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Pentecost 8
26/7/2020

Ezekiel 1:1-3
Romans 8:26-37
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

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In a sentence
The simple affirmation that ‘God is with us’ in difficult times like the C-19 pandemic ultimately renders God pretty irrelevant to the whole catastrophe; the biblical dynamic of judgement and grace helps us more.

The persistence of COVID-19 – perhaps more urgently now that we see more clearly that we are in this for the long haul, and the potential for suffering deepens – urges us to fresh reflection on its ‘meaning’, if indeed it means anything. To faith the question of meaning seeks after a relationship between the pandemic and God and takes a form something like, ‘Where’ is God in all this?

Connected to this is another faith-question along the lines of, Where are we in all this? Scriptural images of exile and wilderness wandering seem to have pressed forward here. We are in the wilderness, exiled in self-isolation, but surely – to answer the question of God’s whereabouts – God is with us, here in our exile.

Perhaps we are in a wilderness, and perhaps God is with us. But is God’s being with us good news or bad news? In affirming that God is with us, we seek to say something comforting to those in exile. Yet if it is a scriptural wilderness or exile within which we and God presently meet, the notion of ‘comfort’ sits uncomfortably with this borrowed image.

Ezekiel is in exile in the spiritual wilderness which is Babylon, and his calling and visions take place in that far country. Yet his commissioning as prophet is not in order to declare to the exiles that God is ‘with’ them. Or, better, this is not yet a comforting message. As part of his calling, Ezekiel is given a scroll to eat and then to speak. On the scroll are words of ‘lamentation and mourning and woe’ (2.8-10). God is with Israel, but as judge. Ezekiel is to proclaim God’s condemnation of the ‘house of rebels’ which God’s people have become (2.1ff).

What does this mean for us in our current experience of ‘exile’ or ‘wilderness’, if that is truly what it is? If we claim these scriptural images as metaphors for our present experience, do we dare to interpret our suffering as a sign of ‘judgement’?

It is surely a dangerous thing to wonder about God’s hand in particular historical events. And yet it is not therefore an impious thing. If it were, then it would be entirely impious to assert that God is with us here to ‘comfort’, for this is already to have made a judgement about God’s hand in the matter – a black-and-white ‘God good, us good, virus bad’.

If we are to take the scriptural witness seriously, the two options here are equally dangerous. On the one hand we might say that whatever happens to us, we are innocent of the causes and, so, God also is innocent but nevertheless is always there comfort us in our wilderness. On the other hand, we might maintain that the wilderness implies judgement and that God stands over against us.

In churches like our own, at least, we hesitate in relation to the latter, and for good reason. A virus is indiscriminate and we want to say that God is not. We hesitate to entertain certain things about God and the virus, for God’s sake.

Yet – if we are honest – we hesitate also for our own sakes. A week or so ago the Victorian State Premier referred to COVID-19 as “a clever, invisible enemy”. Invisible it is indeed, but ‘clever’ doesn’t quite fit. A virus worth worrying about is not clever; it is merely terribly efficient. It simply does what it is given to do. Like the Angel of Death it is ruthlessly effective by nature and not by cunning – a deadly sword in the slayer’s hand. If that analogy is confronting, we must keep in mind that that is just how the prophets interpret the armies which invade Israel in the eighth century and Judah in the sixth, with a devastation most of us can only imagine.

But if the virus were a sword in God’s hand, why are we being slashed in this way? What is the judgement which could justify this?

Your preacher today is not a prophet, and so won’t be making the direct kind of link between happenings and the action of God which the prophets of old once so boldly made and which have been secured by the Scriptures. But the average preacher ought, at least, to caution against making too easy – too comforting – a borrowing from the Scriptures in order to speak God into our time. If we are going to locate ourselves in a wilderness or an exile, then the question should also be asked, is there a judgement here? The answer to this may indeed be ‘yes’.

This is not, however, because we can now see it as punishment for this or that transgression. It is because – with this God – grace is not grace without judgement, and judgement is not judgement without grace.

We desire only the gracing presence of ‘God with us in our exile’ but grace is only grace in the setting aside of a just condemnation. We reject judgement because we cannot see grace in it but, with this God, judgement is grace‑d.

The problem with the exile metaphor as it is used for our present situation is that, while it allows God to be with us in this place, it is agnostic as to God’s role in getting us here. And, presumably, if God didn’t get us into this and didn’t prevent it in the first place, God also can’t get us out, either. We will just one day be out, and God will just continue on being-with-us.

If we are going to be faithful to the God who interacts with God’s people in the way the Scriptures portray, we need something more than a God who just hangs about, even if we can’t quite say what it is. The church does neither itself nor the wider world any favours by telling half the story of God’s dealings with us.

Even if we may not be able to say what the judgement might be in these circumstances, to be in a ‘wilderness’ or ‘exile’ in any true scriptural sense is to be involved with a God who is more intimately involved in what is unfolding around us than merely as comforting observer. The evidence of this is the old prophets themselves, and Ezekiel among them. There is not much difference between the armies of Babylon and COVID-19, so far as the prophets and the people are concerned. If God can claim the armies as God’s own, perhaps, also then the virus.

And we might ask again: is this good news, or bad news?

It is indeed a scroll of lamentation and mourning and woe which Ezekiel is given to eat. But he says of that scroll, ‘in my mouth it was as sweet as honey’. The possibility that God’s hand might somehow be active in the virus is the possibility that judgement is not all bad, indeed, that it might be ‘as sweet as honey’, that it might be grace‑d. Perhaps, if this God judges, judgement does not mean what we fear it means; it is not made to abandon in condemnation but rather to draw back together.

This will, in fact, be Ezekiel’s message, and a difficult one.

The old rabbis wondered whether Ezekiel was one of those biblical books which most thoroughly ‘defiled the hands’ of those who opened it. Curiously, they held that the holy books of Scripture made unclean those who handled them, and that any book which did not do so was unworthy of being considered Scripture (candidates for this latter included Ecclesiastes, Esther and Song of Songs).

