Please think back to your childhood for a moment? If you had a brother or sister at home and your parents were out for a while, try to remember the way you greeted them when they got home. Was it always a scene of joyous, loving reunion? Or were you playing beautifully with each other, and so absorbed in your play that you didn’t even notice their arrival? Or was the reunion perhaps less than ideal?

My parents would usually arrive home to at least two raised voices, each of us putting a strong case for the other’s punishment. Our parents discovered yet again that they’d returned to be changed into judges required to umpire a quarrel. If they were out for a long time, phone calls took on the same noisy function. It was, of course, very wrong to tell tales; but reporting serious issues was a different matter.

Today, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians reminds us how such quarrels and requests for adjudication were communicated in the days before telephones and when journeys took months. I had the chance to re-read the whole of 1^st Corinthians on Tuesday and I was struck by how many times Paul wrote that someone had informed him of this or that dispute amongst the people of this church he’d founded in Corinth. Either they’d written to him, or they’d travelled to find him.

First Corinthians is very much a letter sent to settle disputes – and some of them remarkably petty. These recent Christians have been bellyaching publicly about each other and about Paul. Some have been surprisingly selfish; holding communal feasts where the rich Christians eat everything – including communion – before the poorer ones even have time to get there. ^{1 Cor 11.17-34}  Some people are also trying to set themselves up as having more important spiritual gifts than everyone else. ^{1 Cor 12} Understandably, Paul calls the Corinthian Christians spiritual infants ^{1 Cor 3.1-3}; he writes that they are his children, and he is their father.^{1 Cor 4.14-17}.

But as he corrects and rebukes them, time and time again, he presents them with a tremendous vision of the transforming power of Jesus’s love. Three weeks ago, we heard his hymn to love as the answer to their disputes about who had the more important spiritual gifts. As an alternative to their bickering pride – the great leveller – Paul presented these new Christians with God’s Love as the unstoppable force for universal exaltation – raising up the whole creation.

Two weeks ago, we heard Paul remind everyone of the Gospel which had called them into community as a church, and then last week, he went on to deal with voices in the community saying there is no resurrection of the dead. This week, Paul seems to be tackling one or more of the community intellectuals who’ve been offering their own versions of what resurrection must look like. It’s not easy to determine what they’ve been saying; we only hear one end of the ‘phone call’; but they’ve infuriated Paul. Many scholars speculate that these dissident community members are influenced by a philosophy of their day – Middle-Platonism – which saw the physical realm as being of a lesser order than the spiritual. If they believed this, they wanted to reject Paul’s teaching about our resurrection being physical.

One recent scholar offers quite a new insight. She points out that the almost universally accepted Stoic philosophy of that time would have had these dissidents arguing that the resurrection world will be an exact replica of the current one, as Stoicism says the universe repeats itself in an endless cycle of decay and carbon-copy rebirth. Imagine how that might suck the hope out of a community!

Paul responds, as we just heard, that the resurrection body is not the same as the one which dies, and yet it’s absolutely in continuity with that mortal body. He offers a metaphor from nature to argue this; that death and resurrection are like planting a seed or a grain which must be utterly lost so the new life dormant within it might awaken.  ³⁶‘What you sow doesn’t come to life unless it dies.’ And the new life form is of a completely different order from the seed it springs from.

The ‘fool’ that Paul challenges should accept the wisdom behind this resurrection as God’s – and that this is a reason for hope. And if that ‘fool’ wants to pontificate about the universe, Paul says that God is way ahead of any amateur philosopher, who might want to splinter a faction from the Church simply in order to become its leader of a group. God has the universe covered too. Thus Nicola started us off this morning with St Francis’s Canticle of the Sun. ‘All creatures of our God and King.’

Paul tells that ‘fool’ in Corinth not to try to subordinate the Christian Gospel to the popular philosophy of the time. It’s like an onion seed telling God it’s decided it’ll grow into a river red gum. Paul says your philosophy won’t determine the life form God calls out of the seed you sow. ⁵⁰‘The perishable doesn’t inherit the imperishable’. No; whatever imperishable existence springs from you will inherit the qualities you’ve cultivated in this perishable life of yours. So look out! This is quite a roasting.

Like all of Paul’s teaching, it’s primarily aimed at the welfare of a community; it’s aimed at community cohesion, and most important of all, on community reliance on Jesus. Only then can we consider resurrection life. And what is that?

This is where we return to Joseph – and incidentally, to the same message as we find in today’s Gospel. Joseph offered forgiveness and new life to those brothers of his who’d only narrowly been convinced not to kill him, but rather to sell him into a life of slavery in a foreign country. They had unintentionally sent Joseph as a seed of God’s people to be planted in foreign soil. And if you go home and read his story, you’ll see that he brought life to that country where otherwise there would have been death. He also transformed that country into one which could provide salvation to all the countries surrounding it. That’s resurrection-life in action.

