Michaelmas 2011 A & C - The Feast of the Archangel Michael and All Angels

Today is Michaelmas - the feast of the Archangel Michael and all Angels.

My usual mistake when I talk about angels is that I assume we all think the same way about them.
So today I’ll explain myself.

The first thing we know about angels is that they are messengers.
That’s what the word angel means; messenger. Another thing is that the names of angels usually end with the sound -el, the ancient Semitic name of God. (Michael = who is like God, Gabriel = God is my strength, Raphael = It is God who heals. The modern Hebrew word Rophe means doctor of medicine!). So they’re named for their connection with God. And if you meet one of them, the Hebrew scriptures say that in a very tangible sense you’ve met God.

Michael is one of only two angels named in the new Testament. Gabriel’s the other; the one we hear about at Christmas; the messenger angel who tells Mary she’s going to be the mother of the Christ child.

Traditions about the Archangel Michael give him several roles - he is the patron angel of Israel; its champion against the Persians and the Romans; a military figure seen to be the chief-captain of the Angels.

But Michael is also the one who prays for Israel before God; for Israel and for the entire world. So he’s also described as merciful; the one who opens the gates of heaven for the righteous.
There are stories of him contending with Satan for the body of Moses.
Satan, the accuser, claimed Moses had no right to an honourable burial because he’d murdered that Egyptian. But in the Jewish tradition, Michael does eventually bury Moses honourably.

And as we heard in today’s reading from the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation, Michael is the leader of those angels who cause Satan to fall from heaven. There’s the military figure again. [Revelation 12:7-12]

So what’s all that got to do with us?

Ancient mythology drawn from books no-one has access to; and hasn’t science debunked all this as superstitious nonsense anyway? I wonder.

I’ve lived among people in more traditional cultures, and I’ve also lived amongst people in Australia for whom talk of angels is normal and describes something real. In fact in world terms, it’s actually our educated elite who are out on a limb when it comes to angels.

I’ve found experience of angels - of a personal divine encounter - comes to people around times of birth and death. It also comes in times and places where nature is so overwhelming that our normal categories are reduced to nonsense. And I also find that personal experiences of divine encounter come to us when our life changes direction utterly and providentially.

And I have to say it doesn’t worry me in the slightest that it all comes packaged in the language of mythology.

Mythological language - mythical stories - convey orders of truth that are beyond scientific experiments to measure or prove, and beyond rational categories to discern or to describe; beyond them and beneath them.

That’s why, whether we are children or grandparents, our great philosophers, poets and novelists, painters and sculptors, musicians and actors are the ones we can trust to help us navigate the nuances of good and evil, courage and cruelty, strength and cowardice.

Mythology achieves through feats of imagination what lists of do’s and don’ts and tables of facts and figures cannot. We need both—the scientific and the mythological—and we choose the one over the other to our peril.

When I talk about angels, even in church, I’ll often shy away from saying the sorts of things I’ve talked about today; I worry about frightening people off. So what I normally do is move swiftly to safer ground. I talk about people I’ve met where those meetings have, in hindsight, turned out to be experiences of angels. It can be dramatic; a CFS volunteer, a surf life-saver or a wonderful nurse, or it can sound mundane in the re-telling, like the person from the RAA who went above and beyond the call - except that what they did changed someone’s life forever.

But I should also tell you more; I should talk about people who’ve survived something alone, but know it was because they weren’t really alone at all; some stranger turned up to help, but melted away when people arrived. I should tell you about people who sing in near-empty churches and lonely places, but swear they had tremendous choirs singing along with them.

But do I need to? You know who you are.

The great apocalyptic, mythological language we shared together just now is meant to help us see things in a particular way. It’s political language - it’s about Babylon and Rome - the superpowers of their day. But it’s not in newspaper language. Its language is exalted poetry because God’s views on the affairs of nations are dignified and worthy of song. It’s political language and it’s also personal language. But it too is exalted language because the dignity of a person whom God has stooped to bless is also beyond normal speech.

Moshe Visits Crafers - Moshe on the burning bush Exodus 3: 1-15

Moses turns to face Jerusalem (NW), raises his hands and cries: “Elohe eloheni: attah gadol: tishlekhena-bi ruahka. Selah” (Oh God my God, you are great: please send your breath/Spirit into me: Selah)

He turns to the people and greets them—hands over his breast
Shalom aleichem. (and in an accented voice continues) Please. Pull up a goatskin. Sit down. I should introduce myself. I’m Moshe. You probably know me as Moses. You were listening to my story just now. But some bits got left out! I’m not saying you have a bad cantor—please, don’t misundertake me. It’s just your printers; they’re trying to save a sheckel or two in their parchment department. Adonai knows; these are hard times.

Anyway, I’m very pleased that your Rebbe and the beadles invited me here to set the record straight. So now, let me tell you my story.

Things didn’t get off to a good start. Where I come from, a pedigree is everything. But did I get a name worthy of the son of Amran (1 Chr 23.13) and Jochebed (Num 26.59)? No way! Instead, I land up with some glitzy Egyptian prince’s name—Moshe—and it sticks! Sheesh! But my old Mamma—may her memory live for ever—she always reminded me where I came from: “Moshe,” she’d say, “Moshe, just remember what side of the Nile you were launched in.” Ahhh, she was a mother.

Anyway, what she said never really struck me until one day, I was out for a spin in my chariot, near the alabaster works. I heard someone screaming in there, so I turned and went over for a closer look. And what did I see? There was this big Goy; he had a little Hebrew fella by the sidelock and he was beating the living qerev out of him.
I saw red, I’m telling you. (Searing) I looked this way and that; nobody looking, so I pick up the nearest implement and I forget the sixth commandment for a moment—well how could I remember it; I haven’t been up the mountain to collect them yet!

Anyway, it felt real good to put this guy six cubits under. And me; I saw myself in a new light—a freedom fighter. Maybe I’m starting the Hebrew Spring. Mama would be so pleased.

But that feeling didn’t last long, I can tell you. The next day I find I already have a reputation as someone who’s handy with an axe. (Mediterranean burnt fingers gesture) There was no future for me in Egypt now. I mean would you buy a used camel from someone with that sort of reputation?

There was nothing else to do. I headed East. I started a new life; married a nice religious girl, and got a job in her daddy’s grazing business. Out there with the flock, it was really relaxing. It gave me time to think. I used to wander for weeks on end; camping under the stars. But you know I kept worrying about all the others that hadn’t got out of Egypt.

Well, one day, I was out in the mountains, just me and the flock, and I see that someone is trying to burn a blackberry bush. Now in the desert, anything counts as entertainment, and so I say to myself: “This I’ve got to see.” I mean, have you ever tried to get rid of those things.

Anyway, no sooner do I turn to get a better look than someone calls out my name. (Megaphone) “Moshe, Moshe!” Hoy gewalt, I think; the MISAD have caught up with me. But what I hear next gets me even more scared: (Megaphone) “Stop right where you are and take off your shoes!”
This is no Beverly Hillbillies invitation, I’m thinking. “They’re going to start clubbing the soles of my feet next. Where are you now Mr Rudd!” But then the bush says: “You’re on a sacred site.” And then I’m thinking to myself: “Moshe, you’ve wandered a long way, I know, but I thought this was Horeb, not Uluru!”

Well, Adonai finally got through to me—at least, I realised who it was with the big voice. Adonai talked to me about all those big names from the old days—Avraham and Sara, Yizhaq and Rivqa, Ya’aqov and Rakhel—you know, the ones Adonai told to do things, and they did. It really got me here (Beating breast. Ruefully laughing) I was such a stupid schmuck; I didn’t see it coming. Adonai talked about how bad it was for us down there in Egypt, and I was nodding; Adonai said something had to be done about it, and I was still nodding; agreeing with every word, and then, I’m still nodding and Adonai says: “So Moshe, get on with it. And don’t go through the red tape either. You just go straight to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.”

