Whose light is it anyway?

January 1, 2022

Christmas 2 – 2022
John 1:1-18

In the name of God, whose radiant light will not be overcome by darkness. Amen.

“A candle says ‘no’ to the darkness.”

I have heard that in the dark days of apartheid in South Africa many people would place candles in their windows as a sign of solidarity and of hope. A candle, though the smallest of lights was an act of defiance, daring the darkness to win and declaring that no matter how difficult things were, how much opposition the people were facing or how resistant authorities were to change, the desire for justice and peace could not be extinguished and that despite violence, oppression and injustice right would win in the end. The candle, to those who lit it and to those saw it, was a sign, a reminder that their situation could not last forever and that no matter how oppressive or how brutal their current circumstances, they would (eventually) come to an end. The light was an assertion that evil could not and would not prevail.

John’s gospel begins, not with a birth narrative, but with a declaration that Jesus is the light of all people and that: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” It is an assertion that God has not abandoned God’s people and that no matter what the evidence to the contrary, evil will never triumph over good, and that light will always defeat the darkness. In Jesus, the light of God has entered the world

To a greater or lesser extent, the last two years have been a time of gloom for many of us, but they are nothing compared to the conditions which millions of people endure day after day, year after year. Our daily news reports are filled with stories of people risking life and limb to flee violence and injustice, of children and adults forced to make a “living” in conditions which are not only dangerous, but which will shorten their lives, of whole peoples enslaved and incarcerated, and of those enduring famine, war and civil strife.

Even in the wealthiest countries of the world there are thousands who are underpaid and overworked and who, no matter what, will never be able to escape the circumstances – over which they have no control – in which they find themselves. Here in Australia we know that women are trafficked into the sex industry and men are lured to work on farms and then are kept in conditions of near slavery. Hidden amongst us are thousands more who live lives of quiet desperation – carers who do not have enough income or support to have a life of their own, women (and men) caught up in domestic violence, and those who for whatever reason (lack of education, poverty) are prevented from finding fulfilment and happiness.
Overcoming the evil and injustice in the world around us too often seems an impossible task. On our own we cannot take on traffickers or foreign powers. We cannot bring peace to the Middle East, ensure the fair distribution of the world’s resources or stop climate change. In the face of so much suffering and inequity, it is easy to feel impotent and from this position of powerlessness to do nothing.

The problem is that doing nothing is in fact doing something. If we do not call out injustice and oppression we are, by implication supporting the status quo. Turning a blind eye to evil allows evil to continue. Nor is ignorance an excuse – we live in a world more connected than ever before. If we read a newspaper, listen to the news or connect to the world in any other way, we cannot escape the horror and despair that abound.

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

John uses the imagery of light and dark to great effect throughout his gospel. Light reveals the presence of God and offers hope to those whose lives are filled with despair, but the light also exposes deceit, and evil, weakness and complicity. Light threatens those who prefer to act in the dark. Light shines into our very being and uncovers the secrets of our hearts – our timidity, our prejudices and our fears. The light reveals those parts of ourselves that excuse us from acting and prevent us from naming the darkness and gloom that surrounds us.

This week Archbishop Desmond Tutu was called home to God. For our generation he was a light in the darkness. He was never afraid to speak truth to power, to expose wickedness and vice and to stand with the oppressed and disenfranchised. Despite the danger to himself, he was clear about what was right and what was wrong and nothing would deter him from pursuing a path of righteousness – the path to which he believed that we are all called as children of God.

God in Jesus, immersed Godself fully in our broken world – choosing not to be protected by wealth and power, but identifying with the poor and dispossessed. God in Jesus could have conformed to the laws and customs of his day. He could have chosen silence over confrontation and in so doing he might have kept his life. But the light of the world sees the world as it is and longs to bring God’s healing balm to places of darkness and despair.

The light that shines in the darkness is not intended simply for you or for me – a sign of hope to sustain in the dark. It is, as the gospel says, for all people. May it shine in our hearts, revealing (and freeing us from) our inner darkness that we might in our turn be light to the world.

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The Feast of Stephen

December 25, 2021

Christmas 1 – 2021
Marian Free

In the name of God who gave everything for us. Amen.

“Good King Wenceslas looked out
on the Feast of Stephen
when the snow lay round about,
deep and crips and even
brightly shone the moon that night
though the frost was cruel
when a poor man came in sight,
gathering winter fuuu-u-u-el.”

I wonder how many of us have sung this popular carol without giving much thought to King Wenceslas or to the feast of Stephen. Apart from the snow (which even in the southern hemisphere signifies Christmas) there is nothing remotely Christmasy about the words of the song. So why is it associated with Christmas and why does it reference the Feast of Stephen? The answer is simple – today (the day following Christmas Day) – is the Feast of Stephen. We often overlook this as we mark Boxing Day or, as is the case this year, we celebrate the first Sunday after Christmas.

Today’s preacher then has a wealth of themes on which to focus – the secular celebration of Boxing Day, the first Sunday of Christmas or the Feast of St Stephen. (One could even stretch to focusing on Wenceslas who was a Duke and not a King and who lived in Bohemia from 907-935. The Duke was known for his piety and his support of the poor and as a consequence was made a saint.)

