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Lent 5
6/4/2025

Philippians 3:4b-14
Psalm 126
John 12:1-8

Sermon preached by Andrew Gador-Whyte

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I don’t need to remind you that we are living in a fairly grim time for political discourse. There have always been political shouting matches and claims to moral superiority. But what’s somewhat different at present is the degree to which political voices are pursuing moral certainty over and against the other, and the violence we have witnessed in that. It’s the level of incommensurability of our political identities. Incommensurable, that is to say, unable to be at the same table.

Nothing is gained by engaging in platitudes, by telling each other to grow up and start talking. We’re in deeper mire than that, we are living from different premises, we are locked in something we cannot get ourselves out of by our own efforts.

We in the church are implicated in this seeming disintegration of a common language. And yet, we are the Body of Christ. That is, we are people belonging to this world whose life together is to be a sign of God’s kingdom coming into being in exactly this kind of world. A world that has been pursuing a righteousness of its own at the expense of trust. And a world in need of a joy that can only be created in it by confrontation with the Other. In confrontation with One who suffers at its hands and in solidarity with it.

In Philippians, Paul is encouraging his community at a time of their suffering and his imprisonment. Others might see these things as a sign of failure. But for Paul, it’s even possible to see their suffering and his imprisonment as a sign of their belonging in the Body of Christ, their fidelity to their vocation, and their solidarity with the Crucified one.

And through imitation of Jesus Christ, through solidarity with him, and by means of his love that the Spirit creates in us, it is even possible that their lives may come to be marked by joy – a joy that not even imprisonment or state-sanctioned violence can take from them.

The joy Paul is speaking about it is the fruit of relationships and consciences ordered towards self-giving, the fruit of minds formed by the serving logic of the Crucified.

Life in community as the Body of Christ means having our faculties of reason and logic radically reoriented by confrontation with the Crucified God. Paul has described this as the Mind of Christ, something that is to characterise the community as a whole. And by grace, and through our relationships, we are enabled to grow in virtue – in purity of intentions, in responsibility to our neighbour, in absolute commitment to the world Christ has redeemed.

In Philippians, some in the community seem to be seeking circumcision. In a predominantly Gentile community in a Roman colony, it might have been about seeking the legal protections afforded to Judaism in the Empire.

Whatever the reason, for Paul, Gentiles seeking circumcision represents a kind of failure of trust. It seems to represent a search for moral certainty and moral achievement. And for Paul, this confidence in our own moral security is at the expense of learning to live with confidence in Jesus Christ.

Paul contrasts seeking this confidence in the flesh, this ‘righteousness of my own’, with a confidence in our belonging in Christ. This is our confidence that the Crucified continues to identify with us in his resurrection life.

What we strive for, like the athlete in Paul’s metaphor, is a life of knowing Jesus and imitating Jesus. Because we trust God has been adopted us, we no longer need to try to prove our worth: to ourselves, to our neighbour, to God.

Whenever we try to prove our moral worth, there are always vertical and horizontal implications. From a vertical point of view I am failing to trust God’s unconditioned desire to accept us. From a horizontal point of view, because I have set up a standard of right I need to prove to myself, I also end up judging or excluding my neighbour.

To know Christ is to accept my neighbour as accepted by Christ, not because of her moral goodness. To know Christ is to accept myself as one incorporated into this community despite my moral failing.

To strive towards this goal is to seek a renewed life of obedience and holiness, a life of serving the Crucified One in the world, in our neighbour. But there is no longer anything ‘behind’ our strivings. What we strive for is to know Christ in eternity: the prize is only Christ.

Life in the Body of Christ is a growing into solidarity with the suffering Christ, whom we also recognise in the suffering of our neighbour. Our baptised life together is a life of learning to trace the way to Golgotha liturgically with our own steps. And we do so always in the knowledge that our fidelity can become a hospitality to the stranger. God enables our lives to be an invitation to the stranger to join in to that liturgical procession.

The motivation we are all in the process of unlearning is the desire for moral security over and against our neighbour. The motivation we are all beginning to learn, in imitation of Christ and one another, is joy.

Joy is the simplicity of acting in response to an encounter with the living Christ. Joy is living in the knowledge that the Crucified one has returned to us in forgiveness. There is no absolute moral certainty to be found here, no certainty that we have acted rightly and not been found wanting. The joy that animates our life together is only the certainty of faith, the certainty that Christ is in our midst and does not refuse to eat with us.

Joy is being confronted by the forgiving victim who calls us by name. It is the joy of first being forgiven, and that forgiveness then illuminates how we have spent a lot of our lives trying ‘to be right’.

When Mary anoints Jesus’ feet, she does so out of joy in the unconditioned love of God, who in Jesus has borne her sorrow at her brother’s death and raised her brother to life. In reply to Judas’ outrage, Jesus doesn’t provide a moral justification at all. What Jesus recognises in her is an authoritative response of joy, a joy that has been created in her by the Other’s love. The logic of her action is not moral, but rather, liturgical.

As the Body of Christ, we are given as bread for a hungry world, and what this means is that our life together can be a hospitality to a world that does not always recognise its hunger. We are invited to be formed in a life of service, unselfish prayer and discipline, action in solidarity with Christ in the world. And we take up that invitation, in order that our life together may begin to create space for those outside also to be pierced by an encounter with the risen Crucified One.

We strive to know Christ, in order that our life together may reveal to others that they are invited into the freedom of trusting Jesus, and reveal to them how much they too have been living out of a desire to be right.

And our city, our culture is in dire need of this kind of joy. We have to be willing to offer this city and this world that kind of hospitality. The Eucharist places us in a new solidarity with those with whom we simply cannot agree to disagree. Our ordinary refusal to divide the table despite our conflicts can be an example, an invitation, and an act of hospitality to this kind of world.

At this table we can trust Christ to mediate between us, to make us audible to one another. Here Jesus places us in solidarity with the stranger, even the enemy, the peace we cannot create for ourselves. Here we can become the kind of people who anoint the feet of our ideological enemies, the kind of people who welcome the other as though welcoming Jesus Christ. And Christ enables this difficult solidarity to be an act of solidarity with him in his sufferings, and a sign of his resurrection life in our midst. Amen.

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Lent 4
30/3/2025

Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
Psalm 32

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Let us imagine that I owe EEEE $10,000, and that I’m happy about this – partly because I needed the money, and partly because I know what I now need to do, and can do, which is pay back the loan. And, in due time, I repay EEEE according to our agreement – at a very fair interest rate – and we are done. This is what an “economy of exchange” looks like – a simple engagement in which “this” is exchanged for “that”, obligations are met, and we both know that the transaction has come to its end.

Now imagine that NNNN gives me $10,000. I’m now very happy, because he doesn’t want repayment; this is a real gift and he just wants me to enjoy it. And I do enjoy it.

