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Pentecost 25
19/11/2023

Zephaniah 1:7-16
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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How are we to do God’s will when God’s voice is so tiny. Elijah found this to be true. He expected to hear God in storms and earthquakes and cataclysmic events – stuff accompanied by big noises. Afterall, if God is so big it follows that God has a big voice. Not so, says Elijah. God speaks in sheer silence. No wonder I can’t hear what God is saying. That, at least, is the complaint implicit in the one talent servant who buried what was entrusted to him and returned it to the master on his return. He complained that he knew what kind of man his master was and what he would expect and out of fear he kept the talent safe, buried in the ground.

This calls for a little bible study. There are a few things to say about the parable that could be helpful. There is another version of the story in Luke. Luke’s version has quite a different feel but in this version one notable difference from the one in Matthew is that the master gives instruction as to what the servants are to do with the money. He said, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ (Luke 19:13) The third servant wrapped the money in a cloth to return it but the master admonished him for not even putting it in the bank where he could have earned some interest.

The Matthew version of the story is the third in a series of parables that follow a theme. They are about waiting. There is the unfaithful slave who is behaving badly when the master returns. There are the foolish virgins who had run out of lamp oil when the bridegroom arrived. Then comes the absent master who returns to assess the management of his property entrusted to three servants.

Parables can be tricky. Sometimes we can see them as metaphors that depict what God is like. It seems reasonable to let the good Samaritan remind us of Jesus. It seems reasonable to do the same with parable of the lost sheep. Indeed, in iconography, the shepherd who finds the lost sheep is usually depicted as Jesus.

There is a temptation to make these connections in all Jesus parables but if we did that we would be considering divine attributes that belong better with inhabitants of Mount Olympus. The masters and the bridegroom in the three waiting parables are unreasonable and vengeful, not the loving and gracious God we have come to expect.

How interesting that Jesus told stories with main characters who shape the outcome of events in these parables who have values and personalities devoid of what we might expect to be divine attributes. How interesting that gospel writers reported these stories and expected their readers to derive lessons in them for being more faithful in their following Jesus. How perplexing that so many of these stories with characters who have just mist the point rather than being outrageously bad, who look like they have been treated unfairly, how come they are the ones that end up gnashing their teeth.

Remember, Matthew is the one who reports Jesus’ words, “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.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Some chapters later Matthew tells of someone who asked, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) The two of the waiting parables in chapter 25 look like part of the answer to this except that the actual doing part is not spelled out, much to the misfortune of the foolish virgins and the servant entrusted with one talent.

Now, we who have sat under the scriptures and sound preaching all our lives Sunday by Sunday are fully aware that the juxtaposition vis a vis us and eternal life is not dependant on our doing but on what God has already done through Christ. The baptised are in Christ living in a sure and certain hope of eternal life.

What we must do is not our path to eternal life. Christ has already trod that path. Whatever we might do is in response to the gift of life. There is doing to be done. There is the leading of God to be heard and obeyed. Problem, the voice of God is very tiny. But, thanks be to God, the returning master who admonished the one talent servant for treating what had been given him as if it were dead by burying it gives a clue as to how to get round the apparent silence of God.

Indeed he taught him with his own words. As he flicked mud from the exhumed talent offered him by the lazy servant he said, “You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?” (Matthew 25:26) There it is. The absent master did not need to leave spoken instruction because those who had lived with him knew him and his expectations. Knowing the master informs the doing of obedient servants.

Matthew and his church knew the lazy servant’s dilemma. Jesus was no longer with them in the flesh as he been before his death. He was not with them to teach and instruct and provide a living example of doing that befits eternal life. They were living in the waiting time of the absent Lord.

Followers of Jesus are entrusted with bearing witness to what God has done and is doing in Christ. Bearing that witness, doing what is expected calls for listening to a master who is present in the Spirit, but that kind of presence looks a lot like absence. So how can the faithful followers know what to do? Part of the answer is revealed in the parable of the talents. Those who know the master know what is expected. Knowing Jesus makes God audible. Knowing Jesus makes sense of the sheer silence of the voice of God.

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Pentecost 24
12/11/2023

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

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Only a god like the God of the crucified Christ can resolve the tension many of us experience as beneficiaries of a violent colonial history.

Only a god like the God of the crucified Christ can make a gospel Yes out of the violent No of history’s tragedies, including colonialism.

This is because the violence of colonisation is the violence of the crucifixion. And if the substance of salvation can wear the form of the cross, the healing yet to come can wear the vestments of colonial history.

The burden of my sermon today is how this might be so…

The colonising God
Consider the terrifying words of Joshua to the Israelites: “…the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land.”

Did God do this? Did the “God of love” command and enable the violent displacement of the Amorites (among others) in favour of the Israelites? The moral answer required by modern sensibility is a resounding No, God did not.

But it’s not that easy, if the Scriptures matter for our sense of God.

It’s not that easy because the “gift” of this land in fulfilment of the promise to Abraham is central to the Old Testament’s confession of the faithfulness of God. From Abraham through the Exodus to the occupation, in the prophets and then in the Exile, and again in the post-exilic Restoration, possession of this land is a central measure of God – a proof of God’s faithfulness. And, of course, in the New Testament, St Paul makes not a little(!!!) of Abraham’s trust in the promise of God with respect to descendants and the deliverance of Canaan.

This matters to us here and now, of course, because as for the Israelites so for us: our land, too, is bloody. And so we find ourselves seemingly in need of these texts because they sign God’s faithfulness, while also being fully aware of the moral problem: everything non-indigenous Australians have is had at enormous cost to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples. While we wonder about the possibility of doing theology “on” stolen land, the scriptural text theologises the stealing: God did this.

Death as method
We can make the problem more concrete by asking, Does God kill for God’s own purposes? Is death a method for God, a means to divine ends?

This opens the question up to include now the crucifixion of Jesus – the colonisation of a single body. The cross is the quintessential scriptural moment at which human and divine violence coincide. The human violence is obvious: a man is killed. The divine violence appears as an overlay on that death, with talk of ransom and sacrificial exchange hinting that God purposed Jesus to die.

But do God’s purposes require killing? Did God kill the Amorites for the sake of the Israelites or kill Jesus for everyone’s sake? No, God did not, although we can’t say this merely because we imagine that ours is a God of love. “Love” versus “not‑love” at this point simply moralises the problem, and this can’t make sense of the way the Bible circumscribes love with the language of divine violence. St John tells us that divine love is God sending “his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We can’t happily lean on the scriptural authority of John’s “God is love”, without accounting for his interweaving of love with death.

Death and the free God
We must indeed say that God doesn’t kill or demand killing – of Amorites, Jesus or indigenous peoples. But this isn’t merely because God is love; God doesn’t kill because God doesn’t need to. Killing is method – a means to an end. We have means and methods: if this sacrifice, then that benefit – and we have found that blood can be a very effective lubricant. Because God also has purposes, it is almost irresistible to conclude that God must need means. Thus, God drives out the Amorites in order to fulfil the promise, and kills Jesus in order to save us. In this way, death now appears as a means to God’s ends.

