Rev’d Susan Straub

Easter 2 Year B – Acts 4:32-37, Psalm 133, 1 John 1 1-2, 2, John 20:19-31

Children’s Talk

 When I was Priest in a country parish by the sea, there was a little boy called Selwyn.  He was bright and quick on his feet (his daddy was a national-level soccer-player).  One Sunday morning, Selwyn came confidently as usual to the altar-rail for his blessing.  He was dressed a little differently than usual, though still in his best:  he wore his Spiderman costume.   And we loved him for it!

Now Selwyn is not an uncommon name in some Pacific Islands. Many people are still thankful to the man who brought them the good news that God in Jesus is not only alive but with us; right where we are.  Not only that, but He loves us and always will. All you have to do, the man said, is believe it. It’s the Truth.  The life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son, were evidence of the Truth of God’s love for the world, for  each one of us;  and for you.  The name of the man sent by his Church was George Selwyn, and he was the first bishop of New Zealand. (1809-1878).

Sermon

On Saturday, Easter Eve, I went for swim, instead of going as usual on   Sunday before church.  Jim, not his real name was sitting in the morning sun with a pleasant-faced Asian woman.  She could have been a recent immigrant as she didn’t seem confident about speaking English, but seemed to understand.  Jim had had orthopaedic surgery the previous week, was happy with his recovery so far, and grateful. That led to the wonders of living in Adelaide. Together we extolled its delights: from d medical science, to the space-agency, opera and high culture, sports, and our new Oval overseen by the Cathedral.  At that, Jim asked if I was taking Easter services, and as a quick aside to the woman, said, ‘Susan’s a priest’.  He then suggested my sermon should be about being thankful: for living in safety, when elsewhere in the world was suffering hugely, especially from the pandemic. Our exchange then centred on suffering and the person of Christ.  He made statements that allowed me to say that Jesus was a victim who didn’t behave like a victim;  that he didn’t repay evil with evil, but in the agony of the brutal, intentional cruelty, and humiliation of crucifixion, he said: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’ and the evil done to him was cut off, it couldn’t continue to circulate and damage others.  The woman was looking at me intently.

John 20:19-31

Christ’s appearances and what they meant to the disciples.

Easter Day, that first Sunday after the crucifixion, John wrote that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene.  In the evening of that day, Jesus came and stood among the disciples as they were together in a locked room.  He greeted them, and showed them his hands and his side.  From the marks that the disciples saw on him, there was no doubt for them that this was truly their crucified Rabbi, and if this was their crucified Rabbi standing there among them, then he had to be master over death.

So as to understand what that really meant to these disciples, we need to know how they understood the cosmos. It was heaven, earth and sheol.  Sheol was the place of the dead.  There was no concept of heaven as dwelling forever with God.  The concept of forever dwelling with God, of nothing being able to separate us from the love of God was given to us by those earliest disciples.  For one thing it meant that all that Jesus had taught them could be lived out, as Jesus himself had lived, because it was true, it was genuine, it was a way where God walked too, God walked with them.

In other words, and this is an important theme in John’s gospel, Jesus is the Truth.  God’s Word, Jesus, is the Truth.  A couple of years ago, there was an article in the Easter edition of the Weekend Australian.   Written by Brian Rayment, QC Advocate for the Newcastle Diocese, the article explored the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin (the court of justice of Jesus’ people), and the trial before Pilate, the Roman governor.  The conclusion Rayment drew is that the charge brought against Jesus was probably not that of blasphemy, but of being a false prophet, a fraud, a charlatan, one about whom no-one could testify to any evidence that what he had taught and said was in any way true or subsequently borne out. This would explain, for example, why the chief priests wanted to change the inscription on the cross from:  ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’ to: ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews’.  Under the first title, the King of the Jews is being crucified, under the second title, a fraud, a false prophet, a trouble-maker, is being crucified.

So when Jesus appeared to his disciples alive with the marks of crucifixion, there could be no greater testimony to the truth that God had spoken in the person and work of this man.  The disciples saw and believed this truth, Thomas touched and believed, and John wrote these things so that we may believe. What we believe is that the way of God is the way of Jesus, the Christ;  that as members of his body we live his risen life; and that in living Christ’s risen life nothing can separate us from God.  You know as well as I do, that we all share the joys and the sorrows of human life.  We have our achievements and our failures, as did the one we call Lord, but we, who believe, who have faith, even if our faith is as small as a mustard seed in a sea of doubt, have the power of life and peace, and the power to give life and peace to others.  In fact, ou faith is made complete in loving giving.

At each eucharist, we celebrate the presence of the risen Christ in our midst with the greeting of peace, the broken Christ distributed among us, with Christ alive within us, God sends us out.  Like those disciples long ago, we too leave the security of the church, the building and each other to go out into the world with the message of hope conveyed in ordinary words and actions:  Christ is risen. He walks with us. Talks with us. Shall we face welcome, hostility or indifference? Like the disciples, we learn not to be fazed by the reactions of others one way or another, some are ready or receptive and some not (God knows!).  We know that we are called and sent to show our love for God and our neighbour: to show it in the way we live, and when opportunity arises, telling the truth.  Christ is risen! There’s nothing to fear. Love is stronger than fear – the fear of being judged by someone who tells you what Christians believe and that’s why they’re not, but they’re ‘spiritual’, whatever that means! Love is stronger than fear – the fear of being condemned, whether ‘trolled’ or ‘blocked’, or our faith overlooked to make us acceptable and socially appropriate to acquaintances, colleagues, neighbours.  Love is stronger even than death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s love.  That’s the truth

You see, in the person and work of Christ, our faith deals effectively with the problem of evil, of sin both committed and suffered.  We know that it was by people of faith in Jesus Christ that Adelaide was founded and developed.  As I left Jim and the woman on Easter Eve, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’d speak of thankfulness!’

