waiting for banished April to return

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

SUNDAY 25^th SEPTEMBER, 1988

FEAST OF St MATTHEW (transferred)

 

 

                     On a bare

Hill a bare tree saddened

The sky. Many people

Held out their thin arms

To it, as though waiting

For banished April

To return to its crossed

Boughs. The son watched

Them. Let me go there, he said.

                     (from “The Coming,” R.S. Thomas)

 

So often as I speak to people I am confronted with the claim “You don’t have go to church to be good.” It appears that this oft-repeated aphorism is a magic phrase designed to expiate years’ build up of guilt for not being seen in the church to which we claim allegiance. And of course, like so many aphorisms, it is true. You don’t have to go to church to be good.

But also like so many aphorisms, it misses the point altogether. For no one that I have ever heard has made the claim that you do have to go to church to be good. Nor have  I ever heard the claim that attending church makes you good. Any such claim would be far from the teachings of Jesus, and would stand in obscene contradiction to the words of our Lord that we heard read in the gospel today.

For Christ made it abundantly clear in his teachings that he did not see his ministry as one of praise to towards those who prided themselves as being moral and upright religious citizens. Like many notions that those who do not bother to read the gospels espouse, the notion that Jesus was on about being good has no biblical basis. He came to earth, he tells us, “… not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Certainly, he told many  who received his healing love, “Go, and sin no more,” but perfection is far from human experience, and he is telling his followers to strive to avoid participating in the world of sin in which we are all caught up. He is setting an ideal, to which all of us will fall short.

So if we claim that one does not have to go to church to be good, we succeed blithely in missing the heart of the gospel. We set up a religion based on good works, and not one that rejoices in the salvation and love offered in Jesus Christ. We return to the religion of the New Testament pharisees, not to the radically new teaching of the Messiah.

At the heart of Christianity is the belief that we are quite simply unable to be good enough to win the favour of God. This is, ironically, good news: if we are unable to attain salvation by our own merits then there is no room for self-righteous pride – there is no room for teacher’s pets in the Kingdom of God. When we realize that we can’t earn our own salvation, then we join those people who, in the R. S. Thomas poem with which I began, reach out their thin arms to the Cross. We recognise our need of God’s forgiving and nurturing love, and turn to him in the knowledge that we have no bribes to offer.

In our Lord’s words, then, we are all in need of a physician. We are all in need of the forgiving love and empowering Spirit of God. We attend church, then, not to prove that we are good, or even to make ourselves good, but to discover and to acknowledge before God that we are not good enough. In the words of the old Book of Common Prayer, words that are somewhat over-the-top by contemporary standards,

we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.

 

Having said that, however, I must also emphasize that we are not called to remain wallowing in our wretched state. We may well be convinced of, admit to, our sin, and so it should be. We should also recognize the very real sense in which we are responsible for the death of Jesus.

Who was the guilty, who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee;

’twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;

I crucified thee.

 

But having made that connection we must not remain there, must not continue to dwell on our guilt. Instead, we must accept the healing the Physician has to offer us. In the words of the same hymn as that just quoted,

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee.

                                                          (from Johann Heermann, “Ah Holy Jesu”)

 

As that hymnist emphasizes, no small part of that movement from guilt must be the service of liturgy, worshipping together with one another, together with Christians throughout the world, worshipping God who is Father of the Christ-saviour. That is why we worship, why we go to church. It is not so that we become good, or so we might look good in the eyes of the community, but because we there encounter the God we love in a particular manner.

Then, having worshipped God together in the context of the eucharist, the great and catholic prayer of thanksgiving, we are given further responsibility. We are called by God to go out into the world to love and serve him and to love and serve his people.[1] “Go in peace,” we say, “to love and serve the Lord.” We serve and worship him by serving his broken people.

I was hungry, and you fed me.

I was thirsty, and you gave me drink

Says our Lord, and

For inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.

 

Having served and worshipped God in church, then, we must go out and serve him by serving his people in the community. And all people are his people. That is the point of connection that I wish to leave you with today. For today we are celebrating the Feast of Saint Matthew, and it was he who, in popular belief, came to be associated with the tax collector, Levi, with whom Jesus went to eat early in his ministry.

Frequently, in Matthew’s account of the gospel, we find Jesus mixing with the undesirables of society. It is to that that we are called. We too are called to go into the dangerous places, the places where so-called good people are not seen, and there proclaim by our lives the love of Christ. We must be prepared, like Jesus, to get our hands dirty, to risk the misunderstanding of friends and neighbours.

There, amidst whatever dirt and misunderstanding we may find, we will begin to be able legitimately to speak of the God of love.

We cannot proclaim or even know the God of love until we have first discovered that he is indeed the God who is to be found in the squalid – or in contemporary jargon the “uncool” – places. We cannot have the Christ of Easter without the shame of Good Friday.

And one said

Speak to us of love

and the preacher opened

his mouth and the word God

fell out so they tried

again speak to us

of God but then the preacher

was silent reaching

his arms out but the little

children the one with

big bellies and bow

legs that were like

a razor shell

were too weak to come.

                     (from “H’m”, R. S. Thomas)

 

It is to those that are beyond our church walls, those who may not be attractive to us, that we are called to go out. For we may be their only taste of the body and blood of Christ.

---

[1] While in 1988 I worked hard to utilize inclusive language, and had done so sitting at the feet of Enid Bennett of the Religious Studies Department of Massey University, I had not yet considered the use of inclusive pronouns for the Creator.

church as mega-corp?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH
ORDINARY SUNDAY 24 

(11^th September) 1988

 

“And he charged them to tell no one about him.”

                                                                                      (Mark 8:30)

 

As I cast my eye around the Church I am often saddened by what I hear. All too often the Church’s teachings ooze a sense of triumphant self-assurance, an overly satisfied sense that God is in heaven and that all is well, or well at least for those who are within the walls of Christendom.

