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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.

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Pentecost 14
3/9/2023

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105
Matthew 16:21-28

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In a sentence
We cannot (re-)construct ourselves, but find wholeness in God’s construction of Godself

“Who am I?” asks Moses. Who am I to do what you have asked?

Moses was many things. He had Hebrew roots but was probably raised as something like an Egyptian prince. He was a known murderer who now hides in the hills. He was married to Zipporah, who was neither Hebrew nor Egyptian, and now watched over his father-in-law’s flock. It is this multi-fractured Moses who asks, “Who am I?” as counter God’s request.

We are all fractured like this, perhaps increasingly so in late modern society.

The fundamental fracture in our lives is natural: the knowledge and experience of death. Death tears at us and through us. If I was a child or a parent, a spouse or a friend, death forces the “Who am I?” question upon us: Who am I? What am I now that she, he is gone?

Alongside this natural fracturing of our identity are myriad social, political and historical ones. At a national level right now, we are wrestling with the re-discovery of what it means to have a colonial history. The question of how to respond to this discovery has driven a wedge between us – between the post-colonial peoples and the indigenes of the land, as well as within both of those communities themselves. If, a couple of generations ago, mainstream Australian society knew what “Australian” meant, that is now under renegotiation, whatever the outcome of the approaching referendum.

The church has experienced a massive fracturing of identity since the 1950s. If once it was the engine of much of what happened in society – or at least partner in that action – the church is now often simply overlooked or perceived to be an obstacle. “Who are we?” is a question hidden within a lot of talk in small congregations and shrinking denominations. We ourselves at MtE have something of this question in our minds as we begin to find what it means to have sold our historic property and now to be sharing this one.

And there are myriad fractures in social and economic experience which are similarly shaking our sense of human identity. The deeply anti-social possibilities of social media come to mind, or the impact of telephones and cars on the integrity of local communities, or the raging debates about race and gender.

That Moses’ question is over 3000 years old reminds us that, in fact, the fracturing of identity is scarcely new. The “times” – where we find ourselves – are less the problem than we ourselves. The looking glass is cracked, and its angled shards now fracture the image of God in our own image. But it has always been so.

We are here today, as always, seeking an answer to that irrepressible and urgent question: Who am I? Who are we? We ask this because the answer tells us “what to do”. If I am a parent, I know that I should care for the kids; if I am a consumer, I know that I should buy and consume; if I am a leader, I know that I should lead.

Moses, of course, has a working theory on who he is, something out of the mix of being Hebrew, Egyptian, murderer, fugitive, husband, son-in-law, shepherd, and the rest. Not being dead yet requires such a theory if we are to be at all – if we are to do some next thing. But the encounter with God casts his working self into question. “Who am I to do what you ask, God? How do my many parts become that one person?”

Left hanging, this question would be enough to let Moses off the hook. He could, like many of us do, just bob around on a sea of possible identities, never taking one up or living into it – just bobbing, up and down.

But Moses dares to press the matter by asking God, “And who are you? Who would I say sent me?”

God has already been identified in the story as “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. This might be heard as similar to Moses’ own fractured self-identification: I am what I have been – prince, fugitive, shepherd. But now God recasts this identity by giving the divine name: “Yahweh” (“Jehovah” in the old money). The Hebrew here is typically translated as “I am” or “I am who I am” – “Tell them, I Am sent you”. Yet this is too static. “I am” is the old God: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel. “I am” is the God of the fractured past out of which uncertain Moses has arisen, with his “Who am I?”.

But Hebrew grammar – not to say, the very nature of how this God interacts with God’s people – requires that the translation be more open: “I will be who I will be”. This is more than grammatical correctness. The Moses who is constructed as a pastiche of unreconciled human fragments is met by the God who claims to be utterly self-determining. The Hebrew Moses whose Egyptian name was the first fracture in his identity is drawn towards wholeness as that name is spoken now by the undivided God: “Moses, Moses, come and be made whole”.

It is God’s self-determination which overcomes the divisions in Moses, God’s       open nature as “I will be what I will be,” which integrates the divided heart.

While Moses is trapped in – or trapped between – the clamour of many identity-voices, one voice addresses him as a whole and draws his many parts together. This is the God not only of the Hebrew Moses but of the Egyptian; not only of the shepherd but of the murderer, not only of who Moses was but of who Moses will be.

And so it is for us. The divided national heart, the unmoored church and congregation, the multiply-intersectioned soul, the dissipated spirit, the unresolved yesterdays that keep us from reconciliation within ourselves and with each other today and tomorrow – these are met with the call to rest in God’s own resolve: “I will be what I will be”

Moses is called to be more than the sum of his parts or, perhaps more evocatively, he is called to be less than the sum of his parts. He is no longer to be all things in competition with each other, consuming him in their contrast and conflict. He is called to be one thing – God’s “thing”. So now, though he will still burn, he will not be consumed with the work of making himself. Moses is no longer to exhaust himself in the construction of a soul out of pieces which don’t fit together, as if each piece mattered as much as the other. God’s call is to leave this drive aside, and to live. Recalling Jesus’ call to take up the cross – Moses, with each of us,  is called to lose his life in order to save it.

