The season of Epiphany is a time to celebrate the light breaking into our lives. Epiphany is when we recognise that God is not confined within Godself but breaks forth into creation as love. We call this the incarnation, when God continually breaks into history and does a new thing. In the southern hemisphere, this is our summer. We live, laugh, and play in the sun. In enjoying the sun, we celebrate the ways light enters our lives. 

In Epiphany, we also bring our gifts and offer them to God in Christ. The best gift we can offer God is the gift of ourselves. We offer ourselves to the mystery that is God, even when we do not fully understand, because we know that, through God, we are no longer the people we used to be. 

Thomas Merton describes an Epiphany surrender:

What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. 

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyse them into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. 

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds, and join in the general dance.
[Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (Shambhala: 2003), 302–303.] 

Merton sees God at play in the sacred manuscript of nature:

·      In the solitary splash of a frog in a pond, as the poet Bashō hears

·      In witnessing children play

·      In the silent presence of the sun, moon, and stars

He also sees God at play in the experience of love, in “micro” awakenings when our values are turned inside out, in moments of newness, and in moments of complete emptiness. 

Where is God at play in your life? Where have you seen God at play in the past? What does it take for you to join the general dance and abide in God? The fact that you are here today, or reading these words, means that something has stirred within you. Do not break faith with your awakened heart.

I recall one such moment when I was arrested by God. I ministered in Johannesburg, a chaotic, beautiful, hectic city. On my way to a meeting, I was caught in a traffic jam, frustrated, with tension rising because I was late and there was much to do. When it rains, people’s driving skills seem to vanish. In the midst of this tension, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings played on the radio. The beauty of the music overcame me. Why do I spend so many of my waking hours trapped on the outer edge of the richness of life I am living? Why do I let the centrifugal force of daily demands spin me away from the centre of love that is always holding me? And yet, I also knew that, in this moment, it was not that something more was given to me. Rather, a curtain opened, and the infinite love that has always been given to me touched me. 

In John 1:36, the disciples of John the Baptist hear him say, “Look, there is the Lamb of God.” The Lamb of God is a metaphor for the one anointed with the Spirit—the Messiah. John describes Jesus as the one in whom the Spirit abides. These disciples then ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” and Jesus answers, “Come and see.” Andrew stays, or “abides,” with Jesus. He experiences the awakening Merton describes when meeting Christ. Jesus asks him, “What do you want?” Andrew does not know, but he knows he wants to be as close as possible to the God he sees in Christ; he wants to abide in God. The great gift is presence. 

“Abide” is dense with meaning. God abides with God, showing a dynamism where the persons of the Trinity co-inhere. The energy of love within God flows out as the Word abides with humanity (John 1:14). Jesus becomes the example of full humanity: as He abides in the Father and the Father in Him (John 14:11), so too do we abide in Jesus as branches rest in the vine (John 15:5). 

Our spiritual practice is where we learn to abide. Holistic spiritual practice usually has two aspects: alone in solitude and in community. 

·      To your own self, be true.

·      Spiritual practice is anything that helps you forget yourself.

·      It requires courage, faith, and risk.

·      In practice, we forget ourselves on purpose.

·      We focus on love

·      At times, we will feel the love of God pouring into us in abundance. 

And yet, as Merton reminds us, it does not matter very much if we falter. No despair of ours can alter the reality of things. We remain in the joy of the cosmic dance, which is always there. Indeed, we are in its midst, and it is in ours, beating in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

This is the beauty of Merton and the mystics: Do we put our faith in our ability to abide, or in the love that abides in us despite our inability? In our inability to abide, love remains, precious in our confusion and in our wayward ways. 

Abiding with God we also learn to abide in each other, allowing the Christ in us to love the Christ that is in the people we share community with. As we abide in Jesus, each of us becomes the place where heaven and earth meet. Each of us is a living, breathing word of the Lord, a vision of God made manifest. It is not the perfection of our lives that makes us this place; it is our openness, our willingness to love, our acceptance of the pain of vulnerability, and our gentleness with ourselves and our mistakes that allow God to abide in us and flow through us into the world.

Sermon Notes for Sunday 11th January

by Desiree Snyman

This year the season of epiphany is reminding me that small things, done with great love, matter to God and transform the cosmos. 

The following poem is by Jan Richardson:

Wise women also came.
The fire burned in their wombs long before
they saw
the flaming star in the sky.

They walked in shadows, trusting the path
would open under the light of the moon.

Wise women also came,
seeking no directions,
no permission from any king.

They came by their own authority,
their own desire,
their own longing.

They came in quiet, spreading no rumours,
sparking no fears to lead to innocents’ slaughter,
to their sister Rachel’s inconsolable lamentations.

Wise women also came,
and they brought useful gifts:
water for labour’s washing,
fire for warm illumination,
a blanket for swaddling.

Wise women also came,
at least three of them,
holding Mary in the labour,
crying out with her in the birth pangs,
breathing ancient blessings into her ear.

Wise women also came,
and they went,
as wise women always do,
home a different way.

There is no biblical record of midwives assisting at the birth of Jesus. Nor is there a Biblical record for three kings, camels, donkeys, a stable or a cow yet our traditions are happy to accept their presence at the nativity. (St Francis was the first to pageant a creche scene which he did to emphasise that God is with us in creation). Could we stretch out imaginations to accept the possibility that wise women may have assisted at the birth of Mary’s child? After all, Mary was young, possibly 14, 15 or 16 years old and this was her first pregnancy. Sure, there is no evidence for the presence of wise women midwives, whose contribution may have been so obvious or insignificant that it was overlooked. Yet, small things, like supporting a woman in labour, done with great love, matter to God and transform the world. How many other small things done with great love are happening right now, transforming our world, yet we may have no record of them? Yet small actions done with great love matter to God. 

Today’s address is “Epiphany and Empire”. Both words are explained. Epiphany means divine manifestation. From January 6 churches celebrate the end of the 13 days of Christmas and the beginning of the season of epiphany, the giving of light in the darkness, enlightenment, the manifestation of God’s glory, the gift of divine revelation in Christ. The Old Testament lesson stirs our hope: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear.” The promise of epiphany’s hope will sound irrelevant unless it inhabits real world politics. We might spend a Sunday hour reading “Arise Shine” and singing hymns about light but at some point, we will go home, switch on the news, and confront a world at war, indifferent to the type of justice Jesus imagined. Take heart, the Good News of Christmas and Epiphany was and is born in the shadow of empire, reminding us that seemingly insignificant people, and seemingly insignificant actions like changing direction, matter to God and transform the world. 

I use the word empire as a general description for the oppressive and massive control power seeks to extend geographically, politically, economically, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, culturally, and religiously. In the past empire referred to nation states such as the empires of Babylon, Rome or England but empire could also refer to the wide-reaching control technocrats and oligarchs seek to impose on society. The effects of empire are long lasting. Even after empire has fallen, been defeated or retreated, empire’s impact still wounds, just ask post-Colonial Africa, and First Nations Australians. While Australians might enjoy relative peace in a relatively stable democracy, we are not immune from the sting and influence of empires and the brutality of the rulers that control them. 

What media today has in common with the historical records of antiquity is that the focus is almost exclusively on powerful and famous personalities who succeed within empire. That is how we know about Herod. While the writing of classical history might salute the architectural mark Herod left on history, theology and scripture point out that Herod’s grandiose constructions were paid for by taxing the poor. Theology and Scripture recognise that Herod ran an empire within an empire. Herod’s Jerusalem was like a police-state, complete with loyalty oaths, surveillance, informers, secret police, imprisonment, torture and brutal retaliation against any serious dissenter.

