Rev’d Peter Balabanski

All Saints – Rev 7 9-17, Ps 149 1-5, Eph 1 11-23, Lk 6 20-31.

All Saints’ is the day when we celebrate the many, very special followers of Jesus who aren’t recognised by name in the Church’s calendar of important somebodies. So the writer Elizabeth Johnson calls today the feast of the splendid nobodies. All followers of Jesus are called to number among the saints. But what’s that mean?

I’m glad Elizabeth Johnson acknowledges her nobodies as splendid. That’s the job description of followers of Jesus. Our call is to be splendidly different. And as we just heard, Jesus doesn’t mean a little bit different. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹ If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat don’t withhold even your shirt. ³⁰ Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, don’t ask for them again. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you. We’re called to be very different people from the people we might have been if we’d never become followers of Jesus.

We’ve been getting some very confronting challenges from Jesus lately. Last week, we heard him say it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. That challenges most of us. And this week, we’re told to love our enemies, turn the other cheek and give to those who’ve stolen from us. Is that what all the saints have always done? Is this really what we signed up for when we became official followers of Jesus? We members of modern westernised churches are not at all comfortable about this radical aspect of our call to discipleship. I’m not. But Jesus did it all. Did we really sign up for this? Let’s check the terms and conditions set out in our baptismal charge: Go forth into the world; be of good courage; hold fast that which is good; render to no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint hearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; give honour to all. That sounds do-able; well most of the time anyway.

But after what we just heard Jesus say, this charge from our baptismal blessing sounds a bit tame. Will being of good courage and all those other things make my life reveal the Kingdom of God to people who don’t know Jesus? I doubt it. For someone like me, it just sounds like a call to be decent. For a poor person, it sounds like a recipe to feel inadequate. The baptismal charge doesn’t confront everyone like Jesus’ call does. It’s not as inescapably direct or specific as Jesus’ call we just heard in the Gospel. It doesn’t demand the radical actions Jesus calls from us; his demand that we become completely different people from your average citizen.

Today, we celebrate all the people who have answered his call; people whose lives have revealed the Kingdom of God to the world. And they’ve done so at great personal cost. The price they’ve paid is the reason our invitation to confession and our collect prayer today refer to the cloud of witnesses surrounding us.

These witnesses are the people who, down the centuries, have put their lives on the line for their commitment to Jesus. We know this because in the Bible, the Greek word translated as ‘witnesses’ is also the word we translate as ‘martyrs;’ – people who’ve died for their faith. The cloud of witnesses are those who truly have put their lives on the line for Jesus. And they’re still doing it. The past century has seen more followers of Jesus killed rather than renounce their faith than in any previous century. Where does the astounding strength of their commitment come from?

It’s fairly clear how it happened in the church of the 3^rd century. Back then, preparation for baptism took at least three years. The aim of this preparation was to irreversibly change the habits of perception and standards of judgment of people who were coming out of a pagan lifestyle. They had to make the commandments of Jesus the heart of their way of life. An important early Christian book, the Didache, emphasised living the teaching of Jesus! You weren’t just to talk about it; you had to learn to live it. The Church’s primary witness was not what Christians said, but what they did. And an important focus of the Didache was the command of Jesus we just heard this morning; bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies.

Another significant early Church document was called the Apostolic Tradition. And like the Didache, it made reconciliation with an alienated sister or brother a precondition of community participation; no polite concealment of grudges. According to the Apostolic Tradition, our inner life and outer life had to be truly integrated for participation in community life to be allowed. The Church would not baptize someone in the hope that they might change for the better afterwards.

This is so far removed from the way people expect to receive baptism here today. I worked with two Chinese priests some time ago. When preparing people for baptism, they gave them months and sometimes years of regular classes until the candidates were deemed ready to receive baptism. The intention of this long and thorough process is, like the early Church process, to shape a new character in the candidate; to change their character from one formed by the world around us to a new character formed by the teachings of Jesus. This is not a cult thing; it’s forming people whose actions proclaim the Kingdom of God to the world.

How might that work for us here? I think it’s best to talk about us as a community rather than focus on individual actions. Inner city churches are challenged by the growing number of homeless people turning up on our doorsteps, and us not being able to do much for them in a practical way. There’s always the worry about protecting property, insurance issues, setting up dependencies if we do this or that. As a community, how might we better obey the commands we have received from today’s Gospel? They are clear and unambiguous. How might we as a community of saints respond to the needs that literally arrive on our doorstep right now?

e.g Budget to give at least 10% of our parish income to mission / clear need / outreach?

Develop a clear agreed purpose as a parish: acknowledging that we are not here for ourselves, but to be a community whose character is formed by the clear teachings of Jesus in Luke 6, and which can respond instinctively without delay to obey Christ’s clear call on our gifts and resources for those who need them. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 20 C – Luke 18 15-30

Let the little children come to me, and don’t stop them; for it’s to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

All Jesus wished for these infants was that they be themselves; little children. As little children they could approach Jesus, go to God, and inherit eternal life – no questions asked. But Jesus’ disciples rebuke them as they try to come to him; block their way to their inheritance. Thankfully, Jesus notices and sets things straight. But what if that hadn’t happened? Luke wants us to think about this.
Luke brings us towards this encounter with the little children by way of a series of parables; parables of insiders and outsiders. And just after this encounter, we meet a ruler who is the proverbial insider. Luke surrounds the little children brought to Jesus with stories of people excluded by such insiders. How are these little children to be protected from that fate if they are among the lucky ones who grow up?