We no longer understand how holy books were thought to do this, but the effect is clear: uncleanness ‘sets apart’ those who are defiled – they are no longer fit for normal social intercourse, and ‘social distancing’ becomes necessary if others are not to be contaminated. To borrow from elsewhere, we might recall in this connection Moses veiling his face on coming out of the tabernacle, shielding the people from God’s reflected glory.

Of course, there is something deeply ironic in describing the holy books in this way. This ‘defilement’ by exposure to the deep mystery of God is to be desired and sought, not – feared – even if it has the potential to separate us from each other, at least for a season.

To see and know about judgement and exile, grace and restoration, what Ezekiel knew about these things will likely cause us to think and say surprisingly things, even uncomfortable things.

That is hard because many are finding it uncomfortable enough as it is. But if it is this God who makes us uncomfortable, we know that it is only for our benefit and wholeness.

Let us, then, in these hard times and always, wait on the God from whose Word there is yet much more light to shine, that we might more truly know God – and ourselves.

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Pentecost 7
19/7/2020

Romans 8:12-27
Psalm 139
Matthew 13:18-23

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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Melbourne is living through a second season of pandemic induced shutdown – maybe a suitable time to reflect a little on failure.

Years ago I was talking with a colleague who was a chaplain in a shopping centre. Part of every day he spent walking between the shops of the huge complex. He said that it is very frustrating work. He couldn’t measure the results. On one day someone would pour out his heart and soul to the chaplain. Two days later the same person would not even recognise the chaplain when they came face to face again. What was the use of being the church in the market place? So much of the effort seems to fail.

It is not an uncommon feeling, not uncommon in ministry, not uncommon in all kinds of walks of life. It doesn’t help when we hear wonderful success stories — stories of flourishing businesses, stories of sparkling achievements, stories that shout bigger and better at us and taunt us in our mediocrity and failure.

Between my ordination and my retirement, every so often I had to fill out a profile on myself for the church. The synod liked to keep a few details about me on their files. One question the profile form used to ask was, ‘What do you think are the most important tasks for the church over the next ten years?’ I never knew what to say. I decided to leave it blank rather than write, ‘blessed if I know.’ It seems to me that a church experiencing success and growth and confidence wouldn’t bother asking that question, and a minister who really knew the answer would have put things to rights by now. It would not be a question to ask of a church with 200 in the Sunday school and thousands of young people rushing off to Christian Endeavour on Sunday afternoons. That’s not what’s happening in most churches at the moment so we ask, ‘Does anyone know what we should be doing?’

Why couldn’t Jesus have told stories about failure, stories that speak to those bits of my life that don’t hold together? Why couldn’t Jesus have told stories that dwindling and confused churches might have resonated with? A nice failure story would speak to most churches.

But of course Jesus did tell some wonderful failure stories. He actually lived a remarkable failure story. Most people who heard Jesus preach didn’t follow him. By the time Passover came round in the third year of his teaching career public opinion had turned completely against him so that even his students ran away when he was arrested. When he was taken out and killed I wonder how close he came to saying, ‘Well what was that all about?’ What he actually said was, ‘My God, my God! why have you abandoned me?’

The church has remembered Jesus failure stories. One of them was the story of the sower who went out to sow and he failed. He sowed seed on hard ground and the birds ate it. He sowed seed on stony ground and it couldn’t take root. He sowed seed among thistles and it choked — complete waste of time really. A sower went out to sow and most of his efforts were unproductive, a complete waste of time.

A story that is not all sweetness and light is easier for us to hear because it more closely resembles our story. The sower failed and so do we and so did Jesus and so did the infant church and so does the Uniting Church — and that is disheartening and frustrating. So why don’t we give up. Why bother trying to be winners in the face of defeat? Why bother trying to be the church when we keep missing the goals? Why do we send chaplains into schools and hospitals and prisons? Why do we maintain worship in this church? Because a sower went out to sow, and some seed fell on good soil.

We know from our recent readings from Paul’s letter to the Romans that Paul would want to add something like, ‘Therefore should we try to fail more so there can be no mistaking that God’s kingdom coming is God’s succuss story, not ours.” Then Paul would add a phrase English translators render as, ‘by no means.” One of my New Testament teachers gave a fruitier translation – ‘not jolly likely’ – at least that was the jist of his translation. We do strive, we do try harder. Paul tells the church in Rome, ‘…the Spirit helps us in our weakness…’

Listen, a sower went out to sow and he failed, but because he sowed God triumphed and God has this habit of passing his triumphs onto his people.

We struggle and strive and fail — even so, God brings in his harvest. Keep struggling and striving — keep risking failure — for God’s sake.

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Pentecost 6
12/7/2020

Romans 8:1-11
Psalm 119:105-112
Matthew 13:1-9

Sermon preached by Rev. Bruce Barber

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We continue to live in unprecedented times as our entire city is once again in lockdown. It is helpful, then, to recognize that the problems all human beings face are likely to be of two kinds. Some we experience only as matters of momentary urgency. I lost my wallet on Tuesday in a shopping centre at the exact time that the lockdown was announced. Which of the two do you think exercised me the more? Other problems endure as issues of lasting concern. Sometimes the two cannot easily be separated. COVID-19 has arrived as a matter of momentary urgency as politicians juggle competing social health and economic claims, but for millions upon millions worldwide life will never be the same again.

However, it is when issues of enduring significance are unrecognized that they readily make life more problematic than would otherwise be the case,

The readings offered to us Sunday by Sunday invariably reflect both sorts of problems – momentary urgency and lasting concern. Today is a case in point.

Paul draws the attention of the church in Rome to what must be the most basic issue of lasting concern.  So, he writes:

“Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on flesh is death, but to set the mind on the things of the Spirit is life and peace”.

Notice that the contrast he draws is between flesh and spirit, not body and spirit. The distinction is crucial.