There are places in the world that echo the empire of Herod and of Rome. In the face of big politics, and significant challenges, it is easy to feel helpless; what can any one person do to change the injustice and pain caused by empire and inhumane systems?

The nativity stories centre on ordinary, easily overlooked people, Jewish refugees, through whom God changes the world. When the visitors from the East have offered their gifts, they return home by another road. A small decision to change direction becomes an act that saves lives. Against the crushing force of empire stands the quiet, liberating power of human presence and moral courage. Are our own choices, made in a time of violence and domination, really of any less weight, even when we feel small? So, the Messiah continues to enter history quietly, like a thief in the night, not through spectacle or force, but through moments of faithful, hidden grace (1 Thess 5:2).

Little things done with great love matter to God and transform the world. Epiphany invites us to remember the quiet stories of resistance, carried by people of conscience who acted without knowing how their choices would turn out. May these stories steady us and give us courage in our own time, when empires still loom large and the need for faithful, loving, and brave small acts has never been greater.

Sermon Notes for Sunday 4th January John 1:10-18 Christmas 2 by Geoff Vidal

We have had a wonderfully busy family Christmas. The presence of a niece from Brazil and a niece from California gave us an excuse for more gatherings with lots of eating and drinking. I very easily fell into the trap of making Christmas more about family celebration than connecting with God. The strong attraction of the Aussie Christmas culture prevailed! Why do they celebrate Christmas in Tokyo? Often it seems that Santa Claus is more important than Jesus. Now, hot cross buns in Coles are already beginning to distract us from Easter and, for many people, chocolate bunnies will be more important than the crucifixion of Jesus. 

Over Christmas, in those times when I have actually tried to connect with God, my thoughts have been about how the baby Jesus can distract us from the teaching, healing, loving Lord Jesus. We will end today by singing “Away in a manger” but I hope we see more than the birth of a baby. The critical Christmas message is that “God is with us” Emanuel! Christmas is all about seeing the glory of God. 

Our Gospel reading this morning was the continuation of the wonderful poetic opening of the Good News according to John. John begins his Gospel dramatically; “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God  .... everything came into being through him .... the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it”. 

That powerful message from the prologue to John continued in today’s reading. Verse 14 says “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”    

This Tuesday it is Epiphany. The 12 days of Christmas are done and dusted on 6th January and that’s the day for decorations to come down. Traditionally, Epiphany is the day of reading about (and celebrating) the visit of the wise men. Their story is a great story about seeing the glory of God. 

In our house, the wooden nativity scene with the manger is put away on 6th January but the carved wooden figures of the wise men are now brought out and, for the rest of the year, they stay at our front door reminding visitors to our house that the wise people are still looking for God. 

I recently read a sad story of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, who said he was 'intimidated' by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land. Archbishop Cottrell explained that he was stopped at checkpoints and that militias told him he could not visit Palestinian families in the West Bank as he had planned to do. During his Christmas Day sermon at the Cathedral in York, he said: “We have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers. We don't seem to be able to see ourselves in them and, therefore, we spurn our common humanity.” 

Archbishop Cottrell described how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with “persecuted Palestinian communities” in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood nativity scene carving.

The piece showed a “large grey wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus. He said, “It was sobering for me to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn't visit Palestinian families.” 

So, if they tried it today, any wise men who came from the East, from some country far away, would be blocked from visiting Bethlehem.   

You and I live in an age of seeking understanding, of longing for peace, where life can be thought of as a search, a journey. People are looking, searching. Visitors who turn up to Christmas services and who sometimes sneak into the back of our churches on other Sundays are “seeking”. They are trying to find out what Christianity is really all about; wondering if it is possible to see the glory of God.

 This is an age of searching. In fact, we are often suspicious of people who say that they are sure of where they are. We have our doubts about anyone who is confident in their destination. We are more comfortable with people who say, “I haven’t arrived yet, I am still searching” than we are with people who say “I know! I have definitely found what I am looking for.”  

So, Epiphany is the day for the seekers and the searchers; the day when wise people are on their journey, looking for the Messiah, the promised one. Epiphany is the day for looking for the presence of God with us. 

And, in the Epiphany story, these people, who came to the manger in Bethlehem, were not necessarily kings and, although they had three presents, there were not necessarily three of them. But, they were wise and, significantly, they knew that they didn’t know everything. Most certainly, they were all people on a journey. 

These wise men were strange and foreign. We guess that they must have come from Persia. That is modern- day Iran. They were not Jews: not people of the book. They were aliens. And yet they were the first ones to see the glory of God in Jesus. They were the first ones to worship him.  

They are the ones who, lacking a certainty about where the Messiah is to be born and about who he is, lacking the scriptures themselves, are on a search. Others may be content to stay home, going over the old slogans and formulae, keeping to well-worn paths, but wise men are prepared to get up and go to a new place. 

I wonder what happened to the wise men after they left the manger at Bethlehem. Initially, they intended to go back to tell King Herod where they had found the baby. Fortunately, an angel appeared to them, took charge, and told them not to go back, because the king wanted to kill the baby Jesus. All we are told is that they went home “another way.” Isn’t “another way” a wonderful little phrase! Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear the story of the rest of the lives of these wise men after they chose to go “another way”?   

Undoubtedly these wise men, these searchers and seekers, who had found the baby Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and worshipped him - these people who had seen the glory of God - would not have gone home the same way, even if the angel had not warned them. That is, there was no way to go back home to their previous lives. They had seen God Incarnate: they had seen the fulfilment of their expectation, and they were compelled to go back “another way”, forced to live lives other than they would have lived had they not met the babe.

Sermon Notes for Sunday 28th December Christmas 1
by Doug Bannerman

The child in me still wants the Christmas season to be a sugar-coated experience of happiness, safety, warmth and good will. I spent the war years in Vancouver, and my memories of Christmastide are coloured by images of lots of snow outside, checking to make sure that the reindeer had found the carrots left on the window sill (we did not have a chimney), singing carols en famille after breakfast and, finally, opening presents. 

Although today’s gospel reading does have a bit of sugar, it is laced with a sobering view of life and the universe.  

Matthew’s story is quite a paradox, celebrating the birth of Jesus, our redeemer, in the context of Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents. By setting Joseph’s dreams in the presence of “Rachel weeping for her children”, Matthew locates the announcement of God-with-us in a believable universe because it matches our own. 

The holy family are refugees and refugees still flee from the horrors of their homelands. Powerful people still threaten the vulnerable, and death continues to stalk the corridors of society. 

Nevertheless, Matthew tells us that in the madness of want and evil, God comes to give life, to preserve the life that is God’s unceasing action of creation. What overpowers the bloody spectacles that humans create, however, is the overwhelming truth that God not only gives a means for responding to evil, but also a reason – that is to say, God’s creation is holy, intended for good. That intention makes all the difference. 

Matthew also makes time for Joseph. He is given four crucial dreams in the first two chapters. His role is not only to protect Mary and Jesus but to serve as one whose actions respond to God’s desire for Joseph’s little family’s safety. God speaks; Joseph listens and acts. 

We cannot avoid noticing, however, that the other parents of the children targeted by Herod do not receive an angel’s message. This, again, reflects a reality of our world, and of course, it is a circumstance worthy of our prayer and mourning. But we do not understand it. That must be said. Not everyone is saved from others’ evil deeds. 

