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Epiphany 4
2/2/2020

Jonah 3:1-10
Psalm 15
Matthew 5:1-12

In a sentence
God’s grace is realised in us as we become a means of grace for others

I remarked in passing last week that the book of Jonah is more effective as biblical proclamation if, in fact, the story of the big fish were not ‘literally’ true. That is, the message of Jonah is stronger if the story is ‘just’ a story.

Today we’ll begin by considering a little more closely how that might be the case.

When reading Jonah, of course, we cannot but notice the fish. It is the most attention-grabbing element of the story, not least because it seems to be the most problematic for certain understandings of the text. It is the fish which precipitates questions about ‘did it really happen?’, and which becomes a test of belief about the text and about what God can and can’t do.

And yet in the passage we have heard today there is an even greater miracle: ‘And the people of Nineveh believed God.’ This is not miraculous in the terms we usually associate with miracles, but the Scriptures cannot be held accountable for our not knowing when something miraculous is in our midst. In fact, most of the time, not noticing the miracle is the very sin of God’s people.

Of course, we might hold that anyone could be converted under the right circumstances and that this is scarcely miraculous. Yet we don’t normally behave as if this were the case. What are the chances that the wall will come down in Israel, or that the architects of Brexit could ever find the courage to sorry should it all go belly-up? What are the chances our governments – or, more to the point, the self-interested voting public – will have a change of heart on asylum seekers? These are ‘conversions’ for which we might hope but it is really only hope – in the weak and strong sense – we hold for them. It would simply be miraculous if such things were to come about.

So it was also for the Israelites represented by Jonah. To read the book of the prophet Nahum is to feel the vitriol Israel held for Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. This brutal people destroyed forever the ten tribes of northern kingdom of Israel, leaving only Judah and Benjamin in the south. Full as they were of their own power and achievement, and that of their gods, it is simply ludicrous that Nineveh would have a change of heart at the mere word of a quivering prophet from one its victim-states. It would be easier to believe, say, that a chap was thrown from a boat, swallowed by a fish and then burped up on the shore three days later.

It might be argued, of course, that the repentance of Nineveh also never happened. Most likely it didn’t. In this sense, the book is no more historically true here than in relation to the fish.

This doesn’t matter, however, because the book presents not so much what happened to Jonah and Nineveh (as if something else might have happened) but, more deeply, it tells what can happen when the word of God is spoken.

What ‘can’ happen are those things we noted when considering the fish last week: the chosen one is preserved, outsiders become insiders, God’s creative word does not return empty. This all happens again in Nineveh: Jonah survives three fearful days in the belly of the enemy, Gentile Nineveh is converted and God’s word finds its mark in both Jonah and Nineveh.

Such miracles are difficult to believe but not in the way in which the great fish story or the resurrection of Jesus are difficult to believe. On their own, those attention-grabbing flashes are quickly absorbed again by the dark. Yet, in the Scriptures, they are not things in themselves which happened to happen but rather serve to illuminate deeper realities which can be very uncomfortable. Of such deeper realities it is not so much that we can’t believe them as that we don’t want to.

As we will see in more detail next week (chapter 4), just such a reality is revealed by the conversion of Nineveh and the extraordinary conclusion to the chapter, ‘and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them’ (KJV, a more literal translation of the Hebrew here).

The book of Jonah places us in a relationship to each other which will sit no more comfortably with us than it did with Jonah. It is part of the affliction of self-righteousness that we imagine that we stand between God and those we do not like. They, then, must join us – must become like us – to get closer to God. In a negative way, this is the basis of Jonah’s response to the initial call: if I don’t go, the Ninevites won’t have the opportunity to repent; they can’t get God but through me.

We noted last week that there is some truth to that: Jonah is crucial to the mission. Yet, Jonah’s position ‘between’ God and Nineveh is not as obstruction or filter but as conduit, and as conduit to all which is distant from God, even finally Jonah himself. Twice in the story Jonah is just such a means for others, despite himself. Who Jonah is, before God, makes Jonah important for others’ standing before God, whether he likes it or not. There is more work involved with grace than we usually imagine.

Since the Reformation we have grown familiar with the notion that it is by grace that we are saved, through faith. We see something of this in the conversion of Nineveh and God’s ‘repentance’. But perhaps what has been weakest about our repetition of the Reformation slogan is that it has caused us to distinguish too sharply between the grace which saves and the works which are then hard to fit coherently into the schema.

This can lead us to say that we are saved ‘for’ good works – in order now to do what God requires – but Jonah’s story presses us to something deeper. Jonah becomes what he is when he does what God commands. It is a ‘given’ that Jonah belongs to God – that he is chosen or ‘saved’. Yet Jonah is also still becoming God’s chosen, and becomes the chosen when he becomes God’s own means for the salvation of others. In the call of God Jonah hears what he is in eternity; in his action Jonah becomes in time what he has been called: God’s body in the world.