So here’s to thankfulness for the risen life we share in Christ.  Thanks for the way of life we share in Adelaide, in Australia;  thanks for the life and work of George Augustus Selwyn, first bishop of New Zealand; and thanks for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who loved faithfully and steadfastly in war and peace, his country, our country, our commonwealth of nations, and our Queen.  May he rest in the love and peace of Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2021

Love is stronger than death – quite literally. Jesus rose from the dead! He is alive! In his love for us, he came to bring us abundant life – life filled with hope, joy, freedom, justice, healing, equality, dignity, peace – he came to bring these good gifts of God to everyone.

But some people wanted to monopolise power, wealth and control for themselves. So they did what they thought was needed to stop him – they eventually murdered Jesus. But in him, the combined might of established religious and national vested interest and trans-national power were stopped in their tracks. Their final solution, to silence his movement by murdering him, was helpless in the face of the love which this dear, humble, compassionate man embodied. Love was born again when Jesus rose from the dead. His love is quite literally stronger than death itself.

John’s gospel tells us that Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb; and Peter and the beloved disciple were witnesses to this – right down to the grave-cloths discarded in the cave. Dumbfounded, the men return to their homes. But Magdalene stays, weeping, at the entrance to the cave. She looks in and sees two angels there who ask her why she’s weeping. She answers that she fears the body of her beloved teacher Rabbouni has been removed by someone. A horrible fear.

But then she turns and the risen Jesus appears to her, first asking the same question as the angels – Why are you weeping? – and then another question. She’s been staring into the cave – For whom are you looking? Magdalene first assumes he must be ‘the gardener’ and asks if he’s the one who’s taken her teacher away. She doesn’t recognise him. But the gardener? It’s a lovely detail, and only in John’s resurrection story, this memory of the tomb being in a garden (which we also heard in the Good Friday gospel). This woman and this man alone in the garden echo the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden; placed there to serve and protect. We know Jesus as the most perfect expression of our human vocation to serve and protect.

While we’re on the subject of echoes of earlier stories, let’s go back to Jesus’ second question to Magdalene – For whom are you looking? It reminds us of God looking for the man and the woman hiding in the Garden of Eden. But it’s the same question Jesus asked Judas and the soldiers in another garden – Gethsemane. John’s drawing all sorts of threads together. We’re reminded of betrayal and deceit in the two other gardens – Eden and Gethsemane. But as soon as John’s evoked these memories, we see that in this garden, they’re wiped away. Mary, he says; Rabbouni – my teacher. And she grabs him. Every tear is wiped away. Jesus has to ask her to let go of him – physically. Everything’s different from now on, but still connected.

In this garden, the man doesn’t point a finger of blame at the woman. Rather, Jesus commissions Mary to carry the wonderful news of his resurrection to the others. She is like the river flowing out of the Garden of Eden to water the whole Earth – she is the first Apostle, sent to bear the good news that the love of Jesus is stronger than death. That is the Gospel we bear still.

So in today’s service, we began our worship in a garden. We lit a fire to show that our God is afire with love – love that is stronger than death. From that fire, we lit a candle which held the light of Christ before us as we recalled the true significance of his resurrection in all time and space. And in the next few minutes, we will remember our baptisms – where we went under the deep waters of death with Christ in order that we might be raised to new life with him.

We engage in these ancient, symbolic acts to remind ourselves whose we are. We, have been raised to new life from the deep waters of death by the power of Jesus. We are to live the certainty that love is stronger than death. We are set free to name and defy the powers of greed, control and fear and death which could not contain Jesus, and which have no legitimate place in the world. Those powers rise and seek to dominate in every age; they’re doing so now. But we know, and we proclaim what we celebrate again today. Love is stronger than death. Christ is risen; Alleluia!

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 5b – I am the true vine – John 15 1-8

In John’s Gospel, when Jesus says I am the true vine, or I am the Good Shepherd, or I am the way, the truth and the life, or any of the other I am sayings, the I am part is especially significant. It’s a deliberate echo of God’s revelation of the divine Name to Moses at the burning bush ^{Exodus 3.14} – I am who I am – tell the Israelites that I am has sent you. You might remember in the Good Friday Passion Gospel when soldiers came to arrest Jesus. Jesus asked them who they were looking for. When they said Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus replied literally I am, and everyone fell to the ground. The I am sayings in John’s Gospel tell us that the whole majesty and glory and love of God is present physically in this human being called Jesus.

Often, the I am sayings also make a connection between Jesus’ body and the Temple of Jerusalem. Jesus referred to own body as ‘this Temple’ – a place where God is present ^{John 2.19-22} – which was what the Temple of Jerusalem was for the Jewish people. Jesus called his followers to shift their gaze away from the Temple building, and instead turn to him.

Today’s I am statement, I am the true vine, is for us an obscure Temple reference. What does a vine have to do with the Temple? The archæological architect, Leen Ritmeyer is a world authority on the Temple of Jesus’ time. On the basis of his research, he and a colleague designed and built a scale model of the second Temple Jesus knew. Supporting its porch are four columns. Wreathed up these columns and over the porch is a huge vine, wrought out of gold; the Golden Vine of the Temple.

This vine represented Israel whom God had planted in the Holy Land. ^{Ps 80; Hos 5; Jer 2}. It graced the doorway into the Holy of Holies. And pilgrims would bring offerings of golden leaves and clusters of golden grapes to add to the Temple vine’s splendour. In the Mishnah, we read whosoever gave a leaf, or a berry, or a cluster as a freewill-offering…brought it and [the priests] hung it there”. ^{(Middot 3.8)} So to return to this morning’s Gospel reading, when Jesus said I am the true vine, he was declaring that he superseded all this in his own person. He was effectively saying, By me, by this doorway, you enter God’s presence. I am the way.

Vines have a mind of their own. Watch them grow and you see creation at work before your eyes. Little tendrils stretch out quickly, looking for the next thing to grab onto. They set the direction of growth for the rest of the vine towards the light. Plants adapt to their environments like that. They adapt and belong – they give fruit, shade, beauty, variety, oxygen – they give life. So I find it a fascinating picture Jesus gives us of ourselves, the church, as the branches. It’s an image which speaks of amazing variety; an image of life-giving providence.