Christians do not worship a God who simply fixes problems. We worship the God who knows anguish, misery, agony and torment; we worship a God who comforts those who suffer and who visits us with dreams, visions and insights as with Joseph. 

Joseph’s first dream (Matthew 1) tells him not to abandon Mary. In the second, (Matthew 2:13-14) an angel tells Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt or Herod will kill the baby. Third, an angel tells Joseph, the refugee in a strange land, that because Herod is dead, the family can safely return to Israel (Matthew 2:19-20). On the way, however, Joseph learns that Herod’s son — someone as brutal as his father — is the new ruler. He hesitates until a fourth dream assures him it is safe to bring his family to a new home in Nazareth of Galilee (Matthew 2:22). 

Today we heard only one of Joseph’s dreams, but it embodies the thrust of all the dreams that came to him: Do not fear anything. Consider the lilies of the field, and so on. Well … easier said than done. Not being a lily in the field, I fear a number of things. Besides, fear is a normal human response, a protective device. 

Nevertheless, God does speak to us, if we pay attention – in inklings, love, inspiration, insight, empathy, visons, dreams, intuitions, and … well, everything really. 

Joseph understood where he ought to stand: alongside those who are in trouble. He guarded and nurtured the ones in need of being lifted up, his children, his son Jesus. 

The contemporary American prophet Linda Wylie-Kellerman recently remarked “Awe and wonder are the gifts my kids give me daily. But also, I believe it is a gift we adults need to give to the children in our lives.”  

She points to the context of anxiety within which our children are growing up. It is, in fact, an incredibly anxious time. A host of destructive elements threaten our existence and that of the precious planet that provides us with the wherewithal to live, to breath, to grow in health and safety. The future is unpredictable. And our children’s lives are turned upside down at every turn.  

Children are resilient to be sure, but this is too much, and they are growing up feeling anxious, worried, stressed and angry. Most of the kids I know are all too aware that the powers that be in this world simply do not care.  

One powerful antidote to anxiety stares us in the face every morning at dawn and every evening at sundown – the ineffable grace of awe and wonder.  

It is our responsibility to make opportunities for our children to experience this grace, to find beauty in unexpected places, to marvel at the miracles around us, and to rest in moments of pure magic. 

Again to quote the prophet: 

“Beloved friends, go out and find a secret portal. Walk the shoreline and keep your eye out for magic. Pull out that old telescope. Tell wild stories. Go outside and dance in the rain. Be “that” adult who gets the eyeroll and the side smile. Laugh often. Slow down. Feed the imagination. Clear the space to be washed over by this wild and wonderful world.” 

Thus do the angels bear messages of hope and love from God to all of us; setting the tasks of life before us.  

Rilke framed it rather nicely:, 

For gazing, you see, has its limits.

And the more gazed-upon world

wants to prosper in love.

Work of the eyes is done,

begin heart-work now

on those images in you, those captive ones;

for you conquered them: but you still don’t know them

Doug Bannerman

Sermon Notes for Sunday 21st December on Matthew 1:18-25 by Desiree Snyman

Genealogies

Luckily for us, the lectionary reading begins at verse 18 of Matthew 1. Verses 1–17 detail the genealogy of Jesus with unpronounceable names. Raise your hands when you recognise a name from Matthew 1.1-17: Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers; and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar; and Perez the father of Hezron; and Hezron the father of Aram; and Aram the father of Aminadab; and Aminadab the father of Nahshon; and Nahshon the father of Salmon; and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab; and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth; and Obed the father of Jesse; and Jesse the father of King David. 

In Matthew 1.1-17 three sets of fourteen generations are listed. The number fourteen is not accidental. In Hebrew, David is indicated by three letters, DWD: Daleth (4), Waw (6), Daleth (4). Thus 4 + 6 + 4 = 14. Matthew is signalling, symbolically, that this story culminates in the promise associated with David, though not in the way anyone expects. 

Controversially, five women are named, four of them outsiders or boundary-crossers. All five live in tension with Jewish law, and their relationships intensify that tension. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah’s wife, and finally Mary. Within the strict logic of the law, each story carries the possibility of condemnation. Yet it is through these women that the Messiah comes.

Already, Matthew is unsettling any neat account of righteousness. 

Joseph and righteousness

Joseph is described as a righteous man, yet the irony is that his righteousness looks like mercy. Mary is with child. Joseph is afraid. There are laws, reputations, and honour to consider. Rather than exposing Mary to public disgrace, he plans to divorce her quietly. Then a dream interrupts him, and he chooses differently. He takes Mary as his wife.

This is not a story about moral certainty. It is a story about surrender. 

What Matthew is doing

The genealogy is not historically precise. This is not a DNA report from Ancestry.com. It is a theological text, carefully composed to tell us how God works.

Some examples help us see this:

1.   Seventeen verses list Joseph’s lineage in the active voice: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. Then suddenly, the pattern breaks. The active voice is replaced with a passive voice: Jesus was begotten Jesus is not begotten by the Holy Spirit. Matthew is not explaining biology. He is announcing meaning. This child belongs wholly to God’s purpose, not to human power, bloodlines, or imperial authority. In a world ordered by Roman domination and violent hierarchy, Matthew dares to claim a different source of life altogether.

Some will read the virgin birth literally. Others will read it as poetry and symbol. Matthew allows space for both. But neither should miss 1.   the central proclamation: something new is happening. There is a rupture with the old order. That is where the good news lies. 

It is to this virgin birth that we now turn, because it is not only about Mary. It is an invitation to us. 

Virgin births

Meister Eckhart says it best (in Sermon One, in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works):

“Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. What does it avail me that this birth is happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.”

Where does this birth take place? Not in Bethlehem. Not in a stable. Not around 4 BCE. Not even only in Mary. But “in the very purest, loftiest, subtlest part that the soul is capable of”, the part of us that is virgin. Virgin, here, does not mean untouched or innocent. It means open. Unclaimed. Not possessed by fear or control. 

The ground of the soul

I imagine our lives and identities are like a river. When the river is clogged with debris, the bottom is hidden. But when the water clears, the ground becomes visible. That ground is always there. So, it is with us. Beneath the false selves, the wounds, the anxiety, and the stories we tell ourselves, there is a deeper ground. Eckhart calls it the ground of the soul. It is where God and the soul are one. It is where the Christ is eternally being born. Emmanuel. God with us. 

Our lives may feel muddied by fear, grief, or self-protection. Yet our true identity is not the turbulence at the surface. It is the divine life rising quietly within us. To live as a spiritual virgin is to live open to God, not striving for purity, but practising availability. Spiritual virginity is about letting go of the illusion that we are self-made, self-secured, and self-contained. 

The rim of eternity

Eckhart says that when we live from fear and separation, we cling to a false self, a self that believes it must manage everything. That fear, he says, is our deep confusion. Mary and Joseph step out of that confusion. They do not grasp. They do not defend. They consent. They live, as Eckhart says, on the rim of eternity. Still ordinary, still in the mess of daily life. yet open to the divine life already holding them. Joseph’s righteousness is not rule-keeping, it is release. He lets go of his need to control the future. He allows God to act in a way he does not fully understand. That is the real miracle of this story.  

Christmas now

Christmas is not about God arriving from somewhere else. It is about the ground of love becoming visible in human life, God with us, Emmanuel. Eckhart would say God is not only with us, but shining through us, when we dare to trust, to release control, to love without guarantees. We do not celebrate a miracle that happened once. We celebrate a mystery that can happen now. In us. In this world. Whenever fear loosens its grip and love is allowed to be born. 

