View or print as a PDF

Lent 2
16/3/2025

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

---

[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.”

View or print as a PDF

Lent 1
9/3/2025

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

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

---

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.

View or print as a PDF

Epiphany 4
2/2/2025

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

---

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

 

View or print as a PDF

Epiphany 2
19/1/2025

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

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

---

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.

View or print as a PDF

Baptism of Jesus
12/1/2025

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

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

---

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.

View or print as a PDF

Epiphany
5/1/2025

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

Sermon preached by Rev. Dr Peter Blackwood

---

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.

View or print as a PDF

Christmas Day
25/12/2024

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

---

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.

View or print as a PDF

Advent 1
1/12/2024

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25
Luke 21:25-36

---

The Doctor is a time traveller. And if you’re wondering, “Doctor who?” – precisely! In a cunningly disguised time machine, Doctor Who, the last of the Time Lords, travels from the very beginnings of all things to their very end.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in the time-travel/science fiction genre, you likely know the apparent paradoxes of time travel. One of the first questions to which the possibility of time travel generally gives rise is, What would happen if you were to travel back in time and kill your own parents before you were born? The paradox, of course, is that if I kill my parents and so am not born, how could I kill them?

Storytellers have sought to think through this and other time travel paradoxes with varying degrees of success, although, in the end, none of it really makes any sense. And, often enough, making sense isn’t really the point – certainly not in the case of Doctor Who, at least, where the point is more enjoying watching a crazy person and his sassy sidekick do their stuff.

What has this got to do with today’s text from Luke’s gospel, with its apocalyptic foretelling of the end of time? Just this: New Testament apocalyptic thought is a time machine with its own set of paradoxes and contradictions.

The word “apocalypse” relates to the uncovering of the end of the world – the revealing of the goal towards which God draws it – quite apart from the dramatic form apocalyptic thought took. New Testament apocalyptic serves as an itinerary for the end times, by which we might know where we are up to as that time approaches.

Yet the most apocalyptic thing in the New Testament is not any of its “watch-for-this” predictions of what is yet to come but the already-happened resurrection of Jesus.

Resurrection as a general “idea” was an apocalyptic concept at the centre of the religious and political atmosphere of Jesus’ time. The details varied in the different accounts, but the point was not that resurrection was a miraculous return to life. At the apocalypse – the revelation of God’s righteousness – a general resurrection of one sort of another was anticipated as part of a great judgement; it was how the final setting-right touched upon everyone – the living and the dead.  This meant that, in late biblical times, if someone were to stop being dead, this would be a sign that the end of the world had come. By affirming Jesus’ resurrection, then, the church affirms not life after death but that we have seen the end of the world: the goal towards which God is drawing us, even Jesus himself.

This is where the time machine of New Testament apocalyptic kicks in with a couple of temporal twists of its own. The first of these is that the resurrection does not reveal Jesus in the future. Unlike the Doctor and all other time travellers, Jesus doesn’t move through time into the future. Rather, the future is seen in him, here and now. And if his disciples sense that Jesus continues to be present to them long after the events of Easter, then their future is also present to them, here and now in the presence of the future-containing Jesus.

More than this, the Jesus the disciples see in the resurrection is the same Jesus they knew in his prior ministry. The preaching, teaching, exhorting and challenging Jesus was the same as the Jesus encountered in the resurrection. The resurrection was merely(! ) the apocalypse – the uncovering, the revelation – of who Jesus was and how he was related to God. It was not, then, so much that our once-future moves in the resurrection to be relocated in Jesus; it was always in him, even as he walked the dusty roads of Palestine. This would seem to be the point of the Transfiguration of Jesus one ordinary day on a hilltop: here, for a moment, the meaning of Jesus’ extraordinary ordinariness is seen.

The paradox of the New Testament apocalyptic time machine is that the now of Jesus, in whatever condition he might be met, is the future. And the gospel is that this now future might be ours.

Now, as interesting as I hope you’re all finding this to be, I admit that it is not yet very useful! What I’ve tried to say is that time is a central notion in the New Testament’s wrestling with the person of Jesus, and that the outcome of that wrestling is a notion of the past, the present and the future which is quite confounding of ordinary understandings. To confess the resurrection of Jesus is to remember our future, and this must qualify our reading of New Testament apocalyptic such as we find it in texts like today’s from Luke.

The importance of all this – its usefulness – is that, for the New Testament, a Time Lord is not one who controls time – who can wind it forwards or backwards. A Time Lord is one for whom the present time is no impediment to life. Such a one has no need to wind forwards or backwards; now is always good enough. Life does not have to wait for tomorrow (or even return to yesterday, to recall last week’s thoughts).