I stop nodding. “You’re kidding,” I say. “Tell him to give up the best labour-relations package in the Middle East?!”
“Ja, tell him,” says Adonai, “and when you all get back, we’ll celebrate with a grand reunion right here.”

Well I started to laugh. “Don’t you know who I am, Adonai. Your old pal Moshe the axe murderer. Everyone’s just going to love that one. My stepfather will roll over in his pyramid before uncle Ramses agrees to that!” I told Adonai the Nile River would be just as likely to run with blood! (Looking up) “You sure have a weird sense of humour!”
“And the Hebrews wouldn’t trust me anyway;” I said. “They know who I am. How could I tell them you sent me as an answer to their prayers? Look, why don’t you ask me to sell pork chops in Jerusalem when you establish it? Something simple.” But Adonai was serious. “Look Moshe. This has nothing to do with who you are ...”

Well I argued the point for a long time: at least another chapter, if I remember right. But every time I thought I’d got out of it, it was as though someone had me by the scruff of my jalibiyya, and ... (shrug), well you know; I was like clay in Adonai’s hands. And I suppose it had to make a difference; having Adonai as your backer is a bit different to being a one-axe revolutionary, ja?.

Anyway, the rest is history. It had its down sides. I had to give up fishing. Every time I lift my rod to cast, the waters separate for as far as you can see. I got kicked out of the Aqaba fishing club.

(Sigh) But you know, I did learn something from it all. So whenever my boy Gershom—he’s a good boy—whenever he asks me what it means to tread on Holy Ground, I say to him:

Gershi,” I say, “Gershi, you don’t have to see Adonai trying to control noxious weeds to know what’s going on. Melchizedek! Listen to what I’m saying for once! I was a hundred and twenty years old when I died, and I was still on the wrong side of the river. All the people went over with young Yehoshua, and they left their old axe murderer buried back in Moab. But what Adonai did with me, what Adonai did with me! That’s still burning inside them. It doesn’t burn them up, but they can’t put it out. (Wandering out of the pulpit) No, you can’t put it out.

A couple of weeks ago, we began the Joseph story—we saw him sold off by his brothers to become a slave in Egypt. Later he’d call those brothers and his parents to come to Egypt as he saved them and his adopted country from a catastrophic famine. Today we’ve moved on about 400 years in the story. Joseph’s family still lives in Egypt; but now it’s grown from a clan of twelve households to a numerous people.

There’s a new Pharaoh, and he sees these outsiders in such numbers as a security threat. He calls them Israelites children of Israel/Jacob the refugee. He forgets they are the people of Joseph, the one who saved his country from ruin. He calls them by a derogatory name too; Habiru-Hebrews. This isn’t just another name for Israelites. Habiru then meant refugee, fugitive, non-citizen, fringe dweller; but mostly Habiru just meant ‘slave’.

Today’s story is part of a grand historical sweep. But unlike other historical narratives, it doesn’t spend much time on the comings and goings at the palace. Nor does it tell of the exploits of desperate men planning an underground resistance movement. Instead, we zoom in on five women; women who conspire to preserve life rather than obey an order to kill children. They conspire to pervert the course of injustice. We even know the names of the first two women; Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives. That they are named makes me notice that the Pharaoh hasn’t been named.

These women expose the evil of Pharaoh’s attitude—how he dehumanizes vulnerable people. Shiphrah and Puah expose him brilliantly. When the Pharaoh confronts them with their failure to obey his order and kill the baby Hebrew boys, their reply plays on all his prejudices.

He asks, ‘Why have you allowed them to live?’, and they reply,
"Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." (v.19)

His first prejudice they play on is that outsiders, Habiru are essentially different from Egyptians. His next prejudice is that this difference will show in the way Habiru women bear children. Pharaoh won’t question a view that Habiru are more like breeding animals than actual human beings.

And of course his final prejudice is that these Habiru midwives couldn’t possibly be smart enough to trick a Pharaoh with a lie, and they certainly wouldn’t be brave enough to engage in real civil disobedience!

So the Pharaoh digs himself in, deeper and deeper, and in the process, exposes his own heart as the real place of inhumanity. If these Habiru boys must be spawned, then let’s throw them in the river; drown them like rats. Who’s the real inhuman one? The story tells it all.

And so we read on to the point we all know so well, where Moses is born again from the Nile—the river sometimes called the Mother of Egypt. A child ‘abandoned’ in the river and drawn from it by the enemy—death turned to life by commitment and compassion; it’s a parable of salvation history written from the perspective of freed slaves.

Do you need to be a slave to enter this story? Do you get your name in the story like Shiphrah and Puah did by joining in the story—by being a midwife to a new and risky rebirth? These women got under the guard of their slavers and worked with God to set a whole people free. Do we face anything like they did? Are there stories like this where we can to join in?

We Australians also have a story of asylum seekers and dangerous waters and vulnerable children, and East Africa has catastrophic famine again. The Joseph and Moses stories are still with us; and they’re stories that won’t be going away. I remember reading in the 1990’s about 25m displaced people in the world. Now there are more than 42m. Forty-two million stories.

Today’s Moses story sits alongside ours and teaches us. It says that God’s people are called to resist power that dehumanises; that we are called to make sure that vulnerable people looking for safety and dignity can find it . The Moses story also challenges our parliaments when debates descend to stereotypes; where their policies hide the victims of these stereotypes behind steel fences and even oceans so other people can’t learn their names or hear their stories.

Their stories must be heard. Our Lt Governor Hieu Van Le is a boat person, and he tells a story we must never forget. His story says, ‘Listen to the other stories too; they’ll change the way you see everything!’ The current edition of the Adelaide Hills Magazine has a lot to say about stories opening minds about the people who live at Inverbrackie.

Today we heard St Paul tell us what an attitude of openness and grace can achieve. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. The stories we’re not hearing; if we did hear them, they might guide our minds over the treacherous waters of ignorance to a place of new life. With these stories in us, we might also become midwives and expose what’s wrong in a world that evicts 42m innocent people from their homes, and respond by bringing forth new life.

If we accept without question that people and their stories get automatically locked away, Jesus tells today that this has spiritual consequences—not just for asylum seekers (and we see that as they appear more and more in our psychiatric hospitals); it also has spiritual consequences for their gaolers as well: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Our Lt Governor Hieu Van Le is a lovely reminder of the importance of the old stories we’ve heard today. Joseph, viciously sent as a slave to Egypt by his brothers; Moses, unaccompanied minor, lovingly entrusted to the river by his mother and sister, launched to a new future in a tiny ark tevah ??? and watched and prayed for.

Joseph; Moses: there were utterly different motives for their sending, but in God’s good providence, it made no difference. Both boys were to rescue their people. Hieu Van Le’s story tells us that we have to believe God may still have that in mind for a displaced person that comes here. And Moses’ story says that like the midwives, we should keep that good possibility alive, even in the face of destructive and frightening prejudice.

Amen

After the sermon Professor Frank Brennan (SJ AO, Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University) spoke to us about asylum policy in Australia.

You can read his article entitled "Breaking the stalemate on refugees and asylum seekers" by following this link www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2849128.html

Pentecost -Inspirational Leadership

On Thursday, I had the joy of attending Anglicare’s annual service in the Cathedral; a great event with wonderful music from an a-cappella singing group. They sang Spirituals about justice—What does the Lord require of you—about love—Ubi caritas—about following in the way of Jesus—I will follow Jesus wherever he goes—and about life with Jesus beyond death—Deep River.

The theme of the service was the leader as a faithful dissident. Like Jesus, a faithful dissident leader stands up for oppressed people; … stands with them to help them break free of the tyranny of their burdens … inspires us to know we don’t have to accept our burden as the status quo; as something immutable; … will help heal the void of isolation with real compassion; with love and sensitivity; … will inspire hope. And faithful dissident leaders dedicate their lives to making sure that the hope they’ve inspired in the burdened and down-trodden people they serve will be realised.