Because the first Sunday of Christmas follows immediately after Christmas Day it seems too much of a jump to focus on the readings for that day which take us forward 12 years to the account of Jesus -on the verge of adulthood – frightening his parents by staying behind in Jerusalem. So let us instead consider Stephen, the first person to be martyred on account of the emerging faith in the crucified Jesus.

What we know about Stephen comes from the Book of Acts in which Luke provides us with a stylised view of the emerging church. From Acts 1:8 we can see that Luke structures his account in concentric circles. He imagines the gospel spreading from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria to the ends of the earth. The movement is not only geographic, but ethnic – from the centre of Judaism, to the Jews, to the Samaritans (who have something in common with the Jews) and finally to the Gentiles. According to Luke’s telling of the story it is Stephen’s martyrdom that sets this movement in train and which presages the spread of the faith beyond Jerusalem to ‘the ends of the earth.’

Stephen’s story begins in Acts 6 and concludes at the end of Acts 7. According to Luke, the earliest community of believers was led by the Twelve. It becomes clear that they cannot do everything and that the widows of Hellenist (Greek or gentile) believers were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. The Twelve make the decision that they should not be distracted from preaching by waiting on tables and they direct the Hellenists to choose seven men of ‘good standing full of the Spirit and wisdom’ to fulfill this task. Seven were chosen and were formally ‘ordained’ by the laying on of hands and with prayer. Among the seven was Stephen.

As I said, Luke. Uses the appointment of another tier of leadership (the beginnings of the diaconate) to introduce a new period of growth in the church – many come to ‘the obedience of faith’, even priests. Unfortunately, as is often the case, with success came conflict. Members of the synagogue of Freedmen (who themselves appear to have been Hellenists) argued with Stephen and, being unable to compete with Stephen’s wisdom and spirituality, they stirred up others against him and brought false charges of blasphemy against him.

Stephen is brought before the high priest and in response to the accusations gives a long speech (a typical Lucan device) in which he recites the history of the Jews from Abraham to Jesus, recounting the ‘typical’ rejection of the prophets by the people of God. This, as you might imagine, only further enraged his opponents. When Stephen concluded his speech by saying that he saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God Stephan’s opponents had had enough. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him. Hence Stephen became the first person to be martyred for his faith, to sacrifice his life for Jesus.

In a recent podcast Alexander John Shaia suggests that it is possible to link Boxing Day and the Feast of St Stephen to each other. I share it with you, not because I am convinced, but because it is a novel idea worth pondering. In the northern hemisphere Christmas falls near the winter solstice. It is the depths of winter a time when earth was often covered with snow. Snow or not, it is impossible to grow crops and for the poor there was nowhere to forage for food. On the day after the winter solstice, the Celts had a tradition of teaching boys on the verge of adulthood something about the value of sacrifice – giving of themselves that others might live.

The ritual (which seems barbaric to us) involved killing a wren and letting its blood run into the earth in order that the earth might regenerate after the long hard winter. Shaia argues that the early Celtic Christians saw in this tradition a resonance with their newfound faith. Stephen the first Christian martyr had given his life for the life of others. As was the case with many Celtic traditions, they kept the day but gave it a new meaning. They no longer sacrificed a wren, but adopted the spiritual practice for men and boys to gather and give food and money and clothing to poor and shut ins.

Here Shaia brings us back to the carol which ends:
“In his master’s step he trod,
where the snow lay dented.
heat was in the very sod
which the saint had printed.
therefore, Christian men, be sure,
wealth or rank possessing,
ye who now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing”

Having asked his page who the poor man is and where he lives, the king and page set out in the bitter weather with food and wine and fuel to ease the suffering of the poor man. When the page’s strength fails, the king urges boldness to combat the cold and the carol ends – as we see with a blessing for those who are generous.

Whether we link gift giving and generosity to the wise ones or the tradition of Stephen, it is important that in the midst of our own celebrations, our self-indulgence and our (often) over eating, that we remember those for whom every day is a struggle – the refugee, the poor, the hungry, the lonely, those suffering from the effects of war, civil strife or natural disaster and that we give – not what we can spare – but generously and openly so that our small sacrifice might make the world a better place and ourselves better for the gift.

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Just how much does God love us?

December 24, 2021

Christmas – 2021
Marian Free

In the name of God who became human so that we might become divine. Amen.

Sometimes a person will say or do something that changes the way you think or act.

Such was the case for me when I was at Theological College. The scenario was a community meeting at which we were discussing our differences and how we could manage to make the student community a place in which everyone could feel comfortable no matter what their background or church tradition. On this occasion a primary issue was the matter of the daily Eucharist and whether attendance was absolutely necessary for those among us whose tradition made this more of a burden than a joy. Sadly, I no longer remember the name of the student who raised the issue. He explained that for him the Incarnation, not the crucifixion/resurrection was central to his faith and that the Eucharist’s emphasis on the latter did not hold as much meaning for him as did the daily office. God’s becoming one of us was, he felt, more significant than God dying for us.

The event is so long ago that I would not be able to say why an emphasis on the Incarnation was such a revelation. I imagine that until that time I simply had not paid much attention to the significance of Jesus’ birth. If I were to hazard a guess I think that I might have thought that Jesus’ birth was simply a means for Jesus to enter the world – so that he could die and rise again.

