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Christmas Day
25/12/2023

Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:1-7

Distracted
What we pay attention to matters so much in economic terms today that commentators speak of our now inhabiting an “attention economy”. We experience this in all its social, commercial and political dimensions through the notifications on our phones, the clamouring of influencers, and increasingly in-your-face advertising.

With this competition for our attention comes the corresponding experience of distraction. When something vibrates or “tings” nearby, we are distracted from whatever we are doing. If the distraction is well-designed, the interruption grips our attention. This is how we might be sucked into a vortex of binge-watching something into the wee hours, or have a study session cut into confetti-sized bits by group chatter, or find ourselves with a hefty fine because1 we’ve tried to answer a text while driving. So pervasive is this experience that some have suggested that indistractability is the most impressive superpower of the present age.

But what does it say about us that we are so distractable? Distraction works as a commercial and political method because there are “buttons” in us which can be pushed by noises or flashing lights which will cause us to look up from whatever we are doing. These buttons are being pushed, of course, because our responses translate into dollars or votes for the button pushers.

Incomplete
But my immediate interest is that we respond, because our response tells us something about the tension between the real, tangible value of what we might already be doing and our sense of the possible value of what the distraction promises. What’s common to these kinds of distractions is the positive possibility of an “addition” to ourselves, and the corresponding negative experience of incompleteness.

This is perhaps most obvious when counting the number of online friends, followers, views, votes, shares, or re-tweets: more is more, and more matters because it is “less incomplete”. But it’s much the same with other distractions: the distraction of the latest version of our now superseded thing or of the novel “experience” we might have the money to buy. The possibility of the new thing distracts us because we imagine we are not yet complete. Where I am now, what I am doing now, what I am – these don’t seem to be enough. I am not yet enough; there must be more, and it’s not here but perhaps it’s there – in the next notification, in a different life partner, a new job, or when I finally retire

Christmas and completeness
So, what has all this got to do with Christmas? Christmas is about completeness in the midst of, and in the very form of, incompleteness.

“…And [Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger…”

Luke’s Christmas narrative is filled with signs of incompleteness. It speaks of the displacement of the holy family by the will of empire, of their marginalisation despite Mary’s condition, and of the humiliation of being laid in a manger. There is not a lot of fullness in the circumstances of the birth of Jesus.

But born, wrapped securely, and laid down safely, the child is complete. Of course – as with most children – there are many things he will do and say, many things he will enjoy and suffer. But none of that will exceed the completeness he is in himself: he is already all he needs to be. The Christmas story is about a completeness in the midst of poverty and powerlessness – a wholeness despite want and need, the utter absence of the need for distraction.

We don’t believe this, of course, which is why Christmas is often the opposite for us: a season of not enough, a season of incompleteness. And so we can be driven to distraction by the Christmas imperative to provide for the accumulation of more: more stuff for people who don’t really need it, more money to pay for the stuff, more work to earn the money to pay for the stuff, and so on. This kind of incompleteness is not merely a condition but a process, a way of life.

By contrast, there is a completeness in the Christ child to which nothing needs to be added. Yet this is not sentimental gooeyness at the image of a newborn. And neither is it a nostalgic harking back to a lost era when things were simpler. These are both themselves distractions. Sentimentality distracts us from the whole truth by telling only what might be appealing, and so sees only the cradle and not the cross. Nostalgia distracts by denying a fundamental truth of history – that though our circumstances may change significantly, we ourselves do not. And so, nostalgia imagines that the story from the cradle to the cross is not really our story.

But that first Christmas was the beginning of a story of wholeness in full awareness of our deprivation, a vision of completeness despite absence. We could moralise this by saying that Jesus remained true despite his lowly beginning, the opposition to his ministry and the final injustice of his crucifixion. This is worth saying, but it also reduces Jesus to a mere hero. The problem is that we don’t need heroes to do it for us; we need to be able ourselves to live complete lives in the midst of incompleteness. We need to be able to live lives which are not constantly haunted by the suspicion that there’s a better life, a better option, just behind the next glittering, ringing, distracting thing. Because there really isn’t.

Being enough
If Jesus does remain true from the cradle to the crucifixion, it is not by mere moral courage. It is by the conviction that he is complete wherever he is, whatever he is doing, whatever is happening to him. That is, Jesus knows his life to be a point at which God reigns in the world. It is this presence of God in what he does and experiences which is Jesus’ completeness. And this is despite appearances. God reigns in the child in the manger, in the sweaty teacher on the dusty streets, in the argumentative troublemaker and in the despised figure on the cross.

To get Christmas right is not to reduce it to a small part of our incomplete lives but to see it as being about everything in one thing: the whole of God and ourselves in just one small child and what he was to become, and perhaps also in us.

The reign of God – the gift of God’s self to the world, to our very selves – is not a distraction from what we are doing. It is the revaluation of what we are. You are not the sum of everything you have done, if this means there would be more of you if you did more, experienced more, viewed more, or sampled more. With the God of the cradle and the cross, you are enough before you begin doing or experiencing anything.