The vine growing in the soil is a picture of Jesus connecting us with the source of our being. It’s an organic, reciprocal image of a church community who can grow and spread where we’re needed in order to provide nourishment, refreshment, shade and beauty. There’s a wonderful purpose to it. Christ as the vine and we as the branches says that we are called to provide for anyone who needs our fruit.

Plants can be utterly different from each other – each specially adapted to its own particular environment. So how does this speak to us – St John’s, a branch of the true vine? In Adelaide terms, we’re an ancient parish – the second oldest – and we’ve seeded other parishes in our time – parishes, a school, St John’s Youth Services, our community store. And we’ve seen significant prunings too. The world around us has changed and we’ve adapted. And Jesus still calls us to bear much fruit. We’re the latest season of branches of the true vine, called to bear much fruit.

The golden vine of the Jerusalem Temple was a sign of God’s provision, and at the same time, an emblem of the people’s gratitude. It’s a very helpful image, this link between gratitude and generosity. It characterises people who know we are loved and blessed, and feel moved to respond with love and gratitude.

Easter-5-b-2021-True-Vine- (1)

But how to respond to such a gift? In my weekly, I wrote about the work of St John’s Youth Services, which is a beautiful fruit of this branch of the vine. I also wrote about some related services that serve the poorest and most vulnerable in our community – homeless people; people escaping the poison of coercive control and violence; Aboriginal people in need – all on our doorstep, many with no safe place.

It’s time to ask if the fruit we’ve been producing until now is adapted to current needs. Are we bearing enough fruit – the right variety? Are we alive to specific needs; are we willing to be pruned; to have other branches grafted in with us, or to be grafted in different places ourselves? Are we called to something new? These are things we can only discern together through prayer and listening – openly and courageously. Do we increase the ministries we’re doing to meet increased need, or add something quite new? We in Parish Council await your suggestions. Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Palm Sunday – Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem

Outside: introduction to the liturgy of the Palms

The Temple Mount looks out east across to the steep side of the Mount of Olives – Jesus’ triumphal procession will be like a slow-moving tableau. The Roman headquarters, the Antonia fortress, at the north-west corner of the Mount commands a clear view both over the Temple precinct, and the Mount of Olives.

The soldiers will watch everything from their battlements. I don’t think they’ll believe it’s an insurrection – these aren’t insurgents. More likely they’ll think there’s a factional battle brewing between different groups of religious fanatics.

And the Temple authorities will be watching too, trying to measure the threat; preparing strategies to quench a dangerous new movement. If they don’t stop it quickly, there’ll be soldiers out on the Temple Mount imposing martial law before you know it. You can sympathise with all of them really; that is, until you think about the decisions some of them took.

The Palm Sunday Gospel calls us to join the crowd of people who surround Jesus, and to choose to walk with him. So let’s do that. Let’s raise our palm crosses, bless them together, and then hear the palm Gospel.

Sermon – The servant king who conquers through self-emptying, not force.

The crowds on the Mount of Olives were crying out words from Psalm 118.  : ^{Ps 118.25} Hosanna Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! ²⁶ Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the Lord. ²⁷ The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.

Everyone who was anyone has come to Jerusalem to conquer her, to control her, to rescue her, to avenge her. Jesus came to save them by emptying himself of power.

David captured it from the Jebusites (1000 BCE) 2 Sam 5

Sennacherib, King of Assyria came to take it from Hezekiah, but was mysteriously turned back (701 BCE) 2 Chr 32

The army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon sacked the city and carried the people off into exile (586 BCE) 2 Kings 25

Alexander the Great conquered the land (332 BCE)

Julius Caesar’s general Pompey (63 BCE) and Caesar in 47

Caliph Omar (Arabian) (638 CE)

Baldwin I Crusader King (1099)

Sala’adin (Sultan of Egypt and Syria) (1187)

The Mamluk Pashas (Egyptians) (1250-1517)

Suleiman the Magnificent Ottoman Sultan (Turks) (1517-1918)

Napoleon’s Palestinian campaign ended with an outbreak of the plague amongst his troops (1799)

Theodor Herzl & Kaiser Wilhelm both visited the Ottoman rulers (1898)

The British General Allenby strode in ahead of his troops (Dec 1917)

The Arab Legion marched in (1948)

Israeli forces took it in (1967)

Lots of them believed they were joining a mission to save Jerusalem from blasphemy and evil. Yet they came to do that with swords or guns or bombs.

Today, we accompany another king who rode into Jerusalem. We join a crowd of ordinary people who line the road down the Mount of Olives to shout with hope and joy – hope for a king who’ll lead an army. But we get Jesus, perched on the back of a tiny donkey that jiggles its unceremonious way down towards Jerusalem. We’re shouting; we’re crying out to him to save us. We’re bellowing הוֹשִׁ֘יעָ֥ה נָּ֑א – Hosanna ‘save us, we beseech you’– the cry of suffering people – we’re crying out to this very exposed man on a borrowed donkey; calling him to save us.

The generals, sultans, caliphs, kings, emperors and armies have arrived to turn people into enemies, captives, slaves, subjects, displaced persons and refugees. They’ve taken by force what isn’t theirs to take. Jesus doesn’t do that; he’s an utterly different king. He receives what isn’t his too, but rather than taking over people’s freedom, he receives from us what hurts and terrifies and imprisons us.

• Remember that costly perfume the woman anointed him with? Jesus received her gift as an acknowledgement of his burial.
• Jesus received Judas’s twisted friendship for him
• He received the animosity of the chief priests and the cowardice of Pilate
• He received Barabbas’s execution
• He received the crowd’s capricious change; ‘hosanna’ one day, ‘crucify’ the next
• He received the soldiers’ boredom, their mocking and their cruelty
• He received Simon of Cyrene’s forced assistance
• He received acknowledgment of his kingship with the sarcastic inscription on his cross
• He received the contempt of passers by, of priests and scribes, and of one of the criminals crucified with him
• And in death, he received the centurion’s confession of belief.