In the much-vaunted secular society that we inhabit, “flesh” is likely to be understood merely as an infatuation with the sensual. And spirit? Who knows what spirit might be thought to represent? In former times, spirit might have suggested something non-material, even to be a somewhat ethereal experience eclipsing the predictabilities of the every-day. Today, spirit lacks all definition, except when increasingly rejoiced in as something superior to “religion”. It is far from clear what those have in mind who declare themselves to be “not religious but spiritual”.

This likely secular connotation of what flesh and spirit are thought to mean is not that which Paul is addressing. On the contrary, for him flesh is the whole of life turned away from God – turned away in “spirit”, we might say, as well as in body. Beware of those who imagine the “spiritual” to be benign.  Spirit, it turns out, might well be “flesh” in disguise; as much a disorder of a hidden “inner” as that of a conspicuous “outer”.

Equally, Paul’s “life in the Spirit” is not some self-indulgent solitary religious pursuit, but is rather the whole of life in the body turned toward God and the neighbour.

In another of his letters, this time to the church in Galatia (Galatians 5:19ff), Paul is confronting vital ethical matters of the moment. He chooses to use this flesh/spirit framework by way of their illustration. He first lists the contours of life in the flesh. We should not be surprised to find that fornication, licentiousness and drunkenness qualify as “flesh”. Remarkably, however, there he also lists as “flesh” such susceptibilities as: “idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy”. Who would have thought envy, anger, and jealousy might be described as failures of the flesh rather than of the spirit?

Martin Luther, always the master of the colourful image, once described “flesh” as “a heart curved in on itself”. Or, even better, in his earthy German, he pictured “flesh” as Nabelschau, literally “navel gazing”, a life originating from the centre of the self. How modern is that! And Nabelschau, says Paul, will, later if not sooner, be experienced as a form of death.

By contrast, life in the Spirit he describes as “fruit”, an image which suggests a flowering that is harvest from a lifegiving source: so, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, self-control. Being fruit, it follows that these socially desirable attributes are not likely to be self-generated. As gifts, they supplant a life dedicated to the dictates of the self. Moreover, precisely as bodily actions orientated towards others, this fruit becomes a genuine offering back to its source in the life of God.

The parable of the Sower is not an accidental accompaniment to all this. Here enduring concern and momentary urgency coincide. Employing an agricultural metaphor, it illustrates the consequences of life lived either as flesh or – by grace – the miracle of holy Spirit. We hear that it cannot be taken for granted that sown seeds will find their proper destination. Paths, rocks, weeds – each may well be seeds’ regrettable destination, the rich variety of places where, sooner or later, no life is to be found, therefore, places of death. Only those seeds which find good soil will prove to be productive.

In other words, the only alternative to deathly life where flesh reigns is life enriched in the Spirit which is God. This is why we must allow the conclusion of the parable to leave us with its warning appropriate to every moment:

“Let anyone with ears – listen”.

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Pentecost 5
5/7/2020

Romans 7:15-25a
Psalm 145
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

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In a sentence
Human sinfulness is something we really only grasped after we have been grasped by the grace of God, when sin is already behind us

The category of sin, which has been prominent in our readings from Romans over the last few weeks, is somewhat on the nose these days, even in the churches. The question is being asked quite seriously – have we not focussed too heavily on this? Ought we not to begin with original blessing and creativity, rather than with the somewhat dark and depressing idea of original sin and the corresponding need for redemption? Do we not frown too much we speak of human brokenness, and do we not sully God’s name with all that scowling?

An honest answer to these questions would have to be ‘Yes’, for the most part. The fear of sin has manifested itself in witch hunts for sin in our lives or the lives of others. At the same time, with greater and greater clarity, we’ve come to recognise that many of the witch hunters have been at least as accomplished in sin as those they’ve pursued. And so, both from fear of hypocrisy and from sheer dissatisfaction with the idea that all human beings are born and die sinners, sin is often shifted into that room in the house which the guests never see, and which we rarely enter ourselves. It is still there, and we know that it’s there, but out of sight is almost out of mind, and we imagine that that is good enough, all things considered.

Whatever good reasons we can give for this hesitation around the theme of sin, it has also to be said that, as much as ever, the church needs today a strong doctrine of sin because, without such a strong doctrine, we will only have a weak doctrine of salvation and so have very little to say which is actually worth hearing.

To illustrate where a weak doctrine of sin might lead us, let’s consider what we’ve heard from Paul this morning:

I don’t understand my own actions. For I don’t do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I can will what is right, but I can’t do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  

He continues:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

The answer he brings to that question is, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! This might sound as if Paul reflects on just how hard it is to be good and then concludes: isn’t it great that Jesus makes a way through it all for us?!

But this is a very weak doctrine of salvation which gives rise to the weak doctrine of sin we settle for too often these days. If Christ is merely a help through our inabilities or failures to deal with this or that challenge in our lives, then he is only as relevant to me as I am weak. The stronger I am, the less I need God in Christ. The measure of the work of God in Jesus Christ has now become my own weakness or strength. To the extent, therefore, that I live by the empowered creativity which comes with ‘original blessing’ (say), rather than am hindered by the darkness of ‘original sin’ – to just that extent, I have no need of God in Christ.

We are free, of course, to draw a general conclusion like that. Most of the Western world has, and much of the church with it. But we are not free to read Paul in that way if we want to hear what he has to say, rather than imposing on him what we think or wish he says.

In our readings from Romans over the last few weeks we’ve heard Paul put a couple of times the rhetorical question: ‘Shall we, then, sin more that grace may abound more?’ This was a charge which some had brought against his theology (3.8; 6.1,15). And it will be justly brought against any theology which concerns itself with an idea of sin as something which exists and can be understood apart from grace. We will imagine that more sin equals more grace if we think that grace is simply God’s ‘top-up’ over and above our sometimes weak, sometimes strong, efforts.

