View or print as a PDF

Epiphany 4
2/2/2025

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71
Luke 4:21-30

---

Does the prayer of our psalmist this morning make any sense?

It is a prayer for protection, that God be a “rock of refuge, a strong fortress”.  This much seems straightforward; those in need reach out, and God is often such a resort. And yet we might imagine that if God were able to become such a fortress, and if – as he testifies – God has been the poet’s hope and trust since the days of his youth (vv6f), then why is there a problem in the first place? Has God failed to keep up what would seem to be his end of the deal?

There is at least a tension here, and perhaps it’s even worse than this. The poet isn’t in the throes of what we might call “general” suffering – illness or infirmity, poverty, a broken heart, or any such thing which even his persecutors might suffer at times. His suffering is specifically that which arises from the life lived according to the call of God. It would seem to be his own very faithfulness which has seen these hard times visited upon him. Later in the psalm (v20), he even “blames” God for what has happened, addressing God as, “you who have made me see many troubles and calamities.”

Taking seriously the things the psalm sets alongside each other, there emerges what is, perhaps, an unexpected account of what it means to live faithfully, and to pray. The psalm contradicts the simplistic notion that the faithful always have a good time of it. The faith of the poet here cannot be cast as a last resort for some kind of protection from the ills of the world, a kind of vaccine we take in order to ward off evil. Quite to the contrary, the prayer of the psalmist suggests that faith might actually be the thing which causes suffering for the believer – at least the kind of suffering that the poet experiences. For the “troubles and calamities” he experiences seem to be persecutions for what he believes in the first place. What he believes marks him somehow in the eyes of others. His faith marks him as different in what he will and will not do, in what he will and will not say, in what he looks to as a measure of truth. And this brings conflict in a world where the things of this particular God are rejected.

It’s common these days – within the church almost as much as without – to caricature Christian faith and prayer as a response to an experience of secular life. Believing is here something we do in order that our situation might be changed: we believe as a means to an end.

But, for the psalmist, it is what he already believes which has become the source of heartache for him, as it has become a focus for mockery (vv13,11). But this mockery is not for the poet a sign of God’s absence, but rather arises from the very presence of God in the poet’s life. And so, despite first appearances, there is no contradiction when the poet calls out to God for help. It is not that faith knows the presence and the absence of God, coming and going. It is that God’s presence is as much a problem as a solution.

And so the faith of the psalmist doesn’t come and go according to the circumstance. Faith is steady. It turns to God not simply because something has gone wrong, but because it has first known the “going right” which relationship to God has brought before. And so faith is no grasping at straws when all else has failed. Such a “faith” – so-called – does not know the God it longs for; it longs only for a change of circumstances and “hopes” that there might be a God who can bring this about.

But what distinguishes the psalmist’s hopeful faith from the simple wish for relief is the thing which will mark its arrival. Those who simply wish for change long only for a change of circumstance. It brings about in them no real change but the relief itself. And that is the end of the matter, until the next crisis arises.

But for faith which hopes for change – and so looks to a God it already knows as the agent of change – the outcome is marked not only by relief but by praise and thanksgiving which reflects a renewed experience of God’s faithfulness.

And so the poet finishes the psalm in a surprising way – not actually praising God yet but looking forward to the time of praising God:

²² I will also praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing praises to you with the lyre,
O Holy One of Israel.
²³ My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praises to you;
my soul also, which you have rescued.

The psalmist looks forward not only to his deliverance, but to the praise which will spring from his lips. For this deliverance will be something which marks a constancy in his life – a constancy which is God Godself. The psalmist’s life is structured not by the ups and downs, the ins and outs of human existence, but by God’s company along the way. His life is not simply a story of what happened to him, but a story within the story of God – a story within the call to trust God who is faithful. God’s love and faithfulness frame the psalmist’s experience in the bright times and in the dark ones. And so he does not simply suffer or celebrate according to the circumstances; he finds the call of God to be the way of understanding where he is, and what he is to be. In the good times, then, and in the bad, he continues to learn what it is to be a creature of this God, trusting in God’s promise to make peace of him and his circumstances.

And in the meantime, the poet gets on with the next thing which will be required if he is to remain faithful: the next word, or act, or prayer.

And this is God’s promise also to us. Though our experience of the world can feel harder because we believe, our faith itself is that God, and not anything other thing in the world, is finally to be trusted. And so we pray in confidence, trusting that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. With poet, we too will give thanks and praise, that this is indeed the case.

And, in the meantime, we too will get on which the next thing which faithfulness to a God like this requires: the next necessary word, or deed, or prayer.