Somehow, by his self-emptying, Jesus makes space within himself to receive the gifts and sufferings of others. By his self-emptying, he opens himself to receive the good and the bad. And in receiving them, he transforms the life of the people to whom he shows such compassion.

No-one can be just a bystander watching Jesus pass by. He will receive something from us – respect, indignation, shame, dishonour, authority, disbelief – and we’ll find the place where it was in us may well be utterly transformed.

If we choose him as our teacher – if we choose discipleship to Jesus – to follow him – then on this Passion Sunday we need to know that his is the path of compassion. And compassion, as our Lenten study group has been learning, quite literally means suffering with the other – the one who hurts. The terrible challenge of the Holy Week journey we embark on today is this; as followers of Jesus, are we also prepared to travel the road of self-emptying? To renounce the power and influence we might habitually use to serve the ends of ourselves, our friends and families? To enter the world of those who are hurting, and be with these dear ones in their pain?

Jesus doesn’t ask this of the ones who are already suffering – he doesn’t need to; you already know compassion. But he does ask it of the comfortable and the contented – and he asks it not so much individuals as communities.

So St John’s, are we prepared to stay on this path? Are we still prepared to self-empty; to risk; to receive what only the compassionate dare to receive, and to trust in our Lord that this will lead to healing?

Archbishop Geoffrey Smith

Lent 5B – Jeremiah 31.31-34, Hebrews 5.5-14, John 12.20-33

English can be a tricky language to learn for a number of reasons but including because one word can have more than one meaning. There is an example of that in today’s gospel reading: the word ‘see’. See, that’s s-e-e not s-e-a, (that’s another challenge with English-different words can sound the same).  S-e-e can describe process of seeing with our eyes, or it can describe understanding , as in ‘oh now I see what you mean’. It can be tricky.

Today’s gospel passage from John’s gospel has some Greeks, that is people from Greece, likely to be non-Jews or in other words gentile people, who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, finding the disciple called Philip and saying-‘we wish to see Jesus’.

The passage then has Philip telling this to Andrew and the two of them telling Jesus.  Presumably they said to Jesus, ‘some Greeks want to see you’. There is no record of the Greeks having a face-to-face meeting with Jesus. What follows the communication of the request to Jesus is a long passage where Jesus reflects on the meaning of his death and resurrection and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  The people from Greece want to ‘see’, that is meet Jesus, but the response Jesus gives is about seeing who he is, and seeing the meaning of his death and resurrection and understanding what following him entails.

The Greeks want to see Jesus, but Jesus wants them and the disciples to understand what he is all about.

This play on seeing and not understanding is a bit of a theme in John’s gospel. There is a contrast between the religious people who should recognise Jesus but don’t see who Jesus is, and often the people who aren’t religious specialists who do see. Who do get it. Who do understand who Jesus is.

So instead of ending up with a face-to-face meeting with Jesus where the Greek enquirers eyeball Jesus, we end up with the most concentrated teaching on the meaning of Jesus death and resurrection in the whole of John’s gospel. This is to help us to ‘see’, to understand, to follow and so have life.

John’s gospel tells us what the purpose of the gospel is: ‘so that we might come to believe (or continue to believe) that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name’ (Jn 20.31).

So, it seems important then that we have a look at this block of teaching and see what it might have for us on the fifth Sunday of Lent.

First, Jesus’ crucifixion was not some unfortunate mistake or tragedy where Jesus’ life was taken from him against his will. His whole life was about service. In his ministry we see him offering himself for the good of others. His life was a life of love. Jesus’ death was the final and most dramatic example of that. Jesus didn’t have some macabre death wish but a sense of his vocation of service. As he says in verse 27-‘should I say-father save me from this hour?’. (That is the hour of his rejection and suffering and death). ‘No’, he says, ‘it is for this reason that I have come to this hour’. Jesus’ whole ministry led to his offering of himself for the life of the whole creation. This is love. This is service.

Second, in Jesus’ offering of himself, the world has been judged. All the priorities of the world, those who think they have power and influence, the forces of evil themselves have been shown to be false. Here in Jesus offering of himself do we have real meaning, real purpose, real power. The world and its priorities and what it thinks is valuable has been judged and shown to be lacking. The ultimate power of evil is overcome in the offering of Jesus himself and his death on the cross and the true way of life and living has been highlighted.

Third, Jesus’ offering of himself on the cross, his great act of love, will lead to reconciliation. He says, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself’. His death is enough for all people. Through his death all the people of the world are invited to him. All the people of the world are welcomed by him. All the people of the world have the opportunity to know him and be at peace with God through him, and receive his life. This is the answer to the word of God through Jeremiah in the first reading: ‘for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more’. This through the offering and death of Christ.

It is important that we notice the word ‘draw’-I when I am lifted up will draw all people to myself’. There is the sense of a positive energy. Not only is the door to Jesus and his life open but there is an attraction to Jesus as people see the power of his loving service on the cross and realise how wonderful that is.

There is a tension in John’s gospel in that so much is on offer to the whole world, but there is the need to accept what is on offer. To respond to Jesus’ loving service. To believe and trust in him and follow him. People need to accept and believe but the way is open to all.

Fourth, those who ‘see’ who Jesus is are called to follow him. He says: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life’.

To love our life is the antithesis of Jesus style. Jesus’ style, his example is to give away his life in service. To expend himself for the good of others. Not to preserve himself or save himself but to spend himself. To hate life in this context is not to despise our life, but to be loyal to Jesus. To follow his example. To serve others as Jesus did.

What it means to serve Jesus is seen clearly in the foot washing which comes in the next chapter. There Jesus takes on the task of the lowliest servant in the household and dirties himself in the process of making the disciples clean. Its only their feet but it is symbolic of cleansing all of them. That is what it means to follow Jesus. To give of ourselves for the good and healing and benefit of others.

This ties in so clearly with the mission of Jesus which is the healing of all things. The bringing good to everything. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what his followers do.