Matthew’s story unfolds against a background of terror, violence, and threat. That world is not so different from our own. Fear and hatred may fill the air around us, but they do not have the power to name who we are. Only God’s infinite love, given in the depths of our soul, has the power to name who we are. Whenever we dare to trust, to release control, to live open to love without guarantees, Christ is born again. 

• What are the things in your life that make you feel pressured, anxious, or like you have to be in control, and what might it mean to let God meet you right there?

• What gets in the way of you being your real self, with God and with others, and what helps you feel more open, honest, and alive?

• If something new and good could be growing in you right now, what do you hope it might be, and what small step could you take to make space for it?

Sermon Notes for Sunday 14th December on Matthew 11:2-11 Advent 3a by Desiree Snyman

I find the story of John the Baptist profoundly archetypal. It is, I think, the true story of many people’s faith journeys. I began preaching when I was eighteen. When I look back at some of those early sermons, which I have thankfully destroyed, I cringe. The faith of that eighteen-year-old has died, and it needed to. That faith could never have sustained me through the realities of life, through loss, grief, complexity, and the long arc of human vulnerability that any ordinary life brings. 

Whether I am visiting people in aged care, sitting with those who have attended one funeral too many, or standing beside hospital beds, I recognise this story again and again. John the Baptist, imprisoned by darkness, confined by doubt, remembering a faith that once burned far brighter before loss and suffering began to close in around him. What once felt like conviction now feels fragile. What once felt clear now feels distant. This is a deeply human experience. And the human instinct is to try to escape the darkness. We want God to break us out, to restore the light we once knew, to return us to something familiar. 

Yet the mystery of Christmas, prepared for through Advent, teaches us something far more unsettling and far more hopeful. The darkness is not a prison we must escape. It is the womb of God’s own darkness, the place where a deeper radiance is conceived and brought to birth. 

This is why I see John the Baptist as an archetypal faith journey for those of us who have followed Christ for many years. The faith of our younger selves had to die. We had to enter the womb of God’s darkness so that a greater faith, a more spacious faith, could be born. 

I have written a meditation from John’s perspective as he sits in that space of loss. It traces the grief of losing one faith while waiting, often painfully, for the rebirth of something deeper and truer. 

The Gospel is cheeky here, and deeply honest. When John questions Jesus, Jesus replies, “Go and tell John what you see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them.” This draws on Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61. But notice what Jesus leaves out. Isaiah also proclaims freedom for captives. John is in prison after all. Surely that is the line you would include. But the prison John inhabits is not something he is meant to escape. It is the womb in which his faith is being transformed. So rather than rushing to free John, Jesus invites him to wait. To gestate. To trust that God is still at work, not despite the darkness, but within it. 

So let us sit with John for a while: 

He sits in Herod’s prison with nothing but time. Time to think, and time to pray. 

His mind drifts back to the early days, the good days, when he was fearless. His voice had carried conviction like fire. He can still hear himself by the Jordan, crying out: 

“Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. He will clear his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 

John looks down at his camel-hair cloak. It has been a long time since he has washed. He longs for the Jordan. He longs to be submerged again, to be rinsed clean of politics and pressure, of worry and weariness, washed free of Herod. 

He remembers the day Jesus came to be baptised. John had been preaching about a new kingdom, the reign of God, a world where Pharaoh-like rulers do not have the final word, where taxes do not steal daily bread, where there is enough for all. And then, suddenly, the kingdom was standing in front of him in human flesh. Jesus. The Lamb of God. The One. 

And surely now, John thought, the reckoning would come. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the tax collectors and soldiers, the whole machinery of exploitation and hypocrisy would meet the axe. The new day would dawn. 

Except it has not happened. 

John sits in prison and the promised day of judgement has not come. His prayers for a better tomorrow seem unanswered. Fire has not fallen on those who have stolen bread, clothing, and life from his people. 

Instead, the Messiah has done something else entirely. 

He has called tax collectors as disciples. He has spoken kindly to soldiers. He has eaten in Pharisees’ homes and preached in their synagogues. Instead of curses, there are beatitudes. Instead of a cleansing fire, there is “love your enemies.” 

And in the silence of prison, John begins to wonder if he was wrong. Misgivings rise. He begins to think that perhaps Jeshua ben Josef is not the One after all. 

At last, he sends his disciples with the question he can no longer keep contained: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we wait for another?” 

The answer that comes back lights up the prophets he has known by heart: “The blind receives their sight. The lame walk. Those with leprosy are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. The poor have good news preached to them.” 

And then the final line, unexpected, almost sharp in its gentleness:

“Blessed is anyone who does not take offence at me.”

What can this mean? 

John realises at once that it sounds like an additional beatitude, a mark of those who truly belong to the kingdom. A call to patience with the love of God and the way of God. A call to trust that God’s mercy is not weakness, and God’s timing is not absence. 

And as he waits in prison, John learns again what he wanted others to learn. The covenant does not allow you to manufacture God. You can only be surprised by God, even unsettled by God, even carried beyond what you expected. 

The God he expects and the God who comes are not always the same.

So, he mutters the words of his favourite prophet, not as a slogan now, but as a lifeline: 

“Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, be strong, do not fear. Here is your God.”

Slowly, very slowly, peace settles upon him like a dove. And he knows, whatever happens next, God is still God. And it will be well.

Sermon Notes for Sunday 7th December
on Matthew 3:1-12 by Desiree Snyman

Goodness is stronger than evil.
Love is stronger than hate.
Light is stronger than darkness.
Life is stronger than death.
Victory is ours through Him who loves us. 

The prayer was written by Desmond Tutu. Although first published by Double Day in 1995 in “An African Prayer Book”, the prayer surely predates its published form. Prayer, meditation and the reading of Scripture were a daily diet for Desmond Tutu. The prayer was sustenance and hope during the dark days of oppression. Imagine it. The apartheid regime oppresses black people. In response resistance movements rise up merely asking to be recognised as humans. The brutal and violent response of the apartheid regime to resistance movements leaves many protesters including children dead, others in prison and still others in exile. The wave of racial oppression must have felt never ending. In the midst of the doom Tutu experiences this prayer: Goodness is stronger than evil. 

A similar version to this prayer is found in the papers of Dieterich Bonhoeffer, penned whilst in a Nazi concentration camp. Glancing at the German victory during World War Two, observing the holocaust, witnessing suffering, Bonhoeffers firm was hope and belief was that ultimately God’s goodness is stronger than evil.  

What Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Desmond Tutu with John the Baptist have in common is a stance of hope when the hopelessness seems never ending. The Roman political and military might was epic, indefatigable and unbeatable. In the midst of Roman oppression, in a wilderness place, John the Baptist calls for hope. Scholarship today confirms that John the Baptist was a member of the Essene community. The Essenes, who lived near Qumran around the Dead Sea, had an ascetic approach to life and repudiated the decadence of the world they saw around them. Much of this Essene lifestyle is reflected in John the Baptist, who, like prophets Elijah and Elisha before him, lived in the desert wearing camel skin and eating locusts and honey when he could find them. Enormously admired in his day, John gave voice to the people’s anger at the elites who profited from religious and political hierarchies. More than anything, John wanted God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. The dreams described in Isaiah’s poetry inspired John, a land of safety with enough for all, a land where people’s full flourishing was nurtured and where there were no stumbling blocks to people’s needs being satisfied. In the face of the reality of Roman oppression, John’s sermons must have sounded absurd.  