Based on Epiphany 4C 2016

 

View or print as a PDF

Epiphany 2
19/1/2025

Isaiah 62:1-5
John 2:1-11

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

---

The last time I led worship here we read the texts for All Saints Day, which included the raising of Lazarus from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary finishes at verse 44, but it’s actually the following verse which informs us about the purpose of the story: ‘Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.’  Scholars recognize this story as the seventh and final sign in the fourth gospel, which concludes the first half of John’s narrative, known as the ‘book of signs’, and leads into the second half, the so-called ‘book of glory’.

Today, we’ve heard the gospel narrative that John declares to be the first of Jesus’ signs.  As the church discovers during the season of Christmas, the Gospel according to John is deeply interested in exploring the meaning of Jesus through vivid images and metaphors.  The gospel opens with a prologue that recalls the creation story of God’s Spirit giving form to the void and God’s Word speaking light into darkness.  The prologue declares that the source and destiny of God’s creating is God’s Word, the Word which becomes flesh in Jesus Christ and dwells among us in glory, grace and truth to make God known.  Jesus is the form and light of God’s creating; the living one through whom all things came into being.

With the prologue having set the scene, the gospel then features the witness of John the Baptist: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared: ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’  The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed: ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God.’  The gospel then indicates that the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee, bringing us to the passage we’ve heard today, which begins:  ‘On the third day …’  Of course, this reference to the third day already anticipates something significant about how the life of the crucified Jesus is made available to the world.

In John, chapter 2, the third day is the occasion of a wedding in Cana, to which Jesus, his mother, and his newly called disciples are invited.  This wedding occurs in a culture in which it’s common to serve the good wine early, and replace it with poorer wine as guests become too drunk to notice the difference.  Good news perhaps for wedding hosts, since celebrations typically lasted several days.  And yet, inexplicably, on this occasion the supplies don’t last the distance, and we’re left wondering about the dismay and embarrassment of the hosts.  At this point, Mary informs Jesus that ‘they have no wine.’  To which he replies: ‘What concern is that to you and me?’

This seems like a fair response.  After all, it’s not his responsibility to cater for the wedding.  But Mary is anticipating something of far greater significance than this celebration.  And this is precisely what Jesus is thinking when he adds: ‘My hour has not yet come.’  This references a narrative thread that appears later in the gospel.  In chapter 7, some people attempt to arrest Jesus, but no one lays their hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.  In chapter 8, after proclaiming himself as the light of the world, he again avoids arrest, because his hour had not yet come.  Finally, in John chapter 12, Jesus declares that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Now we discover that the hour he speaks of to Mary is the hour in which he’s to be lifted up on a cross to draw all people to himself.

This explains his initial reluctance at the wedding banquet, which now hints at another significant theme we must explore.  In John chapter 3, the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom, and of himself as the bridegroom’s friend whose joy has been fulfilled.  Then in John chapter 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well, noting how she’s had five husbands and her current partner is not her husband.  Is Jesus being presented here as a groom, and if so, what is the identity of the bride and indeed the nature of the pending nuptials?  Those who know the Scriptures may recall the prophetic Hebrew imagery about God as a husband who courts Israel as a wife, or the eschatological imagery of the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19.

Which brings us back to Cana, as Mary advises the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.  At his command, they fill six stone jars to the brim with water, and then draw out wine of the finest quality.  These six stone jars set aside for the Jewish rites of purification had been empty, just like the wedding supplies, but now they contain the abundance of a new dispensation.  Jesus attends the wedding as guest, but then becomes host, the one who embodies the hospitality of God, deconstructing cultic demands as the water of the old covenant becomes the wine of the new, a new covenant sealed in his blood and signed in his cup.  His hour has not yet come, but he is anticipating a banquet set for all humanity.  The wedding celebration of an unknown and unnamed couple presents any and all moments in which eternity enters the mundane as a sign of God’s revelation and offer of life.

Our world is in the midst of precarious times:  deadly wildfires around Los Angeles hint at what’s to come as global temperatures rise; a tenuous cease fire in the horrific violence between Israel and Hamas; Donald Trump to be inaugured for a second time as President of the United States.  It remains to be seen how these events will play out, and the world will look like in four weeks, four months and four years.

What is certain, however, is the church’s faith and hope in the one whose glory is revealed in death, and whose life is the light of the world.  As bridegroom, Jesus recapitulates the prophetic promise to vindicate the forsaken and desolate, gathering them as a bride in whom the Lord rejoices and delights.  Here is the table of the Lord, a sign of the wedding feast in which all things are consumed in his honour and service.  Our Lord’s hour presses in on us.

Here, we are made welcome by hospitality that is not of this world.
Here, the Spirit of devotion shared between Father and Son is poured out upon us.
Here, the exhausted old wine is replaced by the water of life.
Here, we are fed by the bread of heaven and cup of eternal salvation.
Here, we receive what we are and become what we receive.
Here, we are enlivened by the Spirit to be the body of Christ.
Here, we are sent by Christ and with Christ into the world.