Since then I have pondered long and hard on the Incarnation and am filled with wonder and awe that God should enter our human existence. Yes, Jesus was crucified and yes he was raised, but the Incarnation – God with us – is a powerful statement of God’s love for us and of God’s identification with our hopes and joys, our disappointments and our sorrows. If we stress the crucifixion to the detriment of the Incarnation, we lose sight of the fact that in the Incarnation, God is demonstrating the depth of God’s love for us. In becoming one of us, God becomes one with us. In entering our existence God shows that so far from being unworthy, we – with our physical and other limitations -were considered a suitable vessel for God to inhabit.

If, as we believe, Jesus is God then we can be certain that God knows what it is to be human. God, in Jesus, has experienced the full gamut of human emotions. God in Jesus has been idolized and abandoned, has been surrounded by friends and deserted by the same, has known joy and sorrow.

God’s entering the world completely changes the dynamic of our relationship with God (and, with ourselves). For if God did not despise the human form or reject the constraints of being human, then we can be kinder to and gentler with ourselves. If God knows what it is to face the difficulties that we face, then we need never feel alone knowing that God has felt the same.

The conversation at our community meeting came back to me this week when I learned that for the first thirteen centuries of church history the focus was on Easter. It was only when Francis of Assisi entered the scene that Christmas began to hold the significance for the church that it does today. Francis felt that God’s love for us was not limited to the crucifixion but was made clear when God entered the world in the form of the infant Jesus. It was love that propelled God to come to us. It was God’s love that insinuated itself among us. It was love that wanted us to know just how precious we are in God’s sight.

Enjoy Christmas and all the traditions that you observe as a family, but when you look at the tiny vulnerable child in the manger, be sure that you see God and be filled with wonder that God could love you – love me so much – that God would risk everything to share our lives.

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Who would God choose?

December 18, 2021

Advent 4 – 2021
Luke 1:39-55
Marian Free

In the name of God who overturns the structures of power, wealth and status and who chooses the poor and the vulnerable to bring God to life in the world. Amen.

This year I received a Christmas card on which the image was a reproduction of a painting by Australian artist Rod Moss. I have to say that it is the most realistic image of the Holy Family that I have ever been privileged to see. Rod Moss has adapted a painting by Caravaggio and has used as his model an indigenous family and a central Australian setting. What stands out to me is the fact that the scene is not sentimental, nor has it been sanitised or primped. It is posed to be sure, but the models are real people – people who are almost certainly more like Mary and Joseph than any other representation that I have seen.

The background is likewise unadorned – it is bare and plain – a simple corrugated iron structure, a family of dogs and an angel that is not overtly “angelic”.

From the image one can deduce that this is a family who have little to spare. Mary is dressed simply in a blue, ill-fitting, open-necked polo shirt paired with a bright patterned skirt. Her long hair is not covered, and strands have broken loose from her ponytail. Not for this Mary the spotless white head covering or perfect blue robe in which she is usually depicted. Joseph wears a shirt that is a bit too big for his narrow frame and his longish hair is tousled rather than neatly brushed unlike the tidy, well-groomed Joseph of most nativity scenes.

The baby is lying (arms outstretched) on a bed.

Moss’s image provides what to me is a realistic picture of Mary and Joseph – a couple from a poor rural town who have travelled by foot for several days only to discover that there is nowhere for them to stay when they arrive at their destination. The painting is a stark reminder that neither Mary or Joseph came from families of privilege, wealth, status or power.

An image such as this – one that doesn’t gloss over the poverty and the hardships faced by Mary and Joseph – gives power and meaning to Mary’s song. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52). In response to Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary seems to grasp the implications of what God has done – that in choosing her to bear God’s anointed, God has clearly demonstrated God’s preference for the poor. Mary has no position or heritage that sets her apart, a fact that is further amplified by the fact that she is a woman, yet she is the one whom God has chosen to bring God into the world. In choosing Mary, God has acted contrary to expectation that God will enter the world with power and might and God has made it clear that justice and equity are at the heart of God’s relationship with the world.

Our English translation does not do justice to grammar of the text. As O. Wesley Allen Jn. Allen points out Luke shapes the Magnificat by having Mary speak of God’s actions in the past tense: “God looked, did great things for me, showed strength, scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry, sent the rich away empty, and helped Israel (verses 48–54). English translations render the verbs in the perfect tense (for example, “has looked”) implying an action in the past that continues into the present. But the Greek verbs are all aorist, indicating actions completely completed in the past .”

In the words of her song, Mary is saying that God has (already) acted. God’s choice of Mary is proof positive of God’s preference for the poor, the marginalized and the dispossessed. It is not something that is going to happen – it has happened. God has acted. God has demonstrated God’s preference, has provided a glimpse of the kingdom values.

God’s choice of Mary is a slap in the face of all who think that their power, their influence or their wealth comes from God, who think that their place in the world implies that they are better than those who do not share their privilege, or who think that because they are richer and more powerful that it is within their right to exploit or to oppress others.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the Magnificat this way: “It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings…. This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”

Mary’s song is an indictment against a church that has become institutionalised and that has aligned itself with the cultural norms and values of the world in which it finds itself. It critiques a church that has become contented with its place among the establishment, the respectable and the comfortable. It puts the lie to the idea that God needs beautiful churches and well-dressed congregations, and it challenges all of us who believe that we are doing all that we can to bring about God’s kingdom.