A single church service conveyed all of this; how? There were those Spirituals. But before the sermon, we heard two inspirational speakers. The first was Sonia Waters, Anglicare SA’s Aboriginal Services Director. Katrina and I met her recently at a meeting with the Anglicare staff who are supporting our Papunya project. Alongside her job, Sonia’s family have been giving respite care to a boy from Docker River for the last 5 years. So she knows about the strains on Peter and Katrina’s home from the inside.

The second speaker was Michael Hawke. Michael’s a project officer in the Anglicare programme called Living Beyond Suicide. People who work in this programme directly support the friends and family of people who have taken their own lives. Sonia and Michael are both courageous people.
For the annual service, they’d been asked to say how they might see their vocations as being dissident leaders. I had no time to think about it before they spoke. We can now. We can think of someone who serves amongst the brokenness and heartbreak of Aboriginal people—of someone who sits with people who are battling the incomprehension and suffocating misery of a suicide—what does doing that have to do with dissident leadership?

I found both of them managed to tell us what it means. Sonia’s vocation is with people caught in the oppression of an injustice that has lasted for generations. Michael’s is with people suddenly buried under a burden of helpless grief and remorse; a burden so heavy it’s crushing them. Often, people in these terrible places can’t see a way out. In there, you can easily come to believe that this misery is all life will be from now on; and you can’t change a thing. Blinded by pain, you need somebody to show you there’s another way; not somebody to push you, but someone to take you gently by the hand and each time you’re ready, help you put one foot gingerly in front of the other on a slow, painful journey back to the surface.

Sonia and Michael were both inspirational. They’ve let us put their stories up on our website; and those stories will also be in our next edition of Church News. We all need to know about this wonderful work.

Sonia and Michael and their colleagues in Anglicare see other people’s predicaments as their own. They aren’t content to passively enjoy a comfortable life if they can see people in their community who are locked out of happiness. Another person’s pain is their own. They have to do something about it. They’ve both let this insight shape their life’s vocation. Another person’s pain is their own; this is a deeply Christian insight.
Michael told us how Jesus taking a towel and washing his disciples feet is an image that inspires the way he carries out his vocation. Sonia is inspired by the strong Aboriginal women who have entrusted her with the baton for the next part of the fight for social justice; she is also inspired by the shared interests and values she finds working now in Anglicare.

Sonia’s and Michael’s stories echo both the struggle and the way to peace that today’s scriptures spoke of. Paul speaks of the human struggle: people having good intentions but having them sabotaged by malignant forces we encounter in others and, God help us, even within ourselves. But Sonia and Michael also tell us about the difference it makes to them to be working with people who look to Jesus for inspiration; people who can give those who suffer a tangible experience of Christ's love and compassion for them.

That's what Paul's been working up to all the way through the first part of his letter to the Romans until the end of ch7 we heard today. He’s described the human condition without Jesus from every angle. Now he pounds us again and again with how hopeless that is. "I've tried everything …nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does."

We met Jesus today confronting people in the gospel who fell into the same trap; they refused to receive him, and so prevented others from coming to him as well. They were fickle; they refused to receive JBap because he wasn't like Jesus, and now they're refusing Jesus because he isn't like John.

While they waste time bickering about the kind of preacher they’re comfortable with, they don't notice the poor and downtrodden, and they don't even notice their own suffering. They don't notice the stupid self-imposed burdens of pride and selfishness they load onto others, but which actually crush the life out of them. They don't notice that the laws they’ve invoked to protect purity and good order have been turned into prisons of cold judgement for them and everyone else.

We can be frustrated with people like this and call them every name under the sun; Jesus probably feels like doing that. But instead, he says to all of them, perpetrators and victims alike, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

That's what Sonia and Michael are telling people every day of their working lives. They are treating people just the way Jesus did. It's in ministries like Sonia's and Michael's that people meet Jesus. And this brings me to our part of this job as a parish. If people like the ones Sonia and Michael look after turn up here, we have to be ready for them. They will meet Jesus here, and we will meet Jesus in them.
How?

The answer, thank God is that Jesus Christ can and does meet us here.

Amen

Grace - How Do We Respond? - Rev'd Sonya Paterson - Sermon - June 2011

Rules are generally good for us. Some rules are explicit – we know them because we’ve been told what they are. Can someone give me an example? One of the schools I used to work at had only three explicit rules: look after yourself; look after each other; and look after the space.

Some rules are implicit – we know them without having to be told, because of the other rules that we have. Can anyone give me an example of an implicit rule? The school with only three explicit rules had lots of implicit rules. Hitting somebody would break the rule about looking after each other.

When I was a teenager I had a boyfriend who lived in Queensland. My family lived in Aldgate. Back then we didn’t have the Internet, so we couldn’t Facebook each other, we couldn’t Skype each other, we couldn’t even e-mail each other. We could write letters and we did, but we had to wait for those. The other thing we could do was use the telephone. So my boyfriend and I spent hours on the phone to each other. Back then it cost a lot more to phone Queensland than it does now, so one day my mum and dad got a phone bill that, in today’s money, was about $750. Mum and dad couldn’t understand why they had such a big phone bill, but I knew. I went to my room feeling really guilty and thinking about what might happen next.

Why do you think I felt so guilty? Mum and Dad didn’t know about my phone calls, and I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t think about the consequences at the time. The natural consequence of my selfishness was that somebody had to pay that $750.

Before long my parents came into my bedroom and asked me directly: “Sonya, have you been ringing Jamie?” “Yes.” What do you think they might have said next? A logical consequence would have been working out a way for me to pay the bill. What they actually said was: “Please don’t do it again”.

That’s all!

They didn’t want me to pay the money back, and I couldn’t believe it - what a generous gift - and I so didn’t deserve it! And, because it was so undeserved, that is one of the best gifts I have ever received. That’s what grace is.

Over time I realised that this gift was even better, because as I looked back on it, it helped me to understand God’s grace. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was God’s amazingly generous gift to the whole world – every single one of us.

That’s the starting point for today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. We’re up to the part of the letter where Paul is considering how we might respond to that gift.

Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome discusses the implications of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today’s reading from this letter compares two alternative responses to God’s most gracious gift.

The first alternative is to keep on living life the way we used to. I could have done that after my parents paid that big phone bill. But how would it be if I had done that? If I kept on making those long expensive phone calls? It would be ungrateful. It would ignore the special gift I’d been given, and it would hurt my relationship with my parents. But it would also hurt me. If I continued to be selfish and kept on just doing what I wanted, that selfishness would grow stronger.

This is the kind of thing Paul is talking about in today’s reading when he says, ‘do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies’. Don’t let selfishness dominate your life.

Late last month I attended an intensive seminar on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. There were 12 speakers and I was intrigued by the common threads running through the presentations that highlighted the consequences of letting selfishness dominate our lives. Richard Eckersley spoke about pop culture and mental health, and he actually raised Thomas Aquinas’s list of vices, commonly called the seven deadly sins.
Remember them?
Pride, gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, envy and anger. Eckersley pointed out that, in our post-modern consumer society, these vices are now promoted as virtues. The other speakers talked about how letting these things dominate our lives is making our society, and too many of our young people, sick.

Part of the problem is a misunderstanding of freedom. When we think freedom just means doing whatever we want, we indulge our selfishness and we can end up being dominated by it – on a personal level, and at a societal level.

A tragic example of this is sexualisation in the media, and the enormous pressure it places on young people to look and behave in ways that are not natural, that they are not ready for, and that are downright harmful. This in turn leads too many people into anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and self-harm.

Another, all too common, problem for teenagers these days is cyberbullying which, thanks to modern technology, can have a far greater impact on children, both targets and bullies, and their families, than kids can possibly realise to begin with. Situations can spiral out of control so quickly, with devastating effect. In one case I know of, a whole family was forced out of their home because of the thoughtless action of a few teenagers using the internet to score cheap points against a fellow student.

No wonder, then, that Paul says, ‘The end of those things is death’. Sometimes death is a literal, direct result of letting ourselves be dominated by harmful attitudes and behaviours. But more often, we can die a thousand little deaths, bit by bit, by indulging ourselves in ways that are actually soul-destroying.

