Sermon Notes 26th July
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 by Desiree Snyman

Parables are not “earthly stories about heavenly matters,” but “earthy stories about heavy matters.” They create an everyday playground for you to wonder and wander within, but then a punchline turns everything you thought you knew upside down. The immediate, domestic and straightforward interpretation of a parable is usually the lazy option — and rarely the correct one.

 I am grateful for Chris Lockley’s “Parables” sermon two weeks ago, which helped us discern a slight but important difference between the way Jesus speaks and the way Matthew speaks. Jesus is provocative and offers parable. Matthew often offers allegory. 

You may be familiar with George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a classic allegory criticising totalitarian regimes. The farm animals revolt against their human masters and set up what is supposed to be a more equal society. Until, of course, the pigs assume control and begin their own reign of terror, eventually justifying their privilege with that wonderful manifesto:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

That is allegory. The characters and events point beyond themselves to something else. 

Empowered by Chris’s insight that parable and allegory are different, we can begin to discern the moments where Jesus speaks in parable and the moments where Matthew seems to speak in allegory. Matthew 13 is a sermon in parables about the kingdom of heaven. Just to be clear, the “kingdom of heaven” means the kingdom of God. Matthew just doesn’t like using the word “God.” The kingdom of God is not simply somewhere we go when we die. The kingdom of God is a state of being, a consciousness, a friendship with God and others. The kingdom of God is within, it is always available, all the time, right here, right now. The kingdom of God is not simply somewhere we go when we die. It is God's reign: God's alternative ordering of life, already breaking into the present and yet still awaiting fulfilment. In each set of parables there is one longer parable with an explanation, followed by shorter parables without an explanation. When we have an explanation, when somebody tells us that this character means this, and this object means that, and this group of people represents those people, we have moved from parable towards allegory. Playful parables allowing for many meanings is often Jesus, while the judgement-based allegories are more than likely the community writing in Matthew’s name. Which brings us to the parable of the net. 

Matthew says the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea which catches fish of every kind. When it is full, the fishermen haul it ashore, sit down, put the good fish into baskets and throw out the bad. Then comes the explanation, the allegory. At the end of the age, the angels will separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire. Which sounds rather less like a playful parable and rather more like one religious group telling another religious group to go to hell. Perhaps that is exactly what is happening.

 As I have explained before, the Gospel of Matthew was written for a community living in the aftermath of catastrophe: the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the death and displacement of its people, the end of sacrificial religion, the end of the Jewish priesthood, and the profound transformation of Jewish religious life. Without the Temple, Jewish faith increasingly centred upon Torah, synagogue and rabbinic interpretation. In the background of Matthew’s Gospel, we can hear the hostility of a family argument. Pharisaic Jewish leaders and Christian Jewish leaders are fighting over what faithfulness now looks like. Pharisaic Jews and Christian Jews caricature one another, condemn each other, and use every opportunity to tell one another to go to hell. Which makes the explanation of the net sound rather different. Family fights can be vicious. While Anglicans partner well with other denominations in caring for creation or the poor, providing religious education for children in schools or running community-based services such as LinC, they can be hostile to factions within the Anglican denomination. Think about some of the internal fighting between rational, credible, progressive, broad-stream Anglicans and the rabid evangelism of Sydney Anglicans to understand how quickly religious siblings can start speaking about each other in less than charitable terms. I should point out that those caricatured, tongue-in-cheek remarks are intended to prove precisely the point I am making. Internal family fights take hostility to entirely new levels.  

Now compare Matthew’s fishing story with a similar saying preserved in the Gospel of Thomas. The dating of Thomas is disputed. Some place traditions within it very early; others date the Gospel in its surviving form much later. A Coptic version was famously discovered among the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in Egypt in 1945. In Thomas we hear: “A man is like a skilled fisherman who cast his net into the sea.” He pulls it up full of little fish, but among them discovers one large and excellent fish. So, he throws all the little fish back and chooses the large one. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Notice what has happened. There are no angels. There is no furnace. Nobody is sent to hell. And perhaps most importantly, nobody tells you what the parable means. You must wrestle with it. You must wonder and wander within it. So perhaps the parable of the net is not about the external rejection of unbelievers at all but internal fighting within a family group of believers in Antioch.  

We come to two, tiny parables that are even stranger. The mustard seed and the leaven. We have domesticated both. We hear “mustard seed” and imagine something quaint and lovely. Perhaps a little pot of Dijon mustard beside a nice piece of ham. But mustard was not necessarily a respectable garden plant. It could be invasive. Once established it could spread and become extraordinarily difficult to control. In our context it would be like a macadamia farmer deliberately planting a camphor laurel tree. 

When Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…” his listeners may not have heard: “The kingdom of heaven is like something small and sweet which eventually becomes something lovely.” They may have heard: “The kingdom is like a weed.” An intrusive weed. An uncontrollable weed. 

Then Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour.” Again, we have domesticated the image. We imagine a nice packet of commercial yeast from Woolworths. Ancient leaven was old, fermented dough, kept back and allowed to sour in a dark dank place, then introduced into fresh dough so that fermentation spread through the whole batch. Leaven was unstable stuff, a symbol of the “unclean”.  

There is something wonderfully earthy about all of this. A weed. A woman. Fermentation. Things spreading where they are not supposed to spread. Things bubbling away out of sight. Things refusing to remain controlled. On the one hand: weeds, women and the wild. On the other hand: the patriarchal, the tamed, the settled city-state civilisation, the military-industrial complex. And that takes us back into the deepest memory of Israel. 

At harvest festivals the Hebrews recite the words of Deuteronomy:

“A wandering Aramaean was my ancestor.” A wanderer. A nomad. And then a slave. The foundational story of Israel is not the story of a great city, a great army or a great king. It is the story of people who escaped. People who walked out of Egypt as runaway slaves, wild and free. The story tells us that when the freed slaves leave Egypt, they must learn again how to live on the land and be wild and free by eating wild and free manna. There is a fascinating theory that manna may have some relationship to the sweet secretions associated with scale insects feeding on tamarisk trees in the Sinai — a substance traditionally collected and eaten by Bedouin communities who called it “man”. For 40 years, Moses learned how to rely on the land for its provision while being deprogrammed from everything Egypt had conditioned into him. Under the tutelage of the African clan of herders, he hooked up with and eventually married into, he was retrained in the wilderness after fleeing Egypt as an OG on the run, with a price on his head. Whether or not that finally explains the biblical manna is not really the point. The theological point is that the people have left Egypt. They have left the city-state. They have left the system that fed them in exchange for their labour and their slavery. And now, in the wilderness, they must learn again how to trust the land, how to receive, how to gather enough for today, how not to hoard. Again and again the Hebrew tradition insists upon release. The land must rest. Debts must be released. Slaves must be freed. The machinery of accumulation must stop. Creation must be allowed to breathe again. 

The manna story, the wild weeds, and the uncontrollable leaven tell how the kingdom of God interrupts the human project of controlling everything — land, animals, labour, wealth, time and one another. It insists upon regular release back towards the undomesticated condition of creation — including those particularly troublesome wild creatures called human beings. The mustard seed, intrusive, uncontrollable, wild, and dangerous points backwards, behind the ploughed fields, towards growth unauthored and unauthorised. Simultaneously the mustard seed points forward, towards a question: What is the ultimate role of wildness? What might the things we call “uncivilised” have to teach civilisation? Civilisation has a dangerous capacity to make terrible things seem normal. The normalcy of civilisation. The banality of bureaucracy. The invitation to normality. (The Gathering of the Manna by James Tissot https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/26365-the-gathering-of-the-manna 

It’s up to you to decide what the parables mean for you, but this is how I hear their invitation: To be wild. To be free. To be untamed. If the kingdom is wild, then I don't get to decide in advance where it will grow. It may invade conservative gardens and progressive gardens. It may disturb the certainties of Sydney evangelicals—and the comfortable certainties of people like me. I remember the words of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, who remind us that Jesus was not murdered by unusually evil people. He was killed by the normalcy of civilisation: by empire, law, religion and the ordinary machinery of power doing what they normally do. I think, too, of Hannah Arendt’s haunting phrase, “the banality of evil.” The Holocaust did not depend only upon monsters. It depended upon ordinary people, ordinary offices, ordinary bureaucracies: processing forms, obeying instructions, keeping the machinery running. 

The “normalcy of civilisation” and the “banality of evil” troubles our easy assumption that what is normal is therefore good. The normal, civilised, tamed option is so often to accept the world’s wisdom and call all of that sensible:

·      Protect what is ours.
·      Secure our borders.
·      Accumulate wealth.
·      Build bigger armies.
·      Measure our wellbeing by GDP. 

But what if the kingdom of God is not sensible? What if the kingdom is wild?

What if the kingdom is the mustard seed, an intrusive weed that gets into the carefully cultivated garden and refuses to stay where it is put? What if the kingdom is the leaven — hidden away, fermenting, swelling, disturbing the neat and unleavened order of things? Then perhaps the wild option is to give money to the poor and dispossessed. The wild option is to welcome the refugee and make space for emigrants. The wild option is to spend less on the machinery of war and more on education, medicine and care for the vulnerable. Perhaps the kingdom asks us to remember that our ancestor was a wandering Aramaean; that our foundational story is about runaway slaves; that Jesus himself was a refugee. 

The parables ask me a disturbing question: Do I want to be normal, respectable, tamed and safely domesticated? Or do I want to be wild? Because perhaps that is what freedom looks like. Perhaps wildness is not recklessness at all. Perhaps the wildest thing we can do in a world organised by fear is to hope. To love. To believe that another world is possible even when there is very little evidence before our eyes.

So, I conclude with words attributed to a Jewish prisoner, said to have been found written during the Second World War:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when God is silent.
That, perhaps, is the wild faith of the kingdom. 

Sermon Pentecost 8 1 Corinthians 12.12-27, John 15.1-17 by Geoff Smith

It’s great to be here with you today. Thanks, Desiree, for your invitation and for your invitation to me to speak. 

Lynn and I met Greg and Del Ezzy and Geoff and Carol Vidal in the mid ‘80’s. I was Greg’s curate at Lismore, and in time Geoff became my curate at Ballina parish. Geoff and I were also colleagues in the parish of Surfers Paradise. Through all the years from then until now Greg and Geoff have been friends, mentors and encouragers of me. 

I met Charlie a long time ago, but I am not sure when-but it’s been a while. I met Desiree earlier this year and Cathy this morning. It’s a privilege to be here and be part of this celebration. 

In some important ways today is about numbers. Important numbers :60, 40, 30, 20, 10. Years served in ordained and licensed lay ministry. That’s worth a celebration.  

I wonder as we do that, if we could think about some other numbers alongside those numbers. I’d like to discover who here this morning has been baptised for the greatest number of years.  

We might not all know when we were baptised but let’s do an experiment. Let’s start with 70 years. Who has been baptised for 70 years. How about 75 (and so on). I wonder who here might have been baptised for the shortest time! One year maybe (and so on). 

The reason I am asking about years baptised is that baptism, whether we receive it when we are young or old, whether it’s with a lot of water or just a little, and no matter which Christian church we receive baptism in, baptism is incredibly important. 

Through baptism we become members of the Christian church and God does some important things. First, through baptism we are adopted by God as his sons and daughters, we are made co-heirs with Christ. Second, through baptism we are given the gift of eternal life and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Third, through baptism we receive a vocation, a calling, to follow Jesus as his disciple. We are called to follow Jesus for the rest of our life. 

Following Jesus includes serving his mission, his ministry in the world. As Jesus pointed by his words and actions to the reality of the new era called in the gospels the kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven, so we are called to do the same thing by our words and actions. 

A clue to this is part of the Lord’s prayer where we pray- ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. God’s great project is to bring about that state of affairs where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Where there is a new creation on earth-heaven comes to earth. 

That’s what Jesus came to announce and point towards by his actions and words and inaugurate through his death and resurrection. 

As baptised people we are called to carry Jesus’ ministry on. So, we point to the reality of this new state of affairs by what we say-we tell people about what God is doing, and we do things to make this state of affairs real right now as much as we can. 

And so, we seek in God’s strength to love others, to bring life and wholeness, peace and justice to the creation including the human part. To try to make things right on earth as they are in heaven. To help others know about Jesus’ project and invitation to join in.  

The church is quite unique in many ways. The church is one of if not the most international, multiracial, multilingual, multigenerational organisations in the world. And there are no spectators in it. All the members of the church have a vocation. We all have a purpose, we all have a meaning for our life, and that is to serve Jesus’ mission as his disciples, as his followers. 

In the New Testament the word that is mostly used for this service is translated ministry. All the baptised are called to serve Jesus. All the baptised are called to ministry. 

This ministry is lived out as we live our everyday lives. As we interact with family and friends and neighbours, in our community, with the creation and as members of the church, we seek to be working models of the kingdom of God, bringing the life and love and peace and wholeness and healing and connection with God that Jesus brought in his ministry to the people and the creation we interact with. In other words, doing what we can to bring heaven to earth. 

This ministry that we all have as baptised people is a great privilege and we share it equally. Our purpose in life is to serve the mission of Jesus in every interaction we have, using the gifts and opportunities God gives us. No one person and no gift is more or less important than others.  

If the body of Christ is going to fulfill its function all the baptised are important. That’s the point St Paul is making in his letter to the competitive Corinthian Christians which was today’s first reading. All the members of the body of Christ, all who are baptised must play their part, exercise their ministry, serve Jesus as they live their lives. 

Jesus puts this slightly differently in today’s gospel reading, but with the same intention, when he reminds his disciples: ‘you didn’t choose me remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil.’ We bear fruit as we serve Jesus’ mission, continue it, show forth the reality of the new era that is the kingdom of God. 

It’s great that today the theme of the service is the body of Christ and the ministry of all believers. It’s a great reminder to us that we are all called to minister, that is, to serve Jesus’ ministry.  

It is the case that God calls and the church sets aside a very small number of the baptised for particular service. Forty years ago, the church, in the form of this parish, asked the bishop to license Charlie Handley for service as a lay reader, and forty years later Charlie is still doing that ministry alongside his other Christian ministry as a baptised person. We thank God for Charlie’s faithfulness to that call, and we thank Charlie for that faithfulness. 

Another example of the church setting aside people for particular ministry is ordination. Ordaining baptised people to be deacons or priests or bishops. A holy ordering with particular responsibility for teaching the faith, administering the sacraments and leading. Members of the body of Christ who already have a ministry of serving Christ, being called by God and asked by the church to live their ministry in particular ways as deacons, priests and bishops. 

The expectations of the church for people being ordained are heavy. There are life-long commitments. Before people are ordained, they face a formation process which usually takes a number of years, and if they are deemed suitable and ready they turn up usually to the cathedral and face a public examination with questions concerning their faith, their commitment to Christ and the work they are being set aside to do, and their lifestyle. 