But this over-reads the scriptural text and under-reads Christian confession. God does will and does purpose, but needs no means by which to achieve that will. More specifically, God has no need that we do a particular thing for God’s will to be fulfilled, certainly not that we kill. This is the importance of the doctrine of creation out of nothing. Creation out of nothing is about the freedom of God, such that nothing has to be in place “in order that” God can do God’s thing. God’s power to create out of nothing is the meaning of grace and the possibility of the resurrection of the dead. God is unconstrained by prior conditions. God does not kill because God doesn’t need anything to die for his purposes to be realised.

Why, then, do the Scriptures cast God as one who kills to save or to punish?

Death is not a method for God, but it is for us. We fight our way into places not ours, or fight our way out of places in which we are trapped. This is Palestine and Ukraine and our own colonial history right up to this moment, and countless other instances besides. This is the normal – even the natural – way of the political animal.

And by simply not having drowned under our history of violence, we survivors today find ourselves afloat upon a sea of blood: the blood of soldiers who died in wars we didn’t fight, of indigenes in colonisations we can’t undo, the lives of slaves on whose back we have built our lives, and so on. The human being is many things, but it is this also.

The question is whether God can work with this, whether the nothingness of human brokenness is the kind of nothingness out of which God creates.

– – – – – – –      Selah     – – – – – – –

The sinful form of forgiveness: the “happy sin”
An answer is found if we turn to the marvel – and the moral shock – of Christian confession, with its understanding of the dynamics of forgiveness.

The cross, of course, is central to this dynamic. In particular, it matters that the cross is intrinsic to a particular experience of forgiveness. An extrinsic account of forgiveness holds that the cross doesn’t need to know what sin I have committed. I might be an adulterer, a murderer or a thief, but in any case the cross is invoked as a catch-all means of reconciliation to God. An intrinsic account of forgiveness is one in which the cross is part of the sin I have committed. This means that, in its first moment, the cross saves only those who, 2000 years ago, rejected the presence of God’s kingdom in Jesus. The crucial(!) point here is that the sign of God’s blessing is cross-shaped because the crucifixion of God’s kingdom is the sin to be overcome. Put more simply, forgiveness cannot – ever – forget. Forgiveness cannot forget because to forget the sin would be to forget that I have been forgiven. And I would lose myself as a new creation.

It is this which leads us into the moral jolt of forgiveness and reconciliation: any deep experience of forgiveness looks back on the particular sin as the “cause” for the present blessing: I know the blessing of reconciliation now “because” I sinned. And so, in fear and trembling, the church has sometimes spoken of the felix culpa – the happy, lucky, blessed fault. So unlikely, so unanticipated, so impossible is the vision of God had in this experience of reconciliation, that it becomes possible to imagine that God’s hand must have been in the very fault itself – possible to see God’s hand in our sin, so that we might see God and ourselves more clearly.

This is slightly overstated, but only slightly. None of this works at the level of morality, of course, which is why Paul rejects the conclusion that we should abound in sin in order that grace might abound (Romans 6:2). The idea of a blessed fault only works on a reading of the cross as sinful human violence which God has made a blessing. It’s God’s hand, and not ours, which makes this reading possible. Just as the Psalms are our words to God made into God’s Word to us, so also is the cross a pious act against a blasphemer made into a healing revelation of our own blasphemy. In the Eucharist, the body broken “for us” is only so because it is the body broken by us. How could we have known that there is a God who works like this without the cross? Surely, the Scriptures conclude, God must have destined the Son to die for us; surely God “did” the cross.

This is the strange, and disquieting, but evangelical logic of the Scriptures, by which the light does not merely contradict the darkness but comprehends it, making the darkness its own. Our darkness is never darkness in God’s sight (Psalm 130:12).

Canaan as the cross
The Scripture’s theologising of the bloody acquisition of Canaan can’t be reconciled morally, but it can be heard through this dynamic of sin-shaped forgiveness. The sin is the violent dispossession, but the blessing is the experience – or cultural memory – of having been slaves and, impossibly, freed from slavery and, impossibly, finding our way to and settling into a new homeland. So unlikely is this to have happened that it must have been God who did it – from the Plagues, to the drowned Egyptian charioteers, to surviving the desert, to settling in green pastures beside still waters. How could it not be that the Lord drove out the Amorites before us?

But God is no killer on this reading, even if perhaps the scriptural writers probably believed she was. This reading requires, rather, that the blessing comes in spite of human violence even if in the shape of that violence. And this is dependent principally upon a reading of the cross as a sin-shaped means of grace.

God and our history, beyond morality
Now, if we find some truth in all that, what does it tell us about our own contemporary experience of colonisation – and I mean here particularly, the experience of those who have benefited from the dispossession? Is it possible that we might come to an experience of forgiveness and reconciliation which must wonder whether God’s hand was in the violent processes of the colonisation of this land, in a way comparable to what I’ve proposed for the taking of Canaan?

This is a ghastly question at a moral level, and the moral answer is No, and rightly so: God did not kill by the colonist’s hands; what happened to create modern Australia has no moral justification. Yet it did happen; death is a method for us. And we are stuck – colonisers and colonised alike. It can’t be undone because there is no proper recompense for blood in strictly moral terms. Blood stains deeply, and it can’t be washed out.

But the gospel is that the God we are dealing with here is not a moral agent in the world, and doesn’t deal with us according to our moral achievement or failure. God’s interaction with our history is not a moral matter but a matter of the nature and possibility of forgiveness, of the willingness to remember and the requirement not to forget, and of discovering ourselves as worthy of judgement but blessed nonetheless.

Whatever might be the conflicting hopes and fears of the broader Australian community, the colonially complicit church hopes in a God who will reconcile in such a way that it will seem that things had to happen as they did, horribly wrong as they were.

The church can hope this only because the violence of colonisation is the violence of the crucifixion of Jesus – our colonisation of his body.

The church can hope this only because if the substance of salvation can wear the form of our crucifixion of the Lord of glory, so it can also wear the tragedy of colonial history.

This is the gospel for the coloniser who cannot undo the colonisation.

– – – – – – –      Selah     – – – – – – –

What is missing in all that I’ve said this morning, of course, is the perspective of the Canaanite, of the crucified, of the colonised; the perspective of the Israeli woman enjoying a weekend music festival and of the Palestinian boy whose hospital collapses on top of him. I have addressed primarily the condition of the violent and their beneficiaries – those of us who have blood on our hands. Nonetheless, the victims of violence can also be addressed through the dynamic of the cross because the victim and the victimiser are two different types of nothingness, out of which God can create. It’s just that that would be another too-long, too dense sermon.

None of what I’ve said justifies violence or injustice. None of this lightens the moral demand for redress. The gospel is not a political program. My concern here is confession – confession of sin and confession of faith as to what we can expect from God. As interested as we must be in we should now do, I’m speaking here about what God will do.

If there is horror in what I’ve said, it must be not only in the possibility that colonialism might be destined to be found a blessing, but perhaps more profoundly in relation to the place of the cross itself in our account of God. A God who has a “use” for a crucifixion must surely be a terrifying God, and yet we confess just this God to be marvellous, and because of the crucifixion. God is marvellous because nothing should come back from a crucifixion, much less the crucified himself, showing us the marks cold steal leaves in flesh but speaking words of peace.

And can anything come back from colonisation or a lost referendum, or from murder or rape, or from suicide or bereavement or a terminal diagnosis? That is, can anything good come back from such brokenness and loss?