When I was a child I saw an anti-smoking cartoon and one scene was striking enough that I can still see it now. It’s an image of people chained together by the neck like slaves, trudging in despair towards their doom, smoking all the way. What began as free choice ended up as a form of slavery.

It’s an image that works in the context of addiction, but it works in other contexts too. We can be slaves to fashion, slaves to wealth, slaves to status, slaves to all sorts of unhelpful behaviour patterns.

Paul recognises this, and urges us instead to respond to God’s grace: ‘so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification’. Offer yourselves to the ways of God for the deeper freedom that grows in right relationships. If, at any time in our lives, we have been dominated by unhelpful behaviour patterns, submitting ourselves to God can truly liberate us, but it’s no cheap, shallow, instant liberation, it’s liberation through commitment – both God’s and ours.

I stand in awe of the way God works with us to turn our lives around when we’re open to it. I can see it in the lives of many of my friends, and in my own life as well. Lives that were seriously messed up by all sorts of harmful attitudes and behaviours have been transformed by God’s grace – not just as a one-off gift, but on an ongoing basis. Maybe you can see it in your life, or in the lives of people you know, too.

Back when I was a teenager, I was deeply grateful to my parents for the grace they showed me over that phone bill, but it would take time for me to realise just how big that gift really was. Looking back, I can see that their gift inspired me to change for the better and helped me to grow into the person they wanted me to be. So their gift didn’t just happen that afternoon. It continued, as I learned a bit more self-discipline, as I became more considerate, and more gracious, and it continues with me to this very day.

It was a special reflection for me of God’s grace, which is not limited to the initial fresh start that Jesus offers. God’s grace extends through our whole lives as long as we continue to stay connected, sharing our journey with God, and with each other, and growing into the people God intends us to become.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

"Does God Hate Queensland" by Andew Dutney

Last week, Peter handed out copies of an article by Rev Dr Andrew Dutney, President-elect of the Uniting Church in Australia, with the provocative title "Does God hate Queensland?"

This article was written before the far worse disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power problems in Japan, and is very thought provoking as it asks us how we as Christians can respond.

It asks the question "Why does God let these things happen" and examines how theologians have developed theodicy: the justification of God in the face of evil and disaster.

Dutney explains that there are two broad kinds of theodicy. One, based on the thoughts of St Augustine of Hippo, says the creation fell from perfection with Adam. The other, from Irenaeus, says that the world began in an immature state, and that suffering is necessary for us to mature.

Dutney points out that "theodicy works for some but not all cases. There are far too many examples of suffering which are so grotesque or so excessive that they make it impossible to devise an explanation that is both rational and morally tolerable. In any case, it would be offensive even to try to explain such suffering away."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Anti-Poverty Week 17/10/2010
Luke 10:25-37 Good Samaritan Children’s Talk

Look at this picture. What do you notice?

It’s a rocky, steep and winding gorge, called the Wadi Qelt.

Those buildings are St George’s monastery, and they were built in the 19th century. They weren’t there in Bible times.

Can you see a road? This is the way people would travel from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Can you see any caves? They were good hiding places for robbers, who would attack travellers. This road had a reputation for being very dangerous because of the robbers.

Here are two more pictures.

This is how people travelled – either just by walking, or with a donkey.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus tells a story about a person travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and is attacked by robbers. They bash him up, take his things, and leave him there to die.

Then somebody like Peter or Wendy (our priests) comes along and sees him. What would you expect Peter to do? Help him. But sadly this person doesn’t help him. He avoids him, and passes by on the other side.

Then somebody like me (minister in training) comes along and sees him. What would you expect me to do? Help him. Sadly this person doesn’t help him either, but goes past on the other side.

Then another person comes along, called a Samaritan – and people around Jerusalem really hated Samaritans. We are so blessed that I couldn’t think of any groups of people that we hate (but for the grownups, people-smugglers, perhaps?) Anyway, this person stopped, and helped the injured person, took him to safety, and paid for him to be looked after while he got better. And he did this for someone who was very different from him, someone who would normally hate him. That Samaritan gave us such a good example of how to act that we call him the Good Samaritan, and Jesus said we should follow his example.

One of the ways we are trying to follow the example of the Good Samaritan is by helping some people from the Papunya community in the middle of Australia. Peter and Vicky visited Papunya earlier in October, and you can read more about it here.

Readings:
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 145:10-18
1 John 3:16-24
Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

This week has been a remarkable week, really, with many themes weaving together.

On Monday morning I was at a funeral for John Chataway, son of Jim and Joan, who worship at Bridgewater. The people there gathered together to show their love, to support one another and especially John’s family in their grief, and to express a shared hope of resurrection and eternal life, of that day that Isaiah spoke of, when death will be swallowed up forever, and God will wipe every tear from all our eyes.

Then on Wednesday and Thursday we witnessed the final stages of a 69 day miracle, as those 33 Chilean miners were brought up in the capsule they called Phoenix because, in a way, they were being born again. While they were literally rising to new life, their rescue also carries a strong sense of that same shared hope of resurrection and eternal life for us all.

While they were down there some of the 33 came to new faith, and others had their faith renewed. One miner sent up a note saying, ‘There are actually 34 of us, because God has never left us down here’.

Another miner said, ‘We could do nothing else but pray. I have never prayed before. I learned how to do it down there. I came close to God’.

The families supported each other in a camp called Esperanza, or Hope, and that was also the name given to the baby born while her father was still trapped.

President Piñera said the entire country had learned "the value of faith and of hope, the value of comradeship and solidarity".

Faith, hope, comradeship and solidarity are important themes in Luke’s Gospel. Luke is an evangelist – sharing the good news of God’s rescue mission for all of us. And today’s reading is one of Luke’s signature pieces. We’ve heard it so many times, but remember how it starts? A lawyer gets up to test Jesus. And what does he use to test him? That shared hope of resurrection and eternal life.

‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’

The lawyer’s really only interested in points-scoring, but Jesus throws the challenge back at him, ‘What’s written in the law? How do you read it?’

The lawyer makes the two points: ‘Love God with every part of your life; and love your neighbour as yourself.’

‘Right answer’ says Jesus, ‘do this, and you will live.’

But the lawyer doesn’t want Jesus to have the upper hand, so he throws another challenge: ‘Who is my neighbour?’

Jesus tells a story about a person who gets robbed and bashed. Two respectable people come along and see him, but they just avoid him. The only person who does help is the kind of person this lawyer despises. But this person doesn’t just do basic first aid, he finds somewhere safe for the man to recover, and he takes responsibility for the cost. And he does it for someone who would normally hate him. That’s the reason, of course, that we call him the Good Samaritan, but in the lawyer’s mind, that’s not what Samaritans do.

So when Jesus throws the challenge back at him, when he asks which of these three was a neighbour to the victim, the lawyer can’t even say the word Samaritan, and you can almost hear him squirming as he says, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’

Jesus has won the stand-off, and he finishes with a final challenge, not just to the lawyer, but to us all: ‘Go and do likewise.’ Don’t waste your time arguing over who the neighbour is that you ought to love, be the neighbour that inspires love.

This isn’t about earning eternal life; it’s about receiving it. As we choose to love God and love our neighbours, we experience a foretaste of life in God’s eternal kingdom, and we join in the mission of sharing God’s love with all who need it.

The Good Samaritan has been around for almost 2000 years now, and this story seems to have had some influence, not just in Christian communities, but in broader society. In our better times, the whole world seems to recognise that we are all neighbours.

For the last 10 weeks, people all over the world have had those 33 miners in their hearts and minds and prayers. We rejoiced when the miners were found alive. We hoped and prayed as experts from all over the world worked together for weeks to accomplish the rescue. And this week we have been able to rejoice with the miners and their families.

But already there has been another mining accident, this time in China, leaving some people dead and others trapped. It underscores what Rev Alfredo Cooper, chaplain to the Chilean president said to a BBC reporter: ‘The thing is that in this fallen world this is exactly what does occur. Man is subject to accidents and all sorts of problems thanks often to his wilful negligence as was the case in this mine. There are consequences when you don’t care enough for people.’