A week later, I bump into NNNN at café when we both front up for our morning coffee. And he is his normal friendly self, acting as if nothing has happened. But I wonder to myself, Should I offer to buy his coffee for him? After all, $10,000… And so I do offer, but he smiles and refuses. He pays for himself, takes his coffee and goes his way. And I think, What was all that about? Should I have insisted? Was he testing me?

I worry about this, because I am an exchange economy cynic. I know how these things really work.

A week or so later, I notice that NNNN is talking with EEEE at a table in the café, but he happened to be looking at me just as I saw him. And he smiles and turns back to his conversation. But I wonder, Why is he looking at me? What’s with that smile? Does he want something? Are those two comparing notes on their $10,000 loan and gift? I’m now feeling quite unsure about where I stand.

A week later again, NNNN and I pass each other in the supermarket, and he smiles again and says Hi, and continues to where he was going.

And now you’re really starting to freak me out, man. What do you want? And why are you everywhere I go? What can I do to get you off my back? It was so much easier with EEEE. I knew where I stood. I knew what I had to do. And it’s over. I don’t owe her anything. But NNNN… Will you please stop smiling at me?

What we’ve been imagining here reveals something of the difference between an economy of exchange and an economy of gift, and this is interesting because Jesus’ parable of the man and his two sons splashes around in this difference.

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands. ”

The Prodigal invokes the “economy of exchange”. He realises that he might be able to trade his labour for food and shelter in his father’s house. Of course, we all know how the story unfolds: before the exchange can even be proposed, the father enacts the economy of gift, and receives the son back with open arms. And so we’ve become accustomed to speaking here of the father’s “forgiveness” of his son and to extend this allegorically to a word about divine “grace”. This, then, becomes grounds for celebration and the singing of doxologies or whatever – on the presumption that the parable tells us God can do the same for us.

But perhaps we celebrate too loudly, too quickly.

Because grace is harder than it seems. We might not notice this because the difficulty of grace kicks in at just the point where the parable ends, a problem which has to do with what it is like for those of us who live in economies of exchange to shift to life in a gift economy. That shift is not easy.

The economy of exchange is straightforward. We know where we stand. It might be uncomfortable sometimes, if I don’t have enough to trade or to pay my debts. But it is clear where I stand. I know it, and you know it. And we can usually “work something out” if I can’t pay my way. “Tell you what, Dad, how about I serve as one of your hired hands? ”

But the economy of gift is a different matter. You don’t know what to do next. What does God want? By which we mean, what is the “then” which follows from God’s gift, God’s grace understood as having an “if” – if I forgive you, “then”… What do we exchange for salvation?

Good Protestants that we are, we know the answer here is “nothing”; this is what grace means.

But what we do next often contradicts this. While we celebrate God’s gracious gathering of us home, we then return to the graceless economy of exchange, back to salvation by works. We imagine that the Prodigal must now get up early the next day and drudge out to work with his older brother. This is the payment for his forgiveness, because forgiveness has now become the possibility that he who previously did not impress God might now be more impressive. The forgiven Prodigal cannot sleep-in the next day, because that would hardly be impressive in view of the gift he has received.

In this way, we turn grace into something like the “reset” button on a video game. Each time we play, we get a little further into the game but fail, and then reset and start again, and again, and again – O Glorious Reset Button, Gracious Source of New Life – until finally we can get all the way through the game and no longer need the reset button.

Grace now becomes what we rely upon until such time as we hear God’s “Well done, good and faithful servant”, now having impressed God all “on my own”.

But the gospel is not that God has a reset button by which we are made loveable again, and by which we might once more try to prove ourselves to be loveable. The gospel is that we do not need a reset because God doesn’t need one, because God’s love for us is not the result of what we do – not the result of what we do. And so, in astonishment, and in fear and trembling, we are made to declare the impossible: we do not need a reset button, because it does not matter what the recipients of grace do.

It. Does. Not. Matter. What. We. Do.

It does not matter in the sense tha, while it might be clear what the wrong thing to do is, it is not clear what the “right” thing is

But what then does faithfulness – the next thing we do – actually look like if indeed God’s grace is truly unconditional? More to the point – to acknowledge the anxiety grace can bring – how can I justify what I do as a forgiven person, if God has not stipulated a condition or two I can point to?

And this brings us to the problem with grace. If it doesn’t matter what we do, we have to guess what to do next, because there are no conditions to grace. There is no “now you must” which follows from God’s “I forgive”, because there is not “then” which follows God’s “if”, because there is there is no “if” with this God.

For those of us who just want to know what we should be doing in exchange-economy mode, this is an almost terrifying freedom. We have to decide. We have to take a risk. For the most part, we prefer to be like craftspeople who know the proven methods and techniques of our craft and simply apply them in some new situation: if this type of wood, then that kind of cut; if this colour thread, then that place in the weave. “If, then; if, then; if, then”. No risk.

But grace transforms us from mere craftspeople into artists who create things which even God hasn’t imagined, regardless of the wood, the thread, or the circumstances. In a gift economy, nothing is determined before it happens: there is no “should”. And so, our “works” of righteousness become more like experiments in righteousness, or even just play; our speech becomes more like poetry; and so our actions become a most unexpected raising of the dead.

And this is why NNNN keeps smiling at me. He’s not messing with me, not wondering whether I know what he expects me to do with his gift. Rather, he’s wondering himself what I’m going to do with it, because he doesn’t know: there was no condition attached to the gift, there was no specific obedience upon which the gift rested. What happens next is – by the grace of NNNN – up to me.

But NNNN does know – as God does – that if I have received his gift as a true gift – if I have understood God’s grace – then I could do anything with it, because it doesn’t matter what happens next, because what happens next cannot change the fact that

neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor stupidity, nor laziness, nor miscalculation,
nor anything else in all creation,
is able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus the Gift.

Upon this affirmation rests the strange, disorienting freedom of the children of God. The shape of faithfulness to the gift of God is not prescribed because faithfulness is freedom itself.

God says to you, Child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. (15. 31)

It is all gift.

Let us see, then, what surprising thing we can do with that.

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Lent 3
23/3/2025

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63
Luke 13:1-9

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In an online article this week, the Ethics Centre’s Simon Longstaff remarked upon a couple of the more cynical modes of political self-promotion available to our parliamentary representatives. These are appeals to the voter’s self-interest though either fear or greed.

Of these, greed is probably the less effective, perhaps not least because most voters are doing reasonably well already, or because we’re less confident that politicians are reliably able to tweak the economy in our favour.

But fear can work very well. “Vote for me, and I will protect you from… [insert deep fear here]” – asylum seekers, woke city millennials, housing density increases in your area, fluoride in your drinking water, or whatever. Protection from threats like this – if “protection” is the right word – are often possible with the stroke of pen; observe the political style of a particular president across the Pacific.