As we engage in this our third week on gender-based violence it is to this theme of hope that I wish to turn. The statistics spell doom. Too often the church has been complicit in violence against women especially in the area of false doctrine such as male headship and female subservience. Despite greater awareness and funding for gender-based violence, we haven’t turned the tide. The Nordic paradox is a term that researchers use to describe the situation in Scandinavian countries like Iceland that have the most progressive and equitable societies violence against women is alarmingly high. Iceland, Finland and Sweden have the highest gender equality rankings.  

We desperately yearn for God’s kingdom of peace, hope, justice, kindness, and gentleness. We take communion trusting in a universe where all have enough bread, and all have wine to celebrate. We pray. We worship. Our hearts long for all children to experience safety, love, and hope. Yet the world around us belies our deepest confidences. The political systems of injustice and racism effect the most vulnerable. Aboriginal people still have no voice, no justice, no acknowledgement of the history of pain embedded in their DNA. The war in Ukraine rages against our dreams of peace. We feel frustration like John, Dietrich and Tutu did, Jesus’ revolution of love does not seem to be happening. What can break us free from our prisons of doubt, discouragement, and apathy?  

Two things: 

Advent asks for waiting and hope and to see with spiritual eyes. Advent turns to several images or metaphors to describe how reasonable this hope is. Advent is described as a pregnant season; we are a pregnant people nourishing the divine within that will birth into the world. The only conviction that pregnant woman can have is hope; you can’t see the baby, but you have the firm hope that a child will be born in 9 months. The image of a seed growing in the ground.  

1. Jesus says that God’s kingdom is on the way and is unfolding in our midst. It is true that we live inside the tension of the yet and the not yet. There is a tug of war with God’s kingdom and Isaiah’s dream on the one hand and the reality of war, violence, and injustice on the other hand. Jesus asks that we notice and bless the moments where the kingdom of God blossoms. 

2. We are invited to look at the seeds of the kingdom of God growing, and not focus on the dark, dank soil, compost and manure surrounding the growing seed. Live the future now 2. “Strengthen the weak hands,” says the Prophet “And make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’” The prophet Isaiah who inspired John the Baptist and Jesus paints a vivid picture of God’s new world order. The vision of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is to inspire people to live God’s promised future as if it is a reality now. Thus, in God’s promised future, there is no loneliness thus we celebrate belonging and community now. In God’s promised future there is no hunger and poverty thus in the present we share our excess so that all have enough. In God’s promised future people have access to education and all that might nourish their full potential thus in the present we support policies that remove blockages to people’s agency and empowerment. To describe how blockages to human growth is removed Isaiah uses the image of a highway, a straight road where mountains are made low, and valleys are lifted up. “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” 

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ”Desmond Tutu.

Waking up

Sermon Notes for Sunday 30th November on Matthew 24:36-44

by Desiree Snyman 

Gender based violence GBV

We support the 16 days of activism to end gender-based violence (GBV) including domestic violence and intimate partner violence. While physical violence is the most obvious form of domestic violence there are several types of GBV including:

 Intimidation: Using fear to control a victim survivor by forcing changes in their behaviour. This can involve yelling, threatening gestures, destroying property, displaying weapons, reckless driving with the victim in the car, stalking, or making unwanted contact.

 Verbal Abuse: Using words or tone to degrade, insult, ridicule, or shame. This includes name-calling, derogatory comments about appearance, beliefs, spirituality, friendships, or achievements, and silencing the victim survivor.

Emotional Abuse: Behaviours that damage a person’s self-worth and emotional wellbeing. Examples include the silent treatment, minimising or denying the victim’s concerns, gaslighting, shaming, using jealousy as justification, guilt-tripping, or manipulating love and goodwill.

 Isolation: Intentionally cutting a victim survivor off from their support networks. This may involve controlling where they go, who they see, their clothing or media, tracking money, limiting access to transport, or dictating when they should be home.

 Financial Abuse: Restricting or controlling access to economic resources. This includes controlling family money, making all financial decisions, preventing employment, taking their money, or incurring debt without consent.

Minimising, Denying or Blaming: Refusing to take responsibility for abusive behaviour. This includes ridiculing concerns, downplaying harm, covering up abuse, rewriting events to protect the perpetrator’s image, or blaming the victim for the abuse or for the perpetrator’s substance or gambling issues.

Using Children: Using children as a tool of control. This can involve using children to send messages or threats, manipulating contact times, turning children against the victim survivor, blaming the victim to the children, or threatening to take them away.

Coercion and Threats: A pattern of controlling tactics designed to force compliance. Examples include threats of self-harm, blocking cultural or religious practices, threats about calling police or child protection, forcing the victim to drop charges, threatening loved ones, or coercing them into illegal activity. Coercive control became a criminal offence in NSW on 1 July 2024 when used against a current or former intimate partner.  

Coercive control is sometimes hard to define; it may be helpful to give explicit examples. Here are some of the stories from people who have survived GBV

(from https://shadowsofcontrol.com/articles/what-coercive-control-looks-like/) 

Constantly Changing the Rules: “Every time I started to feel in control of my life, he’d change the rules. It felt like I was always back at square one, questioning everything I did.” 

Discouraging My Independence: “He discouraged me from applying for jobs, claiming he didn’t want me working with other men. He even controlled my finances, even though I paid most of the bills.” 

Explosive Reactions: “I was nursing my baby on the couch when my partner got up and started screaming at me because I hadn’t cleared my cereal bowl from the table. He didn’t seem to understand that my baby was the priority at that moment, not tidying up.” 

Invasion of Privacy: “I wasn’t allowed to lock the bathroom door or take time to myself without him barging in, questioning why I needed privacy. If I ever locked the door, he’d make a big scene, saying it was strange or suspicious. He would even find tools to unlock it from the outside, claiming he had to use the bathroom, even though there were other toilets in the house. I wasn’t allowed any peace, and he always found a way to disrupt even my quiet moments.” 

Anger at violence

Stories about violence against vulnerable people provoke anger and sadness in me. Beneath the anger and sadness is a theological conviction that people are bearers of the Divine, created in the image of God, and worthy of utmost respect. When I look at another person, I want to remember that I am looking at a precious diamond formed in the image of God, holy and worthy of deep reverence. Abuse is the utter absence of respect. What I long for is respect, deep respect. How dare anyone harm a child or a vulnerable person. How dare anyone destroy the beauty of a human soul. 

And when I see even a trace of violence or harshness within myself, I am horrified. The line between good and evil does not run between people but within each of us. This is why I need God’s judgment. If we imagine God as judge and jailer, judgment becomes something to fear. But if we imagine God as healer, judgment becomes something we long for. When we struggle with an unknown illness, we long for a diagnosis. Diagnosis is judgment, and it is the beginning of healing. God’s judgment names what is broken so that restoration can begin. 

I have holy envy for the Hindu practice of bowing before another person, acknowledging the divine in them. Advent invites us to recover that same instinct of reverence and that embodied awareness of the sacredness of the other. It is the season in which we prepare to be ambushed by the beauty of God shining through every face; a bible study on Matthew 24 can help us realise this. 