With me, God says, you are to be what you will become. Because I will be, says God, so will you be.

My being is the gift of your life. So live.

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Pentecost 13
27/8/2023

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Matthew 16:13-20

Sermon preached by Chris Booth

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I think that what we have head in our reading from Exodus is a story of new life flourishing in the midst of death. It starts off by setting the scene: the people of Israel are living in Egypt, but a king has risen to power who does not remember Joseph. He doesn’t remember Joseph, the Israelite slave who became one of the most powerful people in Egypt, who brought his people into Egypt so they could survive the famine and find a homeland. This king doesn’t remember Joseph. And yet he rules using Joseph’s methods. Joseph was a shrewd ruler, buying up all the grain on behalf of the king, because he knew that a famine was coming. When the people came asking for grain Joseph made them sell their land so they could eat, then made them sell themselves into slavery. If we’ve just read straight from Genesis into Exodus, it’s hard not to hear that this new king is doing the same kind of thing. When he notices the Israelites, another nation living among the Egyptians, he feels afraid, and so he enslaves them – and puts them to work building storage cities for storing up wealth.

The king is worried that these foreign people living among the Egyptians cannot be trusted – that they might rise up and join Egypt’s enemies in the event of a war. And he becomes more and more afraid, because enslaving them and putting them to work at hard labour has not made him feel any more safe. In fact he now feels like there are even more of them and they’ve spread to every corner of the country. Everywhere he looks he sees a potential threat. And so he feels he has to treat them more harshly, forcing them to work harder and harder.

It seems the king feels particularly threatened by Israelite men, and so he goes to Shiphrah and Puah, who serve as midwives to the Israelite women, and he tells them to kill all of the Israelite boys as soon as they are born – commanding them to participate in genocide against their own people. The thinking would be not just that there would eventually be no young Israelite men for the king to be afraid of, but also that this would mean young Israelite women would need to find Egyptian men to start families with, and this would dilute Israelite identity. This is the same kind of thinking that informed policies of removing Indigenous children from their families in these lands that we now call Australia. An attempt to erase culture and identity.

The king does not appear to be afraid of women, or suspect that women might conspire against him… He may be the most powerful man in the land… but he knows nothing about childbirth… Perhaps he’s never been present at the birth of a child. And so Shiphrah and Puah are able to take advantage of this power that they have, the knowledge of bringing life into the world. And so they disobey his orders, they are able to make something up, and he has no idea, he can’t question it because he knows nothing about birth. And they manage to do it in a way that messes with the fears and prejudices that are swirling around in his head, the fears about Israelites being stronger than Egyptians – able to give birth in a flash, before a midwife can even get there. The king may think he has the power to kill, but Shiphrah and Puah are more shrewd in their protection of new life. And it seems that God is pleased with them. God blesses them in their trickery, in their conspiracy to protect the lives of children.

This doesn’t stop the forces of death. The king sees that the Israelites are continuing to multiply and grow stronger. And he demands that all the little Israelite boys be thrown into the river, the great river that flows down from the mountains of Ethiopia and Uganda, through Sudan, to irrigate and fertilise Egypt. This river nourishes the earth and makes life possible, but the king wants to use it to kill. Once again we are told a story of Israelite women’s resistance against genocide. The mother of one of these little boys keeps her child hidden – I don’t know how – until he’s three months old. And then, at three months, she knows she can’t hide him any longer. So she comes up with a plan that will allow her to keep her baby. She makes a basket for him made out of papyrus, makes it waterproof, basically turns it into a little boat or an ark. And she takes him down to the river in the basket, right near where the king’s daughter is bathing, and places the basket in the water, leaving him there in the river. She’s done what the king has said. Obviously, when the baby notices his mum is gone, he starts bawling, the king’s daughter hears the cries and comes and finds him. The child, Moses, is adopted into the royal family, but raised by his own mother, who ends up receiving a parenting payment to raise him. Moses ends up being raised in such a way that he knows both worlds, the world of the Israelites and the world of the Egyptians, and this prepares him to lead his people out of slavery, into freedom.

Is there somewhere that you can think of, where you have witnessed new life flourishing in the midst of death?

In the gospel reading we heard about Jesus asking the disciples who they think he is. All of their initial answers are things they’ve heard others saying, suggesting that he is someone who has somehow overcome death. Some say that he is John the Baptist, who they remember being executed by the king. Some say that he is Elijah, an ancient prophet who never died, but was whisked away to heaven. Some say that he is Jeremiah, or another long-dead prophet. All of these speculations point to Christ’s death and resurrection later in the story – as though the crowds are anticipating it without realising. And Simon Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. We aren’t told here what kind of Messiah though.