Luke gives us a powerful message in his account of the ruler who asks, what must I do to inherit eternal life? The man turns out to be so blinded by his sense of entitlement, so convinced of his own good character, and so straitjacketed by his obligations to his family’s wealth that he couldn’t begin to follow Jesus, even if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to. He wanted to inherit eternal life, served up on a silver platter just like everything else he’d received in life.
Just before this episode, Luke reminds us that Jesus said all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted. As an example of this, the contrast between the little children and this ruler couldn’t be plainer. And it’s also helpful to know that in that part of the world, great wealth was traditionally viewed as the result of theft from the poor.

Let’s think about the people bringing even infants to Jesus. Before the little children could respond to Jesus’ invitation, they had to be brought to a place where they could see Jesus for themselves, and hear his voice welcoming them. They needed to be brought to a place where they could choose to take their own first steps towards Jesus. They needed their parents to support them so they could run the gauntlet of those pompous disciples – come to Jesus with eyes and ears only for him. That’s a challenge many young people must face today; many run the gauntlet of an alien or unwelcoming church, yet still find Jesus here. So our welcoming crew are some of the most important ministers in this church on a Sunday morning.

But where does the rich ruler fit in here? He’s at the place where lots of Australians find ourselves – deluded by our sense of entitlement. He’s like the other brother in the parable of the prodigal son. His issue was inheritance too. Who but a wealthy heir could assume inheriting eternal life was possible? All the perks with no idea of the grace of a community of justice, mercy and faithfulness – just eternal life delivered on a platter. Jesus said that belonged to the little children. So why shouldn’t this ruler ask to inherit eternal life for himself? Good question!

Attachment to family obligations was his trap. As a ruler, he was the current custodian of his family’s wealth and honour. What he had belonged to his ancestors and to his descendants as much as it did to him. Jesus told him, sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. But he would have felt that he had no right to dispose of the family assets – and he certainly hadn’t come to talk with Jesus about following him.

We’ve heard a call like Jesus’ call to the ruler before. It’s God’s call to Abraham; the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation.” When God called Abraham, it was a call to leave his inheritance behind – to leave his identity behind – for the sake of a posterity he could only dream of. Jesus’ call to the wealthy ruler was the same call. And when Jesus called the children – again, the same call – the same command. Break through what is fearful and unknown and come, follow me to a posterity that is going to exceed your wildest dreams.

How insistent this call is! It’s different for each of us, but always the same call; always calling people to let go of what is most precious to us. Truly I tell you, [said Jesus] … no one who’s left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God…won’t get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come, eternal life. We’re called to let go of power, wealth and control. And as the disciples showed, and the Church has ever since, we need regular reminding of it many generations on. We still don’t get the camel through the needle’s eye – that it’s God who makes our impossible possible. We’re so attached to our treasure here that we’re not available to God. That’s today’s challenge.

Every birth is a grace; a sign that God still trusts us; a chance for us to renew our own commitment to relinquish power and control in favour of gratitude and humility. A child’s presence among us today is Christ’s renewed call to us; ‘Let go, travel light and follow me.’ And for that call, we give him thanks and praise. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 19C – Lk 18 1-8; Jer 31 27-34

Today’s gospel says that Jesus told his parable of the very persistent widow to teach us to pray always and not lose heart. Not lose heart is an interesting expression when we see how today’s reading from Jeremiah says God will write the law on our hearts. If that’s where God’s law is kept, you can’t lose it, can you? But back to the widow. She’s been wronged, and her access to justice blocked by a judge who doesn’t revere God, and doesn’t care less about his own public image; someone with no heart. It doesn’t look as if that heartless judge will ever listen to her.

Yet she persists. She visits him repeatedly. She knows that the shame of her predicament is a scandal. She knows she’s entitled to justice, and so she’ll go on badgering the judge until he goes blue in the face, not her.

Where could she have got her inner conviction of justice from? What gave her the heart to persist? I think it’s because of something she did that we do too. As a Jewish woman, she joined in her community’s worship of God. She’d have learnt of God’s commitment to justice in the Scriptures she heard ^{(Micah 6.8)} and learnt of God’s particular care for her as a widow. ^{(Exod 22.22-24, Deut 10.17-18)} She acted on her trust in the God she’d heard speak to her directly through the scriptures. She acted on her trust in the God she met in those readings. It’s as if, whenever she confronted the unjust judge, she talked over his shoulder directly to God as she persistently demanded justice. It was time this heartless judge learnt God’s ways.

Jeremiah identified the source of her conviction in today’s passage from chapter 31.^{33 …} this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. Jesus presents us with a widow who has God’s law written on her heart. From that teaching inside her, she draws courage to persist in her demands for justice.

I think we can find written on our hearts that we belong to God; that we can also find a heart within us that persists in prayer. And like that widow, we can discover God at work in us, persistently supporting us from within. But where inside us?