And finally, verse 26, ‘whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also’. Where is Jesus to be found? Jesus is found among those lost from God. Those who are marginalised and in need. The sinners and the sick. Those who might be breathing but are short on life. That’s where Jesus was to be found in his ministry and that’s where his followers will be found today. Bringing hope and healing and life to those who are running short of those things.

We are all in the process of ‘seeing’ Jesus. We are all in the process of understanding him and understanding the implications of his service for us. Lent is a good time to move that understanding on, but also to hear again his call to follow. To follow his style. To follow his priorities. To be where he was and still is.

What this means for us in comfortable middle-class Australia requires some thinking as it can be challenging for us. The whole narrative of our society is opposite to the idea of self- offering and service in the style of Jesus. The narrative of our society goes the other way, so we as followers of Jesus need to think about what it means to actually follow the one who washed his disciples feet. Who dirtied himself to cleanse others. Who gave his life so the whole world could have more life. Who died so that the whole world could be healed. And then we need to act, because that’s what following Jesus always means.

 

 

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4b Mothering Sunday – Num 21 4-19, Ps 107 1-3, 17-22, Eph 2 1-10, Jn 3 14-21

Introduction to the readings for the younger people

We’re about to hear an episode in the adventures of the Israelites that doesn’t appear in many children’s Bibles.

After God rescued the Israelites from being slaves in Egypt, they often grumbled about things on their journey – especially about the food. Today, they even grumbled against God and against their leader Moses.

God sent fiery serpents among them and lots of Israelites were bitten and died. They realised how wicked they’d been. They said they’d been wrong to complain, and they asked Moses to pray that God would take away the serpents from them. Moses did pray, but God didn’t take the serpents away. Strangely, God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole. Moses made one out of bronze and set it up on a pole, and from then on, if anyone was bitten by fiery serpent, they had to look at this bronze fiery serpent and then they wouldn’t die. One person said that this means ‘… Israel can’t become so terminally ill that God isn’t able to heal them’. ^{(T B Dozeman, NIBC II – The Book of Numbers, p.167)}

In today’s Gospel story, Jesus reminds someone about this old snake on the pole story. Jesus meets a man who’s wondering about becoming his follower – a man called Nicodemus. He’s a Pharisee; a Jewish religious leader. Jesus tells Nicodemus, I will be like the serpent set up on the pole. He means that when we see him up on the Cross – which is a sign of death – we’ll see that he’s the way the world can be rescued from death.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that he came to rescue the world – not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Nicodemus listened to Jesus, and even though he was very secretive that night, he would become one of the bravest of Jesus’ followers.

We still remember the danger of death leading to life in the Church when we are baptized. We go beneath the deep waters of death as the way Scripture tells us we enter abundant life in God’s Kingdom.

Sermon

If Moses had prayed the way the people asked him to, he would have asked God to take the serpents away from them. Maybe he did pray that. But God didn’t remove the snakes; people kept on getting bitten. But when they looked at Moses’ bronze serpent, the bites didn’t kill them any more. Is this a story about that eternal question of why a loving God allows suffering, or is it a story about a merciful God who sends healing into a world where our mortality means suffering is inevitable – God so loved the world that he gave his only Son … is that what it’s about?

These questions were still hanging around when Jesus talked with the Jewish leader called Nicodemus. Jesus linked the serpent on the pole with his crucifixion: ^14…just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The Gospel tells us when we can really see, we’ll know Jesus gives life where logically there should be death.

Nicodemus had come to Jesus secretly that night to avoid being noticed. You don’t let on that a dangerous radical has captured your imagination if you value your social standing. Yet we know Nicodemus openly became a disciple soon after. We’ll soon find him speaking up for Jesus against his fellow religious leaders. ^{Jn 7.50-51} And we’ll meet him again on Good Friday when he comes to his Lord again – this time to embalm him for burial. ^{Jn 19.39-42}

Nicodemus had been baffled just before, when Jesus told him he had to be born again. Today we come into that conversation as Jesus tells him about the Son of Man being lifted up like that bronze serpent Moses made. But still on Good Friday as Nicodemus risks everything to bury his Master, he doesn’t yet know that his eyes will see Jesus again ‘lifted up’ – from the grave, and finally from human sight at his Ascension; such knowledge is a privilege that we only have with hindsight.

So has our journey been travelled for us by Nicodemus and the other earliest Christians? Have they tackled all the questions of pain and suffering and healing in a world of mortals, and left us with the answers? No, they certainly haven’t. The questions are new again in every generation. But we can learn from their journeys.

In today’s story, Nicodemus is at one stage on the journey we’re all travelling. He’s come to Jesus to dip his toe in who knows what; to step over the edge of the certainties of his faith world. He’s come secretly to visit someone who challenges his world; threatens to turn it upside down. What is it in Nicodemus that senses his yearning; and why him particularly, and not one of his fellow Jewish leaders?

Last week, we heard how the Holy Spirit lives inside us – places God’s wisdom right on our hearts – hears the deepest yearnings of our hearts, and speaks them for us to the heart of God. In our listening prayer, we hear that conversation between our own hearts, and the fathomless love of the God who bends to hear us. As we hear our yearnings go out, our call is to follow them towards God. Like Nicodemus was called, the Spirit beckons to us as well. Will we also hear and follow?

Today, we’re called to explore the paradox that we are at once the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and yet we and all creation live embraced in God. This Mothering Sunday, our collect prayer sees this embrace from inside: Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being. It’s like an unborn baby might experience life in the womb. Eternal God, in whom we live and move and have our being. God holds the world in a loving embrace; an embrace so nurturing that it’s like a womb.

On Mothering Sunday, one image we’ve inherited is that the Church is our Mother. This echoes something in the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. Jesus had told him you can’t see the kingdom of God without being born again. Might that be where we fit in? Are we, the Church – called the bride of Christ – are we the living sanctuary, the womb, where God nurtures people’s life and movement and being so that they and we may be born anew from here – from this community?

