Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 16B – 2^nd Sunday in the Season of Creation – Isa 35 4-7a, Ps 146, James 2 1-10 14-17, Mark 7 24-37

Last Sunday, we started looking at Ecological Spirituality. As we did, the word that kept coming back at us was relationship: our relationship with each other, with Earth, our common home, with all life on Earth, and our relationship with the Source of all Being – the God who spoke all of us into being. That’s why we named Genesis 1.3 as pivotal – Then God said – the creative Word that made everything.

As we thought about all these relationships, it became clear that our spirituality exists in our physical life just as much as it does in our emotional and intellectual life. Spirituality has important practical, physical dimensions. That’s why we remembered Paul’s words from Romans 1.20 where he says that God’s power and nature have always been understood and seen through creation. Our physical relationship with creation is critical to our spirituality.

That was underlined as we remembered John 1.14 which says that Jesus – the creating Word of God –came among us as a physical, flesh-and-blood human being. God takes physical existence seriously! We looked at the way Jesus modelled relationship through kindness, compassion and costly generosity – just as we’ve seen in the exhausted Jesus of today’s gospel. And since we are spoken into being by God, the model of relationship of Jesus, the Word made flesh, is our guide to living. But kind, compassionate, generous living is vulnerable living. So what happens when we encounter people suffering the effects of greed, and cruel violence? Jesus’ healing and teaching ministry addressed the consequences of greed, and cruel violence, so responding to those consequences is also our model.

So, all the selfish, destructive evils we witness; the shocking disparities in wealth and influence that deprive countless millions of access to the basics of life? What about them, and the chronic, seemingly unstoppable damage being inflicted on the living planet and its worst effects harming the poor and weak? How does ecological spirituality speak to all this? Our scriptures today speak unequivocally of God’s justice.

In today’s scriptures, we encounter words about God’s anger and vengeance. We comfortable Christians are chronically uncomfortable with these sorts of words. Lots of people tell me they don’t like the God they meet in the Old Testament because of all the angry words. But do we forget that we see Jesus angry with the way power is misused by community leaders? We saw him angered in last week’s gospel by the religious-police-tactics of Pharisees and scribes accusing his disciples for eating with unwashed hands. And we liked Jesus protecting us.

We heard God tell Isaiah today to do something similar. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, don’t fear! Here is your God. He’ll come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. We may get uncomfortable about talk of God’s anger and vengeance. That’s because we don’t hear these words as people who have fearful hearts. But in what politicians call ‘our own backyard’, there are people who hear these words of God’s anger and vengeance as uplifting and hopeful. There are downtrodden people in Australia, around the western Pacific region, and in nearby Asian countries struggling to survive in the face of the juggernaut of exploitation, economic colonisation, and a climate catastrophe that is not of their own making.

These are the people of a fearful heart that God wants Isaiah to address. These are people who find hope in words that declare God’s vengeance and terrible recompense. Today’s Psalm underlines this commitment of God’s to the poor and needy. It’s a litany of God’s love for such people – promising justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, captives set free, the bowed down lifted up, God’s care for the refugee, for the widow and the orphan. And as for the way of the wicked, those who are responsible for all this misery, God will bring it to ruin!

Earth itself is included in Isaiah’s message of hope and healing. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; ⁷ the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Care of God’s creation is an integral part of our call to care for God’s poor, because they suffer most immediately from ecological harm. We have a chance to roll our sleeves up and do something about that after church today. If you’re able, head up to the wetlands and join Heather and the others in the tree-planting that’s happening there. Ecological spirituality without practical engagement is hollow – to paraphrase the Letter of James.

Speaking of James, it’s not just the Old Testament prophets who declare God’s preferential commitment to the poor, the sick and the needy. We heard James say it quite categorically today: ⁵ Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

What challenges do we feel as we consider today’s scriptures? What’s our relationship with God’s world? Are we worried that we find God’s anger uncomfortable when poor people can find hope in it? Are we thinking about new initiatives to grow a more mature faith here? What might our collective faith inspire that could respond practically to the chronic homelessness, epidemic loneliness, failure in closing the gap, and rampant environmental vandalism we see around us; all so patently offensive to the God who loves the people and other creatures who suffer these terrible wrongs? How will our ecological spirituality help bring God’s healing and justice to any of these? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 15  – Song 2 8-13 – Ps 45 1-2, 6-9 – Jas 1 17-27 – Mk 7 1-8 14-23

Three verses underpin our choice to celebrate the Season of Creation. Genesis 1.3 – Then God said… John 1.14 – The Word became flesh… and Romans 1.20 – God’s power and nature have always been understood and seen through creation.

The banner outside the church tells everyone that this month St John’s is exploring ecological spirituality. But what’s that? What do ecology and spirituality have to do with each other? Let’s think about each of them in turn – ecology and spirituality – then see if we can put them together.

So ecology? Ecology is the science which deals with the relationship of living things to their environments. That sounds like zoology; a physical science; not a spiritual one. So am I asking you to imagine David Attenborough squatting beside a hole and a furry little ghost pops out of it? No. So what’s ecology got to do with spirituality? It’s in that word relationship; the relationship of living things to their environments. Relationships aren’t just physical things; they involve much more than our bodies.