But the doctrine of sin is not about our being weak or naughty. We need a strong doctrine of sin because of the extraordinary power God has manifest in Christ. Unless God’s work is extraordinary, then the sin it overcomes will be nothing really worth commenting on.

And so, to be true to Paul’s method and proclamation, we have to say that the gospel is not the declaration that the doors of heaven are thrown open for those of us too feeble to push them open ourselves. The gospel is that the doors of hell are ripped off their hinges,[1] so that those who did not even realise they were in hell might escape. A torrent of quickening light floods in, dissolving the chains and revealing, to those who had no idea they were shackled, just what it meant truly to be enslaved by sin. This awareness of slavery to sin occurs in the very moment that one is set free. The depth, the darkness, the power of sin to enslave us is something we know only in the moment of liberation. To speak of sin to those who do not know that liberation will be to make no sense. And so also will it make no sense to speak of grace. Only the saved know what sin is.

Those of you familiar with my preaching will know that I’m not a great one for illustrations in sermons. This is partly because sermon illustrations get in the way as often as they help, and partly because I’m just not that imaginative.

But this one seems like it will help, and is silly enough to be memorable.

Paul’s experience, first of grace and then of sin, is like that of a chick just hatched from an egg. Paul is that little chick, who doesn’t really know he is in an egg until it is broken in pieces at his feet. Have you ever wondered what chicks say to one another when they’ve just hatched and are standing around cheeping away madly at anyone or anything which will listen? They’re saying something like this:

‘Wow, I never imagined the world was like this! Hey, can you believe what it’s like out here? Who could have guessed? I thought that old egg was OK but, rooster, this really rocks!’

Now, of course they say it all in chicken, but the translation is close enough. Paul seems to begin with a theory of sin and then drop Jesus in on top of it all. To be fair to us who misinterpret him, it is easy to read him this way: ‘The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus’. ‘Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more’. ‘Who shall save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God in Jesus Christ!’

This all reads like a pessimistic theory of human existence is being prettied up by inserting Jesus into the picture. And, because we can read Paul way, when we reject his apparent pessimism we render Jesus only as relevant as we imagine ourselves to be broken – which can even be to render Jesus irrelevant if we think we’re pretty much OK.

But in fact, while Paul’s argument runs from sin in Adam to its treatment in Christ, his image of the sinful beginning is revealed to him by the end. Paul is only interested in the sin of Adam because he has experienced the gift which comes in Christ. He begins with the salvation he has known in Christ, and this reveals to him what he was like before the eggshell fell away. He doesn’t really notice sin until it is overcome.

Our doctrine of sin can only be as strong and well-defined as our experience of salvation. To turn that around makes it something quite shocking: a weak doctrine of sin reflects a poor experience of salvation. If we cannot speak strongly about sin, it is most likely because salvation has not figured strongly in our experience. Talk about sin then becomes little more than fearful moralism or its pendulum-swing opposite, optimistic wishful thinking. And neither of these is really worth hearing about and we do better – under those circumstances – to keep silent.

But, if Paul is right, we might also be set free to be honest about the ambiguity of our current experience of grace. We still confess that Jesus is Lord, for it is the very conviction that Jesus is Lord which has revealed that we have not yet known enough of grace to speak meaningfully of sin and so meaningfully of our need for grace.

And so we are also moved to prayer, for we cannot generate the experience of grace for ourselves. Grace is God’s gift of Christ to us in the power of the Spirit, and only God is the possibility that we might receive this gift. To understand what Paul speaks of here we must know the grace of God. Strangely, then, to see and understand sin, we must wait on God.

Let us then take God at his word,

prayerfully reminding him of the promises he made to Adam’s children through Abraham,

and waiting expectantly for the time when we too will marvel at what we see the God, the world and ourselves to be,
once the shell of sin is broken.

[1] Note the curious connection here with today’s OT reading: (to Jesus’ ancestor Rebekah) ‘…may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes…’Genesis 24.60(-ish).

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Pentecost 4
28/6/2020

Romans 6:12-23
Psalm 13
Matthew 10:40-42

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In a sentence
Ever tempted to justify ourselves before God, God sweeps our efforts aside and embraces us regardless

In our reading from Romans today, it seems that Paul is going round and round in circles and drawing contrasts which are too stark to maintain.

Indeed, there is a going-in-circles in his argument here, although it is more a matter of him following a helical path – as in a corkscrew. Around and around he goes, but making progress in another dimension – in a direction ‘above’ any of his circling, adding metaphor upon metaphor to develop the contrasts his proclamation of the gospel requires.

But what about those stark contrasts? Central to our passage today are themes of slavery and dominion. Paul holds that we are all enslaved by something, and he reduces these to just two alternatives: slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness. At first hearing this seems too simple, for surely we are capable of both good and bad. Are we not, then, sometimes ‘enslaved’ by the temptation to do the wrong thing and sometimes freed to do the right thing? It seems Paul needs more ‘balance’ in his account of how we are and how we behave. ‘Balancing’ Paul is what many of his readers spend a good deal of time trying to do.

But this is to miss the force of ‘slavery’, and then to miss what Paul means by righteousness. ‘Slaves’ are subject only to one master; vacillating between masters is not an option. If Paul is consistent here, and we know that we are capable of both good and bad, then both bad and good works on our part fall under the one heading – under the one slavery – which would be Paul’s ‘slavery to sin’. This is where most of us part company with him, and also with his gospel, because for us ‘doing the right thing’ is the meaning not of sin but of righteousness.

Yet, to speak of righteousness as simply doing the right thing lands us back where we were last week. There we considered our tendency to justify sin in terms of its necessity: if I had to do it, then it is not sin, and so in accord with what God commands. This is a negative approach to righteousness – our defence against a charge of having done wrong.

A positive approach to righteousness would to be to do what God has commanded because God has commanded it, for it is a ‘safe’ thing to do. If asked by the Judge why we did such and such, we can happily point to where it is commanded in the law.