We lose this somewhere along the way, strangely becoming less as we do and own and experience more. The child in the manger will one day propose that unless we become again as children, we cannot be whole, cannot know God’s kingdom, cannot know that time and space in which whatever belongs to us, we belong to God (Matthew 18.2-5).

Indistractability is about this gift of completeness – trusting that even though there are many things we can do and we can add to ourselves, it is enough that we have been born, and swaddled, and laid in the manger of the world.

Because with this God, You. Are. Enough, however incomplete you think you are, however tempting it is to want to be more.

Rest, then, under the loving gaze of God, as did Jesus once under Mary’s eyes of love, and know yourselves to be complete.

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Advent 3
17/12/2023

John 1:6-8, 23, 26b-28
Psalm 126
Luke 1:39-55

In the season of Advent, our Scripture readings do strange things with time. We are called to remember something which is yet to occur while, at the same time, called to prepare for the arrival of one who, common sense would say, has been and gone. The same kind of time-twisting is heard today in Mary’s song of praise:

⁵¹ [God] has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud…⁵² He has brought down the powerful …
[he has] lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

Whatever we might think about where we are in the midst of these powerful and lowly, hungry and rich, the claim is unambiguous: God has worked with power to change the order of things in the world. Yet, this doesn’t ring true. From time to time, we might see the lowly lifted up and the haughty brought down but, for the most part, things don’t seem to be going the way Mary’s song would imply on a plain reading; the assertion that God “has” done such things is not convincing.

But the issue is not only that we don’t see this kind of change in the time between Mary’s song and now. The thing about her song is that nothing could have happened yet – at the very time she sings – if she is singing the gospel – singing what God has done in Jesus. Jesus is not yet born, but she still sings,

[God] has shown strength …; he has scattered … He has brought down… [he has] lifted up… he has filled… and sent away…

It is odd that Mary should speak in this way.

The key to understanding this strange speech is to see that there is no “history” here, in the ordinary sense. So far as Christian confession is concerned, there is little interest in the order or timing of revelation but only in what is revealed. And what is revealed about God’s work for the poor and the hungry? The only sense in which faith can say unequivocally that God has shown strength to lift up and fill the weak and poor is in relation to the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. He is the powerless and lowly one filled and lifted by God.

But consider what this now means! Mary does not sing the praises of the God who has lifted her up, as some readings of this text run. Or, at least, this is a secondary sense of her song. Rather, Mary praises the God who raised her son, the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. And here we see the Bible’s strange sense of God in time: Mary praises God for having done something that has not yet happened at this moment in the story.

This is bad history by most standards, but is in fact good biblical theology. Not unreasonably, we typically read history from start to finish, as if it were simply the unfolding of events from beginning to end. The very way in which we read a book – including the Bible! – reinforces this. Yet the Scriptures read, or tell, from end to beginning. The “end” is some experience of God, a salvation of some sort: an exodus, a healing, a restoration or a resurrection. This new thing is of such proportion that the beginning cannot be merely the first thing which happened on the way toward the present experience. The beginning is what must have been the case for us to have experienced the salvation we have.

And so, when it comes to what Mary sings, the important thing is not that she did say this – for it would make very little sense if she did. Instead, for Luke himself, bursting to speak of the work of God in Jesus, there would have been nothing else Mary could have said: the prelude must anticipate the climactic finale. If, in view of the resurrection, we imagine that Mary might have sung a song of praise to God at the news of her pregnancy, it would have to have been a prophetic song, because of what was going to come of her child. The song would point to the end which is Luke’s real purpose in telling the story: God’s work in Jesus. Why does Mary sing? Because of what God has done. And what has God done? God has raised the crucified Jesus from death. All of this then, and most strangely, makes the singing Mary the New Testament’s first believer in the resurrection.

Once again, we acknowledge that this makes no sense: it hasn’t happened yet, when Mary sings. But all belief in the power of God is like this: all confidence in the power of God is the bringing into the present some promised but unrealised future as if it had already happened. All belief is a living out of what God has done before it has been done, a living towards what we expect God to do.

Faith is a lived-out vision of the future. Faith says, That is how things will be in the end, so this is how I will be now: live with others now, speak of God now. The real question in faith, then, is simply the vision: how will all of this end? What will we say God has done in our story when it comes to being able to tell it in as finally completed?

To see what is at stake in this way is to see also that faith is not merely a “religious” question. Any life – whether it knows God, is still seeking God or is altogether indifferent to God – is the backward projection of some expected future, some time of completion, some sense of what it is all about. Every conscious action (and most of our unconscious ones) speaks of our sense of where we are headed, of what will finally be declared about the proper order of things. When Mary sings that God has done this, she declares her place in the world and the world’s place in God, despite every contradictory appearance. My soul magnifies the Lord, Mary sings, because God “has” magnified Jesus and will magnify me.

And, to the extent that she not only says this but lives it, she begins to appear, a glimmer of God’s intention for her. And God begins also to become clearer, a glimmer of Mary’s own future.