And I am saddened because I am aware, partly from my own experience before I converted to Christianity, of how silly it all sounds, how irrelevant it all seems to the average person in the street. And I am further saddened because, quite honestly, I don’t believe that the gospel is a triumphant or cosy message. For the victims of floods in Sudan or Bangladesh, for example a cosy assurance of future reward is poor comfort indeed. For victims of individual or societal violence the assurance of Christ’s love may sound hollow indeed when coming from the lips of those who have never suffered, never really been in need.

And that is most of us.

But what do I mean when I speak of a triumphalist gospel? It is that version of the Christian message that confidently asserts, together with the fourth century emperor Constantine, “in this sign I conquer.” It is the version of the gospel that adopts the sign of the cross as a sign of conquest, as a passport to victory. It is the version of the gospel that seeks to build bigger and better churches, bigger and better structures to enhance its own image in society. It is the version of the gospel that seeks to adopt the marketing strategies of the successful mega corporations to emulate their success.

But it is also, tragically, a version of the gospel that has little to say to those who seemingly fail. To the unbeautiful people, to those who start or finish life a long way behind the race. It is that version of the gospel, for example, that triumphantly hands out New Testaments across the country in a bicentennial crusade, without addressing the more critical needs of our neighbours.

And of course it is biblically based.

For it cannot be denied that there is an element of triumph that runs through many New Testament writings, not least the writings of Paul. But it must be read in context: the hope and exhilaration of the New Testament is precisely a hope born out of the experience of being misunderstood and rejected, and later even persecuted and killed.

But the New Testament writers did not forget what we might call “the dark side” of faith.

As testimony to that we find the early Christians beginning to identify Jesus with the unidentifiable Old Testament figure that we know as “the Suffering Servant.” It is this Old Testament figure that we read of in the first reading this morning.

The Suffering Servant appears in four poems in the second half of the book we know as Isaiah. He it is who in this morning’s reading reminds us,

I gave my back to the smiters,

      And my cheek to those who pulled out the beard;

I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

                                                                                      (Isaiah 50:6)

 

It is he whose words are collapsed together in an aria from Handel’s Messiah, an aria which captures exquisitely the essence of the Servant’s poems;

He was despised, rejected, a man of sorrows

      and acquainted with grief.

He gave his back to the smiters and his cheek to those who plucked off his hair.

He did not hide his face from shame and spitting.

 

The words are unforgettable, and the poetry in Isaiah some of the most beautiful in religious literature.

And yet too rarely do I hear the church proclaiming this spat-upon Christ to the world. For the early Church quickly identified Christ as one who had been thus treated. What a remarkable claim for a Church, an embryonic Church that was proclaiming a new messiah, ana new saviour  to the world. What poor audience research. How unlike the vast mega corporations of our own day.

And we want to imitate the mega corporations.

Sadly, I sense that all too often we do just that. We package our Christ up in a plastic bag, and in the words of a ’70s song, “turn it upside down.” We image for the world a feeble attempt at portraying an all-purpose, extensively guaranteed saviour. And, because we are competing in a better qualified world, we find we are unable to compete with Fosters lager or with the latest brand of cigarette.

By this I do not merely mean that our media evangelism is awry, but that our entire Christian lifestyle is awry. The image that we present is one of self-assurance, yet statistics should remind us that we can be anything but self-assured.

That is where we as a western world Church are falling dreadfully astray. For the Christ we are called to proclaim is not one who reveals himself to the world in staggering success stories, but in absolute tragedy. In Mark’s account of the gospel it is not when the tomb is found to be empty that the glorious work of God is done but when our Lord cries out in utter despair and lets go of his final breath. It is then that the Roman centurion, who for Mark represents the unbelieving world, cries out,

Truly this man was a son of God.

 

It is in a moment of utter despair that God pronounces his victory to the world, in a moment of utter defeat that God chooses to make himself known.

That is why Mark’s account of the gospel is so important for the Church today. It is Mark who realizes with stark clarity that the gospel is neither pretty nor comfortable. Throughout Mark’s gospel account we find what scholars call the “messianic secret.” Whenever someone claims to have made the discovery that Jesus is the awaited Messiah we find Jesus telling that person to remain silent. Hence the text with which I have begun this morning, “And he charged them to tell no one about him” (Mark 8:30)

This text provides the pivot upon which the whole of Mark’s gospel account balances. At this moment the closest follower of Jesus, on whom the Church was to be founded, makes the decisive claim, “You are the Christ.”

It is the claim that we are all called to make. It is the decision for Christ that every evangelist hopes and prays his or her listeners will make. But Jesus knows only too clearly the road to Jerusalem that lies ahead. He knows only too clearly that Peter has grasped only a triumphalist gospel that fails to acknowledge impending agony and failure. It is only when Christ has revealed himself to be Messiah in the midst of absolute disaster that the message of the gospel can truly be apprehended.

It is only because Christ revealed himself in tragedy that he has a message of good news to offer to the world.

A Messiah who is revealed only in triumph has nothing to say to the people of Bangladesh. A triumphalist Church has nothing to say to the people of Bangladesh. A Messiah who dies as a glorious conqueror has nothing to say to the smarting Aboriginal people of this country, stung as they are by the inane remarks Brigadier Garland[1] made this week. Only a Messiah who has himself been spat upon can transform such pain into a revelation of God.

Only in and after such pain does Jesus reveal himself to be the Son. Only in pain and the aftermath of pain does God reveal himself to be the God of the Resurrection, the God who transforms pain and sorrow unimaginable into joy unimaginable. That God instructs us to follow Jesus into the dangerous places, where he treads before us, and where we will experience something both of the cost and of the joy of our gospel.

Where are the dangerous places? They are the places where it is not nice to be. They are the places where we will not find comfort, but rather only pain and misunderstanding. They are the places of Desmond Tutu, the places where we will be despised for our beliefs. They are not the pews of our churches.