In terms of our moral measures of the world, it is an indeed an impossible thing we confess: history – all that we have done and has been done to us – is to be made the province of God, the form of God’s grace‑d presence to us, re-creation out of nothing.

– – – – – – –      Selah     – – – – – – –

Can it be?
As I struggled to bring all this to some sort of conclusion, the words of a perhaps-too-familiar hymn came to mind, which I had never quite felt in the terms I’ve outlined this morning:

…can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me (!?!), who caused His pain?
For me (!?!), who Him to death pursued?

It’s a rollicking good song to sing but perhaps this verse at least is better whispered than belted out, for it indicates the shocking proposal of the gospel: that my victim will become my salvation.

Can it be that the crucified God will make a gospel Yes out of the violent No of history’s tragedies?

Whatever else the church might say in our wrestling with our history and with every other tragedy besides, we must – in fear and trembling – say that if we confess the crucified Jesus to be Lord, then we confess also that God can draw the reconciliation of all things out of the nothingness of human sin and violence.

Whatever moral good we must yet do to acknowledge the sins of the past and mitigate their continuing effect, these works will not justify us and we delude ourselves if we think we can make it good. Blood stains deeply, and can’t be washed out.

But we are a people of the gospel. To take an image from the Seer of Revelation, we confess that with the God of the crucified Christ, Blood. Washes. White.

Can any other God do this?

“…put away then the other gods that are among you,” Joshua said to the people, “and incline your hearts to the Lord.”

 

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Prayer of response

We bless you, great God,
for you have created and sustained us
and all things
for your own name’s sake,
that we might glorify and enjoy you forever.

And yet we confess that, in thought, word and deed,
we fail to bring you glory.

Forgive us when, wittingly or not,

our lives are lived at the cost of others,
and we refuse to know the need for forgiveness…

Forgive us when, mindful of our failures,

we imagine that we can make good
with this or that gesture,
and we refuse to know the cost of forgiveness…

Forgive us then, when we withhold forgiveness,

and lack generosity and mercy;
or refuse the consequences of being forgiven
and lack justice and sacrifice…

Gracious God,

you bring your people home from despair
and gave them a future of freedom and plenty.
Do not let us rest easy with injustice,

or wallow in our inability to heal ourselves,

but bring us home to justice, sharing, and compassion,
in the realm you promise all the world
This we ask in Jesus the Christ,

who became sin and salvation for us. Amen.

 

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Three related sermons:

Salvation’s sinful form (John 3:14)

https://marktheevangelist.unitingchurch.org.au/15-march-salvations-sinful-form/

The God of COVID-19 (Isaiah 53:10)

https://marktheevangelist.unitingchurch.org.au/5-april-the-god-of-covid-19/

God is a resurrecting avenger (Revelation 16)

https://marktheevangelist.unitingchurch.org.au/3-july-god-is-a-resurrecting-avenger/

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Pentecost 23
5/11/2023

Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107
Matthew 23:1-12

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

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The opening chapters of the book of Joshua tell how the Israelites are finally about to cross the river Jordan and enter into the land of God’s promise.  For 40 years they’ve wandered in the wilderness, and during this time many of the people who came out of Egypt died in the desert.  Like Moses, they never crossed over Canaan’s side.  We can only guess how they might have felt, stumbling and falling on the way, hope surrendering to despair, as they realize they’re not going to make it.  And yet, if it wasn’t for those who died along the way, there would not have been a pilgrim people to make the journey, and the destination would have been irrelevant.  As the Israelites tread the verge of Jordan, the Lord says to Joshua: ‘This day I’ll begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I’ll be with you as I was with Moses.’  It’s no coincidence that what follows recalls the crossing of the Red Sea four decades before.  While the priests bearing the ark of the covenant, the sign of God’s presence, stand in the Jordan River, the Israelites are able to cross over into the Promised Land without even wetting their feet.  The message for the Israelites is clear – as the baton of leadership is passed from Moses to Joshua, the Lord is indeed among them just as surely as when they fled Egypt.

The leadership of God’s people has always been contentious, and the Hebrew Scriptures record the various ways in which it was exercised in different eras, from patriarchs to judges to kings to prophets; from priests appointed according to the Law to self-appointed leaders in popular lay movements.  Leadership in Jesus’ day was no less contentious, as we note in his numerous conversations with the Pharisees, the scribes, the Herodians and the Sadducees.  Jesus’ frequent criticism of these leaders seems to be at odds with a comment he makes in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5.  After blessing the poor, the grieving, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers, Jesus declares: ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’  What seemed like an impossible goal for his audience is now clarified in today’s gospel passage, as Jesus says: ‘Do whatever the scribes and Pharisees teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach.’  In other words, the scribes and Pharisees are not nearly as righteous as they imagine.

But this begs the question – to what righteousness may God’s people aspire?  Jesus then says: ‘The greatest among you will be your servant.  All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’  Many years ago, a colleague suggested that the purpose of the gospel is ‘to subvert the dominant paradigm’, and Jesus blessing the poor and critiquing authority certainly seems to achieve this.  Yet, as attractive as this comment is, it’s important to understand why it’s not adequate.  The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t an ancient version of Marxist economic theory; it is rather the story of God’s determination to reconcile and renew a broken world.  This provides the proper theological context for Jesus’ references to greatness and servanthood, to humility and exaltation.  The good news is that Jesus is talking about himself, and his own vocation as a Messiah who will humble himself on a cross in apparent resignation and defeat.  I say apparent act of resignation and defeat, because God vindicated the humility of Jesus and exalted him as Lord.

The flesh and blood of Jesus, crucified and raised, becomes – through the power of the Holy Spirit – the living body of Christ’s church, a servant community that embodies the grace of God.  We are the body of his humility, breathed into life by his Spirit, to give glory to God.  This is our vocation, purpose, and identity as church.

It’s now several months since this congregation shifted from North Melbourne into this facility.  This transition seems to have gone well, largely due to congregational goodwill, as well as careful leadership, consultation, planning and preparation.  Perhaps you feel a sense of satisfaction at this achievement.  You’ve not spent 40 years in the wilderness, but this transition does mark the end of a long journey which is now concluded.  And yet we should be cautious about any end that is not, as the Basis of Union, paragraph 3, declares, God’s end in view for the whole creation: ‘God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.’

In light of contemporary political and social challenges, it can be hard to picture this coming reconciliation and renewal.  The outcome of the recent Voice referendum obscures how progress towards healing and justice for Australia’s First Nations peoples may now be achieved.  And fresh violence in the Middle East pours salt into an old wound in the heart of a region that, ironically, is historically acclaimed as holy ground.  Equally ironic is that technologies and capacities designed and intended for human flourishing and peace appear instead to resource us even more deeply towards division and violence.  The myth of human progress, so attractive during the second half of the 20th century, now seems largely forgotten or at least discredited.  How can we imagine the vision of God’s end in view for all of creation?

Only by remembering and trusting that it is God’s vision.  Like the Israelites treading the verge of Jordan, so too do we anticipate a future founded not upon human courage and design, but rather upon the call and promise of God.  Just as the first generation of Israelites departing Egypt never enter the promised land, so too does the gospel of Christ crucified and risen call us to invest in a promise that is always beyond human possession and control.  For us, the Jordan is not a place, but a person.  Jesus is our Jordan, the verge and the fullness of God’s promise to a pilgrim people.  He is the verge and the fullness we tread:  as we gather in humble adoration of the one who is great on our behalf; as we learn the peace of the gospel and practise it in the life of discipleship; as we exercise the grace of God in our relationships, especially those that are strained; as we live simply and walk lightly, distancing ourselves from the death and despair of colonialist, nationalist, and materialist aspirations.