If we take a look around, we can easily find all sorts of examples of the consequences of not caring enough for people. One of the most persistent consequences is poverty. Luke’s gospel makes it clear that poverty is a kingdom issue, so it is quite fitting that the feast of St Luke and the canonisation of Mary Mackillop, who was dedicated to working with people suffering from poverty, are both happening in Anti-poverty Week.
Loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind involves sharing God’s love for the poor and, like the Good Samaritan, doing what we can to help.

This doesn’t mean just charging in and thinking we can fix things instantly. The rescue team in Chile was so successful at least partly because of how carefully they conducted the rescue. They didn’t try to do too much too quickly. They didn’t make promises they couldn’t keep. They took the time to think things through, to learn what they needed to learn, to work out a range of different things they might be able to do.

When we try to help others, there’s a time for acting quickly, and a time for careful discernment. This is what we are experiencing in these still early days of our journey together with Grant Hay in his ministry with the people of Point Pearce, and with the Papunya community, with Shekayla and Tobias. Some things can be done quickly, while others take a little longer. But we have begun the journey, and we’re beginning to learn some of the things we need to know.

What’s really important is that we keep on journeying together in faith and hope, comradeship and solidarity. And may God continue to guide us along the way.

Amen.

Pentecost + 20 C : 10.10.2010 : Papunya Visit Jeremiah 29.1-7

Last May in our church hall at Crafers, Alison Anderson, an indigenous member of the NT legislative assembly invited the people of this parish to start visiting the remote aboriginal community of Papunya; her home community. This past week, Keith Smith, Vicky and I visited Papunya for the first time. We made our way to Alice Springs, and from there Alison drove us over 230 km of ever-more-exciting road surfaces to Papunya.

We went there to begin exploring possibilities for a partnership between the people of this parish and the people of Papunya. We had two areas of partnership in mind. The first is a spiritual partnership between two Christian communities. And we both particularly wanted that spiritual partnership to be one that linked the children of our two communities.

So it was logical that the other main expression of that partnership between us was that we would try to help some of the children of Papunya who dream of the possibilities a good education might open up for them. We wanted to speak with those children, with their teachers and their families and their community elders. Would some of those children want to come and live here, and go to school here?

I think Keith and Vicky will agree with me when I say that our visit turned out to be a life changing experience for each of us. But today I only have space to scratch the surface with a few stories of what happened while we were there.

We got there late on Monday afternoon, so the evening was mainly taken up with settling in and getting ready for the coming three days—and, of course, being sized up by dozens of curious children.

Alison had promised she’d introduce us to some of her family. On Tuesday morning we went first to visit her Auntie Topsy. Auntie Topsy is very sick with liver cancer. She’s got to the stage where she can’t walk anymore. Her bed is outside under the veranda roof. It was just a mattress and blankets and pillows lying on the concrete, a little bit above ground-level. There are other beds lined up beside hers. Some of the older women of the community have moved from their homes, bringing their beds along, so they can be there with Topsy. Topsy’s older brother Gregory was there too; he’d come down from Yuendumu. Gregory is in a wheelchair; he’s been an amputee for two years, and he is still waiting for his ‘plastic leg’. On the ground between Auntie Topsy’s mattress and her friend’s mattress, a little campfire burns.

After chatting for a while, everyone gathered around Topsy to pray for her. We got Gregory’s wheelchair up the bump, close enough so we could all hold hands, and we prayed and cried together. I tried to come to terms with palliative care in a backyard with no more than a cyclone wire fence to give any privacy from the outside, and where little children and dogs share the beds with everybody there. But when I think about it, I can see that Topsy would prefer that to most other palliative care I’ve seen. I also realise that we were welcomed into a place of extraordinary privilege and trust.

We visited a couple of other, equally wonderful households that day, before going to a meeting at the school. But that evening we were invited back to Auntie Topsy’s for a gospel sing-along. When we got there, all the beds were being lifted up onto galvanised iron frames with legs. Someone had seen a mulga snake in the backyard!

The sing-along and the sharing were beautiful and gentle. Papunya’s gospel music blends the styles of the islands and their beloved country and western.
With some songs, like Amazing Grace and This is the Day, we’d sing a verse in English and then they’d sing it in Luritja. When they prayed, their prayer was fervent and heartfelt. Their prayers were about Papunya’s hunger for the gospel message, and for spiritual renewal. God is giving them leaders from among their own community who can help bring this about. Auntie Topsy’s son Douglas, and Janet, the wife of Alison’s older brother, Sid, are wonderful, faithful spiritual leaders. They are undertaking theological studies and will, in time, take their place as pastors of the community.

The meeting at the school was just as moving. It’s a great school, and the principal, Sue and her staff are incredibly dedicated. They bend over backwards to help the kids attend. Sue drives off in a troop carrier just after eight o’clock each morning to collect students from the outstations; and other teachers go out with drums and whistles as a ‘walking bus’ to encourage the kids who live close to come. Keith joined the bus on Thursday; it’s a long trip! The school is well equipped, and the school canteen provides breakfast, morning tea and lunch to all the kids. It’s all there, it seems.

But there are extraordinary cultural and social barriers to the kids attending school. Children don’t speak English at home; it’s often their 3rd language. Sorry business or initiation can take them out of the community for weeks or months at a time. For these and dozens of other reasons, Papunya School has never had a boy reach year twelve. And girls are in danger of abuse and drug addiction at extremely early ages. There are teenage parents everywhere.

At this meeting, we heard the stories of the two promising children that their teachers would like to see come here to live and study; Shekayla who turned nine in July, and Tobias who will turn twelve next March. Neither lives with their natural parents—Shekayla lives with a foster family; Tobias lived with his remaining grandmother until she died a few weeks ago.
Now he and his brothers are being looked after by different local families. Both Shekayla and Tobias are streets ahead of their classmates at school, but for Tobias, that and the fact that he has no-one to protect him has seen him suffer from serious teasing recently.

Streets ahead there doesn’t mean they’ll find school here straightforward. Remember, the only place they use English is at school. Alison could count on the fingers of both hands the remaining people in Papunya functionally literate in English; her counting stopped with her younger brother Amos.

On Wednesday, Keith and Vicky spent most of the morning in class with Shekayla, and I sat in on Tobias’ class. We also spoke with both children afterwards. We agree with their teachers that they are both promising, and we think they have strong motivation to do well. So on Thursday, we and Alison talked about the idea with two senior community elders who have strong ties with these two children, and with Shekayla’s foster father. They were very positive about this idea, and talked about putting significant Papunya-community resources behind it. Alison sees this as a new, mutual model of reconciliation; gone are the old paternalism and guilt.

In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures today (Jer 29.1-7), we heard how Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon to marry and have children—to live as people who would bless the community they resided in. It seems they did. And they also raised children who, when they eventually returned home, would be a blessing to their own country as well. The vision that Keith, Vicky and I have returned with is also this one of shared blessing. And our fervent prayer is that we may be a part of God’s desire for Shekayla and Tobias to be children of Papunya who will be both a blessing to us, and then enabled to return home as people who are a blessing to their country and their people.

CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS OF THE VISIT

Michaelmas 2010

In 1987, Vicky and I found ourselves at a worship service unlike any other we had known before.

In a small chapel we joined a semi-circle of men who were all wearing monastic habits.
We took our cues from them, standing and sitting when they did, trying to sing mediæval plainsong for the first time, and making sure we were on the same page in the service book.
But a couple of times in the service, out of nowhere, they all said some verses and prayers that weren’t written down. Since then, during hundreds of services, we got very used to these words.

They start like this:
I saw an angel, flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to
preach to those who dwell on the earth. (after Rev’n 14.6)

So begins the memorial prayer of the Society of the Sacred Mission—the SSM.

This parish used to know the Society very well. Until 1983, most Anglican clergy in Adelaide were trained for ministry by the SSM brothers, just up the hill at St Michael’s House on Mt Lofty.