Every day we can discern glimpses of resurrection-life here and now – in the lives real people live. May these insights be planted as seeds among us and germinate to enable this community to flourish as a resurrection-life-bearer to the world. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 3: Neh 8 1-3, 5-6, 8-10, Ps 19, 1 Cor 12-31, Lk 4  14-21

Like lots of people, I have a family story that shapes the way I see myself. On Mum’s side, my grandmother was a daughter of engineers and miners. She was a schoolteacher, artist and calligrapher. She died of diabetes when my mother was six. Her husband, my grandfather, was a son of farmers and miners, and the grandson of two convicts. He was a music teacher and a violinist.

On Dad’s side, there were tea merchants, missionaries, butchers and dentists. Both my grandfathers were Methodist Lay Preachers. So if you read all that tea-drinking, preaching, writing, mission, criminality and music as the story of where I come from, it makes some sense of where I am now. I feel blessed to have this story. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live without it.

But imagine thinking that you didn’t have a story, and then suddenly discovering that you had one after all. It could change your life. Suddenly, you’d belong. You’d have a ‘because’ in your life. All sorts of things about you might start to make sense. And with a ‘because’ in your life, a sense of purpose and belonging might encourage and shape you.

That’s what happened in today’s reading from Nehemiah. We met dispirited, uncertain people —returned exiles—whose immediate ancestors had also been born in exile. These people were gathered together by the priest, Ezra, and he told them their true ancestral story; the story of where they come from and why they were a nation. With their story came both pain and new heart. Maybe they couldn’t cope with the enormity of it all, but as they listened, purpose flooded back in.

This Australia Day weekend, this scene from the book of the prophet Nehemiah calls me to imagine Aboriginal people around the world suddenly having all their Law, Language, Land and Tradition restored to them – a sense of what had been lost, and a vision of its restoration. I get the weeping.

Nehemiah had overseen the rebuilding of the city. Now, through the ministry of Ezra and the Levites, we see God set about rebuilding the people themselves.

The books of the Law of Moses are still written on scrolls that you can see being read each week in Synagogues. These books tell the story of the commitment there is between God and people. It’s a story of belonging; a story of a people’s heritage; the reason they are a people; their purpose as a people. And it tells in great detail how they are to be a healthy, life-giving community. We saw Ezra’s reading give all this back to people who’d lost it generations ago – gave them back their belonging. And no sooner were they given it than they celebrate and feast, but importantly, to include others. Eat hearty, but make sure other people can too.

It was a transforming moment for these people – hearing their story afresh, with understanding. It poses a question for us; what do we expect will happen to us when we hear the Scriptures read as a gathered community? Does something happen?

What does it do to us when we followers of Jesus hear him this morning proclaiming his mission statement – our mission statement? What’s it meant to do to us? What’s it meant to feel like? Let me ask the journalistic question—what does it feel like to hear this as coming from your own mouth – from your own heart?

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Just imagine if you didn’t have a story, and someone suddenly gave you this one – not just any story – this one. What if they gave you this story that puts you in a huge picture, filled with a family you never imagined was yours, and a call to belong and join in!

We are most fully ourselves when we are connected – when we are part of a shared story of God’s extravagant generosity. Today we heard Ezra tell the returned exiles: this is your story and it’s a story to be shared in word and action most particularly with those who have nothing to give back. We are shown what this means for us when Jesus stands up in the synagogue and declares his commitment to the poor, to captives to the sick and oppressed. We are shown what this means for us when Jesus lives this story and dies to protect those sick, oppressed captives.

The Christian life can only be lived out in relationship; in community; in care and compassion. And central to the way we live it out is a shared commitment to the poor, to the weak and the marginalized. It is not the work of a moment, neither is it the work of momentary grand gestures and inspiring events; though they may sometimes happen. The Christian life is lived out by ordinary people who grow in our sense of belonging, care and inclusion. It’s simple, and lovely.

As we think about the on handing of stories, we remember that our children soon return to school. Can we see their return in a new way. Education is the sacred responsibility of each generation – handing on the story of how we’ve become who we are. Our children learn how and why they belong; they discover what gifts they have, and become equipped to care for their community when they become adults. Here, we seek to do that handing on of the story in the kids’ corner, and we are partners with other groups who seek to do it with us in the wider community – SJYS, Dulwich, MM, SLWS – partners honouring this co-missioning we share.