Yet, in either case – whether defending ourselves against a charge of unrighteousness, or claiming righteousness for having worked according to God’s law – the law we point to to justify ourselves is external to the relationship we have to God. That is, the law stands between us as a barrier to be overcome, or as a third party with whom we have to check before we and God know that we are in positive relation to each other. If we imagine, then, that we are sometimes slaves to sin and sometimes slaves to righteousness, we end up keeping a balance sheet, seeking to ensure that we are in the black. This kind of righteousness might impress the locals but it places divine commands and our efforts to meet them between us and God as something in their own right, as something by which even God is bound.

Nowhere in such a dynamic is God the God who justifies sinners, for we are constantly required to justify ourselves with reference to the law and God’s hands are tied by this. This means that good news for those who cannot write their own good news is entirely erased.

The stark contrasts Paul draws – between grace and works, Adam and Christ, death and life, sin and righteousness – have their energy in a radical re-imagination of what it means to stand before God. Righteousness is not what we do or can justify to defend ourselves against God. For Paul there is no defence against God, and there is no need to defend ourselves. Righteousness is, rather, what God does to bring justification and relationship with God.

The law is not erased, but neither is it God’s reference point when considering us. In Paul’s terms, being right with God by doing the right thing is displaced from our spiritual imagination with ‘faith’. This is not mere belief – believing for example that God ‘exists’ or that God wants us to do certain things. Faith here is openness to God’s gift of life and blessing, as a simple gift.

The good life – the life of doing good – is still part of our calling, but it is now no longer our way into God but our way ‘out of’ or from God. Good works move from grace, and do not now seek to secure it. Good works, then, become a repetition of grace.

We give richly because we have received richly. We give to liberate and not to bind. We give, in mercy, what is needed but has not been earned.

In all this life flows from grace, with grace, for the purposes of grace. This is God’s gift and call.

Let us then, not from compulsion or anxiety but in joy and freedom, receive the gift and answer the call, that we might become what God gives us.

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Pentecost 3
21/6/2020

Romans 6:1b-11
Psalm 86
Matthew 10:24-39

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In a sentence
To free us from necessary sin, God kills us in order that we might know the freedom of Jesus

The thing about sin, not immediately obvious to most sinners, is that the sinner will generally argue that it is ‘necessary’ that the wrong thing be done. We rationalise what we do – perhaps especially when we have knowingly done the wrong thing – and in this way we make wrong-doing necessary, unavoidable. If it is unavoidable, we cannot fairly be held to account for our actions. This is the genius of the accomplished sinner.

And so it becomes justifiable to kneel on a man’s neck so heavily and so long that he dies, for he was potentially a dangerous man; and riots and looting are a justifiable response to that calculation, for surely they have put us down for too long; and sending in the troops to ‘dominate’ the streets is surely justifiable because perhaps the looting is not justifiable after all. This is a chain of ‘if-then’ connections: if I don’t do this bad thing, worse things will happen. If I do do this bad thing, then worse things won’t happen. I am not free here, my hand is being forced. If it is sin, it is also necessary.

This applies in any scenario when we feel we need to justify to ourselves or to someone else a decision we have made: spending more on your next car than you really need to, indulging in online porn or not going to church on Sundays (when that is health-safe!). We have rational justifications by which we seek to persuade the judge, the Twittersphere or God that the agreed rules of engagement made it necessary that we did what we did.

We might even add: if God would only make it that our hands were not tied in this way, then we would not have to sin. In the passage we have heard from Romans today, Paul proposes that God indeed frees us from the necessity of doing the wrong thing.

How? God frees us by killing us. God’s liberation is as strange as this.

Today’s passage from Paul has him in mid-flight through a rather complex account of the human condition, around the themes of sin, law and death. At the centre is that God gives us a death linked to the death of Jesus. It is this death which liberates us.

Death is a useful metaphor here because if there is one thing we can say about the dead, it is that they are free of necessity. The dead truly can do nothing, and so truly need do nothing.

The only thing the dead can do is what they are told – either ‘stay dead’ (which is fairly straightforward) – or, in the instance of creation or resurrection, ‘stop being dead’. Having no other option, the dead must rise if there is one who can bring this about, for they can put no argument that they need to do something else. The ‘freedom of Jesus’ is that he, being properly dead, is then in a position to be raised from the dead at God’s command. Jesus being raised is now, surprisingly, simply a matter of obedience.

Paul argues: you must die in the same way, so that you might be raised to a newness of life – dead to the necessities of sin, and alive to God. Surprisingly, being dead to having to justify our actions corresponds to being alive to the freedom of Jesus.

In the life-and-death of Jesus, we are given a humanity which does not have to justify itself. For there is no longer any reference point outside of the God who commands, who addresses. And so there is no means by which we can test that we have done the right thing, no third party justification for not obeying.

Of course, we want such points of reference and will scarcely give them up. We might comfort ourselves with the justification that ‘blacks’ deserve to be treated that way, or that white privilege and affluence justifies rioting and looting, or that peace demands sending in the troops. But this doesn’t work. In this situation, and in all other cycles of violence and retribution, there is always another ‘necessity’ which arises from another point of view, out of the now changed circumstances, justifying more violation.

What does all this mean?

For Christians it means that violence does not justify violence, whether it is the crushing of a possibly dangerous man, the trashing of the shops of the privileged or the threat of violence from armed soldiers. Acting inhumanely – sinfully – has no justification.

But it also means that having power and privilege does not mean that these cannot be shared. It means that wealth – which we think must necessarily be guarded – can be given away. We cannot justify the great differences in power and privilege which cause others to calculate justifications for sin.

It is when the alleged necessities which serve as self-justification are allowed to fall away that the unexpected possibilities of freedom suddenly open up, that grace begins its work. It is to this freedom in grace that Paul calls us.

But let us also understand that letting go of ‘justified’ sin doesn’t mean that very much is likely to change in the wider world. Or we might say that as much will change as changed with the crucifixion of Jesus. Grace is not a ‘method’, is not a means to a calculated end. Means-to-ends are calculations, rationalisations: if this, then that.