So what is spirituality? Spirituality describes our response to the sense that there’s something besides our physical selves; something more to experiencing life in this world than we discover purely through our senses of taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing. Spirituality says we sense that the reality we live in has a cosmic or divine Nature. Spirituality describes our quest to relate to that cosmic or divine Nature.

Our quest to relate – there’s that relationship word again. So ecology studies living beings’ relationship to their home, and spirituality describes our relationship to a greater reality – some call that reality the Source of Being. So, ecological spirituality? Do physical life and spiritual life have a relationship with each other – apart from a body providing a spirit with temporary accommodation? That’s the popular way to describe it. But aren’t spirits pure and bodies gross? Isn’t this like trying to mix oil with water? Is the idea of ecological spirituality trying to force an artificial link between our physical and spiritual life? Is this just religion trying to force imaginary values on us – so it can tell us what we should do with our own bodies?

I can’t pretend some Church leaders don’t make loud public comments about what people can and can’t do with our bodies. Religious leaders of every persuasion have been doing that forever, it seems. We saw it happen in today’s gospel. We saw the Pharisees and scribes, the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ people, challenge Jesus because they saw some of his followers hadn’t washed their hands in the prescribed way before eating. Those spiritual leaders saw a definite link between what we do with our bodies and our spiritual integrity. But I’ll get back to them in a minute.

The Law they were proclaiming talks in one place about people’s wrong behaviour violating the land, and the land reacting by vomiting them out. ^{Lev 18.26-30} That might sound a little bit extreme, but what’s understood here is a complex relationship – and there’s that relationship word again – a complex relationship between what we do with our bodies and our spiritual health, and what we do with our bodies and the effect that has on the health of the land we live on. A relationship between our actions, our spiritual health and the health of the land where we live – that sounds like it has a lot to do with ecology, doesn’t it; ecological spirituality?

So let’s get back to today’s Gospel and those Jewish religious leaders challenging Jesus because some of his followers didn’t wash their hands before eating. It reminds us of that extraordinary time just a few years ago when we had to treat each other and ourselves as if we might infect each other with a deadly disease. Back then, doing the right thing meant avoiding each other’s possible dangerous uncleanness. And violating the land? I’m reminded of last week’s God Forbid programme on ABC RN where Professor Auntie Anne Pattel-Gray spoke about the relationship between Aboriginal people’s language and their ancestral land. They couldn’t take land from a neighbouring nation because they didn’t have the words or songs to understand it and care for it. She described environment and people’s actions, understanding, values and spirituality as intertwined in a living relationship which shapes nature and identity.

The ancient scriptures seemed to get this, but the Pharisees and scribes were so fastidious about what people did with their bodies that they missed the point that relationship lies at the centre of the law’s teaching. That’s what Jesus tried to get through to them. Our spiritual life is healthy if we act not out of fear and knee-jerk judgement, but out of love and commitment to good relationship and belonging.

So what do we do with all this – this interwoven relationship of ourselves, our neighbours, our common home, and the Source of our Being? We don’t need to be reminded of what’s going wrong; that’s plain enough to see. Ecological spirituality challenges much that is damaging that interwoven relationship right now, and it demands that we do something about it right where we are. Heather’s going to give us a few pointers in the notices today about how we can start right here and now.

Today we’re called to turn from fear and isolation, and turn to hope and belonging. We choose to follow Jesus who we saw today brush aside the fixation of the religious leaders on purity, and instead calls us to nurture our neighbours and our common home, drawing strength from the Source of our Being. That’s living ecological spirituality.   Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 14 – 1 Kings 8 22-30, 8 41-43, Ps 84, Jn 6  56-69

Today is the Sunday when the General Synod calls us to a day of prayer for refugees. So it’s particularly appropriate that our first reading is the part of Solomon’s prayer dedicating the new Temple where he prays that God will hear and answer the prayers of foreign visitors just like God hears the prayers of Israelites. When a foreigner comes and prays towards this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you. It was always a part of the Hebrew Law that the sojourner in the land should enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as citizens. And this spills over in surprising and delightful ways in scripture; as we’ve seen in Solomon’s prayer. Your journey of faith – your pilgrimage of hope – deserves to be honoured, whoever you are.

Today’s Psalm (Ps 84) is one we call a Psalm of pilgrimage. The pilgrim Psalms are intensely emotional songs which tell us how the journey to the Temple of Jerusalem could lift people’s spirits from the deepest gloom to glorious heights of joy and hope. I wonder if that’s something any of us has experienced – if this Psalm resonates with our culture – if any destinations have ever had that effect on us. Can you think of any? I have a friend who used to experience this on an annual hike in the Australian high country. We don’t have much of a tradition of pilgrimage in Australia, though it’s growing now ^{(eg, Portland Vic – Penola SA; Subiaco – New Norcia WA)}. We’ve gone to Spain to walk the Camino, or to the Holy Land, or to sites of terrible battles.

But we’ve journeyed here to St John’s this morning. So maybe our pilgrimages are of a different scale. We come here to experience God’s beauty, peace and care in the family liturgy; to revive in the ambience of the hundred and eighty-five years of prayers offered here – prayers infused into the fabric of this building. I’m glad to say that visitors often comment on the peace they experience here.