That ought to sound familiar. It is the being-becoming dynamic of Jesus’ own baptism and temptation. It is the gift and call of all who gather around the Lord’s Table: receive what you are, become what you receive.

To be saved by faith is not, then, to be insulated from the world of works, from responsibility. It is not to be in any way isolated from those others whom God would also save. We believe that God makes us whole by faith only when we act. Specifically, such faith is only held in acting to make others whole. Our action is the sacrament of God’s grace toward us, and the grace is not there without the sacrament.

For Jonah and Israel; for the church; for Nineveh, Babylon and Rome; for America, China, Russia and Australia; for each person sitting here today or in a café down the street: salvation is becoming in time what we are in eternity – part of the whole and healing life of God.

The challenge in the book of Jonah is not whether such a miraculous thing can happen – is not whether God’s word can turn the sinner’s heart. The challenge is whether we want God to bless those who do not bless us, and are willing to be the means by which this comes about.

When such a willingness is found, truly we are in the presence of a miracle. In this Jesus is preeminent – the blessing for those who curse – of whom Jonah is a shadow.

Let us, then, say yes to God in such a way that the miracle of life-with-God-in each-other might be our very own.

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Epiphany 3
26/1/2020

Jonah 1:1-7
Psalm 107
Matthew 4:12-23

In a sentence
The ‘great fish’ of Jonah is a sign of how God’s plans for the world are dependent upon those called to fulfil them, even Israel and the Church

We begin our exploration of the book of Jonah with a question, the answer to which might seem very obvious: why does God appoint a big fish to swallow up Jonah?

It matters not whether such a thing actually happened; in fact, for reasons I’ll not expand on this morning, it’s more consistent with the apparent point of the book that the tale is ‘just’ a story. For our present purposes, then, we’ll just take the narrative at face value and deal with why it might matter for the story that Jonah ends up intra-fish.

The obvious answer to our question is that God appoints the fish to scoop Jonah up in order to save him, with the emphasis on the ‘save’ rather than on the ‘him’.

Clearly the saving takes place but who cares that Jonah is saved?

Again, there is an obvious answer: Jonah himself. The fuller text of the book would seem to suggest this purpose as well; the whole of the next chapter is a prayer of Jonah, praising the God who saves those who descend to the deep.

Yet this doesn’t sit quite comfortably with the story. Jonah has offered himself up to death: ‘Throw me into the sea; that should do it!’ Jonah apparently resigns himself to death. Die now or die in Nineveh? A death for nice people is better than a death by an enemy’s hand. Surviving isn’t really part of the plan because, so far as Jonah is concerned, that would mean still being in earshot of God’s uncomfortable call to preach repentance and forgiveness to the dangerous and hated enemies of Israel.

Still, Jonah is saved and the obvious answer to our ‘Why?’ about the fish seems the right one.

Yet there are two other ‘hidden’ beneficiaries from the intervention of the great fish in Jonah’s plight which shift the fish from amusing comic image to a necessity for understanding who this God is and how this God works.

The first of these hidden beneficiaries is the crew of the boat. Of course, they have been saved in the sense that throwing Jonah overboard seems to have calmed the wrathful God. But the fish is not connected to this. So far as the sailors know, Jonah is dead. If they saw him swallowed up, they would not imagine him sitting inside praying but rather being digested.

Yet the sailors have not merely been terrified and then relieved with the arrival and then departure of Jonah. In the course of this short episode these Gentiles have become worshippers of the God of Israel. And they have linked their status before God to God’s reading of their sacrifice of Jonah: ‘O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood…’

This prayer is answered by Jonah not, in fact, dying – although they do not know this. All they know is that the storm is stilled, which is the sign either that Jonah was not innocent, which they already suspect, or is the sign of what they might not suspect: that Jonah is not dead and so they can’t be accountable for killing him. Of course, both of these things are true but only we know that.

God, then, does not save merely Jonah with the fish. God saves the sailors with the fish; an alive Jonah is salvation to the sailors. Jonah, who has fled the call to preach to Gentiles, has been caught up in the conversion and salvation of unbelievers quite despite his best attempts not to be.

And this leads us to the second of the hidden beneficiaries of the gaping fish: even God.

For Jonah to drown is for God’s claim on Jonah to fail. But God is serious: Jonah, go to Nineveh. Jonah himself, as the means, is as important in the story as is Nineveh, the purpose of the call. God’s word is not a general proposal that Nineveh might be have the opportunity to be saved but the specific proposal that they have that opportunity through Jonah. God’s word, God’s intention, requires that Jonah be the means of this possible salvation; there is no one else who can be the means by which this intention is met.