Vote for me, and I will keep you safe. This works, to the extent that there is sufficient fear in the electorate.

The interesting thing about this political method for our thinking this morning is how close it seems to what Jesus says in today’s gospel reading. After hearing of a couple of local political and natural disasters, Jesus remarks – Do you think your prospects are any better? “I tell you…unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”. This sounds more than a little like, Unless you vote for me, you’re all going to die.

Certainly, many Christians have read such texts in just this way – whether in fear for their own well-being or as a weapon with which to threaten others. The proverbial fatal encounter with a bus after leaving the evangelistic meeting comes to mind: what will happen to your soul if you are run over by a bus on leaving today, unrepentant?! Jesus looks here like he might have made a pretty good politician of the cynical type.

And yet, even if this is what Jesus does mean here – or what Luke thinks he means – the Scriptures know more broadly that the promise will not be honoured. The books of Job and Ecclesiastes are not persuaded that goodness amounts to long and prosperous life. But even more central to Christian faith is the problem of Jesus’ own experience, because he himself suffers what is described in this troubling little text: his blood is “mixed” with his sacrifice when upon him falls all the towering weight of religious and political opposition.

This is to say that the “unless” – unless you repent – and the “perish as they did” cannot mean that simply repenting will see these threats resolved. And so “repent” must be less straightforward than simply “confessing all my bad stuff”, and “perish as they did” is much less straightforward than just dying young.

The problem with the politics of fear – and the religion of fear – is that it fights fire with fire, leaving us only with … fire – the fire of fear.

To relate to anything in the mode of fear is always to be fearful of that thing, even as we imagine ourselves to be protected from it. If we truly fear the judgement of God, then we will wonder whether everything we have done to protect ourselves is yet enough. This is because the protection is precisely what we ourselves have constructed, and it will likely be about as reliable as the kinds of protections many of our politicians promise us. To hear that we should repent is fine, but have I repented of everything which matters? Have I missed something? What if God really knows me better than I know myself? – surely a truly terrifying thought here, if I believe what Jesus says. How can I repent of what God knows but I do not?

And so, on the simplest – and probably most common – reading, our text today should strike horror into everyone who takes it seriously. Who could possibly be saved? Who could be confident that they repented of everything? The fear of God which demands repentance creates the fear that I have not repented enough, not repented of everything I should have. And so the fear of God begets the fear of God. There is nothing liberating or good-news-y about this.

How then could what Jesus says here be true? What could repentance mean, which makes sense of the fact that righteousness does not prevent suffering, but also calls us to a new, deeper, richer experience of ourselves and of God?

The thing of which we should repent is fear itself. It is fear the crowds bring to Jesus – Did you hear what Pilate did to those poor people? Did you hear about everyone crushed under the tower? And Jesus affirms their worst fear – that this is unpredictable, that they are no different from the others who got up in the morning and launched into their normal day but didn’t come home that night.

So, when Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you will perish as they did”, he cannot mean “Such things do not happen to the faithful”. For such things will happen even to Jesus himself, whom we see as the definition of faithfulness.

Rather, fear itself is the problem – the fear with which the crowds told the story, and so the fear by which they defined their place in the world. The possibility of dying “as they did” is not the possibility of dying early, but of dying under the cloud of the fear of death – of its unpredictability, its capriciousness, its finality.

And so, “Unless you repent, you will perish as they did” is not about how we might die; it is about how we are living. The right kind of “fear” of God does not keep death at bay, but it does keep death in its place. The right kind of “fear” of God refuses to live under the shadow of death, or any of death’s many friends. When Jesus says here “repent”, it is a call to repentance of a way of living which imagines that our lives are just about us – that our longevity is our importance. And so he calls us to repent of the fear which separates and isolates, to repent of the fear which causes us to judge others, to repent of the fear of judgement by others. These are the fears which a cynical leader magnifies and manipulates.

None of this is to say that we should not respect what is dangerous. Many who die young do so because they are foolish – which is to say, disrespectful of how the world usually works.

And neither does this soften what Jesus puts to the people in the text today. The fearless life is a difficult one, more so than any mere moral repentance we might make to try to keep God (and death) at bay. Our fears can be a kind of comfort to us because we are able to take control to protect ourselves from them, whether by building bigger walls or by trading with the powers which threaten us, so they’ll leave us alone.

Last week I finished the sermon with a passage from Matthew’s gospel, in which Jesus tells the people to “consider the lilies”. I didn’t prepare today’s reflection with that passage in mind, but it seems pertinent again, only today here it is in Luke’s variation on the same teaching:

²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ²⁸ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! ²⁹ And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. ³⁰ For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹ Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

³² ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³ Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

How we perish is not the question. The question is, how we live.

Unless we repent of the fears which constrain us, our living will be just a kind of continuous perishing: to live captive to the fear of death is to imagine that, in the end, God is death, that death is God.

But for those who live without fear, their death just happens to be the last thing they do. To recall from St Paul: “If we live, we live [in] in the Lord; if we die, we die [in] the Lord. So we whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Romans 14.8).

So, lift up your hearts, Jesus says. And live.

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Lent 2
16/3/2025

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Matthew 6:25-34

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[NOTE: Throughout, ‘Abraham’ is used for ‘Abram’ in the Genesis text].

It is surely a very strange text we have this morning from the book of Genesis.

It is also, of course, a crucial text – not only for the scriptural narrative but for what is happening in the world even today. (No small part of the events in the Holy Land over the last couple of years springs directly from what is said in our reading today from Genesis.)

I want to focus this morning just on the strangeness of the first promise about a great number of descendants, hoping to draw out not simply how unfamiliar to modern minds is the action in the story but how – that foreignness aside – there is a deeper strangeness which might speak to our sense of who and where we are, even now.

The text begins with the promise that God will be Abraham’s shield, and that his reward will be very great. This sounds pretty good, we might suppose, and so it’s perhaps a little surprising that Abraham responds with a question about the viability of his family tree. So far as he is concerned, that can be no shield or no reward while he remains childless. Or rather, the shield-and-reward Abraham looks for is precisely that he have descendants. The promise which God makes then is not a promise in relation to any passing personal crisis which needs to be fixed but the promise of a family which, for the most part, Abraham will not see.

God, then, restates the promise in terms of descendants numbered like the stars. This seems to satisfy the old man, and he ‘believes’. The strangeness here is that I suspect there are few of us who would be satisfied that God had given us a significant gift if it were possible that we ourselves might not even see that gift realised. How could the promise of such an extension of Abraham’s line into the future be the promise of a ‘shield’ and a ‘great reward’?

And so we might wonder: if the promise of descendants is Abraham’s shield here and now, what is the thing from which he must be shielded? If our protection is a future we will not see, what is it this future protects us against, here and now?