Prayer is the place in our lives where God meets us, embraces us, talks with us, and takes us seriously no matter what our circumstances. Prayer is a gift – a spiritual gift which comes to us because of the Holy Spirit living in us. In the conversation of prayer, we find that we are permanently invited eavesdroppers; eavesdroppers listening in on a conversation between our Mother, the Spirit and our loving Father, with the example of our brother Jesus before us to encourage us; to give us heart.

That intimate conversation is one which goes on whether or not we’re conscious of it. But from our baptism on, we can grow in our sense that this conversation includes us; that this conversation connects us with the true Source of our Being. The Holy Spirit speaks to God from deep within us. She searches our hearts and offers our deepest prayers from there. So we have the Father speaking to us through the Scriptures, through the Church, through friends and through creation. And we have the Holy Spirit replying; crying out from deep within us.

It’s a lifelong-skill, learning to hear her voice. But by giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit at our baptism, God ensures that we are equipped to learn to hear that voice. Like any little child, we’re born with the faculty to learn our parents’ language.

God the Holy Spirit dwells within us. She’s the mother and teacher of our hearts. Because of her dwelling within us, our hearts gradually learn the life-giving nature of this divine conversation. It’s something within us, written on our hearts, says Jeremiah. And St Augustine teaches us that whatever it is feels empty and alone until we’re engaged in this conversation. He prayed it this way; God, in whom we live and move and have our being: you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

Jesus walks before us alive in the gospel, and invites us by his love for us, and by his own example, to join in that conversation. He makes it easier because he’s one of us. Choosing to join in this conversation can change us utterly. Once we accept the invitation, God persists. So when I’m talking about persistence in prayer today, there’s the real persistence. God never gives up on us. God is the one who persists.

What comes of eavesdropping on our divine parents? This morning’s gospel sheds an interesting light on this aspect of prayer – having God’s law written on our hearts; having the Spirit within us. She gives us new heart; gives us courage. And that shapes the way we live; the way we see ourselves.

Remember that widow! Most people would probably have viewed her as deluded, stubborn and hopeless. But frankly, I see her example as inspiring. She subverted everyone else’s delusion of her powerlessness by her God-given belief in her own dignity and worth. That belief was a free gift which God wrote on her heart; a heart nourished by her regular encounters with God through scripture and prayer.

If you ever wonder why we give such prominence to hearing scripture together, the example of this persistent widow and her reminder of Jeremiah’s prophecy shows us the importance of letting God’s teaching get written on our hearts too. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 18C– Jrm 29 1 4-7, Ps 66 1-11, 2^nd Tim 2 8-15, Lk 17 11-

I wonder how often you’ve had the joy of spending time with someone who’s very grateful; someone who receives everything as a welcome gift. I find people like that transform everyone around them. They’re filled with an infectious reverence for everything they receive; a reverent care for every blessing. They also have an open-hearted habit of sharing; a contagious aura of comfort and joy. Everyone loves being with them. Complete strangers impulsively invite them to meals and events. They invite old friends to meet this amazing new friend because they’re just such lovely company. To be with anyone who overflows with gratitude is a gift. The very grateful people I’ve known are a constant blessing! I believe that we’re called to learn to see the world like they do; to choose to see God’s gift in everything.

I’m thinking about this today because of the theme we’ve been given by today’s liturgy and readings. The theme is gratitude for God’s bounty; something very appropriate as we emerge from the Season of Creation. From the sentence we started with to the collect prayer and on through the readings and the communion’s great thanksgiving prayer, we’re called to rejoice in God’s grace and generosity. In fact, we’re invited to shape our entire way of seeing life and the world as it is by choosing for thankfulness; not the world as it might be, but the world as it is. It changes everything when we can see God’s good gift in the uncertain life we have.

This is the perspective we’re given in another extraordinary reading from Jeremiah today; just as surprising as a fortnight ago when as a sign of future hope to his people, we read how he bought a field when he was in Jerusalem under siege.^{Ch 32} Today we find him still in Jerusalem as many have been taken into exile in Babylon. Some of the people in exile have set themselves up as prophets there, assuring their fellow exiles they’ll be there for only a couple of years. Putting a happy spin on things ensures people will come back to you for more. But Jeremiah writes the letter to them that we just heard. He says they’re in for a long stay – generations. So they are to treat Babylon like home. Build homes; plant and grow food. Marry and have children. And perhaps most astonishingly, pray to the Lord for the welfare of Babylon. Pray for the people who have captured and enslaved you.

Some commentators write Jeremiah off; they say he’s just advising enlightened self-interest. Keep your noses clean and you’ll get better treatment. But no; that part about praying for their enemies says what he’s actually telling them. He’s saying God is at work among you no matter where on earth you are; no matter your circumstances. And more than that; God is active among your Babylonian captors. When you’re facing generations of exile and slavery, Jeremiah’s message – as hard as it is – is the one that can give you the necessary strength to endure. Jeremiah’s message is to thank God for the life you have; and in that thanksgiving, find your hope and your faith; your reason for being. And you can believe too that by your thanksgiving, you’ll also transform the people around you – even your enemies.

