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Baptism of Jesus
7/1/2018

Genesis 1:1-5
Acts 19:1-7
Psalm 29
Mark 1:4-11

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

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God, help me by your Spirit to reveal who you are, and help those that listen to reveal what is left obscure. Amen.

Yesterday was epiphany: the day we remind ourselves to check our star signs — just in case. More straightforwardly, epiphany reminds us of the surprising revelation of God: that moment when the incarnate Christ is revealed to Gentiles, represented by those star-gazing wise men from the East.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark tells the story of Jesus’ baptism. This seems at first glance something quite removed from epiphany. There seem to be no Gentiles to speak of, just a wild desert preacher and a young Rabbi about to take his mantle.

In fact Mark’s account, when set aside the other Gospel accounts, is the most restrictive of all. In Mark’s account it seems only Jesus can see the Spirit descending like a dove. John and the crowd are not privy to this divine revelation, as they seem to be in Luke and John’s Gospels.

The divine voice from heaven is likewise restrictive. It addresses Jesus directly: “You are my beloved Son.” The indirect and public declaration of Jesus’ divine sonship, through the mouth of John the Baptiser, or a booming Heavenly voice is absent.

The first Sunday after epiphany here we are: no gentiles, no public revelation. And worse: as soon as Jesus’ divine sonship is revealed he is drawn out into the desert. Upon his return he begins a ministry, dare I say, marked in this Gospel by a messianic secret. No one is allowed to publicly utter that Jesus is the son of God.

This is turning out to be the worst Epiphany ever.

If epiphany is about God’s surprising revelation to the gentiles, and we have today no Gentiles and no public revelation, perhaps we can see in today’s reading something of a surprise.

Or perhaps it’s simply unfair to frame this text as an epiphany text when in fact it’s simply the story of Jesus’ baptism. This is, perhaps, an instance of setting unfair expectations.

Be that as it may, I really want to press just how surprising the story of Jesus’ baptism is. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, it is so surprising that the Gospel accounts written after Mark – as the others were – felt this story needed to be retold differently. The other accounts broaden the audience of revelation. Matthew’s Gospel even inserts a short conversation between Jesus and John the Baptiser, acknowledging the awkwardness of John baptising Jesus.

The baptism of Jesus by John is awkward – and surprising, a point we will return to.

But what it is also surprising that Jesus’ baptism by John is not Jesus’ first baptism. At least, not according to some Theologians – particularly from the rich and broad Eastern Orthodox tradition.

These theologians suggest that the first baptism of Jesus was his conception. There the Spirit enabled Christ’s participation in humanity. Recalling the great birthing waters over which the Spirit hovered in the beginning, God came to dwell fully in and with our humanity.

The idea of baptism in which, through the symbol of water, we participate in Christ, is mirrored in the Spirit’s enabling of Christ’s participation in humanity.

We might say that the liturgical period we have just passed through – advent, Christmas, epiphany – narrates the first baptism of Jesus. We have taken time to marvel at God becoming human. What, to recall last week’s sermon, is the marvel of the big God coming close. The Creator God becoming human.

And yet … Is this not old news? Good news, to be sure, the Good News: but we have already understood this much.

Indeed, this much is captured in our reading from the book of Acts. What we need, above all, is the same outpouring of the Spirit that enabled God to become human. This same Spirit that hovered over the waters of creation, hovering over the waters of our baptism.

Hallelujah!

But today we are more narrowly focused on Jesus’ second baptism. Not a baptism into humanity, but a baptism of repentance.

Baptised by John: not proclaiming the new creation, but proclaiming repentance: the ruin of the old creation. John proclaims the same note of judgement that was a feature of Jewish eschatological expectation. That is, the judgement associated with the end of days, when God would wrap up this creation and begin a renewed creation.

This is the judgement that we recalled last week in recognising that in the context of the sheep and goats, we are goats. In the context of the hungry, the naked, and the stranger: we are least of all.

The broad Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would come and mete out this judgement. Dispensing God’s wrath on the enemies of God, as this created order fell into ruin and a new one emerged. Perhaps this is why so many thought that John the Baptiser was the Messiah. He came, after all, proclaiming judgement, calling people to repentance.

And yet in all of this, John points beyond himself. He points to someone else. He points to the Messiah who is yet to come.

And this is the surprising bit: when this Messiah arrives he does not meet the expectations of the people. He does not come as a Messiah dispensing judgement. He comes as one who submits himself to being baptised. A baptism of repentance.

What on Earth does Jesus have to repent of?

Having already been baptised into human form, Jesus further humbles himself, by being baptised in repentance, bringing himself under judgement.