So today’s Psalm is a pilgrim song; a song people would sing as they went up to the Temple of Jerusalem – the first Temple. We just heard Solomon dedicate the Temple with a prayer focussing on God’s hospitality. The Psalm takes it to another level – including sparrows and swallows – most appropriate as we prepare to enter the worldwide Church’s Season of Creation. I’m struck by the Psalm’s opening words; ¹How lovely is your dwelling-place: O Lord God of hosts! And I’m struck that what draws pilgrims towards the house of God’s presence is desire; longing; rejoicing. It’s a safe place; even birds are safe to nest there in its inmost sanctuary.

People had a sense of God as an honoured guest with them in their own homes and villages. They responded to God who reached out to them; they came to God’s house to offer thanks; to experience the hospitality of God who dwells with us; to sense God’s strength sustaining us on our life’s journey, through good times and bad. ⁵Blessed are those whose strength is in you: in whose hearts are the highways to Zion; ⁶Who, going through the valley of dryness, find there a spring from which to drink: till the autumn rain shall clothe it with blessings. … (The soft green fuzz carpeting the Judean wilderness straight after the first autumn rains).

Psalm 84’s pilgrimage is about a deep and abiding experience of God’s loving care all along our life’s journey. And as people have been singing this Psalm for 3,000 years, it’s been fairly infused into us.

When you think of Solomon’s dedication prayer for this new Temple he’d had constructed – the way it’s to be open to foreigners and sojourners, it’s clear that its doorkeepers were meant to be welcomers; not bouncers. That’s a call we have inherited. Because Solomon knew what God is like, even we foreigners are welcome! As doorkeepers and custodians here, we are called to prepare this place for others. And when we see ourselves as greeters and welcomers, we prepare ourselves to share the excitement of what is here for the pilgrims who are coming.

The Church exists to provide hope for those who need hope, to provide peace in the midst of chaos, and comfort in the midst of distress. We are here to participate in the costly hospitality God offers to everyone, to renew and strengthen them. And by being that beacon of hope, peace and comfort – of Godly hospitality – we are meant to be salt and light to transform the wider community of Australia and beyond.

That’s the discovery we heard Peter make today when Jesus challenged the twelve with the difficulty of the pilgrimage they would have to walk, and that now we must walk. After seeing so many others desert him, Jesus asked the twelve – Do you also wish to go away? The answer was immediate – Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. And look at what they did with that belief! They worked to make the Church a welcoming community who have opened our doors to the whole world.

What can we do to open our doors wider? Let’s begin by praying as General Synod asks; praying for refugees. Inside the back cover of our service booklet. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 13b  –  John 6.51-58

Isn’t it funny how sharing food is okay within families, but not outside them? It’s strictly limited to families. Double-dip your sausage roll in the sauce at a party and you very quickly become unpopular. Even families don’t do their usual garbage-guts routines in public; there’s not much plate swapping at a restaurant.

There are lots of taboos around food. Mouth to mouth food sharing is strictly limited to the most intimate relationships of all (pelicans vulning). Break that taboo with someone and they’ll carry on as if you’ve poisoned them. Yes, there are lots of taboos to do with food. The strongest taboo of them all is against cannibalism – eating human flesh or drinking human blood. For Jewish people particularly, consuming any blood is an absolute taboo because the blood is the life ^{(Gen 9.4, Lev 3.17 + fat!, 17.10-14, Deut 16, 23)}.

Nothing daunted, Jesus tells the Jewish people of his own home-district that they should eat his flesh and drink his blood; he says it over and over again. Naturally, they’re scandalised by this. But with our hearing, shaped by our familiarity with the language of Holy Communion, we miss a lot of the scandal. But we mustn’t miss it. Christian proclamation is meant to bring people to a decision: and scandal always calls you to take a stand. So if we read this passage from John through the soft focus of a comfortable, routine communion ritual, we won’t be confronted; we won’t decide. But that’s not how it should be.

Jesus doesn’t leave offence to chance; he makes sure he forces people to a choice. Who’s with me? Are you family? Do we share food from each other’s plates, forks, spoons, mouths!? Or are you going to leave? Does that sort of sharing scandalise you? Is it too intimate? Well it’s the only way it can be. This is how John confronts us.

For me, John’s gospel actually does give us an image of mouth-to-mouth feeding to teach us how very intimately God gives us life through Jesus. And it’s not the only time: remember Ezekiel being given God’s words to eat in the form of a scroll in preparation for his preaching. ^{Ezek 3.3} But John does it much more confrontingly.    In 6.57, Jesus says, Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

Let’s take that one phrase at a time. …Just as the living Father sent me … How did the Father send Jesus? John began this gospel by telling us how Jesus came to us from God? In the first chapter of John, we read that Jesus is the Word of God; that this Word was God; and that this Word became flesh and lived among us. …Just as the living Father sent me … We’re reminded to think about how God sent Jesus. That sends us back to the beginning, and in the beginning, we’re effectively told that Jesus—the Word – came from the mouth of God – was spoken by God. So that’s the first phrase.

Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father…In this next phrase, and I live because of the Father…connects us with chapter 1 again. There we read that the Word, spoken from the mouth of God, became flesh, and lived among us. But the sentence began with just as. These words mean we’re waiting for the next part of a comparison— Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

Jesus is saying, I came from the mouth of God. I live because I come from God, and so if that life from God’s mouth is my flesh, and you eat my flesh, you will also have within you the life that comes from God. Out of God’s mouth, and into yours and mine, divine life is transmitted.

It might feel like I’m labouring the point a bit, but I want you to see how the evangelist is pushing us to see the confronting intimacy there is in – what is for us – the language of the Eucharist; the language of Holy Communion. Genesis 2.7 springs to mind; then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being – there’s the first kiss of life, for all you St John’s life-saving graduates out there.

In both our dominical sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the life of God passes into us mouth to mouth. In baptism, we believe it’s by the breath – the Spirit, who enters us and gives us our new life in Jesus. And in communion, it’s by the bread and wine – the body and blood of Christ that we receive and put in our mouths. The bread and wine nourish us in extraordinary ways. They make us grow, and they assert, week by week, that we are now God’s flesh and blood; the family of God; the body of Christ. We are what we eat.

And that changes the world for us, doesn’t it. I get an idea of just how changed it is when I remember how St Augustine of Hippo wrote ‘I shall never be separated from God’ ^{Commentary on Psalm 26/2, 18}.This was for Augustine the most important fact about the world that he discovered inside and outside himself.

He discovered that this is a beautiful world of land and sea and sky in which each individual is most precious. It’s a world in which that astounding, transcendent wonder that is God walks the streets with human beings as our neighbour, friend, doctor, sister, brother and parent. It is no wonder that Augustine heard this as a consoling message to a struggling humanity:

Wherever you go on earth, (he wrote) however long you remain, the Lord is close to you. So don’t worry about anything. The Lord is nearby. ^{Sermon 171, 5.}

Mouth to mouth intimacy.   Closer than we are to ourselves.           Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost +12 B  – 2 Sam 18; Ps 130; Eph 4.25-5.2; Jn 6.35, 41-51

Personal relationships and good confrontation in the Church

I said at the beginning of the service that today’s readings all speak about confrontation. And the Psalm reminds us of the deep water we are in. So confrontation – good confrontation – must be our theme; out of deep water and into a lifeboat. So let’s do that with the guidance of our Ephesians passage today.

The letter to the Ephesians has a strong focus on relationships between Christians. Its second chapter effectively says that we’re all in the same boat; that we all started in dangerous water outside the boat, and God rescued us. WCC? It’s a great equaliser. If we’re all in the lifeboat together, it makes no sense if any us claim to be superior to others, or treat others badly, or if there are divisions between us. Yes us, because the way we read Scripture assumes that this letter is in some sense addressed to us. It assumes we’ve all been dragged out of dangerous waters and into the lifeboat. And our state of grace – our status as rescued people – means God should have a lot of say in how we live with all the others God has also rescued.

A Christian lifeboat-community is no place for anyone to dominate or control others. What you’d hope would define all of us is gratitude to God for our rescue; something to bind all of us together in humble joy. Does this sound like hopeless idealism to you? Do you think this writer is naïve about human nature? Oh no! Today’s passage contains the best-known ancient statement there is about anger management: that famous saying, Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. What this sentence is essentially telling us is not shy away from necessary confrontation. If we’ve got an issue – if we’ve been wronged, or witnessed an injustice, this old saying means deal with it; and as soon as possible.

Letting anger fester, letting it sour relationships; letting it ruin our sleep, our appetite; letting it make us grumpy tomorrow – or even for the rest of our life – whatever way this anger shows up in us, the price of delaying resolving it can be very high indeed. So there are very good reasons for going ahead with confrontation when it’s necessary, and this old saying clearly endorses doing so. But this passage also tells us that when we do confront, we are to be imitators of God. Good confrontation can be very Godly; very constructive; very healing.

At its heart, good confrontation enables two things. It enables the truth to be acknowledged, and by clearing the air, it can make genuine forgiveness and healing possible. But neither forgiveness nor healing are ever achieved by a style of confrontation which dominates or humiliates. Remember, we’re all in the same lifeboat! In fact, there are specific instructions against this distortion of good confrontation;

³⁰ …do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom [we are] sealed for the day of redemption ³¹ Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³² and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Those attitudes we’re called to give up – bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander and malice – are dividers; and they’re often old, ingrained fears and resentments we might carry from our past; nothing to do with the dispute we might be managing today. Today, we’re being urged to choose to leave these behind and seek today’s truth together. We want to arrive at a place of reconciliation, having journeyed well, so we’re still together when we get there.

For me, this can begin by remembering the love God has shown in forgiving me and the Holy Spirit working to transform me. Then it seems perfectly reasonable that God asks me to give up my bad habits of suspicion and cynicism; to give someone else the benefit of the doubt like God has so often done with me.

To return to the lifeboat analogy, when we’re baptised as Christians, we celebrate together our rescue from the deep waters of death. Baptism is the moment when that rescue officially happens. We record it in a book: ‘today, such and such became a full member of the Church of God – came out of the deep waters of death and joined everyone else in our lifeboat’. We record it in a book, and we also write it on our foreheads with holy oil, signifying the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit moves in and spirits of fear, division and self-righteous anger are given their marching orders. We’re committed to work full-time with God’s help now.