What kind of Messiah is Jesus? Jesus is the kind of Messiah who comes to us and joins us in a world where human life is fragile and resilient. We have heard this at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel. Like baby Moses, baby Jesus also risks being killed in a genocide by a paranoid king. His family flee and find refuge in Egypt, where they can raise him safely. In this story Egypt is a hospitable place, sheltering the baby Jesus and his family from harm.

In our church, and I actually believe in all the churches, there is a lot of fear about death and decline of churches. That’s a real concern, and I think we need to be present to the grief of dying. But in the midst of that, I think we also need to be present and attentive to where new life may be growing. Jesus reassures us that the gates of death will not stand against the church. As we continue our worship today and throughout the week, lets be present to the grief of death, and alert to the signs of new life springing up in the midst of death.

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Mark the Evangelist Uniting Church @ St Mary’s, North Melbourne; 24/8/23

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Psalm 121
John 10:11-15, 27-30

Sermon preached by Rev. Em. Prof. Robert Gribben

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 Jn 10¹¹ [Jesus said,] ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

And the verse before it, which we didn’t hear:

¹⁰ ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’

When we read John’s Gospel, we are aware that it has a different scope. As we say on one of our Uniting Church prayers at the Table, ‘In time beyond our dreaming, you brought forth life out of darkness, and in the love of Christ your Son you set man and woman at the heart of your creation.’ So begins the work of the Trinity of love.

And the stories he tells are not so much about events in Jesus’s life as reflections on the meaning of that life, that death, that rising in glory from the cross. They are, as he says, ‘signs… that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’. (20:31)

One of the signs is Jesus’s testimony, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’.

You may like to have Norma’s ikon on the front of the service booklet where you can see it.

Between the 2^nd and 4^th centuries, it was the main image of God in human form, then it largely disappeared but is now universal. I suppose it was a familiar sight in ancient Palestine; indeed, there are statues from pagan times of a beardless youth with a lamb slung around his neck which might have provided a model. (Sheep in their time were smaller than ours!) I’m not good at dating sheep, but Norma’s one is, I think, still young, and Jesus – the mature Jesus with a beard – is holding it firmly.

The halo forms the shape of a cross around the head, and you can see the marks of the nails in his hands. ‘The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’.

And since you’re looking, you can see the letters O and N, by which the icon-writers identified the principal figures. The O at the top is for ‘the’, and another O (Ω) hidden under the lamb on the left side, and N on the right, form the Greek word for ‘Being’, Existence Itself, and translates the Hebrew I AM – so there you have our text.

Jesus, after all, was not a shepherd, even when young, and on the whole in the Bible, shepherds get a pretty bad press. They may be wolves who attack the flock.  Ezekiel in particular goes to town, calling them thieves and robbers ‘who do not care for the sheep’.

But the addition of the adjective ‘Good’ to ‘Shepherd’ takes the matter right out of an agricultural context. The Roman and English traditions which paint Jesus cuddling a lamb with little children at his feet in a flowery field have missed the point. It is not meant to convey a family-friendly, sentimental image to make us feel warm inside.

At the centre of this passage is the One ‘who lays his life down for the sheep’. In all the references to shepherds throughout Scripture, none goes this far. This shepherd goes even beyond the mere ‘good’. And it is saying something else: this goodness is not human virtue; it is divine, it is of the essence of God. The combination of ‘shepherd’ and ‘good’ should have been a shock to its first hearers.

The evangelist is saying something important about Jesus. The human divisions and conflicts in the earlier verses are set aside. This shepherd knows his flock, and the word ‘know’ means to know intimately, knows every one of the flock and knows them thoroughly (or in the old use of the word, ‘throughly’, through and through). And the flock knows their shepherd, just as thoughly.

This is exactly how St John speaks of Jesus’s relationship to his Abba, Father. And he goes on to offer the same intimacy to us: ‘I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.’

And amidst of the babble and noise that surrounds us – more than a shepherd ever knew – we know him by his voice.

^2’7My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.’

I looked at dozens of Good Shepherd ikons in my preparation. They come in all shapes and sizes, all comfortably settled, half-awake, gazing nowhere.

This is where Norma’s ikon has a surprise.

This is a lamb that knows, knows her keeper (Ps 121) and knows she is held. Her eye is unwaveringly intent on the Good Shepherd. I think that is a detail unique to Norma’s ikon.

For he has heard her voice too and has come, picked her up and carried her, he, the holy One, the I AM.

‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’ (John 10: 28)

‘So [as St Paul wrote] we do not lose heart.’ (2 Cor. 4:16).

Into that loving, life-keeping embrace, we entrust our beloved Norma.