Grace certainly brings freedom. Yet, though it might free me, you may not yet be free. This makes you dangerous and can lead to such things as well-rationalised crucifixions: ‘it is better that one die than that the whole people be lost’ (John 11.50).

Grace brings freedom but does not know what happens next. This is because the freedom is a freedom to respond to the command of God: Sleepers awake, rise from the dead. Obediently responding to this call, we then wait to hear what we are to do next.

Dead to all rationalisations of sin, we are free to do what is right, for God’s sake and for the sake of those wait to see God’s righteousness working through us.

Let us, rise and respond, presenting ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. For sin has no dominion over us, no argument by which to persuade us not to live the rich and free humanity God commands.

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Pentecost 2
14/6/2020

1 Peter 5:6-14
Psalm 116
Matthew 9:35-10:8

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In a sentence
1 Peter calls Christians to an extraordinary life of service

[‘]Set all hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring; be holy; love one another deeply; rid yourselves of all malice; let yourselves be built into a spiritual house; abstain from fleshly desires; conduct yourselves honourably; live as free people; have unity of spirit, sympathy and love, a tender heart and humble mind; do not repay evil for evil; sanctify Christ as Lord; keep your conscience clear; live no longer by earthly desires but by the will of God; be hospitable; speak and act as stewards of God’s grace; entrust yourself to the faithful creator; humble yourselves, cast all anxiety on God, resist the devil.[’]

The ‘charge’ Peter puts to his people is nothing less than, ‘Be extraordinary’. Know what you are, and become that ‘thing’. You are of God, in Christ; Be then what you are, where you are.

In this, Peter calls his people not to the ‘ten-million-views-on-YouTube’ type of extraordinary which dominates our sense of the marvellous today – the freak event, the apparently miraculous timing, or the just plain stupid. Peter’s ‘be extraordinary’ is a call to change our sense of what is ordinary, our sense of what is proper and appropriate.

We learn a sense for what is appropriate in the home, at school, in our engagements at work and through other aspects of human society. And much of that is very good. Yet Peter’s ‘be extraordinary’ is not, ‘Be what you have learned to be from the breast,’ but rather, ‘Be as Jesus was’, whose death seemed to his killers to be just what they had long learned to be appropriate. For Jesus’ death was, in this way, an entirely ordinary thing. It was just the cogs in the machine of one particular human society grinding on, producing what that machine is supposed to produce, which includes not a little death of things insufficiently ‘ordinary’ or appropriate, the death of who does not fit, of who is not valued.

Peter’s ‘be extraordinary’ is a call to be willing to be Jesus, in your own particular time and place. And do not be surprised, he reminds them, that it is hard work. There is death in the machine and you can’t fix it. But even if you can’t fix it, you don’t have to fear it, or be forced by it to be less than God calls you to be. A fearless life is not necessarily a long one, or even a wholly ‘happy’ one. It is simply a life which knows where we have come from and what we are here for.

We have come from the God who calls us unto being. This is not a mere calling into existence. It is the call issued to those capable of hearing and responding (or not). We are when we respond. Peter’s people have heard this call, have received themselves from God through Jesus, and now see themselves in the work of Jesus. Here is the new and better ordinary.

We are here, then, that we might become that new ordinary, that ‘extra’-ordinary. We are here as an answer to the question, ‘Where is God?’ We usually ask this question in such a way as to imagine that the answer might be, ‘Oh, God’s just over there…’ Peter’s answer is that God is ‘there’ in the life of Jesus, and wherever that life finds an echo in our lives. God is present in humble acceptance, in the gentle word, in the grace which releases. God is ‘there’ when God’s people speak and act ‘as if the God of grace’, as we saw last week. Do these things, for the remembrance of me.

To know what we are – that we are of the God of grace – and to become this – humble yet fearless, merciful yet strong – this is God’s call to us in Peter’s letter.

It’s all rather simple, then. We have a charge to keep.

Let us, then, humble ourselves, cast our cares on God, keep alert and resist the constant temptation to be any less than the very good God seeks in us.

And may we find that this is enough.

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Trinity Sunday
7/6/2020

Isaiah 53:4-6
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Rob Gallacher

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lockdown has meant getting into overfull cupboards and sorting old notes and memorabilia. Here is one incident I recalled from 35 years ago, or more.

A professional lady of middle years, who had broken with her family and rejected her faith was telling me all the things that were wrong with her parents. Suddenly she stopped, and asked, “What do you think of my mother?” In retrospect, I see that question as a significant step. She had been constructing a world out of her own prejudice and her own resources. Now she was opening herself to something other, another perspective. Let us speculate that she saw me as God’s representative. That would mean that she was wanting the heavenly parent she thought she didn’t believe in to make comment on the relationship with her earthly parent which had caused he much suffering.

Caught on the hop I said the first words that came into my head; “I see your mother as a person who, in the midst of her own pain, has the capacity to reach out and care for others”. I did not realise at the time, how Christlike that sounds. During the agony of the cross, Jesus prays for the soldiers “Father forgive them”, he comforts the thief “Today you will be with me in paradise” and he tells his mother and the beloved disciple to look after each other, “Woman, here is your son”.

Now, the third part. I did get some feedback from this encounter. A different spirit pervaded the conversations after this exchange. Mother and daughter were able to tread on the holy ground of their fraught relationship. I don’t know where my words came from, but I believe that the Holy Spirit was able to use them as a witness to Christ and to move the people in a godly direction.

We can use the three parts of this incident to penetrate further into the experience of God as Trinity.