The story of Jesus and the ten lepers has a similar message about a link between gratitude and the end of enmity. The healed leper who came back to Jesus was a Samaritan; a pariah to Jesus’ people. Samaritans have much in common with Jews. But sometimes the worst disagreements between people are between those who have the closest ties to each other: family feuds; denominational differences. Add this man’s leprosy to his Samaritan identity and you’ve got an absolute outcast. Yet his gratitude sees Jesus upgrade the significance of his physical healing to a much higher level. A literal translation of Jesus’ words to him at the end of our reading can be your faith has saved you. Some commentators draw from this story the idea that faith and gratitude are almost the same thing. I’m still thinking that one over.

So now what? What can a choice for gratitude mean to us? By that, I mean choosing gratitude as our response to whatever life throws at us, whatever our circumstances. For a start, as I said earlier, we’re likely to become people who are much better company. But we’re not in this for the dinner invitations. What if we as a congregation choose for gratitude as our life perspective from now on? What changes might we see? Can we see ourselves in either story?

^{Jrm 29.7} Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

^{Lk 17.15} One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶ He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Kimberly Bracken Long writes, to practice gratitude intentionally changes an individual life, to be sure. It also changes the character of a congregation. When Christians practice gratitude, they come to worship not just to “get something out of it,” but to give thanks and praise to God. … The mission of the church changes from ethical duty to the work of grateful hands and hearts.  ^{Long, K. B. (2010). FotW Yr C (Vol. 4, p. 168).}                              Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 17– Lam 1 1-6 3 19-26 , 2^nd Tim 1 1-14, Lk 17 1-10

There’s deep lament in our readings from the Hebrew Scriptures today. We heard the lament of the holy city emptied of her people. Then we sang the lament of that people; people made homeless by an occupying military force. Singing those words brings a voice into our bodies that speaks for around 130 million displaced people around the world today – six times Australia’s national population.

We join with observant people of every faith in praying for their healing, for justice, and for their return to a safe home. The point of our sharing these laments together is not to seek to apportion blame. God knows who is blameworthy, and they will answer to God. But as we wait for that day, there are immediate needs – and the first of those needs is compassion. Everything else proceeds from that.

?What’s meant to happen for us as we listen to the cries of grief, of loneliness, of violation and betrayal, and as we watch the total breakdown of entire peoples? ?What’s meant to happen for us as we hear these words from Lamentations, or sing them together? They call us to offer compassion. We are called to step out of our usual multitude of preoccupations about the bits and pieces of our own lives. Instead, we are to learn how to enter into lives that have been broken into bits and pieces – lives that may never come together again. We are to be what those people need most desperately; to be compassionate, present, loving and dependable.

It’s a very uncomfortable place to enter. It demands a huge amount from us. Our instinct is to appeal to legal systems to defend the abused; to blame the abuser; to confront lies and set the record straight. That is to seek to work through an organisation – work remotely from a position of strength and control. And there’s a place for that.

But if you listen to the voice of the suffering one in the passage we sang as today’s Psalm, it’s not the strong, vindicating agency that the abused need first. Their first cry is to the God of steadfast love whose mercies never come to an end – the one whose consoling arms of love they long for right now. And that needs to come primarily from people of faith. In my experience, compassion is the life-changing gift that people of various faiths can offer. Compassion brings hope and restores worth to those who’ve had their hope and their sense of worth torn from them.

Being close to such pain is very difficult; especially when you feel as if you have nothing practical to offer. But please never underestimate the healing that your compassionate presence can bring. What you are doing there is offering something from beyond any of us: the steadfast love of the Lord that never ceases; whose mercies never come to an end. Believe that – or ask God to help you believe it – and your presence and compassion can be God’s gift in a time of need.

We gather here each week to be built up in that commitment to compassion. It’s not as though we get baptised and confirmed, then, like a fully wound-up toy, dispense faith and hope and love for the rest of our lives. Last week, we thought about regeneration. Today we heard Paul write to Timothy about rekindling the gift of God within him; about a gift that passes down through generations. That’s essential.

A friend sent me a study last week which examined the way people of faith influence our nation’s social cohesion. One of the findings was that participation in religious communities can foster traits like compassion and forgiveness, which in turn enhance feelings of respect and being valued by others. Receiving spiritual support from fellow believers is also associated with higher self-worth and respect. Believing in a loving or supportive God, frequent prayer, and strong congregational ties have also been linked to a propensity of individuals to ‘find meaning in life’. https://www.scanloninstitute.org.au/publications/insights/social-cohesion-insights-08-religion-and-social-cohesion-in-australia

People of faith can offer those gifts to people who are suffering because we’ve experienced God’s love and support for ourselves. We can share that hope and affirm a broken person’s worth because we know it’s true. And we do that; people of faith do this. The study looked at participation in social groups, and unpaid volunteer work. And the participation score for people of faith was significantly higher than all other groups – much higher than those who said they were not religious at all. Research has shown that faith is associated with higher rates of volunteering, charitable giving, and involvement in civic organisations.