It might be enough for us right now not even to know the answer to this question as it relates to Abraham, but simply to see how different it is from our usual thoughts about what we think would constitute a shield or a reward for us here and now. Our personal and joint political lives are filled with desires for shields, and expectations of rewards, very few of which would be met with the promise of great-great-great grandchildren. That is, we don’t want God’s promises to come tomorrow, but today.

Yet this is exactly not what God promises Abraham.

And so we have to ask: if this is the divine order of things – if God’s sense for what we need is located in tomorrow and not in today – how are our deepest desires for today wrong?

It’s a bit scary, really – that we might be wrong about what we need. Though I don’t want to dig too deeply into the promise of the land given in today’s reading, it’s worth noting that the guarantee of the land promise is given to Abraham in a deep sleep, within which descends a ‘deep and terrifying darkness’. This is not just a cheery ‘it’s all going to work out OK in the end’. The thing God is going to do is like darkness to our sense of what is light – and this is shocking.

Again, we might wonder: if God’s promise is the answer to the question Abraham imagines matters, what is the question? Because the answer doesn’t make sense, given our normal questions. What is wrong with our questions given that God’s answer to Abraham would not impress us?

I don’t think I can answer the question about the right question(!) today in a way which will satisfy even myself, let alone you, unless – perhaps – it is simply this: that we are probably worried about the wrong things. Our questions don’t accord with God’s answers, with God’s gift.

The exception to this is Abraham himself. When the text tells us that Abraham ‘believed God’, the point is not at all about credulity or even pious trust; Abraham believes because the promise is true both to himself and to God. Abraham and God are both bound and set free by the future-located promise.

To fill this out a bit, we should recall that, in addition to the importance of the promised descendants and the gift of the land for the biblical story, this Genesis text also features in St Paul’s account of faith and justification by grace apart from moral works. That ‘Abraham believed and God counted this as righteousness’ became a central text for Paul’s attempt to speak of God’s freedom and the freedom of the children of God.

But Paul is not interested here in credulity – in the fact that Abraham simply believes whatever God says, as if the promise of countless descendants were not much different from the promise of an eternally re-filling packet of Tim Tams, and suggesting that if God had promised that Abraham would also have believed it.

Rather, God’s promise of the descendants means this: even long after you have gone, Abraham, I’ll still be there. But you will be present to me in my faithfulness to your descendants, in my remembering of my promise.

To be justified by grace in Paul’s sense is just this: that, before God, we stand on nothing but that God remembers us. This is our end, and it is what Abraham believes.

But if we believe with Abraham that this is our end, then it is also where we begin. We start with the promise that we are the memory of God’s promise to Abraham, and that there will be yet others by whom God remembers us.

All of this is to say that the whole thing – everything we thing we are caught up in and worrying about and working towards – it’s not really about us – not in the anxious way that we tend to experience it. “Abraham, your shield is not only that you will have more descendants than you could ever count, but more than you will ever count. But I will count them for you, and this will be your reward? It’s not just about you.”

And so for us, too: it’s not just about us.

This, of course, seems like bad news: like a deep and terrifying darkness, as if the light of God’s gaze is turned away from us to someplace, someone, else.

But it is in fact good news. It doesn’t render us irrelevant but free. This is because the story – the great story of which we are part – is now not our problem to finish or resolve. Our role in the story is now less to strive than it is to play; less to calculate than to experiment; less to work than to pray – whether in words or actions.

^{Matthew 6.25} ’Therefore I tell you, [JESUS SAYS] do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸ And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³² For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

This is what it means to believe: not to believe that God ‘exists’ but to believe that even when we no longer exist, it matters that we did, and matters to God, and in this is the glory in which we are clothed.

“Look toward heaven and count the stars”, God says. “This is the measure of my love for you.”

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Lent 1
9/3/2025

Deuteronomy 26:5b-11
Psalm 91
Luke 4:1-13

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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Deciding good from bad can be so hard, especially when bad can actually look very good. The idea of providing food for all people so that no one need go hungry seems pretty good to me. Having all the powers of the nations given into the hands of a truly good and godly person also seems pretty good. Using whatever means that might be possible to prove the goodness and the power of such a person seems good and sensible too. When we consider that this good man is Jesus there is much to be said in favour of these ways of accomplishing the good of all. Make sure all people are fed – make stones into bread. There are plenty of stones. They would make plenty of bread. This would satisfy the personal needs of the people.

Having the rulers of the world acknowledging the authority of Jesus as King of all people would solve the world’s political problems. Shows of supernatural power would coerce people to believe in Jesus and that would solve the religious problems. Are these not good things? Apparently not, and how would one know?

The simple answer in the case of Jesus in the wilderness might be that Luke tells us that Jesus was tempted by the devil. Quite simply any suggestion by the devil must be ipso facto bad. But of course, talk about the devil presents a particular problem to our modern minds. The personification of evil in a character that can be seen and heard and touched is quite alien to us. It is not our experience. It seems to me that in the terms I have just described such a devil was not Jesus’ experience either. I am not saying that the devil doesn’t exist or that Jesus didn’t have an encounter with the devil. I am saying that the gospel writers wrote of evil in the form a the devil because by doing so they were able to speak into the mind set of their day and overcome all kinds of difficulties that are encountered if you try to explain the events of Jesus in the wilderness in other ways. For starters a conversation between Jesus and the devil makes it clear that Jesus was not dealing with any idea of evil in himself. Promptings to do what is wrong come from beyond Jesus in the gospel writers’ scheme of things.

I think, before I say another word, I had better clear up this business about the devil or Satan. I said a moment ago, ‘I am not saying the devil doesn’t exist.’ Was I therefore saying that the devil does exist? Scripture deals with the presence of evil in different ways. Sometimes it is personified in a devil, in demons, in Satan, in a powerful angel gone wrong, cosmic power, powerful forces set against the will of God. What it all adds up to is that the bible agrees that there are forces within us and around us that are in opposition to love, health, wholeness and peace – against those things God is in favour of.

I am writing quite a long list of questions to ask St Peter at the pearly gate when I get there, and one of them is about how evil is present in the world, but at this stage of my journey I am inclined to go along with scripture, not in terms of a devil but certainly in terms of forces within and beyond human beings that are in opposition to God’s plans for love and wholeness and peace.

For me, therefore, Jesus’ time of trial in the wilderness was a confrontation with that power of opposition. The thing about that power is that it is dressed so respectably – more like a blue suit and red tie than battle fatigues. If there were a personification of evil in the devil I do not think he would be distinguished by horns or a pointing tail. I think he would be as respectable as you and me, and thoroughly pleasant besides. It is one of the most sinister things about evil – it is so reasonable. The choices Jesus is given are not obviously evil. They are not even selfish. They represent choices that should give good things to people. They are even backed up with texts from Scripture. They must be good. Evil is not playing fair when it dresses up as if it is good. That is particularly sinister.