Mary’s song is an uncomfortable song and echoes down the ages with a message for us all.

What does God’s choice tell us about our attitudes and dispositions, our value judgments, our position in the world? I wonder who God would choose today and how comfortable would God’s choice make us feel?

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Don’t wait for heaven – live it now

December 11, 2021

Advent 3 – 2021

Luke 3:7-18

Marian Free

May we allow Christ into our lives so that we might be transformed into people who will know themselves at home in heaven. Amen.

Some years ago, I was impressed by a statement written be C.S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity Lewis wrote: “We might think that the ‘virtues’ were necessary only for this present life – that in the other world we could stop being just because there is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there is no danger (or stop being good because there is no reason to be bad)[1]. Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or courageous (or virtuous) acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for being the sort of people we can become only as a result of doing such acts here. The point is not that God will not refuse you admission to his Eternal world  if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of these qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make it Heaven for them, that is could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakeable kind of happiness that God intends for us.”

I find Lewis notoriously difficult to re-phrase but I took this to mean that if we want to feel at home in heaven that we should begin changing our behavior now. That is if, as we imagine heaven is a place of peace, joy and harmony we should, in the present begin to practice those qualities in our own lives and to begin to excise those parts of us that will not be comfortable in such an environment. We should in the present, try to remove from our lives anything that would make others feel uncomfortable – self righteousness, judgementalism, anger, hatred and so on. It is a challenging concept – especially for those of us who are carrying grudges and who have an expectation that we will be vindicated in the life hereafter. A heaven filled with sour, unforgiving people would be no heaven at all and those who are sour and unforgiving would not be at all comfortable in a place full of peace and joy. Fear of hell is no reason to be good now, but wanting to be at home is every reason to practice being heavenly now.

In her sermon commentary for this week Chelsea Harmon says a similar thing from a different perspective. She asks: “When the world ends and all that’s left of you is what is of God and his Kingdom, will you be able to recognize yourself?”[2] If I found Lewis’s idea challenging, I find Chelsea’s even more confronting. What would remain of me if everything that was not of God was taken away?

Lewis’s image allows us to imagine that we can act in a way that prepares us for heaven, that we can practice the virtues that will fit us for everlasting life. In Harmon’s image we see ourselves completely stripped bare, with only what is Godly remaining. In essence, the ideas are exactly the same but the first allows room for us to act, the second reminds us that one of our tasks in this life is to get ourselves out of the way so that our lives and our actions are determined by the presence of God in us.

Either way, as Richard Rohr points out, “We don’t go to heaven, we learn how to live in heaven now. If try to prove that we’re better than everybody else or believe that we’re worse than everybody else, we are already in hell.” (12/3/21)

According to today’s gospel, crowds have been drawn into the wilderness seeking John’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Among those who came were tax collectors and soldiers – those despised by the general population because (for whatever reason) they were in the service of Rome. Instead of welcoming the crowds, John’s tone is harsh and judgmental: “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” he asks. Apparently, he doubts their sincerity. By implication, he is accusing them of being self-serving – wanting to find an easy (superficial) way to avoid God’s judgement. Their question tells us otherwise. They (especially those whose situation is one of compromise and obligation) genuinely want to know what they must do. John’s response is to tell them how to behave according to the values of heaven. That is, instead of taking advantage of others because of their positions they are to live (as much as is possible) generously and with integrity. In other words, they are to live the life of the kingdom now, so that when it comes, they will be at home.

It is quite clear to us that the urgency with which John proclaimed his message was misplaced. The world did not come to a physical end. His generation did not experience the wrath of God. But God did come. God came – not in power and with wrath but in obscurity and with peace. Jesus entered the world, not to judge but to transform, to turn hearts to God and lives to God’s way of being. John did announce the end, but perhaps not the end he expected. The Incarnation, the coming of Jesus heralded the end of one way of existence and the beginning of a new. John’s listeners had a choice – to continue in their old ways, to demonstrate by their behaviour and their attitudes an unwillingness to become part of God’s kingdom, or to repent (to turn around), to let go of their old, self-centred ways and to begin to live lives focused on God and on their neighbours. They were live as if they were in heaven now.

So it is with us, whether by practicing kingdom values, attitudes and behaviours as Lewis suggests, or divesting ourselves of worldly values, attitudes and behaviours as Harmon says,  John calls us to turn our lives around, to “flee from the wrath to come”, to begin to live in the present as we hope to live for eternity.

This is the choice we are offered again and again every Advent – to hold fast to the values of the world (which is coming to an end) or to allow ourselves to be transformed by the values of the kingdom which never ends.

We have been warned. We have a choice to make.

Will we choose earth or heaven, the present or eternity?

 

 

[1] Italics mine. In Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, he creates a fictional story about a variety of people who self-exclude themselves from heaven – the angry and the bitter who cannot bear to see that the person who has wronged them is already there for example.

[2] For the full article go to https://cepreaching.org/authors/chelsey-harmon/

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Moving Mountains

December 4, 2021

Advent 2 – 2021
Luke 3:1-6
Marian Free

In the name of God who has come and will come. Amen.