This leads us to quite a surprising conclusion. God does not merely save Jonah with the fish, or even Jonah-and-the-sailors. God saves God’s own intention, which is ‘Jonah-for-Nineveh’. God’s word does not return empty. ‘Let there be light…, Let there be peace, forgiveness’…, ‘Let Jonah go to Nineveh,’ ‘Let them be fishers for people’ – these are not ‘suggestions’ of what might be the case but a calling into being of what will be.

The ridiculous means by which land-lubber Jonah is still alive despite being thrown into the sea is, then, not accidental and not silly: God’s intention for Nineveh is bound to Jonah doing what he has been called to do, and only Jonah. If Jonah dies by his own death wish, God fails. It is certainly the case that Jonah is not lost because the fish appears but more to the heart of the matter is that Jonah cannot be lost. At the risk of (only slightly) overstating it, we might say then that, with the fish, God saves God.

The chosen one is saved, the Gentiles are saved, God is saved, by the great fish. All of this is to say that, rather than being a comic interlude, the fish is a sign of the mystery of God and the world. The fish binds together the called people of God – in Jonah; those for whom the elect are called – the sailors and the people of Nineveh; and God Godself. Saving Jonah saves the world, and saves God.

God calls God’s people for a purpose – for the healing of others – and this purpose will not be thwarted. And it will not happen apart from those who are called.

Though often interpreted a symbol of the three-days tomb of Jesus, the fish is then also a symbol of the resurrection. The fish does not bury but returns to life in the chosen one all that he represents: the God who chose and loved, and those for whom such a setting aside took place.

To put it differently, God is for the world of Ninevehs in every time and place by the world: by those in the world God calls to be the means by which love and reconciliation. This is why Israel matters, why the Church matters, why the Word-becoming-flesh matters. The word is carried on the world which it created. This is what we are for, to bear the word.

God creates, calls and sends – ‘I will make you fish, for people’.

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Epiphany 2
19/1/2020

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

What did the Baptizer mean when he saw Jesus and said, ‘Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’?

This is quite a critical question for a congregation like Mark the Evangelist if for no other reason than we sing these words nearly every Sunday. It is one of the ordinals of the Eucharist, one of the texts that are common to every communion liturgy. These include the Kyrie (Lord have mercy), the Creed, and the Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy).

The choirs I sing with have extensive repertoires of Latin masses. They always conclude with the Agnus Dei – Agnus Dei qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis (Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us). It repeats this twice except the last time the miserere nobis is replaced with dona nobis pacem (give us peace).

The version we sing is a rewrite to get around the modern minds irritation with repetition and to introduce a few more concepts about the work of Christ. But still we begin by singing, ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.’

For a metaphor like ‘lamb of God’ there needs to be some context or it does not make sense. This particular image can be a bit confusing because a much stronger image in the gospels, that is to say a much more frequently used image for Jesus, is that of shepherd. Matthew, Mark and John think shepherd when they think of Jesus. Only John also thinks ‘lamb’ and only in the portion we heard this morning.

Understanding New Testament concepts often relies on knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. I remember a visiting teacher of liturgy telling us that if you need to leave out any of the set readings on a Sunday, don’t drop the Old Testament one. We can’t understand the gospels without knowing the Hebrew Scriptures.

That is certainly true for this metaphor of the lamb. However, we could start on this one without any ancient context to build on. The context of the story on its own stimulates interest and raises the eyebrow. John the Baptiser has been preaching that someone greater than he is coming along to step his mission to higher level. In the next breath he points at the man he is talking about and calls him the lamb. Not the lion or the bear or the elephant but the lamb. If that doesn’t make a first reader who has not sung the Agnus Dei hundreds of times for the last 40 years sit up and pay attention, then I don’t know what will.

John the gospel writer talks of Jesus as lamb only this once, but John the Theologian in Revelation calls Jesus the Lamb 26 times. We could write a few doctoral theses on whether the writer of John’s gospel and that of Revelation are the same person, but the lamb metaphor provides a link.

So, what was happening in the Hebrew Scriptures to help us understand what John was thinking? There are three that I have found and together they provide some of the richness and complexity for grasping the work of Jesus and his nature. Let’s go backwards through the books. This morning we heard part of the first of the Songs of the Suffering Servant of the prophet Isaiah. In Passiontide we often hear from the fourth Song of the Suffering Servant that includes the lines, ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.’ (Isaiah 53:7)

We are reminded of Jesus silence at his trials. John is also the one who records Jesus words, ‘17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.  18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.’ (John 10:17-18) Was John thinking of Jesus’ posture of silence before his accusers, his do nothing to prevent his death is why we speak of Jesus’ self-giving for the sake of the world?