Wake-up: Matt 24

This Gospel passage has often been read in a spirit of fear. Many have imagined a sudden vanishing or a divine interruption that sweeps some away and leaves others behind. But when we listen slowly, as Advent invites us to do, we discover something far more life giving. Jesus is not warning us about a violent divine ambush. He is calling us into wakefulness. The invitation is simple. Stay awake. Be ready. Keep alert. Wakefulness is not fear but awareness. It is the ability to see God in the present moment. It is the practice of noticing the divine in the ordinary. It is an inner awakening that recognises Christ in all things and all things in Christ. 

Jesus recalls the days of Noah, not because the people were particularly sinful, but because they were sleepwalking. They were eating, drinking, working, marrying, doing ordinary things, yet unaware of the deeper reality unfolding all around them. They did not perceive the divine invitation into a new way of seeing. They were physically awake yet spiritually drowsy. This is the condition Advent seeks to heal. Spiritual sleep is the dullness that forgets God is present. It is the heaviness that settles into routine and misses the sacred in the everyday. It is the fog that forgets that God is being born in every moment. 

Jesus calls us to wake up. Waking up is recognising that God is always already here. It is knowing that Christ is the light within the heart of matter. It is the inner shift where the mind of Christ begins to shape our way of being in the world. Two are in the field. Two women grind grain. They stand side by side doing the same work. One sees only the ordinary. The other perceives the presence of God. The difference is consciousness. 

To be ready for the coming of the Son of Man is not o fear a cosmic interruption. It is to awaken to the truth that the Son of Man, the fully human one, is being born within us now. Christ comes wherever there is compassion, justice, tenderness, courage, and presence. Christ comes whenever we recognise the sacredness of what is before us. The unexpected hour is every hour. The thief in the night is not an enemy but the Beloved who quietly removes whatever keeps us asleep. Christ comes not to frighten us but to awaken us to our identity as theotokia, God bearers. 

Advent invites us to stay awake. To awaken our senses. To notice the present moment. To choose consciousness. Christ consciousness is not something we achieve. It is something we awaken to. It is a gift already given, waiting to be welcomed. Waking up to Christ present at the heart of matter is ultimately acknowledging with reverence the divine within each person which means that respect is our default way of relating to others.  

Respect

The final word will be from Greg Ezzy, staff chaplain at EAC. For those who have lived in loving and respectful families, it can be difficult to imagine the fear, sadness, shame, and hostility that many experience in domestic violence situations. Greg says that “We Australians pride ourselves on mateship and fairness. Yet alongside our highest ideals there is a profound failure of respect. A woman dies every eight days in Australia at the hands of a partner or former partner. Twenty-five more are in intensive care. Countless others live in fear. One in four women and one in fourteen men experience physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from an intimate partner. These are not statistics. They are people created in the image of God. And still, respect shows itself daily in our multicultural democracy. It appears in our legal system, community service, and our commitment to reconciliation with First Nations peoples. But respect is not an idea. Respect is the quiet, daily act of listening. It is sharing responsibility, honouring autonomy, and creating safety. Respect is love in action, helping others flourish. 

This is the heart of Emmanuel. God with us. God in us. When we nurture this presence, respect becomes instinctive. When we see Christ in one another, reverence becomes our natural response. 

Alleluia for every person who chooses respect. Alleluia for those who interrupt violence and create safety. Alleluia for every home, workplace, community, and parish where dignity is honoured and the divine image is cherished.”  

Reflection Questions

1. Waking Up

• Where in my life am I spiritually asleep or distracted?

• What helps me become more aware of God in the present moment?

 2. Seeing the Divine in Others

• Who do I struggle to see as carrying the image of God?

• What daily practices might help me treat others with deeper reverence?

• When was the last time I felt “ambushed by the divine beauty” in another person?

 3. Facing Violence and Its Impact

• What forms of violence, disrespect, or injustice stir righteous anger in me?

• How does naming my own shadows or harmful patterns open space for healing?

• What does imagining God as healer, rather than judge, change in my understanding of divine judgment?

 4. Respect and Human Dignity

• Where do I see respect flourishing in my relationships and community?

• Where is respect failing, and how might I respond with courage and compassion?

• How can I make safety, dignity, and kindness more visible in my home, parish, or workplace?

Sermon Notes for Sunday 23rd November on Luke 23:33-43 by Doug Bannerman

Christ the King

In 2020 Hannah Clarke and her three children died a violent death at the hands of her estranged husband. The coroner presiding at the inquest into their deaths found that it was unlikely anything more could have been done to prevent Rowan Baxter from killing his family. However, later evidence provided by whistle blowers from both the police system and the coronial system has cast doubt on that finding.

The Brisbane mother had made repeated disclosures of nonlethal strangulation, stalking, phone hacking, rape and suspected child abuse. She believed that Baxter was capable of killing her, himself and the children. None of these disclosures were logged in the police systems at the time and the coronial system failed to take proper note of the evidence presented.

When Baxter abducted his youngest daughter, he was very charming and persuasive with the two officers who went to his property. Astonishingly, the officers ended up giving him advice on how to thwart the restraining order Hannah Clarke had in place.

Baxter controlled, abused, stalked and killed his estranged wife and their children, having spent days planning the act. A hideous and extreme example of Gender Based Violence (GBV).

The failures of the police and coronial systems beggars belief and, in my opinion, those failures belie the influence of a flawed cultural script in both institutions. I believe that the same flawed script is a feature of Australian culture. A dominant facet of that script is a failure to listen to the woman. It takes extreme courage for a woman to say out loud what is happening behind closed doors.

Shockingly, in 2023 – 2024, one woman was killed by an intimate partner every 8 days on average.

A report in last Friday’s Guardian (21 November 2025) notes that “statistically, the most reliable way to predict a domestic violence homicide is to believe the victim”. LISTEN TO THE WOMAN.

Today is the start of a national 16 days of action against GBV. But we need to take a closer look at what it entails. At first sight we think of physical or sexual violence only; but GBV encompasses far more than that.

Although actual or threatened physical and sexual assaults are common forms of GBV, regular use of other abusive behaviours, when reinforced by one or more acts of physical violence, make up a broader system of abuse known as Coercive Control. Physical assaults may occur only once or very occasionally, but they instil threats of future attacks and allow the abuser to take control of the woman’s life and circumstances.

Here are the characteristics of coercive control.

Intimidation

Employs looks, actions and gestures that make her afraid. Smashes her things. Destroys her property. Abuses pets. Displays weapons.

Emotional Abuse

Puts her down. Makes her feel bad about herself. Calls her names. Makes her think she’s crazy. Plays mind games. Humiliates her. Makes her feel guilty.

Isolation

Controls what she does, who she sees and talks to, where she goes. Limits her outside involvement. Uses jealousy to justify actions.

Minimising, Denying and Blaming

Makes light of the abuse and does not take her concerns seriously. Says the abuse didn’t happen. Shifts responsibility for abusive behaviour. Says she caused it.

Using Children

Makes her feel guilty about the children. Uses the children to relay messages. Uses visitation to harass her. Threatens to take the children away

Economic Abuse

Prevents her from getting or keeping a job. Makes her ask for money. Takes her money. Does not her know about or have access to family income.

Male Privilege

Treats her like a servant. Makes all the big decisions. Acts like the “master of the castle”. Defines the roles of men and women in the relationship.

Coercion and Threats

Makes and/or carries out threats to do something that will hurt her. Threatens suicide. Threatens to report her to welfare. Makes her drop charges. Makes her do illegal things

That’s a brief outline of the dynamics.

In the population at large, something like 25% women experience GBV; but according to a report commissioned by the Anglican Church of Australia, 44% of churchgoing women experience GBV, often exacerbated by the perpetrator’s use of biblical references to justify his opinions and actions. The worst offenders were priests.