Let us tread the verge of Jordan, with all humility, patience, and grace, seeking in faith the one who makes our anxious fears subside.  Let us trust our Lord to breathe his Spirit into his body, to meet us here and now in Word and Sacrament, our hope and our heaven.  Faithful is God who has called us and who will not fail us.  And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever.  Amen.

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All Saints
29/10/2023

1 Thessalonians 2.13-20
Psalm 127
Matthew 22.34-40

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In a sentence
The communion of saints is from and for the changing of lives

What is our crown of boasting? asks Paul. What is our joy? What is our glory?

What is the glory of the Christian church? What is the glory of the Congregation of Mark the Evangelist? Paul answers his own question: Is it not you, you saints in Thessalonica? Yes, it is you. This is what we value in Christian ministry, what we ought to value: the hearts and minds and lives changed by the gospel.

Glory and joy are not common words in modern speech. Glory usually has to do with sports success, and the word joy probably pops up most often with respect to the experience of children or grandchildren (mostly grandchildren!). Nonetheless, what Paul declares here makes sense to us: “You are our glory and joy”. “For we now live”, he says after recounting some of their sufferings in ministry, “we now live, if you continue to stand”.

There’s not a lot of this in our churches these days. Strategic reviews and mission studies seem to dominate the way we think about what matters here and now, for it seems that there could not be a lot of glory or joy in the decline of a congregation.

For Paul, by contrast, it’s more a “people thing”. He and his missionary team are stumbling around Asia Minor, from success to disaster, from acceptance to persecution, and they come to Thessalonica and they meet a group of people, and they tell a new story about the Thessalonians and God. The story is received with joy. And so Paul can now tell about how the word of God has blossomed in these people, and how through that blossoming these people have themselves become imitators of Paul and his missionary team. The Thessalonians have themselves become a means by which the gospel continues to be spread, through whom the word has more effect. And by “effect”, we mean that it changes lives.

As for them now, so also for us today. We are invited into just that process. Faith is not just about being right, if it’s about that at all: getting the words right, the liturgy right, reading the right Scriptures from the right translation, and having the right doctrines. These “institutions” matter but only so far as they draw us further into the truth about ourselves, the world and God.

We at Mark the Evangelist have moved from an old place of being into a new one. To what extent is there a call to a new way of being? What is worth investing our released resources in now, that we might begin to become a little more like those Thessalonians, whose glory is not so much in the comfort of buildings, in the aesthetic and well-roundedness of liturgy, or in the truth of doctrine but in being the glory which is lives that have been touched by the gospel, such that they and we ourselves become “touchers” of others’ lives, for the good?

There is a lot of work going on in the church these days – a great effort towards managing our changing situation and securing a future of some kind. As hard as all that is, it’s easy compared to the heart of the matter. Because however well we are structured and funded, if we feel that we cannot say of anybody, in Paul’s sense, You are our glory and joy, the question has to be asked: have we a gospel? Is there any really good news we have for those around us, or even for ourselves? There’s a real possibility that the answer here is “perhaps not”. The glory and joy of Christian faith is no method of doing church but is found in ministry – being ministered to, and ministering to others, towards healing, towards a futures we can’t yet see (as distinct from the frightening ones we can).

Each year on this weekend, we mark the communion of saints. The celebration occurs one day a year, but the human community by which the gospel is embodied is as much the everyday heart of our faith as is the doctrine of creation or the Trinity. This community is what we are created for, what God’s own being makes possible.

And this concerns not just us “religious” folk who express our humanity by turning up at church. To consider the communion of saints – as with such wide-reaching doctrines as creation and Trinity – is to consider the promise and call to all humankind. The communion of saints is not a thing in the world; it is the future of the world: the promise God gives to the world.

For our world is filled with fear and sadness. The closest thing we have to glory is shock and awe – whether in the form of a political ambush, a bigger than-ever-before bushfire or a sky darkened by a storm of missiles loosed to rain down on our enemies’ homes. And so the daily news never brings joy, despite the cheery “human interest” story bulletins often tack on the end, because we can’t force joy. It is just such force which causes the misunderstanding and suffering in the first place.

The joy of the communion of saints is the hidden and unforceable work of God. It is gift, and not the fruit of our self-assurance or busy-ness. But, in receiving this gift of God, we can allow ourselves to become the kind of people who are growing in joy and glory, becoming the gospel – becoming good news for each other and for those around us. This might mean – probably will mean – doing and being quite differently from how we have done and been. This shouldn’t surprise us. To grow is to change; it’s as simple as that. The communion of saints is not a static thing in the world, it is the dynamic future of the world, and the world is not yet what it will be. And so neither are we.

The communion of saints is not a thing but a purpose.

Let us, then, to the glory of God and for our own joy, commit to being a people who count not only the things we can enjoy and value now but what God’s grace is yet to realise among us: lives deepened by the gospel in new and as yet unimagined ways, glory and joy.

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Pentecost 20
15/10/2023

Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106
Matthew 22:1-14

Sermon preached by Daniel Broadstock

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Friends, God is furious today.

‘Now let me alone,’ he thunders, ‘so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.’

Elohim smoulders with anger at the ungovernable folly of his chosen people. Yahweh, the God of their fathers, has made his covenant with them of old. He has tested the faith of Abraham. He has given Jacob children past the age of hope. He has inspired Joseph with dreams and lifted up Moses as a prophet of liberation. He has subdued the stony pride of Pharoah and delivered his people from slavery. He has shown them wonders to shake the world. They have seen plague and calamity and darkness. They have seen moving fire running through the clouds. They have seen the waters of the Red Sea part and collapse in their wake.

He has left them in no doubt of his power, of his judgement, and of his faithfulness. And now, just as his finger leaves the tablet upon which he has inscribed a new law, a template that will be the foundation of a new kingdom of righteousness; just at the moment that he has set his seal upon a new foundation of justice, his chosen people turn from him again. The old covenant trembles on the edge of failure.

‘Let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.’ How does that instinct of wrath feel to you? Do you relate to it? Do you feel that rage at human failure and fault?

This week we have witnessed a new outbreak of violent horror in Israel and Gaza. Atrocities too awful to contemplate are once again the daily reality of Palestinians and Israelis caught in an ever-tightening knot of pain and injustice and enmity. Many killed and many displaced, in fear, and grieving. How long, O Lord?

Are you frustrated? Are you appalled? I am. I can’t see a way out and I’m angry at political leaders who seem unwilling to compromise, to set aside their pride, to make sacrifices for peace.

Yesterday, we added a 37^th failed referendum to our political history, as the Australian people declined to amend its Constitution to provide for a Voice to Parliament. How do you feel about that? Whatever side you have voted upon, it seemed to me that it was an unedifying and small-minded campaign, in which all the ordinary and pragmatic considerations of political life prevailed over a real wrestling with our national identity, with a real reckoning with the urgent demands of reconciliation.

