God is not ours to control

June 24, 2023

Pentecost 4 – 2023
Matthew 10:24-39
Marian Free

In the name of God whose ways are not our ways, whose timing is not our timing. Amen.

How you might wonder does a preacher know what to preach – especially when confronted by such diverse and complex readings as we have before us this morning? It is difficult to pass over the pettiness of Sarah and of Abraham’s willingness to collude with her mean spiritednesses. How can one possibly declare (as we did) that this is the word of God? Paul’ letter to the Romans is rich and complex but again, for the sake of time, this too has to be passed over. My habit, as is the Anglican tradition, has been to focus on the gospel, but today’s gospel – as last week’s – consists of several parts. To give the passage the attention it deserves would warrant longer than we have. So to answer my question – in the first instance I read the set texts (hoping that some idea or theme will leap out). Second, I read what other people have to say – what have they made of these diverse readings? If this fails to produce inspiration I will repeat the process until an idea begins to form. Throughout the process I place myself in God’s hands through prayer and reflection, trusting that the Holy Spirit will and does guide me.

Sometimes I am as surprised as you might be as to where I land.

This week for instance, I was convinced that the gospel provided good material for a sermon on persecution – what it is, and why some who claim to be persecuted are not. A re-reading, however, convinced me that, just as this week’s gospel concluded that begin last week, so the theme of prayer could be addressed through Jesus words to his listeners. (That is to say I saw the gospel in a new light – a light I trust given through the Spirit).

Last week I wondered whether we thought that God had a magic wand with which (if we prayed hard enough, or in the right way) God could answer our prayers. Today’s gospel makes it clear that this is not how God acts. In fact, today’s gospel is shocking and confronting to any of us who have a simplistic, naïve faith. If we believe in a God who is benign at best and a frustrated parent at worst, then Jesus’ words today fill us with disquiet – “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father,and a daughter against her mother.” These words (and indeed those that precede them don’t conform to a picture of a Jesus who is warm, loving and protective. This angry, challenging Jesus makes us want to look the other way, to disassociate ourselves (surely he can’t mean what he is saying!)

Throughout history we have simplified and domesticated our faith. We have smoothed off the rough edges, seen conformity to the norms of society as an indication of our goodness and our moral standing. We associate ‘rocking the boat’ with non-conformist radicals, nothing to do with good upstanding Christian citizens.

We are ill-equipped to hear what Jesus is saying. But Jesus is saying something really important. His confronting language serves as a corrective to all of us who think that we know what God should do and how God should do it. Jesus reminds us that God is not ours to control (through prayer or any other means). He defies our desire that he will bring peace, restore order or conform to our expectations that faith is not costly or that as a consequence of his coming all differences between us will be dissolved. He makes it clear that he cannot change the world without first changing us.

Contrary to what we want to believe, Jesus warns us that faith can be, and often is divisive – because it calls us to stand for justice, to love the unlovable, to welcome the rejected. Our faith might bring us comfort- but Jesus warns that it is just as likely to make us uncomfortable. While he wants to shake us out of our complacency, to remind us that no amount of prayer will force God’s hand, Jesus is also keen to reassure us. We need not be afraid. Even if strife is raging around us and our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. God knows each one of us – down to the hairs on our head and, even in the midst of our troubles God is with us, supporting and sustaining us.

In the final analysis instead of expecting God to do what we want, we have to trust God. We do not try to bend God to our will or, expect God to do what we think God should do. Through prayer we place ourselves in God’s hands, seek God’s will and rely on God’s strength to face the chaos in which we find ourselves.

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Prayer changes us

June 17, 2023

Pentecost 3 – 2023
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Marian Free

In the name of God whose faith in us is beyond our imagining. Amen.

How and for what do you pray? What do you expect from your prayers? Are you sometimes completely overwhelmed by the needs of the world? Do you sometimes feel that you are inadequate for the task – that even if you did pray hard enough there would not be enough people who cared enough to alleviate suffering? Do you worry that no matter how much you pray some situations simply remain the same? Do you wonder why God does not appear to act?

At the moment many of our prayers are focussed on the peoples of the Ukraine and Sudan, but there are conflicts all over the world that equally deserve our attention and our prayers. When I wonder did you or your church community last pray for the Khmer, the people of Syria or of the Congo or the countless other places still at war? We are rightly focussed on refugees who have fled recent conflicts and especially those who risk drowning at sea, but that means we tend to forget that there are thousands who have lived in refugee camps their entire lives or that in Palestine there are generations of families who have lived in camps. It is the same situation with victims of natural disasters – we simply cannot pray for everyone impacted by fire, flood, cyclone, and our memories tend to focus on more recent events. In 2020, COVID took our attention away from those who had lost everything in the bush fires of January that year and the floods in Northern NSW and elsewhere are, to many of us a distant memory – and yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of people (in this nation alone) who are still trying to rebuild homes and lives.

At the moment those who are impacted by the increased cost of living, rising interest rates and the rental crisis are front and centre in the minds of many of us and yet we are limited in what we can actually do. Our contribution to a Parish Pantry or other charities will not alleviate the pain for one family even for one day, and few of us can afford to purchase accommodation that could be made available for the homeless.