I think it means that on this Mothering Sunday, we remember that our mission as a church is to be a place, a people, of nurture, of nourishment, of warmth and welcome both for each other, and for anyone who is called to be born again into God’s Kingdom, through this community. We nurture life and movement and being.

Today, may we lift up our eyes with Nicodemus to discover the paradox that we are at once the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, yet we are also embraced inside the journey of gestation in God. We live and move and have our being in God. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 3 b  Ex 20 1-17 Ps 19 1 Cor 1 18-25 Jn 2 13-22

I was given a birthday card some years ago which had a picture of a very muscular looking young man on the front. Its caption reads – ‘I know my body’s meant to be a temple, but I think of it as more like a well-managed Christian youth-club.’

It’s not a card you forget quickly. It echoes a saying in 1 Cor 6.19 where Paul writes – Don’t you know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you’ve received from God? You are not your own. Paul’s just been writing about things people who belong to Christian youth clubs probably shouldn’t be doing with their bodies. So it’s always been a much-discussed verse in those settings. … But I digress.

I know my body’s meant to be a temple. This also echoes the saying we just heard in John’s gospel; Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body. And of course, it relates to something we say together here every Sunday – We are the body of Christ: His Sprit is with us. So today we have the symbolism of this body–temple image in the Gospel to explore – both its implications for us as individual, living temples of the Holy Spirit since our baptisms, and for us as St John’s collectively embodying Christ, whose Spirit is with us.

This has a particular focus in Lent, our cleansing time, which is why we have this story of Jesus cleansing the Temple – and on healing Sunday. How I wish, when I pray for someone’s healing from an aggressive disease, that Jesus would knot a cord of ropes and drive the illness out of the temple of their body!

There’s so much in all this that only a story can help us to navigate it. So let’s get our Gospel back in front of us. Jesus arrives at the Temple in Jerusalem when Passover is near; the great Jewish festival which happens around the time we Christians celebrate Easter. Like Easter, Passover remembers a sacrifice through which God saves many people from a death that would otherwise have afflicted everyone. But arriving on the Temple mount, the scene confronting Jesus shocks him deeply. It looks like a marketplace. We might get a sense of this shock when we think of the way hot cross buns and Easter eggs appear in our shops almost before the Christmas tinsel comes down.

In the lead-up to Passover, extra stalls had already mushroomed on the Temple plaza. Some stalls catered to the extra demand for animals and birds to sacrifice at Passover. Others catered to pilgrims who needed to pay their annual Temple tax. They had to exchange their common secular money for silver Tyrian half-shekels; the only coins pure enough to be accepted in payment of the Temple tax.
So what provoked Jesus when he came to the Temple is something we’re quite used to; the grotesque commercialisation of a sacred festival. But for him, the trade wasn’t out in the shops like it is for us. The shops had taken over the Temple plaza itself. Imagine if someone suggested sales of hot cross buns and chocolate rabbits during services in this church as a fundraiser for Lent – imaging vendors marching up and down the aisles crying their wares. How would we react? Not on our watch!

That’s how all the trade in the Temple affected Jesus. This was where God dwelt among the people – where people encountered their God; the Holy of Holies. Brazen commerce in the Temple was something. Jesus took very personally; Jesus; the Holy God embodied and living among the people. There was only one possible response; Jesus cleansed the Temple.

The authorities challenged Jesus to justify his actions, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this? He replied, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ They didn’t understand his response at all. Taking him literally, they said ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But as John has told us Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.

There’s that body-equals-Temple saying again. It comes alive for us today on this Sunday in Lent and in our prayers for healing. Today, we are called to grasp the connection between John’s story of Jesus cleansing the Temple, and the way we, the body of Christ whose Spirit is with us, seek cleansing from all that cuts us off from God. We ask this in a particular way today in our prayers for healing – that Jesus may cleanse us and those we love, that he might heal us of what afflicts and grieves us.

I see Jesus’ passionate reaction to the abuse of the Jerusalem Temple today, and I know that he’s just as passionate about us too – passionate to cleanse us of what mars his image in us. Jesus is passionate about you and me and all people because we too are created in God’s image to be temples of the Holy Spirit like he is.
Jesus is passionate about us as St John’s too; how we represent him in this place. His Spirit is with us so we might provide justice and mercy and faith in the world he died for. Jesus sees how vulnerable people and groups have their sacred places and spiritual connections violated by outside interests that seek only wealth and control – and we only have to think as far as Western Australia for a recent example of this. And he calls us as his body to oppose these abuses – to get rid of these abuses. That’s what the image of cleansing the Temple says to me.

If any are hindered from approaching God by such grotesque forces, or oppressed or sick, this won’t get cleansed just by the well-managed Christian club of my birthday card. Jesus calls us, the Body of Christ who have the Spirit with us, to do what he showed us how to do; his is a call to action. Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Wondering with children inside an egg: Mark 8.31-38 – Lent 2 2021

Have you ever seen a bird hatch out of its egg – a bird or a crocodile or a tortoise or a caterpillar? It’s a big change for them, isn’t it. One moment, tiny living space, next minute, the whole world!

Imagine if you were in an egg and it was time for you to hatch. Everything you know is inside your shell. It lets light in from outside, and warmth and cold. That’s all you feel and see inside your egg – and probably you don’t know you’re going to be in a world bigger than ever you dreamed possible. Your imagination is shaped like the inside of an egg. I wonder how it’ll be just after you’ve hatched. Your world has been replaced – your imagination has cracked open – open to forever.

We’ll hear two stories today about people hatching out of their imaginations. God tries to tell Abraham and Sarah what’s outside their shells. And Jesus does the same with us. We don’t understand all that well, but God is patient; Jesus is patient.

Abraham and Sarah are both very old, but God tells them they’re about to become parents anyway. You might just hear them chuckling in their shells.

Jesus’ friends had heard him talking about God’s Kingdom. They hoped Jesus would become their king, because he was good and kind and wise; much better than the one they had. They knew what a king should be like. But they didn’t understand what sort of king Jesus is, or how amazingly different his Kingdom is. They hadn’t hatched out of their thought-shells yet.