Australia’s search for a settlement of its colonial past remains agonised in the grip of this reality. ‘YES’ posters gaze pleadingly from windows overlooking stolen land. Cattle chew on native grasses as calloused farmers puzzle over the Constitution. The agile shadows of kangaroo pass like spirits over the hot span of the highway. The Statement from the Heart speaks, though we cannot agree what it says. We cannot erase the past. Colonialism cannot be undone. Yet we cannot seem to find a way through to a truly unifying and healing picture of ourselves. Maybe we never will.

Do you, like God upon the mountain, feel exhausted at the effort? Are you tempted to give up on human beings?

In the heat of his anger, God turns to Moses and makes to him a great and terrible offer: ‘Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

‘This covenant has been a mistake. These people are not worthy of the great charge that I lay upon them. I will not dwell with them. But you, Moses, I will make a new covenant with you! I will make you a new Abraham, and your descendants shall be the ones in which I place my trust.’

Down below, at the foot of the mountain, the oblivious Israelites have made their golden calf. This picture of idolism is so enduring that it has passed into the English language as idiom. We all recognise this tendency for faithlessness in ourselves. This blind inclination to turn all too quickly from what we know is right and true and difficult towards what is comforting and gratifying and easy. There is something pitiably sympathetic in what the Israelites have done. It’s not clear that they intend to turn away from their God, from their Yahweh. “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD,” says Aaron. While Moses communes with God upon the mountain, the people have sat wondering below the covering cloud for 40-days and nights. And such is their longing to see their God, to be close to him, to know him, that they give up their treasures. They melt down what little gold that they have carried with them from Egypt, and from it they fashion this pale shadow of their God.

And looking down from the mountain, Moses pities them, despite his own great anger. He cannot accept God’s offer. He cannot become a new Abraham. He cannot let God indulge his wrath. He pleads for them. He pleads for mercy for those that he knows are wrong.

Friends, this is what the Gospel of Christ asks of us, what the Law of love requires. We cannot give up on human beings. We cannot give up on community. The Kingdom of God is not a Kingdom of one. The church can never be a solitary endeavour. So much of our collective failures are born out of the little, pitiable, understandable urges of the golden calf. The desire to be a little richer. The desire to be a little more important. The desire to be a little more noticed, a little more gratified, a little more justified. Even to see God a little more clearly. But we plead for mercy for those we believe are wrong, in the hope that when we are wrong, we will receive mercy. We trust in the redemptive power of God to overcome human evil and apathy.

This unerring commitment to togetherness, to community, is written across all the pages of our tradition.

When Naomi says to Ruth, ‘where you will go, I will go. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.’

When Adam and Eve are made for each other, flesh from flesh, so that neither should be alone.

When David and Jonathan make their covenant, and Timothy helps Paul carry his burdens.

When Esther risks all for her people, and when the disciples mark their final hours together with the sharing of bread and wine. When Jesus washes their feet.

That is what the Kingdom of God is like. This is what we are called to, even when it feels hopeless. Even when it feels pointless. Even with people who seem unreachable, with whom common understanding feels impossible.

In the end, God hears Moses’ pleading, and he changes his mind. How does an omniscient, unchanging, perfect God change their mind? Perhaps they don’t. But to change your mind, to relent, to give up the right of wrath and judgement, that is the stuff of relationship. And our God is the God of relationship. Relationship that perseveres through error and folly and failure. Relationship that endures beyond death.

May God grant us the humility to plead for those with whom we disagree, to release our grip on our pride, to resist the temptation of wrath, to persist for justice, and to sojourn on in imperfect community, trusting in the God who travels with us.

Amen.

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Pentecost 19
8/10/2023

Philippians 3:4b-14
Psalm 80
Matthew 21:33-46

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In a sentence:
Whether seemingly on our side or not, God in Christ is always for us

“They wanted to arrest Jesus, but they feared the crowds, because [the people] regarded him as a prophet.”

The ambiguity of the crowd
Crowds are ambiguous things. Crowds are “averages”, for better or worse. Governments need to know what is the average need of people in a crowd in order to deliver one-size-fits-most social services. Schools need to know the average needs and abilities of students to deliver one-size-fits-some education. Event organisers need to know how many toilet cubicles to order for the average crowd at an average concert weekend. Crowds tend to be predictable.

Crowds can also be pretty stupid. The mob cannot think, so people can be crushed by crowds – one way or another, literally or metaphorically, intentionally or not. The current critique of political populism is as much a critique of the stupidity of crowd as it is of the cynical manipulation of the masses by influential individuals. Crowds tend to operate close to the lowest common denominator and, as such, can be very hard to move when that thing in common is challenged. Democracy, of course, is a politics of the crowd, with elections and referendums being about what is most common to most in the masses.

In and of the crowd
Yet, for all of the ways that crowds reduce us, in truth we need crowds as much as we need to be done with them. The trick to crowds is being “in” the crowd but not “of” the crowd. Indeed, this is the trick to life, for life is crowd‑ed.

In our text today, the Pharisees and the priests are in the crowd, and “of” the crowd. This doesn’t mean they agree with the crowd but that the crowd prevails. Challenged by Jesus, they are forced – they think – to acquiesce, and they slink away to attack again at some later time. They are only able to act with the crowd. Later in the story, another crowd comes into play, with which the religious leaders are again in accord, but now it is “their” crowd. Now, still “in” and “of” the crowd, they are what the crowd allows and they get what they want.

Jesus, on the other hand, is in but is not of the crowd. Certainly, this crowd saves him some grief from the religious leaders, but another crowd will gather to accuse and decry against him. The crowd is Jesus’ context, but not his measure. Jesus is in the crowd, but not of it – not contained by it.  Crowds change, but Jesus does not. For the religious leaders, however, the crowd is their measure, is their containment (or freedom). The Pharisee and the priest caricatured in these conflicts with Jesus change with the crowd.

Note what this means: the Pharisee and the priest can only be themselves in one kind of crowd: the crowd they agree with. The Pharisee, then, changes with the changing context, becoming larger or smaller, freer or more constrained.  Fear might cause us to make ourselves safer but it also makes us smaller.

For Jesus, all the world is open to him, good and bad. He is always in crowds but never of them, never by them. Of course, some crowds are safer and more comfortable. But there is no part of the world which is not his world, given to him, open to him, in which he is not at home.

The difference between Jesus and the Pharisee – the difference, that is, between Jesus and most of us – is that the Pharisee changes as the crowd changes but Jesus does not. The Pharisee is often in the wrong place, in the wrong crowd – as in our reading today. Jesus is never in the wrong crowd, because the crowd is not his measure. His measure is the unity of God and the oneness of the world. God does not wax or wane with location, so that the many locations in the world do not divide the world in any real way. The one God relates to one world, and so Jesus does not change.

And this opens up something else – in fact, the crucial thing. The Pharisee is sometimes for the crowd, and sometimes against – depending on the crowd – changing the Pharisees own purpose. Jesus’ doesn’t change with the change of mood which might sweep across the masses. His stance, his relationship to the crowd, remains unchanged.

In and for the crowd
And what is that stance? Jesus is in the crowd but not of the crowd for the sake of the crowd. I called this the crucial thing – the crux, the cross­­‑­thing – because it is in front of the crowd at Golgotha and the crowd of all human history that Jesus hangs “for” those who put him there. Jesus is always for the crowd, always for those around him, whether he affirms them or opposes them. It is on the cross that Jesus is definitively one for all, surrounded by those who oppose him and those who hoped he was their hope.