In the face of such mind-numbing issues, it is tempting to wish that God would wave a magic wand, end wars and alleviate poverty and suffering in the world. Yet if that were how God solved problems there would be no need to pray. God would already have responded. Why, in the face of so much anguish does God appear to stand idly by? The answer of course is complex, but God’s apparent inaction reflects God’s faith in us and God’s longing for us to be a part of the solution.

That this is how God responds is reflected in this morning’s gospel, especially in verses 36-38: ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”’

First century Palestine had been under Roman occupation for decades. Land that once fed generations of families had been taken by the occupiers and given as a reward to Caesar’s soldiers. Everything was taxed – the roads, the crops, the right to fish. The church authorities were either Roman appointments or were people who had cow towed to the Romans. As a consequence, the vast majority of the population felt harassed, oppressed and utterly powerless to effect change.

Faced with the suffering and helplessness of the people, Jesus seems to be overwhelmed. You can almost hear him sigh with despair as he observes that they are like sheep without a shepherd. He is filled with compassion. The Greek word “splagnizothai” (compassion) refers to an emotion felt deep within one’s belly, with one’s whole self. In other words, Jesus’ inner being was overwhelmed with concern – but, like God, Jesus doesn’t wave a magic wand. Indeed, he doesn’t even enlist God’s assistance. Instead, what Jesus does is to pray that there might be enough will in enough people to bring about change.

The need is clear, the solution is not to miraculously make it go away but to send people to fill the need – people of compassion – to heal, to console, to challenge unjust structures, to work for peace.

Seen another way, Jesus prays not for the world to change, but for us to change. As long as there are greedy, selfish, power-hungry people in the world there will be wars, injustice, and inequity. As long as people put themselves first we will continue to rape the planet, change the weather patterns, and induce climate change. As long we continue to believe that it is someone else’s (God’s) problem nothing will change.

Mother Teresa said: “I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.

In the end, prayer should change us. It should open us to the ways in which we contribute to the ills of the world; reveal to us our selfishness and lack of action; and open us to the Spirit of God working within us.

We are called to be God’s co-conspirators in changing the world for the better.
We are the labourers for whom Jesus prays. Only when we change can we begin to change the world.

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Models of ministry

June 10, 2023

Pentecost 2 -2023
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Marian Free

In the name of Source of all being, Word of Life, Eternal Spirit. Amen.

Have you ever read or tried to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace? From memory, the list of characters extends over two pages. That, and the unfamiliarity of the names, made it impossible for me to read beyond the first chapter. Dicken’s Bleak House was not quite so challenging but, because it was written as a serial, and because there are several sub-plots, I found it difficult to follow the thread of the separate stories and to remember a character whom I hadn’t heard from for four or five chapters.

Thankfully, the gospels do not pose such a problem because the vignettes are short and the primary characters consistent. In today’s gospel, there are several unrelated sub-plots – Jesus encounters several unrelated characters whose stories do not appear to be making a particular point or leading to a conclusion. The passage begins when Jesus sees Matthew and calls him to follow. Jesus then has dinner with tax collectors and sinners and responds to the criticisms of the Pharisees. Then in the paragraph omitted by the lectionary writers (a few characters too many?) Jesus answers a question about fasting that is posed by John’s disciples. In the verses given to us for today, Jesus is approached by the leader of the synagogue and while he is on way to raise the synagogue leader’s daughter, he is touched by the woman with a haemorrhage. Finally, at the house of the synagogue leader, Jesus has to confront the grieving crowds. (Were we to read on we would see that Matthew continues the story with the healing of two blind men and healing a man who was mute.)

In only one of these encounters is Jesus’ identity mentioned – when the blind men call out: “Have mercy on us Son of David.”

The purpose of the stories then, is not to tell us who Jesus is, but more to give an insight into how Jesus is. The encounters tell us about the character of Jesus, how he behaves, with whom he interacts and, to a lesser extent, what he teaches. The reactions to Jesus, the questions of the Pharisees and John’s disciples, and the grief of the crowds. are indicative of the very human responses which Jesus’ actions elicit – criticism, confusion, lack of trust.

Through the eyes of this gospel writer, we are shown that Jesus was a risk-taker. He sees Matthew at the tax booth and says simply: “Follow me.” There is no job-interview, test of character, or referees. Jesus sees in Matthew something that no one else has seen and trusts his intuition that Matthew will make a suitable disciple.

Jesus sets no boundaries on his ministry – who might join him and with whom he might associate. He and his disciples are not discerning about whom they dine with, drawing criticism from the Pharisees (who believe that God insists that Jews keep themselves separate from Gentiles and sinners). In response to their criticism, Jesus uses his knowledge of scripture to firmly correct the narrow, judgmental, and smug attitudes of his critics.

When John’s disciples express their confusion about the differences between Jesus and John, Jesus uses practical, everyday imagery to help them understand that there is a proper time for everything. It is appropriate that John’s disciples fast, but the time has not yet come for Jesus’ disciples to do the same.

Jesus doesn’t hesitate when the synagogue leader asks him to do the impossible, but he is not so focussed on raising the young girl that he cannot stop and give his full attention to the woman with a haemorrhage. Nor is he deterred by the mourners when he reaches his destination but remains focussed on what he has come to do.