This, of course, messes with our usual sense of time. The time which matters here is not the ticking of clocks, as it usually is in sci-fi time travel. It can be that, but this is scarcely a very interesting type of time. The biblical sense of time is entirely social and political – and so is utterly interesting if we are paying attention – and we come closer to the truth if we say that time is what passes between persons. Such time is more a quality than a quantity. The ticking of clocks is a mere medium for that human passage, that human exchange.

If a Time Lord is properly one for whom time is no impediment to life, then this means that my set of relationships here and now are not merely where I happen to live. The here and now – and not the tomorrow – is where I can be truly alive, God’s will done on earth, as in heaven.

It is our failure to live in such a timely fashion which bears in on us from all sides. Time – in the mode of our current relationships – is something from which we constantly seek to escape. This is the meaning of Israel in Gaza, of Russia in Ukraine, of the rhetoric of our politicians, or of our dismissal of the insufferable neighbour, colleague or spouse. It is the meaning of lonely old souls in nursing homes, of binge-watching streamed TV series and of comfort chocolate. In our fractured relationships with each other and our lack of reconciliation within our very selves, true life is only to be found in the kind of future which comes from the further ticking of a clock. Peace, reconciliation, oneness – heaven – are always put off till tomorrow.

It is in contradiction of this that the risen Jesus is the future, here and now. In him, longing for the future is met with his fullness of life in the present. Jesus is lord over time by reconfiguring the relationships around him. He reconciles, heals, joins, uncovers new possibilities, overcomes without destroying. The future in him is now because God is able to work with our now. It is as Lord over this kind of time that Jesus is Lord over all time, which is to say that the Incarnation is the meaning of the Resurrection.

And us? Unlike the Doctor, Jesus is not the last of the Time Lords, the only one who can pull off life in the midst of death. By God’s grace, he is the first among a great family of Time Lords, called to live the future in the present, to find life in all its fullness in the midst of the change and decay which surrounds us. The Body of Christ is called to be timely in the way of Jesus himself.

If the point of watching Doctor Who is to enjoy a Time Lord and her sassy sidekick do their crazy thing, then the point of Christian discipleship is to be Time Lords. This will often make us seem crazy. For most of the world, it is well understood that if the life of heaven were our destination, we would be poorly advised to try to get there from here.

But our call is the call to the Now.

And even if it is crazy, we do our reconciling, relationship-renewing, time-bending thing anyway. This is because our sidekick is especially sassy: Jesus the Christ, who is first and last, who is today, yesterday and forever, and in whom we now and finally live, and move and have our being.

With a God like this, every time is God’s time, and ours.

View or print as a PDF

Pentecost 26
17/11/2024

1 Samuel 2:1-10
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

Sermon preached by Yoojin Song

---

Have you ever watched a Superman movie or read the comic? Most of us have probably heard of him or know his story.

In 2013, another Superman movie was released, called Man of Steel, directed by Christopher Nolan.

In the movie, Superman wears a suit with an ‘S’ symbol on his chest. For a long time, I thought this ‘S’ stood for ‘super.’ But there’s a scene in Man of Steel where Lois Lane asks Superman what the ‘S’ really means. Superman explains that it’s not actually an “S” but a symbol for hope in his world.

While many focus on Superman’s superhuman powers, his true role is to bring hope to seemingly hopeless situations. In moments of crisis, disaster, or danger, people look to Superman with hope, waiting for him to appear and save them. In fact, in the Superman series, we often see scenes where people wait for his rescue in their most desperate times.

Not just in movies, but in real life, many people try to hold on to hope in the face of an uncertain reality and future. But where people place their hope can be very different. Some place it in wealth, others in their own abilities, but what really matters is if our hope is in the right place.

Just as people look to Superman in moments of crisis, trusting in his power to rescue them, we, too, have a Savior who stands ready to respond to our needs. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is always with us, deeply understanding our struggles and listening to our prayers. Our hope in Jesus takes shape as a daily reliance on His presence, His strength, and His unchanging love.

This hope allows us to do our best in what we can control, while entrusting what we cannot to Jesus, finding peace in knowing He is always near. Like the words of Psalm 23, we can trust that He will lead us in goodness. With this trust, we find true peace and freedom here on earth, knowing that He is guiding us faithfully each day. Just as Superman’s symbol represented hope, the cross of Jesus reminds us of a far greater hope: a Savior who not only hears our cries but walks with us, offering peace in every circumstance.