The home in which I grew up was not grand. It was one of four or five built by a developer on what had been a city council dump (and before that a swamp). The nearby houses were basically of the same design with only slight changes to make them appear different. Though the house was quite ordinary, it was ours. When I was quite young there were many occasions on which my parents would invite guests for afternoon tea. What marked out these days for me was not so much the visitors, but the preparation. Together we tidied the bedrooms, cleaned the bathroom, put out a nice hand towel and arranged biscuits on our best plates. I took it for granted that this was the way in which guests were treated and have (mostly) maintained the practice in my own life.

There are two ways of interpreting this behaviour. One is that it reflects a sense of pride, a desire to present oneself in the best light. Another way is to see it as a sign of respect for the one who is coming, the host making an effort so that the guest feels valued and welcomed. I would not want my friends to think that they mean so little to me that I have not gone to any effort in preparation for their visit, nor do I wish to entertain them surrounded by the detritus of my life – physical, emotional or spiritual.

Our Gospel today is all about preparation.

John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner, proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Using language taken from the book of Isaiah he was, according to Luke, “a voice crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

It is important to note the distinction between the agendas of Isaiah and John. Though John uses the words of Isaiah he is speaking into an entirely different situation. Isaiah is addressing the Judeans in exile in Babylon announcing that a path will be made in the desert to smooth their journey home. Just as God led the people through the desert to the promised land, so now, Isaiah says, God will create a smooth path from one place to another. The earth will experience a radical upheaval – the flattening of mountains and the raising of valleys – such that every barrier between Persia and Judea is removed.

John, taking the words of Isaiah, puts them to a different use. His insistence on repentance and forgiveness suggests that it is the Judeans, not God, who need to clear a path and that it is God, not the Judeans who will use it. John insists that making a path will require changes to the lives of individuals that are every bit as dramatic as the earth moving changes described by Isaiah. The upheaval that John depicts will take place in the human heart as those who seek John’s baptism reassess who and what they are and as they endeavour to remove every obstacle that prevents God from being an integral part of their lives. As the penitents reassess who and what they are they may find that they need to make changes that are every bit as earth-shattering as the removal of mountains and the building up of valleys as they remove every obstacle that prevents God’s being an integral part of their lives.

Preparing our hearts for God’s coming is not unlike the preparation of one’s home for a guest. Each of us will need to have a good hard look at ourselves so that we can clear out the debris from our lives and do a deep clean of all the dark and hidden places of our hearts. We will have to make an honest assessment of the state of our lives and to ask ourselves what it is that stands between ourselves and God and what must we do to break down the barriers we have created.

Scripture reminds us – sometimes in terrifying terms – that God could come at any time, ‘like a thief in the night’. The implication of these warnings is that we should exist in a constant state of readiness.

Of course, none of us can really live like that, constantly on the edge, perpetually in a state of anxiety as to whether or not we have not left a stone unturned or failed to remove a bend in the road.

This perhaps is why the church in her wisdom has given us Advent, a time to reflect on our lives once again and to consider our state of readiness for God’s coming, a time to remove any impediments that prevent us from being completely open, exposed and vulnerable, a time to be honest about our short-comings and to seek God’s forgiveness. Like the housekeeper who allows their home to return to normal when the guests have gone, so we too may slip into our old habits once Christmas has passed. Hopefully though, throughout Advent our lives will have been changed – if only a little – and we won’t completely slip back into our old ways. The time we spend in preparation will make us more ready to welcome God than we were before Advent began and will mean that next Advent we can continue the process of smoothing out the way for God.

The good news is that it is not all turmoil and destruction. Every Advent we look back to Jesus’ coming as well as forward to his coming again. Through the Incarnation we have already experienced the presence of God among us and in Jesus we have been shown that God does not stand apart but is ready and willing to enter fully into the messiness of our existence. God in Jesus is content to sit down amid the clutter of our lives and to relate to us just as we are not as we could be. This and every Advent, it is important that we hold the tension between God with us, and God who is coming so that we can be comforted and disquieted in equal measure, knowing that God loves us as we are and challenges us to become who we can be.

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Looking back, looking forward

November 27, 2021

Advent 1 – 2021
Luke 21:25-38
Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.
On the 26th of July, Marmour Kunpeter wrote for Anglican Focus: “I fled South Sudan for Ethiopia when I was 11. The journey across the desert without clothing or shoes was very bad. We travelled for many days – we walked for more than a month across the desert to escape the persecution of the Khartoum government who wanted to abduct boys so they couldn’t join the rebel groups once they became older.
More than 20,000 boys walked across the desert as unaccompanied minors. We are known as the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’. There were seven from my extended family and we walked with 13,000 others. I left my parents with only the food I could carry, which my mum packed for me, and a two litre container of water. My mum packed simsim for me, a sort of produce like peanuts that doesn’t need cooking so it was easy to eat. I didn’t see my parents again.

We travelled at nighttime, mostly so the Khartoum government military in helicopters could not find us. We ran out of food quickly and ate wild animals, although not all of us would get a portion. It was a struggle. The desert was very dry and it was dangerous. We could be abducted. Many were eaten by wild animals. Some children were eaten by lions. Most children who died just fell asleep and did not get up as they were too weak to walk any further.” Once the group entered Ethiopia it took three months before the United Nations came with food and water, by then many more children had died.