The way in which Jesus responds to each of these situations reveals something about the nature of Jesus and of his ministry. Through these encounters Jesus shows us how to be courageous, inclusive, non-judgmental, open, empathetic, unhurried, and life-giving. By the way in which he interacts, he makes it clear that he doesn’t have criteria by which he determines who may or may not be a disciple, with whom he will or will not associate or whom he will or will not heal. He is not cowed by the Pharisees, confused by John’s disciples, or caught off guard when the woman touches his cloak. He will not be bound by social convention, religious expectation, or stereotypical definitions.

From these encounters we can deduce that Jesus is self-assured and confident of his role. He will not be rushed or forced to do anything he does not want to do. So, while we might hold our breath when Jesus stops to attend to the woman with a haemorrhage – instead of hurrying to the already dead girl – Jesus is clear that attending to the person in front of him will not detract from his ministry to the person who awaits him. (He is not so full of his self-importance that he feels he has to ignore the woman to get to the child and his closeness to God enables him to trust that all will be well.)

This lengthy passage, with its variety of scenarios, provides a model of inclusive community and of pastoral care. Jesus demonstrates through his reactions to those whom he meets that no one is to be excluded and no one is to be given priority over anyone else. He makes it clear that ego has no place in ministry and, in stopping to address the woman who has touched him, Jesus proves how important (and life-giving) it is to be fully present to those whom we encounter – rather than worrying about where we have to be and what we have to do.

Jesus’ interactions become a model for our interactions and his character a model for us to aspire to. The responses of the Pharisees (and of John’s disciples) provide a yardstick against which to measure our own reactions especially to those who like Jesus, break cultural norms or religious expectations.

May Jesus always be our model and our guide, and may we with him be open and compassionate, confident and wise, responsive and present, that our interactions with others may be sensitive, respectful and life-giving.

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Trinity Sunday

June 3, 2023

Trinity – 2023
Matthew 28:16-20
Marian Free

In the name of God, creative, generative force, loving, sacrificial being, empowering and energising breath. Amen.

A little while I saw a meme that featured Jesus and the disciples. The first frame, pictured Jesus preparing the disciples for his ascension. Jesus was saying: “Don’t make this too complicated”. In the next frame, after Jesus has ascended the disciples see a group of people coming over the hill. “Oh no”, they say, “here come the theologians!” The creator of the cartoon was implying that theologians complicate simple tenets of faith by analysing and explaining them.

It is easy to imagine that we would be better off without those academics who make meaning out of scriptures, who turn apparently simple texts into complex ideas. The fact is, that without theologians, we would be confronted with a multitude of conflicting ideas and no arbitrators to determine which interpretation was more accurate or more reflective of the teaching of Jesus and its reception by the first believers.

The early church provides two cases in point – the Incarnation and the Trinity – both of which proved controversial in the first few centuries. In the gospels, Jesus is depicted as both human and divine, but there is no detailed argument as to how this works in practice. The most direct claims are those of Jesus in John’s gospel in which Jesus consistently claims that he and the Father are one. In the Synoptics, there are no direct claims that Jesus and the Father are one (Mt. 11:27 being an exception), but in those gospels Jesus shown to have power over demons, over the natural elements and over life itself – powers previously associated only with God. It seems obvious that the gospel writers took for granted. that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, but they provide no explicit statement to this effect, and give no explanation as to how such a thing could be. It was left to the early church to determine what this meant and how it could be explained. The result was a number of theories about the nature of Jesus and fierce arguments between various bishops and theologians.

Similarly with the Trinity. God as Creator/or Father, Son/Christ/Lord and Spirit is referred to unselfconsciously throughout Paul’s letters and to some extent in the Gospels, but nowhere is there any explanation as to how God can be both three AND one. There is no biblical description of the way in which the three persons of God relate to each other. A Trinitarian God was such a departure from the strict monotheism of Judaism, that there was no language to accommodate a new way of thinking about this same God. The first believers took for granted that God was in some way three persons in one God, but they did not have the appropriate language to defend that belief. It was left to later scholars to find language that honoured the equal value of each member of the Trinity and to describe the relationship between the three – language that often takes away from the relaxed way in which the early community accepted and related to a Trinitarian God.

Interestingly, though the Pauline letters use the language of God, Lord, Christ, and Spirit interchangeably, and though Paul coined prayer: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian formula with which we are most familiar “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” occurs only in Matthew’s gospel. This is in no small part because the gospels were trying to tell the story of Jesus and to record his teaching – rather than to make meaning. of his life, death, and resurrection.

That said, the conclusion to Matthew’s gospel tells us two things – one, that by the 80s, Trinitarian language was being used as a matter of course and two, that the language of Trinity was an essential component of the baptismal liturgy. In other words, at least by the time Matthew was written, the idea of a three-fold God had solidified into a formula – a formula that was accepted even by this most Jewish of the gospel writers. At the same time this formula was used (without explanation) as an essential part of the liturgy that welcomed new believers into the community.

It seems that the early church did not have to reflect on the nature of the Trinity or on the relationship between the members of the Trinity. Early believers appear to have taken three-fold nature of God for granted – without seeing any contradiction between that belief and their existing belief that God was one.

Perhaps the best attempt to make sense of a three-fold God is the Athanasian Creed, which can be found in the back of your Prayer Book, and which used to be said on Trinity Sunday. “So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved must think thus of the Trinity. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.)

The Trinitary is first and foremost relational and communal. The persons of the Trinity are non-competitive, inclusive. No one person of the Trinity has priority and no one person of the Trinity is dispensable, but all work together in unity.