It is only when we as Christians are prepared to proclaim the love of God from the dangerous places that we will achieve any tangible results of our proclamation. Only when we turn our backs on the neat marketing packages of the mega corporations will we begin to see gospel love active in the western world. Only when we are allowing God to take us into the uncomfortable places will we learn the meaning of the comfortable words of Christ. Only when we have grasped the message of the Crucifixion will we be able to taste the sweet fruit of the Resurrection

Christian faith then is not a ticket to find parking places when we are in a hurry, nor an easy solution to a sprained ankle. Christian faith will not make our problems go away, and may indeed create more for us. But because Christian faith is born in tragedy it has something to offer the victims of tragedy, with a global or personal. Christianity breathes hope not only into my world but into the entire world. It will eventually turn all night into day. That is why it is good news.

We await the time for that final revelation. In the mean time we must find the dangerous places to which God is calling us, and find means of proclaiming God from those places.

As watchmen wait for the morning, Lord,

so we wait eagerly for you.

Come with the dawning of the day

and make yourself known to us,

not in the glories of success,

but in the breaking of the bread. Amen.

---

[1] Garland was National President of the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) from 1988 to 1993. He was well known for pronouncements against Asian immigration: “We want to retain Australia for Australians," and was a vehement opponent of Tutu’s anti-apartheid activism. See “New RSL Chief Enters Migrant Row”, Financial Review, September 9^th, 1988. Accessed April 28^th 2025.

 

visionary John

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN

and the GLENORCHY MISSION HALL

 SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

(May 25^th) 2025

 

 

READINGS

 

Revelation 21:10; 21: 22 - 22:5

Psalm 67

John 14: 23-29

 

 

Since Easter these mysterious faceless guides that I called the lectioners, shadowy figures in an ivory tower somewhere, who succeed where I could not dream of succeeding, giving us a planned coverage of biblical readings over a three-year.

The word “plan” of course being my drawback.

By leading us through John’s account of the gospel, not merely the resurrection appearances, but the earlier teachings, the lectioners give us a remarkable insight into the experience and understanding of the first apostles. As they encountered their Lord, he was initially unrecognisable. But he was absolutely tangible, in those 50 days after the first Easter. Through those days the disciples, together with Jesus, dug deep into the great texts of the Jewish faith.

They found these texts to be unlocked not with some esoteric Da Vinci Code meaning, but with the new insight that comes from new perspective. As if I were watching an American football game, which seems to me a complete and unmitigated shemozzle, suddenly being given a rule book and video demonstration of the rules and subtleties, coaching in the arts of play, launching me into an aha moment when what once was shemozzle suddenly becomes comprehensible contest.

So the disciples recalled many things that Jesus said, and they understood with new ears. In this passage the apostle John, whoever he was, remembers, decades later, the promises Jesus gave of peace, of the new and dynamic sense of his presence, despite his absence from sight. This is not like me knowing that Anne is vaguely out there somewhere in the diocese, but a powerful heart-pumping knowledge that the one who is out of sight is inexplicably and immeasurably present. “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” says Jesus, gently, to Thomas. That’s you, that’s me.

This Thursday is the feast of the Ascension. I have found over the years that Anglicans are abysmally poor at attending it (work gets in the way), so I haven’t scheduled a Eucharist this week. Perhaps I will go, quietly, sit on the lake side and ponder. (I enjoy my own company, but it is against the rules of Anglican theology to celebrate mass alone. And even given my belief that we celebrate with the Saints and even the ancestors, their presence is a little hard to quantify!).

This is what Jesus was emphasizing in our passage when he said enigmatically, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” He said it in various forms over and again, but for it to be recorded decades later, when the Fourth Gospel was written, it had to ring true. It had to resonate with the experience of those first Christians.

With you and me, too. John covers that base when he reminds his audience that there were so many things he would love to have said about those encounters with the risen Lord, and indeed the Incarnate Lord before that, but that the whole world could not hold the pages of such a book. John, as he late in life looked back on those events, he knew how immeasurably life-and world-changing they were. So too did those who listened as his gospel was read out. They too experienced the inexplicable but invisible presence of the risen Lord, made known by the one they had come to know as Advocate, Counsellor, Spirit.

Our doctrine of the Trinity came later, as Christians spent centuries wrestling to find language to express the mysterious truth that God was triune. But nothing else could explain the tangibility of the presence of the risen Lord who they encountered in their worship, in their fellowship, in their journey through scriptures. And while the years, centuries, even millennia have passed we too stand in the privileged place of encounter with the risen Lord, made possible through these elements, clung to by faith but also by that occasional uncanny pressing sense of Christ-presence.

This Thursday somewhere, whatever we’re doing, some of our sisters and brothers (especially I should add in the Roman Catholic communion) will be recognising the disappearance of the fleshly Jesus from our sight. Yet next Sunday our experience of him will be one and the same as it has always been, sometimes powerful, sometimes sketchy or even meh. Yet nevertheless always validation of the claims he made to be one with, claims he was inseparable from the creator of the heavens and the earth.

So inseparable that he even came to be known as Word, the Breath, the Son, Godself.

Closer indeed then our own breath, for this presence is the breath of the creator, the Redeemer, the Giver of life, as I sometimes say when I give the almost-final words of the liturgy.

Breath does not force us, does not direct our every footstep, dictate our every decision. If it did we would not be a people of faith but dull, robotic mechanisms. Bots.

That we are not. As we go out of our worship today we are called simply to do our best as we offer ourselves and our lives afresh in the service of the risen and Lord, and his reign of justice, compassion and love.

Bewildering Paul

 

SERMON PREACHED AT POST-ORDINATION TRAINING

St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 5^th, 1988

(Monday of the 23^rd week in Ordinary Time)

 

 

It was with some ambivalence that I approached and prepared for the task of celebrating the Eucharist and preaching here amongst you today. It was in part, as Andrew Moore said to some of us last year, the knowledge that I was about to expose myself, to stand at least to some extent momentarily naked before my colleagues, no easy task. 

And yet I can play no games: when I preach I allow myself to become emotionally naked, no matter who my congregation might be. To do less would be to sell my priesthood and the gospel short. But also in my mind is the knowledge that we are a diverse group, typically Anglican, with much on which we are bound to disagree, I hope in love, beyond the boundaries of that on which we are gospel-bound to agree. On what should I preach? On the realms in which we are bound to part company, or on safe, but dare I say it, mundane essentials commonly held.