Today, we’ll hear Jesus help to crack their shells for them so he can show them what God’s Kingdom is like. Even though he’s their king, he’ll be treated badly, crucified and killed – but after three days, he’ll rise again. They don’t like the sound of this. It’s not like they imagine. They try to shut their shells again and stay inside. But it won’t work. God’s Kingdom doesn’t wait for us to break out of our eggs. God’s Kingdom breaks in, and shows us that we live in something much more wonderful than we could ever have imagined. So let’s hear these stories.

Lent 2 – 28-2-21 Genesis 17 1-7, 15-16 – Mark 8 (22-30) 31-38

Lots of people have trouble reading the Gospel set for today. What Jesus says is really confronting – confronting for us just as much as it would have been for the original twelve. Here, Jesus calls himself the Son of Man – one of the titles of the Messiah – God’s anointed – the one who, in Daniel 7.13-14, is proclaimed as everlasting sovereign of the Earth. But Jesus says this Son of Man is going to be tortured, killed and then raised from the dead. In saying this, he dumps everything they’d grown up thinking about the one they expected – the Messiah. No wonder Peter reacts like he does, and no wonder Jesus has to reject so forcefully the temptation of Peter’s contradiction. He knows what his path is; self-denial and utter loyalty. And he knows its cost – for him, and for any who would follow him.

When Jesus turns to talk to the crowd – and that means us too – he claims the same self-denial and loyalty from us – even to the point of losing our life for his sake. He challenges us head on. As one writer puts it, We too are scandalized by a crucified Messiah. We too look upon discipleship as a fulfilling and pleasing life-style. We too expect success and approval rather than defeat and ignominy. We too want to raise the approval of our faith in the eyes of the world, and enable the church of Jesus Christ to be a seen as a positive and admired institution. ^{Leonard Vander Zee} So these words are as hard for us to hear as they were for their first hearers

We’re being challenged to wake up to an unfamiliar faith journey today. That’s why I talk with the children about hatching out of an egg. It’s the closest analogy I can come up with for what Mark is saying today. Jesus is asking us, his disciples to follow him out of the world as we see it and into a Kingdom we cannot yet see. He is asking utter trust and courage from us; the sort we met in Abraham and Sarah.

We get a vivid image of this transformation when you remember the last things we saw in this chapter of Mark’s gospel before we rejoined Jesus and his disciples on the road today. (Mark 8.22-30) It’s when Jesus gave sight to a blind man. It’s a beautiful story.

When Jesus and his disciples arrived in the village of Bethsaida, the locals bring the blind man to Jesus and ask if he might touch him.

Jesus does better than that; he takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village. Then he puts some saliva on the man’s eyes, lays his hands on him, and asks the man if he can see anything. The man looks up and says, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees walking.’ Jesus lays his hands on his eyes again. The man’s sight is restored and he sees everything clearly. Then, sending him home, Jesus tells him not even to go into the village.

Today, Mark challenges all of us to leave behind our settled ways of seeing things – and by that, he means our spiritual blindness – and to open our ears and our eyes to what has been proclaimed since the beginning of this gospel; ‘The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.’ ^{Mk 1.14} Repent means to turn around; walk the other way. To walk the Christian path means a complete 180^o turn from the type of power we humans currently honour. Mark makes this point by setting today’s story … in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, a city built by Herod Philip to honour the emperor who’d given him this area to rule … a city built to celebrate worldly power. ^{Leonard Vander Zee}

In this of all places, Jesus decides to tell us that he and everyone who follows in his way must turn from what such a city represents – the self-focussed pursuit of power and influence. We must turn from that, pick up the Cross of Christ, and tread unashamedly, in his footsteps; tread the path of caring for others, walking alongside the poor, the outsider, the vulnerable; revealing the Good News of God’s love.

It’s not always straightforward; not always crystal clear. Like that blind man after Jesus first touched him, we may well also see walking trees, or be seen as walking trees. (cf The Land of Walking Trees by Michael Hansen – a book of meditations for people suffering chronic illnesses) But Jesus can see so much more than we can, and stays with us to help us see just as far – just as well.

Remembering our egg analogy, we don’t often willingly break out into the Kingdom to take hold of these things, so the Kingdom breaks in to us – gently. Like Jesus did with that blind man – breaks in so Jesus can give his sight to us as well. Thanks be to God for loving us so dearly.                                Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 1b – Gen 9 8-17, Ps 25, 1 Pet 3 18-22, Mk 1 9-15

Last Tuesday evening – Shrove Tuesday – many traditional Christians would’ve finished clearing their pantries of sweets and delicacies, and, with the odd pancake or ten, eaten them up before Lent. We clear things out that might distract us from the focus of the fasting time. That focus is the simple truth that ultimately, we rely on God alone. Churches pare down too – no flowers; ornaments veiled, violet robes and hangings. With distractions out of the way, life is more austere and basic. Then that essential truth can come more easily into focus; we rely on God alone.

On Ash Wednesday, we thought about the way fasting from food has the effect of changing our experience of time. Our days are no longer partitioned into the spaces between meals, snacks and sleep. Instead, our days stretch out into an unfamiliar, trackless emptiness. Each day is then an obstacle-free space for God to find us.

We can achieve the same effect as fasting from food by fasting from overwork, from compulsive shopping, from over-consumption of news and media, from obsessive hobbies or passions (eg., worry). We can fast from speaking – inhabit the silence. Each is a chance to make obstacle-free space for God to find us.

For a long time now, the wider community has been bewildered by this sort of practice – if not downright hostile towards it. And that’s understandable. Our ‘quality of life’ is conventionally measured by how much we consume and how full our social and working calendars are. Fasting from such things questions this measure of life, and many dislike such indisputable standards being challenged.