The God whom we are called to worship in not a lonely, isolated, all-powerful despot, but a loving community whose roles are both distinct and indistinguishable. The God whom we worship is not a distant and indifferent power but a fellowship that is so concerned with our well-being that God’s very self shared our humanity becoming one of us and one with us. The God whom we worship is not static and unchanging, but dynamic and innovative, dancing through time and space – before time and beyond time.

The God whom we worship invites us into the dance, into communion with Godself and promises to be with us always, to the end of the age.

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Breath or fire it is one Spirit

June 3, 2023

Pentecost – 2023
John 20:19-23
Marian Free

In the name of God who comes to us are we are and reveals Godself as we require. Amen.

If, when you heard this morning’s gospel, you had a sense of déjà vu, you would not have been mistaken. The gospel for the second Sunday of Easter was John 20:19-31 and today we have heard again the first five verses. It seems unnecessary to have the same reading twice in two months, but for the purpose of the lectionary writers, there are at least two different messages in this part of John’s gospel. The first is that of Jesus’ resurrection appearance and, in particular, the absence of Thomas on that occasion. Today, on Pentecost Sunday, our focus is on the gospel account of Jesus’ breathing the Holy Spirit on to his disciples.

Every Sunday we have four readings, one of which is always a gospel reading. It is only in John’s gospel that we have an account of the giving of Holy Spirit, so each year, no matter what readings make up our Easter fare, we include a reading from John on the day of Pentecost.

Luke’s dramatic account of the coming of the Holy Spirit is recorded in Acts, not in the gospel. In his account, the one with which we are most familiar, the Holy Spirit appears with a rushing wind and tongues of fire. Because this event occurred on the Day of Pentecost (which we celebrate today) It is easy to think that the Holy Spirit can only be known or experienced in a powerful and emotionally charged way. It is also tempting to believe, because of the sudden and dramatic appearance of the Spirit that, prior to that Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not exist .

This is simply not true. The Holy Spirit has played a role from the beginning of time and is evident before Pentecost in all the gospel accounts. To give just a few examples: Matthew tells us that Mary was with child through the Holy Spirit. In a quote from the Old Testament Mark informs us that David was inspired by the Holy Spirit. According to Luke an angel informed Zechariah that John the Baptist would be filled with the Holy Spirit and Mary is promised that she will conceive by the Holy Spirit. Luke also tells us that when Elizabeth greeted Mary that she was filled with the Holy Spirit, that Zechariah too was filled with the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit rested on Simeon.

As might be expected the place of the Spirit is different in John’s gospel. According to this author, Jesus and the Holy Spirit cannot co-exist with his disciples. In his farewell speech, Jesus assures the disciples that they will not be left alone and that he will send them the Holy Spirit – Advocate, Comforter and Teacher. Then, when he appears to them on the day of resurrection Jesus breathes on the disciples and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit” – a more intimate and less melodramatic, event than that described by Luke in Acts.

Of course, the Gospels and Acts were written a substantial time after the actual events and the accounts are no doubt coloured by the experiences of the believers in the decades after the first Pentecost. That said, it is quite clear that the Holy Spirit was a significant and dynamic presence in the early church as recorded in the letters of Paul. In Romans Paul assures believers that: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (5:5)” and 1 Corinthians describes our bodies as “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (6:19). In Paul’s communities the Spirit empowered believers to lead, to teach, to prophecy (as well as to speak in tongues and work miracles, 1 Cor 12) and it is to Paul that we owe the insight that the fruits of the Spirit – those characteristics which will be evidence of the presence of the Spirit within us – are“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22-23).

These varied reports of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the first believers are not intended to confuse or tease us. The different accounts serve an important purpose for those of us who live centuries later. They reveal that there was not one way to receive, to know or to experience the Holy Spirit. Some believers felt a quiet assurance of the Holy Spirit in their lives and others encountered the Spirit through an ecstatic and life-altering event. Some were moved to speak in tongues, some empowered to work miracles, some to share the gospel and some to lead their communities and many no doubt continued to live their lives – lives now enriched and emboldened by the Holy Spirit.

The differing accounts and the differing experiences of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament free us from the misconception that there is only one way to know and only one way to experience the Holy Spirit. We do not (as some people insist) have to speak in tongues to demonstrate the presence of the Spirit within us. If we do not have the power to heal or prophesy, we do not need to feel less than adequate. The Spirit might unsettle us in wind and fire, or gently uphold us as a breath of air. The Spirit might draw from us gifts that we could not have imagined or build on strengths that we already knew that we had. Our experiences of the Holy Spirit will be at least as diverse as those recorded in the New Testament because it is not a matter of one-size-fits-all, but more a matter of God giving to each as each has need, or God empowering us to fulfill the role that God has in mind for us.

You might have had your own ecstatic Pentecost experience, or you might have known the gentle presence of the resurrected Jesus. It does not matter how you know or experience the Spirit, only that you know the Spirit and that you trust the Spirit to empower you and to lead you in the paths that God has established for you.

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For whom and for what do you pray? Jesus prays for the disciples

June 3, 2023

Easter 7 – 2023
John 17:1-11 (12-end)
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.