This is the basis of Christian talk of justification by grace. God values our good work but loved us before we did anything. God hates our sin but loves us nonetheless. This doesn’t make the good we do (or don’t do) without value. It calls us to re-value our good. Goodness is not only for the crowd in which we feel comfortable. Our goodness should not change with whether we are among friends or foes, whether it is light or dark. For, as with God, so also for us: we are what we do to those who oppose us, we are what we do in the dark.

In the light of day and the darkest night, in solitude and in the throng, in safe places and fearful one, God is for us, in order that we might be in God and for those who love or oppose us. There is no place that God is not, in order that every place can be a place of rich human possibility. There is no place that God is not, in order that love might always be possible.

Let us, then, wherever we find ourselves, commit to the work of love which brings order out of chaos and life out of death.

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Pentecost 18
1/10/2023

Philippians 2:1-11
Psalm 25
Matthew 21:23-27

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In a sentence:
We are true to our calling when our words and actions reflect our convictions

The divided self
In our gospel reading today, the elders and the chief priests demand of Jesus, By what authority do you do these things? (“these things” including the overthrowing of the temple marketplace). Rather than answering directly, Jesus poses a counter-question about the perceived authority of John the Baptist, now dead. Fearful of the consequences of answering honestly, the elders and priests are forced into a public and dishonest agnosticism: “…we do not know about John’s authority…”

The public nature of their refusal to know is critical. They know very well, of course, what they think privately but they dare not think this out loud. In this dishonest turn, the elders sever the relationship between their “internal” and “external” selves: what I am in myself and what I am in public are here two different things. My private self is created by my thoughts, experiences, emotions, desires, and so on. My public self is what I think I need to be to protect my private self. The elders and the chief priests defend themselves in their private beliefs by refusing to have a public opinion about John.

Most of us do the same. We can be different in ourselves from what we are in public. I don’t mean here to things that are properly personal and inappropriate for public spaces. I mean rather those circumstances when we find ourselves doing the kinds of calculations the chief priests and the elders do in response to Jesus: knowing what we think but sparing ourselves the grief which would come from speaking it, choosing to divide ourselves into two identities – the self I think I know and the self I show. God gives us each one face, and we divide it into two, each side looking in different directions, each ear listening for different things. Jesus’ challenge to the religious leaders (and to us) leads to a similar affirmation to what we considered a couple of weeks ago – that we are what we do in the dark. When we speak of a person as having integrity, we mean that she is in the light as she is in the dark.

Authority as integrity
The clash in our reading today is not quite about personal integrity but is about authority. The effect of Jesus’ response here is to assert that authority rises from a single voice, from both ears hearing the same thing. Jesus’ opponents – with most of us – know two authorities, while Jesus himself knows only one. Jesus’ authority is founded on the cohesion of his inner life and outer ministry.  In contrast, the priests and the elders – and we with them – are divided in themselves; they are spiritually “schizophrenic” (Greek: “divided mind”), subject to multiple voices. Our authority evaporates in our dissembling and deception, for we are shown to be divided.

Such dishonesty about myself before others arises from fear: I don’t trust the world with my true self. And perhaps this seems to be fair enough: the world is a dangerous place and a self-preserving instinct does not always deny God or our true selves.

Yet, dishonesty like this does not only arise from fear but also gives rise to fear, because no one really knows what’s lurking beneath the visible surface. We are what we do in the dark, and we have reason to fear what that is. This fear breeds dishonesty, duplicity and suspicion, and all this dissolves community.

In contrast, being the same in myself as I am in public gives rise to love and trust. This is not easy and is often dangerous. I have to put myself at risk by revealing who I am so that you can know what to expect from me when the relationship between public and private is pressed.

Now, all of this is very nice, but it’s just not how the world works. And so we suffer and find we cannot trust. The debates about the Voice at the moment, our constant preparation for war, our refusal to act decisively in relation what might be a looming climate catastrophe – these have to do with the absence of authority, the lack integrity.

The cross as authority
The touchstone in Christian confession for understanding this tension in us is the cross of Christ. The cross is Jesus subject to the effect of what is revealed in the debate about authority in today’s Gospel text. The religious leaders, divided as they are in themselves, reject the possibility that what Jesus says and does is integrated with God, and he is crucified. The cross marks the powerlessness of divine authority in the face of worldly power. And the story should simply end here – one more tragic effect of human fear and loathing. And it would, were it not for Easter – for the resurrection.

This is not to say that the resurrection is a happy ending for Jesus which promises us also that, whatever happens, we’ll end up smiling. That might be true but it’s not very interesting, because we have to live here and now, not there and then. The resurrection of Jesus is not a happy ending but the invitation to look again at the cross, now not as failure but as triumph.

The gospel sees the cross as the sign of Jesus’ authority – the sign of his integration of inner call and outer action. On the cross, Jesus remains true to his calling, which is not to be crucified but, in all circumstance, to be true to the God who sent him. This integrity with his calling, however, is not a “power”; it is authority as authentic being. Power, in the sense we usually mean, springs from the kind of division in the leaders as they avoid the truth in responding to Jesus. Our division of ourselves is an act of power – a manipulation – and this kills.

The cross is powerlessness; there are no two ways about it. In terms of worldly power, there is nothing to see in the cross but the tragic crushing – again – of the powerless. But the gospel is not about power but about authority and authenticity; on the cross, Jesus stays true despite the divided self of the world.

This hardly seems like good news. When Jesus calls us, someone said, he bids us, Come and die. Only those who lose their life will save it. Is this good news? It is only good news against the backdrop of two things we don’t often admit. The first is that we are going to die anyway, and the second is that the divided self of an inner heart hiding behind an outer façade is its own kind of premature death. In light of this, the question becomes, Where is true life to be found?

Authored by God
The gospel’s response is that true life is found in integrity. The cross is where Jesus triumphs in the face of evil by being true to the love of God. And so, for Christian confession, the cross is the authoritative event in human history. The resurrection is the evidence that true human being is possible even in a death on a cross (Philippians 2). And so it is here that true human being is authored. Here, God writes (with a “w”) what we are to be, for we are to live as if the world of duplicity and disintegration cannot keep God out.

Authority in Christian confession is anything which declares that God will be near even in death and decay.

God will be near when bombs explode and forests burn and referendums fail.

God will be near when she dies, and when the church doors close for the last time, and when the divorce papers are signed.

God will be near when the diagnosis comes, when the weight of shame threatens to crush, when  the money falls short.

By what authority does Jesus do what he does? Who “authors” him?

Jesus – rejoicing with his friends, clashing with opponents or gasping on the cross – is authored by God.

And so also for us. Our authority – our integrity – springs from being and doing what God calls us to be and to do. Our faith is true when it is matched in our actions.

This is what God honours.

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Pentecost 17
24/9/2023

Exodus 16:2-18
Psalm 105
Matthew 20:1-18

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

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God, may my words be loving and true; and may those who listen discern what is not. Amen.

What is the point of the Church? The building, the ritual, the symbols, the music, the week in and week out? What are we trying to achieve with all this? And not just the weekly service, the whole apparatus of it all: the theological college, the books in the library, the Bible studies, the agencies, schools, the Synod offices? What is the Church for?