Yet communities of faith – all faiths – have always valued fasting as a spiritual exercise. So what do we discover in this self-emptying process? What does it do for our spiritual health? There’s more to it than that silly joke about banging your head against a wall – that it feels better when you stop? Today’s collect prayer seems to me to point to what’s happening – particularly the way it links the waters of the primordial flood with the waters of our baptism. It recognises that at the same time as these waters are bringing death, they’re also germinating new life.

God of the new and eternal covenant, as the forty days of the great flood swept away the world’s corruption and watered new beginnings of righteousness and life: grant to us, who are washed clean and born again in the saving flood of baptism, the wellspring of your grace, that your gift of new life may flourish once again; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer

The flood story is about washing away the wickedness and evil that had come to characterise humanity – ^{Gen 6.5} every inclination of the thoughts of [human] hearts was only evil continually. Selfishness and disloyalty lay behind the human violence that so grieved God. The community on the Ark sheltered as much from those evils as they did from the waters of the flood.

And the story of Jesus’ baptism sees him immediately after his baptism going to the people-free ‘ark’ of the wilderness – to be with wild creatures and angels, rather than humans – and await his call to mission.

Both the Ark community and Jesus emerged from a fast – a retreat from everyday life where God could come near them – where they could experience the utter dependence of all life on God alone. And when they finally left that wilderness, the Ark community and Jesus emerged in obedience to God’s command to restore life to Earth – to reaffirm the reign of God on Earth.

Lent is the time for the Church to rediscover, reaffirm and reinforce our basic values of love for God and neighbour. Lent is the time for the Church to remove ourselves from the prevailing climate of entitlement – and we’ve always been complicit in that – and re-equip ourselves for the self-emptying life that we see yet again modelled in Jesus today.

Jesus didn’t go down to the river to take over from John the Baptist; he went down there just like everyone else to receive baptism. That is our model – rely on God alone, assume no entitlements, make obstacle-free space for God to find us.

Lent is our chance to return to the wilderness – to remove ourselves from all that numbs our spiritual senses – and wait for God – to wait upon God.                  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Transfiguration – Mark 9.2-9 

Sometimes at the end of a very cloudy day, just when you think you’re headed from one depth of shadow into the even deeper shadow of night, the sun appears under the clouds just before it sets. Suddenly its glorious, golden light transfigures everything; forest treetops shake off their dull grey-green to reveal a sparkling copper crown that shimmers for as far as the eye can see. Old stone buildings seem to come to life. The world feels caught up into a holy moment, and you soak it up while you can, because you know it’ll only last for moments.

Mark frames the moment of Jesus’ transfiguration just like this. Just as the shadow of thick clouds and the deeper shadow of night can frame a glorious moment of sunset, Mark frames the transfiguration with worrying stories – shadow stories.

Three times in this Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples of his coming death and resurrection and their reactions are very disappointing. On two of those occasions, Peter, James and John are named as the disciples who just don’t get it. Before today’s reading, Peter rejects the thought and tries to talk some sense into Jesus,^8.32 and after today’s reading, James and John ignore what he says as they obsess about their own future eminence.^10.35-37

The transfiguration is a momentary glimpse of Christ’s true glory, but even here, Peter, James and John just don’t get it. These three are its privileged witnesses, but they’re utterly unable to comprehend it. It really jars, and it’s meant to. Jesus’ dazzling transfiguration should transform them, and all of us, like those special sunsets do to a cloud-shadowed world. But in that moment, it doesn’t; the full wonder of it is only accessible to them – and to us – in the light of Easter. So what’s going on?

A while before today’s story, Jesus had said, Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power. Now, six days later, for these three, Peter, James and John, that’s just what happens. Jesus takes them up Mount Tabor, Moses and Elijah appear with him, and the disciples see that the kingdom of God actually has come with power. The kingdom has come in the person of Jesus.

So what do they do? Peter wants to put Jesus, Elijah and Moses in boxes. His motives are good; it’s what the Jewish people had always done with sacred things; put them in a safe place so nothing can defile them.

Even though they witness the transfiguration, Peter, James and John don’t have the full picture. They have no idea that the Messiah can die, far less rise again.

So Jesus tells them to keep quiet about what they’ve seen until after he’s risen from the dead; don’t tell the story until you can tell it all. You can’t say who I am until you know the whole story. They wander on, wondering what it can mean; this rising from the dead business. And yet there’s this memory of an incredible vision that they’d never shake off; a vision of life beyond our ‘natural’ one. A glimpse of something more that they don’t seem ready to understand yet.

We’re in a similar spot to the disciples. Every now and then, we can also have a profound encounter with Jesus; feel as if we get who he really is. But like his first disciples we’re on the learning journey with him too. Where his words about rising from the dead were a mystery for them, for us, I wonder if it’s the mystery that he said he’s coming again, and that we will be raised from the dead with him.

What does the transfiguration say to us? Jesus’ transfiguration reveals who he really is. And just as the first disciples grew into a deeper understanding of who Jesus actually is, we travel the same road they did.

On Ash Wednesday this week, we turn with them to follow Jesus on the cruel, mysteriously providential road to Jerusalem. And as we learn more about him, we pray to learn more about what he calls from us. Sometimes, other people can see that there’s more to you or me than we know ourselves. Sometimes other people are given the gift of telling us who we really are. Sometimes we are given that gift ourselves for fellow pilgrims; transfiguration moments of light at work in each other; we’re like that forest set aglow at sunset.

I remember as a very new Christian I’d done something stupid, said some hurtful things, and I felt ashamed of them. 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 nasty words weren’t who I really was; that deep down, there was a more real me.

The real person was the one who could see those actions and words for what they were; the one who wanted to do better; leave old ways behind. In a way he held up a mirror to me; held it on an angle that shone transfiguring light on me.

Just as Peter, James and John were not prisoners of their bad choices and mistakes, I didn’t have to be either. Jesus transformed their lives, and Jesus transforms our lives.

I pray that this is our gift to each other, and to our community. May we be compassionate, transfiguring people who reveal/reflect each other’s deeper inner lives: reveal/reflect the indwelling of God in each of us; reveal/reflect to the world Christ in whom even death is transfigured into new life.    Amen