When someone learns that they have a life-threatening disease, not only do they have to come to terms with what it means for themselves, but very often they have the agonizing task of preparing their family, their friends, and even their business partners for life without them. I witnessed something of this when I was in my teens. The father of a friend of mine was diagnosed with leukemia. There were few treatment options at that time, and it was clear he was going to die. Knowing that, this man – we’ll call him Paul – did what he could to prepare his family. He insisted that his wife study law so that she could support the family, and he made a video for each of his children to be played when they turned 21. His advice was good. His wife excelled at law, and the children grew up confident in their father’s love.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to know that one was dying and to know that there was so much more left to do, people who relied on your support, or children who would be left without a parent. It must at least initially, make the knowledge of pending death so much harder to bear.

Jesus had always known that he was to die and, as the time grew closer, he knew only too well that the disciples (his children) were far from ready to continue without him. So, on this his final night, Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for his departure. Their response was anything but reassuring. They responded with bemusement and misunderstanding – “you won’t wash my feet”, “we don’t know where you are going” and so on. Jesus was only too aware that he did not have enough time to ensure that they were ready for him to go. You can almost hear his anguish: “I still have many things to say to you” (16:12).

Still Jesus tries. His farewell speech (which takes up 5 chapters of the gospel) is an attempt to form the disciples into a community and to model what leadership would look like in that community. (It is worth reading John 13-17 in one sitting.) Among other things, Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment (love one another) and assures them that not only will they not be left alone, but that he will send the Holy Spirit who will teach them all that he does not have time to teach them. More than that, he himself and God (the whole Trinity) will live in them. And even as Jesus warns them that the world will be hostile to them, he promises that their joy will be complete.

In the short space between dinner and his arrest, Jesus has tried to prepare the disciples in every possible way for life without him, but still, it is clear that he is anxious about leaving them. The disciples seem to be so confused. They are so vulnerable, so exposed – if the authorities are going to kill Jesus, there is no guarantee that they will not come for the disciples as well. In response, Jesus does the only thing he can do – he prays. He pours out his soul to God, sharing with God his anxiety for his disciples and pleading with God that God will do what he can no longer do – bind the disciples in love and protect them from a hostile world .

This prayer is very different from the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane – recorded by the other Gospel writers. In the Synoptics, Jesus moves away from the disciples to pray alone, to wrestle with God and to ask that the cup be taken from him. The disciples fall asleep and so are not privy to Jesus’ anguish or to his words. In John’s account, Jesus prays not for himself, but for the disciples. He doesn’t question his fate but asks only that God will do what God has promised to do – glorify him. According to John, Jesus doesn’t take himself apart to pray – the disciples (and by extension) ourselves – both see and hear Jesus’ outpouring of prayer. They, and we, are witnesses to this most intimate moment between Jesus and his Father. We see Jesus at what is perhaps his most vulnerable. He might be ready to face the cross alone, but abandoning his disciples is another thing altogether.

Unfortunately, our lectionary reading only gives us the beginning of his prayer, but the prayer – which continues to the end of the chapter – should be read in one piece. It is the most selfless, most all-embracing, and most forward-looking prayer. He prays not for himself only that his death will lead to his glorification (which is the purpose for which he was sent, and which will lead to the glorification of the Father). He prays primarily for his disciples and more than that he prays for all who will come to faith through them. In other words, he prays for his children, his children’s children and for every generation yet to come. Jesus’ prayer is an outpouring of concern for the world – that it might know God, and knowing God, might be united in love.

We who are witnesses to this prayer have been shown not only Jesus’ fears, but indirectly we have been shown how to pray. We are to pray that God’s presence might be known through all the world, and we are to pour out our hearts in anguish over the state of the world – hoping against hope that the world will be united in love, yearning for a time when there will be an end to the war in Ukraine (and all other wars and conflicts that tear lives apart), pleading that the vulnerable might be protected, the hungry fed, the oppressed liberated, and all the children have a place to sleep. With Jesus, we through prayer, fulfill the command to love – metaphorically laying down our lives for others, putting aside (at least for a time) our self-interest and our fears, thinking only of the needs of others and trusting God to do what needs to be done.

For whom do you pray and what do you most desire?

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God’s home in us – John 14:15-21

May 13, 2023

Easter 6 – 2023
John 14:15-21
Marian Free

In the name of God who has made God’s home with us. Amen.

Our neighbour, Norma was a thoughtful, generous person. Whenever she came to visit, she would bring something. I remember that my mother used to feel awkward about this because the usual response would be to give something in return. In normal circumstances, one would simply take a cake or flowers or chocolate when next visiting Norma. The problem was that my mother instinctively knew that such a gesture would cause embarrassment. Norma gave because she wanted to give. Our job was to be gracious in our acceptance of that gift – even if our automatic response was to give something back.

Receiving unexpected or undeserved gifts can make us feel uncomfortable or obligated because we live in a that operates on an economy of exchange. If you have something that I would like then, in order to get it, I must give something in return. If you would like to receive respect, you must behave in such a way as to earn that respect. If we want to advance in our careers, we have to ensure that we gain the necessary qualifications, get the requisite experience and so on. In other words, in this life, we learn that nothing is free.

An economy of exchange encourages us to place value on things, on people and on relationships; to determine the worth of a person or an object. It creates a dualistic outlook in which people and things are divided into good and bad, worthy, and unworthy, people who can benefit us and people who cannot. Not only that, it creates an atmosphere in which we tend to strive for approval, for success and for financial gain. An economy of exchange leads to a culture of competition. We determine our own value by measuring ourselves against others. It ill-equips us for living in the kingdom of God.