Let’s go back further to the Exodus, to the Passover lamb that was to be killed and eaten before the journey of escape. The blood of the lamb is given graphic mention in this story, but it is not sacrificial blood. This blood of this lamb is to be daubed on the door posts and lintels so that the angel of death will pass over the houses so marked, but the first born of households not marked with blood will be killed that night. John the Theologian lays great store on the efficacy of the blood of the lamb to maintain life for the faithful. Is this what John the Evangelist had in mind? Now to unwrap all that Revelation means of how the blood of the lamb works for the good of humanity would require a few more PhDs, so let’s leave it there.

Go back to Genesis to the strange and disturbing story of Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice. At the last moment a lamb caught in a thicket provides the substitute sacrifice. Was John thinking of Jesus whose death is our deserving?

Well, we don’t know what John the Evangelist was thinking or what John the Baptiser was thinking when Jesus was named the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He did not go on to say, ‘Now, what I mean by …’ and then give a detailed explanation so that what it means is this or that and nothing else. It is the power of poetry, music, parables and metaphors that they do not nail down the truth but allow emotions, current contexts and the movement of the Spirit of God to shape and reshape how we know what God has done and what God is doing and the life of Jesus in our world.

However the ancient texts of our Jewish heritage tells it, the image of the lamb as a metaphor for God’s love and desire and power to save us points to weakness and vulnerability. God’s saving act in Jesus is so risky. Put the salvation of the world in the life of a human born into world where the geopolitics and religious extremism is rife – what could possibly go wrong. A world so familiar to our own – what can possibly go wrong.

I glanced at the Synod’s calendar for 2020. Did you know that yesterday was the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity? Well may we pray for Christian unity because if the church is better at one thing than another it is disunity. Did you know that today is designated ‘Day of Mourning, First Sunday before Australia Day’? Did you know that tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jnr Day? You probably knew that that next Sunday is ‘Australia Day’ (hurray for us) and, according to the calendar, ‘Survival Day’. The calendar asks us to remember the sin and trauma of the past, and this amidst current trauma of geopolitical chaos and natural disasters that would be less disastrous if we cared for the planet.

What goes wrong in our world yesterday, today and probably tomorrow? Just about everything. So we place our hope and trust in the vulnerable Christ who does not avoid his own destruction, who is caught in the thickets of the world gone mad, who marks humanity for life – to this one we pray:

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, give us peace – give us peace.

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Baptism of Jesus
12/1/2020

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Rob Gallacher

The Baptism of Jesus is a very rich subject, and I am going to leave most of it out in the interests of getting you home before lunch.

I want to work with three building blocks, The Baptism of Jesus, our baptism, and the righteousness mentioned in the text. Actually “righteousness” has some overtones of moral or legal correctness that I want to avoid. I’m going to say “rightness”, to express this sense of things being right when relationships with Jesus are right.

BAPTISM OF Jesus. Jesus, who was without sin, submitted to John’s baptism of repentance. It is part of his becoming one of us. As he descends beneath the water he is identified as one with this sinful human race. We acknowledge this in the liturgy, “Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us”.

OUR BAPTISM If Jesus identifies with us in his baptism, we are identified with him in our baptism. We are baptised into Christ. It is that mutual indwelling so simply yet profoundly expressed by John 17:21, “As you, Father are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us”.

RIGHTNESS And that is rightness. In the text, Jesus overcomes John’s unease with the words “It is proper for us to fulfil all rightness”. John accepts this and is accepted.

I wonder if you can sense this mutual acceptance in the way the symbols are arranged here. There are several ways of arranging liturgical furniture, and each has its own meaning. Since it is like this now, we’ll look at this one.

Start with the font, the reminder of baptism. I haven’t studied your behaviour closely, but I have the impression that most people acknowledge its presence only by avoiding it, or sometimes stumbling over it. I see it like the turnstile at the MCG. You pass through into another space, where exciting things will happen. The font is the beginning of sacred space. Once you have passed this point you are in the place of the baptised. There is a rightness about your being here.

Now look at the line from the font to the table. I wish we could call it the altar, the place of sacrifice, where the body of Christ is broken so that the baptised may be fed. I can give you several examples where the table/altar is also seen as the tomb. It is not just the body that is broken open to give life, but all the restrictive powers are fractured. So behind the altar is the empty cross, the new life of the resurrection.

So when you take your seat, you locate yourself between two great symbols, the font, the baptism identifying Christ with you, and also your identification with Christ, and secondly, the altar and cross that represents the final rightness between you and God. So there you are, somewhere in the space between the two symbols, the place of worship, sacrament and pilgrimage, the place of sacrifice, brokenness and renewal. There is a process going on. We speak today of spiritual journey. But that is a bit : New age-y”, a bit “me” centred The old fashioned word, “sanctification” seems stronger to me. The Spirit of God working in you, the descent of the dove on the body of Christ, till the Father says “I am well pleased”. That is rightness.