And now to the God of all grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ, be the dominion forever and ever.  Amen.

View or print as a PDF

Baptism of Jesus
12/1/2025

Acts 8:14-17
Psalm 29
Luke 3:15-22

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

---

The baptism of Jesus was a job lot. I know that sounds shocking but there it is, at least according to St Luke. Not only that but the celebrant at the baptism of Jesus may or may not have been John the Baptist. It probably was because John was the only known registered Baptist, but who knows, registers being as they were so long ago. John the writer of the gospel according to St John seems to have a clearer idea about the baptizing team. He says that Jesus and his disciples and John (the John we know as the Baptist) were baptizing out in the desert at Aenon near Salim because there was a lot of water there. John’s gospel does not have John baptizing Jesus. John’s gospel makes a clear distinction between water baptism as performed by John and holy spirit baptism as performed by Jesus. Sorry to bring up these anomalies but I find them interesting, so it is fun to inflict them on a captive audience. I promise to try to make sense of this later.

Today’s gospel is from Luke so let’s concentrate on him.

Luke says: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” (Luke 3:21-22)

Add to that the verse that precedes that statement where Jesus’ baptism is simply lumped with all the other baptisms. It looks like John was in prison at the time – “But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.” (Luke 3:19-20) John’s gospel disagrees with this. In that gospel the Baptist is not in prison yet.

With all this confusion the church through the ages has taken its lead from Mark and Matthew on this point. They are clear that John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. John was reluctant and only baptized him on Jesus’ insistence.

It is not unusual for various accounts of the same event to look different through different eyes and different politics and philosophies and theologies. But it looks to me as if all of them are grappling with an embarrassing issue for the early church. All the gospels agree that Jesus was baptized, although John leaves out the bit about water. The problem is that all agree that for the Baptizer, baptism was about repentance. Now, if the gospel professes that Christ was without sin and therefore had no need to repent, then, what was Jesus’ baptism about? That is a question for systematic theologians. My interest is how these accounts of Jesus’ baptism have had an impact on the church’s practice of baptism through the ages.

The main point of agreement between all the gospel writers regarding baptism is the bits about sin, water and Spirit. To deal with human sin each sinful person needs to do something about it. That is where repentance comes in. The person’s faith community needs to do something about it. That is where the water comes in. For any outcome to be effective, God needs to do something about it. That is where the Holy Spirit comes in.

From earliest accounts of the liturgical life of the church these components have been essential to the celebration of baptism. Ancient testimony tells of catechumens, converts who have undergone instruction in Christian teaching were baptized in a river on Easter Day. They repent then passed from one bank to the other but in the middle a deacon immersed each into the water three times in the name of the Holy Trinity. As they emerged on the other bank the bishop laid hands on their heads praying that they receive the Holy Spirit.

In time, as episcopal regions grew larger so that the bishop could not be on the bank of every river where deacons were performing their part of the ritual, the act of laying on of hands was delayed until the bishop could visit each local church under his charge.

The essentials of this ancient ceremony survive in baptismal liturgies today. Fonts and baptistries have symbolically brought the river into the church. The practice of infant baptism has moved and stretched the components of the ritual. Instead of instruction followed by water then laying on of hands it has been common in western denominations that practice infant baptism for the water followed by instruction then repentance and laying on of hands at confirmation. In episcopal churches the confirmation is still the prerogative of the bishop.

The laying on of hands can look like a bit of an add-on. Indeed, it is and always was. In Acts Luke maintains a strict separation between the water bits and the receiving the Holy Spirit bit. In Acts chapter 8 Peter and John visit a community that have been baptized but still need the Apostles to lay hands on them, so they receive the Holy Spirit. Paul came upon a similar issue in Ephesus in chapter 18. This clunky separation continues in modern church liturgies.

We have so few baptisms celebrated in our congregation we could be excused for being a bit hazy on how our liturgy is ordered. It runs like most western denominations. We do include a scriptural warrant. Our Reformed heritage demands this. Presbyterians didn’t do anything unless it was prescribed in scripture. The story of the wedding at Cana is read before a wedding. The institution of the Lord’s Supper would be read before the Great Thanksgiving, not included in the prayer. There are seven passages to choose from in the Uniting liturgy.

Then how do we represent the actions of the three players in this sacrament. If we are following the ancient traditions what does the baptismal candidate do, what does the faith community do, what does God do?

The candidate learns about the faith and repents. The congregation confesses the faith of the church reciting the Apostles’ Creed with the candidate and the minister pours water three times in the name of the blessed Trinity. God gives the Holy Spirit which is provided visual symbol by the laying on of hands on the candidate’s head.