Our belonging to a community of faith makes a difference. We can offer compassion because we experience it from God through each other. With the home-base of a community of love like this, this gift is regenerated in us so that we might offer compassion we could never offer alone to the wounded ones God loves. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Season of Creation 4 –Jrm 32 1-3a, 6-15, Ps 91, 1 Tim 6, Lk 16 19-31

Just before his 99^th birthday this year, Sir David Attenborough launched his latest film, Ocean. And he did so with an extraordinary message of hope. He said he’s realised the oceans can recover from environmental damage far more quickly than he’d ever imagined. He called on the world leaders who’d promised to protect a third of the world’s oceans. He said that at this year’s UN conference, he hoped they would take decisive action so their promises would become a reality.

Surely he must know how untrustworthy these leaders have proven to be! Yet he asks anyway. I hear in his hopeful call to a seemingly hopeless situation an echo of the messages we hear in today’s scriptures.

In our first reading, Jeremiah and his people faced imminent catastrophe. They were in Jerusalem, besieged by the mighty Babylonian army. And we know today how terrible a siege can be, don’t we. Jeremiah’s fellow citizens were about to be sent off into exile. He knew it was just punishment for their Godless behaviour. Yet, in this seemingly hopeless situation, God told Jeremiah to buy a field, and store the deeds of sale in a safe place so they could be found again a long time later. Can you imagine someone in Gaza doing that now – besieged, with the leaders of the attacking forces talking about exiling you forever, and God tells you to buy a field and hide the deed of sale where you’ll be able to find it decades from now!

Can you imagine hope in David Attenborough who’s seen what human greed has been doing to the natural world he’s studied all through his long life – can you imagine him believing humanity will actually change now? And yet he says he has a hope now that he never thought he’d have. Can hope overcome bitter experience?

Today’s scriptures tackle this head on. At their heart are two messages. The first message is to hope even when human understanding says to do so is folly. The second message denounces what, more than anything else, can destroy us; greed.

So first, hope. Jeremiah is told to do something shockingly hopeful in a city under siege. He’s told to buy land and preserve the contract so it can be found again when the catastrophe is over. That speaks to our situation where so many people see our future besieged by the threat of unstoppable climate catastrophe; where we see ourselves utterly powerless to halt the greedy onward march of a petro-chemical, military behemoth that tramples governments and populations with impunity.

Yet we Christians – along with Muslims and Jews – believe that God has promised regeneration, both for people and the Earth. Even though Earth suffers as dreadfully as it does now because of people’s rejection of our call to be Earth’s servants and protectors, people of faith believe God’s will is to restore and renew creation. And in that belief, we find both hope, and a command to live and proclaim that hope.

Our call to actively serve and protect creation is in no way cancelled by the hope that God will act. We’re not to leave it to God. Being God’s people means living the hope, acting with hope, proclaiming hope for creation. We are also to enact and proclaim peace with creation. We’ve seen the effect of someone like David Attenborough publicly speaking for this hope. It’s re-energised people who might otherwise have surrendered to despair. We are called to believe God’s promise; to declare it and live it out in action, and regenerate that same hope in others.

People may say we’re deluded to hold such hope. That’s what they said to Jeremiah too. He was locked up for what he was brave enough to say. People in power wanted him silenced. It’s a tactic that those who worship power and greed have never given up on. Our modern Jeremiahs – Greenpeace, the Climate Council, the Marine Conservation Council, the Religious Response to Climate Change, the CSIRO – all of them meet campaigns to silence them; bombings, drones, vexatious law-suits, government funding withdrawn – the whole box and dice. People of faith speaking up to protect Earth from destructive greed will face all these tactics.

And that’s the other message from today’s scriptures for us. Resist greed. Resist greed for ourselves, and when we see it poisoning the lives of others, name it for what it is. First Timothy puts it plainly. ⁷ we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it … ⁹ those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Our Gospel tells us the same thing in story form – the rich man who is blind to the needs of the poor.

Greed is bringing the world to ruin, and in its desperation to protect itself, it offers false hopes about the climate catastrophe being a mere hoax. We are called to reject that cynical lie, and instead to tell the truth and proclaim real hope; to live lives that proclaim that hope. God will bring renewal and regeneration in the end, and we are called to be an essential part of that renewal, starting here and now. Thanks be to God, our redeemer and our true hope in this life and the life that is to come.  Amen.

Rev’d Dr Elizabeth McWhae

15th Sunday after Pentecost – Psalm 79:1-9, 1 Timothy 3:14-4:6, Luke 16:1-13.

INTRODUCTION:
As I have been thinking about this sermon, I asked myself why we need or have a Season of Creation in our church. I hope this sermon will provide you with some food for thought and leave you with questions to explore.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, or just don’t care, it is not surprising that the subject of ecology and creation is a big one these days. Probably because of all the natural disasters occuring, global warming, toxic algal blooms, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and I could go on.

Academics such as David Suzuki in Canada, Sir David Attenborough in the UK and many thousands of conservationists have alerted us to the dire state of our planet. Many indigenous cultures have also reminded us of the need to live gently on this earth. And, this may surprise you, so have a number of Christian and Jewish theologians written about our relationship with creation. They have done so since the 1970s and come from various Christian, Jewish and even Islamic traditions.

So this is not something new, but rather a collective of world voices growing louder and louder.

POINT 1:
We should listen to these voices because as Christians we believe that God created this world. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…..God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. God did not just create humans, but all living things, all living beings. We depend upon the creation to sustain us. Harm done to our world will eventually catch up with us, which is why we must learn to value the creation and not abuse it.