And it’s not just an individual holiness. Notice how the liturgy moves from “Jesus, bearer of our sins” to “Jesus redeemer of the world”. The rightness here is to be reproduced out there. Isaiah put it, “I have called you in righteousness … to be a light to the nations”. (Isaiah 42: 6) Even the lectionary moves us from Baptism, on this first Sunday after Epiphany through steps to Transfiguration on the last Sunday of Epiphany. You, and the world around you, will look different. You will see differently, rightly.

The three pietas of Michelangelo pick up some of these themes.

Look first at the best known, the one in St Peter’s in Rome, done when he was only 23. When Norma and I first went into St Peter’s we had two young children, so we took one each and went our separate ways, except that we kept bumping into each other as we went back to the Pieta for yet another look. It is the classic view of a young man who sees everything very clearly. It is highly polished, balanced in composition, expressing great emotion, yet serene. It is the view of someone looking in on the scene from the outside.

The Florentine pieta is different. Michelangelo is now in the fullness of adult life, in his late 60s. The figures of Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea have been added, and the face of Joseph is a self-portrait. He has placed himself in the scene. It is no longer smooth, the lines are not so clear, and the people supporting the body of Jesus with one hand support one another with the other hand. Bonhoeffer wrote a poem called “Stations on the way to freedom”. His second stanza contains this line: “Make up your mind and come out in the tempest of living”. When you are involved in the action, the lines are not so clear, the surface not so polished.

The third Pieta displays a stage yet further on. We discovered this in Milan, and I find it the most profound of them all. Clarity has given way to mystery as Michelangelo contemplates his own death. He is 89, and this is his last work. You can make out the two figures, but who is supporting who? While Mary is supporting the dead body of her son, the crucified one is supporting her. And when you look into the indistinct face of Christ, you see that Michelangelo has dared to carve his own features onto the face of Christ. Identification. Rightness. Can you see your own face on the face of Christ? We see the face of the hungry, the sick, the poor and the imprisoned as the face of Christ. But do you take the identification of Christ with you and your identification with Christ to this point? Do others see a Christlikeness in your face? Transfiguration!

As you sit amongst the baptised, ask, Where are you on your spiritual journey? How far has that descending, sanctifying dove led you, pushed you, towards rightness?

Soon you will be invited to reaffirm your baptism. As you return from the font to sit in the sacred space, I invite you to reflect on how far you have come from your beginning in baptism, and how close you feel you are to the altar, the place of sacrifice and resurrection life? Where there is a proper rightness connecting these three.

Christ’s baptism identifies him with us.

Our baptism identifies us with Christ.

Our growth in this relationship that is right, proper righteousness.

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Epiphany
5/1/2020

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon preached by Andrew Gador-Whyte

Today we are marking the Epiphany of our Lord. We celebrate the coming of the wise men paying homage to the infant they recognise as king.

We celebrate the revealing in Jesus of God’s inclusion of the Gentiles, all of us, in his saving work.

And we look forward to the coming restoration of all humanity and the whole cosmos in the reconciling death and life of Jesus Christ.

What has been revealed at epiphany is the purpose behind the life of all human cultures and indeed animals and the whole creation – participation in the life of God through Christ, Christ who is the unifying principle and radical generosity within and behind all created things.

In recounting the coming of the Gentiles to worship their infant Lord, Matthew is drawing on the rich prophetic imagery we have heard in the Old Testament today.

Isaiah and the psalmist proclaimed that exile will end, and the integrity of the nation and its families will be restored. In former times, Judah’s kings were humiliated before the violence of Babylon. But soon the nations will recognise in Judah their true centre, the epitome of human flourishing.

By God’s faithfulness, the roles will be reversed, and the kings of the Gentiles will fall before the king of Judah. But although Isaiah’s image is one of an imperial capital, it represents instead a reconciling power exercised in the world. This power will above all be for the restoration of the life of the poor and weak. A restoration beyond the violence that seems so intrinsic to the world and the exercise of power.

All of humanity, and particularly those in authority, will be transformed by obedience to the one reigning with the authority of this reconciling God. Judah’s king will act in a way that is recognisably authoritative in the true sense, that is, oriented in service towards reconciliation. Think of the spontaneous cry of the crowd in Mark’s gospel as Jesus begins his ministry – ‘A new teaching – with authority’.

God’s reconciling authority will be revealed to the nations through his people, and particularly through one who will act among God’s people with justice. This justice flows from receiving it as a gift to be worked out in the world through human integrity.