We call our community the body of Christ, so we seek to live a life anointed by the Spirit; to proclaim good news; to offer our story to people who might have lost theirs; to release people from the prison of isolation; to offer a vision of life to people who see no purpose, and release people from the slaveries of our age. Jesus has this day declared our belonging and our purpose in this mission statement.

Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany + 2:  John 2 1-11 – The Wedding at Cana

Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and bless what you have given us.

Leaning there were six stone water jars…each holding 20 or 30 gallons. There’s a lot of food and drink that gets consumed in John’s gospel … an awful lot. So I thought it a good idea to say grace first.

In a former life, I used to teach English to people who’d come to live in Australia. One of my favourite times then was teaching groups of tram drivers and conductors in a tram depot in Melbourne. In one class, I had a student called Joe who’d come from Italy. In class conversations, it appeared that Joe seemed to spend most of his available energy on bottling home-grown vegetables, making tomato sauce and, of course, ensuring a plentiful supply of strong red wine. At our end-of-course party, Joe brought several flagons of his amazingly strong, rugged wine for everyone to enjoy. In fact he brought so much, I was worried he might run himself a bit short.

I asked him if he would, but he smiled comfortably: “Peda, I make-about-a tirdy gallon evera year; iss anuffa,” said Joe, with the serene confidence of a man fully prepared for any emergency life might bring. I think of Joe when I hear the story of the wedding at Cana and the hundred-and-thirty odd gallons of wine (500 litres).

A lot of church history … and a lot of the history of religions generally … tells us stories of people who’ve tried to get the food and drink thing under control so they can be free to concentrate on “higher” things … spiritual things.

But John’s gospel says that separating the spiritual from the physical is not an option. John is much more concerned than the other three gospels with physical things; things you can touch, taste, see, smell or feel. It’s John’s gospel which starts by telling us that God who was the Word became a physical being in order to share our material existence with us: the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us^1:14.

God enjoys us so much – God is so fascinated by the things that make up our lives – that nothing short of being one of us could adequately express that delight and fascination. The Church celebrates the fact that a risen, ascended, physical, human body is forever a part of the Trinity we worship as our God; God is interested in bodies, and as today’s Gospel reminds us, God likes food, drink and parties.

But in today’s story, this fascination with joining in the fun doesn’t seem to grab Jesus immediately. His Mother tells him that the wine has run out, and like any sensible Mediterranean guest, he asks what that has to do with them. He also adds, “My hour has not yet come.” It hardly sounds like his mother’s message was warmly welcomed. Yet undeterred, she turned to the servants and said they should do whatever Jesus told them to do.

We might be excused for feeling baffled here, but Johannine scholars Sherri Brown and Frank Moloney highlight the example of the Mother of Jesus here as a disciple par excellence. Just like John the Baptist had shown in the previous chapter, she showed true discipleship. In John’s Gospel, this means trusting entirely in Jesus, pointing people’s eyes towards him and teaching us to listen to him. The Mother of Jesus uttered a prayer; she was met with the discouraging deflection that we can so often feel as God’s silence, and yet she trusts whatever he will do, and insists that others should also trust. She teaches us that prayers are heard.

Our next puzzle is this initial, seeming reluctance of Jesus to act – was he worried whether this wedding feast should be the place to launch his public ministry? That would be understandable – once the course was set, there was no turning back. But there may also be a very human, kindly element to his hesitation too. Around the Mediterranean, a person’s honour is their most valuable possession. If Jesus were publicly to fix the wine shortage, his host would lose face. Maybe Jesus was thinking of a way to fix the wine supply, and preserve his host’s honour at the same time, so the wedding banquet could go on in uninterrupted joy.

In any case, that’s precisely what he manages to do. Jesus meets two needs; the one his mother brought to him there’s not enough wine, and also the fact that his host’s honour is at stake. The way he meets these two needs is ingenious. He has the servants do everything; they fill the great water jars, they draw the new wine and they take it to the master of ceremonies. And, I’d guess on that day, they also begin their discipleship to this kind, thoughtful man. The MC and the guests think the host provided this wine. Two needs are beautifully met, more wine is provided, and the honour of the host is preserved. And for us, Christ’s Glory is revealed.

Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and bless what you have given us. There’s a link between this traditional table grace and the story of Jesus at the wedding of Cana. When we sit down to eat and we say this grace, we’re saying that Jesus is at once a guest at our table, but that at the same time, he’s the one who provides what we have on the table; just as Jesus was an invited guest at the wedding, but at the same time, provided that huge quantity of wine for the feast.

Jesus is a guest at each meal; at our dinner table and at the wedding feast. But at the same time, he’s the one who provides what is served up to him and to everyone else.