We’re officially a family in baptism. And like any family, the Christian Church has its uncomfortable moments – rough edges have to keep being chipped off. And day by day, we learn to live together.

It has its confronting moments. But we are called to make them healing, reconciling ones, by always remembering what God has done, and does, every day for all of us, and before the sun goes down, making sure we’re ready for the next day.

Let’s pray.   ^{(The prayer of St Richard of Chichester.  1197 – 3 April 1253)} Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits you have given us, for all the pains and insults you have borne for us. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may we know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 11B – Transfiguration  – 2 Sam 11. 26–12 .13a;  Mark 9. 2-10

Last week I said a few words to introduce the shocking story we heard about King David’s adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of his loyal soldier, Uriah the Hittite. We heard some of the story last week; about a king who stays home from battle and lets his troops face the danger without him, his adultery, the pregnancy, the failed cover up, and then the plot to arrange Uriah’s death. I said it was a shocking story – that the scriptures don’t gild the lily; that they show what dreadful things people get up to. But then they also show us how God deals with wrongs like this.

Today we hear how God responds. The story’s moved on. David’s plot to have Uriah murdered has succeeded, and after Bathsheba’s time of mourning is over, she becomes David’s newest wife. All good? Will David get off scot free? No way. Now God’s response. ‘The thing that David had done displeased the Lord, ^12.1 and the Lord sent Nathan to David.’ When a prophet comes to speak to you, watch out!

Nathan tells David a parable which exposes David in two ways. It exposes how vile his shabby, selfish and cowardly behaviour was. And it also reveals David’s very clear sense of what’s right and wrong. David’s anger was greatly kindled …. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die …’. And because David can tell right from wrong, it means there’s hope. Shocking wrong has been done, but God’s way of dealing with it means there is hope.

Now Nathan accuses David to his face. He recounts all the blessings God has showered on David, and what punishment might even up this betrayal of trust. Our study group thought the threatened punishment unfairly targeted David’s family rather than him directly. But hyperbole has its place and the desired response was spoken; David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ God’s priority of the poor and vulnerable over the rich and powerful has been made crystal clear.

Our cycle of readings won’t finish this story next week; we’ll have to read it at home. But today, we are given Psalm 51. Many Psalms have a superscription in the Hebrew which says who it’s written for, who wrote it, and sometimes when it relates to a particular event. Psalm 51’s superscription says, ‘To the choir leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.’ Psalm 51 is David’s penitential Psalm on this time in his life. It’s also a testimony to his hope in God’s steadfast love; his hope that we can trust God to renew us – to create in us a clean heart – even if we’ve behaved as badly as David did.

I remember as a new Christian I’d done something hurtful and said some very unkind things. I felt ashamed about this for a long time. When my priest asked me to help in the church, I said I didn’t think I should, because I wasn’t a good enough person. He didn’t agree. He said those hurtful actions and words weren’t who I really was; that deep down, there was a more real me; the one who could see those actions and words for what they were; the one who wanted to do better; to leave those old ways behind. He could see better things in me than I could see in myself.

Jesus’ transfiguration does the same thing. It’s the beginning of another stage in his disciples’ transfiguration. Jesus was revealed to be much more than they could ever have imagined. The Lord of time – present with his friends, and at the same time, present with people from the olden days – Elijah and Moses. The Lord of light –light emanating from him rather than simply shining on him. The transfiguration reveals who Jesus really is. His friends wouldn’t get it until later; not until they saw what he would do for them and for all of us in his crucifixion and resurrection.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Why would he say that? It’s like us at a funeral; we can have the experience of suddenly realising there’s much more to a person than we ever knew when we hear what people tell us about them at their funeral. All at once, we see what they’d really done with the life they were given. It’s a revelation, isn’t it. Jesus showed he knew this same limitation in his disciples on the way down the mountain of Transfiguration. They wouldn’t get it until they’d seen him on the Cross, and then seen him rise again. But their experience of his transfiguration opened them to the true meaning of the cross.

What does all this mean for us? We are people called to live lives that emulate the example of Jesus. And despite what we might think of ourselves, we are to trust that Jesus sees something much greater in each of us than we dare to imagine; in fact he infuses it into us by the Spirit. We get a taste of this when people can see that there’s more to you or me than we believe of ourselves. Sometimes other people are given the gift of telling us who we really are. Or we can do it for them.

All those years ago, that priest held a mirror up to me; held it on an angle I hadn’t imagined before. And nothing has been the same since. I pray that this might be our gift to each other, and to our community; that we are compassionate, encouraging mirrors who reveal people’s inner lives; that we reveal the hope God offers – death overcome by life. Let the Transfigured Christ, his light and love, his belief in us, shape us as instruments of his Transfiguration, showing all who we can be.  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 10 B – John 6 1-21

Jesus feeding the 5,000 and walking on water: in our reading last week from Mark’s gospel, those two miracle stories were left out. Well today we’ve got them, but from John’s gospel; not from Mark. And John gives the miracles a very different setting from Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Mark, we’ve tracked with disciples sent out on mission, Jesus ferried around the lake to escape the crowds, and dealing with John the Baptist’s murder by Herod. But John’s gospel is different. John sets the miracles straight after Jesus has been arguing with the religious leaders about having healed someone on the Sabbath. And after the two miracles, he’ll be teaching everyone that he is the bread from heaven. We’ll hear about that over the coming weeks.