In doing this Jesus subverts the expectations that he would come to give out judgement, by suggesting that instead he would undergo judgement.

And as Jesus does this, as Jesus is submerged in repentant waters, and rises out of them, the Spirit that hovers over the waters of creation comes down. As Jesus enters into our judgement he brings new creation, all of a sudden, very close.

At that moment, the new creation is begun – not at the end of time, but at the beginning of the Good News of Jesus the Messiah – the new creation is begun at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. At that moment a voice from Heaven reveals Jesus to be the Son of God.

Not only is it surprising that God would become human. But even more surprising that God would become fully human: mired in our failings, our sufferings, and our tragedies. What is most surprising is not simply that God would become human, but that God would become even the least among humanity.

Is this surprising revelation of the lengths God has gone for us an epiphany? The surprising lengths that lead to us being reconciled with God, and with each other? Is this an epiphany?

Or perhaps, we have to wait for that moment.

Mark’s Gospel, written with sheer genius, has us wait until what seems the end of the story, to truly have our epiphany. That moment when a voice once again declares – in public – that Jesus is the Son of God. That moment on the cross. When it is no longer a voice from Heaven, but the voice of a Gentile Centurion.

Jesus does not simply show us an icon of perfect humanity. But by becoming subject to judgement, by placing himself in a state of abandonment and dereliction on the cross, he shows us how to be imperfect humanity. Jesus shows us how to live as those under judgement. To follow the way of Christ, the way of the cross, is not to abandon our fragile humanity, but to more fully acknowledge and embrace it.

To follow the way of the cross is to stand in relationship and solidarity with those who are also mired in failings, in sufferings, and in tragedies. And it is from that sharing in weakness, that sharing in the suffering of Christ, that we follow the way to new creation. The way of surprising revelations of God – perhaps even in star signs, or strange tongues.

What Jesus acknowledged on our behalf in his baptism by John is the surprising way of the Spirit hovering over birthing waters. A way that is mired, to be sure, by blood, and tears, and pain; but a way that also calls new life into being.

When Jesus stands under judgement, crying out in abandonment, in dereliction, he no longer connects himself with God, but connects himself with us and us with him. It is at that moment that a human voice can finally confess to his divinity. We are bound together by this act, by this event. And as we walk the way of the cross, we are all bound together as a community of solidarity, reconciliation, and love.

Let me finish with a quote from Lilla Watson. A Gangulu elder, artist, and indigenous activist from Queensland.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

…

Amen.

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Christmas 1
31/12/2017

Revelation 1:1-6a
Psalm 8
Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

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God, help me to say what is helpful, and help those that listen to judge what is not. Amen.

Those of you who follow the lectionary closely will have noticed that our Gospel reading for today has not been gone for long. A month ago the Christian liturgical year ended with the feast of Christ the King, and with it came our reading from Matthew 25. Today marks the end of the year within the civil calendar, and with it Matthew 25 is back.

And if it is back, let it come back with a vengeance.

In fact I mean that quite seriously.

The texts that accompany Matthew 25 today set the mood rather differently than the feast of Christ the King.

Our Psalm of praise expands our imaginations to a cosmic vision. Everything – all of creation – is caught up in the sovereign majesty of God. From the mouths of infants, to the moon and stars in heaven. Humans and beasts, over the earth and under the sea:

“O Lord, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8.9)

The persistent rhythms of this created order are expressed in today’s well-known reading from Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything: living and dying, loving and hating, throwing stones and gathering stones, mourning and dancing, embracing and casting out. And standing above the constant hum of these rhythms of creation is the sovereign God. God who’s good gifts consist in our eating and drinking, and taking pleasure in work.

This background sets the scene of a God many people are familiar with. We have here a God that reflects much of what we confess in the first article of the creed: the article of God the Father, creator of Heaven and Earth. Who stands sovereign over the created world, seemingly at a distance.

And yet our psalm begins to question this distance: “what are human beings that [God] is mindful of them, | mortals that [God] cares for them?” (Ps. 8.4)

What is, dare I say, revealed, in our reading from the Revelation of John is precisely that this God is not distant. The home of God is among us. Our hope is that God will dwell with us, and we will be God’s people. The old rhythms of living and dying, mourning and dancing will be interrupted. And the sovereign rule of God shall come down into a new and renewed earth – a new creation.

Today, Matthew 25.31-46 needs to be read with this background in mind. We have a building sense of two things:

On the one hand, a grand vision of God’s sovereignty over all of creation. The story we tell about God is cosmic, it expands to incorporate everything.

While on the other hand, this sovereign God seeks to dwell among humanity, this God seeks to embrace us as God’s people.

God is at once very big, and at the same time very close.