Another aspect of this story of Jesus making his decisions about his ministry is that the suggestions made by the devil are the only suggestions before Jesus. He hasn’t got a set of plans from Satan on the one hand and another package of ideas for ministry from God on the other. To make matters worse Jesus is in the wilderness with and by the Holy Spirit. Our reading began, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,… God and evil are there with Jesus and the devil is the only one coming up with the ideas. Jesus returns from the desert with the articulated ideas for how he will conduct his ministry all rejected. The ideas of the evil one are cast aside. The devil leaves Jesus, but Luke says that evil has not left forever. He says that the devil would wait for an opportune time.

Jesus comes away from his forty-day temptation in the wilderness knowing what not to do. We have no indication of a plan. The only thing that emerges as the story unfolds is that the way of God for Jesus would be the way of the cross. His way ahead is lit, but with a poor light. I interviewed a candidate for the ministry once. I asked how she would tackle the issues that faced her down the track. She said that the Lord was a lamp to her feet and light to her path but he only ever showed where the next step would be. That for me was a wonderful statement of trust. Jesus was left with the same need of trust. So are we.

We can’t even come up with definitive answers to the questions of what is right and what is wrong. We don’t really know how to plan for the best for our children. We can’t be certain if this or that choice is God’s way or if it is evil dressed up as good complete with Scriptural warrants.

We can know that Jesus knows the dilemmas we face. His temptations were greater than ours. Not only that, but temptation is not a time when God is far away. ‘Filled with the Holy Spirit the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness.’ For whatever reason our alone times are spirit filled times. (That is not to say that we can have lonely times when God seems far away. I want to distinguish between lonely times and alone times.) So it is that Christian people have learned to come away from their wilderness experiences, not so much with questions answered as with faith enriched – being prepared to walk with God again and to trust, one step at a time.

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Epiphany 4
2/2/2025

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71
Luke 4:21-30

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Does the prayer of our psalmist this morning make any sense?

It is a prayer for protection, that God be a “rock of refuge, a strong fortress”.  This much seems straightforward; those in need reach out, and God is often such a resort. And yet we might imagine that if God were able to become such a fortress, and if – as he testifies – God has been the poet’s hope and trust since the days of his youth (vv6f), then why is there a problem in the first place? Has God failed to keep up what would seem to be his end of the deal?

There is at least a tension here, and perhaps it’s even worse than this. The poet isn’t in the throes of what we might call “general” suffering – illness or infirmity, poverty, a broken heart, or any such thing which even his persecutors might suffer at times. His suffering is specifically that which arises from the life lived according to the call of God. It would seem to be his own very faithfulness which has seen these hard times visited upon him. Later in the psalm (v20), he even “blames” God for what has happened, addressing God as, “you who have made me see many troubles and calamities.”

Taking seriously the things the psalm sets alongside each other, there emerges what is, perhaps, an unexpected account of what it means to live faithfully, and to pray. The psalm contradicts the simplistic notion that the faithful always have a good time of it. The faith of the poet here cannot be cast as a last resort for some kind of protection from the ills of the world, a kind of vaccine we take in order to ward off evil. Quite to the contrary, the prayer of the psalmist suggests that faith might actually be the thing which causes suffering for the believer – at least the kind of suffering that the poet experiences. For the “troubles and calamities” he experiences seem to be persecutions for what he believes in the first place. What he believes marks him somehow in the eyes of others. His faith marks him as different in what he will and will not do, in what he will and will not say, in what he looks to as a measure of truth. And this brings conflict in a world where the things of this particular God are rejected.

It’s common these days – within the church almost as much as without – to caricature Christian faith and prayer as a response to an experience of secular life. Believing is here something we do in order that our situation might be changed: we believe as a means to an end.

But, for the psalmist, it is what he already believes which has become the source of heartache for him, as it has become a focus for mockery (vv13,11). But this mockery is not for the poet a sign of God’s absence, but rather arises from the very presence of God in the poet’s life. And so, despite first appearances, there is no contradiction when the poet calls out to God for help. It is not that faith knows the presence and the absence of God, coming and going. It is that God’s presence is as much a problem as a solution.

And so the faith of the psalmist doesn’t come and go according to the circumstance. Faith is steady. It turns to God not simply because something has gone wrong, but because it has first known the “going right” which relationship to God has brought before. And so faith is no grasping at straws when all else has failed. Such a “faith” – so-called – does not know the God it longs for; it longs only for a change of circumstances and “hopes” that there might be a God who can bring this about.

But what distinguishes the psalmist’s hopeful faith from the simple wish for relief is the thing which will mark its arrival. Those who simply wish for change long only for a change of circumstance. It brings about in them no real change but the relief itself. And that is the end of the matter, until the next crisis arises.

But for faith which hopes for change – and so looks to a God it already knows as the agent of change – the outcome is marked not only by relief but by praise and thanksgiving which reflects a renewed experience of God’s faithfulness.

And so the poet finishes the psalm in a surprising way – not actually praising God yet but looking forward to the time of praising God:

²² I will also praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing praises to you with the lyre,
O Holy One of Israel.
²³ My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praises to you;
my soul also, which you have rescued.

The psalmist looks forward not only to his deliverance, but to the praise which will spring from his lips. For this deliverance will be something which marks a constancy in his life – a constancy which is God Godself. The psalmist’s life is structured not by the ups and downs, the ins and outs of human existence, but by God’s company along the way. His life is not simply a story of what happened to him, but a story within the story of God – a story within the call to trust God who is faithful. God’s love and faithfulness frame the psalmist’s experience in the bright times and in the dark ones. And so he does not simply suffer or celebrate according to the circumstances; he finds the call of God to be the way of understanding where he is, and what he is to be. In the good times, then, and in the bad, he continues to learn what it is to be a creature of this God, trusting in God’s promise to make peace of him and his circumstances.

And in the meantime, the poet gets on with the next thing which will be required if he is to remain faithful: the next word, or act, or prayer.

And this is God’s promise also to us. Though our experience of the world can feel harder because we believe, our faith itself is that God, and not anything other thing in the world, is finally to be trusted. And so we pray in confidence, trusting that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. With poet, we too will give thanks and praise, that this is indeed the case.

And, in the meantime, we too will get on which the next thing which faithfulness to a God like this requires: the next necessary word, or deed, or prayer.

Based on Epiphany 4C 2016

 

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Epiphany 2
19/1/2025

Isaiah 62:1-5
John 2:1-11

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

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The last time I led worship here we read the texts for All Saints Day, which included the raising of Lazarus from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary finishes at verse 44, but it’s actually the following verse which informs us about the purpose of the story: ‘Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.’  Scholars recognize this story as the seventh and final sign in the fourth gospel, which concludes the first half of John’s narrative, known as the ‘book of signs’, and leads into the second half, the so-called ‘book of glory’.