People who are ordained are expected to abide by those public commitments and be faithful to the service they are called to do. This is a weighty responsibility which impacts not only the individual but their families too.  

As part of today’s celebration of the ministry of all the baptised we thank God for Greg’s faithfulness to those commitments for 60 years. That’s a long time. We thank God for Geoff’s faithfulness for 30 years, Desiree for 20 and Cathy for 10. Ordained ministry is very public. It is a ministry of leadership and public interaction.  

When ordained people live their ministry out well there is great benefit. When ordained people live it out badly there is the potential for great damage. 

So, we thank God for the faithfulness of Greg and Geoff and Desiree and Cathy. Thanks for what you have done on our behalf, as part of the body of Christ, doing what the body of Christ has asked you to do so well and so faithfully. 

It is the case that all of us are called to ministry, to service. We are called to serve the ministry of Christ who is the head of the body, the church. It’s his ministry we serve. He is the head; he is in charge. That means we need to be well connected to Jesus. My body will not do what my head wants it to do if the two are not well connected, and it’s the same with the body of Christ. 

Jesus highlights this in the gospel reading. We have already noted Jesus reminding the disciples that he had chosen them, not the other way around. Jesus also makes clear that to bear fruit, in order to serve his mission, the disciples need to be connected to him, as the branch of a grape vine needs to be connected to the vine in order to bear grapes. 

We have been baptised. We have been called to serve; to minister, we can only do that effectively as we are connected to Jesus. As we are well connected to Jesus, he works through us bringing his love and wholeness, peace and healing and life to whoever and whatever we connect with. 

People who are about to be ordained make commitments to do things which will help keep them connected to Jesus. So, for instance people being ordained as deacons and priests and bishops are asked: ‘will you be diligent in prayer and the study of the holy scriptures? Will you undertake such other studies as will help you in your ministry? Will you constantly seek the help of the Holy Spirit to use and develop Gods gifts to you so that you may serve all by word and deed?’ 

These are public commitments by those being ordained because doing these things; praying, studying the scriptures and constantly seeking the help of the Holy Spirit all help keep us connected to Christ the head, and these actions will help the ordained to live out their commitments for the benefit of the church and its mission. Ordained people who lose a vital connection with Christ struggle and often the church suffers. 

But this is not just for the ordained. This is for us all. All the baptised are given opportunities to serve Christ’s ministry every day. All of us really need to be well connected to Jesus in order to be directed by him.  

If we are going to be fruitful and live out our baptismal vocation we all need to spend time in prayer often and study the scriptures often and keep learning of Jesus. We all need to be praying for the strengthening and filling of the Holy Spirit. This isn’t just for the ordained but all the members of the body of Christ. 

Today we celebrate the ministry we all have and the different opportunities God gives us to live that ministry out. In a few minutes we are going to have the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our baptismal calling. And I wonder too whether we could recommit ourselves to doing what we can do to remain united to Jesus. Prayer, the scriptures, asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we are well connected with him and so be able to serve his mission fruitfully. We can’t do that in our own strength. Only by being connected to Jesus, the head. 

Sometimes, even though it is vital that we spend time in prayer and reading and reflecting on the Scriptures, we actually find those things hard to do. We may not be confident in praying. We may find difficulty in understanding the scriptures. Lynn and I have come across an app for our phone which we have found to be very helpful. This app is called lectio365. This is a free app, which doesn’t ask for personal information, there are no in-app purchases and no ads.

Lectio365 can be downloaded for free from the app store and it provides a devotion, a reflection including prayer, scripture and an explanation of the scripture passage for morning, midday and evening every day of the year. 

Lynn and I have found lectio365 really helpful and I would encourage you to try it. If you don’t like it or its not helpful, then delete it. But I strongly suspect that if you try it each day for a week you won’t delete the app. 

The church, the body of Christ, really needs all its members to be engaged in ministry. God’s project of a new heaven and a new earth is stunning. And we can be part of the fulfillment of that project. And the more so as we use our gifts and opportunities to share in that mission. So that we do our part in making Gods will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s our ministry. That’s our purpose. That’s our God given vocation.

Let us pray.

Sermon Notes Pentecost 12th July Matthew 13 by Chris Lockley 

Do you remember writing letters, and receiving them in the post? Letter writing seems to be a lost art. I’d like to read to you part of a letter that I received back in January – 46 years ago, in the days leading up to my ordination. I don’t keep all my old letters, but I did this one. It was from a fellow student – Dorothy – a few years behind me in college. She wrote the letter while on holidays and wanted to tell me what she would have liked to say if she could have been at my ordination.  

Rereading the letter after all that time I have been stunned by the almost prophetic insight Dorothy had back then.  

She wrote: “The thought I wanted to give to you is from a South American priest.  He asked himself, if he had only 3 minutes with a person, what would he say that was significant and relevant enough to make them think further. He decided the crucial words were “Love is never wasted”.  

She went on: “That may not be your message for others, Chris, but it is my message to you … There will be many, many times in your ministry when you will be misunderstood and when you will be tempted to think that love IS wasted … You will need to believe over and over again that your love is never wasted.”  

Neither of us could know at the time just how true those words would become – for both of us – over the years. The love Dorothy put into that letter was not wasted. Time and time again through four decades of ministry, through challenging times both personally and professionally, those simple words came back to encourage me.

Love is never wasted. 

They came back to me once again as I reread the parable of the sower and its message of the indiscriminate generosity of God. There are a few things I need to mention before suggesting what it might be saying to us.

Firstly, the reading is in two parts: the parable itself, followed by an explanation of the parable 9 verses later. When we separate those two parts, we realise they are very different in style, and have a different purpose. And whereas the parable most probably represents the words of Jesus, I doubt very much that he gave the explanation.  

Secondly, it’s important to understand the nature of parables, at least as Jesus told them, and how they are different from another story form – the allegory. 

PARABLES are very rarely explained. I can only think of two others. A parable is meant to be open ended, to provoke its listeners and leave us wondering and thinking. Parables often present upheavals in the way things are understood and valued. They reverse commonly held wisdom. Frequently, there is no single meaning to a parable. They can be multi-layered and have multiple meanings. Parables are invitations to question our thinking and beliefs about the Kingdom of God. 

The story of a farmer who sows seeds willy-nilly on a variety of soils, seemingly without any common-sense plan, is such a parable. What kind of farmer would do such a silly thing? He doesn’t prepare the soil. He wastes seed by throwing it at random. What did he hope to achieve? What could this possibly say about the Kingdom of God? About us? 

An ALLEGORY, on the other hand, is carefully structured so that each element in the story represents something, or someone, else. They are also prescriptive. There is often an element of moralising and judgement in an allegory, whereas a parable leaves things fuzzy and unclear.  

In the second century one of the common forms of preaching was to treat the gospels and Hebrew scriptures allegorically. The stories about Jesus, for instance, would be interpreted symbolically, pointing to some deeper, spiritual meaning.  

In the second part of today’s reading, the earlier parable of the sower is explained through that common preaching style – allegory. The seed represents the Word. The soil represents those who hear it – some are receptive, but most seem to be shallow, hard-hearted or too involved in other things to truly listen. The sower is most probably the church as it spreads the word. And it is this interpretation that seems to dominate how we think about the parable. 

I don’t think Jesus gave that explanation. The allegory doesn’t reflect his style of teaching but that of later preachers. It addresses some of the challenges of Jesus’ followers in the several generations after his death, as they slowly developed into a movement distinct from Judaism. 

It was answering questions such as: why do some people not accept our message? Why do some ‘backslide’ after having believed, and return to their previous life? There is the added judgement that those people who fall away have failed in some way. There’s something wrong or sinful about them. Alongside that was the encouragement to remain faithful and be part of God’s work. 

I’m not saying that was wrong. It was how those early followers made sense of what was happening in uncertain times. It was Matthew’s message to his church. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind in telling the parable. 

So, let’s return to the story as a parable – a provocative story that challenges and opens up our curiosity and thinking.  

The observation that stands out for me is what I mentioned earlier: it describes the indiscriminate generosity and love of God that is extended, broadcast out to everyone, and it invites us to live in that same spirit of love, compassion and generosity. 

Sure, not everyone will be receptive to that generosity and love – just as they weren’t receptive to Jesus. But there is no moral judgement in the parable. Perhaps those who resist love most are those who hurt most. Who need love. Jesus is talking about planting seeds of love. And even the smallest shoots of life and healing can make a difference in someone’s life.  

Nothing can stop God’s extravagant, indiscriminate, unconditional generosity and love. All receive. No one is judged unworthy. No one is considered not good enough. No one is a failure. No matter how hard one’s heart. No matter the shallowness of one’s life. 

The seeds of love and generosity still matter. Even the smallest, most vulnerable or transitory of responses counts. It’s as if to say: look what love can do in even the most difficult of situations. Don’t love only when its easy. Love, too, when its difficult. 

Love is never wasted. It’s not always easy, popular or welcome. But love is never wasted. God’s love is never wasted, and neither is ours. 

Dorothy, the fellow student who told me that love is never wasted 46 years ago, was appointed as minister at a church in Sydney’s CBD. One thing that caught the congregation’s attention in the 1990’s was the increase in racist graffiti around the city: in particular in one of the pedestrian railway tunnels at Central Station. So, on a couple of occasions Dorothy and several of the congregation went out with paint and roller brushes and painted over the racist graffiti.  

On one of those occasions, they were arrested and charged with vandalising railway property. When they were brought to court, the judge was outraged – at the arrest. He threw the charges out and reprimanded the railways for not removing the graffiti themselves.  

That could have been the end of it, except that the neo-Nazi organisation responsible for the graffiti increased their campaign by harassing the church. Containers of Chinese food were tipped on the steps outside the church. The church’s garbage bins were raided and members names and contact details were identified. Those members were harassed in their homes.  

On one occasion the Neo-Nazis stormed into a church service, shouting their racist slogans, and threw their propaganda on the communion table during the Eucharist.  

Was the church intimidated? Yes. Did they back down? No. They stuck together in solidarity, they continued to stand against racism in the city. They knew that, despite the cost, love is never wasted. 

My friend is now in her early 90’s. Sadly, her sharp theological and analytical brain is being eroded as dementia does its insidious work. 

After re-reading her letter I would have liked to write back to tell her how much her words have meant to me over the years. But her confusion might make that difficult, even distressing for her. My words might be like seeds falling on a hard surface and rolling off. But I am reminded … love is never wasted. 

Dorothy is losing her remembrance of the lives she has touched and the causes she has championed. But the people she has moved with her courage, and passion for justice, do not, will not forget. Her love is not forgotten. It has not been wasted. 

Its not always easy, popular or welcome. But love is never wasted. God’s love is never wasted, and neither is ours.  

Sermon Notes Pentecost 5th July Matthew 11 by Desiree Snyman

An analogy
Imagine three people baking the same cake. The first glances at the recipe, decides they know better, ignores the instructions, and then wonders why the cake collapses. Applying this analogy to how some live their lives, the Bible often calls this person a fool, not because they lack intelligence, but because they refuse to be taught. 

The second person carefully follows the recipe. They measure accurately, mix patiently, and produce a very good cake. This is knowledge and skill faithfully applied. 

Then there is the master baker. She knows the recipe by heart, but she also knows when to depart from it. She notices the humidity in the air, the quality of the flour, the temperature of the butter. She instinctively knows when the mixture needs another minute, a little more liquid, or a gentler hand. She cannot fully explain how she knows; years of experience, intuition and love have become one. The result is something extraordinary. It is not merely a technically correct cake, but something beautiful, generous and unforgettable. What do we call that quality? It is more than knowledge. More than intelligence. More than following instructions. The Bible calls it wisdom. 

Wisdom is the art of living well. It is knowledge transformed by experience, humility, compassion and love. Just as a master baker takes ordinary ingredients and creates something extraordinary, a wise person takes the ordinary ingredients of life; relationships, joys, disappointments, failures, hopes, and fashions them into a life of beauty, not perfection but the art of living well. It is this kind of wisdom that Matthew invites us to discover today. 

What Is Wisdom?

For the ancient Semitic people wisdom was an invisible force at work a pattern to the universe. Although invisible, wisdom was a power as real as gravity. Wisdom is skill and knowledge and more than skill. That mastery of wisdom was personified as a woman.   

In English we refer to Lady Wisdom. In Greek wisdom is Sophia. In Aramaic and Hebrew wisdom is Chochmah, pronounced hokkmah, where the k is guttural. The Aramaic/Hebrew word for bread is lachmah. Lachmah and Chochmah are closely related. In the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us our daily bread, lachmah” is often also heard as give as “Give us our daily wisdom or chochmah”. So, who is Sophia, or Woman Wisdom? 

In Jewish wisdom literature, wisdom is portrayed as Woman Wisdom and appears throughout Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, and other wisdom books as God’s companion in creation. Woman Wisdom is described as a teacher, and a source of understanding, compassion, and authentic life. In Wisdom 7.22-29, Woman Wisdom is people loving, intelligent, holy, free moving. She collaborates with God and is responsible for creation: 

26 For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of God’s goodness.
27 Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;

According to Proverbs 8, Woman Wisdom stands out in the streets and invites the people to come and play, to tell jokes and to laugh at our mistakes: “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?” 

Woman Wisdom is powerfully intelligent but also artistic and practical. She has built her own home. The wooden beams holding up the roof were crafted by her. On a regular basis she opens up her home to the most vulnerable. She walks through the markets handing out party invitations calling people to feast at her home. She prepares a feast for them with bread she has made herself and roast lamb from her small farm. People eat the best food at a table that she herself has made. After the meal she invites everyone to dance and even the most reluctant dancers with two left feet cannot help themselves and join in the ecstasy and joy of dancing the night away. She is warm and funny and sometimes plays tricks on people. She is also boldly outspoken; she points to the corruption of greedy businessmen and con artists exploiting the most vulnerable. Her home is a safe haven for those who need to recover from life’s worst stresses. She is a counsellor, a spiritual director, a community leader, a wealthy business leader, mentoring and advising politicians who serve the common good.  

Matthew 11 is Woman Wisdom

Every feature of Matthew 11 can be traced back to the Jewish wisdom literature. The development we see in Matthew is that Jesus is now characterised as Wisdom. Just as Woman Wisdom received everything from God, so Jesus receives everything from God. Just as Woman Wisdom gives understanding as a gift, so too does Jesus reveal wisdom. Woman Wisdom is people loving (Wisd. 1.6) so too is Jesus. Just as Woman Wisdom calls people to play so too does Jesus. In the same way that Woman Wisdom condemns corruption, so too does Jesus. 

“Come to me and rest” is a beautiful invitation from Woman Wisdom herself repeated by Jesus in 11.28. Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach 51.59, was written by a scribe in about 125 BCE: 

Draw near to me, you who are uneducated,
   and lodge in the house of instruction… 

See with your own eyes that I have laboured but little
   and found for myself much serenity. 