The coming together of God’s bigness and God’s closeness finds articulation in Jewish and Christian eschatological hope.

Eschatological: a term referring to the end times. When the normal rhythms of our world will be interrupted. When all of this big wide world will be wound up. And when the God who stands sovereign over this world will become – all of sudden – very close.

In much of the Jewish and Christian traditions this coming close of God is thought to involve a significant amount of judgement. As it turns out not everything for which there is a time is good. As one quite well-known writer has suggested: “the time is out of joint.”

And so when I suggested that Matthew 25 was back with a vengeance, I meant it. The whole chapter forces us to reflect on the quite harsh message of the Kingdom of Heaven – what other Gospels call the Kingdom of God. What we might simply refer to as the bigness of God coming close.

It is in Jesus that we see God closest of all.

And as God comes close in the ministry of Jesus many are left out in the cold.

The parables Jesus tells leave maidens wandering darkened streets for lamp oil, slaves have what little they have taken away. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, the wealthy and poorly dressed are shut out from a banquet. In today’s reading, the careless are cast out, gnashing their teeth in everlasting torment.

Jesus meek and mild I think not.

Jesus’ teaching cannot be understood as saying that there is no inside, and no outside. Jesus does not fail to give voice to eschatological judgement. Jesus does not fail to take seriously what it means for the bigness of God to encounter us closely, bringing with it judgement.

In light of these teachings about judgement many commentators note that what is distinctive about Jesus is the basis of his judgement. Unlike the religious leaders of his day, it is not righteous adherence to religious law that will sway the judge. Rather, it is love: enacted love is what sets some aside for embrace and others for casting out.

And so we have inherited a tradition marked by the command to love others.

But, we might ask: a command to love who? Who are the others?

In the most exhaustive study of the interpretation history of this text Sherman Gray sheds some surprising light on answers to this question.

Up until the 8th century, less than half of commentators addressed the question of who we are called to love in Matthew 25. But of those that do: only 13.5% suggested we are called to love everyone — 86.5% suggest we are only called to love other Christians.

This overwhelming majority continues through the middle ages and into the modern era.

When I first discovered this I found it unsettling, to say the least.

Could the command to love really be so narrow in its focus?

Perhaps, the Gordian knot of this parable is not so easily untied.

The standard interpretation of this parable calling us to the command to love locates us at the centre of the parable. It is our moral virtue – wittingly, or more likely unwittingly – that counts in the end. In this we are at risk of losing the cutting edge of judgement that has run through this entire chapter – and many of Jesus’ parables.

Have we forget so quickly that we ourselves are under judgement?

Have we forgotten that we are the needy; we are the least.

We are the maidens left wandering darkened streets, slaves who have what little we have taken away. The wealthy shut out from a banquet. We are the careless gnashing their teeth in everlasting torment.

Christians are rightly the recipients of the command to love: for we are the needy; we are the least. And if it were a test of moral virtue we would almost certainly all be goats.

It is when we realise that we are such needy people as these that God comes the closest of all. We are not the righteous, following the command to love out of righteousness. We ourselves are the needy that receive love out of unrighteousness.

We see Christ in our experiences of suffering and loss when we remember that Christ too experienced suffering and loss on the cross for us. Suffering and loss we remember with cup and bread.

As we see ourselves as the least, we see a God big enough to hold our weakness, and close enough to care.

We see from behind the closed door the resurrected Christ – who passes through that door towards us.

As we see ourselves as the least, we see Christ as the big God who comes close, by himself becoming least.

We can take from this a moral lesson, indeed that same lesson of love. But no longer out of our own righteousness. No longer our means to sway the judge. For the judge is judged in our place. In today’s reading Christ the judge literally stands in our place.

Our love flows from our being loved. Our giving from our receiving the love of God. Love follows the way of Jesus, the way of the cross. It is our means of becoming like Christ, like the one who too became least.

And so if we are to find ourselves wandering the streets in darkness, let us clothe those we find there. If we find ourselves shut out from a banquet, let us provide food and drink for those also outside. If even what little we have is taken away, let us take ourselves to visit and care for the sick and incarcerated.

If we are to fall under judgement, let us follow the way of the judge who is judged in our place — let us follow the way of Christ, the way of the cross, the way of love. Amen.

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Advent 1
3/12/2017

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80
Mark 13:24-37

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Every day we read, we hear, something new in the news: some new political furore, the unprecedented weather event, the surprise that he is suddenly outed as an abuser, or that she was abused, the economic bubble or burst, the bomb blast.

