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All Saints
29/10/2023

1 Thessalonians 2.13-20
Psalm 127
Matthew 22.34-40

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

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

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.