Unless we have had a similar experience, it is impossible to really understand the privations that some people go through and still come out the other side – the death camps of the Holocaust, the civil war in Syria, people-trafficking, the persecution of the Rohingya are just a few of the horrific examples that come to mind.

The gospels were written at a time when the violent and murderous march of Titus through Galilee and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem were fresh in the minds of many. Not only had the siege of that city by Rome led to starvation and desperation, but the in-fighting between the different sects of Judaism had made the situation even worse. After five months, the Romans entered the city and razed it to the ground so that it could not once again become a focus for dissension and rebellion. Those for whom the gospels were written would have known only too well how uncertain and precarious life could be. Jesus’ words as reported by Luke, would have provided reassurance and a sense of optimism to his community – reassurance that catastrophic events such as the destruction of Jerusalem (and with it the Temple) were not unexpected, and a sense of optimism that God is present even in the very worst of circumstances.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year, yet we begin at the end of the story – Jesus’ warning of future events in the days before his death. This is perhaps because Jesus is referring to an end that is also a beginning, to devastation that has within it the seeds of the future. As Advent continues our readings will move us from upheaval, through promise to joyous expectation. Together they serve as a reminder that, with or without faith, life rarely runs smoothly, that there may well be times when our hopes are dashed and our expectations shattered, when we are forced to face difficulties and obstacles for which we were unprepared.

As the church year continues, we will experience the full gamut of human emotions – terror and hope, despair and joy, disappointment, and surprise, wonder and confusion. In the stories of Jesus’ followers, we will witness excitement and expectation as well as foolishness and betrayal. The gospels are not a record of dry, historical events, but a microcosm of human experience, a reassurance that our experiences are not unique but are shared (to a greater or lesser extent) by all humanity. All of us will at some time or another have our lives turned upside down – by external events (war, COVID, natural disaster), by personal issues (the death of a loved one, a diagnosis of a terminal or deteriorative disease). At such moments, Jesus assures us, God will not have abandoned us. Indeed, as many of us can attest, it is often when our world seemed to be falling apart that we discovered that God was closer than we had thought.

In the midst of his unimaginable travails, Marmour found God. “It was at this time when I was 11 years old that I began to have a relationship with God. In Ethiopia there was a church that I went to. It was there that I found out about the Israelites and how they travelled a long way on foot. After hearing their story, instead of thinking so much about going back to my parents, I thought to myself that this is what I had to live with, that this is my life now. I thought about what I had experienced and decided that there had to be some kind of power – something that was sustaining my life.”

Now in Brisbane, Marmour is married with six children and studying for his Bachelor of Theology. His story is a powerful illustration of God’s presence in the worst of circumstances and a reminder that, at the start of another year, a year in which anything could happen, that in good times and bad the kingdom of God is near and that “Heaven and earth may pass away, but Jesus’ words will never pass away.”

May we face whatever lies ahead with courage and with confidence that when we need God most, God will be most near.

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What is truth?

November 20, 2021

Christ the King – 2021
John 18:33b-37
Marian Free

In the name of God who alone is the source of all truth. Amen.

Over the last decade or so, and especially over the last two years, truth has become a casualty to political ambition and to conspiracy theories. Through the internet and social media, more information is available to us than ever before. So too is misinformation. There are many who maliciously or otherwise seek to have control over the popular narrative and there are many thousands who choose to believe what to some of us seem to be the most spurious of claims. Those who believe these “untruths” are sometimes uneducated, but often they are anxious and afraid, and they may feel as though they have no control over their lives. By attaching themselves to an alternate view of the world these people feel as though they have some control of the narrative as opposed to being controlled by it. Such people will not be convinced by argument or debate. They need us to hear their fears and to recognise their sense of powerlessness.

Today’s gospel is all about power and about alternate truth. The narrative that Jesus’ weaves throughout his debate with Pilate is in distinct contradiction to the popular storyline. Pilate exerts the power that has been bestowed on him by Rome and which is expected of him by the Jewish leaders. He must defend his right to rule and protect his leadership from external threats. Jesus demonstrates strength in weakness, leadership through service, honour through apparent dishonour and life through death.

Only in the gospel of John do we find this extraordinary dialogue between Jesus and Pilate – the clash between two sources of authority – that of Rome and that of God. It is the night of Jesus’ arrest. He has been questioned by Annas and then by Caiaphas before being taken to Pilate who tries to shift the responsibility back to the leaders of the Jews. They in turn claim that it is his role to judge because under Roman law, they cannot put Jesus to death. In fact, the charge is presumably insurrection or treason (not a matter of Jewish law) which is why Jesus is brought to Pilate and why Pilate asks: “Are you the King of the Jews?”

In some ways this is a strange question. Jesus is quite clearly no threat to the might of Rome. He has no army and no weapons. There is nothing about his appearance that suggests royalty and, most telling of all, the Jewish leaders clearly do not recognise him as their king. Yet, as the dialogue continues, it becomes clear that the trump card that the Jewish leaders will play is that Jesus has claimed to be a king (19:12) – (even though this cannot be argued by John’s narrative.)