Today’s reading from Mark chapter 13 connects back to events in chapter 12. In chapter 12, while Jesus was teaching in the temple, He criticized the scribes. Their actions were not just small mistakes; they had twisted their religious responsibilities, making faith seem confusing and shallow. Jesus spoke out against their hypocrisy and empty show, and then He pointed out a poor widow who was giving her offering in the temple.

While the wealthy gave a portion from their abundance, this widow gave all she had to live on. Jesus praised her offering, teaching that the true value of giving lies not in the amount, but in the heart of faith and sincere devotion behind it.

In Mark 13:1, one of Jesus’ disciples says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Admiring the beauty of the temple, he was impressed by the grand stones and impressive structure. This reaction makes sense because the temple was the center of Israel’s religious life. The temple in Jerusalem, built by Herod, was known for its grand and beautiful appearance. The Jewish historian Josephus even described it as being made of white marble stones, carefully arranged to look like waves flowing across the walls when viewed from a distance.

But Jesus responds differently. He says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” He is foretelling the complete destruction of the temple—a prophecy that was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Roman soldiers destroyed it.

Hearing this, the disciples ask Jesus when these things will happen and what signs to look for. Here, it’s important to understand that biblical prophecy is not given to simply satisfy curiosity about the future. While prophecy may indeed point to future events, its purpose goes deeper: it calls believers to respond in the present with faith and a renewed commitment to live according to God’s will. This is what sets biblical prophecy apart from secular predictions or fortune-telling, which often aim to exploit fears about the future. Biblical prophecy always carries a message that urges us to live faithfully now, no matter what lies ahead.

So in Mark 13:32, Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Jesus didn’t focus on the outward beauty of the temple building. Instead, He saw the inner corruption and predicted its destruction. This message reminds us that the true temple is not a building, but the community of believers, created through Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection, and ascension (Acts 2:44-47). It also reminds us that our own bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Our true hope and trust should rest in Jesus Christ alone.

In our lives, we might also rely on things that are ultimately temporary, like the temple that would be destroyed. Jesus warns us in verse 6, saying, “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.” We should reflect on whether there are things in our lives that we hold onto as if they could replace Jesus.

In Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller, the former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, explains that our modern society is not so different from ancient cultures. He says that each culture has its own idols. For example, places like offices or gyms can become “temples,” where people pursue blessings for a happy life and try to ward off misfortune. In our personal lives and society as a whole, we can find gods of beauty, power, money, and achievement, all holding a near-divine place. Keller points out how young people today, especially young women, often struggle with depression or eating disorders due to an extreme focus on appearance. Many prioritize money and success as the highest values, even at the cost of family and community.

Similarly, the temple in Jerusalem during Jesus’ time was created for a good purpose—to connect God and His people. Yet, over time, an obsession with the temple itself led the leaders to become addicted to wealth and status, while the people suffered under misguided teachings.

He also shares the story of Chris Evert, a top tennis player in the 1970s, who idolized success. With the highest career win rate in history, she considered retirement with great fear. She once said in an interview, “I was afraid of letting go. Who would I be and what would I do without tennis? Winning gave me a sense of worth and applause, and I needed it to feel like someone.”

Yet, in times of crisis, wealth, status, and achievements often fail us. Wealth, status, and achievements cannot protect us from war, famine, economic instability, or natural disasters.

Like the disciples who admired the beauty of the Jerusalem temple, it’s easy for us today to be swept away by the glamorous progress of modern civilization without stopping to question it. Yet, as Christians, we are called to see beyond the glamour of the world and recognize the increasing corruption and moral decay hidden beneath.

Just as Jesus reached out to those who were marginalized and became a source of hope, our purpose as God’s children is to love God and love our neighbors. Jesus’ cross may have seemed like a failure in the eyes of the world, but it became the foundation of our hope and the beginning of new life.

Jesus, who became fully human and experienced life as we do, is not a distant observer of our struggles and pains. Even now, through the Holy Spirit, our heartaches and burdens are brought before Him. He sees our sorrow and suffering as His own and desires to show us a way forward in hope. When we bring our frustrations to Jesus in prayer, He listens to our stories and responds with compassion.

Following His example, may we, both as individuals and as a community, look around to see where help is needed and live as a light of hope, sharing God’s love and justice with the world. Amen.

View or print as a PDF

All Saints
3/11/2024

Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

---

Over the past few weeks, the lectionary has drawn passages from the middle chapters of Mark’s gospel, and also from the letter to the Hebrews.  This letter explores the obedience, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus as the one begotten by God and appointed as great high priest to appear forever before God on our behalf.  The many significant declarations made in this letter follow the no less significant introduction: ‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.’