The Society was founded ninety years earlier in the UK by Fr Herbert Kelly. (= B/water’s founding)
Its main function has been to train for ministry people who don’t have a highly academic or privileged background.
The SSM sees itself as training ordinary people for the mission of the angels - to preach the gospel around the world. These days, their main work is in Lesotho. With their mission to do the work of angels, the society’s special day is the one we’re observing today; Michaelmas, the feast of Archangel Michael and all Angels.

The trainee priests at St Michael’s house always used to come down to this parish to preach their first sermon. Somebody from here would drive up and collect a very nervous young man, and some time later return a very relieved and invariably well filled brother to St Michael’s House.

After St Michael’s was burned down in the 1983 bushfires, it looked like the link between the parish and the SSM would fade away. But ten years later the bond was restored in an unexpected way.

In 1993 a very unlikely looking angel arrived in this parish. You know how you can look at a jumbo jet and never imagine it could fly; the same must often have been thought of a substantial angel named Gordon Holroyd SSM. Gordon came here as a healing angel after those terrible years where this parish was ravaged by a paedophile priest.

For me, Gordon’s ministry here is a beautiful Michaelmas story. We just heard the original story of Michaelmas in the second reading. I imagine when most people listen to Revelation 12, they think they’re hearing something from the realm of mythology. ‘War broke out in heaven; Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his Angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them…’

Mythology? I believe this parish can hear these words more plainly. Here, we’ve seen the once trusted servant turn on us; deceive us; accuse us; call our children liars, and seek to dominate us. People who lived through this time have endured someone who chose to serve the dragon. But those same people, the people who knew the ministry of Gordon Holroyd, have also met one of Michael’s angels. They know that his sacred mission to us was a healing ministry; that Gordon was sent to help us restore love and trust and peace.

It’s a Michaelmas story because this community was restored. The power of deceit and malice were overcome by deep goodness and warmth and love; joy was able to return.

Deep scars still mark this community - this is no whitewash. Yet over this year, I’ve heard you asking the positive question about our sacred mission. And I suppose it’s natural that the mission we’ve discerned - the mission we’re actively exploring - is about the protection of children. We believe we’re called to a mission where God wants us to help restore wholeness to Aboriginal children whose circumstances deny them access to that wholeness. Through no fault of their own, opportunities are out of their reach; opportunities we take for granted are out of their reach. And we have heard the gospel challenge to do all we can to put those opportunities within their grasp. It’s so like the SSM!

Like all sacred missions, this one sees us entering something of a battle ground. The obstacles in our way are huge. There are questions which seem to have no answers; challenges loom and we have no solutions ready. Yet we feel called to this mission.

The obstacles we encounter can be precursors either to failure or to a Michaelmas moment. I believe we are headed for a Michaelmas moment, but only if we look to God for it. The SSM’s memorial prayer is a wise prayer to start with, because it reminds us, just as it reminds the members of the society every single day, that we always look to God for our next Michaelmas moment.

Vicky, Keith Smith and I are visiting Papunya in a week’s time to get to know the children, their families and elders, their school and their teachers. We need discernment, and we need to see that the minds of the Papunya community and the many other groups and organisations needed to support us are positive and committed.

Above all, we need your prayers to be with us and the Papunya community; and this prayer of the SSM is a great starting point. I’d like to share it with you now, and ask that you’d pray throughout the time we’re away, whenever you think of it.

Let’s pray.

I saw an angel, flying in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel
to preach to those who dwell on the earth.

Fear God and give glory to him,
for the hour of his judgement has come.

Almighty and eternal God,
from whose presence the angels go forth to do your will:
grant that in obedience
we may serve to the glory of your name,
and overshadowed by your protection
receive at last the crown of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The Parable of the Good Samaritan Pentecost +7 C 11.7.2010

Who is my neighbour? Lev 19.17-18 One’s kin or one of your own people.

On the surface, the lawyer (The Law here is Torah) is asking who he must love. But what he’s really asking Jesus to do is to say who’s in and who’s out so that he will know who he’s not required to love. If he can say who is his neighbour, he will also know who is not his neighbour.

Jesus could have answered, "Everyone is your neighbour."
Instead he tells a story that encourages us to shift our focus from the boundary marker to the neighbour on the other side. When our eyes are focused on the fence, we can’t see our neighbour clearly. However, when we look at the neighbour, as a story makes us do, we hardly see the fence.

Jesus doesn’t say much about the traveller. We don't know if he is Jewish, Samaritan, or an alien; Jesus doesn’t say what he’s been doing in Jerusalem nor why he’s going to Jericho. But all his listeners will know that road.

The road from Jerusalem down to Jericho winds through rugged terrain where robbers could ambush and escape easily. This man took a risk travelling alone and paid dearly for it. But the Samaritan doesn’t stop to ask whether he brought his trouble upon himself; he simply stops to help.

We tend to sort needy people into deserving and undeserving categories so we can excuse ourselves from helping the undeserving. But Christianity is actually about help for the undeserving.
Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Usually, passersby could identify the victim by his clothing or speech, but the robbers stripped him and left him unconscious. So he’s unidentifiable. Passersby might be quicker to stop if they could identify the man as a member of their group, but they can’t do that (Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes, 42-43).

The Priest

• would certainly have been riding, and so could have taken the injured traveller to help
• Sir 12.1-7 teaches that you help a good person, but you might be wrong to help a sinner, as you may even be working against God’s purposes
• the priest couldn’t get close enough to identify the injured traveller as good person or sinner (or even as living or dead) because of the risk of ritual defilement—contact with a corpse (and passing within 2 metres counts as contact) is the worst form of defilement; contact with a non-Jew is also defiling
• Ritual defilement was no small matter—to restore ritual purity, he would have had to find, buy and reduce to ash a red heifer in a ritual that lasted a full week (Bailey TPE 45)
  “The priest was the victim of a rule book…Life…a codified system of do’s and don’ts. This mentality…claims to offer the security of having quick answers to all of life’s…questions…until we face an unconscious man on the side of the road. When we do, we discover that the agenda has become, Maintain status within the supporting community, instead of, Reach out in freedom to the one in need beside the road” .Bailey 45-6 That’s precisely what we did when we failed to deal with child abuse within the Church.

The Levite

• Would have known a Priest was ahead of him on the road
• The example of the higher-ranking priest would have him reasoning that if the priest had done nothing, he would be implicitly criticizing the priest’s interpretation of the Law if he did otherwise himself.
  This is the power of a leader’s example, and we see a current parallel in the asylum-seeker debate.
• Centuries of ill feeling between Jews and Samaritans. ‘Who eats the bread of a Samaritan is like one that eats the flesh of swine.’ MShebiith 8.10
• Risked attack from bandits himself by stopping to help the stranger
• Poured oil and wine on the wounds—oil and wine were the libations priests and Levites poured on the high altar in the temple

There are the Priests and Levites again.
We’d do well not to demonize them.
Jesus didn’t choose them because they were the worst, but because they were the best.
If they were terrible people, the story would lose its force.
They’re actually just like us.
We also have good reasons to pass by on the other side—urgent duties that won’t permit delay.
If we’re alone, we’re also frightened of stopping on a deserted road to help a stranger.
We also get overwhelmed with the logistics of helping needy people.

These are very real concerns, and we must acknowledge them.
But the parable says these real concerns must not be allowed to become our rule book—the acceptable excuse for doing nothing. We know too well what happens then!

The Samaritan poured oil and wine on the man’s wounds like priests and Levites poured them on the altar in the Temple. "It is the hated Samaritan …who pours out the true offering acceptable to God" (Bailey, p50).

When I was a teenager, I heard a sermon on this parable that completely rocked me.
The preacher asked who was Jesus in the story.
I thought it should be the Samaritan.
But the preacher said it was the one who got beaten up. I think that was right.
So if we go and do likewise—do what the Samaritan did, there’s nothing to fear, because there, in the wounds of the one we serve, we will meet our Lord.

Easter 2010

I want you to imagine yourselves inside an egg, not yet hatched.

Tell me about the world you know.