Interestingly, Jesus does here what he does so well. He turns the table on Pilate, questioning whether Pilate has come to his own conclusion or whether he is just repeating what others have told him. Pilate seems to be at a loss as to how to comprehend Jesus’ approach. In particular he cannot understand why Jesus will not defend himself. His understanding of power and of truth is based on the culture of his day, the culture of the Roman Empire. Pilate’s hold on power is precarious it depends entirely on the whims the Emperor. Worse, to some extent, his power is also dependent on the Jewish leaders – his ability to control them and their ability to manage their own people. In and of himself he has no power or authority.

Jesus’ trial exposes Pilate’s reliance on external forces. Indeed, during the course of the trial, Jesus points out the unpalatable truth – “you would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”

On the other hand, Jesus owes nothing to earthly patronage nor to any external influence. Unlike Pilate he is not obliged to demonstrate loyalty to the Emperor, he owes nothing to anyone or anything. Unlike worldly powers, he does not need to rule the world or use force to exercise control, nor does he need to enslave people to ensure that they bend to his will. He does not need followers who will defend him at any cost. Jesus’ authority lies within, it permeates his very being, emanating from the presence of God in him, in his self-assurance, his confidence in his role and his willingness to be the means through which God reveals the truth to the world.

As recent events have revealed, authority and truth go together. The party that can convince the most people that they are the holders of truth (or who can force their truth on others) will be the party that is able to exercise power.

What Jesus does in today’s gospel is to subvert the nature of truth and therefore of authority for (according to John’s gospel) it is in truth that the nature of Jesus’ authority lies. Jesus speaks the truth, and he is the truth, believers will know the truth and the truth will set them free. Jesus redefines the nature of truth. Truth is not, he suggests. something external and verifiable in the normal sense, rather it is the truth that lies at the centre of all things, the truth that flows from God – that is God. Truth is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus.

It is in truth that the nature of Jesus authority lies. Pilate cannot possibly understand this. Truth to him is flexible and is determined by the might of Rome which decides who should live and who should die, who should have power and who should be denied power. Truth is the world as he knows it with the Emperor at the helm. This is the truth that he is charged to uphold at any cost.
Jesus speaks and reveals a different truth, and he does so not by claiming or defending his authority, but rather by ceding his authority to that of God.

We will discover the truth by relinquishing our quest for power, our need to be in control and our desire to have ownership of the truth, and by surrendering ourselves, body, mind, and soul to God.

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Change and disruption

November 13, 2021

 

Pentecost 25 – 2021

Mark 13:1-11

Marian Free

 

In the name of the God of our past, present and future. Amen.

Given that that the Bible was written by men in a patriarchal world, a world in which men and women had clearly defined roles and in which pregnancy and childbirth would have been entirely the province of women, it is extraordinary that there are more than a few occasions on which images of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering are used for God and for the journey of faith. Sometimes they are used to describe God’s intimate love and care. They evoke God’s promises – the barren woman will bear seven-fold (Is 54), God’s love – I took them up in my arms (Hos 11), God’s comfort – as a mother comforts her child, God’s compassion – can a mother forget her nursing child and God’s protection – I will be as a bear robbed of her cubs (2 Sam 17).

 

At other times, as today, the pain and the violence of childbirth is used to bring to mind the trauma and disruption that can precede change. This is exemplified in the Song of Hannah (echoed in the Song of Mary) that speaks of upheaval – the bows of the mighty are broken, the powerful are brought down, the poor are raised from the dust and the lowly are lifted up.

 

In our scene from this morning’s gospel the disciples were no doubt expecting Jesus to join them in their admiration of the Temple – after all it was the centre of their faith, the place in which sacrifices were offered to God and to which faithful Jews came for the major festivals of their faith. They must have been completely taken aback by Jesus’ response that not one stone would remain upon another. It would have been completely impossible for them to imagine that within decades of Jesus’ death a new expression of their ancient faith would have been brought to birth and that many of the things that they now considered sacred would not only have been destroyed but would have lost their meaning. How could they conceive that the anointed one, the one for whom they had waited for so long would be the cause of a deep rupture between all that they had known and the future that he was initiating?

 

 

Many of us like the disciples resist change. When everything is going smoothly it is difficult to imagine that there can be any benefit in letting of of the comfortable and familiar. Worse, as our reading suggests, change can be violent and destructive and there are times when the old must be destroyed to allow room for the new to emerge. It can be difficult to see new possibilities while the old structures and the old ways of doing things remain in place and it is often only with hindsight that we can see the benefits that accrued from what had appeared to be a catastrophic event. (Who, for example, would have imagined that a rag-tag bunch of foolish and non-comprehending disciples would have transformed not only their faith, but the whole world along with it? Who could have predicted that anything good could have come out of a pandemic? Yet a bunch of uneducated men and women spread the gospel to the world. And the pandemic has shown us how we can connect without being face-to-face.)

Today’s gospel is a timely reminder that nothing lasts for ever and that even the greatest of edifices can fall. It is also a caution against holding too tightly to the past and of failing to be open to the opportunities offered by the future. 