At the recent commissioning of the new priest at Burnside, Lyndon Shakespeare, John’s story of the feeding of the five thousand happened to be set as the reading. So the Archbishop preached on it. He focussed on a challenging aspect of that story. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle story that appears in all four gospels, and John has some interesting differences from the others. Abp Geoff focussed on one of those differences. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the weary, hungry disciples come and ask Jesus to send the crowds away so everyone can buy food for themselves. And when they do, Jesus challenges them to feed the crowd.

But Abp Geoff was struck by the fact that in John’s Gospel, Jesus looks up and sees the crowd, and he asks Philip where can we buy bread for everyone? Philip is astounded and wonders where all the money’s going to come from. A commentator ^{(Karen Yust FotW B 3 284)} has fun describing the way modern church committees might deal with this sort of request from Jesus, just like the disciples try to – it’s not in our mission budget; we don’t have that sort of cash; what do you want? A miracle?

Jesus looks up and sees the need and he’s determined to respond. That’s what the Archbishop noticed; Jesus looks up and sees the need. And Abp Geoff challenged the good parishioners at Burnside to do the same, just as he would no doubt have challenged us here. Do we as followers of Jesus look up and see the need around us like Jesus does. And do we hear Jesus ask us what we’re going to do about the need when we see it? That funny commentator would imagine us turning our pockets inside out, looking helpless and whispering that our cupboard is bare. And it’s true; like many churches, our mission budget is always something of an afterthought. So is there something we can do about it? As the Archbishop’s gaze swept back and forth over us, by this stage, we were all feeling pretty uncomfortable.

But then he asked us to look at what the disciples had readily available – five loaves and two fish – and what eventually happened when it was offered to Jesus for him to share out. Jesus wasn’t asking for more than we have; he just asked that we make available what we do have, and trust in his help for the rest. They started with just five loaves and a couple of fish and however you want to explain it, look what happened; everyone fed, and loads of leftovers. What’s needed, and what can we start with?

So; the need. As I wrote in a recent weekly, we keep being reminded of an epidemic of loneliness in the Australian community. Despite being connected with each other via social media and myriad electronic communication options, we’re realising that there’s no substitute for actually being together in person.

The Covid experience has supercharged an epidemic of loneliness, isolation, depression and anxiety in people. Children are refusing to go to school in record numbers. People don’t want to be at work in person if they can work from home. They want to avoid the tension of being in work situations where people really don’t behave well with each other, not to mention hours of lonely, frustrating commutes. But the electronic modes of being in touch are sometimes even more dangerous – and particularly for our children and grandchildren. ^{cf Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation}

Here we are a small community with a wonderful, abundant resource. We’ve spent a long time as a community where being kind, thoughtful, gracious, patient, generous and gentle is the normal way to be. We have ethical standards which are intended to make this community a place of safety and fulfilment and belonging for everyone. In our gospel story, we’ve seen Jesus look up, see a need, and challenge us to meet that need. And we are being called to address a deep hunger in people right now.

Our loaves and fish? I’m glad to say that we’ve begun something that answers this call, and that’s the children’s choir. The choir is a safe, delightful place for children of different ages to connect with each other in a way that’s not electronically mediated; a place to enjoy each other’s company in a safe, loving environment. Learning to sing together can help fix loneliness and anxiety; and singing itself is a lifelong skill and joy.

But what about the anxious, lonely adults out there? Let’s share ideas. What invitation can I put on our notice board that might help meet a need you know of? I remember knitting groups making beanies for the desert people in winter, and ambulance care bears in the summer. We already have a group greening the parklands together. We have centring prayer groups. But what else to offer – it only need be as humble as five pitas and a couple of fish? What can we offer? Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 9b – 21-7-2024 – Mark 6 30-34, 53-56

Look in the mirror and find Jesus, a goldsmith, purifying us – the gold – with fire, crucible, and skimmer. Skimming over and over until his face is reflected perfectly.

Today’s Gospel passage is startling for what gets left out – two iconic miracles; Jesus feeding the five thousand, and Jesus walking on the water. Today, we only read the verses before the miracles, and then the verses straight after them. So what we’re looking at today is like a frame without a picture in it.

The frame is Jesus’ compassion – as ever, for the crowds, but first, his compassion for the apostles. They’ve worked so hard they haven’t even had time to eat. So he took them away in their boat to escape the constant demands of the crowds.

One lesson many followers of Jesus have drawn from this is that discipleship must balance times of service with time for physical and spiritual renewal – food, rest and prayer. St Vincent de Paul said, Be careful to preserve your health. It’s a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything. Another interpretation might be that the disciples learn about compassion by being on the receiving end of it. I think we need both insights.

Jesus took his apostles away in their boat to get away from the constant demands of the crowds. No chance of that. People guessed where they were going and ran on ahead of them. A great crowd had gathered to meet the boat by the time it landed. What’s a reasonable reaction to this? What should Jesus have done? He and the disciples had every reason to be dismayed. They hadn’t eaten, and they’d needed rest even before bringing the boat here.