The Church exists in an intermediate space within history. The time between what some theologians call the “already” and “not-yet” of divine salvation. After the “already” of Jesus’ saving work through cross and resurrection; and before the “not-yet” of the final consummation of all things.

This eschatological horizon frames the life of the Church as it plods along through the mundane rhythms of history. By “eschatological” here I mean the grand end towards which history is ultimately aimed: the end and goal which is the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation; the end and goal which is God’s complete dwelling all in all within and among creation itself — walking in the garden with humanity once again.

The church’s life is sustained in this intermediate space, so the story goes, by the foundation and promise established by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And the Church is carried forward by a future hope: the final enthronement of this same Lord, where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In this intermediate space the Church is perhaps a vessel which carries faithful souls from saving promise to final consummation. A vessel which seeks to add as many souls as possible to the voyage. And to make of the passengers a good crew for the journey.

To what end, then, the Church? To be the lifeboat for a world bound for destruction, and an enjoyable cruise for those aboard the ship? All these rituals, and songs, and sermons, a series of onboard entertainment for the cruise?

Our daily lives together mere small, trivial, fleeting fancies awaiting God’s making good on Jesus the divine down payment.

Is that the point of the Church?

Set in the context of grand — eschatological — history, the parables of the Kingdom can help guide the Church’s life between the times. Parables like the one we have heard in today’s Gospel reading, of day labourers working in a vineyard. These parables can be a kind of key for addressing the questions raised by the Church’s place between promise and fulfilment, between the already and the not-yet, between the foundation and future. Like all good parables, the story of the day labourers in the vineyard helps to unsettle and recast our understanding of ourselves, and our place within God’s redemptive project. It can be read as a parable of the long day of the Church’s existence in history.

The parable of the vineyard workers takes place in the context of a long, but single day. The vineyard owner goes out early to the marketplace and hires workers for the day. The practice of day labouring was fairly common in the ancient world, and indeed is fairly common around the world today. A day’s work should guarantee a day’s pay at the price of a day’s provisions.

Labourers intent on ensuring they get the work they need to survive are wise to get to the marketplace early. Ready to accept an offer of work, lest they arrive late and all the work is gone. Labourers who are late to the marketplace risk missing a full day’s work and going without. In the great reversal of this parable even those who are late to the worksite are given the full day’s wages — much to the chagrin of the diligent workers who stood ready and waiting early in the day.

In the context of the early Christian communities who first heard this text we can imagine the kinds of issues which come to mind. The tensions between the Jewish believers who stood ready for the coming Messiah early in the day, as it were; and the Gentiles, who came untimely late.

The Jews, of course, had spent their lives in hopeful anticipation for God’s vindication and arrival: the coming of the Messiah, the outpouring of the Spirit, the liberation of Israel and the wrapping up of history. Their deep devotion, recalling the stories of Exodus and Exile, kept alive the flickering hope of God’s reward. They had been eager to take their place in God’s harvest, keeping alert from the earliest dawn.

Who, then, are these Gentiles, those untimely born, who only recently came into the fold of this Jewish renewal movement — as if only at the end of the day? Not even with a requirement for circumcision, nor food laws, nor seemingly much else beyond the confession of the Risen Jesus.

The point here isn’t so much about the disjunction between law and grace: Torah observant Jews supplanted by Gentile converts — there is enough evidence of Jesus’ own Torah faithfulness throughout Matthew’s Gospel to put that idea to rest. Rather, the point is to pay attention to the basis of inclusion in the workforce. It is the needs of the vineyard and its harvest, and the generosity of its owner; not to the work or the pay of the labourers that really matters.

That new labourers are brought into the vineyard late in the day perhaps suggests that the abundant harvest demands even more work than the labourers can provide. The harvest is plenty but the labourers are few. The vineyard’s harvest has more than enough for everyone.

So too the generosity of the vineyard owner is not tied to the work of the labourers, but to their need. Regardless of whether a worker begins in the morning or at dusk, their need for wages and the provisions those wages pay for does not go away. The generosity of the vineyard owner is not simply in paying everyone what they deserve, but in returning again and again to the marketplace, seeking out new labourers so that none would be without.

The work of the church, like the work of the labourers, does not serve first and foremost our own satisfaction. The church does not exist merely as an elaborate hobby to while away the time before the miraculous return of Christ. Rather, in this parable is a vision for a community which models to the world a proactive concern that all would have enough, and their needs met. The church ought to be the community which seeks to include everyone in the generous harvest of God.

Set between the time of God’s planting the vines, and the great feast of wine and celebration, the great labour of the Church is to harvest the vines of God’s present work in the world. To align our own need as human beings, with the need of God’s kingdom flowering and fruiting in the midst of the world today.

The church’s life, in this sense, exists not simply between the “already” and “not-yet,” but as a labour which stitches together the promise and fulfilment. So that the gap between them might be revealed to be no gap at all. Not to build God’s Kingdom, which is God’s alone to build, but to be ready at the present harvest to gather in and celebrate the fruits of God’s work in the world.

The task of the church, then, is not to be the keeper of safe passage through a world bound for destruction. The task of the church is to be co-workers with God in the fruiting work of reconciliation in the world already. To be witnesses of joy, to be partners in justice, to be doers of mercy. The church’s life is caught between the times, but it is not defined by an absent past and distant future. The church’s life, and all its apparatus, serves the harvest of plenty where God calls all humanity into the present work of new life. Where there is more than enough work to do, and plenty enough to be enjoyed by all.

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Pentecost 15
17/9/2023

Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

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History bears witness to the primordial human reactions to being threatened, offended or hurt – aggression, retaliation, vengeance, retribution, saving face. These are the basic instincts of our humanity, and they have terrible consequences for families, communities and nations; terrible consequences that we see throughout our world.

These basic instincts provide a context in which we hear Simon Peter seeking to clarify the leadership responsibilities given to him by Jesus. He asks: ‘Lord, how often should I forgive? Should I forgive even seven times?’ To which Jesus replies: ‘Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.’ This reflects the tradition of Psalm 130 that, with God, sins are forgotten and forgiveness is unconditional and unlimited: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ Jesus knows that keeping count is not true forgiveness, but merely the postponing of vengeance until an opportunity arises to inflict a more painful retribution.

He tells a parable about a slave who owes his master 10,000 talents. Given that a talent is more than 15 years wages, this is a debt of such magnitude that it could never be repaid. The slave falls on his knees, seeking his master’s patience and claiming that he will repay the debt, which is completely ridiculous. And yet, in an extraordinary act of mercy and forgiveness, the master cancels the slave’s debt and sets him free. The former slave swaggers off, and happens to meet a fellow slave who owes him a much smaller debt. But the forgiven slave is not forgiving. He assaults and imprisons his fellow slave. The forgiven slave has received mercy, yet he doesn’t practise it. He’s been set free, but he ignores the obligations of this unexpected and undeserved liberty. His community is so distressed by this injustice that they tell the king, who summons his former slave, and rebukes him: ‘You wicked slave, when you pleaded with me, you received mercy and forgiveness. Why haven’t you shown mercy and forgiveness to others?’ The king orders that the slave be tortured until he can repay his entire debt.