When we live in a competitive, dualistic world, our tendency is to internalize the values that we see in the world. As a consequence we live with a divided self. In other words, we separate ourselves into good or bad, loveable or unlovable, holy or profane with all the negative consequences that that entails. A divided self is always aware of its shortcomings and it always comparing itself with, measuring itself against others in order to feel better about itself. A person who doesn’t accept themselves as a whole, complete, loveable person never feels truly worthy, is always striving to be what they are not, and always striving to please an apparently unsatisfied God.

There are so many difficulties with this. A dualist worldview reveals a belief that God’s love must be earned, a conviction that God’s creation (ourselves) is unpleasing to God and that is that there are parts of ourselves/others/this world that do not belong to God or are not part of God’s creative plan. Worse, this attitude leads us to search scripture to find a measuring stick, a way to judge ourselves and others. The creation story exposes this approach as flawed and invalid. It is we who measure ourselves – not God. To give just two examples: according to the first chapter of Genesis, God created everything and saw that it was good and if that were not enough, the Incarnation is proof positive that God rather than reject our humanity (which is good) God fully embraces it for Godself. In becoming human, God became part of God’s creation and in so doing, God revealed that God affirms creation in its entirety.

Last week, I quoted Meister Eckhart: “God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.” This week I am reminded of a statement by a Japanese scholar whose name is sadly lost to me, she wrote: “I found God in myself and loved her fiercely.”

This morning’s gospel speaks powerfully to the presence of God (Father, Son, and Spirit) within each one of us. “The Spirit of truth abides in you.” “We (Jesus and the Father) will come to you and make our home with you.” God’s presence within us should be assurance enough that we are worthy. God’s presence in us makes a nonsense of a divided self. God is either at home in all of us, or God is not in us at all.

What is more, we don’t have to behave in a particular way or think certain things before God makes God’s home in us. God’s presence in us relies solely on love – our love for God. We don’t have to to be better, be more spiritual, do more good works before God (Father, Son and Spirit) make their home in us. Jesus does not say: not “keep my commandments and I will come and live with you but: “if you love me you will keep my word.” Love comes first. Love always comes first. Keeping the commandments is a consequence of love (not a precondition for love), a consequence of God’s having first made a home with us.

If God has made a home with us, who are we to think that we are not worthy? In the end, our relationship with ourselves and others directly impinges on our relationship with God. If we reject those parts of ourselves that we do not like, if we split ourselves in two – the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ what does that say about our understanding of God’s presence in us?

Immediately prior to this week’s gospel, Jesus has reassured the disciples that they do not need to worry about the way, because he is: “the way, the truth and the life.” Now he expands on that. Not only is he the way, but having made his home in us, he can direct us in the way.

All we need to do is search deep within ourselves to find the God within, and having found God to trust God and, trusting God, allow God to lead us flawed and imperfect though we may be.

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Getting out of God’s way – John 14:6

May 6, 2023

Easter 5 – 2023
John 14:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who is as close as breath and yet always just beyond our reach. Amen.

I often say that Jesus did us a great disservice by not writing down his teachings or his philosophy of religion. Jesus left it open for his followers to develop their own theology and, in the case of the gospel writers, to draw up their own individual version of events. It is possible that Christianity would be more united had Jesus been more definitive or produced something in writing . There would be less confusion as to what he said and did and no need for the early church to make sense of Jesus’ death and resurrection, because Jesus would have spelled out the meaning of everything before he died. In other words, to avoid confusion, misunderstanding and division, Jesus could have made it clear that he was promoting a new religion. He could have produced a fully formed theology of the Christian faith, written a creed and provided outlines of liturgical and ecclesiastical practice so that no one need be in any doubt as to what the church should believe and what it should do.

Having said that, I suspect that Jesus’ creation of uncertainty was actually a deliberate attempt to free humanity from a need to lock God (and faith) into a rigid set of principles and behaviours. Jesus does not set anything in stone, because Jesus wants us to rely less on ourselves and more on God; to grasp that our salvation is dependent not on anything that we can do, but on what God in Jesus has done for us; and to understand that God cannot be bought, bargained with or reduced to human categories.

He wants those who follow him to avoid the trap that the Pharisees seem to have fallen into – the trap of desiring certainty, of believing that they know and understand God, and of thinking that they can stay on the right side of God if only they follow this rule or another. Jesus hopes that those who come after him will follow his example of openness to God and his willingness to trust God blindly rather than to think that we can bind God to our will.

I find the Jesus of John’s gospel is perhaps the most frustrating, obscure, and contradictory. To give just one example, in verse 13:33 Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot come”, then only 8 verses later he says: “You know the way to the place where I am going” and “where I am you may be also” (14:4, 3). Both cannot be true, so we are forced to live with the tension of not knowing for sure.

Jesus seems to be deliberately keeping his disciples (and therefore us) deliberately on edge, ensuring that we don’t try to lock God into one way of being or another. He knows our desire for security, but he want us to understand that our relationship with God is less a matter of holding on, but rather a matter of letting go, less a matter of living within rigid and narrow guidelines and more a matter of grasping the expansiveness and openness of God.