Yet, in this way, so also is the news pretty much always the same. There is a persistent staleness about the newness of the news. The same kinds of things keep happening, if in ever-changing form. And we respond to them in the same kinds of ways. Royal Commissions, witch hunts, further regulation, lower (or higher) taxes, better medication, more surveillance. We are ever active, ever responding, although always with the same kind of response because it is the same kinds of things to which we are reacting.

We can “dress” this experience with the colourful language of Isaiah’s lament this morning: “we have become like one who is unclean”. The sense of the text is almost certainly of the ritual uncleanliness described in the religious law, but it remains the case, even in a secular context, that we are unable to wash ourselves of the things which cling to us, which require constant scrubbing, which keep us busy and distracted and weary.

It is out of this experience that there springs the extraordinary lament which opened today’s text from Isaiah: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down”. For what else could heal us?

In the text, this bidding springs from a recollection of the past, although not in any nostalgic sense. It is not that there was a golden age, a “good old days” to which they long to return. Nostalgia is delusional escapism, of which the Scriptures can never be accused. Longing for yesterday gets us nowhere because it forgets that, even if things felt better back then, that “then” is what delivered us the present in which we now live, whether the present of the church or of society more generally. The past for which we might long was the seed of what we now long to escape.

The prophet recalls instead God’s working of “awesome things we did not expect”. What has been lost is not the golden past, but the unexpectedness of God. It is only in the presence and action of this one that the world breaks out of the cycles of stale newness.

And so what is required is not more manipulation of the world around us, but prayer such as we hear in the prophet today. What we seek is something which cannot be rightly expected, something we don’t know how to tease into reality. Hope is not concerned with what we can see or touch or even imagine, for these are the very things which bind us. Hope springs from the unexpectedly new, the unseen, the unknown.

The text dresses with this reality in language we scarcely dare entertain today, convinced as we are of God’s boundless love and, so, of the easy access we have to God. But we must take seriously the prophet’s declaration that God has “hidden” himself: “for you have hidden your face from us.”

Whatever else this means, it means that prayer is not a kind of spiritual “technology:”  not a thing we need to do, in just the right kind of way with just the right words and condition of heart, in order to get God to act as we would like. “About that day or hour, no one knows”, we have heard in the gospel reading today, making the same point: God cannot be calculated. The hiddenness of God – that God has hidden himself – is God’s inaccessibility on any terms other than God’s own.

If this is the case, then what we need for the radically new and refreshing is not better science, more open hearts or gentler politics. None of these should be scoffed at, but they are appeals to variations in the quantity of what we think we have or need. The prayer of Isaiah today is a prayer for something of a different quality.

And this different quality is marked by a different method: a different orientation and expectation and so a different way of being. It is a humble waiting on God in the “fervent breath of prayer,” as our closing hymn puts it. As prayer, it is not inactive or passive. There is much we can do, not so much “in addition to prayer” as giving body to our prayers. We do not pray “and” act. Our prayers are surely actions, for in this way we mark before the world that we need more than we can say or do, and our actions are surely prayers, for in this way we show to God how we desire things to be and seek more of it.

Advent is not about “waiting” for God, as if at any other time of the year we are not waiting. It brings to the fore the character of our relationship with God as one of grace, in which things unexpected or unmerited are given, that we might live. This characterises all Christian existence as marked by hope, embodied in prayer and action. God has acted, and so we pray, and God acts, and we pray.

So, let us pray…

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Reign of Christ
26/11/2017

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95
Matthew 25:31-46

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

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

Put most simply, the moral and theological problem is this: to love someone else because they are, in a sense, Jesus, is not to love them because they are themselves worthy of love; it is to love something other than what we think they manifestly are. This is where things go wrong, for in this way we try to perfume the stink of needy humanity. While the “lovers” of the parable love and serve those in need simply because they are in need, our knowledge of the parable may cause us to “add” something to those we are to love. In this we seek to make them more “lovable”: Why help the needy? Because it is really Jesus we serve, and surely we want to serve him, if not these themselves.

The problem is that to make something “more loveable” is to turn it into a means to an end. It is to turn it more into what I need. So far as our reading of the parable is concerned, the “end” here might be our own salvation: seeing Jesus in others makes us more likely to serve them in their need, putting us in a better light before God. More broadly, the end in mind might be some other seemingly laudable but ulterior motive – perhaps the growth of the church – or just something salacious.

But people not means to ends; they are, properly, an end in themselves. We might risk to say that this is the basis of divine law, and that violations of the law are instances of people – or God – being made a means to an end. What are idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery and theft other than strategies to get to something other than God or the violated person?

