Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 5: Acts 11.1-18

Old fashioned hospitality: new vision: God has visited us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three practical outworkings of this to ponder:

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

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

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

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

John, Apostle and Evangelist – Patron of this Parish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2:  Hoping Thomas – John 20 19-31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Thomas the Apostle

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

Courageous master of the awkward question,

You spoke the words the others dared not say

And cut through their evasion and abstraction.

Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,

You put your finger on the nub of things

We cannot love some disembodied wraith,

But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.

Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,

Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.

Because He loved your awkward counter-point

The Word has heard and granted you your wish.

Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine

The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.

Malcolm Guite

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Easter 2019: John 20.1-18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Reflections for Maundy Thursday 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and here’s another

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

From the Greek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections for Maundy Thursday 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and here’s another

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

From the Greek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Palm Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 5 C: John 12 1-8 Phil 3 3-14

Children plant and water wheat – letting it die so it might rise again.

Story of Peter Kahrimanis’s abundant barbeques and happy worms

We are buffeted around by the extremes in today’s gospel. Mary of Bethany bowls us over with her extravagant gift; perfume worth a year’s wages squandered in a moment. Then there’s the portrayal of Judas – so miserable and bitter. And finally, there are Jesus’s words about the poor always with us – words abused ever since.

John’s gospel works at a number of levels. We get extremes, like today, and often words have multiple meanings too. I’ve said before that John’s is a very sensory gospel – there’s more tasting, smelling, touching, seeing and hearing in John than almost anywhere else in the Bible. But when John says ‘see’ or ‘hear’, we’re just as likely to find that it’s not just physical seeing and hearing that’s intended, but spiritual insight and wisdom as well. What happens to people, and what they do in this Gospel is as much spiritual and inward as it is physical and obvious.

So Mary’s gift of nard to Jesus – and by its perfume, her gift to everyone within cooee of him: it’s as much a sign of something else as it’s a very confronting extravagance. The manner of its giving is extraordinary. It’s not given to Jesus for him to keep and use. It’s squandered on his feet, so neither he nor anyone else can ever use it again. It’s given as though none of them is going to see another day.

Like her sister Martha did, Mary senses who Jesus is. She also senses the purpose of his coming into Jerusalem’s hostile environment at a time when doing so can only lead to his death. Martha had declared to Jesus privately that he was the Messiah/anointed one. ^(11.27) Mary proclaims the very same thing publicly by anointing Jesus. But by doing it the way she does, she evokes the anointing that has to do with the dead. She does what we do if we sense that a loved one might soon die. Before they die, we do all we can to show how deeply we love them; to show how much they mean to us.

Mary of Bethany knows instinctively where Jesus is going, yet she doesn’t try to stop him. The children watering the wheat today do something very similar to what Mary does when she anoints Jesus for his burial. They could try to keep the wheat to grind and eat, but they choose to give it up for dead, and trust that God will bless that choice for trust with a wonderful harvest: a resurrection. For the children, the wasted wheat – for Mary of Bethany the squandered nard are signs of hope for a new, life-giving abundance. They’re signs that God’s abundance allows for death, but also that God’s story tells us to look for resurrection to a wonderful new life.

Mary’s gesture isn’t just extravagant; it’s prophetic. Firstly, it’s a proclamation of who Jesus is – God’s anointed one – the one God’s people had sought for over a thousand years. It’s also a well-wishing; ‘Godspeed the feet of the one embarking on this perilous journey.’ And finally, it’s a sign – the last in John’s book of signs – before Jesus’ providential entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Why can’t Judas be like Mary of Bethany? For that matter, why don’t all Jesus’s followers pour ourselves out like Mary did? Maybe like Judas, our spiritual senses are blocked, and we struggle to accept a God whose extravagance is so great that it blocks out even the terror of death – never mind tomorrow’s grocery bill.

Poor Judas is cut off from Mary’s sense of wonder – her sense of gratitude. He’s trapped by a choice for fear in the miserable world of mistrust – where you keep more fuel in your tank than you’ll ever need – even to the point of pretending you’re doing it for someone else. But wonder of wonders; Jesus came for just such people as Judas. Judas belongs in this story just as firmly as Mary of Bethany does.

Even though he’s one of Jesus’ disciples, somehow Judas can’t see who Jesus is the way Mary and Martha can. Doubtless there are very good reasons for his mixed fear and zeal. But fear is the wrong foundation to build on. The only foundation is Jesus’ love for us; we build our faith on that foundation, in response to that love. That’s what we see in Mary of Bethany today.