Now this is where things get very tricky and it’s because of this verse. God blessed them and God said to them,”Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and upon every living thing that moves upon the earth.” The problem is that these verses seem to imply that humanity is to have control over creation or they have been interpreted this way. This is the reason why many ecologists are so opposed to Christianity.
So, there is a problem here. Ecotheologians have pointed it out for a while. This is how it can be summed up. Ecotheology offers a dual critique, both an ecological critique of Christianity and a Christian critique of ecological destruction. To put that more clearly, as Christians we must offer an explanation for the above verse from Genesis and any other verses in scripture that imply humans can do whatever they want to the creation simply because they are the top dogs, but we must also speak against danger to the creation which God has made. So, we need to acknowledge that we have got things wrong in the past and also be part of a new solution.

POINT 2:
Now, let’s have a look at Jeremiah. He was an Old Testament prophet who lived from 650-570 BC. Born into a priestly family he was a reluctant prophet. His ministry was very perilous and tumultuous. His life was marked by opposition, imprisonment, and personal struggles. His mission from God was to call the people of Israel back to God. You see, the people had turned to idols and their leaders both political and religious were corrupted by power. So Jeremiah was a prophet who was full of lament, and grief. His words were constantly falling on deaf ears. The verses we read today are an example of one of his oracles where he speaks of overwhelming grief. Jeremiah’s grief, God’s grief and Israel’s grief because they feel abandoned by God. Even the land is affected by this grief. The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. The people are not saved because they have not listened to Jeremiah’s message from God. Because they will not listen, their temple will be destroyed and they will be deported to Babylon. All of this Jeremiah tells them, but they will not reform or believe him. Of course what he says comes to pass.

POINT 3:
My question to us this morning is who are the prophets like Jeremiah in our day? Because there will always be people with prophetic vision. These are not people who predict the future. They are people who observe the past and present and see what our future may look like. And when it comes to our planet’s wellbeing, it may be people outside the traditional church. It may also be theologians who consider how we are dealing with the world that we live in, ecotheologians. There are plenty of voices and books to read, if you are interested. Try Thomas Berry, or Sally McFague or Rachel Carson or look at the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.
As Christians we are people who should be discerning the movement of the Spirit in our lives and in the world. If we are blind or disinterested in what is happening to our planet, if we do not listen to the secular and religious prophets of our day, then will God not be grieved? Do we want to bring grief to God simply because we would not listen?

CONCLUSION:
I am fully aware that this is not your typical Sunday sermon. But I think it is the task of a preacher to challenge our theological beliefs if they are not helpful to us or to God. How we view God and our relationship with God is crucial to how we relate to the world that we live in.

Let me give you an example to show you why how we understand and relate to God matters deeply.

Here are 2 differing ways of seeing God. The hierarchical view goes
like this. God
Jesus
Holy Spirit
Man
Woman
Child
Animals
Plants

But there is another way of seeing God that is communal and circular. And it goes like this: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Man, Woman, Child, Animals, Plants It is a circular view where everyone is connected to each other and God and our creation.

So I leave you with a question? What’s your view?

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Jrm 4 11-12 22-28, Ps 14

During the past week, I’ve been pondering the meaning of Jeremiah’s terrifying words for this second Sunday in the Season of Creation. I didn’t really know what to say to you until I came across a passage in 1st Kings. It’s a word from God to Solomon just after Solomon dedicated the new Temple he’d had built in Jerusalem. God told Solomon that he and his descendants would thrive if they kept the faith. But then God warned that if Solomon or his descendants ever served other gods or prostrated themselves before them, God would cut them off from the Land. And the Land would become a ruin – an object lesson to all nations. 1 Kgs 9.1-9

We’ve just heard Jeremiah paint a picture of that calamity – a picture of de-creation – of Earth regressing to the primordial state of Genesis 1, becoming waste and void again. And instead of the Spirit wind that brought light and life at the beginning, Jeremiah foretells a burning, destructive wind. The wrong that God’s people do has terrible consequences for the Land itself. Can that be?

In the Season of Creation, we focus on the spiritual connection between the way we live, and our relationships with God and the Earth community. We were created to honour God by serving and protecting the Earth community. But where people fail to do that – turn from that purpose, and instead sacrifice the Earth community on the altar of a desire for power and wealth – they betray Earth, God and each other.

That’s where the other central element of our responsibility to the Earth community comes in – and we see it most plainly in the Psalm. That element is justice. In today’s Psalm, evildoers are characterised as those who eat up God’s people as they eat bread, and do not pray to the Lord – who frustrate the poor in their hopes.’ Watching the Pacific Islands Forum play out this past week – small, poor nations entreating big rich ones to make concessions to help them literally keep their noses above water, yet being constantly played like hooked fish and disappointed yet again – the Psalmist cries out with them, longing for justice. It must change!

The message for us today is that people’s loyalty to God and our just care of the Earth community are deeply connected: fidelity and justice are two sides of the one coin. We’re warned that physical consequences result from spiritual betrayal. The betrayal we are warned against is that we worship what we treasure – what we desire – instead of being freely generous like the Creator. The consequence of greed for wealth and power is the physical decay of the Earth we were created to serve and protect; the decay of the creation that reveals God’s nature to us.