The coming of the wise men inaugurates the streaming of the nations to Jerusalem. Their homage before Jesus initiates the movement of those outside the Jewish nation now into obedience to the Promise.  They herald the establishment of the Church as a wild olive tree now grafted into the Promise, now fellow heirs along with our brothers and sisters, the Jews.

Who are the wise men? There is a tradition of their being kings – for us, perhaps politicians, academics, other powerful shapers of public discourse. They are astrologers, possibly even sinister workers of magic. They are clearly not Jews. Yet these foreign, powerful, even shadowy figures have nonetheless become a means by which God discloses his reconciliation of all nations in Christ. God works through their human integrity and wisdom. Through their recognition, God makes them a source of revelation to the Gentiles.

But even more strangely, the movement of the comets and stars have themselves become a means of revelation. Time itself has not been left unchanged. With the coming of Jesus, no longer do the movements of celestial bodies dictate fate. Rather, their movements have become from now on movements of praise.

Time is now marked by the movements of the higher creation in praise of the Lord revealed at the heart of creation. So epiphany is the revelation that the whole universe has been invited into a new obedience to God in Christ.

Here God’s eternal purpose is unveiled, that all nations will find themselves included in obedience to God in Christ. But this is even more cosmic. The powers under which the universe labours, the authorities and forces which govern the world, will come to find their true purpose in obedience to Christ.

By the power of the Spirit, the Church will become a means by which God makes his will clear to all humanity. By its own obedience, the Church is to lead the nations and – startlingly –all of creation into obedience to Christ.

Matthew hints at a shift in the wise men. In searching for the anointed one, they go first to the place where authority is most visibly and brutally expressed, to Herod’s Jerusalem. But afterwards, they return by another road. They have been met by the authority of the Child, which upsets the violent balance of authority as we understand it.

TS Eliot imagined the return of wise men to their own country in this way – ‘we were led all that way for Birth or Death?… this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation…’

In our times when for many the economic and social balance seems hopelessly tilted against them, there is an understandable desire for politicians who will at least upset that balance. The terrifying rise of racist and authoritarian governments is in part an indictment on the way progressive politics have often become distant from the needs of the disadvantaged. And to our shame Christians have often been complicit either in political elitism or in this impulse towards authoritarian, exclusionary, insular politics.

In these times, the Church must allow itself to be transformed by the feast of the epiphany. Our liturgical life, our life of prayer, is meant to bring us more and more deeply into unease in the ‘old dispensation’. Our life of worship and prayer, our living out of our baptism, is a slow birth out of a slow death.

Our life together in the Church is a slow dying to the violent patterns of authority that run through all our relationships and interior lives. And it is a life where, by the grace of God, the strong and the powerful grow into solidarity with the weak, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged; a life where a new unity is possible and where the lip-service of mixed economies is replaced by the radical equality of God’s coming kingdom.

The Church must be renewed in obedience to the Prince of Peace. Our urgent task – in our worship and our engagement in our national life – is to hasten to the feed-trough, where we lay the whole of our lives before the Christ Child.

And this urgent task is from beginning to end an act of joy – joy at the coming of Jesus into this world, this tangled web, these relationships, this crisis. Joy at the humanity of God who remains in our midst in this world. Joy against the crushing pessimism of our times, joy against the fearful exclusion of the stranger. Joy that persists in proclaiming that in Christ now nothing can separate my neighbour, my enemy, from life and communion.

We must allow our lives to be reordered from being the definers of our own fate, to become an act of praise. We must allow our lives to become a star pointing the nations towards Bethlehem, an invitation into the joy of obedience – just as we trust we are being renewed along with all of creation.

By the grace of God, may our lives become a constant invitation to kneel before the one who became poor, weak and vulnerable, in being born among us – the one who chose the cross as his throne.

The crucified and risen one, the Christ Child –
he it is who rules with the authority that is healing;
the one who arises as the dawn,
making our dark cities shine with their coming restoration;
the one whose body we are in the world. Amen.

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Naming of Jesus
29/12/2019

Numbers 6:22-27
Psalm 8
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 2:15-21

In a sentence
God does not notice our seasons – even our godless times – except to the extent that God can use them to claim all our times as God’s own

Rumour has it that, the day after Christmas, you could buy ‘Boxing Day buns’ at Coles supermarket: hot cross buns with a Christmas re-labelling. (Woolworths will apparently follow next week, and Aldi the week after). And the cry has gone up that the supermarket is ‘changing tradition’. As with roses so also with buns – a hot cross bun is a hot cross bun by any other name, and hot cross buns are only for Easter time.

There probably is something to lament here, as there is something to lament in the way in which Christmas has changed culturally under the pressures of capitalism. But these cultural pressures are less interesting than what is implicit in the complaints about the changes they bring. What is implicit in the complaint about Boxing Day buns is that we should not eat them until the ‘right’ season, as if the time of year tells us what hot cross buns themselves ‘tell’ us.