Today, we’ve heard the gospel narrative that John declares to be the first of Jesus’ signs.  As the church discovers during the season of Christmas, the Gospel according to John is deeply interested in exploring the meaning of Jesus through vivid images and metaphors.  The gospel opens with a prologue that recalls the creation story of God’s Spirit giving form to the void and God’s Word speaking light into darkness.  The prologue declares that the source and destiny of God’s creating is God’s Word, the Word which becomes flesh in Jesus Christ and dwells among us in glory, grace and truth to make God known.  Jesus is the form and light of God’s creating; the living one through whom all things came into being.

With the prologue having set the scene, the gospel then features the witness of John the Baptist: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared: ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’  The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed: ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God.’  The gospel then indicates that the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee, bringing us to the passage we’ve heard today, which begins:  ‘On the third day …’  Of course, this reference to the third day already anticipates something significant about how the life of the crucified Jesus is made available to the world.

In John, chapter 2, the third day is the occasion of a wedding in Cana, to which Jesus, his mother, and his newly called disciples are invited.  This wedding occurs in a culture in which it’s common to serve the good wine early, and replace it with poorer wine as guests become too drunk to notice the difference.  Good news perhaps for wedding hosts, since celebrations typically lasted several days.  And yet, inexplicably, on this occasion the supplies don’t last the distance, and we’re left wondering about the dismay and embarrassment of the hosts.  At this point, Mary informs Jesus that ‘they have no wine.’  To which he replies: ‘What concern is that to you and me?’

This seems like a fair response.  After all, it’s not his responsibility to cater for the wedding.  But Mary is anticipating something of far greater significance than this celebration.  And this is precisely what Jesus is thinking when he adds: ‘My hour has not yet come.’  This references a narrative thread that appears later in the gospel.  In chapter 7, some people attempt to arrest Jesus, but no one lays their hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.  In chapter 8, after proclaiming himself as the light of the world, he again avoids arrest, because his hour had not yet come.  Finally, in John chapter 12, Jesus declares that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Now we discover that the hour he speaks of to Mary is the hour in which he’s to be lifted up on a cross to draw all people to himself.

This explains his initial reluctance at the wedding banquet, which now hints at another significant theme we must explore.  In John chapter 3, the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom, and of himself as the bridegroom’s friend whose joy has been fulfilled.  Then in John chapter 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well, noting how she’s had five husbands and her current partner is not her husband.  Is Jesus being presented here as a groom, and if so, what is the identity of the bride and indeed the nature of the pending nuptials?  Those who know the Scriptures may recall the prophetic Hebrew imagery about God as a husband who courts Israel as a wife, or the eschatological imagery of the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19.

Which brings us back to Cana, as Mary advises the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.  At his command, they fill six stone jars to the brim with water, and then draw out wine of the finest quality.  These six stone jars set aside for the Jewish rites of purification had been empty, just like the wedding supplies, but now they contain the abundance of a new dispensation.  Jesus attends the wedding as guest, but then becomes host, the one who embodies the hospitality of God, deconstructing cultic demands as the water of the old covenant becomes the wine of the new, a new covenant sealed in his blood and signed in his cup.  His hour has not yet come, but he is anticipating a banquet set for all humanity.  The wedding celebration of an unknown and unnamed couple presents any and all moments in which eternity enters the mundane as a sign of God’s revelation and offer of life.

Our world is in the midst of precarious times:  deadly wildfires around Los Angeles hint at what’s to come as global temperatures rise; a tenuous cease fire in the horrific violence between Israel and Hamas; Donald Trump to be inaugured for a second time as President of the United States.  It remains to be seen how these events will play out, and the world will look like in four weeks, four months and four years.

What is certain, however, is the church’s faith and hope in the one whose glory is revealed in death, and whose life is the light of the world.  As bridegroom, Jesus recapitulates the prophetic promise to vindicate the forsaken and desolate, gathering them as a bride in whom the Lord rejoices and delights.  Here is the table of the Lord, a sign of the wedding feast in which all things are consumed in his honour and service.  Our Lord’s hour presses in on us.

Here, we are made welcome by hospitality that is not of this world.
Here, the Spirit of devotion shared between Father and Son is poured out upon us.
Here, the exhausted old wine is replaced by the water of life.
Here, we are fed by the bread of heaven and cup of eternal salvation.
Here, we receive what we are and become what we receive.
Here, we are enlivened by the Spirit to be the body of Christ.
Here, we are sent by Christ and with Christ into the world.

And now to the God of all grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ, be the dominion forever and ever.  Amen.

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Baptism of Jesus
12/1/2025

Acts 8:14-17
Psalm 29
Luke 3:15-22

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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The baptism of Jesus was a job lot. I know that sounds shocking but there it is, at least according to St Luke. Not only that but the celebrant at the baptism of Jesus may or may not have been John the Baptist. It probably was because John was the only known registered Baptist, but who knows, registers being as they were so long ago. John the writer of the gospel according to St John seems to have a clearer idea about the baptizing team. He says that Jesus and his disciples and John (the John we know as the Baptist) were baptizing out in the desert at Aenon near Salim because there was a lot of water there. John’s gospel does not have John baptizing Jesus. John’s gospel makes a clear distinction between water baptism as performed by John and holy spirit baptism as performed by Jesus. Sorry to bring up these anomalies but I find them interesting, so it is fun to inflict them on a captive audience. I promise to try to make sense of this later.

Today’s gospel is from Luke so let’s concentrate on him.

Luke says: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” (Luke 3:21-22)

Add to that the verse that precedes that statement where Jesus’ baptism is simply lumped with all the other baptisms. It looks like John was in prison at the time – “But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.” (Luke 3:19-20) John’s gospel disagrees with this. In that gospel the Baptist is not in prison yet.

With all this confusion the church through the ages has taken its lead from Mark and Matthew on this point. They are clear that John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. John was reluctant and only baptized him on Jesus’ insistence.

It is not unusual for various accounts of the same event to look different through different eyes and different politics and philosophies and theologies. But it looks to me as if all of them are grappling with an embarrassing issue for the early church. All the gospels agree that Jesus was baptized, although John leaves out the bit about water. The problem is that all agree that for the Baptizer, baptism was about repentance. Now, if the gospel professes that Christ was without sin and therefore had no need to repent, then, what was Jesus’ baptism about? That is a question for systematic theologians. My interest is how these accounts of Jesus’ baptism have had an impact on the church’s practice of baptism through the ages.

The main point of agreement between all the gospel writers regarding baptism is the bits about sin, water and Spirit. To deal with human sin each sinful person needs to do something about it. That is where repentance comes in. The person’s faith community needs to do something about it. That is where the water comes in. For any outcome to be effective, God needs to do something about it. That is where the Holy Spirit comes in.