Why, then are we discussing this on the last Sunday of the church calendar, when we celebrate Christ the King?

Jesus never, ever, identified himself as a king, although he did say in his conversation with Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (John 18.36)

Earthly kings and emperors in Jesus’ time were Roman imperialists predominantly interested in money and power. Their subjects were subjugated, poor, dispossessed, and powerless to determine their own lives. In essence they were survivors of institutional violence.

But you may recall that, in the long history of ancient near East, the relationships between ruler and subject were represented as that between a good shepherd and his sheep. For example, the 6th king of the first dynasty of Babylon, King Hamurabi (1792-1750 BCE), described himself as “shepherd of men” and “supplier of pasture and water”, who has been appointed “to destroy the ruthless and the wicked and to prevent the weak from being robbed of his just rights by the strong.”

So, the ideal of kingship in 1750 BCE included the protection that the true shepherd gives to his flock, by leading the needy to pasture, providing food and drink, and establishing pasturages and places of safety.

However, a thousand odd years later in Ezekiel’s time (circa 600 BCE), that benign model of kingship had given way in Israel to an imperialist model that mercilessly exploited the poor and the weak. And the prophet Ezekiel declared: For thus says the Lord God: “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out” (Ezekiel 34:11).

Ezekiel regarded the office of shepherd to be a responsible vocation of caring not only for fit and healthy sheep, but also the weak, the sick, the injured, the strayed, and the lost.; and he was bent on calling the king and the ruling classes to account. Indeed, he called to account all who crushed the unpropertied and underprivileged classes.

It was six hundred years after Ezekiel when Jesus declared himself to be “the Good Shepherd”. The Kingship of Jesus the Christ is indeed not of this world, and is modelled on the likes of King Hammurabi, some 1750 years before his time.

I leave the last word on this subject to the prominent first century Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo (On Husbandry 50).

To be a shepherd is so good a thing as to be justly attributed not only to kings and wise men and perfectly purified souls, but even to God the ruler of all … For he speaks thus: “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall lack nothing”. (Psalm 23.1) This psalm should be rehearsed by every lover of God, and in an especial sense by the universe. For like a flock, earth and water and air and fire and all plants and animals in them … are led according to right and law by God the Shepherd and King, who has set over them his true Logos and first-begotten Son, who takes over the care of this sacred Flock like the vice-regent of a great king. For it is said somewhere, “Behold, I am; I send my angel to thy face, to keep thee in the way”. (Exodus 23.20) So let the universe, the greatest and most perfect flock of the self-existent God, say “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall lack nothing.”

Resources: In 1984, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth developed group workshops for men who batter and for their victims. Inter alia, the project published a way to describe such battering to victims, offenders, practitioners in the criminal justice system and the general public: the Duluth Wheel of Violence. Since then, many wheels of Violence and corresponding Non-Violence have been published for a variety of contexts. The description of coercive control above is adapted from the original Duluth model.

Doug Bannerman 2025

Sermon Notes Sunday 2nd November

by Mark Stuckey

What springs to mind when you hear the words All Saints Day advertised?Is it someone who is a well-known saint? Is it one of the images depicted in our stain glass windows around the church?Is it someone known more personally to us, who has encouraged us by their faith. Today, on All Saints Day, we pause to remember those who have gone before us – those lives bore witness to the grace and power of God. Some were famous, like St Augustine or Mother Teresa. While others were quiet saints known more personally to us, parents, grandparents, neighbours, mentors. These peoples’ witness of faith have shaped our own faith story. All Saints Day is not about honouring the past; it’s about recognising the inheritance we share with them and the calling we now carry. Today, friends, our bible passages see us looking through two windows into the heart of God’s kingdom. One is Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – a soaring declaration of our identity in Christ. The other is Jesus’ teaching in Luke – a radical call to live out that identity in a broken world. Together, these passages answer two questions: Who are we in Christ? How should we live because of it? Let’s begin by deep diving into what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians.

Part 1: You are Chosen and Empowered (Ephesians 1:11-23)

Paul begins with a bold claim. In verse 11 we read, “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will…” This verse tells us that you are not random. You are not forgotten. But in fact, you are chosen! We have an identity in Christ. To give some context about inheritance we need to return to the earlier verses of Ephesians chapter 1. In verse 4 it points out that God chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. We were chosen!

As part of our identity in Christ, the Apostle Paul highlights that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit (v.13). What does it mean to be sealed with the Holy Spirit? In ancient times, a seal was a mark of ownership, authenticity, and protection. Kings sealed letters to prove they were genuine. Merchants sealed goods to show they belonged to someone. And God seals us with His Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s mark on your life. He’s the guarantee of your inheritance. He’s the presence of God dwelling in you. “He has put His seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 1:22) That means your salvation is secure. Your identity is sealed. You are not just saved – you are sealed.

This inheritance that we have been offered is not just to be used for future glory – it’s present identity that exists in each of us and that we can use as we go about the ministry we have been called to perform. The saints we remember today lived with this assurance as part of their identity. They new they belonged to God, and this radiated from them when they did their ministry tasks. The application for us is that we can be encouraged. Be encouraged that you, too, are part of this inheritance. You are sealed with the Spirit. You are not forgotten but rather loved. You are not alone. You are part of the communion of saints.

Eyes of the Heart

In his letter to the Ephesians Paul prays that the “eyes of your heart may be enlightened” (v.18). What does it mean by the eyes of your heart may be enlightened? Paul tells us that we can recognise the hope to which He has called you. We can recognise the riches of His glorious inheritance. We can recognise His incomparably great power for us who believe. This power, Paul says is the same power that raised Christ from the dead (v.20). That means resurrection power lives in you. Not just to survive – but to thrive. Not just to be saved – but to be sent. The saints we know lived with their eyes wide open to God’s work in

the world. In very individualised ways each of our saints demonstrated love in action, they did things with their hands, they visited the lonely and the sick, cared for people, listen to people, led people, prayed for people. But most of all they showed Christ’s love to people in a broken world. For each of them they saw beyond suffering, beyond injustice, beyond death.

Our application here is we can ask God to open our eyes and hearts. Allow us to see the world as the saints did – with hope, with courage, with love. As we go about our lives, our ministries, let our testimonies of faith display the power of Christ working with us.

Part 2: Living the Kingdom Way (Luke 6:20-31)

We have seen how Paul instructed the Ephesians about how to live a life pleasing to God. As we move into Luke’s Gospel, we see how Jesus instructs his disciples to live life. Life as the disciples know it is about to turn upside down. Jesus says to the disciples:

“Blessed are you who are poor…

Blessed are you who are hungry now…

Blessed are you who weep now…” (vv.20-21)

Here we see Jesus redefining blessing. The blessings are not offering as comfort, wealth or applause – but rather the blessings are as dependence, longing and humility.

Reversal of Values

As we move through the beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel a reversal of values becomes obvious to us with the woe statements. Jesus warns the rich, the full, the laughing, and the praised about their lifestyle. Why does Jesus offer this warning? Because the kingdom of God is not built on self-sufficiency. It’s built on surrender. This echoes Paul’s message. You were chosen not because you were strong, but because God is gracious. This is the kingdom the saints embraced. The Kingdom Way. They lived counterculturally. They chose humility over pride, sacrifice over comfort, mercy over vengeance. “Blessed are you who are poor in spirit, for your is the kingdom of God” (v.20).