As Woman Wisdom’s prophet and messenger Jesus calls out to all who tired and weary and promises them rest and restoration. As Wisdom’s messenger, Jesus offers rest to those burdened by religious legalism. He criticises the scribes and Pharisees for turning God’s law—intended as a gift that leads to freedom and flourishing—into an oppressive system of rules. Rather than liberating people, religion had become a heavy burden, especially for the vulnerable. Jesus was ultimately crucified not by irreligion, but by those who used law and religion to maintain power. 

What does it mean for us?

The Wisdom scriptures describe that Holy Wisdom gathers a healthy sense of self within us, as one would gather various voices together for a dinner party. When the various voices within us respond to the call of Wisdom and we feel her embrace, a healthy ‘I am’ is born. 

Most of us know what it’s like to feel torn by competing inner voices. One part of us wants to confront someone, while another prefers to avoid conflict. One part is eager to exercise, while another longs to stay in bed. One part offers kindness and understanding toward ourselves, while another responds with harsh self-criticism. Some researchers suggest that these competing inner voices of which there are many can be broadly divided into three categories.  

·  Managers: Protective parts or voices that keep life organized and controlled to prevent painful emotions from surfacing. They often show up as perfectionism, criticism, overthinking, vigilance, or emotional detachment. 

·  Firefighters: Protective parts that react when pain breaks through, using immediate, often extreme strategies (such as impulsive or addictive behaviours) to numb or escape emotional distress. 

·  Exiles: Vulnerable parts that hold unresolved trauma, fear, shame, or grief. They long to be seen, loved, and healed, but are kept out of awareness by Managers and Firefighters to protect the system.

At Wisdom’s Table, every part of us is welcomed, every voice is heard with compassion and curiosity. The Managers who have worked so hard to keep us safe can finally lay down their vigilance. The Firefighters who have spent a lifetime trying to extinguish unbearable pain no longer need to keep running. The Exiles, who have carried grief, shame, fear and loneliness in silence, can step out of hiding and discover that they are not rejected but embraced. 

Integrating all the inner voices or parts within us is not simply an individual journey. Trauma is also carried between generations, within families, communities and cultures. Aboriginal wisdom reminds us that healing is found through deep listening, through belonging, through restored relationship with one another, with Country, and with the Sacred. Nothing is left outside the circle. 

Perhaps this is what Jesus means when he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." It is not an invitation to escape ourselves, but to bring our whole selves. Every voice. Every wound. Every fear. Every hope. 

To come to Jesus, the embodiment of Holy Wisdom, is to discover that there is a place where nothing in us needs to be hidden, defended or silenced. At Wisdom's Table the different parts of us are gathered into the larger "I Am" of God, where our fragmented selves are gently held together in love. There we discover that rest is not the absence of struggle but the presence of belonging. 

"Come to me and rest" is, finally, an invitation to come home. The fool fragments life. Knowledge orders life. Wisdom integrates life. Jesus embodies Wisdom and gathers fragmented people into wholeness. 

Sermon Notes Pentecost 28th June

Genesis 22:1-14, Matthew 10:40-42 by Doug Bannerman

There is a Yiddish folk tale that goes something like this: Why did God not send an angel to tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Because God knew that no angel would take on such a task. Instead, the angels said, “If you want to command death, do it yourself.” 

God’s fourfold command begins, “Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac” (Gen. 22:2).

The medieval commentator Rashi quotes a midrash [see End Note] that explains God’s curious command by imagining these words to be one-half of a dialogue which, fully developed, goes like this: 

God said, “Take your son.” And Abraham said, “I have two sons.” He [God] answered him, “Your only son.” He [Abraham] said to him, “Each is the only son of his mother.” God said, “The one whom you love.” Abraham replied, “Is there any limit to a father’s love?” God answered, “Isaac.” 

The midrash endows the verse with dramatic tension: a resistant Abraham does not know and does not want to know which son he is to take. God spells it out for him: take the son that you love; take Isaac. But is Isaac, in narrative fact, the son whom Abraham loves? Is he the son whom Abraham loves best? If he is, should God have to tell him so? In short, is it Abraham, or God, who favours Isaac? 

Let’s go back a bit in the Abraham storyline to when Abraham was called Abram. 

God promises Abram a child, his own biological child (Genesis 15). Sarai, Abram’s barren wife, knows nothing of this promise because neither God nor Abram shares the news with her. Sarai is desperate to give Abram a child, and so she proposes that Abram father a child with her Egyptian maidservant Hagar. Abram and Hagar produce a son, Ishmael; but is this the promised child through whose descendants Abram would one day become a great nation? Abram did not consult God before about this, nor does he turn to God after his child is born. The child Ishmael, as it turns out, is not the child God promised Abram. 

Subsequently, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah, and tells Abraham that he will have a son with Sarah. Abraham’s response is odd. His immediate response to the wonderful news of a second son is, “Would that Ishmael live in your sight” (Gen. 17:18). 

But God persists: “Your wife Sarah is going to give birth to a son; you will call him Isaac …” (Gen. 17:19). In due course Isaac is born. Now, although the promise was made to Abraham, we are told that this second child is born because God “remembered Sarah” (Gen. 21:1). God, it seems, knows that it is not Abraham who longed for this child. 

The first verse of today’s OT reading (Genesis 22) tells us that “God put Abraham to the test.” What was God testing? Were Abraham’s faithfulness and obedience to God in doubt? Or was God perhaps testing something else? God might well have been testing Abraham’s love for Isaac, for Abraham does seem to exhibit a measure of emotional distance from Isaac. 

Abraham rises early in the morning to do God’s will. He “gets up and goes” to the place that God has told him. No resistance or reluctance is reported. Indeed, “get up and go” connotes some degree of alacrity. Furthermore, although the narrative itself consistently refers to Isaac as “your son” or “his son”, Abraham calls Isaac “the lad”; he says to his young servants, “Remain here with the donkey, while I and the lad go on ahead …” (Gen. 22:5). Abraham’s anonymous servants are also called his “lads”. 

When father and son arrive at the designated place, Abraham builds an altar, arranges the wood, and binds Isaac his son, and immediately takes the knife to slaughter him. No hesitation is recorded. This total lack of affect in Abraham is stunning, particularly compared with his distress when Sarah insisted that he send Ishmael away. 

The angel of the Lord intervenes, telling Abraham not to put his hand forth to “the lad.” Now hitherto, God has referred to Isaac as “your son”.; but now, God, through the angel, acknowledges Abraham’s perspective that Isaac is “the lad”, and Ishmael, his son, is his favourite. But in this, God is distancing from this strangely compliant patriarch. God has at last acknowledged that Abraham does not now, and will not ever, favour Isaac. Abraham may love Isaac, but Isaac is not the son he loves. 

God is surely disappointed in Abraham. In fact, God says nothing more to him here, or ever again. Indeed, the last words God speaks directly to Abraham are the ones with which He tests him: “Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac.” There is no further personal contact thereafter. That God and Abraham never do see eye to eye on which son is worthy of favour might well underlie this final rift between them. 

The preference for one child over another is a theme that pervades Genesis, beginning with God’s preference for Abel over Cain. Isaac is destined to repeat the sin of his father, as children often do. His preference for Esau over Jacob is contrary to both God’s preference and Rebekah’s; it leads to deception. Jacob, in turn, will prefer the son of the good-looking woman he loved, a preference destined to have calamitous consequences.  

How sad. The heart in its desperate yearning for a child, the eye in its helpless attraction to beauty, determine and sometimes pervert human choices and preferences. People favour whom they favour, not necessarily those who merit favour nor those whom God would favour. 

Doug Bannerman 2026 

Post Script (Who have I left out?)

Judaism refers to story of God’s command to sacrifice Isaac as the Akadah, meaning the “Binding of Isaac”. There is a poem by Yehuda Amichai, entitled “The True Hero of the Akedah” (translated by Chavatzelet Herzliya). 

The true hero of the Akedah was the ram
Who did not know about the pact among the others.
It was as if he volunteered to die in place of Isaac.
I want to sing, for him, a memorial song,
About the curly wool and the mortal eyes
About the horns that stood silent on its living head.
After the slaughter, they were made into shofars
To sound the blast of their wars
And to sound the blast of their base celebrations.
I want to remember that final image –
Like a pretty photograph in a fancy fashion magazine:
The tanned, pampered youth in his finest of frocks
And by his side, the angel, dressed in a long silk gown
As if for a festive reception.
And the two of them, with desolate eyes,
Looking out to two distant desolate places. 

And behind them, as a colourful background, the ram
Entangled in the thicket before slaughter--
The thicket, his final friend. 

The angel departed homewards
Isaac departed homewards
And Abraham and God had parted ways a while back. 

But the true hero of the Akedah
Was the ram. 

End Note

Midrash: Genesis Rabah 55.7: A midrash is the classical rabbinic mode of exegesis, interpretation or study of a given text. They reimagine dominant narrative readings while crafting new ones to stand alongside, not replace, former readings. Midrash also asks questions of the text; sometimes it provides answers, sometimes it leaves the reader to answer the questions.

Source:  Roslyn Weiss, “The One You Love? A Case of Divine Disappointment”, Jewish Review of Books (Fall 2022)

Sermon Notes Pentecost 21st June

Matthew 10:24-39 by Desiree Snyman

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings in South Africa. My exegesis of today’s text is shaped by this experience. I begin with a poem by Ingrid Jonker that was read by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural address to parliament. The original is in Afrikaans. The translation is as follows:  

The child is not dead
The child lifts his fists against his mother
Who shouts Afrika!
shouts the breath
Of freedom and the veld
In the locations of the cordoned heart 

The child lifts his fists against his father
in the march of the generations
who shouts Afrika!
shouts the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride 

The child is not dead
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Philippi
where he lies with a bullet through his brain 

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles Saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings
the child peers through the windows of houses
and into the hearts
of mothers
this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man
treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant
journeys through the whole world 

Without a pass. 

Between the Sharpeville Massacre and the Soweto uprising

On 21 March 1960, South African police opened fire on about 4,000 peaceful protesters in Sharpeville (a location for black people in the former Transvaal) who were demonstrating against pass laws that restricted the movement of Black people. Officials underreported the number of victims and falsely claimed the crowd was violent. The massacre at Sharpeville ignited international outrage. It led to the Anti-Apartheid movement internationally and protests inside South Africa. The government responded with brutal force, suppressing any political movements critical of the government. In my understanding of the history of this time, the suppression from a wealthy and powerful apartheid government led to quiescence. Because the apartheid regime responded with such brutality to any protest, people were inclined to “keep the peace” and not “rock the boat”. The relative inertia lasted until about 1976. 

It fell to the youth to take up leadership for justice and against apartheid. Rather than be peacekeepers like their parents, they wanted the things that make for peace. On 16 June what became known as the Soweto uprisings involved groups of high school children marching from various starting points to converge at Orlando High School. The students wanted to show their solidarity and support for the schoolchildren who were protesting the Bantu education act and refusing to be taught in Afrikaans. This disciplined peaceful demonstration turned into a tragic and violent event when police responded with viciousness, sparking a wave of resistance that changed the course of South Africa’s history. Without these brave young people standing up where their families refused to, the New South Africa may not have dawned when it did. The poem you heard remembers the bravery of the youth who were peacemakers and whose lives are remembered in every act toward a wholesome world. 

I offer these stories to demonstrate the difference between keeping the peace and making peace. After Sharpeville many adults tried to keep the peace by giving-in to powerful systems of oppression. This is understandable given the violence meted out. Making peace, the necessary task of speaking truth to power, even if the reply is violent, is costly and uncomfortable. Making peace was left to the youth, and they paid a high price. Likewise, the Gospel calls us to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. Keeping peace maintains the status quo. Making peace is disruptive.  

21st century contemporary parallels of 1st century gospel discipleship

In places and times such as Apartheid South Africa from 1943 to 1994, the civil rights movement in America under Martin Luther King Jnr from 1950 to 1968, and climate activism recently, the contemporary parallels of discipleship in the Gospels are clear. A socio-literary reading of Jesus’ non-violent challenge against the Powers of first century Roman Palestine has clear implications for contemporary practices of discipleship today. 

The centrality of the presence of Christ at the heart of one’s life has implications and political consequences for the decisions one makes and actions one takes to embody the restorative justice we as “little Christs” are called to continue. In short, responding to the Gospel call for discipleship would leave me no option but to form part of the protestors in the Soweto Uprisings, and to line up behind Martin Luther King in the civil rights movements and to join the youth leading protests for climate justice. I am worried that I may lack the courage to do so. More on this later.  

Jesus brings a sword not peace because disciples are peacemakers not peacekeepers. Peacekeepers maintain the status quo. Peacemakers often disrupt the status quo because of a vision of a better society that they want to work towards. Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi all received the Nobel Prize for Peace, but they were certainly disruptive, creating both chaos and discomfort that mainstream society resented. 

If we learn by heart Jesus’ core vision and way of life, it will bring us into conflict. If we learn Jesus’ core vision by heart and take to his way of life we are promised danger, uncertainty and turbulence. We are not promised a happily ever after. We are promised resistance and persecution and even physical threat.

We are called to take up the cross, which is not about a middle-class spiritual ascetism of self-denial, but a political crossroad. Crosses were a common sight in first century Roman Palestine. Crosses were a brutal form of capital punishment reserved for political dissidents. In response to Rome’s oppression Judean nationalists called for patriotic recruits who would take up the sword. In contrast disciples take up the cross. In a world where Caesar was lord claiming Christ as Lord is subversion.  Self-denial is about costly choices that are political as well as personal, then and now. 

If we learn by heart Jesus’ core vision and way of life our concept of family will broaden. The love and concern we have for our kin will expand to become the love and concern we have for others. Discipleship asks that we choose the wellbeing of all God’s people, not just the people we are related to. These decisions may lead to conflict if family members feel betrayed when one’s first priority is God’s kingdom and not the family unit. The Biblical dimensions of hospitality and a focus on God’s favourite people, those on the margins of society, simply mean that the hopes, dreams and suffering of the marginalised take central significance for us. In the context of refugee Sunday, the marginalised that are a priority are refugees. We do well to remember this as we reflect on the diversity and gift refugees are to modern Australia.

How do we maintain a sense of contentment if the cost of the discipleship is so high? 

I listen to the Gospel call, and I can say that I am willing. I am willing to take a risk with myself, my money, my privacy, my time and my energy. I am willing to work hard. In a society were so many organisations are finding it hard to find volunteers, I can say that I am very willing to commit. What I have I am willing to give.  