1. The lady who asked for the opinion of another about her parent represents a society that is trying to alleviate its suffering out of its own resources. We use advanced technology, accept only evidence based research, and bow to the autonomy of scientific data. All good. Yet our troubles don’t seem to be getting any less, – not judging by the appeals that keep landing on my desk anyway. We are even asking the question, “What kind of Australia do we want when this present coronavirus crisis is past?” But we are not asking “How might our heavenly parent view our efforts?” We have a special opportunity to reflect on how God as creator suffers with the pain felt by God’s own creatures, and why we employ the word “Father” to describe God’s concern. If the belief that the earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1) were more widespread there might be some hope for the powers that be to do something about caring for the environment. Climate change is more than a threat to our grandchildren. It is hurtful to God the giver of life, the Father who sees each sparrow fall.
2. The words, “In the midst of his own pain, Christ reached out to care for others” put our present suffering into perspective. In trouble, say, you receive a plate of scones or bunch of flowers from your church congregation. The significance is greater than the gift. Coming from the people with whom you break bread at the Eucharist, those gifts carry a message – The God who bears the pain of the world suffers with you, and Christ, through the sacrament particularly, is present with you, uniting you with the suffering love that is at the heart of God. Athanasius, in the 4^th century, put it, “In Christ God became human so that we might become divine.” Our word is “sanctification”, though I haven’t heard it much lately. It means allowing the Spirit to show you how Christ is with you, bringing you into the embrace of the caring Father. In our present imperfect state we are invited to participate in the life of the heavenly community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and then to recreate that kind of community here – “Your kingdom come on earth as in heaven”.

 

3. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that can move you from isolation to community, from estrangement to reconciliation, from meaningless pain to participation in the life of God the Father, through Christ the Son. The Spirit of God can teach you how to walk gently on Holy Ground.

What I am emphasising this morning is that to know God is to experience Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one unified episode. While we speak of three persons, it is one God, one unified experience. It is often in our suffering that the closeness of the suffering, caring God is experienced. Isaiah knew this when he wrote about the suffering servant. “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases”. This is the God who hears the cry of the people, and inspires someone to act. This is the creator father who saw all was good, but now grieves for what humankind is doing. This is God the Son who embodies suffering love that we might dwell in the Father. This is God the advocate, who witnesses to the Son and the Father, and who enables us to talk about our experience of God with each other.

In so far as we can do this we become God’s new creation, an earthly community in the image of the divine community of Father, Son and Spirit, where each dwells in the other and all work in unity.

There are several disclaimers I need to make.

All this is not to advocate the seeking of suffering. The prayer of Jesus “Let this cup (of suffering) pass from me is very important.

The discovery that the living God is present with you if you do suffer becomes an occasion for joy.

While suffering can be a way to know God, it is not the only way. The sense of the presence of God may come as you hear the Word, practise prayer, experience self-giving love, and so on.

As you journey on in your knowing God, your attempts to conceptualise this mystery at the heart of God will become less clear. God is so much bigger than our capacity to understand. Words are replaced by a sense of awe.

The formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not completely adequate. God is not contained within any name. But this is the best Christians can do. The threefold name keeps us in touch with the church from New Testament times, and in fellowship with the Church in its many forms around the world.

Matthew concludes his gospel with the triune name, and makes it a gospel imperative to baptise and teach in the name of Father Son and Holy Spirit.

Paul uses the formula in another way, to assure us that the grace-filled presence of the Trinity is with all of us.

So, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

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Pentecost
31/5/2020

1 Peter 4:1-11
Psalm 104
John 20:19-23

In a sentence
God ‘ends’ sin by refusing to pass it on; our calling is to do the same

Breaking open the Scriptures is never a straightforward process.

As we open the book, sometimes we find things which are difficult because it is clear what the text says and means, and we don’t like what it means! Other times we struggle even to follow the text because, from this distance, the flow of thought and character of the references or illustrations the writers use are so alien to us.

Something of this latter is perhaps what we strike in our passage today from 1 Peter. Peter writes of the suffering which indicates that we are finished with sin, of the time lost in pursuing things which don’t really matter, of the nearness of the end and of the possibility of living and acting as if we ourselves were the God of grace. And he moves from the one to another in such a way that it reads a little like a grab-bag of throwaway ideas not quite clearly following on, one from another.

Yet these are a constellation of reflections from a central light – the light of what God has done for Peter’s community in the person of Jesus, and what they might then expect for themselves, and what they owe each other.

‘Whoever suffers in the flesh has finished with sin’, Peter writes, not as a general observation about the relationship between sin and suffering but with direct reference to Jesus. Suffering, in itself, is not the reason we are finished with sin – as if we earn forgiveness and wholeness through suffering. Suffering is the way we put sin behind us, the form such a putting-away will take. Jesus on the cross – God on the cross – is sin stopped. Sin is rendered powerless by its inability – in Jesus – to force the reaction of sin in the other. Sin is a virus jumping from one to another in these reactions. Yet Jesus ‘absorbs’ the fear and brokenness of those around him, rendering sin without power beyond what suffering it might mean for Jesus himself. The matter of the conflict between God and God’s people ends with him.

To refuse to respond to human brokenness by causing yet more brokenness is to set sin and its power behind us. The destruction sin brings stops with Jesus because he refuses to participate in the faulty dynamic of power which nailed him to the cross; Jesus refuses to respond in the terms in which he is attacked.

In this way, though his time is cut short, it is time spent oriented towards God and the full possibilities of life in God. It is towards such an experience of time’s possibilities that Peter calls us: you have already spent enough time doing what ‘the Gentiles’ like to do. Do, rather, what is really creative, what will really fill the times; do what is life, richer in every way than the death which will bring it to a close.

For this is the ‘end’ of all things of which Peter write (4.7) – the goal of creation which has been glimpsed in Jesus and now is a possibility for those touched by him. Creation turned in on itself and its own designs is creation without a goal, moving in cycles of fear and destruction, of mere life and death. This is creation without a purpose other than to continue at whatever cost.