We are, all of us, on the threshold of change, myself to a future that is not yet fleshed out and you to the adventure of a new period of ministry. It will not be the sort of catastrophic change that our gospel refers to and it will be experienced differently by all of us. At the same time, the future is full of potential and I am confident that any trepidation that we might feel will be more than balanced by a sense of anticipation and excitement as to what that future might hold.

You will have forgotten the disruption that occurred when I (the first woman to have the cure of this Parish) burst on the scene and I am certain that you now take for granted the many changes that have occurred over the last 14 years. There will be a great many things that you will remember as always having been here, or always having been done in a particular way. That will not be true. This is not the Parish I came to 14 years ago. Stalwarts have gone to God and many new faces have joined us. New groups have formed and some have fallen by the wayside. There have been subtle changes to the way we do liturgy and there have been numerous physical changes to both the church and grounds and now we take it for granted that this is how it should be.

That doesn’t mean that this is how it should stay. In the past few weeks, I have become increasingly convinced that the Holy Spirit is present in the timing of this handover, that this is absolutely the right time for another person to take the Parish on the next stage of your journey and that God has wonderful things in store for all of us.

We, like the disciples, are on a journey of discovery, always on the move, always trying to be open to the Spirit and the will of God. No one knows where the road will take us, but we continually leave the past and present behind us to step out in faith, following Jesus, confident that we will  be asked to do more than we are capable of and that we will never be abandoned to face the journey alone.

 

May God bless us all in whatever lies ahead.

 

 

 

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Sacrifice or example – the widow’s mite

November 6, 2021

Pentecost 24 – 2021
Mark 12:38-44
Marian Free

In the name of God who asks only that we love, with heart, soul, mind and strength. Amen.

Some time ago one of my friends read a book titled The Five Languages of Love. She found it utterly enlightening and somewhat liberating. She was frustrated that her husband, on his day off, would mow the lawn because she thought that if he loved her, he would want to spend the day doing things with her. What she hadn’t understood was that in his mind, mowing the lawn was his way of showing his love for her. Love is complex and sometimes complicated. Neediness or possessiveness are sometimes confused as love with devasting effects. On the other hand, selflessness may not be an expression of a healthy relationship. Love is best when it is freely given, out of a strong sense of self.

This morning’s gospel is one with which we are all very familiar. The widow and her two small coins make a good Sunday school lesson and provide excellent material for a sermon on stewardship. However, as we have been observing over the past few weeks, taking a superficial view of any one gospel story is to miss its real meaning. In this case the generosity of the widow is important, but the context of this account reveals that there is a lot more going on in today’s reading than a story of a widow giving two small coins to the Temple treasury.

A clue to deeper meaning of the story lies in the verses that immediately precede Jesus’ observation about the widow’s behaviour. Here, Jesus has launched an apparently unprovoked attack on the arrogance, social ambition, and avarice of scribes who abuse the poor – specifically the widows for whom they had a special duty of care and who were particularly vulnerable. “Beware of the (attention seeking) scribes,” Jesus says, “they are not who they appear to be.” It is specifically these scribes whom Jesus is condemning. A little earlier Jesus had cause to compliment another scribe with whom he had been engaged in debate as to which commandment was the greatest. Jesus’ asserted that the first commandment was: “‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” To which the scribe responded: “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus commends and affirms this scribe and tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God.

There are scribes and there are scribes and apparently not all scribes are deserving of censure. The shallowness and worldliness of the status-seeking scribes is vastly different from the sincerity and wisdom of the questioning scribe who understood that love of God is the heart of the law and that that love is all-consuming; a love that demands all of one’s being, not just a part of it; a love that cannot be represented by the superficial offering of sacrifices in the Temple or by making a show with long prayers. Jesus’ scathing attack on the posturing of the scribes who devour the houses of widows (instead of providing for them as is demanded in the law) is brought into sharp relief by the widow who contributes her two small coins to the treasury.

Given the context, and the juxtaposition between the scribe who recognises love of God as the most important and those who seek status and recognition, it is possible to argue that the account of the widow is less about her self-sacrifice and more about her loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength. That this might be the case is supported by the Greek text. In the NRSV, the version of the Bible that we are use, we read that the woman gave “all that she had to live on”. This phrase translates the Greek word “βιος” or life (think biology). In other words, it is probably more accurate to say that, “she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole life.”

When we make this pericope only about the widow’s sacrifice, we risk adding insult to injury by further disempowering her. Jesus makes it clear that she is in very straightened circumstances – a situation that may well have been caused by self-seeking scribes who had taken payment for legal services (though that was forbidden), or who had mismanaged her estate or who had taken advantage of her situation in other ways. Despite this it seems, the widow is still her own person, a person of faith and integrity, a person in control of her own destiny who can choose to give her whole life and who understands (as did the scribe who engaged Jesus in debate), that love of God – with heart, soul, mind and strength – the giving of one’s whole self, is of much greater value than any amount of “burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

The widow’s self-giving came from the heart and stood in stark contrast with the scribes whose focus was on appearances and with the wealthy who gave to the Temple what they could easily afford. Jesus’ compares the widow’s behaviour with that of the wealthy and of the scribes not to diminish or pity her nor to draw attention to her poverty, but to lift her up as an example of faith and faithfulness, as a model of one who knows exactly what it is to keep the first commandment and who does so willingly and whole-heartedly.

We are all called to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Nothing less will do.

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