I therefore disciplined myself to preach on the lectionary readings for today. I will of course in so doing reveal something of myself. But far, far more important to me is the opportunity to explore with you my sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the Lord who I love passionately, and who we all are called to share with our diverse gifts and interpretations.

I am however working on the assumption that we are, as a group, informed and theologically educated. I will amongst you explore ideas that I might at this stage choose not to explore with the people whom I am called to serve in this community of faith of St. John’s, East Bentleigh. But in the end the essence of my thought will be the same. Only the terminology might differ.

But what do we do when we are confronted with one of Paul’s tirades against some aspect or other of the life of one of the house churches to which he wrote, a tirade against some practice of which he disapproves? Sometimes I can stand united with Paul, proud to have him as my ally on some issue. At other times I breathe a sigh of relief for his escape clause, “it is I that say this, not the Lord.” At other times I wish he would shut up and go away.

On this occasion I am of course legally bound to agree with Paul in his tirade against what he understands to be an incestuous practise in the church  at Corinth. The Tables of Affinity and Kindred and the law of Australia are both in agreement with Paul: it is unacceptable for a man to sleep with or to marry his stepmother. But I become concerned when I find Paul throwing the Levitical lawbook at his people. Is this the same Paul who is soon to write to his future hosts in Rome,

Now we are rid of the Law, freed by death from our imprisonment, free to serve in the new spiritual way, and not the old way of a written law.

                                                                              (Romans 7:6)

 

Confronted by this case of incest at Corinth, (a case, I might add, that Freud would understand to be inevitable, if not acceptable), Paul is harsh beyond all reason. The offender, he suggests,

is to be handed over to Satan so that his sensual body may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

                                                                              (1 Corinthians 5:5)

 

Which one of us would dare to make such a provocative threat? And indeed, what a fascinating Satanology Paul is here expressing. Has he here been reading the Book of Job, in which Satan is seen to be the servant of Yahweh, whose brief is to tempt the people of God?

The Satanology expressed by Paul at this point raises A terribly important issue. Can we really quote chapter and verse at one another or at our neighbours if the witness of scripture is less than consistent on such an important issue as the person and place of the devil? Were  the author of the Apocalypse of Saint John to read this passage of Paul he would be horrified: how can the great beast Satan who is to be destroyed, serve the purposes of God? Even Jesus, who commands Satan “get behind me,” might be a little surprised to find Paul here expecting Satan to serve the purposes of the Kingdom.

Is this so surprising? Paul often seems to be riddled with inconsistencies. Countless statements of Paul have been used in partisan polemics by warring factions within the church. The man who claims to be all things to all people has been cited as the friend of vastly diverse causes. At the heart of the inconsistency of Paul there appears to be this basic dichotomy of law and grace, nomos and charis. To the Corinthians he appears to be advocating adherence to the demands of the Levitical law, yet elsewhere he appears to be quite dismissive of the Law. Scholars generally agree that Paul had at some earlier stage, before he found cause to write this diatribe to the Corinthian church, been very liberal and dismissive of the Law to the Corinthian converts.

So there is for us a danger here. We must not sling chapter and verse at one another in our attempts to right the wrongs of our fellow travellers, and the wrongs of the church in which we are called to serve the world.

But what is going on? Why does Paul allow this apparent inconsistency to creep into his thought? Is he a form of theological schizophrenic? Or is there method here in his seeming madness? And by what are we to rule our life, the rule of law or the rule of grace?

There can never be an either/or on this issue. Our Lord made that, at least, abundantly clear. In our gospel reading today we find him healing the right hand of a stranger, flaunting the letter of the Law in the face of his casuistic enemies. Yet elsewhere he is to tell those around him,

Not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved.

                                                                      (Matthew 5:17)

 

His healing of a withered hand on the Sabbath is in defiance of the letter of the Law, yet presumably consistent with his belief in the permanence of the Law. He is guiding us towards the realization that the Law – any law – must be the servant, not the master of the gospel.

All this talk, then, of law and grace is a New Testament dichotomy. But its implications should not be lost on us today. Our faith is and must be full of uncertainties, or it is not faith at all. Are we saved? Or are we being saved? By our absorption into Christ are we liberated from constructive codes of ethics and morality, or are we called to adopt new, more stringent codes? Salvation by faith, or salvation by works?

Luther, of course, brought about the Reformation and all its resultant tragedy, on that wee dispute. By faith, or by works? Luther was right to dispute the point with the Roman hierarchy, but the problem was that the answer to the faith-works question is not an either/or, but rather a classic Christian both/and. There cannot be faith without works. Nor, dare I say it, can there be true works without faith.

So where is Paul in the midst of all this? Is he inconsistent? Has he set up a false dichotomy between faith and works? I think not – though if we constantly throw disembodied quotes at one another we will inevitably give that impression.

At the heart of Paul’s thought there is what my favourite Pauline scholar likes to call the “coherent centre,” a consistent and unflinching theme. That theme is his belief that human beings and humanity can experience, as he did, the risen Christ, the Lord who breaks into human history (and human histories) and calls us to decide for or against the scandal of the cross. And it is, Paul believes, that same Christ who is made manifest in the Holy Spirit, who prepares us for our own judgement and our own resurrection at the end of time.

Nothing Paul says is inconsistent with that basic theme, that doctrinal centre. But his proclamation of that message differs according to the needs of what I would have called in my advertising days his “target audience.” In his tormented wrestlings with the church at Corinth he is up against a libertine, antinomian church – the fruits no doubt of his earlier attempts to preach freedom in Christ to that community. By grace, the enthusiasts were saying, by grace we are saved, therefore let us do whatever we like. I have seen that often in the contemporary church, the acceptance of God’s offered salvation but not of the code of love therein entailed. But elsewhere, in for example his equally passionate verbal wrestlings with the Church of Galatia, we find him arguing the opposite: “the Law has nothing to do with faith” (Galatians 3:12). But there he was up against the Judaizers, pharisaical, casuistic Christians who demanded rigid adherence to the Law. There are many such as these in our church today.