In order to speak this powerful word, Jesus arrives in the midst of human history, gathering a community of disciples and engaging in a ministry of healing, truth telling, justice seeking, and restoration.  As this journey unfolds, Jesus teaches his disciples about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that he inaugurates through his own humble self-giving.  Over and against assumptions that kingdoms are created and sustained only through the exercise of oppressive imperial power, Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of God by submitting to that power.  Three times in Mark’s gospel Jesus describes his impending passion, and on each occasion the misunderstanding and fear of the disciples beckons to us across the centuries and invites us to wonder about our own discipleship.

On this day that recalls the All-Saints tradition of the church, we shift briefly away from Mark’s gospel to read from the gospel according to John.  We read about the raising of Lazarus, and the apocalyptic literature in Isaiah 25 and Revelation 21, in which God’s oppressed and persecuted people hear words of hope about how God will wipe away all tears and swallow up death forever.  I suspect that much of the church’s most precious literature was written by those who were facing the end of life as they knew it.  So perhaps that’s the key for how we should read that literature in our own place and time.

There are many things in our own context that threaten life as we know it:  the obscene profit of those who peddle weapons of war;  the unaccountable exploitation of the politics of fear;  the loss of confidence in, and commitment to, shared truth;  the blind reliance on economic growth to build common wealth;  the rampant greed of industries that refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And just recently, the word apocalypse has been used to describe the shocking devastation of life, limb and infrastructure in Gaza, and the flood ravaged Spanish city of Valencia.  These things certainly threaten life as we know it, but do they also constitute an apocalypse in which the hiddenness of God is revealed to sustain God’s people in faith and hope?  Indeed, what would such an apocalypse look like?

In the gospel passage we hear the pain of Mary’s grief when she says to Jesus: ‘Lord, if you’d been here, my brother would not have died.’  And we also note the deep irony in the lament of her community:  ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept Lazarus from dying?’

How does this connect with your own experiences, feelings and fears about the things that threaten life as we know it?  Can you imagine yourself lamenting:  ‘Lord, if you’d been here, the things that threaten life as we know it would not cause so much anxiety and grief?’  Friends, if you can ask this question, then I hope you can also believe that, just as Jesus wept for the family and community of Lazarus, so too does he weep over your uncertainty and disorientation.

But note that his weeping in the gospel passage is not the end of the story.  It’s not enough for him to draw alongside Mary and Martha and their community in empathy and compassion.  He prays for that community, but not for some vague blessing, or that God will draw near in comfort and peace, or that God will journey with them and sustain them in hope.  These are all fine sentiments, and I’ve used such words myself many times, but this is not what Jesus offers in his prayer.  Rather, he declares that the purpose of his prayer is that those hearing him may believe that he has been sent by the one to whom he prays.  And it’s because he’s been sent by the God of life that, upon the command of Jesus, Lazarus comes out of the tomb.  We’re told that many people who see what Jesus has done believe in him.  They come to faith in Jesus, not just as a great teacher or miracle worker, but as the one who has power over life and death.

Indeed, this is the real and only purpose of miracles in the gospels – miracles are signs that Jesus is himself the embodiment of the kingdom he proclaims.  Apocalyptic literature graphically recalls the life denying forces in our world, but it also affirms that these forces have been overcome by God;  the God, according to John’s Gospel, whose Word became flesh to speak life into the world.  This Word, silenced briefly upon a cross, now speaks forever through an empty tomb, breathing the peace of his Spirit upon his fearful disciples in every age.

The crises of our time are deeply challenging, and it’s tempting to define them as an apocalypse.  They certainly seem to threaten life as we know it, but it’s not clear to me how they also declare hope in the God who draws near.  In fact, the most significant crisis before us is also the most unexpected one, because it comes to us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The phrase ‘lurching from one crisis to another’ is sometimes used to describe a person or an institution that is out of control and about to descend into complete chaos.  This phrase reflects the notions of control and power that are so desired in our society, and in which a crisis is something to be avoided or managed.

But the Gospel declares the crisis of the cross;  not a crisis to be avoided or managed, but a crisis by which we are invited to recognise the tombs of darkness, doubt and despair from which Jesus yearns to release us.  Thanks be to God, whose Word gathers his saints in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, welcoming them to his banqueting table, where he offers himself in bread and wine, and raises us into life as his body.  Thanks be to God for the one who declares: ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’

And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever.  Amen.