Mary’s gesture may have sprung from overwhelming gratitude for Jesus raising her brother Lazarus. If so, is it any more than we sometimes feel when we sense what a gift we have been given in our own lives; in our families and loved ones?

Outrageous grace calls out an extravagant response. We all need more Marys of Bethany to tell us that the fear and suffering and misery of this world are not the defining realities of being. It’s so healing when we meet these reckless givers! They transform our world. The world needs more people to give confrontingly. Judas obviously needs more role-models to shake his defences down.

Our giving to the poor and needy, our prayers for the sick, for the sad and for the unloved; our care for those burdened with responsibilities they may have chosen, but which eat them alive – our gifts and prayers and care are strange if we think of them as inputs for which we expect outcomes. Better that we see them as grains of wheat that God will have someone else harvest? Can we set these prayers and kindnesses loose in the world as fragrances which gently, beautifully alert sufferers to the existence of a different reality?

Gifts and prayers and care make perfect sense when they are seen for what they really are; a response to the Jesus who has met us, who has called us, and who has shown us the way of self-giving, joyful abundant extravagance. We are to bless the world with our thanks for God’s grace to us. And we pray that through our thankfulness, a sense that infectious extravagance might just reveal the greater reality to all who need to know God’s endless love.                  Amen

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 4 C: Mothering Sunday  Lk 15 11-32

On Mothering Sunday, it seems a bit inappropriate that we’re given a Gospel reading about a father and his two sons. So I wonder what the Mum might say quietly to her son after his return. Maybe this…

‘The day you left, you broke all our hearts. Dad couldn’t speak at all for days. Month after month, he sat outside watching for you; just gave your brother and the servants their orders in the morning, then sat there watching, silent again.

I couldn’t do anything to bring him out of it. I could hardly get up in the morning myself. And your brother just got angrier and angrier. Every dinner time, I had to shut him up when he’d start ranting about what you must have been getting up to.

I don’t know what made Dad give you all that money. When I asked him, he’d just say you wanted him dead before his time. If you didn’t want to be with him – if you wanted to live as if he were dead – what was the point of holding on to you? You ordered him to give you your one-third share of our family property. You didn’t want to wait for it. So Dad said “It’s only money. Better to give you what you want; let you go, and hope you come to your senses before you get hurt”.

He regretted it the minute you were gone. We couldn’t sleep for worry about where you might be; what might be happening to you.

Dad stopped going to sit with his old friends in the market. He couldn’t face them – didn’t want to hear the angry gossip about you – off in some foreign land full of strange people. What would they want with a fool like him sitting there, anyway; a shamed man amongst honourable, sensible people?

Then the drought came; no food anywhere, no work for anyone. ‘What if he’s starving!’, he’d say, over and over. ‘Please God; bring him home alive!?’ Watching; watching: as if his hope and love could somehow keep you alive. I can’t bear to remember it’ …

Let’s leave her in peace for a while. She doesn’t want to re-live that horror.

Their younger son wanted everything that comes with belonging, but without having to belong. That’s common now in affluent countries where personal freedom is valued more highly than community. This living without belonging was unimaginable in the world of the parable – and in most of today’s world too – where the link between belonging and survival is so obvious. The younger son’s actions and attitudes rejected the core human value of belonging.

That inheritance he demanded belonged to his future; to his children; not just to him. But he wanted it now, and purely for himself. That’s the make-believe world of today’s credit cards; the self-centred world of advertising slogans about how much we deserve things; how we should reward ourselves—reward for what, I have no idea. What can we deserve that exceeds the gifts of our life and our world? The younger son was a child of our sort of society. So he doesn’t shock us the way he shocked his own people. I wonder what that says about us?

That’s why we may not really get how astonishing his Dad’s response is. The Gospel says he divided his life (ton bion) between the sons. (The son had asked for ousios substance, but the father gave bion) So who’s the real prodigal here? The Dad, who recklessly divided his life between his sons long before he died. Could they be trusted to care for him in old age? The Dad doesn’t ask. He sets aside his rights, gives up his freedom, and risks his future. Precisely the opposite of the son who asserts his rights, demands his freedom and seizes his future.