Where, though, does all this leave us as servants of the gospel today? Is there a coherent centre to the proclamation of our faith? Is it, As for Paul, “Christ, and him crucified”? Can we apply that coherent centre to the various contingencies we will encounter? Or will any gospel suffice?

What is the place of the Law for us as Christians?

The point that we cannot afford to miss in our reading of Paul and indeed of our Lord is this: the Law, any law, can be for Christians no more than the servant of the gospel. Whether we believe that the advance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are efficacious only for those who respond existentially to the message that those events are pro nobis, for us, or whether we believe as I do that the Easter event is salvific for all people in all time, nevertheless the proclamation of that event by our lives and our words must become for us the whole reason for our existence. Anything else is secondary. And our use of law must only be to serve that message.

By our adherent to legalisms which proclaim only a dull and hypercritical Christ we are doing our Lord a disfavour. Similarly, if by our libertinism and recklessness we show disdain towards any sense of restraint, then we proclaim only a god of disorder and disinterest. That god is not mine.

I cry inwardly, sometimes even outwardly, when I hear the damage our church has done and continues to do with its repeated cries, a la John Howard, for “good, old fashioned morality.” Too often, I fear, our cries for such a code of law are no more than a cry to feel safe in the conflict of a world entering a new and threatening age, a world, “turning and turning in the widening gyre.” If we proclaim a Christ of legalistic morality simply because we feel afraid in the face of future uncertainty then we are not proclaiming the Christ who will and does take us into the dangerous places.

We cannot afford to let the lure of the safe places lure us from the danger of the gospel. Neither law nor lawlessness can be our code. We as clergy are called to be signs of aspects of God’s love to the church and to the world. Our dedication to that signature of love must lead us to unsafe places, for God’s love, in the words of a much maligned and misunderstood him is the love that “lays upon the altar the dearest end the best.”

There can be no reconciliation of the dichotomy that our New Testament readings bring us today. There is no either/or when we come to speak of law and grace, faith and works. There can only be a both/and. And it is our responsibility as clergy, as icons in God’s church, to proclaim that both/and unflinchingly by our lives and by our words, for as long as we serve Christ. That I believe is what Paul means when he tells us,

I made myself all things to all people in order that I might save some.

                                                                              (1 Corinthians 9:22)

 

Yes indeed. Paul’s writings reflect that changeability. But the core of the gospel for him never changes. In holding that coherent centre together with changing expressions of gospel-life he may well have set a blueprint for our vocations today.

God’s eternal Yes

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

ORDINARY SUNDAY 22

SUNDAY 28^th AUGUST, 1988

(Parish Baptismal Sunday)

 

Do you turn to Christ? Do you repent of your sins? Do you renounce evil? Do you believe?

Shortly we will be asking these four questions of the four children that we are to baptize. Two of those children will be old enough to provide their own answer. Two will have an answer made on their behalf by parents and godparents. The questions are straightforward and unambiguous, yet few things create more division within the Christian Church than the practice of baptism. Baptism: the sacrament by which we are meant to be united.

We are not. The problem is not so much how we are baptized, though that in itself causes some dispute, but when. When is it appropriate in the Christian Church for members to receive this once and for all sacrament? The two older children to be baptized this morning will be fully aware of the richness and awe of the moment that they are about to experience. The two babies will have no idea what to make of it, what to make of a stranger in even stranger clothes taking them and seemingly bathing their forehead. For that reason, some would say, infants should not be baptized.

The very fact that there is no common mind in the church on this matter demonstrates that the dual authorities of written scripture offer no consensus, no unambiguous analysis of the issue. But I want to explain to you the reason why I willingly baptize infants, older children, and adults alike, and why I am willing to place only minimal prerequisites on those coming themselves or bringing their children to be baptized. In an ideal world I would like to see these children worshipping in our midst every Sunday from this day on. It is not, however, an ideal world, and we are not an ideal church.

At the heart of all that I believe about baptism is the belief that baptism is not something that we do, or something that the priest officiating does. It is something that God does. It is the sign of God’s love for his people, and it is a sign that remembers and encapsulates all that God has done for humanity since the beginning of creation. It recalls the murky, sinister waters that move over the face of the earth in the opening verses of Genesis, the waters that God tames. It reminds us of the fearful anger of God represented by the flood, but also of his mercy in selecting Noah to offer humanity a second start. It reminds us of the rainbow that concludes the flood, for without the prism of water there can be no rainbow, no symbol of God’s promise to humanity. It remains as of the escape of the people of Israel, following Moses, from the pursuing Egyptians. It reminds us of the descent of the Son, the pre-existent Word, into the watery womb of Mary, and of the waters of birth. It reminds us of the enigmatic baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. It reminds us of Jesus’ own descent through the waters of death, and the water that flowed from his spear-pierced side. It reminds us of his glorious resurrection from death, from the waters of death, and the new and inexhaustible hope that event gave to his disciples.

This morning we will take four children out. We will baptize them in the narthex, a reminder to us of the journey our Lord made from the realm of God to the world of you and me. In their baptism they will be signed with the sign of the cross. They will go out to the narthex as people loved by God, and will return with us who have greeted them there with the welcome of peace, return with us into the body of the church. They'll return as people loved by God, but as people loved by God and called, together with you and me, called to be signs to the world of God’s eternal Yes.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

FEAST OF MARY, MOTHER OF OUR LORD

Sunday, August 14^th, 1988

 

Mary. Known paradoxically to theology as Mother of God, she and the titles given to her have caused more confusion and misunderstanding, more bitterness and the hurling of insults, than almost any other figure in Christian history.

Who is she, this child bride who has little less than divided Christendom? Loved mother or rejected mother? Saint or sinner? Mother of God, mother of Christ, or mother of Jesus? Was she translated into heaven without first dying? Who is this woman who could have been no more than a teen when she was catapulted onto the stage of human history and on to the forefront of literary and religious imagination?