However, I was mentored, trained and ordained by ministers who were frontline activists against the injustices of apartheid. I saw first-hand the consequences of their political discipleship. Honestly, I worry that I lack the bravery that they had. Many of my colleagues were personally harmed by state security but worse than that was the ways in which their families were attacked. I think fear would have won me over to being a peacekeeper, rather than a peace maker.  Which is why I am interested in what Jesus says next.  

Three times the word fear is used, and Jesus says do not be afraid. We are sustained in the care and compassion of abiding in the Christ. But how do we maintain a sense of contentment if the cost of the discipleship is so high? The answer is so very easy to say but hard to put into practice.  

We are to discipline ourselves into a personal relationship with God maintained through prayer. Discipleship is difficult to maintain if the wells of prayer are dry. We are first called to be God’s Beloved before we are called to God’s mission. The spiritual practice of prayer entices us into the deep end of union with God and our True Selves, away from the shallow end of a half-lived life. A daily rendezvous with God is how one author describes it, noting that the intensity of daily demands drowns out the subtle gentleness of Christ in us. Do not worry too much about what techniques or styles of prayer or meditation you might adopt, rather focus on being sincere and authentic in your intention to allow God to lavishly love you. As Thomas Merton suggests, a little sincerity goes a long way with God. 

When we are faithful to our little rendezvous with God what gradually happens is that it is God’s love that defines us, not our ego selves, and not any fear or uncertainty we may experience. The divine union we abide in gradually takes over the centre of our being, our souls. We may still feel afraid, but the fear no longer has the final say on who we are. God’s presence within us, God’s love and compassion for us has the final say on who we are and who we are becoming. The fractured places of our lives, our emotions, and the world become the portals through which God reaches out to us in the midst of our fracturedness. 

The Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, in Prayers For A Lifetime wrote: "It is both terrible and comforting to dwell in the inconceivable nearness of God and to be so loved by God himself that the first and the last gift is infinity and inconceivability itself. But we have no choice. God is with us”.  

Rahner understood something that Jesus understood long before him. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is discovering that something deeper than fear lives within us. The call of discipleship is costly. It may disrupt comfortable arrangements. It may bring misunderstanding, resistance, and sacrifice. It may even place us at odds with the values of our age. Yet Jesus does not promise that we will face these things alone. Three times he says, “Do not be afraid.” Not because there is nothing to fear, but because God is near. Not because the road is easy, but because Christ walks it with us. Not because we are brave enough, but because we are loved enough. 

The question before us today is not whether we feel afraid. The question is whether fear or love will have the final word. Jesus calls us not to be peacekeepers but peacemakers; not merely to preserve the world as it is, but to participate in God's healing of the world as it could be. May we therefore leave this place willing to take up the cross, willing to seek justice, willing to stand with those on the margins, and willing to trust that wherever discipleship leads us, God is already there. For we have no choice. God is with us.

Sermon Notes Pentecost 3 14th June Matthew 9:35-10.8 by Desiree Snyman

Most scholars agree that Matthew's Gospel emerged out of Antioch and was written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Antioch was in northern Syria, in what is now the southern part of modern-day Turkey. Understanding the Antiochian context sheds a great deal of light on Matthew's Gospel because it helps us recognise the concerns and experiences of the local Christian community. 

The Jewish Roman Wars are significant here. The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale war by the Judea’s against the empire between 66 and 135 CE. In response the emperor wanted to annihilate the Jewish religion  which undergirded the resistance nd make an example out of the Jews. He knew he had to do three things: destroy the temple, end the priesthood (which was hereditary) and demolish as much of the Holy City Jerusalem as possible.  The early Jesus movement was Jewish. The disciples continued to worship in the Temple and practice Jewish traditions. The Jewish Roman war accelerated the separation between Judaism and Christianity.

Acts 11 tells us that Antioch became a place of refuge for believers fleeing persecution from Jerusalem. It became a centre of mission and growth, but it was also a community marked by displacement, uncertainty, and change. It is no accident that the atmosphere of persecution is so present in Matthew's Gospel:

"When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next."

Matthew's community knew exactly what those words meant. 

Sheep Without a Shepherd

Against this background, Jesus' compassion takes on new meaning. The temple is destroyed. There is no possibility of making sacrifices. There are no priests to lead the prayers and guide the liturgy. It is for this reason that the text says, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

The word for compassion here describes how the gut moves in sorrow in response to suffering.

The people are harassed and helpless. They are living through upheaval. They are being persecuted. They are like sheep without a shepherd because the structures that once guided them have been destroyed. The Temple is gone. The priests are gone. Jerusalem has been destroyed. The old certainties have disappeared. 

Jesus sees all of this and responds with compassion. 

Mercy Not Sacrifice

The destruction of the Temple also helps us understand an earlier saying of Jesus:

"Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

These words come from the prophet Hosea.

In Antioch, sacrifices are no longer possible. Yet Matthew offers a profound innovation. A life of mercy becomes the new sacrifice. Compassion becomes the new way of worshipping God.

When the old ways are no longer available, God is not absent. God is inviting something new.

Continue the Mission

In the face of cataclysmic change, what is the early Jesus movement supposed to do?

One option is to give up.

Another option is to play the blame game. The suffering and destruction must be someone's fault. God must be punishing somebody.

A third option is emotional paralysis.

Matthew offers a fourth option.

During chaos, Jesus says: trust in me, trust in community, and let's get back to work. Let's continue the mission. There is a new future ahead.

The harvest is still plentiful.

The workers are still few.

The mission remains. 

How Do We Face Change?

This is the central question of today's Gospel: How do we face change?

Like the first hearers of Matthew's Gospel, we too are living through a period of profound upheaval and transformation. While we may not be fleeing persecution, the changes confronting us can feel equally disruptive. Many people experience the rapid pace of technological advancement as unsettling, and those who struggle to keep up with it can feel pushed to the margins of society.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a striking example. Some see it as a remarkable gift that could help build a better future; others fear it may contribute to our own undoing. Perhaps it will be both. For many, AI raises deeply existential questions. Young people investing years in education and earning multiple degrees wonder whether meaningful employment will still await them, or whether machines will eventually replace much of what they have trained to do.

So what do we do when change arrives uninvited?

What do we do when something precious is taken from us?

Our natural instinct is often to rebuild what has been lost. We long for things to return to the way they were. We cling to what is familiar and secure.

But what if the Spirit is inviting us into something new?

What if there is a grace, a possibility, or a freshness that we cannot yet see?

Jesus does not tell his disciples to remain where they are. Instead, he sends them out. There is a summons here to embrace a larger future and to receive the present moment as a teacher. Faith invites us not to resist the work of the moment, but to receive it.

The opening verses of this passage list the disciples and remind us that Judas was the one who betrayed Jesus. Matthew expects us to remember the events that follow. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says, “Look, the betrayer is at hand.” When Judas approaches and greets him with a kiss, Jesus responds, “Friend, do what you have come to do.”

This remarkable response offers a way of meeting change. Rather than resisting reality or denying what is unfolding, we can face it with courage and openness. We can say to change itself:

“Friend, do the work that you have come to do.” 

Learning to Trust

One of the striking features of this passage is that Jesus sends the disciples out with almost nothing.

No money.

No extra provisions.

No means of protection.

They are to rely on hospitality.

They are to trust the communities they encounter.

In commanding them to show compassion to others, Jesus also makes them dependent on the compassion of others.

Trust in God and trust in community belong together.

Even though the old leaders are gone, even though familiar structures have collapsed, they are encouraged to adapt, to innovate, and to discover new ways of continuing the mission.

Not despite the heartbreak, but through it such that the uncertainty is a doorway to new possibilities. Through it. 

Sent Among Wolves

The prosperity gospel often presents Christ as the solution to all your problems.

The canonical Gospels offer something quite different.

"I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves."

Jesus assumes there will be difficulties. There will be resistance. There will be rejection.

The promise is not that suffering will disappear. The promise is that God will be present within it. 

The world cries out for people willing to embody good news.

The good news that this is God's world and that, despite all evidence to the contrary, God's purposes are not finished. We continue the mission of receiving compassion from Christ and offering that compassion to ourselves, others and creation. We innovate and find new ways of being the Good News. Trust God. Trust community.

Sermon Notes Pentecost 2 7th June Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 by Desiree Snyman

Today I want us to think about shame. 

Many years ago, I was doing the usual Monday morning tidy up around my church and picked up a book left behind by a member of one of the many AA and NA groups that hired the church through the week. On the inside page was scrawled in shaky writing: 

"I am not a bad person wanting to be good. I am a sick person wanting to be well." 

Even today I still feel tearful at the shame that poured out of that sentence. Holding that book stopped me in my tracks. I felt such compassion for the anonymous owner. I realised we have no idea about the inner wounds of shame people carry. 

Shame. When you think about shame, what does your body do in response? Does your head bow? Do you lower your eyes? Do you curl in on yourself? 

There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says, “I did something bad.” Shame says, “I am bad.” Guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.” Guilt can be empowering in that it can motivate repair. Shame is debilitating. It shuts people down. Shame disconnects people from their inner divinity, the Christ within. Shame disconnects people from belonging; it is isolating. Shame says, “You are not good enough.” 

Calling and Healing 

In the second week of Pentecost, we are back in the Gospel of Matthew. Two aspects of Jesus’ ministry are demonstrated: calling and healing. 

Matthew the tax collector is called and ordained to the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. What’s unusual about Jesus’ decision to choose Matthew is that he is a tax collector. For first-century Palestinian people living under Roman oppression, tax collectors are a hated enemy, Jewish traitors who take money to benefit empire and themselves. Tax collectors are reviled and rejected as the worst of sinners, which is why the Pharisees question why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners when Jesus enjoys hospitality in Matthew’s home. 

The two healing stories of a young girl and an older woman are knitted together, but there are stark differences. The father of the girl, a synagogue leader, advocates on behalf of his daughter and speaks directly to Jesus, asking that he break purity codes to touch his daughter. Although he is desperate for healing, he has the confidence and authority to speak directly to Jesus. 

The older woman’s faith is profound. Lacking the confidence of the synagogue leader to interrupt Jesus, she believes that simply touching the fringe of his prayer shawl will be enough. Perhaps she is motivated by Zechariah 8:23: "Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’" 

In Mark’s Gospel the young girl is twelve and the woman has been menstruating for twelve years. The number twelve is a reference to the twelve tribes of Israel. Under Roman oppression the Jewish people, like the woman and the girl, are literally bled dry to the point of death by exorbitant taxes. 

The Shame and vulnerability Beneath the stories

The calling of Matthew, the healing of the young girl and the woman touching Jesus’ prayer shawl seem separate at first, but they are clearly linked. All three stories show how Jesus contravenes purity codes and offers mercy, healing and compassion to those others might reject. 

It is the underlying shame that connects the stories of the older woman and the tax collector, and how Jesus stands within that shame to bring people to wholeness.  

The synagogue leader embraces the power of vulnerability in asking Jesus for help. His example of vulnerability may have inspired the woman with menstruation to be vulnerable also, and reach out and touch Jesus. 

Shame stems from childhood experiences, but also from societal and cultural influences. One source of shame is the purity codes. Matthew and the woman with menstruation are labelled as unclean and excluded from temple worship and social gatherings. Shame is an emotion, but it has other consequences. It leads to a sense of unworthiness and disconnection. Shame says to Matthew and the older woman, “You are not good enough.” 

Matthew might have had a comfortable life with material wealth, but he would never have left his home without an armed guard. As a tax collector the message from tribe and temple is clear: “You are not worthy of belonging and love.” It does not take long for this message to be internalised. I imagine Matthew would have lived a lonely life. 

A woman experiencing prolonged menstruation may internalize feelings of shame associated with her condition. The ongoing bleeding can limit participation in religious observances, temple worship, and social engagement. Consequently, the stigma extends beyond the physical experience, affecting emotional well-being, social relationships, and economic participation. This case demonstrates how shame is sustained through secrecy, silence, and societal judgment, contributing to a profound sense of isolation. 

National Reconciliation Week

In the context of NRW, we might ask ourselves: Who are we in the story? I wonder whether the story of the older woman might resonate with some First Nations people who have experienced the exhausting effects of prejudice. 

The person I identify with is the tax collector. I carry a sense of white shame and an awareness of the ways my privileged class has profited from past and present injustices. By white shame, I do not mean shame for being white, but shame arising from the ways people like me have benefited from past and present injustices. As a white person privileged by wealth, education, and life in a wealthy nation, I recognize that I benefit from economic, social, and colonial systems that have advantaged some groups at the expense of others. 

For this reason, I may be most like the tax collector. In the Gospels, tax collectors were often seen as people who profited from unjust systems that burdened their own communities. This comparison does not necessarily mean that wealthy people are personally oppressive or intentionally exploit others. Although I carry a sense of white shame, I do not believe shame itself is the goal. Rather, that discomfort can become a doorway to truth-telling, repentance, and transformation. It invites self-examination: 

· Do I benefit from systems that disadvantage others?

· Have I inherited privileges I did not earn?

· Am I willing to acknowledge those realities without defensiveness?

· Do I recognize my need for mercy, healing, and transformation? 

Bringing Shame into the Light

The path out of shame is the power of vulnerability and bringing shame into the light. 

The synagogue leader embraces his own vulnerability and need and reaches out to Jesus for help. Similarly, the woman with menstruation reaches out in vulnerability to touch Jesus. Vulnerability is uncomfortable. We are often taught that vulnerability is weakness. However, vulnerability brought healing, joy, celebration and community for the synagogue leader and his family. 

Shame thrives in secrecy and silence but loses its power when brought into the light. By acknowledging and sharing his experience of power going out from him, Jesus brings into the light the woman who would have spent years hiding in the shadows. Her shame cannot survive when spoken and met with empathy. 

For people who have been pushed aside, worn down or told they do not belong, for those who are desperate, Jesus does not avoid broken homes, public shame, deep grief or physical suffering. Grace comes near. 

Concluding comments

The writer of that book all those years ago believed they were a sick person wanting to be well. Perhaps that is exactly what Jesus sees in these stories. Not bad people needing to become good, but wounded people needing healing. Not people to be excluded, but people to be restored. 

Matthew is called while still sitting at the tax booth. The woman is seen after years of hiding. The girl is taken by the hand and raised to life. 

Researcher Brené Brown argues that shame thrives in secrecy, silence and judgement, but that vulnerability is its antidote. When our wounds are brought into the light and met with empathy, shame begins to lose its grip. Brown goes on to say that vulnerability is not weakness. It is the birthplace of connection, creativity and innovation. 

That insight echoes what we see in these Gospel stories. The synagogue leader risks vulnerability and asks for help. The woman reaches out from the shadows and touches Jesus' cloak. Matthew leaves behind the life he has known and follows. In each case, vulnerability opens the possibility of transformation. 

Again and again, Jesus meets people in the places where shame tells them they are unworthy of belonging and love. He does not respond with condemnation. He responds with mercy, healing and relationship. 