This kind of relating to God and to others is certainly a live option for us. But we are to deal with each other without manipulation, for this is how God deals with us, first of all in the person of Jesus. The life of Jesus himself was no means to an end. If he was truly human – truly one of us – his purpose was none other than to live a life of love, for that is our purpose, however badly we might sometimes manage it. Atonement theories which propose that the life of Jesus was strategic, that he “had” to die for a reason different from the rest of us, diminish the freedom of God and diminish Jesus’ own humanity. They diminish God’s freedom by imposing an economy of salvation which ties God’s hands, such that God “has to” do something to achieve salvation other than simply determine that we be saved. Such theories also diminish Jesus’ humanity by turning his life into a means to an end other than his own self – his own liveliness, his own enjoyment of God and neighbour.

In the same way, our love of God – if we do – is not a means to an end. Again, we look to Jesus here. Jesus does not love God “in order that” – in order that he lived a charmed life, in order to secure life after death, or for another other end we might imagine God might facilitate. Living in God, living for those around us, is the end of it all.

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

[ASIDE: For those of you who are still wondering what on earth I was talking about last week, the difference between the sheep and the goats in the parable is the difference between “We did not know God was there but loved anyway” and “We knew God could not be there, so did not bother to love”. The “sheep” lived and loved “as if God were not there”.]

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

As archaic as the language is, the church speaks of Jesus as king not because this is a quality which resides in Jesus for himself, but because his is an active kingship, and active reign, which does what it commands: loves without ends, that our love might be without end. We gather around a table at which is served the signs of a life manipulated, a life turned into a means to some end, and so discarded and left behind. To what end does God say that these signs can heal? To no end but us ourselves. God’s desire for us draws us together, love opening up the possibility of love.

Being, then, drawn together in this way, let us love without ends, be this in the case of the fellowship of the community gathered here today, the work of Hotham Mission, your love for your parents or children or spouse or neighbours or colleagues or some unhappy soul sitting out his day on the footpath. In this way we do not only love Jesus but love like Jesus does. What else does the world need?

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Pentecost 24
19/11/2017

1 Corinthians 3:18-22
Psalm 90
Matthew 25:14-30

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“Do your best with what you’ve been given, in the time you’ve been given!” Is this not the moral point of our reading this morning? Perhaps, and there’s nothing wrong with that lesson, although we might say two things about it.

First, it’s boring. Or, at least, it would be boring to hear any expansion on such a moral point from the pulpit. There are plenty of others to tell us to do the best we can with what we have been given. This is why we have parents, teachers, coaches, shock jocks and the members of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. These all say with one voice: don’t waste the opportunity life has given you. Let’s hear that lesson, and recognise also that we have an opportunity today to hear something different.

And, second: on top of being boring, the moral reading of the parable is tedious, in that any moral precept encourages us to self-righteousness, and the self-righteous are always tedious. I’m reminded of a tussle – necessarily, a gentle tussle – I once had with a widow about the Bible texts to be read at her husband’s funeral. Today’s text was the one she wanted because she felt her husband had lived his life as the first two slaves in the story. Thus, the Scripture reading was to be an extension of the eulogy. The problem here is that, again, the reading is then only telling us what we already know, so why bother reading it?

Acknowledging, then, the importance of doing well with what we have been given, let’s put the moral reading to one side. What is said in word or action in the church should never be boring or tedious, despite all evidence and tendencies to the contrary.

Instead, let’s consider the parable as a statement about the presence and absence of God, which is surely an interesting question in a world where mocking atheism struggles with zealous faith.

We begin with a passing remark about the word “talent” in the parable. What is doesn’t mean is what we usually mean by “talent” – as in “we have a talented organist” or “he spent the afternoon at the beach checking out the talent”. The Greek here is “a thing measured out” – say, gold or silver. In the parable the “talent” is certainly money, although as a symbolic text it could mean for us any blessing or responsibility which we might imagine has been given us.

Let’s look, then, to the experience of the first two slaves. When their master is present, they are given some duty or grace, 2 portions to one, 5 to the other. This much is straightforward. The story begins to get interesting when we hear that, in the absence of the master, they receive exactly the same – 2 for the slave with 2 and 5 for the slave with 5. This is to say that, in his absence, it is as if the master were not gone. For the lives of these two slaves, the absence of the master is like the master’s presence: accruing the very same responsibility or blessing. And, surely, we can also say this the other way around: the master’s presence is like the master’s absence, for if they are the same why should we privilege the one over the other?

When we then allow ourselves to read the parable allegorically and become more theologically explicit, so that the master “stands for” God, we might dare to imagine this: for the first two slaves there is no difference between God’s presence and God’s absence: God’s absence is like God’s presence and God’s presence is like God’s absence. Because the master in the parable takes his leave, and then returns to see what has happened in his absence, it’s typical to read this story as a lesson in the importance of living our lives “as if God were there” even when – like the master – God apparently is not. But the experience of the slaves in the story suggests another, equally valid reading: if God’s absence is like God’s presence and God’s presence is like God’s absence, then we are called as much to live as if God were not there as we are called to live as if God were. Or, to pull out the unexpected bit to stand by itself: we are called to live as if God were not there.