Who is Mary, and what does she matter? Protestant theology has all but done away with her. She becomes an embarrassing distraction to the male-dominated imagery of Protestant thought. And equally male-dominated Catholic theology found another way to silence her, by exhorting her to the heights of Mediatrix and Queen of Heaven, Removing her from normal human experience. In so doing the thinkers of the West removed Christ even further from humanity.

Anglicanism has never been clear what to do with Mary. Sandwiched between Catholics and Protestants, we have relegated her to the too-hard basket, giving her only passing mention even in our formative Thirty-nine Articles.

There is a story of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, well known for his mystical devotion to Mary, that he was one day on his knees in church, praying to a statue of Our Lady. The miracle occurred, and the lips of the statue began to move, as if to speak. But before she spoke, Bernard hushed her. “Shhh,” he said. “Women must remain silent in church.” The story may be apocryphal, but it signifies a great deal. We have exalted Mary, but neglected the feminine within our own ranks.

So who is this woman that we have so neglected? In early Christianity she was seen as the new Eve, the obedient woman who, by her obedience made-up for the disobedience of the first Eve. By the fifth century it was being taught that this mother of the saviour did not die, but was translated or “assumed” bodily into the heavenly realm. By the time of the mediaeval church, as Christ came to be seen as stern and distant, Mary came to take his place as the subject of popular devotion. Timid believers, and especially women, began to pray to Mary, fearful that the stern male Christ-judge would reject their prayers and condemn them to torment. She became, then, the Mediatrix, the mediator between humanity and Christ in the same way that Christ the Son is the mediator between humankind and the Father. Christ had become too holy, too superhuman to be approached. 

Later still Mary became the Queen of Heaven, sitting stiffly on the throne of heaven, herself now too holy to be approached, sitting with the child Jesus, all but insignificant, perched demurely upon her knee.

Such was the worst of Marian theology. Many Protestants still believe this to be the teaching of the Catholic Church today. Many Protestants are still mistakenly fighting the theological battles of five hundred years ago.

Yet reflection on the person of Mary offers the church so much that is of value. She was in any case an enigma even to the very earliest Christian writers. For Luke, from whose gospel we read this morning, she is the archetypal believer in Christ, the first Christian. For Matthew and Mark she is one of the old order, part of the unbelieving family of Israel. For Luke, the angels address her:

Rejoice, so highly favoured … you have won God’s favour.

 

Matthew and Mark record Jesus turning to a messenger sent by Mary and retorting,

Who are my mother and my brothers?

 

Luke knows of no such question, allowing only the theological statement,

My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

 

John makes no reference to the coming of the angels to Mary – in this respect he is similar to Mark. But he does place Mary at the foot of the cross at the time of the crucifixion, something the other writers know nothing about. And yet it is John who records the miracle of the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turns water into wine, but where first he turns and addresses his mother with the harsh words,

Woman, what have you to do with me?

 

So even the gospel writers did not understand how they might weave Mary into their accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Mary was an enigma from the first.

Since the early 1960s, however, when the Catholic Church and consequently all of Christianity was turned upside down by the deliberations of the second Vatican Council, much has changed. I offer you some brief modern insights into the person and work of Mary.

In these recent years Mary has become a symbol of what it is to hear and to obey the call of God. She is the original follower of Jesus, as Luke depicts her, the mother who follows the child, who believes in the child and takes to heart the meaning of his life and teachings. She is the woman who bears the God-child in her womb – who reminds us of our responsibility to obey the call of God, to bear and give birth to the God-child, the Christ of the world, and our responsibility to reach out and make available his love to the world.

From Latin America there is emerging a new understanding of Mary. She becomes not only a symbol of the obedient mother of Christ, but also, in her concern for the poor, she becomes a symbol of the oppressed peoples of the world within whom Christ is conceived. The poor of the world become the womb in which dwells the Saviour who

has pulled down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly,

and who

has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

 

No longer then can Mary  be a mere paragon of womanly virtue, a figure like dear bland Esther Summerson in Dickens’ Bleak House. No longer is she to be ignored as an icon of dedicated motherhood and submissive womanhood, but rather as a far more potent figure. We must see in her, women and men alike, the call to become a home for God, to become a dwelling of Christ. We must see in what little we know of Mary a call to us to take the risk of being ostracized, misunderstood, emotionally scarred in the service of the God-child who we spend a lifetime giving birth to. And we must see in Mary a call to us to make possible the birth of the word which proclaims unflinchingly the greatness of Yahweh, the greatness of the God whose name is holy and whose gospel is the routing of the proud of heart and the exaltation of the lowly.

As a male I can say little more about Mary. It is women who are teaching the church the meaning of the pain of waiting to give birth to the Messiah. It is their obedience to God’s call that is bringing to them misunderstanding and accusations of heresy. Perhaps Mary, too, in her time, was seen as heretical for her faith in the child she bore and in his radical message of justice and love.

I can, however, urge you to look seriously at Mary, and at all that she stands for. I urge you to set aside five hundred years of theological argument and to marvel and muse anew at the miracle of this young, sinful human being who gave birth, at the risk of great pain and isolation, to the Saviour of the World.

glory in the dark

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN
and at St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
(May 18^th) 2025

  

READINGS

 

Psalm 1482012 04 06 2240a

Revelation 21: 1-6

John 13: 31-35

 

As a small boy growing up in Africa and England, and then in the bleak realms of a New Zealand boarding school, I was terrified of the dark. Perhaps I still am, but more of that later.

If we were hearing the entire gospel as told by John, we would moments ago have heard his telling narrative comment “It was dark.”

Darkness is such a visceral place for human beings. I remember those childhood terrors of the night. The sounds of the unknown from somewhere outside.

I was a ridiculously hypersensitive child. It didn’t stop as I entered adulthood. I don’t think it ever stopped. By now many of you will know, because I mention it ad nauseum, I will after leaving you head off for my circumnavigation of Australia. Much of it I have covered before, covered it in the same way, sleeping in tents, in a car, on a swag, even on the roof of the car. To do so is to feel the pressure of the night and its loneliness. What is out there just beyond the edge of the light?