From earliest accounts of the liturgical life of the church these components have been essential to the celebration of baptism. Ancient testimony tells of catechumens, converts who have undergone instruction in Christian teaching were baptized in a river on Easter Day. They repent then passed from one bank to the other but in the middle a deacon immersed each into the water three times in the name of the Holy Trinity. As they emerged on the other bank the bishop laid hands on their heads praying that they receive the Holy Spirit.

In time, as episcopal regions grew larger so that the bishop could not be on the bank of every river where deacons were performing their part of the ritual, the act of laying on of hands was delayed until the bishop could visit each local church under his charge.

The essentials of this ancient ceremony survive in baptismal liturgies today. Fonts and baptistries have symbolically brought the river into the church. The practice of infant baptism has moved and stretched the components of the ritual. Instead of instruction followed by water then laying on of hands it has been common in western denominations that practice infant baptism for the water followed by instruction then repentance and laying on of hands at confirmation. In episcopal churches the confirmation is still the prerogative of the bishop.

The laying on of hands can look like a bit of an add-on. Indeed, it is and always was. In Acts Luke maintains a strict separation between the water bits and the receiving the Holy Spirit bit. In Acts chapter 8 Peter and John visit a community that have been baptized but still need the Apostles to lay hands on them, so they receive the Holy Spirit. Paul came upon a similar issue in Ephesus in chapter 18. This clunky separation continues in modern church liturgies.

We have so few baptisms celebrated in our congregation we could be excused for being a bit hazy on how our liturgy is ordered. It runs like most western denominations. We do include a scriptural warrant. Our Reformed heritage demands this. Presbyterians didn’t do anything unless it was prescribed in scripture. The story of the wedding at Cana is read before a wedding. The institution of the Lord’s Supper would be read before the Great Thanksgiving, not included in the prayer. There are seven passages to choose from in the Uniting liturgy.

Then how do we represent the actions of the three players in this sacrament. If we are following the ancient traditions what does the baptismal candidate do, what does the faith community do, what does God do?

The candidate learns about the faith and repents. The congregation confesses the faith of the church reciting the Apostles’ Creed with the candidate and the minister pours water three times in the name of the blessed Trinity. God gives the Holy Spirit which is provided visual symbol by the laying on of hands on the candidate’s head.

All well and good, but how are we to know what these actions mean. The Uniting Church liturgy is particularly obliging in this regard. After the OK has been given by reading appropriate scripture about Jesus commanding the church to make disciples and baptize them, the minister reads a paragraph that is very helpfully called ‘the meaning of baptism’. I want to conclude by reading this statement, but please note that the statement does not duck away from the problem of why Jesus was baptized like I did. Our liturgy brings together all that I have tried to say in succinct and erudite way.

Baptism is Christ’s gift.
It is the sign by which the Spirit of God
joins people to Jesus Christ
and incorporates them into his body, the Church.

In his own baptism in the Jordan by John,
Jesus identified himself with humanity
in its brokenness and sin;
that baptism was completed in his death and resurrection.
By God’s grace,
baptism plunges us into the faith of Jesus Christ,
so that whatever is his may be called ours.
By water and the Spirit we are claimed as God’s own
and set free from the power of sin and death.

Thus, claimed by God
we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit
that we may live as witnesses to Jesus Christ,
share his ministry in the world and grow to maturity,
awaiting with hope the day of our Lord Jesus.

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Epiphany
5/1/2025

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

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

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Our order of service includes the poem “The Journey of the Magi” by T.S. Eliot. It is this poem rather than the story of the wise men in Matthew’s gospel that forms the text for this sermon. It is helpful for our reflection as it drags us away from the cosiness that cards and carols convey. Eliot takes us back to reality to reimagining the story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus in Bethlehem in the context of travel conditions unfamiliar to us and political intrigue that maybe all too familiar. It is worth noting that the poem begins with an adapted quote from a 1622 sermon by English bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Also worth noting is that Eliot had recently converted and joined the Anglican Church.

We have heard Matthew’s version. Let’s hear Eliot’s poem.

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; 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,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Two lines always trouble me in this account of the story. The speaker arrives at the destination and rather than remembering the encounter with the one who will change his life and alter history for ever with some kind of superlative, he states: Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. SATISFACTORY! Is that the best you can say?

I used to be a religious education teacher and had to write term reports on each student. There was no assessment to comment on. There were so many students under my tutelage I could not possibly assess most of them and judge their participation in those lessons. The best I could do was to be somewhat non-committal and my go to comment was ‘Satisfactory’ – just a little assurance to loving parents that, in my opinion, their son was OK.

The Magi arrive at the house where the infant Jesus is living with his loving parents – a dwelling of ordinary folk who are wearing ordinary clothes amid ordinary décor. There are no coloured light displays. No choirs of angels pre-empting Handel’s Halleluiah Chorus. It was ‘OK’ and then we went home but when we went home it was not OK. Of course, we could try to imagine what Eliot really meant by his understatement. If you say ‘satisfactory’ in a certain way it can sound like a superlative. IT WAS SATISFACTORY!!!! Not convincing?

The other line that puzzles me is the last one – ‘I should be glad of another death.’ The puzzle is that Eliot does not specify what death would make him glad. The commentators have speculated but my speculation is that the poet wanted the reader to grapple with the question rather than get any definitive answer.

The thing Eliot is most clear about is what he says between these two intriguing sentences.

“There was a Birth, certainly, / We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, / But had thought they were different; 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, / With an alien people clutching their gods.”

One commentator on the poem notes that Eliot was frustrated by the way that people believed his conversion to represent a kind of comfortable settling-down, when he saw himself as [engaged on] a difficult process. (Reference)

The Magi return home to the places where they were insiders, where they felt socially comfortable, where the values of their communities aligned well with their own values. But now, after their journey, after their encounter with a birth that somehow looked like a kind of death, now they were in their own lands again. But they found themselves ‘with an alien people clutching their own gods.’ The Magi were now clutched by a different God.

There is a sense in which that is every Christian’s experience. Certainly, we rejoice that the gospel message comforts the afflicted – “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

In The Journey of the Magi T.S. Eliot reminds us that the gospel message also afflicts the comfortable. Is it not true that, like Eliot’s Magi, the call of God on our lives through following the way of Christ brings us into conflict with the society in which we live. That even in our country whose religious affiliation is dominated by Christianity we are the outsiders, ‘no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation’.

Enough. It is still technically Christmastide – the eleventh day of Christmas. Let’s find some comfort, this time in the final lines of John Betjeman’s poem, Christmas. He has waxed lyrical about the trappings of a traditional English Yuletide with family and social and church festivities. Then he says:

“And is it true?  And is it true, / This most tremendous tale of all, / Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, / A Baby in an ox’s stall? / The Maker of the stars and sea / Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true?  For if it is, / No loving fingers tying strings / Around those tissued fripperies, / The sweet and silly Christmas things, / Bath salts and inexpensive scent / And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells, / No carolling in frosty air, / Nor all the steeple-shaking bells / Can with this single Truth compare – / That God was man in Palestine / And lives today in Bread and Wine.”