What on earth could this possibly mean? At the very least it signifies that what we mean by the ‘presence’ or the ‘absence’ of God is less clear to us than we imagine. If that’s all we take away from this morning, important work will have been done.

But we can tease this out a bit further. I remarked earlier that, in a world of mocking atheism and over-zealous belief, the question of the presence and absence of God is an important one. Or so we usually imagine. But what happens in this dispute if suddenly atheism (the purported absence of God) and belief (the purported presence of God) begin to look very much alike. What could we be arguing about if the absence and the presence of God are not diametrically opposite?

What we are doing here is shifting what ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ signify when used with respect to God. Beliefs and atheisms – and the corresponding presences and absences of God – are like cholesterol: there’s the good kind and the bad kind. The good kind of belief and atheism is what we see in the first two slaves, in which the question of the presence or absence of God (or their master) is no distraction from who they are and what they are to do. Whatever the presence or absence of their master is to them, it is something other than being able to see and touch him, or not.

The bad kind of belief, with its corresponding atheism, is what we see in the third slave, who slips into and out of and back into belief as his master comes and goes and comes.

Most of us are the third slave: believing, not believing, sometimes as much on account of how long we’ve been sitting in traffic as on account of some deeper reflection or experience. That is, God tends to be as present or absent as the talent of hours we’ve slept, or the talent of food in our cupboards or the talent of grief it has been given us to bear.

This is simply how it is: this is what we are like – believers and non-believers. The question becomes, then, just how seriously we take this condition. Just like the question of God’s purported presence or absence, we can take our condition with deadly seriousness, or with light interest.

Deadly seriousness here involves recognising that the life of the third slave is buffeted by secondary things – the constantly shifting signs that God might or might not be present – with a constant shifting in behaviour or expectation in response. The deadliness here relates to what we do in response to this condition. Recognising our condition ought to bring us to a place like this one, now, on a regular basis. (Weekly, for example!)

Light interest in our condition, however, is what we should take with us when we leave. For we gather in this way each week to hear and to see in what way our lives are like the third slave in the story, and to be shown what God will do to and for us – all of which is good, regardless of our condition.

Not surprisingly, what we should see and hear in Word and Sacrament is quite like the strange overlap of the absence and presence of God in the parable: our very humanity in Jesus, yet not ours but more human (if that were possible); a God on a cross; a future in the past of the resurrection; a life though death in baptism; a broken body giving rise to a whole one in the Eucharist. A God absently present.

This is the life of the first two slaves, which is the life to which we are called. Such a life takes its bearings not from our fleeting questions but from God’s demonstrated presence where he ought not to have been – in the cross – and demonstrated absence from where he was purported to have been – in the grip of the self-righteous who imagine that they know just where God is and have aligned themselves accordingly.

Our psalmist this morning put it thus: God is not an object in our world; God is our dwelling place, God as God is, and not as we imagine he ought to be.

The effect of this we have heard from Paul this morning (1 Corinthians 3.18-22), as he challenged the Corinthians in their confidence that they knew where to find God. The wrong kind of confidence divides the world up into places where God is and is not, into believers and non-believers. But if, Paul insists, God confuses wisdom and foolishness, and strength and weakness, by bring salvation through a crucified human being, then everything is God’s, and everything is ours.

For all things are yours, whether … the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Nothing can separate us from the loving presence of this God.

This is the gospel, given to become our lives, that we might live in the very joy of God.

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Pentecost 23
12/11/2017

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78
Matthew 25:1-13

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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So, which God is it to be?

All of life calls us into making choices — coming to decisions that mean eliminating other options. As I choose to go down this path I eliminate the possibility of following that one. In a world in which we are surrounded by possibilities choosing can become a daily chore — but always there have been the life decisions, the moment comes past which it can be too late.

The ancient people that Joshua led were faced with choices. They were living in the land among the Amorites. Each nation of people had its own collection of gods. Doubtless there were attractions in getting involved in different cults. It probably helped with diplomacy and trade — good for peaceful race relations, a shared understanding of each others’ culture — all good reasons for adopting a broad spectrum when it came to religion.

But Joshua pointed out to his constituency that there was a problem. Sure, it  was OK to get involved with the cults, but Joshua was to point out to the tribes that had come out of Egypt, you have to make a choice. You either serve Yahweh who rescued us from slavery or you choose the Amorite gods or the Egyptian ones our ancestors had come to know. And the choice is to be made today.