But not just Australia’s vast lonely places! To be alone in vastness is always confronting. My trip is not particularly dangerous at all, but the human psyche does not always deal in realities. 

Urban landscapes too can be places of terror, sometimes rightly so. There are many parks I would not cross or roads I would not traverse in the darkness of the night. The Whakatipu is one of few places on earth that I’ve meandered around night time streets without my heart in my mouth.

Ironically that has more to do with socio-economic factors. Low crime because low desperation, because low degrees of random violence on the roads and lanes of these towns. I can name many places in New Zealand and Australia where, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, I would not wander after dark. I can think of places I would not wander by day, too, though mainly overseas, for we are spoilt here.

It was dark, John tells us. Dark because Jesus is about to confront, even be overcome, by demons of jealousy, disappointment, hatred and a legion more. It was dark. Yet Jesus speaks of love and glory. The  word “glory” draws heavily on the pillar of fire, the light in the darkness, that once guided the people of God through the Sinai wilderness.

And here we are in the Easter celebration season, with altar cloths of white and gold and hymns full of light and joy, yet John tells us it was dark. I even double checked to make sure I had the right readings. The psalm is full of joy, the anthem full of joy, the Revelation reading full of future joy. “It was dark” is not the final word.

This is a brief reminder of the places into which Jesus went to complete his work that we call salvation. We can’t grasp the magnitude of the descent that he made in those 24, 36 hours. On Easter morning we celebrate the darkness being overcome by light. Turn on our news feeds and we know that the darkness remains astronomically great in Gaza, Myanmar, the Sudans. Or in Eastern Europe, and now the India-Pakistan borders, where temporary ceasefires and prisoner swaps may be no more than a parenthesis in hostility.

As the Fourth Gospel was being written the author was not lounging back with a glass of port and a fine cigar. He and most of the New Testament writers knew terror, knew their own vulnerability, the precariousness of their position. They knew these things far more then I will in a quiet jaunt around the remote roads of Australia – though I hasten to add there are one or two places I would not sleep in the back of my car or in a roadside tent.

The New Testament writers knew vulnerabilities each day far more akin to Gaza than my small-boy experience of a twig tapping on the outside of my bedroom window, or the spine-tingling chills of a deserted night time car park.

John speaks these words “it was night” before, immediately before, going on to tell of the glorification, of the unending undefeatable love revealed in Jesus’ last 36 hours.

Because the extent of the glorification of Jesus, the extent of that love is only made complete in those 36 hours. While we will face darknesses, and our sisters and brothers not only in Christ but in the human race face darknesses day by day, our forebears in faith were adamant that these were not the final word.

As a people of the light, John recalls Jesus saying, we must be a people of love.

That commission to be a people of love, of light, is given by Jesus after the resurrection. Only after Jesus has gone through the deepest valleys can light and love be anything but an apparition. Until then the tapping of the twig on the window, or the explosions of military missiles, these drown out all signs of hope. Jesus challenges and empowers us to be in our small ways bearers of light and love. In that way we communicate the glory that transforms every darkness, become bearers of the pillar of fire that enlightens every darkness.

Jesus and the Buddha

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

No tiger, but ... the best I can do

EVE of St JAMES (July 24^th) 1988

 

“Anyone who wants to be great amongst you must be your servant”

 

The Buddha told the following story to one of his disciples:

Once upon a time, long ago, there lived a king who had three sons. They were like young gods to look at.

One day the king was relaxing in a park. The three sons left the king and their servants and wandered around the park together until they came to a large thicket of bamboo. Two of the princes expressed fear of wild beasts – though fear at different levels – but one expressed only excitement and hope at what might befall him in this place.

Asked the Prince strolled about amongst the bamboo they came upon a tigress, surrounded by her five seven-day-old cubs. She was exhausted by hunger and thirst, and unable to hunt for food.

The first brother, who had earlier expressed fear of meeting wild beasts in the thicket, remarked that if the animal did not soon find food she and her Cubs would perish. The second brother, who had earlier expressed not so much the fear of death at the hands of wild animals, but rather the fear of separation in death from those he loved, this brother wondered aloud how the poor animal might find food.

But the third brother cast himself down in front of the tigress so that she might devour him. When she proved to be not strong enough to kill him as he lay there he cut his own throat and collapsed to die at her feet. She devoured him, and received the strength she needed to live and to give life to her cubs.

The Buddha concluded the story,

It was I who at that time and on that occasion was the prince.

 

When the mother of the sons of Thunder came to Jesus seeking greatness for her sons she received an unexpected response. Jesus took the request of the mother of two of his disciples – an entirely reasonable response in his culture – and used it to drive home to his followers A radical message that lies close to the heart of his teachings.

Whoever would be great amongst you must be your servant.

 

It is for our purposes today a happy coincidence that the Buddha in his teachings sought to communicate the same theme, and provided such a vivid illustration of it. The Buddha’s tale, if gory, is hard to misinterpret.

The church that our Lord called to being in the world is a servant church. It is called to serve the world. I hear too little of this as I hear church strategists planning the new way forward into the coming century. We are called to be a servant people. It is not our task to gain a position of power in the community, and from that position to make pronouncements on issues of ethics or morality.

We are called not to remain silent in the face of injustices. We must speak out on behalf of the exploited and the abused. But in order to do that we need not attempt to regain some kind of mediaeval strength. Strength is not the way of the cross. The Crusades slaughtered countless innocents in the name of Christianity, but such is not the way of the cross. American military strategists seek to argue for disarmament from a position of military supremacy, but such is not the way of the cross. The cross is not a symbol of power, in which we should conquer, but rather a sign of powerlessness in which God conquers turning evil to good, tears to joy.

The church, then, is not called to be powerful. It's going to be a servant church imaging for the world the ironic powerlessness of Jesus before Pilate. Like the church, we as Christians are called to announce strategies of power and seek instead to imitate Christ’s outspoken powerlessness. In that way we can begin to be a servant church. We as Christians are called to be Christlike.