We’d expect tired, hungry people to respond with frustration to this unexpected, extra demand on their ebbing energy. Mark doesn’t tell us how the disciples responded; maybe Jesus did let them rest. But he does tell us that Jesus has compassion on the crowd, because they were “like sheep without a shepherd”.

Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The theologian Douglas Hall sees in this verse an answer to two huge questions. The first question; how does God view the world? And the other, how does God want us to view the world? He says that the answer to both is to be found in this verse.

How does God see the world? Like Jesus does; with compassion. And how does God want us to see the world? Like Jesus does; with compassion.

This might seem pretty straightforward; almost so obvious that it doesn’t warrant talking about. Except that it’s not just a feeling that Jesus had on a few occasions when he was confronted with people who were suffering badly. It’s his life and death witness. Compassion demands everything. It’s much more than just pity or sympathy. Pity is something you can manage from afar – at a once-remove! Not compassion. You do not have compassion, really, unless you suffer with [them].*

Compassion means knowing the same experience as another person who is suffering – suffering it with them. And in this morning’s Gospel, we can see that it also meant Jesus deciding to put aside his own comfort so that he could care for the needs of that great crowd – and of course, that other crowd later who greeted him at Gennesaret after the two miracles.

So it’s a frame we’ve been given in today’s Gospel – no picture, but a frame of compassion. This frame calls us to look where the picture would have been, and see ourselves, as in a mirror, and ask what we would have done.

Compassion – the wounded healer – underpins the Church’s healing and teaching service. It makes them authentic. What we say and do are integrated when we follow Jesus, and he calls us into the danger area of compassion. Can we see ourselves willingly entering the experience of those Jesus sends us to serve? Jesus came to seek us out. We know what that compassion has done for us. The call is to offer that gift to the next one we meet. It’s painful to enter that space, and yet it transforms the world – and us – like nothing else.

What about that image of the goldsmith skimming off the dross?

It’s one picture of the pain, the cost of being compassionate. It hurts. It wouldn’t be real if it didn’t. But it transforms us with every decision we make to share someone else’s pain. It cleanses us of the dross – the fear, the self-centredness, the deliberate blindness and so many other barriers we have to risking compassion. But with every new decision for costly care, we come closer to truly reflecting in our own being the image and likeness of God in Jesus.  Amen

^{* Hall, D. J. (2009). Theological Perspective on Mark 6:30‒34, 53‒56. Feasting on the Word: Year B (Vol. 3, p. 262)}

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 8B – Mark 6 14-29 (Parallels Esther 1 & 5, 1 Kings 16)

We’ve just listened to a horrible story. But we finished by calling it the Gospel of the Lord: what Mark calls the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mk1.1 So where’s the good news in it? Is there something we didn’t hear? Herod heard it. He heard people talking about Jesus’ deeds of power and he said, This is John, whom I beheaded. He’s been raised from the dead. A strange thing to say. What’s it all about? Before we look at the story itself, it may also strike you as strange that just after Mark tells this horrible story, without any change of pace, we’ll suddenly be back with the twelve again who’ve just returned to tell Jesus about their mission. 30 [They] gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

And then off they’ll go with Jesus for a rest – which gets interrupted by the feeding of the five thousand. So although good news is actually something we don’t meet in today’s story, Mark has made Good News the context of Herod’s violence – the frame. Today’s violent story is surrounded with stories of healing and love and care. That’s often something quite true to life. Where is God when terrible things happen to good people; I mean really good people? Mark’s answer to that question is the context – the frame – he puts around this story. The good news is that God is still out there in good people doing kind, healing things. In a world of cruelty and malevolence, there is still a different voice; a voice that won’t be silenced.

And this is the voice we can hear surrounding today’s story, despite all attempts to suppress it. This voice exposes evil for what it is by declaring there is another truth. Some people try to stop this voice being heard. For Herod and Herodias, silencing John should have ended the matter, shouldn’t it? What upstart tells the first family what they can and can’t do; who’s running the place anyway? So Herod locked him up. But even so, we’re given some strange things to ponder. 19 Herodias had a grudge against [John], and wanted to kill him. But she couldn’t, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When [Herod] heard [John], he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

What’s going on? A Jewish historian of the time, Josephus, (Jewish Antiquities XVIII.v.1 – LCL 433, 77f) tells us that Herodias and Herod Antipas first met when he was on a trip to Rome. At that time, Herodias was married to his half-brother, Herod Philip (who was incidentally her uncle). Our Herod, Herod Antipas, had stopped at his brother’s house on his journey, and while he was there, he fell for his sister in law Herodias (who was his niece too). He proposed and she accepted, but on condition that he dump his current wife. He agreed, and soon after he returned from Rome, that condition had been met. Then they were an item. So much for the table of kindred and affinity!