To live as if the end were near is – Peter surprises us – to become ‘as if God’. ‘Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength God supplies’ (4.11). In this way we are ‘stewards of the manifold grace of God’. A steward is one who apportions within the household – on behalf of the master – the appropriate share of the wealth of the house. The Greek word here for ‘steward’ is oikonomos – from which we have our word ‘economy’. In God’ household – in God’s economy, God’s grace is the currency, and God is the effect. Peter does not call his people merely to continue in suffering because that in itself has value. The value is in the gift which ‘absorbing’ sin might bring – the presence of God’s peace-making in the midst of a violent world. Peter calls us to do and speak as if God, apportioning God’s grace to whomever we encounter.

This letter has continually turned our attention away from what we might think is going on in and around us, to see what was going on in and around Jesus. With that in mind, Peter then turns us back to our own time and place with the invitation to respond not merely to direct experience without Jesus, but to what is happening as a sharing in what happened with Jesus.

Jesus himself spoke and acted as the presence of God’s grace to those he encountered – both to the poor in spirit who received him as a blessing and to those proud in spirit who found his God too strange.

Enabled by the Spirit God gives to and make Jesus present among us again, God’s life with us takes the shape of Jesus’ own,

By the power of that Spirit, then, become the presence of God to those among whom God has placed you, with whatever joy or suffering this brings.

Only then does brokenness begin to recede behind us as we begin to move towards God’s end for us: life in love, together in Christ.

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Easter 7
24/5/2020

1 Peter 3:8-22
Psalm 68
John 17:1-11

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In a sentence
Fear causes us to act in ways which reduce us and those around us

A quick reading of Peter’s first letter gives the sense that it is his advice to his church as to how it might respond to the difficulties it is experiencing as a community which doesn’t quite fit within its wider social and political context. The advice would seem to be something like this: ‘make yourself a small target by living a life which all will recognise as upright’.

Yet, as we noted last week, Peter’s is not a passive-aggressive survival strategy. In fact, it is the way Peter proposes they behave which attracted the ire of the wider community in the first place: their good behaviour and actions within the wider community are the problem so far as that wider community is concerned.

The life to which Peter calls his community is, then, not a response to the difficulty they are having with their neighbours; it is the cause of their difficulty. Unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, a humble mind, not repaying evil for evil but repaying with a blessing – these are not a solution but the problem. His moral instruction, then, is not something new they should adopt to fend off their persecutors. He calls them to stay the course, to continue in the way they have been going. Peter’s advice is, Do not stop being a problem!

This may be difficult to see because the ethic Peter calls for looks like the kind of thing all communities value, to some greater or lesser degree. Where are humility, sympathy and tenderness not valued? But if humility and sympathy and tender hearts are what all communities commend, then we get the impression that there might be in Peter’s community ‘too much’ tenderness and humility and sympathy.

Certainly such traits as these can be badly distorted, but unhealthy humility is neither what Peter demands nor likely to be offensive to those who oppose his congregation.

We get a clue as to what might be at the heart of the matter in the middle of today’s passage: ‘Do not fear what they fear’. Fear is a great motivator for us. We behave at least as much according to what we fear – what we seek to avoid – as according to what we hope to gain or give.

The reference to ‘fear’ in verse 14 is matched with the word ‘sanctify’ in the following verse. What we fear is what we sanctify. Our fears indicate to us what is most sacred to us: our fears create and call upon the gods. This is as much the case for the Christians as it is the non-Christian neighbours. We confuse the matter if we imagine that for Christians we no longer fear God but love God. In the Scriptures, fear is not a matter of shaking in our boots but a matter of what is most honoured in our lives, what it is we imagine will secure us against the many things which seem to threaten us. Peter says here, then, do not honour what they honour, do not consider sacred would they consider sacred; rather, sanctify Jesus as Lord.

Peter illustrates this with Jesus’ own way. Here is one who does not fear what most of us fear, who willingly submits to God alone, even if that leads to death by crucifixion. Here the crucifixion is not about some economy of salvation which makes it possible for God to love us again; it is about knowing what is truly sacred in the world, what is to be sanctified, and what not.

In Jesus we see a life of humility and sympathy and unity of spirit, of love for the other, of tenderness – a life which submits to those who fear the wrong things but does not submit to the fearsome things themselves. Jesus submits to the powers and institutions and fears in place around him, but without himself fearing anything they might take from him, even should they seem to win in the end. In this way, the cross is itself the victory of Jesus, whatever might have happened on Easter day.

Peter calls his community – and us – to the same humility before those who hold power over us, without submitting to the powers which might cause our overlords to be ungracious and without hope.

In this way, what is truly of God in the world – the human creature made in the image of God – is honoured, even if that human creature is subject to all sorts of dehumanising powers and perhaps even becomes an agent for the dehumanising of others.

This is no easy thing. Peter does not give the answer we seek when we ask the question about dealing with evil in the world. There is here no strategy for alleviating the suffering of his community, although that suffering is radically reinterpreted. Peter reminds them that they suffer because there is a conflict in the world – a conflict between the God from whom all things come and to whom all things will return, and those gods which have us in their grip because we fear death, or fear the loss of some lovely thing, or fear just having to get up in the morning and face the day.

There is a lot we will do when we are afraid. Much of it is hidden in the fabric of our economies and political systems. And it is likely that an awareness of this and a refusal to participate is what causes disruption for Peter’s community: they won’t share any longer in the injustice inherent in the common life of the city. They refuse to participate in dehumanising practices – financial, or relational, or political. And the nuisance value of this will sometimes be very high for the powers that be.

But being a nuisance is not the point. If Peter’s people are refugees and aliens in their own community, it is ultimately for the sake of those who persecute them. To continue to be a problem is to continue to model a true peace, and to make it possible. Only humility, sympathy and love for one another can bring true humility, sympathy and love for one another. And it is scarcely the case that we have too much of these things.

Jesus suffered, Peter says, as God’s stirring nuisance, to bring us to God. We ought not to be surprised, then that we are called to do the same, so that all might see how fear only reduces us, and how only love will expand us.

Let us, then, live lives which conform not to the fears of the world but the freedom of Jesus in the love of God.

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