In time, the son suffers the consequences of his choices. He loses his rights, his freedom and his future. Then amongst the pigs, hungry, he thinks of a scheme that’ll mean he can eat again—but on his terms. As a hired servant, he’ll live apart from the family with independent means. He still doesn’t get relationship. He returns home thinking like this.

Let’s listen to his Mum describe the homecoming.

‘The day you came home, boys from the next village rushed into our marketplace yelling out that you were coming back. A crowd started to gather; angry and ready with bitter words. Some held rotten fruit; a few held stones.

Dad saw all this and rushed out to get to you first. He didn’t care what people thought of him; he could only think of how bad you must feel, and how he had to protect you. The servants and I couldn’t keep up with him. Just as the first hand was raised to throw a stone, he reached you; hugged you; shielded you; kissed you. He ignored their angry words; he ignored your apologies; just yelled to the servants to run back and get his cloak, his ring and some sandals for you. He announced a great party: the whole village must come and celebrate with him.’

The embrace and the kiss were public signs of reconciliation, and were given before the son could finish his prepared speech. That’s grace at work. The relationship of father and son was restored entirely by the grace of the father, not by the bargaining or repentance of the son.

We’re about to meet the older brother again, but first, let’s pause and ask why Jesus told this parable. Do you remember the beginning of the chapter?

…   “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’”. The older brother grumbled in exactly the same way as they did. He grumbled about his Dad welcoming his ratbag of a brother home and eating with him.

In telling those older-brother Pharisees and scribes this parable, Jesus did for them exactly what the Dad did for the older son when he humiliated himself again before his guests by leaving the feast to beg yet another insolent son to come in. Jesus reached out to these older-brother types; upstanding people who were certain of their inheritance, but equally sure that God should damn other people.

Jesus wanted them inside the love; not locked out by their rage; stopped by their arrogant refusal to come in and eat with him and the people they shunned. In this parable, Jesus tried to show those older-brother Pharisees and scribes that God longs for us all to be inside, all together. The parable also tells us younger son types that God allows us to find that out for ourselves. We’re all loved alike; both blinkered selfish younger brother-types, and self-righteous, judgemental older brother-types.

But it’s Mothering Sunday, isn’t it. Most often when I meet someone who forgives and trusts beyond all reason, that person is a mother.

So perhaps this story of this compassionate, forgiving father is right for Mothering Sunday after all. It’s a story which reminds us that this foolish grace – always ready to forgive, to trust; always determined to keep the connection alive, and always ready to bear the cost of it all – that this foolish grace that mothers find the strength to summon up, over and over again, is a wonderful way to help us understand the nature of God. When we think today of the Church as our Mother, and that she must be Mother to our children as she has been to us, gracious, trusting and tenacious, it’s good to spend time with this story to learn the nature of that Mother whom we must now embody ourselves.       Amen

Mothering Sunday Cake and Posy Blessing

Father God, giver of all joy:

We ask that you bless this cake and these posies, that they may be to us symbols of our communion with you and with each other. As they were once scattered over our land as blossoms and blooms, grasses, vines, trees and cane yet are now one, so let us in our diversity be your one redeemed people, and your delight.  Amen.

Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Lent 3 C :  Isa 55 1-9, Ps 63 1-9, Cor 10 1-13, Lk 13 31-35

Yesterday was special day in the children’s garden. It was lovely to have a small-scale project and so many willing people working together to make new gardens. There’s something life-giving about getting your hands in the soil together with new friends. Our new soil is wonderfully smelly. Darren wanted it ready to plant things in so they’d start growing straight away. Soil is a very precious thing, it’s just about the most endangered resource on Earth.

Why am I talking about soil on the third Sunday of Lent? Because it’s mentioned in today’s readings. It’s not very obvious amongst all the other words we’ve read about water, baptism and thirst. But in the second verse of the Psalm, we all read My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you as a dry and thirsty land where no water is. The word translated as land – אֶ֫רֶץ (erets) – has lots of meanings, just like the English word does. It can also mean earth or country or territory or piece of ground or soil. So we could just as easily have said, My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, like dry and weary soil where there is no water.

What do we make of this image – of our soul and body being like soil that needs God as the water and warmth to bring life to us? I’ve always tended to think of myself more as a plant. There’s plenty of Biblical imagery encouraging me to think like that, particularly the parables of the weeds and tares, and that one about the sower. And the Bible also tells me I’m meant to bear fruit. So I’ve thought I may be a bit like a pot plant on a window ledge; needing water and regular turning on my saucer to make sure I grow straight.