What’s the furthest thing from you?
What’s hot; what’s cold?

Now, start to break your shell open and HATCH.
Quickly, tell me—are you in a new world?

What do you see?
Do you believe your eyes?
Are you frightened?

Let’s ask someone else.
What’s a someone else?
It’s someone like you, but different—but of course, you didn’t
know that.
Let’s ask them.
Do you see what they do? …

Back to the first one; Now you’ve heard someone else, and they’ve seen it all too. Is it easier for you to believe what you see now?
Are you hungry? Can you see any wheat or grass anywhere? There it is; eat up.

Just a moment; look over there; those are eggs that haven’t hatched.
Other ones like you will come out soon.
What will they need to know when they come out?
Can you help them?
Can you look after them?

I know people say that Easter eggs are a symbol of new life. But they’re also one of the best pictures you could ever have of a life that at one moment seems to be confined to a particular span a particular shape a particular size, and then its world is suddenly and utterly transformed.

The life is the same, but the reality of the world that was is gone, and something incomprehensibly huge has replaced it. We're in it; now, what do we do?

At Easter we see the Kingdom of God break into our world, and if we let it, our lives. Letting it means leaving behind the shell which would otherwise contain and define the way we understand our existence. That shell is our birth-to-death life-span, our health, our personal circumstances and everything inside the old horizons of our imagination.

Easter releases us into a new huge world outside that shell; a reality we never imagined, though it has similarities to this one, because this one is an image of the real one. So we can recognise the real one if we encounter it, but what Easter does is to call us to live in it fully. If we respond, Easter begins by breaking down the most basic boundaries of our world; birth and death.

On the first Easter Day, this unimaginably huge world broke in through the shell of those women’s sadness. They had bravely gone to the tomb before dawn. They were shocked to see the huge stone door rolled away. Yet even so, they entered the blackness of the tomb before dawn, and there, they were met by two dazzling angels. These angels are all the more dazzling because they brought the women two types of light.
First there was the visible light; the light of their own personal radiance, which destroyed the darkness of the tomb. And then there was the light of their words;

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

What those angels did was to kindle a light in those women that was already there. Jesus had already told them this was going to happen. And now it was upon them. What now? Where was this going to lead?

When I think of the Kingdom these days breaking into a tragedy and transforming it into joy and new purpose, I remember a man I knew years ago in another parish. He lived in a housing trust unit, with his two dogs. For a number of reasons, he couldn’t work; he was lonely and a bit aimless and depressive. He loved the dogs though. One night he was asleep and something went wrong in the kitchen; his home caught on fire. He would have probably got out safely, except he went back in to rescue his dogs.

I visited him for months after that in the burns unit at the Royal Adelaide—there’s practically nothing as slow or painful as recovering from bad burns. He nearly died a number of times. As he got better, he told me that one of those times when he nearly died. He said he would have been happy to go except he heard a voice calling him back. He thought about it, and finally agreed to stay.

He got better more quickly after that. He told me that he knew that voice was Jesus, and that it meant there was something he was called to do. It was as though he'd been given his life back a second time, and now he had to find out why. What was he being called to do by Jesus?

Before the fire, he used to come to the small, midweek services, and when he was well enough to go home and he could make it back to church, I asked him if he'd like to talk about his experience with all of us. He did, and his story and the obvious new sense of purpose he had in his life encouraged several other people in the congregation. A lot of those people lived isolated lives like he did, and the thought that God could have a special need of somebody ordinary like them made a big difference.

His physical survival was a miracle of modern medicine; the RAH burns unit is an astounding place. But I suppose you’ll have to take it on trust from me when I say that for somebody who was already a bit depressive to emerge from such long-term chronic pain, and for the first time in his life to agree to do some public speaking, and then infect everybody with his new sense of purpose in life; that for me is a miracle of the Kingdom breaking in.

In this case, I think the Kingdom was as gentle and painstaking as the burns unit staff would have been; but even so, this man had his shell removed. He was gently invited; he agreed, and he became a person that God enabled to invite others out of their shells; shells that might have become tombs for them. To their delighted surprise, they discovered that God was personally interested in somebody as simple as them.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” It’s astounding; it’s glorious; and it’s real.

Christ is risen, Halleluia! He is risen indeed, Halleluia!

Meditation on the Cross / Good Friday Address

The Cross, as we picture it, is in its completed form. The upright has the Cross piece fixed to it near the top to make a shape like the lower case letter ‘t’. That’s the Cross we see on the walls of churches, on the tops of church buildings and hanging from chains or strings round our necks. The only difference we notice is whether it is an empty Cross or a crucifix—a Cross with Jesus depicted on it.

This notion of what a Cross is meant to look like has shaped a lot of graphic art over the centuries. It’s particularly shaped the way paintings, and more recently, movies about the crucifixion have shown Jesus carrying the Cross from his prison to Calvary. They tend to show him carrying the familiar ‘t’-shaped Cross over his shoulder, with the long, heavy upright dragging along behind him.

This is in spite of the fact that scholars have known and taught for a long time that it is unlikely that the real thing looked like this traditional image. What they tell us is that the upright of the Cross would probably have been at Calvary already, set in the ground and probably equipped with a winch on the top. So as Jesus walked through the streets of Jerusalem, he would have had the cross-piece lying across his shoulders, and his arms would have been lashed at the wrists to each end of it. They also tell us that he would most likely have been naked.

When you walk through the narrow stone streets of Jerusalem, particularly when they are crowded, it is clear just how vulnerable he’d have been in this position.
Onlookers were viewed with deep suspicion if they didn’t throw things at condemned prisoners, and taunt them or spit at them. The soldiers escorting a prisoner through the streets would shove their charges and bully them with that pointless gratuitous discipline that bullies like to inflict on their victims; maybe trip them over a few times along the way.

If you fell with that great big lump of wood across the back of your neck and your arms outstretched, tied back to it, when you fell your face was driven straight into the ground by the weight of the wood. You couldn’t save yourself.

The wonderful Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish captured this for his own time and also named the present experience of many of his own people in his poem, You are mine, with all your wounds. He asks Jesus,

Did your feet,
dirty and swollen,
have to pick their way over these smooth stones,
covered with the usual debris.
of rainwater and rubbish—
watched by some bored soldiers
who were passing the time of day?

Did your feet,
dirty and swollen,
have to take the long route
right around the road block,
picking their way
past puddles as large as lakes—
watched by some bored soldiers
who were passing the time of day?

It gives you a different perspective when you get a local person’s view, I find. It makes you see that for Mahmoud Darwish, what happened all that time ago, was as immediate as if it happened today, and he personally knows the person it happened to. In fact, it might have happened to him.

The Cross says that this sort of compassion—this shared pain is actually true for God too. There’s been a shocking story in the news recently about a young girl who was bullied at school—bullied so hideously that she gave up her will to live. What the Cross says is that the violation, the shame, the fear and the torture that were inflicted on that child are something that God knows from personal experience.

We know that God doesn’t stop people doing terrible things to others. God has a different answer. In the way of the Cross, we find a God, who will never allow a victim to suffer alone. Where was God in that young girl’s horror? Right with her; God suffered with her; even her death—as would any parent who wants to take their child’s suffering on themselves instead.

On the Cross, we see God helpless; we see God who is the one who represents all of us who know pain, despair, loneliness, fear, mental breakdown, or who suffer from bullying. On the Cross, we see in God all of us whom God aches to embrace and soothe and comfort and heal.

Of course, we also see the terror; we also see the cruelty. But overriding all of it, in the Cross we see God’s love that seeks to heal both perpetrator and victim. In the Cross, we see God’s love that alone can bring life where otherwise there is only a way to death. Amen

Reflections for Maundy Thursday 2010

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 and the really ordinary, practical things he did. Here’s a very old prayer that I think might have inspired the first one.

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

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 prayers 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 it's also there in these old prayers.