People who value their safety are careful who they speak to about the indiscretions of their rulers. But that’s never an option for a prophet. John was busy preparing the nation to receive the Messiah; calling people to repentance. He had to speak truth where it counted. John the Baptist had to tell Herod personally that he’d done wrong. But where Herod would normally have killed John without compunction, we’re told that he protected John from his wife’s anger. As we know, when Herod heard John, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

John’s message, which so enraged Herodias, called out to something deep inside Herod. It was at once a mystery to him, and yet a magnet. There was hope. But this was a pretty sick family. Herod threw a birthday party in his own honour – inviting his courtiers, officers and the leaders of Galilee. At formal banquets in that part of the world, men ate in one area and women ate in a completely separate one. That was what civilised people did. That’s why the daughter had to go out to speak to her mother. Yet Herod had his daughter in the men’s dining room dancing for them. That was not civilized. And then despite his reverence for John, Herod compounded his shameful behaviour by sacrificing John to his twisted sense of personal honour. Herod was a slave to what his cronies thought of him. John’s proclamation brought this into the light, and it cost the world his precious life.

29 When [John’s] disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. John’s disciples were more courageous than many disciples of Jesus would prove to be. But Mark will leave the story there and in the next sentence, take us straight back into the story of the mission of Jesus disciples. 30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

Dreadful things happen in the context of God’s mission; bad things happen to very good people. Yet the way Mark has set this out, it’s the healing love of God that surrounds this evil and sets the ultimate agenda; not a frightened politician’s knee-jerk destruction of truth. Mark’s community was not the only one to live in a time when it was all too easy to lose hope. We live in a time of fear and uncertainty now. But this story tells us that those dangers are not our true context.

Instead, we are called by this story to create a context of truth that surrounds the wrong and sets people free; to offer love that heals people, and generosity that meets their needs. We are called to live another agenda; to take up the mission that Jesus sends us out to accomplish. This story is a call to us to tell and live out good news stories; to surround the suffering with God’s love and show them that the context of all that happens really is the love of God. That’s why Mark can have us say even this story is part of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 6b – Cor 12 2-10 Mk 6 1-13

When things are looking grim out there on the field, there’s nothing like an inspirational moment for getting things back on track, is there. A fresh player comes on, scores that sensational goal, and the dejected team suddenly springs back to life. Enough Olympic gold may even lead to elections being called in some parts of the world. What do they say – nothing succeeds like success?

If you weren’t here last week, you missed some inspirational stories. A woman who’d suffered from bleeding for twelve years was instantly healed when she managed to touch Jesus’ clothing. And just after that, Jesus called Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter back from the dead. Inspiration, compassion, power.

Logically, I’d expect the gospel writer to use miracles like these as the launching pad for today’s story of the disciples being sent out on their first missionary journey. Wouldn’t that give them a boost!? But that’s not what happens. Instead, there’s the strange episode where we read about Jesus being rejected by the people of his home town. All the excitement of the last few chapters, his profound teaching and his miraculous deeds of power all brought crashing to earth in this humiliating homecoming. He could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief

Now he sends out his disciples. But hasn’t Mark shot himself in the foot? What sort of launch is this for the disciples’ mission? It seems so weak. Where was Mark’s editor!? … How important are the miracle stories of Jesus to you? Do they inspire you? Are they very important for how you understand Jesus, or is there something else about Jesus that really gets you interested in him? What is it that really draws you to Jesus? Let’s ponder that in silence for a bit – or chat with a neighbour.

I don’t think it’s ever struck me so clearly before, how this part of Mark’s gospel focuses on weakness as the heart of Christian mission. Jesus is weak in the face of his scandalized townspeople. Jesus sends out his disciples with practically no equipment for their journey – no chance of self-sufficiency. And next week, Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist will be executed by King Herod. What is Mark doing here? How can this be ‘the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’?

Mark is teaching us something about the meaning of faith. We sometimes talk about people having strong faith, and maybe we admire them. But what Mark says here is that faith is not about being strong for God. Quite the opposite. It’s about deciding to open to God’s leading, God’s strength; being ready to respond to God.

It’s about risk – not confidence. So Mark is saying that faith is something we receive when our hands are empty, because then they’re free to catch it. God throws us an opportunity – and we must learn how to know when that happens – and we have to choose to drop what we’re doing and catch hold of what God sends us. Faith means we put our agenda to one side so we’re available for God. It means we let go of our security blanket and walk away from it; walk vulnerably into the future that God holds before us. Have you done this, or met someone who has?

However we look at it, it’s uncomfortable; I know. So many of us are used to being in control. Or else we think we don’t want to put God to any unnecessary trouble on our account. We’ll just call on God in emergencies. But normally, we’ll be adult about our faith and look after most things ourselves thanks very much.

Can you hear how ridiculous that is? We heard Paul wrestle with just this question.

You remember Paul thought he had a handicap that was bad for his mission. He was sure he could do a better job if God fixed it. But God didn’t, and instead, answered Paul’s prayers in a very interesting way. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. That’s what God said to Paul. . My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.

What I hear in that is that however God chooses to equip me for a job, it will be enough. And not being good enough myself – and knowing I’m not good enough – won’t matter. God will get done what God chooses to get done. If God calls me to be a part of a job, I’m free to be thoroughly unselfconscious about it: to be in the middle of it all and simply to delight with everyone else at the wonders of God.

Let’s hear how Paul puts it in The Message translation – this wonderful freedom that Jesus gives him in his weakness.

God said, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I stopped focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer; these limitations that cut me down to size – abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

Lord Jesus, may we discover the freedom there is in your love for us as the people we are, and to trust that when you call us, you will work in us and with us so we will rejoice to see the job done. Amen.