But this verse from Psalm 63 challenges me with another image. The Psalmist talks of us being like land; soil. So this Psalm calls me to think of another story – the one about the first human that God formed from the dust of the Earth. That story calls us children or substance of Earth – אָדָם (adam – ‘human’) – because ultimately we are all made from Earth – אֲדָמָה (adamah – ‘ground / soil’).

Maybe if you haven’t spent your life thinking of yourself as a pot plant like I seem to have, this won’t sound like a revolutionary idea. But think about it for a moment. You’re not like a geranium or a pot of chives; you’re more like part of their life-source. Soil – and dust mixed with water and sunlight can bring forth new life.

There’s connectedness in all this – there’s partnership. We’ve grown up with images of God as light and warmth and water and grace, and these still hold good. And now we can imagine ourselves responding to God like soil does to light and warmth and water. We’re in an utterly surprising partnership here. Lowly dirt bathed in light and water and there’s life. We see it every day, but we may not sense it in us – you and me bathed in grace – we produce life.

In verse three, we find that the Psalmist has somehow experienced this dazzling connectedness in the temple; in the house of God. And the rest of the Psalm is all about a determination to hold onto this vision in every corner of our life. There’s wholeness, exaltation, security, intimacy and joy – life in all its fulness – in this experience. This Psalmist bathes in the light and the warmth; eats and drinks the elixir of the Divine, and then rests in God, in the meditations of the night watches.

How do we find our way to rest in God – to soak up the nourishment God longs to give us, so that we bring forth living growth that is strong and supple and secure? What sorts of things are that sunlight and warmth and cool water and grace to our bodies and souls? One of my mentors early in my ministry used to find that access to God in the act of painting. Very early each morning, instead of praying with words and silences, quiet time with God happened with paint and a canvas.

I know lots of us find time in the garden is time with God; and maybe that’s why the plant metaphor has always seemed such a rich image to me. But just after the Psalmist gave us the soil as an image of us and our connectedness, there came another one of finding God’s presence in the Temple – in God’s house – together with God’s people – seeking together a nearness to God.

But it doesn’t work automatically. Remember Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem this morning. So how can we connect? How should we find a connectedness with the divine together? There’s * something in us that seems to call out for that connection – a part of us that resonates with the spirituality of the Psalm. How do we embody that? And when we’ve found it, how do we look after it? How do we make sure we get the light and water, the warmth and the occasional turn we need to flourish? How do we do it? Do we know how, or does it happen by chance? How do we know when something in us connects us with the divine? * Something in us …

A few possibilities; does this spiritual part of you sneak up on you when certain pieces of music play; when you’re with someone you love; when you’re in a very special place, or when you catch a whiff of some familiar scent? It is there; that part of you; isn’t it. The Psalmist sings its song; Isaiah proclaims its transcendence, and Jesus cries out to it with the indignant passion of its Creator feeling ignored. In Jesus’s cries, we can hear God calling us to join with the light, the warmth and the grace so we can play our part in the gift of inner life. God is calling us to be to a community of creation; soil – co-workers with God the on-going work of creation.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the scriptures which have guided this morning’s meditation come from communities; not individuals. They come from communities; they were written for communities, and they have belonged to communities like ours throughout the thousands of years of their history. I hope it sets you free on this Lenten pilgrimage of ours to know that whatever God calls you to, you’re not called to go it alone. Wherever we find ourselves opting for lone-ranger spirituality, we’re headed for grief. No, the wonderful thing; the humbling thing; is that we are called to be the people of God: a living organism, co-creators of life and love, nourished by warmth and cool water and grace; life-givers.

We started Lent with ashes and the words, dust thou art. Let’s turn our attention to the potential that we creatures of dust – soil – can have in the hand of God.  Amen

Just as an afterword to this sermon, I was at an interfaith gathering last Sunday evening to pray together for the people of Christchurch. At one point, a dear friend who is a Buddhist member of that organisation used an expression which made particular sense to me after that morning’s sermon on us being like soil.

She talked of our role as being to ‘plant seeds of compassion, tolerance, hope and love’ in order that communities might become safer and more nurturing to everyone.

The sermon focussed on us being the soil that God tends in order that life might spring forth – so the main image was us as co-creators. But the idea that we might plant such precious, transforming seeds in the soil of others’ hearts and minds takes the image to a wonderful new level. I find in this an exciting call to us as God’s instruments of peace and love.