Perhaps that is the invitation for us today: To bring into the light the places where shame has taken root. To risk vulnerability before God and trusted others. For it is through connection, compassion and grace that shame loses its power, and we discover again that we belong and can be whole.

Sermon Notes Trinity Sunday 31st May Matthew 28:16-20 by Desiree Snyman

God Is Love

When I say, “God is love,” people usually smile and nod. But when I say, “God is Trinity,” people often begin to frown. Maybe that is because we have made the Trinity sound like difficult philosophy. The Trinity has been turned into complicated doctrine instead of what it truly is: a way of life, a relationship to enter, a habit of love to practice. St. Augustine once said, “If you see love, you see the Trinity.” 

I suggest there are three obstacles to allowing the Trinity to be the heart of the Christian faith. 

The first obstacle is that Western Christianity has overemphasised the intellectual aspects of belief. Doctrine has also become overlaid with philosophy. Faith is often seen as doctrine to which we give intellectual agreement. What if each of our Christian doctrines were invitations to an abundant life, a life worth living, a habit, a lifestyle? What if each doctrine were a spiritual practice that led to a fuller way of being human and a fuller way of being divine? 

For example, the doctrine of the Incarnation is more than the belief that God became human. Incarnation is a spiritual practice of embodiment, a way of reconnecting with and listening to your body's sensations, emotions, and wisdom in support of healing and well-being. In a moment we shall see that the doctrine of the Trinity is an invitation to live in relationship, to live in the energy of love. 

A second obstacle to living a Trinitarian life is grammar. Remember our grammar lessons from kindy, where nouns were places, people, or things and verbs were actions? People think of God as a noun. What if God is more like a verb? 

Seeing God as a noun turns God into an object. When people think of God as a noun, they often picture God as an old man, cranky and grumpy, and it becomes our job to cheer him up with good behaviour. This is not the Christian God. It may be the god of the Greeks or the Vikings, but in the Christian faith God is not an object, a thing, a noun. God is less like a noun and more like a verb, the living energy of love. There is a dynamism to God.

A third mistake people make with the doctrine of the Trinity is that they begin with the one God and then try to explain how God is nevertheless three. The Bible actually begins with the Three and then shows us how they are One, like three dancers moving in one dance. The Bible begins with relationship. In 1 John we hear: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In Matthew 28 the three Persons of the Trinity are named alongside one another as equals. The only difference is their ordering. 

Scripture says: God is love. And if God is love, then God is relationship. The Creator loves the Christ. The Christ receives and returns that love. The Holy Spirit is the living bond of love flowing between them. What makes them one is love. We see this most clearly in the baptism of Jesus. Jesus stands in the water. The voice of Love speaks: “You are my beloved.” And the Spirit descends like a dove. In that moment the inner life of God bursts open into visibility. 

The Trinity is not a puzzle to solve. It is a communion of love overflowing into the world.  Here is the astonishing part: humanity is included in this divine life. As 2 Peter 1:4 says, we are called to become “partakers of the divine nature.” God has opened the divine dance and invited us in. 

So, in simple language, what do Christians believe? We believe that God is beyond us, God is within us, and God is alongside us, all at the very same time. We believe that Creator, Christ, and Spirit are so perfectly united in love that they are one. We believe that God is community. 

What does this mean for us? Relationship is not just something God does. Relationship is what God is. We are formed through relationship, with God, with one another, and with creation itself. We are not isolated individuals carrying the weight of existence alone. We belong to one another. That is why baptism matters so deeply. 

At Jesus’ baptism these words are spoken: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And in baptism those words become ours too. Because we are beloved, we are invited into the divine dance of love itself. 

The Trinity is not meant to remain doctrine on a page. It is meant to become a spiritual practice. To live inside the flow of loving and being loved. To forgive. To show compassion. To practice mutuality and self-giving love. To see every person not as a rival or an inconvenience but as beloved. And so, the good news of Trinity Sunday is this: God is not an old man in the sky. God is not an object. God is living relationship. God is love flowing endlessly in and through creation. And that love has made room for us. So when we abide in love, we abide in God. And when we live in God, we begin to join the great divine dance.

Sermon Notes Pentecost 24th May John 7:37-39 by Geoff Vidal

How would you respond to someone asking you to explain Pentecost?

Unlike Christmas and Easter, there has been nothing in our shops to say that it is Pentecost. Maybe Pentecost doesn’t get so much attention because no one has found a way to commercialize it. We don’t turn Pentecost into a culture extravaganza, or into a national holiday. So, this major Christian festival goes unnoticed.

But for us Pentecost is a big thing. This festival, this holiday is very important for the life of the church, for your life and mine.

Pentecost for Jews is celebrated 50 days after Passover and for Christians 50 days after the Resurrection. We have made it a red day. We have red decorations and sometimes red balloons; many of you are wearing red clothes. This is not “modern”. In the 13th century, the French Bishop Durandus wrote of Pentecost celebrations with masses of red rose leaves and sparks of fire blown over the congregation. They obviously had no risk assessment requirements back then.

Why red? Red represents the heat, power, and passion of God's love. It mimics the physical imagery of flames described in the Acts of the Apostles. It also honours the courage and missionary zeal of the early Christian martyrs who shed blood to build the early Church.

You also hear of Pentecost being referred to as Whitsunday (White Sunday). White is used during the seasons of Easter and Christmas. It represents purity, holiness, and the joy of Christ's resurrection. Historically, particularly in England, Pentecost was a popular day for mass baptisms. The newly baptised wore white robes to symbolize their new, purified life in Christ.

So, how do we properly describe Pentecost?

It’s not exactly a birthday for the Church. God’s people have always been God’s people meeting as church. But something very special happened at this time. There was a sort of transition from a “Church of Law” to the “Church of The New Covenant of Jesus”. The church began to see that the role it had was to continue the ministry of Jesus. So, perhaps, more than celebrating birth, we have a celebration of newness or remodelling.

And, here’s the real mystery. How do we understand the Holy Spirit? Pentecost was not actually the moment that the Holy Spirit came into being. It’s somewhat misleading to make our Pentecost focus the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was present at creation. The Holy Spirit was with God’s people with Moses in the desert. What we are doing at Pentecost is noticing the Holy Spirit in a new way.

As we will focus on next week, God, The Holy Trinity, has always existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Here at Pentecost, we celebrate the specific work of the Holy Spirit in giving power to the Church for serving Christ in the world. The Church has always called upon the Holy Spirit when we intend to perform some serious work (such as Holy Communion, Ordination or Baptism).

I’ll share a story. "Several years ago, engineers building a new bridge over the East River in New York, discovered that the wrecked hull of a ship was lying right where the centre piers were to be built. Powerful machinery was brought in to remove the ship, but it would not budge. Then one of the engineers had an unusual idea. Why not have the tide raise the ship! Some strong cables were attached to the hull when the tide was very low. The other ends were fastened to the barge above. As the tide came in, the barge gradually lifted the sunken ship which was then moved out into the ocean and sunk at a spot that would not cause future problems."

God’s Holy Spirit is like the tide, it comes quietly, it comes in slowly, but it comes to us with enough power so that we might do the job God has called, led, each of us to do. There is a power, a force and for many an untapped force in each of our lives, that is the Holy Spirit. Frequently it is not dramatic, it does not cause us to do dramatic things, but it is there to give us the power to live the kind of lives, to be the kind of people, that God intended us to be.

The church grows through the action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been calling, prodding and pushing the church into new life right throughout history.

The presence of the Holy Spirit is often connected with the ability to understand different languages and with speaking in tongues.  

In Genesis, we read the story of the Tower of Babel. God’s people were given a lesson when God caused their language to be confused. Now, at Pentecost, God has done something new. Language is no longer confused. There is now a unity of faith and willingness to hear what others are saying. The Holy Spirit brings a willingness to accept different ways of expressing the Good News. This is not uniformity but acceptance and understanding in diversity.

So, in our celebration of Pentecost, what are we able to discover in our Gospel reading today?

In John chapter 7, we have an invitation to come to Jesus for living water. Jesus has gone to Jerusalem to attend the big annual celebration of the Festival of Booths. The festival went on for a week.

This feast included a daily procession of priests to the pool of Siloam. The priests collected water from the pool and brought this water back to the temple. Then, they marched around the altar seven times and recited a passage from Isaiah 12:3 saying, “with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation”. Then they ceremonially poured out the water at the altar. This was all in remembrance of God’s provision for the thirsty people travelling in the Sinai desert with Moses.

But that water had left the people unsatisfied: the people still grumbled.

The story of God’s provision of water in the desert was significant in people’s minds.  So, it would have been really dramatic when Jesus stood up and shouted out his great invitation to people thirsty for a stronger connection to God; “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let anyone who believes in me drink. Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

Everyone understands thirst. We all know what it feels like when our bodies are dry and desperate for water. But Jesus is speaking about a deeper kind of thirst. The thirst of the human heart. The thirst for purpose. The thirst for forgiveness.  The thirst for love and belonging. The thirst for hope; the hope that life means more than what we can see.

At this Festival of Booths, the people were reenacting a tradition that could never satisfy the heart.

Jesus offered them living water and eternal satisfaction.

So, on this Pentecost Sunday, let’s hear again the voice of Jesus calling out across the crowd. Calling us too! Saying, “Come and drink”. 

God is trustworthy, and the Father is how we know. The Father relentlessly pursues us with love and does not give up on his creation. God rescues us, and the Son is how we know. Jesus became one of us and entered our darkness so that he could bring us into God’s light. God is within us, and the Spirit is how we know. The Holy Spirit makes a home in us and invites us to share in the life of our God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We have been invited to come and to drink deeply.

And as you do, may the Spirit of God fill you so fully that rivers of living water flow from your life into a thirsty world.

God’s Spirit is within us. Amen.

Easter 7 by Desiree Snyman 17th May 2026

There is a thread running through the readings today: we are loved by God into being. Our deepest identity and purpose are not defined by the world. Jesus reminds us that we are in the world, but not of it. Our lives are shaped by love, we are made in love, for love, with love and our purpose is to give love. The great adventure of the Christian life is learning to awaken to that love, to live from it, and gradually to become so filled with the presence of Love, the Spirit of God, that like Jesus we become a source of that love for others.

For some, loving seems natural. For many of us, the journey into love is more complicated. We long to love well, yet we encounter resistance within ourselves and around us. The project is to manifest love. Yet it is often hard to consistently maintain a life of full voltage love. We can become exhausted, irritable and even discouraged when our intentions of love are thwarted by the less loving aspects of our inner lives and discouraged also when greed or hatred or vain self- interest push back against us. The point of the seventh Sunday of Easter is to encourage us to keep on loving, to let go of discouragement.

One of the great spiritual challenges comes after we have tasted the presence of God. There may be moments when something opens within us, when prayer feels alive and our hearts burn with love for God. Yet later, after such moments, God can begin to feel strangely absent. This seventh Sunday of Easter stands precisely in that strange in between space: between Ascension and Pentecost, between Jesus disappearing from the disciples’ sight and the coming of the Spirit. 

The Ascension and the Hidden Presence of God

For forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples intermittently, teaching them to relate to him no longer by sight, but by faith. He had already told them that he intended not simply to stand beside them, but to dwell within them, in their hearts, words, relationships, and actions. Then comes the Ascension.

We misunderstand the Ascension if we imagine Jesus simply floating upward into outer space. In Acts 1, Luke is not giving us geography; he is giving us theology. The language is symbolic and visionary. A cloud takes Jesus from their sight. Throughout Scripture, clouds signify the hidden glory of God: the cloud covering Sinai as Moses receives the commandments, or the cloud overshadowing the Mount of Transfiguration. The cloud represents a divine presence that is real, but veiled. The Ascension represents the spiritual evolution the disciples experience when they learn that Jesus is not leaving the world. The disciples experience a deeper level of consciousness when the Christ disappears from their sight so that he may become present within them. The Spirit will teach them this. The Spirit will remind them that Christ is no longer merely someone they look at, but the very life within which they live.

Perhaps this is why the experience of God’s absence can become one of our deepest spiritual teachers. If God remains merely an external object, someone who occasionally visits us in moments of consolation, we have not yet awakened to the deeper truth: God is nearer to us than our own breathing. God is not simply alongside life. God is the depth within life itself. 

Glory Revealed Through Love

John’s Gospel leads us directly into this mystery. On the night before his death, Jesus prays: “Father, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.” Ordinarily, we think of glory as power, triumph, or magnificence. But in Scripture, glory means revealing what is most deeply true about a person. Jesus is saying: Let the world now see clearly who you are and who I am. This revelation happens through the cross. On the cross we see love refusing retaliation, love refusing hatred. We see Love pouring itself out completely and remaining faithful even in suffering. The cross reveals that the deepest truth about reality is not violence, domination, fear, or empire, but self-giving love. This is why Jesus can say: “I have conquered the world.” Jesus conquers the world not by crushing enemies, but by revealing a love stronger than death.

Christianity is not ultimately about admiring Jesus from a distance. It is about participating in the very life that animated him. Jesus not only reveals what God is like; he also reveals what humanity looks like when fully open to God. When Scripture says, “God is love,” it is not sentimental language. It is a description of reality itself. To awaken to love is to awaken to God. Whenever we begin, however imperfectly, to love as God loves, we participate in divine life. We too are held within divine love. 

Remaining Faithful in a Wounded World

The world is beautiful, but it is also wounded. Peter acknowledges this directly: “Discipline yourselves. Keep alert… Resist him, steadfast in your faith.” Whether we understand Satan personally or symbolically, the reality is familiar enough. There are forces within us and around us that pull us away from love: cynicism, resentment, fear, despair, violence, and the temptation to harden our hearts. Perhaps the greatest danger is discouragement.

When love becomes costly, we are tempted to withdraw, to become smaller, safer, less vulnerable. Jesus prays precisely for this moment. Not that we would escape the world, but that we would remain faithful within it.

As we move toward Pentecost, the invitation today is simple: Keep loving. Stay the course. Do not lose heart. Do not abandon love simply because the world does not always reward it. The Christian life is not the avoidance of suffering. It is learning to remain rooted in love through suffering. May it be so.

Sermon Notes Easter 6 10th May John 14:15-21 by Mark Stuckey

If you’ve ever stood at a doorway watching someone you love leave – maybe a child heading off to school, a spouse leaving for a trip, or a friend moving away – you know the ache of separation. I personally felt the ache of separation when I had to work in Port Macquarie for 6 months in 2024 and then felt that same ache when Loretta had to work in Bourke for a week back in March this year. The ache of separation is real, because we miss our loved ones when they are not present and away from us. In John 14, our Gospel passage for today, the disciples are standing in that emotional doorway. Jesus is preparing them for His departure, and their hearts are troubled. 

But Jesus doesn’t leave them with fear. He leaves them with a promise – actually, several promises – and they are just as true for us today.