We take all this a few steps further in our gathering today … and this is where that other comment of Jesus to his mother needs to be mentioned … My hour has not yet come …. When Jesus talks about his ‘hour having come’ in John’s gospel, he’s talking about his crucifixion (Jn 12.23–13.1). Soon, we’ll be declaring together that we are the body of Christ – that by our gathering, we somehow constitute Christ in this place. Then in our prayer over the gifts, we affirm that everything we give to Jesus has come from him in the first place. And finally, as we rehearse the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper …this is my body, given for you…this is my blood poured out for you … we declare that the bread and wine on our altar are somehow Christ in this place. This extraordinary chain of symbols gives us the Eucharist, where, as a friend of mine once put it, Jesus is both the host and main course. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

The baptism of our Lord:   Isa 43 1-7 Ps 29 Acts 8 14-17 Lk 3 15-22

Imagine we were going to write a handbook for a Messiah. “Purpose Statement: You have three years to transform the world from its present trajectory down the drain and set us on course for a new and eternal hope for life in all its fulness.” How would you suggest this person begin the task? Current wisdom advises you start with a bang: fireworks and fanfare, a huge display of power and importance, maybe a military parade, some feel-good presentations of our art and culture – put our civilization’s depth and greatness on show; that’ll get the message out there!

But no; today we see Jesus join the masses – people who almost certainly didn’t feel good about themselves; who knew their faults but didn’t know what to do about them; who greeted any illness with the fear that it might be their last; who experienced life as broken and painful; who felt cut off from God – like lots of us, really. Jesus was born one of us, and didn’t stop there.

This is why he went to John to be baptised; to join with the crowds of people who went down from Jerusalem and Judea to cross the Jordan River and receive John’s baptism of repentance; a baptism which enabled them to turn back to life within the relationship God meant to have with them.

There’s a pattern in the Gospels of Jesus leaving the land in solidarity with outsiders. The first time is soon after his birth when he has to go to Egypt as a refugee. The next time is the event we honour today; his baptism. And then during the years of his ministry we read of him travelling to the other side of Lake Galilee, and going north into Lebanon. Each time, we find him together with outsiders.

Of all people, Jesus didn’t need a baptism of repentance. Ever since the early Church Fathers and Mothers, we’ve puzzled over Jesus receiving John’s baptism. In their reflections on this paradox of the perfect penitent, our forebears came up with important wisdom that’s always worth looking at again. Let’s journey with these early Christians as our guides. ^{Cf Ancient Xtian Commentary on Scripture NT 1a; IVP 2001,  pp. 49ff}

One anonymous Church Father or Mother wrote that in receiving John’s baptism, Jesus endorsed John’s teaching and practice. John knew God’s people do need to leave behind the parts of our lives that separate us from God and turn back to God. The way we’re given to do this is to imitate Jesus and receive baptism. We’ve been privileged to witness the astonishing power of this here with our Persian families who’ve risked their lives to receive baptism. And those among us who’ve received baptism as adults or confirmation can also attest to its transformative power.

St Jerome saw three reasons for Jesus receiving John’s baptism. “First, because he was born a mortal, that he might fulfil all justice and humility of the law. (Jesus is born and lives his solidarity with us and by grace offers us a salvation we cannot earn.) Second, that by his baptism, he might confirm John’s baptism. And third, that by sanctifying the waters of the Jordan through the descent of the dove, he might show the Holy Spirit’s advent in the baptism of believers.” ^{P.51 citing CCL 77:18-19} (This means our life is transformed from our baptism; a life limited by our biology becomes a life empowered for eternity by the breath of God – new, eternal life which doesn’t have to wait until we die before it starts  ^{See Tom Wright Surprised by Hope SPCK 2007  p.168})  

The Assyrian Bishop, Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote that in receiving baptism, Jesus “identified himself with that part of society outside the law of grace, in which we also take part. The Lord became … like a common person from among the people.” ^{MKGK 101 in ACCS p.51} Bishop Theodore sees Jesus joins the queue with people just like us who head down to the river looking for a new start and guidance for the way ahead. You can really trust someone who’ll do that with you.

Bishop Cromatius of Constance wrote that “the Lord did not want to be baptised for his own sake but for ours…” ^{CCL 9a: 244-45 in ACCS p.51.} This sounds very like the reason for Jesus’s crucifixion. We know that Jesus died for us so that we might be ransomed from the power of evil. Bp Cromatius realised that Jesus received baptism for this too. His baptism was in direct continuity with his self-sacrifice on the Cross.

Abp John Chrysostom of Constantinople saw it similarly to Bishop Cromatius. Chrysostom wrote that Jesus meant, “I have come to do away with the curse that is appointed for the transgression of the law. So I must first therefore fulfil it, and having delivered you from its condemnation, bring it to an end. … This is the very purpose of my assuming flesh and coming to you.” ^{Matthew, Homily 12.1 PG 57.203 in ACCS p.52-3.}  So Chrysostom is also linking Jesus’s baptism with his birth and his crucifixion.