This is Advent faith: no mere wish that things were different, but a life lived differently because we have caught a fleeting glimpse of the possibility of a new order in which is set right all we know is wrong within us.

Let us live, then, as if what will finally matter has already happened and we are its reflection: an image of the God who is justice, mercy and peace.

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Reign of Christ
26/11/2023

Psalm 95
Matthew 25:31-46

It is easy to turn love into a means to an end – a means to getting what we want, a means of keeping the peace, a means of impressing God. The love of the gospel, however, is pointless.

Today’s semi-parable of the coming of the Son of Man in judgement is familiar to most of us. Through this story, we have learned to see the need of Jesus himself in the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, those imprisoned. This lesson comes at the climax of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew’s gospel, which makes the point all the more point‑y. Let us hear the call to love again today.

I want, however, to draw attention to something about the parable which is less obvious simply because the moral lesson is so obvious: those who are commended for doing good did that good in ignorance that the needy they served were, in some sense, “Jesus”. In this, the blessèd “sheep” of the parable are different from us because we have heard the parable. This creates for us a motivation alien to the blessèd ones in the story.

This can distort our sense for what we are called to do and to be. Most simply, the problem is this: to love others because they are, in a sense, Jesus, is not to love them because they are themselves worthy of love; it is to love something other than what we think they manifestly are. In this way, we try to perfume the stink of needy humanity – of each other in our various needs, of the overwhelming need of the poor, the angry, the sick, the ruthless. While the “lovers” of the parable love and serve those in need simply because they are in need, our knowledge of the parable tempts us to “add” something to those we are to love. We are tempted to read the parable as wanting to make others more lovable. Why help the needy? Because it is really Jesus we serve, and surely we want to serve him, if not these bothersome or contemptible people themselves.

The problem is that to make something “more loveable” is to turn it into a means to an end. It is to turn it more into what I need. So far as our reading of the parable is concerned, the “end” here might be our own salvation: seeing Jesus in others makes us more likely to serve them in their need, putting us in a better light before God.

But people are not means to ends. People are, properly, an end in themselves. We might risk saying that this is the basis of divine law, and that violations of the law are instances of people – or God – being made a means to an end. What are idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery and theft other than strategies to get to something other than God or the violated person? What is indiscriminate shooting or bombing of an enemy but a means to an end beyond those killed? What is political misinformation or pornography but a means to an end other than those misled or abused?

This kind of relating to God and to others is certainly a live option for us. But we are to deal with each other without manipulation, for this is how God deals with us, first of all in the person of Jesus. The life of Jesus himself was no means to an end. If he was truly human, his purpose was none other than to live a life of love, for that is our purpose, however badly we might sometimes manage it. Atonement theories which propose that the life of Jesus was strategic, that he “had” to die for a reason different from the rest of us, diminish the freedom of God and diminish Jesus’ own humanity. They reduce God’s freedom by imagining God’s hands to be tied by some economy of salvation, such that God “has to” do something to achieve salvation. And such theories diminish Jesus’ humanity by turning his life into a means to an end other than his own self – his own liveliness, his own enjoyment of God and neighbour. Jesus here is a coin God spends not for Jesus’ sake but for ours.

In the same way, to love God is not a means to an end. Again, we look to Jesus here. Jesus does not love God so that he might live a charmed life, in order to secure life after death, or for another other end we might imagine God might facilitate. Living in God, living for those around us, is the end – the purpose – of it all. This is what we are for, this is enough.

We could, then, overstate the matter – although only slightly – by  saying that love has no “point”, no purpose, other than the life together of the lovers. As we read it now, the difference between the sheep and the goats in the parable is the difference between the beloved as an end in herself and the beloved as a means to an end which finally leaves her behind.

And this brings us to the end – the dead end – of all love which has is aimed at anything other than the beloved. Love which is manipulative, which does not love the person him- or herself, finally renders us alone. Here we would surpass the beloved, stepping on or over or through him to something else, some vision of what we should be or have. But this would be lonely life. In this we would leave the one who thought herself loved behind. And God is not there, either; for God loves persons, not other ends achieved through persons. This is the eternal punishment of the parable: life alone.

As archaic as the language is, the church speaks of Jesus as king not because this is a quality which resides in Jesus for himself, but because his is an active reign which does what it commands: loves without ends, that our love might be without end. We gather around a table at which is served symbols we call “body” and “blood” because they are the signs of a life manipulated, a life turned into a means to some end, and so discarded and left behind. To what end does God say that these signs can heal? To no end but us ourselves. Love makes us here, again, and that is all. God’s desire for us draws us together, love opening up the possibility of love. There is no further purpose than being made in love, and then beginning to love, and seeing what happens next.

Being, then, drawn together in this way, let us love without ends, without purpose, without ulterior motive, be this in the case of the fellowship of the community gathered here today, the work of Hotham Mission, your love for your parents or children or spouse or neighbours or colleagues or some unhappy soul sitting out his day on the footpath.

In this way we not only love Jesus as the parable proposes, but love like Jesus does.

What else does the world need now but love, such love?

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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

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.