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

Certainly it's a Passover meal, so it's got a lot of ritual involved in it. But it's just something normal people did. 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 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

Palm Sunday C 2010 Luke 19.28-40 [CLICK THE LINK TO READ THE PASSAGE]

There aren’t many stories you can read again and still feel the same excitement and suspense you did the first time you read it. Outside the church this morning, we heard the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem—again. We’ve all heard it before; so even as we were listening to it, we knew what was going to happen next, didn’t we.

That makes it really hard for us to imagine what it was like for the people who were there that first Palm Sunday. They didn’t know what was going to happen; they just knew what Jesus had done up until that time. Some of them hoped Jesus would save them. They praised God for him, crying out, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace …!’ Others might have feared for Jesus’ safety; and yet others might have seen him as a threat. They tried to get him to silence the crowd.

As we try to recall this story right now, we’re doing our remembering while just having heard the whole of Luke’s Passion story. It’s as though we’ve camouflaged the Palm Sunday episode; it’s as though we’ve walked through an entire forest, and then turned round to try to peer through the trees to look at just one little grove in it. If we tried to retell the Palm Sunday story from memory, we might put in extra details that aren’t there, or leave things out that we think happened at a different time.

But to figure out what the Palm Sunday story really says to us, we need to be able to think about it just by itself; to think about what it was like for the people who were there. So lets think first about the people who walked with Jesus, and then the ones looking out from Jerusalem who watched him coming.

We met the people walking alongside Jesus as they approached Bethphage and Bethany. Bethany was the home town of his friends Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus; the one Jesus raised from the dead. Bethany is over the back of the Mount of Olives, just out of sight of Jerusalem.

Can you imagine the excitement?

The one who had raised Lazarus from the dead coming back to town! But he sends people ahead of him, asking them to arrange for him to borrow a colt that has never been ridden. So he has a sort of advance guard doing something odd. And when they’re asked for an explanation, they’re told simply to say ‘the Lord needs it’. People will wonder about this, and of course the advance guard will talk a little bit more than that were instructed to. They’ll pop in that detail about a colt that has never been ridden. Maybe someone can explain it to them?

People who know the scriptures might tell them that it’s about something sacred, and also something about a King "According to Num 19:2 and Deut 21:3, an animal to be used for certain sacred purposes must be chosen from those that have never been used for ordinary labour, and according to m. Sanh. 2.5, no one else may ride the king's horse" (Tannehill, 282-283). Clever people will start putting two and two together. The one who resurrected Lazarus, the one who calls himself Lord, the one who does things foretold in the tradition, something about the holy one, about a King; the excitement will build and build.

And as they come up the back of the Mount of Olives and reach the top, Jerusalem, dominated by its gigantic Temple, slowly steals into view. He must be coming to take it. That's what they’ll think; that’s what they shout; ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’ It’s so exciting—surely they are at the centre of history in the making!

But what of the other side of the valley. What do they see? Naturally word will have gone ahead; Romans spies; Temple spies. By the time Jesus comes into view, they will know everything; all the details about the colt, all the speculation in the excited crowd.

The Temple Mount, looks out across to the steep side of the Mount of Olives—the triumphal procession will be like a slow-moving painting. The Roman headquarters, the Antonia fortress, 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 it’s a factional battle brewing between groups of religious lunatics.

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.

What Palm Sunday calls from each of us is a decision. Luke calls us to decide whether we’re walking with the crowd of people who surround Jesus, or whether we’re watching him coming.

That’s not to say that we have to decide to feel exactly the same way those excited people coming through Bethany felt; nor that we should feel challenged the way the authorities in Jerusalem did. We can’t feel that way; because for us the story is mediated through the story of the Passion. We know that walking with the crowd is a walk to tragedy and remorse. We also know what resisting Jesus’ approach meant.

Yet the cries of the crowd tell us that Jesus’ approach is a challenge to achieve peace; heavenly peace. And we do have to make decisions about that for our own time. We have to decide what will make for peace within ourselves; peace between ourselves and others; peace between dominant groups and the people they control. God’s peace is always linked to justice.

The Gospel challenges us to enter Holy Week determined to choose for this just peace. For our parish particularly, this challenge has a special focus. We’ve spent the season of Lent studying the plight of Australia’s aboriginal people. It’s as though a procession is approaching us from another mount; the Mount of Uluru. And as we watch its approach, we have to decide what will make for God’s just peace in this land, and in our time. Amen

Lent 5 C 2010 John 12.1-8; Philippians 3.3-14 [CLICK THE LINKS TO READ THE PASSAGES]

There are confronting things in today’s gospel; paradox and uncertainty. Mary of Bethany bowls us over with her extravagant gift, worth a year’s wages; but then comes the disturbingly understandable portrait of Judas; miserable and bitter. And finally Jesus’ words—so easily misinterpreted— about the poor being always with us; where do we turn?

I think to find where John is leading us, we first have to acknowledge that this gospel works at a number of levels. I’ve often said that John is a very sensory gospel—there’s lots of tasting and smelling and things in John. But often, if John says see or hear, it’s not only physical seeing and hearing that’s intended, but spiritual awakening and insight as well.

Take Mary’s gift of nard to Jesus. It’s strangely given; not given to keep and use; it’s squandered on Jesus’ feet. It’s given to everyone there in its perfume, but no-one will ever be able to use it again. It’s given as though there’s no tomorrow. What’s she saying? Where’s she taking us?

Earlier in the Gospel, we heard Mary’s sister Martha say who Jesus really was. Now Mary says it too. But she says much more: she also says what will happen now he’s come to Jerusalem; he’ll be killed. Martha told Jesus privately that he was the Messiah/anointed one.(11.27) Today, Mary proclaims it publicly and physically when she anoints Jesus. And there’s more; she also invokes the type of anointing that has to do with the dead. She does what we do when we know the death of a loved one is near. Before they die, we do everything we can to let them know we love them; to tell them who they are to us.

She knows where he’s heading, and yet she doesn’t try to stop him. I think of the children watering the wheat today as being very similar to Mary’s anointing of Jesus for his burial. They’re wasting it if we think of it as food; and that’s how we could see what Mary did with the perfume, if you think of it like Judas did. But for us, the wasted wheat and perfume are signs of hope for a new, life-giving life; signs that God’s abundance allows for death, but it also inspires us to look for resurrection to a new, wonderful life again.

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

Why can’t Judas be like Mary of Bethany? For that matter, why can’t all Jesus’ followers pour ourselves out like she did? Maybe like Judas, people struggle to come to terms with 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 trapped in the pragmatic world—one where you make sure you’re prepared for things—even to the point of dishonesty; where you keep enough fuel in the tank for emergencies; where you scrimp and save when you can, because you’re afraid of what’s round the corner.

Even though he’s one of Jesus’ disciples, somehow Judas can’t see who Jesus is the way Mary and Martha can. Surely there are good reasons for his mixed fear and zeal. But Judas tells us for sure that our convictions and our ethics can’t be the engine or the foundation of our faith. That only comes from discovering who Jesus really is.

That’s what Paul was saying in the epistle reading today. You could read Paul in a way that makes you think he’s driven by remorse for what he once was. But that’s not what he’s saying. Paul senses that Jesus has claimed him as his own, and he’s stunned with gratitude. So every bit of energy Paul expends; every struggle is because of Jesus’ grace to him. He’s not looking behind; he’s looking forward, ‘…driven by his own personal experience of grace; pure, unexpected, unearned, outrageous grace.’(Phil 3.14)

Outrageous grace demands an extravagant response; that’s just what Mary did; that’s Paul’s journey. But Judas, poor soul, couldn’t see the grace. And I’m sure he’s not alone. 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.

Our giving to the poor and needy, our prayers for the sick, the sad and the unloved; for those burdened with responsibilities they may have deliberately sought but which eat them alive—these, our gifts and prayers are strange if we think of them as inputs for which we expect outcomes.

But they make perfect sense when they are seen for what they really are; a response to the Jesus who has met us, has called us, who has shown us the way of self-giving, joyful abundant extravagance. We are to bless the world with a model of infectious extravagance that bubbles out of our thanks for God’s grace to us. To whom be glory and praise. Amen