As Meister Eckart says: “God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.” God is already there, in the depths of our being. That should be the only certainty, the only security that we need. Our task, over our lifetimes, is not to seek assurance but to accept that we already have it; not to seek God in words and deeds, but to discover that God is already present in our lives and to know that we can abandon ourselves to God’s presence. The task of spirituality is not to pray more, read more, do more, just the opposite, it is to let go, to trust, and to follow Jesus to the cross so that all that is false and illusory in our lives can be stripped away and we are left with only what is pure and true – the Spirit within.

Letting go, is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive which is why we resist it and why Jesus insists on it and why Jesus models it in his own life.

So, by a roundabout route, we come at last to today’s gospel, the beginning of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples. The scene takes place after Jesus’ final dinner with his friends. The disciples are confused and afraid. Their world has been turned upside down. If they had thought that things would remain the same, they were sadly mistaken. In just a short period of time, Jesus has broken social convention and washed their feet. He has revealed that he is about to be handed over by one of his own, and Judas has gone out into the night to do who knows what. If that were not enough to unsettle and confuse his friends, Jesus has told them that he is going away and that where is he going they cannot come.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It is clear that Jesus knows that his disciples need some reassurance, but it is also obvious that Jesus is not going to accede to their need for direction by providing them with a guidebook or roadmap. As close as Jesus will get to giving them directions is to say: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the way, the truth and the life”, tells us nothing about what to do, what to believe and how to behave.

We will only find the way if we allow ourselves to be led by Jesus (not by our conceptions of Jesus). We will only know the truth if we let go of all those things we hold to be true and seek only God and God’s truth. We will only truly know life if we allow ourselves to abandon this life and to accept the life that Jesus offers.

In faith, we can only let go– not hold on, only empty ourselves – not try to fill ourselves, only get out of God’s way and let God be God in us.

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Whose voice? – The Good Shepherd

April 29, 2023

Easter 4 – 2023
John 10:1-10
Marian Free

In the name of God in whom there is no deceit. Amen.

The internet is wonderful in that it gives us immediate access to all kinds of information and connects us with the world at the same time it has made us particularly vulnerable. Even the smartest among us can fall victim to a scam. Internet searches mean that our interests and shopping habits can be detected and preyed upon, and – at least it seems to me – there are ways for someone to discover if we have recently made an insurance claim, a mortgage application or if we have recently had a communication with a child that mentions money and to exploit these situations for their own advantage. During the last fortnight news channels have informed us that scammers are able to make a reasonable approximation of someone’s voice based on a relatively short recording of same.

It would be reassuring if we could be certain that it was only in the secular world that there were people who wanted to take advantage of us, but sadly, there are also charlatans who use religion to coerce the susceptible (and the idealists) into handing over control over their possessions, their relationships and even their daily lives. The documentary Gloriavale, details how one man (Neville Cooper or ‘Hopeful Christian”) convinced people to join his utopian, egalitarian Christian community. Over time, members of the community ceded more and more control to Hopeful, to the point that he dominated every aspect of their existence. Sadly, there are endless examples of charismatic leaders who have convinced their followers that they are messengers of God – often with catastrophic consequences. Jamestown, the Waco Branch Davidians and most recently the starvation cult of Kenya are just a few of the cults that come to mind. People seeking certainty are offered a clear definitive way to achieve salvation are drawn in by the confidence and assurance of the leader and, if and when, they begin to suspect something is wrong, they are so caught up in the propaganda that they are fearful that leaving will cost them their immortal soul – a price that only the brave are prepared to risk.

Religious cults are often exploitative, coercive, and constrictive and their leaders are frequently self-seeking, power-hungry and arrogant people who maintain control over their followers by stripping them of their self-confidence, their financial independence, and their sense of personal worth.

Whether in the secular or religious sphere, scammers and imposters seduce the willing with promises of love, riches, status, well-being or heavenly reward. For those truly. seeking the truth, it is sometimes difficult to determine the difference between the genuine and the false.

Discerning truth from lie, shepherd from thief is a theme that runs through John 9 and continues in John 10. In the gospel it is Jesus’ identity that is in question – is he an imposter or is he a truly sent by God? When Jesus heals the man born blind, the Pharisees (who are locked into their own idea of God) are determined to label Jesus as an interloper, a deceiver, a sinner, whereas the man born blind is willing to see Jesus for who he is – the Son of Man. In response to the Pharisee’s scepticism and their determination to destroy him, Jesus begins a long discourse on the sheepfold and the shepherd. It is a complex argument, and the imagery alternates between gate and shepherd, but at the heart of the argument is the distinction between shepherd and thief, between the one whose voice is genuine and those whose voices are filled with deceit.

In modern terms, the “thieves” (whom we are to assume are the scribes and the Pharisees) are those who try to lead the people of Israel astray, to lure them into danger with false promises and who use their knowledge of the people and the language of their faith to entice and then to control them. Jesus claims that he, not they, is the good shepherd. It is not his goal to coerce; “to steal and kill and destroy”. He has come: “that they might have life and have it abundantly”. Jesus does not demand obedience to outdated religious laws or observance of empty rituals. He is not seeking to control or to dominate, instead he will “lay down my life for my sheep.”