Our Gospel reading for this morning gives us three anchors for the Christian life.

1.   Love for Jesus is expressed through obedience.

2.   Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit – Our Advocate, Helper, and Companion.

3.   Jesus does not leave us as Orphans – He comes to us!

Anchor 1 – Love for Jesus is expressed through obedience

Our first anchor begins with Jesus providing the Disciples with a simple but challenging line: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” 

Jesus doesn’t say, “If you fear me,” or “If you want to impress me.” He says, “If you love me.” “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” is one of the most misunderstood lines in the Gospel. For Peter, James, John, Andrew and Thomas (the disciples), and for us it’s easy to get tangled up in what this opening sentence is saying. 

Jesus is not setting up a test. He is not saying:

·      “If you really love me, you’d better obey.”

·      “Your obedience earns my affection.”

·      “Your performance determines our relationship.

These would turn the gospel into a merit system.

Instead, Jesus is describing the natural fruit of a relationship rooted in love. 

Love points to obedience. Not: Obedience points to love.

In other words, obedience is not a condition for love—it’s the fruit of love.

When you love someone deeply, their desires shape your actions. Love transforms obedience from a burden into a response. 

When you hear Jesus say, “If you love me, keep my commandments,” hear it as: 

“Your love for me will naturally shape your life – and I will give you the Spirit so that you can live in my love.” I will repeat that… “Your love for me will naturally shape your life – and I will give you the Spirit so that you can live in my love.”  

It’s not pressure. It’s a promise. It’s not a demand. It’s a description. It’s not law. It’s life. 

After Jesus has encouraged the disciples to love him, he moves to sharing with them how he will help them and this brings us to the second anchor needed for a Christian life whereby Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit – our advocate, helper and companion. 

Anchor 2 - Jesus Gives Us the Holy Spirit—Our Advocate, Helper, and Companion

Jesus promises: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.” Here we pick up on what Desiree was sharing with us last week about the three persons of the Trinity. Jesus is not acting alone. He is revealing the inner life of God.

·      The Son asks

·      The Father gives

·      The Spirit comes

This is Trinitarian life in motion. Jesus is saying “My departure doesn’t end my care for you. I will continue to intercede for you.” 

The disciples are not losing Jesus’ advocacy – they are gaining it in a new form. The Father will give you another Advocate – meaning someone like Jesus. The word another (Greek: allon) means another of the same kind, not to be confused with another of a different kind. In this case it is another of the same kind. 

Jesus is saying: “The Spirit will be to you what I have been to you.”

This was staggering to the disciples who were in the Upper Room with Jesus. Are you staggered by this claim?

The Spirit is not:

·      A downgrade

·      A substitute teacher

·      A vague spiritual feeling

The Spirit is Jesus’ own presence extended.

Everything Jesus was to the disciples – teacher, comforter, guide, strength – the Spirit now becomes. 

The Spirit is God dwelling in us, empowering us to live the life Jesus calls us to. Think about these times in your life: 

Where we feel weak, the Spirit strengthens. Where we feel confused, the Spirit guides. Where we feel alone, the Spirit comforts. Where we feel tempted, the Spirit empowers. 

With the Spirit dwelling in us you are never left to follow Jesus alone.

We move to our third anchor needed for a Christian life whereby Jesus does not leave us as orphans – He come to us. 

Anchor 3 - Jesus Does Not Leave Us as Orphans—He Comes to Us

Our third anchor begins with Jesus saying something tender and profound: “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” 

The disciples feared abandonment. You could make an argument that they were terrified. Understandably, it was an emotional time for them. For us how would we react?

·      Jesus has spoken of going away

·      They don’t understand where?

·      They fear losing the One who called them, taught them, loved them.

They had left everything to follow Him. He is their teacher, protector, guide, friend. 

So, when Jesus says: “I will not leave you as orphans,”. He is speaking directly into their deepest fear: the fear of being left alone in a hostile world. 

For us we may often fear the same because we live in a world where we can experience brokenness and hostility. It is comforting to know that we have Jesus’ ongoing presence in our lives journeying with us, through the Spirit, through His Word, through His people, through His resurrection life in us. 

In the ancient world, orphans were – vulnerable, unprotected, without inheritance, without guidance, socially powerless. To be an orphan was to be exposed. Jesus is saying: “You will not be spiritually unprotected. You will not be left without guidance. You will not lose your identity or inheritance. You will not be alone.” 

He says, “Because I live, you also will live.”  

Our life is tied to His life. Our hope is tied to His victory. Our future is tied to His resurrection. And then He adds: 

“You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” 

This is union. This is intimacy. This is the heart of the Christian life. Not just believing in Jesus. Not just following Jesus.

But being united with Jesus. 

You are not abandoned. You are not forgotten. You are not alone.

John 14:15–21 gives us a picture of the Christian life that is both beautiful and practical:

·      Love expressed through obedience

·      Obedience empowered by the Spirit

·      Life sustained by the presence of Jesus

This is not a faith of striving. It is a faith of abiding. It is not a faith of fear. It is a faith of belonging. It is not a faith of isolation. It is a faith of divine companionship. 

A Pastoral Word for Today

Some of you may feel spiritually dry. Some may feel abandoned. Some may feel like you’re trying to follow Jesus on your own strength.

Hear Jesus’ promise again: “I will not leave you as orphans.”

The Spirit is with you. Christ is in you. The Father loves you. You are held. You are known. You are never alone. 

Conclusion

As we walk out of this passage, hold onto these truths:

• Love Jesus by trusting His way.

• Rely on the Spirit who empowers you.

• Rest in the presence of Christ who never leaves you.

Because He lives, you live. Because He is with you, you can obey. Because He has claimed you, you are never an orphan.

Mark Stuckey, LLM

Sermon Notes Easter 5 3rd May by Desiree Snyman

“Do not let your hearts be troubled…”. I find that comment troubling. The time when I am most troubled is when I am told not to be troubled. It reminds me of a youth worker I mentored many years ago. I would ask him if he had completed some task. He would reply, “No worries, I’ve got it covered.” Invariably he hadn’t done what he had committed to do, and something would fall apart. “Do not let your heart be troubled.” “No worries.” “I’ve got it covered.” These words often precede disaster in much the same way that “once upon a time” precedes a fairy tale.

Mentoring this young youth worker was effective training for parenting boys. An unusual silence in the house, which other humans might have enjoyed, was usually the precursor to putting out fires, some literal and some figurative. When the twins could speak, the phrase “Don’t be angry Mum, but…” also heralded some creative disaster. When they became teenagers, the comment “Just relax” produced the least relaxed condition possible. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. No worries. I have it covered. Do not be angry. Just relax.” These are hardly words to induce peace or rest.

Similarly, in John 14 Jesus the Christ is about to be crucified, and the early peace movement he established is about to be blown apart. His friends are agitated and disturbed. They are experiencing a kind of churning of the soul familiar to many of us. Without denying the storms within or without, Jesus invites them to trust.

The word trust here is not intellectual assent but an experience, an experience of resting in relationship. When Jesus says trust, he invites us to lean into his relationship with God, to float in his presence much as we might float in a still, supportive ocean. Trust here is about surrender.

The invitation to receive the embrace of love is deepened further by the next encouragement: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Although this is often translated as “many mansions,” the root of the word meno means to indwell or abide in God. This is not simply a pie in the sky future heaven, but a participation in God available now, not merely some future reward. It suggests a spaciousness in God where everyone can find belonging. The doorway is to allow ourselves to be loved, to surrender to love.

When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he is saying that the doorway to this indwelling is not belief, knowledge, or skill. The doorway is love, more precisely, allowing yourself to be loved. This is the mistake Thomas and Philip make. Thomas asks, “Show us the way,” and Philip says, “Show us the Father.” They are asking for knowledge, but the door to abiding in God is participation, not information. It is about receiving love.

When Jesus says, “I am going to prepare a place for you,” it does not imply building something from scratch, but rather unveiling and demonstrating. Jesus demonstrates how to receive love and participate in God. Without denying the storms, the turmoil, the depression, the pain, or the challenges we face within and without, Jesus offers a deeper way to exist. “Do not let your hearts be troubled; trust in me, lean on me, abide with me in God,” not because there is nothing to fear, but because there is a deeper reality in which you can dwell.

When you are in the ocean and huge waves approach, the safest thing is often to go as deep as possible beneath the wave and allow it to pass overhead. Ever notice how peaceful it is beneath the churning water? Similarly, “do not be troubled” is not a denial of the waves, but an invitation to abide more deeply in God whenever they come.

Many of you are familiar with Rublev’s Trinity icon. An icon is a kind of window into the kingdom of God. Many people use icons as a form of prayer. Merely gazing at an icon, as you may be doing now, can itself become prayer. Prayer is about allowing the mind to descend into the heart while standing in the gaze of God’s love, allowing that love to saturate you.

Rublev was a monk in the Monastery of the Holy Trinity and St Sergius in Russia. He and his fellow monks lived in a time of great uncertainty, civil unrest, wars, anxiety, and stress. He created the icon as a gift of love for his friends so that they might find a safe place to dwell amidst the political turmoil surrounding them.

The icon depicts God as three persons who love one another so deeply that they become one. What is most significant about the icon is not simply the three visible angels, but the invisible flow of love, the circular movement uniting them. As you gaze at the icon, you are naturally drawn into the open space at the front of the table so that you too may become part of the circle of loving and being loved.

This is how we abide in God. This is how we trust God and participate in God, by allowing ourselves to rest within the life of the Trinity. We are not untouched by the dangers and storms that face us, not because we deny them, but because we allow trouble itself to become an invitation to return to God, to abide, to trust, and to participate more deeply in love.

Most of you know that my husband and I have been fortunate to have twin sons who have been a delight to raise. Yet every parent needs a break. While we lived in Johannesburg, the twins would often have sleepovers at their grandparents’ house, and my husband and I would enjoy a date night. The parents loved it, the grandparents loved it, and the twins loved it. Until they did not. 

One night my father arrived at our home with Twin 2. He had enjoyed the presence of his grandparents in the absence of his mother, but there came a moment when he grew tired of the extra sweets, flashy toys, and extra attention. He moved from being irritated, to cranky, to weepy, until he was finally inconsolable. At that point, his grandfather knew that nothing would soothe him except the voice and touch of his mother. The child needed to hear his mother’s voice, and only his mother’s voice. No attempt to replace her, or even to imitate her, helped. There comes a time when only the mother can soothe and comfort. The disquiet disappears only when the mother lovingly calls his name. 

I wonder if this is not also true for us as adults. There are many sounds that distract us for a while, yet only the deepest Silence of the Eternal One can truly name us. We may turn to the various distractions of modern living for entertainment or to numb the existential ache within, yet there comes a time when only the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us by name will truly soothe us. 

There is an infinity to our souls. While we are finite creatures caught in time, creatures with a beginning and an end, we have been breathed into by the Infinite. It is Infinity alone that can satisfy us. There is a timelessness at the heart of the human condition. A well-used reading at funerals is Ecclesiastes. People enjoy the poem about there being a time for everything, but they often forget the sting at the end of it, that human beings are out of sync with the natural rhythms of life. The poet writes: 

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace. 

He concludes with the burden of being human: “I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” 

God has made everything suitable for its own time, but has put timelessness into the human heart, so that human beings remain out of sync with the rhythms of the seasons from beginning to end. This is restlessness. As Augustine said, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Addictions and distractions will not satisfy. 

Inside each of us there is a deep, congenital restlessness. We are not restful beings who sometimes become restless. We are not peaceful creatures who are sometimes anxious. Quite the opposite. We are restless beings who occasionally experience rest. We are always a little dissatisfied. Thoreau was right. We do live lives of quiet desperation. 

We carry a deep congenital restlessness, and the further problem is that our restlessness pushes us outward rather than inward. We try to satisfy it with excitement, distractions, and addictions. It is not so much a question of whether we are addicts, but of how we are addicted and to what. Shadow issues can lead to imbalances and addictions, from work, to busyness, to social media. Like in the opening story, distractions, flashy toys, and sympathetic voices can soothe us for a while. But there comes a time when the ache, sadness, fatigue, and jadedness can be soothed only by the primordial mother who speaks our name and brings rest to our restless souls. 

The Gospel of John is framed by the question, “What are you looking for?” At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus’ first words are a question: “What are you looking for?” In the moment of new creation at the end of the Gospel, in John 20, he asks again, “Whom are you looking for?” The question frames the whole story. It is the question that opens the Gospel, and the question that opens resurrection life. Mary recognises Jesus when he speaks her name. In that moment, John 10:3 and 4 becomes real: the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. 

What is happening here? When God calls us by name, what God is saying is this: I am in love with you. I love you so deeply that I give myself away to you, and you are invincibly precious in my sight, even in the midst of the unresolved matters of your heart. In those unresolved places, I find no obstacle to your infinite preciousness. I pour myself out to you as the life of your life, the hope of your hope. 

Jesus speaks our name and says, in effect: You are beloved. That is who you are. 

You are precious to me, even in the unresolved places of your heart.

You are not your restlessness.

You are not your addictions.

You are not your disappointments.

You are mine. 

And perhaps that is what our restless hearts have been searching for all along. Not another distraction. Not another achievement. Not another voice among the many voices. But the voice that knows us before we explain ourselves. The voice that calls us out of hiding. The voice that speaks our name with love. So, the question remains, as it did at the beginning of John’s Gospel: What are you looking for? Perhaps the invitation is not to search harder, but to listen more deeply. To become quiet enough beneath the noise, beneath the ache, beneath the restlessness, to hear the Shepherd call us by name. And when we hear that voice, we may discover that the rest we have been seeking has already begun. For the One we are looking for has been looking for us.

Sermon Notes by Desiree Snyman Easter 3 19th April

Do you have memories of playing hide and seek? Godly play speaks of the playful, paradoxical nature of God as one who both hides and seeks. On the one hand, God actively longs for us and seeks us, as in the parables of the good shepherd, the lost coin, and the lost son. On the other hand, God is hidden, and once we have been found, it becomes our turn to seek. This raises a difficult and deeply human question: what do we do when God disappoints us? What do we do with the apparent absence of God, especially when that absence is felt most sharply at the very moment God seems most needed? For many, there is an unspoken assumption that faith, goodness, or belief should offer some protection from harm. This assumption sits quietly beneath the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Yet the promise of faith was never that we would be shielded from reality, but that we would not be alone within it. God does not remove us from suffering, but remains present within it, upholding us even when everything else seems to give way. 

But. We. Had. Hoped.

Cleopas and his companion walk the road to Emmaus carrying not just grief, but collapse. They have not only lost Jesus, but they have also lost the future they had built around him. 