We are called to be Christ’s body and blood in the world, like the young incarnation of the Buddha providing our lives to be the food by which those around us may be given life.

Go, prophesy

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

ORDINARY SUNDAY 15 (July 10^th) 1988

 

It was Yahweh who said … “Go, prophesy to my people Israel”

                                                                        (Amos 7:15)

Shake off the dust from under your feet

                                                                        (Mark 6:11b)

 

A friend of mine was once standing in the foyer of the Main Building of our university. He was a new Christian, and a Charismatic, boiling within with the desire to communicate his new found faith to all and sundry. As he stood there in the foyer he watched a group of loud and aggressive mail students behaving in the way that only loud and aggressive male students can. And as he watched them he agonised with himself, “what is holding me back from telling these people about Jesus?”

Now I don’t wish to propose that my friend would have achieved any significant results had he done what he was considering, rushing up to the strangers and ear-bashing them with his beliefs. It may well have been good human psychology, otherwise known as common sense, that held him back. But I do want to stress that his heart was in the right place. His desire to communicate Jesus to the world around him was a real and burning one and for that he was to be commended. Let us leave him in the foyer for a while.

In their wisdom the compilers of the lectionary, by which our readings are chosen each week, have seen fit to describe the theme of this week’s worship as the theme of “faithfulness.” Now I beg to differ (as is often the case). For I find a far stronger theme underlying each of our readings today, and it is a theme that we ignore only at great peril. For in each of our readings we find the central figure, author or actor in the drama, recognizing the distinctive flavour of their faith, knowing it to be something about which there is a sense of urgency and excitement, and knowing it to be something that must be proclaimed to the world around them. In each reading we find the compulsion, the urgency of the responsibility of God’s people to proclaim God’s lordship to the world. And these people of God are no superstars, no Rambos of their religion, but ordinary people. Says Amos,

I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son,

But  I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees;

The Lord took me from following the flock,

and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

 

Amos was a simple shepherd, with none of the normal qualifications of one who might be recognised by society as a suitable mouthpiece of God. He was a simple shepherd, but one who lived in a time of great complacency and comfort. And he was not too simple to see clearly that the comfort extended only to those who belonged to the middle and upper classes of his society. One might be reminded for example, of the “two Britains” of Thatcherism, which in the south flourishes at the expense of a largely neglected north. Or we might care to look closer to home, to find comparisons in our own community, for here too sectors of the community may benefit at the expense of others from the policies of our leaders.

But in seeing the injustices, Amos knew himself to be called to act. Writes one scholar,

He savagely assails the oppression of the poor and the cheating of the poor … the corrupt judicial system which denied them any hope of attaining justice … With equal vehemence he attacked the pampered upper classes … who could not have cared less for the plight of the poor.

                 John Bright, Covenant and Promise: the Prophetic Understanding of the Future in Old Testament Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 83.

 

Again, in Mark’s gospel we find a subtle warning against complacency and comfort amongst the people of God.

When you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.

Mark, the earliest gospel writer, is warning his people against the dangers of social climbing. If our first hosts live in squalor, nevertheless their hospitality must be seen to surpass all comfort, and the gospel visitor must not accept opportunities to move out to more luxurious surroundings.

The point that both Mark and Amos grasp so strongly is the sense of compulsion that we as servants of God are under to proclaim God’s message to the world. Without personal benefit. Martin Luther’s famous maxim was, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Do no other but to proclaim the standards of faith and justice to the world and to the church that we believe to be essential to relationship between God and humanity. Our Archbishop[1] frequently makes the statement that a church that is not on about evangelism, or proclamation as I prefer to call it, is not a church at all.

So we are left with two questions for ourselves at St. John’s, East Bentleigh: are we on about evangelism, and related to that question, what forms of evangelism are appropriate for us to embrace?

Even our reading from Ephesians today, that glorious hymn of praise to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” fits our theme here, for the author of those words, who may or may not have been Paul, has seen passionately the power in which we as Christians operate within the world God gave us. Incidentally, if you ever encounter Jehovah’s Witnesses at your door claiming that belief in the Trinity has no biblical foundation, you could do worse than to refer them to this passage in Ephesians. Few passages are more clearly trinitarian in their language, and few are more celebratory of the power that the Trinity can have in human lives.

In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him [the Son] … were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

 

This writer saw Christians as a distinctive people with a belief worthy of enthusiasm and excitement. We have a message to proclaim. We are possessors of a distinctive belief, a distinctive relationship with God. We are a people sealed at our baptism with the Spirit, and that same Spirit has drawn near to us to be our comforter and to be our strength, literally our pneumatic force.

This thought brings me back to my friend in the university foyer. As he stood there in the foyer he at least knew only too well that he had a task to perform. Had he spoken to the group of macho males he may or may not have achieved tangible results, and those results if tangible may or may not have furthered the cause of the Kingdom. For the moment such niceties are irrelevant. The point is he knew he had a task to perform.

And so again the questions we must ask ourselves at St. John’s are the same as those faced by my friend. Are we or am I on about evangelism, and if so, what is effective evangelism in our life situation? What do we understand evangelism to be, and are we doing it? Does God, Father, Son, and Spirit, excite us, or do we as church, men and women, simply belong to another community service club?

Finally, I want to make it quite clear that I do not believe that what my friend was about to do – and didn’t – in the foyer of that university would have been an effective form of evangelism. Indeed, I do not believe that much of what the church in this and other dioceses is on about today is effective evangelism. But I do believe in evangelism, and I do believe that if you and I together do not spend some time together in the coming months grappling with the two questions I have raised then we will have no future as a church, as a community of faith.

Those questions again are “are we on about evangelism,” and “what is effective evangelism in this situation?”

May I leave you with a final thought? I began with the text “shake off the dust from under your feet.” But we cannot shake off the dust that is on our feet if there is no dust on them.

---

[1] David Penman, Archbishop of Melbourne 1984-1989.