This spiritual–physical nexus comes home to us vividly on this Holy Cross day. We are reminded that it took Christ’s voluntary, physical sacrifice to heal the spiritual dislocation between us and God. Jesus’s self-offering on the Cross was given for our salvation from ourselves. And that is Christ’s model and his call to us. We will only solve the de-creation that Jeremiah pictures – the de-creation that we see happening in the world around us – we will only heal that if we recognise the power of what Jesus modelled, and respond by making physical sacrifices of our own.

Can we give up ways of being that alienate us from God; ways of being whose consequence is the destruction of the Earth community? We thought about such sacrifices last week. Can we choose to be sparing with our use of energy, with travel, with how much meat and seafood we consume, and with our use of plastics? In this Season of Creation, can we sacrifice our destructive habits?
We had a very interesting conversation about this in our Tuesday study group. One of our number reminded us that most people on Earth are not engaging in the industrial-scale consumption and pollution that our country is. People in what we choose to call the ‘developing world’ are struggling to simply survive; to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. If they destroy a bit of forest, it’s because they have no other access to land in which to grow their food, or timber to build their shanty. There’s no way they impose the same destructive ecological footprint on Earth that we do. We have to ask why so many of this bountiful world’s people suffer such need. What must be done to end the terrible grief this is to God is much bigger than the individual level I’ve been speaking about.

My African colleague Rev Chesnay Frantz writes We cannot preach ‘peace with creation’ while ignoring the wounds carved into the land by systems of oppression. Jeremiah’s lament is not just about personal sin, it is also about the violent structures that devastate land and people alike. Reconciliation with creation must mean dismantling the economic engines that keep exploiting both earth and labour.
What I’ve tried to draw is a picture of the way our spiritual and physical life are integrated; that each affects the other. And more, that the spiritual life of humanity has consequences for the Earth and vice versa. I’ve called us to consider making personal changes in our physical lives that can make changes in our spiritual lives, so that maybe once convinced, we might consider joining in something much bigger – to help our part of humanity to make peace with creation; to participate in God’s passion for justice. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Jer 18 1-11, Ps 139 1-5, 12-18, Phlm 1-25, Lk 14 25-35

Today is the first Sunday of the Season of Creation, the season for the Church to remind us of the great gift of Creation, and of our responsibility towards Nature. The theme for this year is Peace with Creation. It’s terribly important that we in the Church publicly choose for this, and act on it together. Because at the moment, the human race is behaving as if we’ve declared all-out war on Nature. And right here in Adelaide, we’re caught in the fallout of that war. Beaches have been turned into graveyards. The sea water is poisonous. The coastal air catches in our throats like the fumes of caustic soda. And the people of the hills and foothills approach each new summer with growing dread as bushfire seasons become longer and more severe here and around the world. We need to change to make Peace with Creation.

But we’re caught in our addiction to the status quo. We expect cheap light and power at the flick of a switch. We expect to travel, and only really worry about the price of fuel or a ticket. Sustaining our carnivorous eating habits sees thousands of square kilometres of virgin forest cleared every year and seabeds everywhere trawled to extinction. Our addiction to throw-away convenience is flooding land and sea with plastics that break down and poison everything that lives with its ever-smaller particles. We are not making Peace with Creation. We are waging an unholy, suicidal war against the common home God gave to us and to all life.

God is calling us from this destructive path – God’s has always called people to live at Peace with Creation. Indigenous peoples have always known that divine call. Peace with Creation has always been embedded in the customs and lore of First Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Whatever is taken to eat or use from Nature, traditional practice is to take only what is needed, and leave enough behind for regeneration. The scriptures of the three Abrahamic faiths share this same value, though unsurprisingly our translations and interpretations work to conceal this.

In Genesis 2.15, the Hebrew makes it clear that the first human was given to the garden to serve and protect it. It’s clear who owns Creation; God. So Christians, Jews and Muslims all have a clear call to care for Creation – to serve and protect it. And today’s readings make very clear, if it comes down to who must give way, for the sake of Peace with Creation, we’re the ones called to change; not Nature. We must change for the sake of God’s created order. This will align us with evolution, which is how we see God’s creative power, always at work integrating all life.

Evolution; change; refinement; balance; symbiosis; survival. So why am I talking about the Creation story in Genesis 2 when today’s Old Testament reading comes from Jeremiah 18. It’s because of a word in the Hebrew which both readings share. The word potter in Jeremiah is the same as the word to form in the creation story. God formed (יָצַר – yatsar) the first human (אָדָם adam) from the dust of the Earth (אֲדָמָה adamah) Gen 2.7 And God gave Jeremiah the image of God as the potter (יָצַר yatsar) – the one who forms – the very same word! And embodied in both uses of that word is change for life; evolution. In Genesis, God forms dust into an Earth-being whose purpose is to serve and protect life. And in Jeremiah, clay is an image of God’s people moulded into a vessel whose purpose is likewise to serve and protect life.