“But we had hoped.” The story contains what I consider to be the four saddest and heaviest words in Scripture. Although it is one word in Greek, I sometimes wonder if the four translation words shouldn’t be four sentences. But. We. Had. Hoped. There is such pain, pathos, emptiness and grief held in each full stop. It the loss of the past but also the loss of the future, the loss of possibility, the loss of hope. I’ve heard these four sentences “But. We. Had. Hoped” many times. But we had hoped that the cancer would be cured. But we had hoped that we would grow old together. But we had hoped that the friend, child, parent would be reconciled to us. But. We. Had. Hoped. These are not merely words of disappointment. They are the language of a world that no longer makes sense. Hope has not simply failed; it has been exposed as misplaced. The past is gone, and the future it promised has vanished with it. This is where the story becomes instructive. The risen Christ does not appear at the moment of triumph, nor at the resolution of doubt, but in the midst of confusion, absence, and misrecognition. He walks with them, unrecognised, as they rehearse their loss. 

The striking detail is this: Christ is most fully present precisely where he is least perceived. 

Later, the disciples will say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” Yet in the moment, they experience only brokenness. This is not a contradiction to be resolved but a reality to be held together. The same heart that feels shattered is also, mysteriously, alive with something not yet understood. 

A resurrected faith, then, is not one that replaces brokenness with certainty. It is one that learns to recognise that the burning is already present within the breaking. The absence of God is not the negation of presence, but one of the ways that presence is encountered. 

The turning point comes not through explanation, but through relationship, walking together, listening, and finally, the breaking of bread. It is there, in shared presence, that recognition of the Christ presence occurs. 

Broken hearts and burning hearts

The Emmaus story reveals something essential: presence is not always recognised as presence. The disciples speak at length about Christ’s absence, even as he walks beside them. This reframes how we understand faith. Faith is not the elimination of doubt, nor the replacement of brokenness with wholeness. It is the capacity to hold these realities together without collapsing one into the other. Broken hearts and burning hearts are not opposites. They are the same heart, experienced differently. The crack is not a failure of faith; it is the very place where light enters. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Jesus is often drawn to those whose lives have been broken open by grief, illness, or disappointment. It is precisely in those places that something deeper can be encountered, not instead of the pain, but within it.

Spiritual direction and the walk alongside

When I first encountered spiritual direction, it was described to me as a conversation with a soul friend. A holy conversation, not in the sense of being elevated or removed from ordinary life, but in being attentive to the presence of the Holy Spirit within each person. The posture is simple: to be calm, centred, curious, compassionate, and connected. To listen deeply. And to remain open to the possibility that Christ is present, not externally imposed, but quietly emerging within the exchange. The road to Emmaus is a model for this kind of encounter. But it is not only a model for spiritual direction. It is a model for all relationships. To be a partner, a parent, a friend, a caregiver, or a professional of any kind is, at its core, is to walk alongside another person. To listen. To hold space for what is broken without trying to immediately repair it. To remain present long enough for something deeper to be revealed. 

This is what it means to be the body of Christ, not as an abstract idea, but as a lived reality. We become, for one another, the place where presence is encountered. The risen Christ is not encountered as an abstract concept, nor simply as a distant third party, but within the act of shared presence itself. In the giving and receiving of attentive, self-giving love, something is made real that was not previously visible. Recognition happens, and then, as in the Emmaus story, Christ seems to disappear from sight, not because he is gone, but because he is now encountered differently. 

Holding the light for one another

The walk to Emmaus offers a reorientation of faith. God is not absent in the way we often assume. Nor is God present in the way we often expect. The pattern is more subtle: presence is mediated through relationship, revealed in companionship, and recognised in hindsight. 

We are not called to eliminate brokenness, nor to resolve every doubt. We are called to walk alongside one another within doubt and brokenness. We are Emmaus walkers becoming for each other a place where hope can begin again, even if only faintly at first. This is the quiet work of faith: not to provide answers, but to embody presence. And perhaps this is what it means to “hold the Christ-light” for one another, not as something we possess, but as something we make visible through love. 

Brother, Sister, Let Me Serve You

Brother, sister, let me serve you,
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant too. 

We are pilgrims on a journey,
and companions on the road;
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load. 

I will hold the Christ-light for you
in the night-time of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear. 

I will weep when you are weeping;
when you laugh I’ll laugh with you;
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we’ve seen this journey through.

I’d like us to look at two images of the same subject but captured with very different techniques. 

This plant is growing in our garden. I took the first photo a few days ago with my close up, macro lens. This is only a tiny part of the leaf. Using a tripod to steady the camera I was able to get within about 4 inches. Without a tripod there would have been a fair bit of camera shake, which is exacerbated in close up work. I love this image’s sharpness and detail, the clear shapes and colours. 

The second photo – of the same plant – is blurry ... intentionally so. I used a technique called Intentional Camera Movement, where the camera is set to a long-ish shutter speed and is moved during the exposure. It can create all kinds of special effects depending on the movements and length of exposure. On this occasion I used a special app on my phone’s camera which, when you move the camera around, can make static images look painterly. Sometimes it looks like an impressionist painting with sweeps of paint across the image. Sometimes its so abstract you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at. But the blur is intentional – as opposed to those times we take a photo and its unintentionally blurry. 

It occurred to me as I thought about these two images that they reflected two different experiences as we seek to follow in the way of Jesus. 

There are times in our discipleship when things are clear and distinct. Our understanding of faith makes sense, and we are confident about what we believe. 

Then there are other times when our faith is a bit blurry – more uncertain. We have doubts and questions – sometimes through intentionally examining our beliefs, sometimes because life throws things at us and challenges our understanding. 

Three questions arise for me:

•         In which of those times do we find it easier to follow Jesus.

The clear, certain times; or the blurry, uncertain times?

•         In which of those times is our faith stronger? When everything is clear and sharp; or when we’re clouded by doubts and questions?

•         And in which of those times do we learn and grow more? 

The answers may not be what we have been led to believe. 

The church has often had difficulty dealing with people’s doubts, questions and challenges. Or perhaps more accurately, people have had difficulty in the way the church has dealt with their doubts, questions and challenges.  

Some years back a friend had a long period of recovery in hospital.

A few women from a local church visited her regularly and befriended her. When she was discharged, she started going to a study group with them and attending services. All went well until my friend started asking awkward questions. The leaders found it difficult to answer her questions, and the other members found them disconcerting. Before long one of the leaders suggested she stop asking her questions because they were making people uneasy … and if she didn’t, she should leave. 

Chatting with her about her now former church, we talked about the importance of being able to question one’s beliefs and faith. That not expressing our doubts and questions is not only dishonest, it actually impedes our spiritual growth.  

Which brings us to the story of Truthful Thomas … yes, I know he’s usually called doubting Thomas, but that unfair label preconditions our thinking about the story. It’s too tempting to stop at the label, “doubting”, without examining the story itself. 

When we look at the broad sweep of the resurrection stories, in the other three gospels as well as John, we find that all of the disciples doubted reports of Jesus’ resurrection. When the women came back on Easter morning with reports of seeing the risen Jesus, the men didn’t believe them. They had to run to the empty tomb to see for themselves. And they didn’t believe until they had also seen the risen Christ. In fact, there is a reference in Matthew 28:17 where the resurrected Jesus appeared to the eleven – they worshipped him …  but some doubted. They doubted even though they were in the presence of the resurrected Jesus! Seeing is not always believing! 

So, there was nothing unusual about Thomas. The evidence even suggests Thomas was less fearful than the other disciples. While they were locked in the room out of fear, Thomas was out wandering around town. Maybe he’d gone out for a falafel kebab. We don’t know the reason for his absence. Only that the others were too scared to be out in public. And that they required the exact same proof to believe as Thomas did. They didn’t believe the women’s testimony. They had to see for themselves. 

Thomas was simply honest and truthful. Jesus didn’t condemn him.

And notably, the rest of the disciples didn’t reject him. There was still a place for Thomas in their company even when he doubted their witness. Which is just as well, because in the narrative, Thomas represents those who have not seen the risen One. Thomas is US. 

Yet, the “doubting” label remains. Thomas is a convenient scapegoat – someone to blame for a lack of faith. As early as the 4th century theologians wrote that Thomas “is held to blame” for his unbelief. Artwork through the centuries has backed that up.  

The message has been clear. Doubting is wrong. Questioning isn’t welcomed as curiosity. It’s framed as moral failure – or worse. It’s sinful. Disobedient. Which is very convenient if you’re in the business of thought control, as the church often has been – and still is in many places today.  

Doubt is interpreted as “rebellion.” Disagreement becomes “pride.” Asking “why” is recast as a character flaw rather than an honest search for understanding.  

The not-so-subtle message is: good people don’t question; faithful people don’t doubt; and loyal people don’t challenge authority. Those messages often become internalised, so we interpret the discomfort that accompanies doubt as proof that something is wrong with us. 

My own observation – whether or not you consider it wisdom is up to you – is that authentic, adult faith can not only survive honest questions, but also grow through them. And as a church we can provide a supportive, non-judgemental atmosphere.

We’ve all heard the idea that we learn from experience. But do we? Sometimes we don’t. It’s not automatic, and we can easily repeat our mistakes. 

Grass roots educator Myles Horton – a highly influential figure in the background of the American civil rights movement – once said that we only learn from experience we learn from. Think about that seemingly obvious statement. We have to choose whether we want to learn from experience. The same is true when it comes to doubt. We can choose to grow through our doubts and questions – or we can avoid them. 

There’s been research which indicates that if we honour our doubts, there’s a recognisable ‘cycle’ that will take us through them and bring us out the other side – although the “other side” may look very different from where we started. 

If we face them head on, explore what they’re saying, and search for alternate understandings, it can shape new and deeper ways of practising our faith. 

But, if we resist our doubts, if we pretend we don’t have them, we get stuck. We never move beyond them. They’re still there, below the surface. We may show a confident face to the world, but it’s like being locked in an upper room of fear. Our faith doesn’t progress.  

The way forward is through embracing our doubts and questions and working through them.  

What does this say about our journey of faith? That we have never arrived. That we should never look down on others whose faith seems shaky. That it’s healthy to allow space in our church to ask questions. That we all need a safe space when doubts arise, so we can talk about them, be heard, supported and not judged. 

In my last church before retirement, I commenced a Q&A time at the end of my sermons. It soon became obvious that I didn’t have all the A’s to the Q’s. But we still had opportunity to ask questions and discuss what I said. Share alternative ideas. Even disagree. One positive outcome as the Q&A got longer was that it led to shorter sermons. We won’t have one now … but I do invite you to question me about anything I’ve said over coffee. 

Author George Saunders wrote: “In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power... what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious).”  

May we be confident enough to be unsure … like Thomas and the other disciples. May we feel safe enough to talk about our uncertainties and work through them. May we feel secure enough in ourselves to help people feel safe with their doubts. And may we all be perpetually curious about following the way of Jesus.

The world is different to what we thought

There have been shattering moments in the development of humanity when we wake up to a world that is not what we thought it was. 

• Imagine life evolving from water to cell to creature to early humans who walk on two legs. Imagine being there at the moment when humans first stood upright, or when fire was first harnessed, or the wheel invented; events that reshaped the future. 

• Imagine living with the assumed “truth” that the earth is flat, only to discover that it is spherical, more precisely a geoid. 

• For centuries, many believed the earth was the centre of the universe, only to learn that it is a small planet orbiting the sun, which itself is not the centre but one star among many. 

• Imagine the shift in modern physics when it became clear that electrons are not simply particles or waves, but exhibit both properties at the same time. 

• Even more, phenomena such as quantum entanglement suggest a deep interconnectedness that challenges our ordinary understanding of space and separation. Imagine the implications of discovering the non-locality of electron spin. The behaviour of one particle is not fully determined by what is happening locally around it. It is connected to something beyond its immediate location. It shows that reality at a fundamental level is more interconnected than classical physics assumed. Non-locality is one of those moments where the world turns out to be different to what we thought. We expected a universe of separate, independent objects. Instead, we discover a reality where relationship is built into the fabric of things. 

• A similar earth-shattering event changed history when the disciples experienced the Resurrection. After the Resurrection, the world was different to what we thought. We expected the universe to operate in one way, instead, because of the Resurrection, we discover a totally different reality. The empty tomb, the appearances of the risen Christ, and the experience of Jesus in a transformed embodied form made real something entirely new. The Resurrection speaks of creation made new. It proclaims that the powers of death do not have the final word, because through love they are transformed into new life. For the early Jesus movement, it was the convergence of these experiences, the empty tomb, the visions of the risen Christ, and encounters with Jesus in a transformed embodied presence, that made the reality of the Resurrection known. 

We are at the heart of John’s Gospel

My conviction is that you and I and everyone we know and love who chooses authentic love is in John’s Gospel, right at the heart of it, leaning into the Christ. We are “the other disciple,” the beloved disciple.

We are “the other disciple” who outran Peter and reached the tomb first. We are the ones who believe in verse 8. Yet verse 8 is strange: “He saw and believed.” The faith of the Beloved Disciple does not sit easily with the very next line, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture.” It is also curious that this disciple does not share his insight with Peter or Mary. We, somehow, experience the resurrection before Peter. We, the beloved disciple, living resurrection faith, are also in John 13 at the foot washing meal, at the cross in John 19 and in 21. 

In John 13.23 we are seated at supper with Jesus as the Beloved Disciple, in the place of honour, leaning into him. 

As the Beloved Disciple, we are entrusted with the care of Jesus’ mother (19.26). She becomes our mother, and we become siblings of Christ and of all who step into the Gospel and take her home. 

When Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee, it is the Beloved Disciple who recognises him and tells Peter (21.7). After Peter is commissioned, he is gently rebuked for asking about the Beloved Disciple’s role (21.20). 

For the writer of John’s Gospel, the reality of the Resurrection rests on faith, not on the proof of intellectual argument, historical witness, or fundamentalism. The faith that the writer of John’s Gospel envisions is a deep trust in oneing, the relationship of intimate unity between our soul with God’s soul and the souls of each other and the heartbeat of creation. John’s Resurrection account assumes that for us the resurrection is the centre of our faith, the resurrection is an eternal present moment, that we are living the resurrection moment by moment in every breath we breath, but then asks what does a resurrection faith look like? 

For some, resurrection faith does not arrive in light and certainty. It begins in doubt, in darkness, in the slow and painful labour that brings about new birth. Being born again is not a single moment. It is a process. 

We often speak of Easter with images of sunrise, light, and triumph. But the story itself begins elsewhere. It begins in a cave, in the dark, damp earth. The resurrection is announced later, but whatever happened, happened in the dark. No one saw that moment. No light, no witnesses, no spectacle. 

If it happened in a cave, it happened in silence, in darkness, with the smell of stone and soil. And that matters. Because new life always begins this way. A seed grows in the ground. A child forms in the womb. And Jesus is raised in the tomb. 