Joshua told them to put those gods away. It sounds like he was suggesting that they put them away in a cupboard as if they were things rather than deities – which is what they were – little household ornaments, family gods, idols.

You can begin to understand how difficult it must have been for the escaped slaves to change so radically their understanding of religion. They had been captive to a foreign power and were now living side by side with people whose gods were inventions of their own minds and who were the constructions of their own hands. Then Moses came along and announced that Yahweh was their God and, no, I’m sorry, I don’t have so much as a photograph of him to show you. But Yahweh is different from all other gods because he is known, not in the images that might be made for veneration or in make-believe stories of the fanciful activities in the invisible places where gods live. Yahweh is known by his saving activities for his people.

Is it any wonder when they were out in the desert and Moses had climbed up Mount Sinai and he had been gone such a while that they could only assume he wasn’t coming back. Moses was gone. God was gone. What were they to do? Of course they did what anyone would do under the circumstances. They made a cow so they would have something nice to worship.

It was not a straight forward choice that Joshua put before the people. ‘…choose you this day whom you shall serve…’, the family statues that can be put away in the cupboard, the things you made, or Yahweh, the God who made you and who is known, not by what he looks like but by what he does, and by what he calls us to do in his service.

It has to do with where we place our trust really — trust in the inventions of our own minds and the constructions of our own hands, or trust in the one who has made us at a word from his mind and who holds us in the hollow of his hand.

Joshua said, ‘who will you serve, as for me and my family, we will serve Yahweh.’ All the people knew how to respond. After all, this was like a political rally wasn’t it. Don’t you just go along with the man of the moment up front who is making the inspiring speeches?

But Joshua was not after a popularity vote for himself, nor lipservice for God. He wasn’t just asking a rhetorical question. Joshua said, ‘you are just saying that, you won’t be able to sustain your promise. You will slip away and get the little figures out of the cupboard again, then your faithlessness will be shown up and it will be too late.’ But the people said, ‘We’ll be good.’

Joshua was not asking a rhetorical question — not like the prison chaplain who was preaching on the parable we read from the gospel this morning. He concluded his sermon by asking, “What would you prefer, to be in the light with the bridegroom or out in the dark with the five foolish virgins?” The answer of his all male congregation was at variance with what he intended as the message for the day.

It was a great bachelor party.  But about midnight some of the guys left. The rest of us stayed till 3 am. just playing cards and telling stories. The wedding the next morning was at 10.  We dashed out to the car at 9:30 to get to the church in time to be ushers and groomsmen.  But the car wouldn’t start.  We’d left the lights on the night before.  No one seemed to be around to help us.  We called the church to get the other guys to come pick us up. “Sorry,”  they said.  “If we come to get you, we’ll all be late.  It’s better that some of us be here to cover the job than have all of us over there starting your car.”  Well, by the time we got there, the wedding was over.

I find this a very disturbing story. It is disturbing like Joshua’s story when he said that the people would give their service to God but they wouldn’t be able to sustain the promise and their lives would come seriously unstuck.

It is a disturbing story because it is told by the same Jesus who told us how open God’s love is, how accepting. This is the same Jesus who told the story of the workers called into the vineyard and the ones who started work late got the same pay as the ones who worked all day. The story is disturbing because there is a cut off time. Do I get a feeling that there is a cut of time to God’s graciousness? Is that why I’m disturbed? Where is the good news in this bit of the good news of Jesus Christ?

The good news is that all have been invited to the wedding. The good news is that God had brought all of his people out of slavery. The new age has begun and in God’s time his new creation will come to completion. We live in the waiting time, the time when you and I are called on to accept God’s invitation to be part of that kingdom and to participate in its new culture, which means being open to the guiding of the Spirit, of participating in Christ’s ministry of feeding the hungry, setting the oppressed free, healing the world’s brokenness. You and I are invited to participate in those Kingdom values and that is good news.

Joshua, the old cynic, he would say that we won’t be able to keep the pace — we’ll go back to trusting in our home made gods. Matthew reminds us that God’s timing is a whole lot longer than we might have hoped and that the completeness of the Kingdom has been a long time coming, but that its coming is in God’s time, not in our time. God is not waiting for us. If that were the case the time would never come when all of broken humanity and creation is healed and restored. Our hope is in God who is faithful, not in procrastinating humanity.

Choose this day and every day whom you will serve.

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All Saints
5/11/2017

Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Howard Wallace

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Today we celebrate All Saints Day. Actually it was last Wednesday, 1 November, but we celebrate it today, the nearest Sunday after.