To consider this more deeply, let’s put to one side the question of when we should eat them and ask a less obvious but more important question: when does God eat hot cross buns?

We’ll ignore the obvious problem with that question simply because it is more interesting to do so. Does God only eat hot cross buns in Holy Week? And when does God stop eating hot cross buns? (As it happens, no one seems to be too interested with the question of when we should stop eating them, although if there is a time we should start eating them then presumably someone should also get worked up about how long the buns remain in stores after Easter, as well!)

It might not surprise you that these questions are not typically covered in the average course in theology for ministers in training – which is lamentable – but we’ll do our best with them this morning, and this brings us to our reading from St Paul.

⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
 did not regard equality with God
 as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
 taking the form of a slave,
 being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸ he humbled himself
 and became obedient to the point of death—
 even death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him
 and gave him the name
 that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
 every knee should bend,
 in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
 that Jesus Christ is Lord,
 to the glory of God the Father.

There is a lot going on in this text but what matters here for God’s interest in hot cross buns is right in the middle of the text, and scholars find that it appears as an interruption to the flow of what was probably an early Christian hymn, quoted here by Paul. The words ‘even death on a cross’ break the rhythm and balance of the text, suggesting that Paul has inserted them here. In this way he draws attention to the meaning of Jesus’ death, as determined by his crucifixion.

Paul, then, is not giving an account merely of what happened – that Jesus was crucified – as if he might have died some other way. ‘[Even][1] death on a cross’ shifts the crucifixion from what might have been seen to what was actually happening. What could be seen was a man on a cross, among other men on crosses, and indistinguishable from them in that. But because of who he is, the crucifixion becomes part of him in a wholly (and holy) unexpected way.

And so the crucifixion becomes part of God in an unexpected way. Paul claims for Jesus that he was ‘in the form of God’ – that he bore God’s image, we might otherwise say. The important thing is, however, that even death on a cross – even a Godforsaken death – does not change that status as ‘image’, even if the image is now cross‑ed.

The silly question about when God eats hot cross buns is actually about God’s relationship to the cross: when is God ‘interested’ in Good Friday?

God’s image bears the cross; so also, then, must God be marked by the cross, if the image reflects its source truly. And this is the heart of the matter: that God’s heart is cross-shaped.

This we are easily able to forget, given as we are to festive seasons, to there being a time for everything and everything in its time. Yet the seasons – as seasons – are distractions. They are the chapters which, though they seem to divide up a story, are only there because of the particular story which is being told. A good editor chops everything, no matter how interesting, which does not contribute to the whole which is the story itself, which is not there only because of what it contributes to the whole.

But this is very hard to sustain. Divided up into seasons as the story of God has become, each season now provides us with an opportunity to get God wrong in a particular way, and so also to get ourselves wrong. We see a cradle without a cross, a cross without a resurrection, a sceptre without a scourge, a Spirit without a crucifixion, or a teacher without a saviour, so that the story is now sentimentalised, now mere tragedy, now triumphalist, now ‘religious’, now moral.

The problem, then, is not that hot cross buns come too early or too late. It is that we can imagine that the cross is only a seasonal matter, that Christmas and Easter mark different things, are different lessons in a curriculum.

Against this, we should not ask ‘when’ God eats hot cross buns because God eats only hot cross buns – only the cross. ‘Jesus is Lord’ means ‘the crucified one is Lord’. And this is ‘to the glory of God the Father’ because God’s glory is that even the godforsaken are God’s own, and not lost forever.

It is, of course, unlikely that the product line manager at Coles has been reflecting on all this and has determined that, for the spiritual health of the nation, we ought to have free access to hot cross buns all year – a kind of daily self-administered Eucharist.

It’s unlikely, and it doesn’t matter.  Our getting the times wrong is about getting God wrong, in a way peculiar to whatever time it is, and supermarket shelves are scarcely the worst of it.

But to name Jesus as Lord – to see the cross at God’s heart – is to say that God is untimely, and to set Boxing Day buns in a new light. To confine the work of God to a season is to get God, and ourselves, wrong.

Let us, then, not be distracted by the approach of a ‘new year,’ or the arrival of Easter too early. Time is not our lord.

But there is a Lord of time whose untimeliness is God’s freedom. If Jesus is Lord of time – the image of God in whose image we are made – then Jesus himself is the time of our lives, and we are lords of time with him.

Let us then, fear nothing – least of all Boxing Day buns – for our times are in God’s hands and only when we are so held are we free.

[1] The ‘even’ is not in the Greek but inserted into some translations to draw attention to the disruption of ‘death on a cross’.