This is where it applies to us; God’s people. Our purpose is to serve and protect life. We must accept significant change, now; to be moulded into a people who no longer destroy life, but who truly serve and protect life. God spoke to all Israel through Jeremiah’s image of the potter to say they had to accept being re-fashioned; changed from a faithless people. Some even offered their own children in sacrifice to pagan gods! Jer 7.30-31 The call was to change into a people who’d serve and protect life. The parallel with us is chilling as our generation offers our own children on the altar of our on-going addiction to the status quo of fossil fuel and convenience. We must change so we serve and protect life. Jeremiah’s potter is coming for us too!

The God who created our inward parts and knit us together in our mother’s womb surely has the right to demand that we do what we were created for. Peace with Creation is only possible if we, who were created to serve and protect life, change and actually do that. The type of change required is there in the letter to Philemon. Paul asks Philemon to pardon Onesimus, his runaway slave, and set him free to be a co-worker with Paul in spreading the Gospel. That was revolutionary in Roman society. And in the Gospel, Jesus is demanding something revolutionary in his society; abandon their allegiance to family and instead give it to him.

Really big change is demanded! So what of you and me? What must we change in order to serve and protect life on Earth? I mentioned four habit changes earlier. They’re a practical starting point to practise in this Season of Creation. We must change – and encourage our nation to change – from our addictions to life-wrecking energy sources, life-wrecking travel habits, life-wrecking eating preferences, and life-wrecking plastic addiction. We must change so we serve and protect life. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 12 C -Jrm 2 4 -13, Ps 81 1 10-16, Heb 13 1-8 15-16, Lk 14 1 7-14

Day of Prayer for Refugees

We tell our children not to trust strangers. Yet today Hebrews 13 tells us not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Our readings this week speak powerfully to this National Anglican Day of Prayer for Refugees. Jeremiah reminds God’s people that they’re descended from refugees and migrants. And that reminds us that we’re descended from refugees and migrants, if we’re not refugees or migrants ourselves. More than that, as followers of Jesus, we’ve been adopted as children of God. The Hebrew people were strangers in a foreign land; but as adoptees into that ancient family, we are doubly strangers.

It’s in that light that we read today’s New Testament lessons. What does God require of a people like us – strangers and adoptees – when it comes to the way we treat strangers who seek shelter with us? The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews says it clearly. Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourself were being tortured. … Don’t neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Can it be any clearer!?

Those are very strong words. And Jesus says it in the gospel too. We’re called to give strangers generous hospitality, and compassion. There’s no softening this message with concerns about stranger danger or running ourselves short. And the hospitality we’re to offer is to be top of the range; the sort we’d offer an angel – hospitality we’d hope to receive ourselves, no less. Jesus calls us to offer hospitality to strangers. And he tells us exactly what sort of people those strangers might be. … when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Back in his time, they were the people no-one wanted to be seen with.

He can ask us to do this because that’s what God’s done for us. We’ve been invited to God’s banquet regardless of who we are, and we’ve got absolutely no way of repaying God for the honour of this invitation. So the idea of us turning up our noses at some other guest that God invites is ludicrous. Imagine being queued up at the door of a banquet hall, and another invited guest turns and tells us to go away because they don’t want to eat with people like us. We’re all God’s guests. The only one who calls the shots is God. And God has invited everyone.

We are God’s guests. We are God’s people, and God wants us to welcome strangers too. We’re to offer them the same hospitality that God has shown us. And that’s traditional hospitality; nothing less than the best we have to offer.

I love the way this parish supports refugees. Mary Mag’s Co-operative and the Hutt Street Centre do this too – give unquestioning hospitality to strangers. God’s people feed hundreds of homeless people every week. But there’s pushback. There was a strong push in recent years to move the Hutt Street Centre somewhere else – unspecified, but not in our back yard. And if Churches try to set up a similar ministry in residential areas, there are often complaints that the Church is encouraging undesirable people to come into a safe neighbourhood. That makes me remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who does Jesus say is a neighbour?

I wonder if the people who’d make those complaints have anything to do with Jesus’ poor, crippled or blind – with refugees. Lots of new street people now are middle-class baby boomers down on their luck; mostly women. They’re like us; not strangers; they’re not other. And newspapers keep receiving letters that horribly misrepresent asylum seekers as somehow other and evil. Have the writers ever met an asylum seeker. Have they ever been hated because of their difference?

God calls us to offer hospitality and compassion. And today, we also see that the example Jesus gives us is to stand against selfishness and mistrust.

I was delighted to read a letter to a newspaper from a friend who was doing precisely that; standing against selfishness and mistrust My friend wrote in response to the way our punitive asylum seeker policies are like slamming the door on a needy person on a cold wet night. The letter was entitled Not today thank you.

It reads: There’s an urgent hammering on your front door.   It’s late at night, howling wind and rain outside. You struggle out of your comfortable chair, leave the warm heater. What’s so urgent? You stumble to the entrance, flick on the outside light, wrestle the dead-lock and open the door. She’s bedraggled and soaked to the skin, plainly terrified. “Please, can I come in?” You think for a moment, see that she’s not from around here. You slam the door, lock it, and turn out the light. That’s how populist politics would have us treat asylum seekers.

Christians, we are called to name wrong when we see it. Christians, we are called to offer by our own example an alternative vision to the people of God’s world: a vision of hospitality, compassion and trusting generosity. Because that’s what God offers everyone. Because that’s God’s wish for everyone.  Amen