What are we to make of all this – the Baptism of our Lord?

I think we can answer that by expanding on that last teaching of Abp Chrysostom – the linking of Jesus’s birth, baptism and crucifixion.

Jesus didn’t go to John for Baptism because he needed it. He didn’t receive John’s baptism to re-connect himself with God. Jesus received John’s baptism to re-connect us with God. His receiving baptism transforms the baptism we receive. It’s the same reason he came among us, born as the child of Bethlehem we welcomed at Christmas. Jesus was born so that any born on Earth might know we are all God’s children too. His being born transforms all births. It’s the same reason he lived the servant-life of gracious, beautiful, healing love that he did. Jesus lived that life so we might have a model before us of the freedom there is in choosing a life of self-offering and love. His choice to live a mortal life has transformed all life.

We need to be baptised; we need to know we are God’s children; we need to know the joyful freedom of a life of loving service. It’s all there before us in the life of Jesus, and it’s also there in his death. We see him on the Cross; Jesus again in our place. And we see him taking on himself the pain of everything that separates us from God; cruelty, deceit, fear, pride, injustice, selfish rage, greed, death. And we see these divisive powers all destroy themselves in their attempt to destroy him. As we rise with him from the waters of baptism, we remember that he rises again from death, and we will too. We know too that because of the grace, humility and love of Jesus, nothing can ever separate us from the Love of God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Epiphany:  Isa 60 1-6 Ps 72 1-7 10-14 Eph 3.1-12 Mt 2.1-12

I visited my Mum’s parish in Melbourne last Sunday and I was particularly struck by the welcome on their pew-sheet. All baptized Christians, regardless of their denomination, church affiliation or irregular or non-attendance, are welcomed, invited, and encouraged to receive Communion with us or to come forward for a blessing. One of the most important things God calls us to do is to welcome visitors of all kinds to participate as completely as they can in the Church community.

So I remember being shocked once when at a Requiem Eucharist I announced a welcome to participate for communicant members of all denominations, and afterwards, someone told me they felt I’d excluded them. They weren’t communicants anywhere else, so they saidt I was explicitly excluding them.

It’s hard when a welcome is heard as a keep-out notice. There are several questions this raises – do we have conditions of entry; conditions of participation; should we? A useful test is to ask the old WWJD question – What would Jesus do?

This is particularly the question to ask at the feast of the Epiphany; the day when the baby Jesus hosted outsiders – foreign astrologers whose practice is frowned on by many parts of the Church and by Judaism. Epiphany is a good time to consider the extent of Christ’s welcome. Epiphany celebrates the day when representatives of the known world were called and received into the presence of the God of Israel – welcomed. Who was welcomed to Bethlehem? Was there anyone Jesus would have left out? Let’s think carefully about everyone who was actually welcomed at Bethlehem. Who did Jesus have there to celebrate his birth?

First, there are his parents. We know Joseph and Mary aren’t married yet. If you don’t think Matthew’s trying to make a point of this, look back a chapter at his record of Jesus’s family tree. You find four other women named there who were illegal or unclean according to the Hebrew Scriptures (Tamar – incest, Rahab – prostitution, Ruth – forbidden inter-racial marriage and Bathsheba – adultery).

So if what we are seeing in our Holy Family is the first ever Christian gathering, this bids fair for a very broad-minded Church indeed. But it doesn’t stop there. Luke’s gospel that we heard at Christmas tells us that Mary and Joseph have to use a manger, an animal-feed trough, as a bed for Jesus. The earliest Church began in a cave at the back of the house; the place where the animals lived. The story gives us a donkey, cattle and sheep as Jesus’s fellow tenants; doubtless accompanied by their attendant insects and parasites. So the Church is more universal still.

Then there are shepherds; again in Luke’s account. Shepherds in the Middle East are still mostly children – kids aged between 5 and 11. So the earliest congregation included little children too. And of course they’d have brought their sheep and goats with them. I wonder if Mary and Joseph had trouble keeping the sheep from nibbling at the straw that Jesus was lying on. The goats would have eaten the swaddling clothes as well, given half a chance. And who could ever forget the smell of a billy goat? So there’s the inaugural service of the blessing of the animals.

Then there’s the star and its attendant Magi. A Magus is a magician; Deut. 18 declares such a person abhorrent. So abhorrent people are there, and Matthew placidly records their coming. How much more broad minded do you want to get!?