So too for us. New life in us often begins in places that feel hidden, uncertain, and even painful. Resurrection is not always something we recognise at the time. It unfolds quietly, beneath the surface, before it is ever seen or named. 

Mary recognises Jesus when he speaks her name (John 20:16). In that moment, John 10.3–4 becomes real: the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. A name signals intimacy, not distance. She does not recognise him by sight, but by sound. Perhaps this is the point. 

At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus’ first words are a question: “What are you looking for?” (1:38). And here, in this moment of new creation, he asks again: “Whom are you looking for?” (20:15). The question frames the whole story. It is the question that opens the Gospel, and the question that opens resurrection life. A new ministry is beginning. A new story is unfolding. 

And it unfolds not through spectacle, but through recognition. Through relationship. Through love calling to love. 

This is what the early Christian experience of Easter rests on. Not simply an event to be explained, but a reality to be entered. The risen Christ speaks our name. And in that speaking, something in us awakens. We hear. We turn. We recognise. 

Resurrection faith, then, is not first about certainty or proof. It is about relationship. It is about being drawn into the deep knowing that we belong, that we are held, that we are part of a reality where love is fundamental. 

Jesus speaks our name and says, in effect:
You are love. That is who you are.
And I am the heart of love.
And the heart of love draws you closer. 

So, the question remains for us, as it did at the beginning:
What are you looking for?
Whom are you looking for? 

And perhaps the deeper invitation is this:
not only to look, but to listen
until we hear our name spoken
and recognise that we are already part of the life we seek.

Opening comments: How do we reform and deepen communion and community? 

John’s Passion Gospel differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels. In the synoptics, the final meal between Jesus and his disciples takes place at Passover. In John’s Gospel, the events occur before the Passover. The suffering that is so apparent in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is largely absent in John’s account of the trial and crucifixion. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus prays, “may this cup pass from me” in John Jesus prays “give me the cup”. 

Each of the Passion narratives offers a different spiritual practice for a different human question. John is not offering history but spirituality. For this reason, John is the least historically focused account. He invites us to go deeper into the Passion so that John 13, 18, and 19 are not simply history or literature, but the landscape of your soul and the map of your inner spiritual life in God and with God. Each Gospel carries its own purpose. Matthew shows us how to wake up and begin again. Mark teaches us how to endure trial and resistance. Luke forms us into mature disciples and apostles. John turns to union, showing how, in the midst of diversity, we are drawn into oneness. We unpack some verses from the passion narrative of John 18-19. 

John 18:1 — “After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out… to a garden.” 

When John18.1 says “Jesus spoke these words” we ask, what words? The answer is obviously from John 17 which is Jesus’ prayer of unitive, nondual consciousness that ends with: “I made your name known to them and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

John 18.2

John begins the Passion in a garden. After crossing the Kidron Valley, Jesus enters a garden with his disciples. John does not name it Gethsemane. He simply calls it a garden, and this is not incidental. The garden evokes the first garden in Genesis 1. John’s Gospel opens with creation, “in the beginning was the Word… in him was life.” Now, at the end, we are brought back to a garden. Creation and new creation meet here. What unfolds is not simply the death of Jesus, but the beginning of something new. The garden also evokes the landscape of Song of Songs where the union of lover and beloved is a metaphor for God’s union with us. The key phrase of Songs is “Set me as a seal upon your heart, for love is as strong as death.”  

John 18:4–6 — “Jesus… said to them, ‘I am.’”

When Jesus is approached for arrest, he says, “I am” and people fall down, much like Moses did at the burning bush. The “I am” are the words of YHWH, the divine name, revealed in Exodus. In John, the inner divinity of God and the inner reality of Jesus are one and the same; the I am of YHVH and the I am of Yahweh are the same. This extends the prayer of John 17, that we may be one as God and Christ are one. 

John 19:5 — “Here is the man.”

When Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd and says, “Here is the man,” the words carry a deeper resonance. They echo the earlier moment when Jesus says, “I am.” Here stands the human being, not triumphant or in control, but vulnerable, exposed, and given. In this moment, John redefines what it means to be human. To be fully human is not to dominate but to love. This is precisely what Jesus embodies. 

John 19:25–27 — “Woman, here is your son… Beloved, here is your mother.” 

This is the heart of what we are meant to hear in John’s Gospel: community and communion. 

At the cross, a new family is formed. Jesus says to his mother, “here is your son,” and to the beloved disciple, “here is your mother.” You are the beloved disciple. I am the beloved disciple. If you take Mary as your mother and I take Mary as my mother, then we are not only brothers and sisters to Christ, but brothers and sisters to one another. In the midst of the world’s crucifixions, this is our spiritual practice: community and communion. 

The early followers of the way developed Christianity as both a spiritual practice and a new movement in human consciousness. It was marked by a radical, inclusive vision that crossed tribal boundaries and included both Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free sitting around the one table. The truth it embodied was that we are one community before God, and therefore brothers and sisters to each other. Before the first century, there is little evidence of communities gathering as equals around a shared table. Many traditions, including Judaism at the time, maintained separation, particularly between men and women. Against this, the idea of sitting side by side at one table is strikingly new. In Jesus, we see the emergence of a different kind of family, shaped by shared belonging rather than separation. John’s Passion narrative is a spiritual practice that supports this vision of unity in diversity.

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John 19:28–30 — “I am thirsty… It is finished.”

After this, knowing all was complete, Jesus said, “I am thirsty,” fulfilling the scripture. He was given sour wine on a branch of hyssop. In John’s Gospel, Jesus receives the bitter wine. It becomes a sign that he takes in the world’s bitterness and transforms it into grace as he breathes out The Spirit. We are invited not to avoid suffering but to face it, allowing it to be transfigured in us. 

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. As Raymond Brown notes, this may mean not only that Jesus dies, but that he gives the Spirit. In this moment, death, resurrection, and Pentecost are held together. His final breath returns us to the beginning, the breath of God moving through creation. 

John 19:34 — “Blood and water flowed out.”

When the soldiers saw he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, his side was pierced, and blood and water flowed out. This is birth imagery. From Christ comes a new creation.

As Genesis begins with creation, John’s Gospel ends with creation renewed. What is finished is also beginning again.

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Living the Resurrection 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are Lenten Passion narratives, but John is an Easter narrative. John assumes the resurrection and then offers a spiritual practice for living the reality of resurrection moment by moment and day by day. When resurrection becomes an inner reality experienced in the heart, life takes on the character of John 13, where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. 

As I have been washed, I want to wash others. I want to bend low before all people and be a servant of the God of love. This may help awaken that same experience in their hearts. 

John’s Gospel presents the Passion as an eternal present reality. It is something happening now. 

The truth of the Passion is found in lived experience. We translate the Christ story into our own lives, wherever we find ourselves. What then does Easter look like in marriage, in family life, and in community? It looks like relationships that continually move through death and resurrection. It looks like praying together, because the great Easter experience is the living grace that emerges when we do. It also means recognising that diversity is both our greatest challenge and our greatest gift. Communities of uniformity are easier, but that is not the path we are called to. We are called to discover a deeper oneness beneath difference, to recognise that beyond all superficial distinctions, we are brothers and sisters of one source. 

“Love is as strong as death.” 

Jesus’ yielding to the cross is a declaration that love is as strong as death. Redemptive love means there is nothing that love cannot transform. Jesus enters the garden with this prayer: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them.” That love is in us. It has never died and will never die. The love of Christ lives in us now.

Things fall apart

There is a hum beneath the routines of daily life. Not panic exactly, but a quiet anticipatory grief. It feels like unmooring. The future is no longer something we move toward, but something we brace against. The maps still exist, but they no longer explain where we are. Institutions, civilisations, and the systems we trusted feel thin. We keep calm and carry on, but underneath there is fatigue, vigilance, and a quiet question: what is holding all of this together? 

It is disorienting because multiple crises overlap: war, climate anxiety, economic instability, institutional distrust. There is no single narrative to organise this experience, and so the psyche cannot settle. We move between urgency and numbness, outrage and exhaustion, longing for stability and being suspicious of it. 

W. B. Yeats captures this atmosphere with unsettling clarity:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

The poem names what many feel: the world we trusted is breaking apart, and what is coming next is not yet known, and may not be what we hoped for. 

Things fall apart in the Gospel of Matthew

Matthew wrote into a world like this. After the destruction of the Temple, identity, leadership, and stability have collapsed. In that context, Matthew offered not blame or despair, but an invitation to move forward with Christ into uncertainty. Darkness is not the end. It is the beginning of something new. God works through disruption, not around it. 

This is already embedded in the story of Matthew. The genealogy in Matthew 1 is filled with flawed and unexpected people, reminding us that God’s purposes unfold through broken histories rather than moral perfection. The path forward is not control, but surrender. 

In the Passion, collapse becomes visible. The disciples scatter. Peter denies. Judas unravels. Institutions fail. Truth is drowned in accusation and noise. This is what it looks like when the centre cannot hold. The good falter. Those who know better hesitate or withdraw. Meanwhile, the crowd grows louder, the authorities press harder, and momentum replaces discernment. 

In this sense, the crucifixion is the drowning of innocence. Jesus stands silent before false accusation. He is mocked, stripped, and struck. Even the sacred becomes theatre: robe, crown, kneeling, all turned into parody. The world has lost its moral centre. 

Here is the crucial difference. Where Yeats ends in dread, imagining something monstrous emerging from collapse, Matthew reveals something else. The darkness at the crucifixion is real, but it is not empty. At the moment of death, the curtain tears, the earth shakes, the tombs open, and even a Roman centurion begins to see clearly: “Truly this was the Son of God.” These are not solutions. They are ruptures. Signs that the world is not simply breaking down, but breaking open. The centre we thought was holding was never the true centre. When it collapses, something deeper is revealed. Not certainty. Not control. But the presence of God in the very heart of the darkness. 

Things fall apart for us

What do we do with our own sense of disarray? Where do we take our fears about world politics, economic pressure, and the recognition that the normalcy of civilisation is often fragile, even violent? 

The words “Truly this is the Son of God” begin to point a way forward. Just as divinity is at the heart of who Christ is, so too is this same divine life our truest ground. Contemplation begins here, not as something we construct, but as something we fall into. It is an unknowing we do not choose, but must inhabit. We relinquish control and begin to trust a deeper, hidden life within. The things that fall apart fall apart because they are finite not infinite. Since the ground of our being is one with God, only that which is infinite can hold us, we will be dissatisfied with anything less than infinite. 

Meister Eckhart, as interpreted by Jim Finley, reminds us that the ground of God is already given as the ground of our own being. We are not separate from God at the deepest level, yet we live as if we are. Our ordinary consciousness, our thinking, remembering, and desiring, operates as though exiled from this ground. This is why we cling to outcomes, relationships, identity, success, control. This clinging produces restlessness, because nothing finite can satisfy the depth of who we are.

The path forward is detachment. Detachment is not withdrawal or coldness, but a disciplined, loving practice. We learn not to let joy or sorrow define us, not to give outcomes authority over our identity, to notice reactivity and gently release it, and to return, again and again, to the deeper ground, the divine with us, the Ground of our Being. This is what it looks like in practice: we may notice a sensation of fear when things fall apart and what we thought was the centre collapses. We notice the feelings and thoughts, but we realise that they are finite, and do not have the final say on who we are, so we release them and let them go. Only the ground of God which is already given as the ground of our own being can define who we are because this Ground of God is Infinite, Infinite Love. Detachment is fidelity to love. It is the quiet work of letting go of whatever pulls us away from what is most true. Over time, this becomes a way of life. In ordinary moments, in relationships and work, in suffering and joy, we are gradually stabilised in a deeper centre, a hidden ground that suffering cannot destroy and success cannot inflate. The journey is not about attaining God, but about being freed from what obscures a union already given, and learning to live from that union in the midst of everyday life. 

The invitation

The invitation of Holy Week is not to cling to what is falling apart, nor to collapse into fear, but to step forward into this unknowing. It is a call to trust that even here, especially here, God is at work bringing new life into being. 

We are called to wait and to witness. To remain present to grief, doubt, and disorientation. To allow them to teach us. We are called to hold to God as the Infinite Ground of Love beneath all finite things that may obscure our true home in God. Uncertainty and collapse are invitations to release the less real for the really Real. As someone once said, there is a deep well within us. In it dwells God. Sometimes, we find ourselves there too.

The symbol of Ash from Ash Wednesday partly defines our Lenten journey. 

It’s from dust and ashes that God created us, and it’s to dust and ashes that our mortal bodies will return. 

I’m going to speak about our Gospel reading today from John but before that I just want to mention that the OT for today is Ezekiel 37:1-14 – the valley of dry bones.  

In many ways it sets the scene for Lazarus’ lifeless body. 

God’s question to Ezekiel is, Can these bones live? 

Logic would say, well they can’t live, powdery and lifeless as they were! 

We began our Lenten journey by identifying with these dry bones: we allowed ourselves to be marked with ashes to remind us that we too came from this dry dustiness, that without the life that God breathes into us, we too are lifeless.

In today’s Gospel Jesus says something to Martha that he said many times:

I am the resurrection and the life. 

The dry bones in many ways represented lost hopes of the people of Israel, just as Lazarus’ lifeless body was, for Martha, beyond human hope. 

Maybe we can relate to that in our lives at the moment.

When life’s challenges begin to overwhelm us, our hopes are sometimes called into question. 

In our world today there are many darknesses:  

We live in the age of rage – there are many angry people and groups out there. 

It’s made worse by social media and the general media helping to turn differences into division and polarisation. 

Also, this is a time of polycrisis - the simultaneous occurrence of several and interactive crises that together produce a damage greater than the sum of their parts. We have conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Congo. 

So there’s much to feel hopeless about. 

Yet Jesus’ ministry to Mary and Martha and Lazarus reminds us that he can meet us where we feel most lifeless, when things seem hopeless, and call us to enter our lives anew. 

The answer to God’s question to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, Can these bones live? (Can Lazarus live, can we live?) … is yes, they/we can live, if filled with the hope, life and love of the Spirit of Jesus. 

The Spirit breathes life into us. 

On this day, as we keep company with Lazarus and hear the voice of Christ calling to us, what will we choose? Lazarus wasn’t just dead, he was bound up. What might we need to let go of, to loose ourselves from, so that we might become unbound, and move with freedom into the life to which Christ calls us? 

Christians throughout the ages have called upon God’s spirit to come upon them as they gather together for worship – to come to their dryness, their hopelessness. The ancient Veni Creator Spiritus (or Come Creator Spirit) hymn reminds us of this (a Sarum, or Salisbury melody). It’s words date from the 9th Century. We’ll hear it later in this service. 

God breathes new life and hope into us, whatever our situation:

2 Your blessèd unction from above
is comfort, life, and fire of love;
enable with perpetual light
the dullness of our blinded sight;

3 anoint and cheer our mortal face
with the abundance of your grace;