All well and good, but how are we to know what these actions mean. The Uniting Church liturgy is particularly obliging in this regard. After the OK has been given by reading appropriate scripture about Jesus commanding the church to make disciples and baptize them, the minister reads a paragraph that is very helpfully called ‘the meaning of baptism’. I want to conclude by reading this statement, but please note that the statement does not duck away from the problem of why Jesus was baptized like I did. Our liturgy brings together all that I have tried to say in succinct and erudite way.

Baptism is Christ’s gift.
It is the sign by which the Spirit of God
joins people to Jesus Christ
and incorporates them into his body, the Church.

In his own baptism in the Jordan by John,
Jesus identified himself with humanity
in its brokenness and sin;
that baptism was completed in his death and resurrection.
By God’s grace,
baptism plunges us into the faith of Jesus Christ,
so that whatever is his may be called ours.
By water and the Spirit we are claimed as God’s own
and set free from the power of sin and death.

Thus, claimed by God
we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit
that we may live as witnesses to Jesus Christ,
share his ministry in the world and grow to maturity,
awaiting with hope the day of our Lord Jesus.

View or print as a PDF

Epiphany
5/1/2025

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72
Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

---

Our order of service includes the poem “The Journey of the Magi” by T.S. Eliot. It is this poem rather than the story of the wise men in Matthew’s gospel that forms the text for this sermon. It is helpful for our reflection as it drags us away from the cosiness that cards and carols convey. Eliot takes us back to reality to reimagining the story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus in Bethlehem in the context of travel conditions unfamiliar to us and political intrigue that maybe all too familiar. It is worth noting that the poem begins with an adapted quote from a 1622 sermon by English bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Also worth noting is that Eliot had recently converted and joined the Anglican Church.

We have heard Matthew’s version. Let’s hear Eliot’s poem.

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Two lines always trouble me in this account of the story. The speaker arrives at the destination and rather than remembering the encounter with the one who will change his life and alter history for ever with some kind of superlative, he states: Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. SATISFACTORY! Is that the best you can say?

I used to be a religious education teacher and had to write term reports on each student. There was no assessment to comment on. There were so many students under my tutelage I could not possibly assess most of them and judge their participation in those lessons. The best I could do was to be somewhat non-committal and my go to comment was ‘Satisfactory’ – just a little assurance to loving parents that, in my opinion, their son was OK.

The Magi arrive at the house where the infant Jesus is living with his loving parents – a dwelling of ordinary folk who are wearing ordinary clothes amid ordinary décor. There are no coloured light displays. No choirs of angels pre-empting Handel’s Halleluiah Chorus. It was ‘OK’ and then we went home but when we went home it was not OK. Of course, we could try to imagine what Eliot really meant by his understatement. If you say ‘satisfactory’ in a certain way it can sound like a superlative. IT WAS SATISFACTORY!!!! Not convincing?

The other line that puzzles me is the last one – ‘I should be glad of another death.’ The puzzle is that Eliot does not specify what death would make him glad. The commentators have speculated but my speculation is that the poet wanted the reader to grapple with the question rather than get any definitive answer.

The thing Eliot is most clear about is what he says between these two intriguing sentences.

“There was a Birth, certainly, / We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, / But had thought they were different; this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. / We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods.”

One commentator on the poem notes that Eliot was frustrated by the way that people believed his conversion to represent a kind of comfortable settling-down, when he saw himself as [engaged on] a difficult process. (Reference)

The Magi return home to the places where they were insiders, where they felt socially comfortable, where the values of their communities aligned well with their own values. But now, after their journey, after their encounter with a birth that somehow looked like a kind of death, now they were in their own lands again. But they found themselves ‘with an alien people clutching their own gods.’ The Magi were now clutched by a different God.

There is a sense in which that is every Christian’s experience. Certainly, we rejoice that the gospel message comforts the afflicted – “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

In The Journey of the Magi T.S. Eliot reminds us that the gospel message also afflicts the comfortable. Is it not true that, like Eliot’s Magi, the call of God on our lives through following the way of Christ brings us into conflict with the society in which we live. That even in our country whose religious affiliation is dominated by Christianity we are the outsiders, ‘no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation’.

Enough. It is still technically Christmastide – the eleventh day of Christmas. Let’s find some comfort, this time in the final lines of John Betjeman’s poem, Christmas. He has waxed lyrical about the trappings of a traditional English Yuletide with family and social and church festivities. Then he says:

“And is it true?  And is it true, / This most tremendous tale of all, / Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, / A Baby in an ox’s stall? / The Maker of the stars and sea / Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true?  For if it is, / No loving fingers tying strings / Around those tissued fripperies, / The sweet and silly Christmas things, / Bath salts and inexpensive scent / And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells, / No carolling in frosty air, / Nor all the steeple-shaking bells / Can with this single Truth compare – / That God was man in Palestine / And lives today in Bread and Wine.”

Now, that is satisfactory.