Finally, there are angels in their thousands. I think we can safely say they enjoy universal approval. But what a gathering! Parents of dubious status from an even more questionable pedigree; the animal, vegetable, insect, mineral and heavenly kingdoms all represented; and strange foreigners who seek a king – and risk the baby’s life by telling Herod about him! That’s as broad-minded a church as you could imagine, isn’t it. And the infant Jesus is there in the middle of it all; God, unflappably gracious, apparently unfussed by the wild diversity of angels, people and creatures all gathered under one rocky roof. And they were all invited, or else co-opted as hosts. This was no accident.

So WWJD? Is what we’ve imagined so far about God’s welcome – about Jesus’s inclusivity – consistent with Scripture? The psalm today reminds us of God’s special concern for the poor, the needy, the helpless, the oppressed and the violated. The reading from Isaiah joyfully proclaims the gathering in of a scattered family, all guided by the brightness of God’s light. And the epistle is a prayer for God’s wisdom to be revealed throughout Earth, and indeed beyond it.

That’s quite all-inclusive. And Matthew points us in two further directions – one at the beginning and the other at the end of his gospel. Matthew begins his gospel with Jesus’s genealogy. He begins that genealogy with Abraham. The most important moment in Abraham’s story is when God promises that through him, all families of Earth will be blessed; not only believers; not just all humans; all families. The tableau we finally have before us in the crib today shows us this blessing fulfilled.

We find the other direction Matthew points us in right at the end of the gospel. Jesus commits his followers to work to fulfil God’s desire – Go…and make disciples of all nations. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

The tableau before us at Epiphany is a call to us to recognise what God truly desires – universal blessing; grace; peace – a call to recognise God’s desire for all to be gathered in the divine presence, and having recognised God’s desire, to choose to work for it with Jesus.

Epiphany calls us to that mission; to invite the world into the presence of Jesus – all families of Earth. He’s hardly intimidating.

Epiphany also challenges us to ask how wide we can open our stable door; how wide we can open our hearts. Epiphany challenges us to open our hearts wider still – to risk what we can’t yet cope with. And it also challenges us to go outside; go to the other and trust that Jesus goes with us; goes with us to whatever family of Earth he leads us.                                                                                                   Amen

Rev’d Dr Phillip Tolliday

Mk 3:21-31, 7:10-12, Lk 8-40-56, Jn 19:25-27, 1&2 Timothy

Standing here I am catapulted back to Christ Church, Hamilton in Victoria. It’s the First Sunday after Christmas, 1987 and, as a newly ordained Deacon it’s my responsibility to preach my first sermon. The parish is observing the day as the Feast of the Holy Family. Nervous? You bet! My training rector, himself trained in Zimbabwe is sitting in his stall, head cocked attentively, and wondering ‘Let’s see what they teach these young things in Theological College these days!’

As I launch out into the deep—and as things turn out, it is pretty deep water that I’m negotiating—I slowly gain more confidence and then, before I know it, the sermon’s over. Said too much, inexperienced preachers always do: a surfeit of information, a deficit of reflection. Service over and disrobing in the vestry, my training rector says to me the words I can still hear today. ‘Well, you’ve just destroyed much of what I’d believed about the Christian notion of family.’ That’s not good. It’s not really what you want to hear from your boss on your first week. I remember saying something like, ‘Well, perhaps it might be best if you preach at the 10am because I don’t think I can fix it between now and then.’ Only to be told, ‘Fix it? Who said anything about fixing it? Ach, man, it was great.’ Actually I’m not sure it was great – but I am sure that Warrick (for that was his name) was both great and gracious with his callow assistant curate.

Looking at the Christmas Creche it’s easy to imagine that the Holy Family is rather like a first century transplant of the modern nuclear family—despite the fact that the latter is somewhat more fissured and permeable than it was when I first considered this theme thirty years ago. But it’s a curious fact that for Christianity the familial is, right from the time Jesus’s youth, subjected to a measure of critical scrutiny that can make some of us a bit uncomfortable. Alright, so it can make some of us feel very uncomfortable.

Family can touch us in places that we sometimes don’t want to go and many of us can resonate with those well-known sentiments that open the novel Anna Karenina: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ So, how did things stand with Jesus and his family?

Let’s begin with the gospel and with Luke’s story of the journey to Jerusalem. On the return journey to their village Mary and Joseph presume that Jesus is with the group of travellers. Unhappily they are wrong. It takes nothing less than a return journey to Jerusalem and three whole days of searching before they find him: sitting in the Temple. For years we had this encounter softened for us by the delightful cadences of Elizabethan English. ‘And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.’ That’s code for ‘And just what is the meaning of THIS!!’