Now, that is satisfactory.

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Christmas Day
25/12/2024

Colossians 3:1-10
Luke 2:1-7

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On our bookshelf at home there is a book with the rather intimidating title, 1001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die! I’ve decided to rise to the challenge, although it is quite possible that I’ve left my run a little late!

An advantage of resting in a discipline like that – if movie-watching can be called a discipline! – is that it forces you to watch and think about a lot of things you wouldn’t normally consider if you simply followed your personal tastes. The range of “must watch” flicks begins in 1902, crosses national, cultural and aesthetic boundaries, and covers every genre – at least those types that might have appeared in a local cinema near you at some time or other.

Yet, for all their variation across time, genre and style, most films have a common structure which runs something like this. The first thing which happens in the story is the placement of the central character. It might be young, innocent Maria on a mountaintop marvelling that the hills are alive with the sound of music. It might be the not so young or innocent Indiana Jones, realising the dream of finding a legendary archaeological artefact. Or it might be plucky Sidney Prescott, living a more or less happy, middle-class teenage life.

The narrative flow then moves to the displacement. Maria falls in love with Captain von Trapp and his children, and must contend with a jealous baroness, with her own sense of call to the convent and with the Nazis. Or all the boobytraps fire and send Indiana fleeing from crushing boulders through winding tunnels, and later from more Nazis. Or Sidney takes a phone call and finds herself relentlessly pursued by the murderous Ghostface.

In each case, the story begins with a placement, followed by a displacement, before the struggle of the heroes and heroines to find their way back to their proper equilibrium. And the bulk of the story is that struggle against all odds and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, climbing every mountain, fording every stream, until the dreamed-for peace is found.

This is the comedic arc the vast majority of our stories follow because most of our stories are comedies – not necessarily in the sense of making us laugh but in following that narrative flow of equilibrium, descent and restoration.

I bring all this to mind today because I want to draw your attention to a small detail in our gospel reading this morning over which we pass pretty quickly, usually noticing the noun but not the verb: “and Mary placed him in a manger”. We know about the manger, and the irony often noted here: that the one who is called “king” has such a lowly cot. But if we shift our attention from the manger to what Mary does, we seem to see again the dynamic by which our books and movies work: Mary lays, places, Jesus in a manger. This is his “equilibrium” point, the beginning of his story point from which the displacement will dislodge him. If we follow the story of Jesus from this beginning to its end, we see something like the usual flow of our stories: from his beginning condition, he descends into conflict, which culminates in the crucifixion, which is then followed by the resurrection.

The story of Jesus, then, looks like all our favourite stories: from high to low, to high again. Jesus “comes down from heaven”, slums it a bit for a while, and then “ascends” again.

Or so it seems. One problem with this way of reading Jesus’ story is that we are the slum! And, certainly, the “we” in the story – the people Jesus encounters in his circle of friends, disciples and opponents – scarcely make it easy for him. But on the other hand, we don’t get the sense from the story that Jesus is somehow dropped into a hole and needs to dig himself out, as do Maria, Indiana or Sidney; or Skywalker, Rambo or Ripley; or Harry, Hermione and Ron.

In fact, the story of Jesus is kind of the other way around. The equilibrium in the gospel story is a world in which mangers and mothers and fishermen and priests and kings already all have their place, and into this is placed the displacing Jesus. The baby in the manger becomes the threat, the thing which disrupts, the thing to be overcome.

And so, just as the heroine typically tries to fight her way back to the world which made sense, those around Jesus push back, seeking again the balance they had before he dislodged them. And this is why the story leads to the cross.

Jesus’ story, then, is not quite like our other stories. It’s a kind of “reverse” story. In a normal story, the protagonist struggles to get out of the frame, and so to disappear back into normality. But in the gospel, it’s not Jesus who struggles to disappear; it is everyone else. It is Jesus who frames them, casting them in a particular way from which they seek to escape by pushing him away.

We usually tell our stories to remind each other that there is danger out there, and that this is how to overcome it, how to get back on our feet again. But we don’t see this in the story that flows on from the manger. Jesus’ own placement and displacement are the same thing: he is at home in the world which finally rejects him, and it is this at-home-ness which is so threatening to everyone else. Jesus always acts as if he is where he should be, whereas most of us, most of the time, want to be somewhere else.

We want to be done with where we’re at. We want to be done with our studies, with our dead-end job, our dead-end relationship, or with the in-laws. We want to be done with the too-high expectations and the incompetence. We want to be done with the uncertainty, the ill health, the infirmity, the worry. We want to be done with knowing and seeing all that is wrong with us and our lives together.

As we struggle to find a way out of all such things, we seek to prove to ourselves that our lives are comedies, despite all appearances to the contrary: the real me cannot be here and now but is still to come. I just need to climb out of this displacement, whatever it is.

The child placed in the manger knows nothing of this. What does a swaddled baby care about straw or silk? A gentle song at a warm breast is close enough to heaven. And this doesn’t change as the story unfolds. Mary’s embrace of Jesus becomes the embrace of the one he knows and names as the divine Father. As at his birth so in the full stride of life, Jesus is where he is supposed to be, and so God’s will is done on earth, without waiting for some distant or future heaven to arrive.

We should entertain no sentimentality, then, as we hear of Jesus’ birth, and the manger, and everything else we’ve added to the story ever since. It is not that things start well in the stable and go downhill from there, only finally to end well by the power of God. It is rather that whether he is with cradle or cross or crown (TIS 321), Jesus is always in the right place; there is nowhere else he needs to be. He is in the right place, whether in Mary’s arms, with his disciples, disputing with the scribes, or standing before Pilate. Jesus is not always in a comfortable place, but it is always the right place, a place where he can be true.

And so this is the proposal of the baby placed in the manger: that it is better to be in the right place than in a comfortable place. The comfortable fear being uncomfortable again, and those who seek mere comfort will fear its loss if they ever find it. But those who know themselves to be in the right place don’t fear anything.

We tell the story of Christmas because it is the beginning of a possibility which might be our own: being fully alive wherever we are, comfortable or not. As Mary places Jesus in the manger, God places him in the world to the part of the world which is always true, wherever it is. The story of Jesus is not comic like the stories we like or tragic like the ones we don’t; it is simply full, and true. Jesus has much to do, but he has nowhere else to be.

And God places us in this same way in the manger of the world, to live stories which are neither tragic nor comic, but pressed down and flowing over with truth and life.

Let the message of the God who finds a home among us be the beginning of our finding our home in the world in which we’ve been placed. For we too have much to do, but nowhere else to be.