In life as in faith we will hear conflicting voices telling us that if only we do one thing or the other our happiness will be complete, our future will be assured, our salvation will be certain. If we are in any doubt as to whether the voice is of God or not we can be guided by this principle. A voice that is bullying, disrespectful, coercive, and self-seeking, that preaches a message that is alarming or worse, soul destroying, then we are safe to assume that that voice is malevolent and does not have our best interests at heart. On the other hand, a
voice that is humble, encouraging, liberating, and self-sacrificial and has at its heart a message that is uplifting and life-giving then we can be sure that the voice is holy and seeks our well-being above life itself.

The thieves and robbers (Pharisees and scribes) seek to control and coerce. The Good Shepherd (Jesus) seeks to empower and liberate.

Jesus came that we might have life and have it in abundance – nothing less will do.

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Christianity that is bland and unchallenging – a sermon for St George

April 21, 2023

Easter 3 – 2023
(Celebrating St George at Maleny)
Matthew 28:8-15a
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earthmaker, Painbearer, Lifegiver.

How often have you been threatened with death as a consequence of your believing in the risen Christ? In nearly seventy years of life and 27 years in the ordained ministry, I have only been threatened once. It was 1998, Martin Bryant had recently massacred 35 people and injured 18 others. Our then Archbishop, had asked all Parishes to encourage their parishioners to sign a petition calling for gun reform. On the appropriate Sunday, I duly made the announcement – naively thinking that my fellow Christians would have no objections to such a petition. That afternoon, I received a most abusive phone call from a Parishioner who threatened to shoot me if I ever stepped inside his fence. The event left me startled but, so long as I kept my distance, I was not in danger.

It is difficult in our time and place to imagine the Christian faith being so intimidating that the ruling powers would want to destroy it or to persecute, imprison or kill believers, or that our neighbours would shun and harass us. For the most part, Christianity in Australia has been so benign and inoffensive that at least in the last decades few people seem to take much notice of what we do or think. There is little, if anything, to distinguish us from any other member of society. By and large we blend in. Only occasionally do we collectively challenge government policy and even then, I am not sure that anyone thinks we are relevant enough or powerful enough to be a danger to authorities.

As long ago as the fourth century, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and the church became so entwined with the government and the surrounding culture, that it has been difficult to draw a clear boundary between societal values and Christian values ever since. To be fair, in the intervening centuries the church has had a significant impact in areas related to social justice – the building of hospitals, the abolition of slavery, the improvement of conditions in prisons and universal franchise (at least for non-indigenous women). In this nation, the support of the churches played an important role in ensuring the passage of the 1967 referendum. While some of these actions caused antagonism and disquiet, few unsettled the government or society sufficiently that supporters of these causes were thrown in jail let alone executed.

The situation was very different in the first three centuries of the common era. Then, as often as not, Christians were considered a threat to the well-being and the status quo of the societies in which they found themselves. This should not surprise us. Before there was a church, there was Jesus – a person who presented such a challenge to the political and religious leaders of his day that he was put to death; a person whose influence, and teaching were so radical and unsettling that he had to be silenced; a person who was considered such a risk to the stability of the state, that even his death did not ensure that the establishment felt secure. That is why the authorities posted a guard at Jesus’ tomb and why, when the tomb was found empty, the priests and elders paid the guards to lie.

For the first three hundred years after Jesus’ death, those who believed in Jesus had an uneasy relationship with the communities in which they found themselves. In the worst-case scenarios, they experienced persecution, but by and large this took the form of local, sporadic harassment and exclusion from the social life of the community. State sanctioned persecution occurred briefly under Decian and Valerian, but it was the Emperor Diocletian who was responsible for the most sustained and bloodiest persecution (nine years from 303-312). It was his goal to return Rome to the golden age – a time before novel religions, specifically Christianity, had begun to emerge. Diocletian surrounded himself with opponents of Christianity, tried to purge the army of Christians, rescinded the legal rights of Christians, and tried to force believers to adopt local religious practices.

It was in this environment that George lived. As is the case of many saints, we know little about George and what we do know is shrouded in myth. One tradition has that he was born in the late third century Turkey to a noble Christian family, another that he was born in Greece and moved to Palestine when his father died. We know he did become a soldier and officer in the Roman army. However, when Diocletian demanded that he renounce his Christian faith (along all other members of the army), George refused and, as a consequence, was tortured and decapitated.

Veneration of George was well established by the fifth century, but he really came to prominence during the crusades at which time he became a model of chivalry. In 1350 King Edward III made him the patron saint of England in . According to Ian Mortimer: “St. George stands for the courage to face adversity in order to defend the innocent. The triumph of good over evil, through courage. …The king who adopted him might be almost forgotten today, but for centuries Saint George represented the idea of courageous leadership and, with it, the unifying popular will to be governed well and protected .”

It was not long after Diocletian that Constantine, anxious to unite the Empire under one banner, made Christianity the official faith of the Empire. Since that time, church and state, church and society have become so intertwined, that sometimes it is difficult to draw a clear boundary between culture and faith or to determine which influences which. There have since then been times when the church has been at the forefront of social change, but at least as often, proponents of the faith have been just happy to support the status quo as to challenge it.

Jesus was feared because he sided with and therefore empowered the marginalised and dispossessed, thus threatening the existing power structures. Christians like George were persecuted and killed, because they stood apart from the structures of power that held up the Empire and threatened to undo them.

Those of us who claim to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and who claim George as one of our own, should perhaps ask ourselves why it is that we are not held in awe, why we don’t challenge and unsettle the establishment and why our lives are so bland that we are not in danger of losing them.

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