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Advent 2
8/12/2019

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Rob Gallacher

“You brood of vipers!” I get the impression that John the Baptist was not too impressed with the attitude of those Pharisees and Sadducees, the cultural leaders of his day. The point he held against them was that they didn’t act. They didn’t “bear fruit worthy of repentance”. They thought they were all right because of their past, they were descendants of Abraham, and that was all that mattered.

Matthew presents John as Elijah come again to announce the coming of the Messiah. The belt, the camel’s hair, the diet, all paint a picture of Elijah. And Elijah set the pattern for being critical of the prevailing culture. Though the lectionary points us to Isaiah for a description of the messiah: – a shoot from the stump of David, a branch that will bear fruit, … with righteousness he will judge the poor. … Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist. … And the whole of creation will be transformed. The wolf shall live with the lamb … They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

The pattern for preparing for the Messiah is first exposing unrighteous attitudes towards the poor and then taking action to relieve poverty. But it is also interesting to note that John was actually executed for his criticism of the marriage of Herodias to Herod Antipas, while Elijah didn’t like the marriage of Ahab to Jezebel.

In his address to the Anglican Synod recently, Archbishop Freier pointed to the marriage debate as “the issue of our times”. The Anglican position is at variance from recent legislation about marriage equality. This leads the Primate to make several points:

• Our society no longer looks to its Christian roots on moral issues,
• The Church must point to the coming reign of Christ, and witness to the judgement of Christ in order to transform the culture around it,
• that witness needs to be expressed in actions that minister to the poor and oppressed.

Without this last point, action on behalf of the poor, there can be little impact on our multi-cultural society. John the Baptist was right about that. There is plenty to criticise in the world around us, from banks to cricket balls, and the attitude of ‘Whatever it takes”. As Thackeray put it in Vanity Fair, “We live in a world where everyone is striving for that which is not worth having”. But just verbally resisting corrupt practice or progressive legislation, only paints the church as reactionary. There is a need to create evidences of the reign of Christ, signs of that which is to come. “Your kingdom come on earth as in heaven”.

Meredith Lake has stirred up a lot of interest with her book, “The Bible in Australia”; – two literary awards, favourable reviews and insightful interviews. I heard her give some examples of the way the Bible has influenced Australian society, and they fit the pattern of seeing something wrong, calling it out, and then doing something about it.

In 1849 there was a Bible Study Group meeting in Sydney. They were discussing poverty in the light of Scripture, and came to the view that belonging to a provident society and having life insurance would give hope to the poor. So they founded the AMP. A decade later another Bible Study Group thought poverty was still a blight on society. They saw the need for the poor to have a means of building up their savings. They started the Bank of New South Wales, which we know today as Westpac. Fast forward another 20 years. There was a committed and fired up Wesleyan layman, whose name I didn’t manage to get. He was critical of the previous approaches and argued that the only way to relieve poverty was through a just wage. He became instrumental in the foundation of the Australian Workers’ Union.

We have the history. Abraham is our father, if you want to use John’s phrase. But appealing to the past is useful only in so far as it inspires us to act in the present. Each Sunday, in our liturgy, we say: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”. We call it the Easter Mystery. It is a tiny creed. Note the change of tense in the verbs. “Christ HAS died”. We have an unshakeable heritage from the past. “Christ IS risen.” We live in his company and can act with confidence in the present. “Christ WILL come again. We have the vision of the reign of Christ to guide our actions in the present. The vision that the prophet Isaiah put so poetically: “With righteousness he shall judge the poor …. The leopard shall lie down with the kid. … They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.” It is a whole new creation.

So hear this voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord”. “All the people were going out to him”. It is not surprising that people, then and now, should fervently long for authority figures and institutions that they can trust. “They were baptised, confessing their sins”. That is the place to start, with the plank in your own eye. John’s baptism was for repentance because the kingdom is near.

Then “Bear fruit worthy of your repentance”. Act on behalf of the poor. Restore the sanctity of marriage. “Do not … say, “We have Abraham as our Father”. It is not enough to live in the past. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down.” Royal Commissions will see to that. “One who is more powerful than I is coming.” Do not reduce the messianic vision to a set of statistics, focus groups or a marketing survey. “I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” That was the task of a slave. John sees the difference between himself and the Messiah as even greater than that between master and slave. (When Ghandi was in prison in South Africa he gave General Smuts a pair of his sandals. Many years later, when Ghandi was leading his non-violent protests against British rule, General Smuts sent them back, with a note saying he was not worthy.)

“He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” The Holy Spirit is the power that moves us from conviction to action, and the fire is that which gets rid of all the useless baggage we carry. It is the presence of Christ in our midst that enables judgement between the wheat, the good fruit, and the chaff which is blown away or burned.

So, this present Advent, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”