And just as we imagine that the slave has received his just deserts, we’re interrupted by Jesus offering his commentary on the parable: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’ It may sound like hyperbole, but Jesus knows that the practice of forgiveness offers liberation from the seductive power of vengeance that breeds violence and disfigures all that God has made good.

We recall that, in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus teaches his disciples a prayer that has the practise of forgiveness at its core. At first glance, this prayer seems to imply that forgiveness is transactional – that we are forgiven only if we forgive others, or that forgiveness is proportional – that we are forgiven in equal measure to our forgiveness of others. But the Lord’s Prayer actually proclaims the reign of God, whose heavenly will arrives on earth among those for whom forgiveness is the source and destination of covenant life. Jesus is not merely offering his disciples another spiritual resource; rather, he teaches them a prayer that expresses his own faithful ministry, his own trusting death, his own newness of life. Indeed, it’s a prayer in which he himself is present and active. The will of God being done on earth as in heaven is nothing less than the forgiveness and reconciliation that leads people into the life of Christ, crucified and risen.

This is the point being made by the apostle Paul when he writes to the church at Rome, to challenge disunity in this new Christian community. Paul encourages them in this way: ‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.’

I noticed in this week’s order of service some words by a grieving widower expressing his appreciation for the care he’s received and his ‘deep feeling of belonging in a covenant community’. Belonging to Jesus Christ is a privilege and a responsibility’; it offers much and it expects much. Indeed, it invites the surrender of our own basic instincts in order that we might participate in Christ’s disruptive insistence on forgiveness, through which we’re drawn into God’s future for all humanity. A couple of weeks ago, the Rev. Tim Costello, wrote an open letter to church leaders on the Voice, in which he recalls how the gospel is proclaimed through the church’s distinctive lifestyle. He writes: ‘From its earliest days, the church has navigated conflict and inequality. Jewish Christians insisted they would not eat with Christian Gentiles, until the apostles made it clear that transcending those divisions was at the heart of living out the gospel. They had the courage to overcome resistance, and the message of freedom in Christ and one family in Christ soon carried across the world.’ ¹

In the book of Genesis are two stories that I find particularly moving, and both are stories of unexpected forgiveness and reconciliation. Genesis 33 recalls the reunion of Jacob and his bother Esau, who’d parted years before in bitterness because Jacob had stolen his brother’s birthright and their father’s blessing. Believing that the passing years will have done little to diminish his brother’s rage, Jacob anticipates their reunion by sending numerous gifts to Esau as a peace offering. On the eve of their encounter, Jacob wrestles through the night with a shadowy figure, and is blessed by a transformed destiny as he is renamed Israel. As Jacob limps towards his brother, Esau breaks into a run, not to attack Jacob but to embrace him, and Jacob declares: ‘To see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favour.’ And Gensis 45 recalls how Joseph, the son of Jacob sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, is now in a position of enormous power as governor of the Egyptian Pharoah. The brothers arrive in Egypt seeking food to take home to their famine-stricken community. Joseph now has the opportunity and power to make his brothers accountable for their violence towards him, and for a while it seems like he might do precisely that. But he becomes distressed by their suffering, and ultimately embraces them in reconciling grace, later declaring to them: ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’

These ancient stories deeply reflect the purpose of God in Christ, crucified and risen, who forgives without limit, cancels all debts, and offers the life of reconciliation and peace. The psalmist declares: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ And Charles Wesley explains how this works in the life of community: ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord, who joins us by his grace, and bids us, each to each restored, together seek his face.’ In the midst of all that seeks to divide and conquer, may the Lord of grace give you courage to pursue his peace, as we share in his ministry of reconciliation.

And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen.

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Pentecost 15
10/9/2023

Romans 13:8-14
Psalm 119:33-40
Matthew 18:15-20

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In a sentence
The ministry of Jesus in the world’s dark places is a call to us to be, ourselves, light

As in the day
Though it is night, St Paul declares, live “as in the day”.

Clearly, he doesn’t mean, Sleep less! Rather, he takes the natural division of day and night and uses them metaphorically to develop a subtle account of the human situation after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The day-night metaphor serves Paul in two principal ways. The most obvious is the suggestion that the night is nearly over, and that it is time for sleepers to wake. Dawn – the expected return of Christ – is about to break; awaken, then, and prepare for it.

But it’s important that Paul’s call here is not built on the threat that God is about to arrive, so you’d better look busy at good works. (Although, more good works is always good! ). The possibility of living day-fully despite the night is found in the ministry of Jesus. For Paul, even Christ on the cross is night inhabited “as if in the day”. This is God in the world’s night. The resurrection of Jesus reveals not only(? ) that heaven is coming but that, in the person of Jesus right through his ministry, heaven was already present, in the world’s night. It is just this Jesus whose future is coming.

Night as day
This means that Paul’s metaphorical night and day are now not a thing which will pass or arrive but are interwoven here, in the moment within which we live. Time now no longer “flows” – second by second, hour by hour – from bad night to good day. Time is now a choice: to continue to sleep is now to acquiesce to the dark, letting it tell us what to do or to be. To awaken is to contradict the night, without wiping it away.

When Paul reminds us, then, “You know what season it is”, it is not to present the threat of the proverbial bus which might run me down tomorrow, so that I might get right with God now. He means rather: though it feels like night, life is possible here and now. The day is not so much “coming” as an addition to night, or its completion. The day is an overlay of the night, with the implication that we are what we do in the night.

Paul’s own account of what constitutes night-like activities is somewhat moralistic, although covering the kinds of things most people would think should be avoided – drunkenness, debauchery, jealousy, and the like. To these, we might add other modern immoralities operating under the cover of darkness: the anonymous internet troll hides in the dark, as does the hidden-in-plain-sight child molester and the online scammer.

But darkness is also active in more subtle ways. Consider our modern denial of death, treating it as a night we would rather pretend is not there. Or consider our next month in politics in terms of a struggle over what is night and what is day in the form of debates over the question of the Parliamentary Voice. What are we to do with the dark colonial history and its continuing effects? We cannot simply declare – as elements of the No campaign do – that the night is overcome with the passage of time, and we are now in a new day. The night continues, but the glimmer of day is possible.

And debates about global warming will themselves doubtless heat up if the coming summer here is like what it has been in the northern hemisphere this year. What does Paul’s “as in the day” look like in the deep night of an intensely carbonised economy?

Being day
Of course, living “as in the day” is not always straightforward. But Paul calls us from any refusal on our part to see, as if we had grounds to claim that we are blinded by the night. Christ on the cross is the presence of God in the dark, God’s kingdom come. It is by this strange light that the church sees. The call to discipleship is the call to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (13. 13), and be such light in darkness. Take up your cross and follow: be day in the night. Be hope calling to despair. Be forgiveness where it is not sought. Be mercy.

None of this is because “God is coming,” and we better be ready. It is because God has already come, light shining in the darkness, revealing the truth and destiny of us and all things. God’s approach in the night of the world is the only thing which will light the darkness in and around us. For God is neither afraid of the dark, nor hides in it, nor simply washes it all away. God is the possibility of day in the night.

And this is what the disciples of Christ are to be as well. We are here today because we suspect that – though it is night – day is more than a rumour.

More than a rumour, it is a revelation – in the ministry of Jesus – and a calling – live “as in the day”.

Let us live, then, as in the day, as light in the midst of darkness.