Is Jesus contrite? Is he Apologetic? Not a bit of it. Instead, he asks them a question, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ That’s not really the response that Joseph wants to hear! Of course Luke tells the story not to show Jesus as an adolescent brat, but to illustrate that even at that early age, he was both precocious and conscious of his identity and destiny: Luke is preoccupied with destiny. And Luke makes sure that he rounds out the story on a positive note: ‘Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.’ These simple lines form the basis of the idealization of the Holy Family as a nuclear unit.

And yet, this idealized picture will not stand closer scrutiny from the gospels themselves. Jesus’ family life was spent in a peasant village surrounded by relatives and neighbours, with very little privacy and strong social pressure toward conformity. The gospel records indicate that he did not conform, and paid the price: rejection and misunderstanding by his extended family.

The earliest narrative of the encounter of the adult Jesus with his family comes from Mk. 3:21 and it is not a happy one. Mark states briefly that in the midst of Jesus’ enormous popularity with the crowds, his relatives or those from his home village came to fulfill their familial responsibility by taking hold of him because they thought he was out of his mind. His bizarre behavior—at least as they interpreted it—was shaming their village and they had to do something about it. A little later in Mark’s narrative (3:31) his mother and his brothers tried again. They sent word to him through the crowd that they were outside (in contrast to the crowd who are presumably on the inside sitting around him). Some in the crowd said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.’

Family loyalty and hospitality would have suggested an immediate response from him: receiving the family was an expected priority. But instead of this, Jesus replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ Thus he effectively ignores them and says to those who are inside and around him, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’

It’s not without significance that the precursor to this story in Mark, Chapter 3 is Jesus’s appointment of the twelve apostles whose ‘insider’ status is contrasted sharply with that of his blood relatives, to the detriment of the latter. Indeed so much so that at this point in the narrative the family of Jesus exit the stage and are never seen again, in spite of the fact that they are known to others later in the story.

In the gospel traditions it is interesting that there are no positive sayings about the goodness of the family that were preserved or attributed to Jesus. Instead, Jesus is portrayed as being sensitive to and taking an interest in the families of others, but at best seems to stand aloof from his own. While Jesus is portrayed as appreciative of religious requirements regarding the family (Mk. 7:10-12 about honoring one’s parents), and sensitive to the needs of and longing for family life in an environment harsh toward the marginalized (Lk. 8:40-56 the healing of the centurion’s daughter), his attitude toward his own family was hardly one characterized by enthusiasm: something we see from today’s gospel and also from the section in Mark Chapter three. A primary and conspicuous exception to this is one portrayal of his death (Jn. 19:25-27 where Jesus commits his mother into the care of the beloved disciple).

It has been suggested that the vision of the earliest Christians, if not of Jesus himself, was to play down the importance of blood relationships in favour of those based upon spirit. Spirit and belief rather than blood would henceforth become the mark of radical inclusion. Those, who to use the words of the Markan Jesus, ‘do the will of God’ would become ‘my brother and sister and mother.’ So, did this radical vision of inclusion actually work?

Well, it sort of worked. It’s true that in Jesus’ disavowal of the family, that the seeds of a new version of family were made possible, but the ideal proved itself impossible of achievement and there was great resistance against it. Consider for example, the Pastoral Letters of 1 and 2 Timothy, to say nothing of the Household Codes from Colossians 3, Ephesians 5 and the First Letter of Peter.  These are the sections in which the respective obligations of wives to husbands and children to parents are spelled out. Indeed it is these latter that are sometimes appealed to by advocates of the ‘family values’ lobby. But as you see, the picture, as always, is more complex and nuanced than one simple or simplistic view.

But the vision did work inasmuch as it called differing people together into one place and for a common purpose. People of differing ages, social status, ethnicity, background, abilities and so much more were and continue to be drawn together throughout time and place. Look around you; look at the person next to you, and ask yourself: would I have met you, perhaps have come to know you, even formed a deep friendship with you, had it not been for the fact that we have been drawn together into one place—this place—for a common purpose. And if your answer to that question is: ‘Well, it’s unlikely,’ then I think we can say that Jesus’ vision of radical inclusion is still quietly alive. That the call is insistent (as the Collect expresses it) is something with which we can readily agree. That it is more insistent than ties of family or blood is something on which the various voices of the New Testament never reaches consensus and therefore it is something through the midst of which each of us must trace his or her own path.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Christmas Day 2018

Christmas is astounding. It celebrates the wildest, most astonishing event. One day, the God of the universe was born as a tiny, helpless baby; a real one; vulnerable to all the hazards of a dangerous world. Why? Why did God need to come, and why come as a tiny, helpless baby?

Scripture tells us that God did need to come – for the sake of this world. That’s a big statement, and it raises a few questions. What did God need to do for this world? Did God get it done? And then there’s that other question; the big one.