In Catholic Churches today is a day of celebration in particular for those deemed to have attained ‘beatific vision’ – ultimate direct communion with God in heaven. It is a national holiday in some Catholic countries. In many places the day is one for people to visit the graves of their relatives, lay wreaths and light candles.

Some of the traditions attached to All Saints Day can be dated back to the 8^th century, for example the date on which we celebrate the feast, 1 November. But the idea itself and other associations could be much older.

While All Saints Day is often associated with people of faith of the past, Protestant tradition especially has brought a present aspect to the celebration with the idea that all of the faithful, the dead and alive, the past and the present, are saints. So the celebration of All Saints Day is not only a remembrance of those of renown who have gone before us, but a celebration of all the faithful, dead or alive, of the present community or one of the many of the past.

This idea of a broader definition of saints is not strictly a Protestant innovation. The idea is present to an extent in Catholic thought and the idea that those in heaven as well as those on earth constitute God’s saints can be traced back even to the Book of Daniel. Nevertheless, the emphasis in many Protestant denominations has been on a more democratic notion of sainthood.

But as we think of All Saints Day this day, I wonder whether the real concern for the church, given our context, is not so much on the celebration of faithful lives of the past or the present, but on where and how will such faithful lives arise in the future?

The story from the Book of Joshua today is concerned with an issue pertinent to our celebration of All Saints Day within our present context. It is the question of the certainty and continuity of faith in times of change.

The leadership of the people of Israel as it moves from Egypt toward the promised land has just passed from Moses to Joshua. God says to Joshua at the start of the reading today that he will exalt him, not just to promote this new leader himself, but in order that the people may know that God is with him and them, just as God was with Moses (v.7). It seems that the purpose of leadership in that community of faith, and by implication the key point about belonging to the community, was knowing that God is ‘with us’. It had to do with the awareness of the presence of God in the midst of life’s experiences.

This point is driven home by the writers of the Book of Joshua again and again. They stress at the start of today’s reading but also earlier in the book that God is with Joshua in a direct way, even as God was with Moses directly. Indirectly God is seen to be with the people still in the fact that the description of the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land strongly parallels the account of the crossing of the Reed Sea as Israel left Egypt. The land Joshua leads the people into is the very land which was promised to Moses. And earlier in the book, Joshua had been called to act in accord with the law Moses had commanded him and the others (Josh 1:7). Moses’s law was to be the foundation of Joshua’s activity and leadership.

This stress on continuity is not an end in itself, nor is it there just to underline the future success of the larger enterprise. Rather it is a symbol of the continuity of the presence of God with the people. That very presence has been the subject of many passages regarding Israel’s wandering through the wilderness. The people have questioned it when they hungered or were thirsty; Moses himself doubted it at time and even wanted assurance of it late in Israel’s sojourn at Mt Sinai.

It was the thing that was essential for the people’s liberation from the powers of Egypt. It was the thing that was essential for their survival in the wilderness. And now it would be the essential thing in their taking hold of God’s promise to them.

But as with Moses, so it was now with Joshua. Moses’s leadership had not been a matter of whether Moses knew the Lord, but that the Lord knew him and was present with him. So it was too with the people. It would not ultimately be their faithfulness that mattered on their journey but rather the faithful presence of God with them.

The repetition of the statement of God’s presence with the people in today’s reading and other passages around this story stresses that God journeys with the people from start to finish. Indeed it is God’s presence that is the guarantor of the completion of the whole exercise.

But while there is this promise of presence and completion in the text there is also a warning. A warning that the hardship of the wilderness journey – the doubt, the difficulty and even the disobedience that has plagued them – will still be with them as they enter the land. The life of faith (so often described as a journey even in our Basis of Union), is one where beginning and end are inextricably linked; where release from captivity of whatever form at the start is bound to promised liberty in the end. The promised hope of a life of faith is foreshadowed, embodied, in the journey itself. Our Christian pilgrimage already embodies its promised end. And the presence of God toward which we move, that ‘beatific vision of the saints’, the thing for which we all long, is already with us on the way, the guarantor of the fulfilment of our personal life of faith, of the life of the church, indeed of the whole of creation.

As we celebrate All Saints Day today we do not just remember God’s faithful people of the past or of the present. We celebrate the presence of God with them as well as with us – a presence that transcends the limitations of this earthly life, the doubts, the difficulties and even the indiscretions we commit along the way. It is a presence that transcends even our uncertainties about the future of our community of faith. If there are to be saints in the future it will be because God will continue to be with us and them. Our task is to maintain that tradition of presence even in the face of doubt and to continue to open ourselves up to that saving and sanctifying presence in our lives. Amen