I think all of us will remember a time when we’ve asked the “big question”: If there is a loving God of the universe, why is suffering allowed to happen? That’s the “big question”. People have always asked it, ever since we were told that God loves us. If there is a loving God of the universe, why is suffering allowed to happen? That suffering might be caused by war; natural disaster; disease; abuse of vulnerable people – we can all remember why we’ve asked that question. It’s because someone good has been badly hurt, or died; maybe someone we love, or some innocent victim of a disaster or an atrocity in the news; maybe even us. What sort of a God lets that happen?

We’re not the first to ask the big question. The Hebrew people had plenty of reasons to ask it. Years of slavery, countless wars, famines, colonization, exile. They asked the big question, and all through Advent, we’ve been focussed on the answer they received. It was a promise that they heard again and again; God would raise up someone extraordinary who would set things right. The prophets used many vivid and mysterious images to speak of him. Isaiah said this special leader would be born to the Hebrew people; born a descendant of King David, a prince. He’d have the authority and the power, finally, to bring lasting peace; peace which he would uphold with justice and righteousness. ^{Isa 9} This morning, Isaiah told us this would involve a rock-solid military defence. And our Psalmist told us the same.

God would raise up someone extraordinary who would set things right; the anointed one – the Messiah. The Hebrews had huge expectations of this Messiah. They waited for this Prince of Peace to be born; they waited and waited. They waited so long that they started to ask another question; “How long!” ^{Hab 1.2} They had huge expectations. But I don’t think they ever imagined who would eventually come.

Jesus was greater than the prophets ever expected. And yet he didn’t come in power as some invincible tribal warrior. He came in the most scandalous, defenceless way imaginable. Just before he was born, his unmarried parents had to beg for fifth-rate lodgings 100 km from home. Jesus’s first bed was an animal’s feed trough. Who were the first visitors to come and witness his arrival? Scruffy strangers, shepherds, apparently turned up in the middle of the night. And soon after, this family would be on the road again as refugees. One day, the God of the universe was born as a tiny, helpless baby; vulnerable to all the hazards of a dangerous world.

Why in the world must any family endure such humiliation? If this baby is God’s answer to the “big question”, then that question needs to go under the microscope. If there is a loving God of the universe, why is suffering allowed to happen? This question has a built in assumption; we expect that a loving God should prevent tragedies. Is this true? And if it is, how should a loving God do this?

Should a loving God stop all wars; turn all weapons into farming tools? Would that fix relations between nations? Well, no. Should a loving God fuse the world’s tectonic plates together; stop all storms; get rid of mosquitoes? Would that make Earth a suffering-free zone? Well, no. Should a loving God abolish all disease and injury; even our mortality? Well, no. Should a loving God put a force-field round all vulnerable people; make every bully behave? Would all that stop us suffering? No; that wouldn’t address the human heart.  …  So what’s a loving God to do?

God did something beyond all expectation. One day, the God of the universe was born a tiny, helpless baby; vulnerable to all the hazards of this dangerous world.

Isaiah calls Jesus Emmanuel – God with us. He was born one of the colonised, bullied people – so the first peoples of this and every land have God with them. Jesus was born one of the people who’d have to depend on the kindness of others just to survive – so asylum-seekers / refugees have God with them. Jesus was born among animals and insects in a stable – so non-human life has God with them too. Shepherds were the ancient world’s equivalent of street people. So they have God with them. Jesus grew up to love and care for any people he met who were sick in mind or body, or hungry. So they have God with them. Jesus was arrested, tried and executed by the state. So prisoners and those on death row have God with them. All these outsiders can be told with confidence that Jesus is their Emmanuel – God with them. And the rest of us? God was born, a living, mortal organism on planet Earth. So every creature, the air we breathe and the land we walk on, we all have God with us. In every place, Jesus revealed God; he was – and always is – God with us.

And the question of suffering? It isn’t forgotten. At the end of his ministry, Jesus would take it all to the Cross – he’d willingly have all wrong and all evil crucified in his own body, and he’d take it to the grave where it belongs. And on the third day after his death, when he rose, alive again from the grave, all the suffering of the world – even death itself – lay defeated at his feet.

Yes, we still experience suffering. We’re still not at the end times. But the Good News is that while suffering has an end, we do not. Just as Jesus came to be with us in our suffering, he promises that when we die, he will come and take us to be with him. ^{Jn 14} And we are also promised that after the last days, in a renewed heaven and earth, God will again make a home with us and wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more. ^{Rev 21}

One day, the God of the universe was born a tiny, helpless baby; vulnerable to all the hazards of a dangerous world. He came to give meaning to our life, to rescue us all, good and bad, and to let us know we have God with us in every moment, in every place, and we always will.                     Amen