For us what is the application? What does sainthood look like today? It looks like choosing the way of Jesus when the world chooses power. It looks like standing with the marginalised. It looks like living generously, even when it costs us.

Radical Love

Jesus doesn’t stop at the blessings and woes when instructing his disciples. Jesus continues and offers a most challenging command. He calls us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you (vv.27-28). This is resurrection power in action. This is what it looks like when the eyes of your heart are enlightened.You turn the other cheek (v.29)You give freely (v.30)You treat others as you want to be treated (v.31)

This is the heart of sainthood. This isn’t weakness – it’s kingdom strength. It’s the power to forgive, to bless, to love radically. The saints were not perfect, but they were transformed by love. They forgave when it was hard. They served when it was inconvenient. They loved when it made no sense.

For us what take away can we obtain when considering radical love. Consider radical love this way - Who is hard for you to love right now? And what would it look like to live as a saint in your workplace, your family, your community?

At the beginning of the sermon, I indicated that our bible passages today were like looking through two windows into the heart of God’s Kingdom. Our passages align with each other. In Ephesians it states you are chosen. In Luke, it says you are blessed even in poverty. In Ephesians it states you are empowered. In Luke, it says you are called to love radically. In Ephesians it states you have hope. In Luke, it says you live with kingdom values. In Ephesians it states you are sealed with the Spirit. In Luke, it says you reflect the Spirit through mercy.

Paul gives us the foundation. Jesus gives us the application.For us to be saints, be encouraged and know that you are chosen, sealed and empowered. Let that shape your decisions, your relationships, your worship. Be prepared to practice upside-down love – love the unlovable. Forgive the unforgivable. Bless the undeserving. That is kingdom living. Ask God to open your hearts to see His hope, His riches, and His power. And be the church that reflects Christ just as the saints who have gone before us have done. For the saints that we have loved they stood in awe of Jesus in their lives. We too as saints can stand in awe of Jesus and be guided by him. In a world of division, let us be a community of mercy. In a culture of revenge, let us be a people of grace.

Conclusion: You are the light.

Paul ends by saying that Christ is the head of the church, “which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (v.23)That’s you. That’s us!We are the fullness of Christ in the world. So, let’s live like it. Let’s love like it.Let’s be the people who know who we are – and live it out with radical grace.

Sermon Notes Sunday 26th October

Luke 18:9-14 by Desiree Snyman

A tax collector and a Pharisee went to the temple to pray; the tax collector walked away justified in the sight of God. A pimp and the Pope sent to church to pray. The pimp walked away justified in the sight of God. Desmond Tutu and a bikie gang sergeant at-arms complete the Camino pilgrimage; the bikie gang member was justified in the sight of God. 

John Crossan once wished he could use the image of a pimp and the pope going to church to pray as a modern way to illustrate Luke 18, but his editors refused, fearing it would offend Catholic readers. Yet offence and outrage are precisely the point of the parable of Luke 18. That shock is the good news. It is the beginning of liberation. These stories are meant to disturb us, to break open what we think we know about holiness and belonging.

I have sympathy for the potential shock that hearing a pimp and not the Pope was pleasing to God (Luke 18). I was trained as an Anglican priest in Johannesburg. One training rector described to me how a brothel owner had become a key member of his local church, having undergone life changing transformation. As she was unable to abandon her employment, her Christian mentors were discipling her to become the best brothel owner in town. What did this look like? She ensured her employees had the best protection available and that they were well cared for and safe at work. I remember my shock. In my youthful, evangelical naivete I had anticipated that she would abandon her line of work as part of her spiritual journey. The shock of Luke 18’s parable is there to remind us that life is messy, there are seldom straight lines to God, and God connects to us beyond the confines of societal expectations, religious judgements and in surprising ways. 

Read in isolation, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector might seem a simple warning against religiosity, arrogance, or moral self-satisfaction. And perhaps it is that. But a slow reading of scripture invites us to see it as part of Luke’s greater journey, a continuous movement toward the question: Who will enter the kingdom of God? Today’s Pharisee and tax collector story is the climax of that question. Luke has been leading us here all along. The Pharisees had asked Jesus when the kingdom would come, and he replied, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed... for, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17.20). Every parable since has been about persistence, courage, and the refusal to lose heart in the face of empire’s discouragement; the quiet insistence that the reign of God is already here, already breaking in, wherever righteousness and justice meet with mercy and humility. 

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” In other words, God’s realm of influence is so near you can reach out and touch it. God is within, among, and around us like breath. And like breath God vibrates as presence in every person we meet. Each face reveals the divine. This is both liberating and unsettling. If God’s presence is available to all, what then of religion, law, church or temple? If God’s presence is in all, then God is within the face of our beloveds, but also glimpses out from the face of our enemies. 

The kingdom invites us beyond boundaries into oneness with God. The good news is that the kingdom is here. How do we begin to see it? Through repentance, from metanoia, meaning “to go beyond the mind.” Metanoia is not about confession, but awakening. Greek thought saw four levels of reality: body, soul, universal soul or Mind, and God. To repent is to go beyond the mind, to go beyond all these identifications, to rest in the One who already holds us.

Repentance is not striving but surrender, a letting go into the reality that we are already in God.

Religion and sacrament have value when they lead us to this surrender as Denise Levertov writes in The Avowal:

As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky
and water bears them...
so would I learn to attain freefall...
knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace.

Sermon Notes Sunday 19th October

Luke 18:1-8 by Desiree Snyman

The Persistent Widow:

Parables of Justice, Faith, and Resistance in Luke

In the era of Twitter, Instagram reels, and quick sound bites, our attention spans have shortened, making it difficult to engage in the slow, attentive reading of Scripture that discipleship demands. In Jesus’ world, stories were layered, rhythmic, and participatory, serving to preserve memory and provoke moral imagination. Ancient storytelling sought to educate the heart as much as the intellect.

Rethinking How We Approach Scripture

Three common habits that often prevent us from engaging deeply with any Biblical text include:

Fragmented Reading: Stories are frequently extracted out of Luke’s broader narrative context. The parable of the persistent widow is more than a lesson "about prayer." It sits within Jesus’ teachings on justice, persistence, and faith under imperial rule. Luke consistently pairs prayer with calls for justice, and the widow’s plea echoes the prophetic challenge for the powerful to heed the powerless.

Fast-food Interpretation: The desire to "get the point" can interrupt the story’s artistry. Jesus’ parables are not merely moral fables, but provocations meant to disrupt and spark the imagination. They reward slow reading, attentive to irony, exaggeration, and reversal. The unjust judge is a mirror for both the systems in which we live and our own reluctance to act until compelled by persistent need.

·Over-personalising Application: If interpretation stops at "what does this mean for me," the communal and political aspects of Scripture are lost. The Bible was written for communities, not the isolated, individualised self of the 21st century. The widow in the parable symbolises public resistance rather than private piety, refusing to be silenced in a society that denies her a voice.

To read as the first listeners did means:

·      Honouring the flow of the Gospel instead of treating verses as isolated proof-texts.

·      Slowing down to let tension, humour, and shock have their full effect.

·      Rooting interpretation in the life of the community, where faith, justice, and prayer intersect.

 

Persistent Women and the Politics of Prayer: Luke 18 in the Company of the Bent Woman

Luke 18:1–8, the parable of the persistent widow, is not simply a call to "pray harder." It is a social parable closely connected to the story of the bent woman in Luke 13. Both women endure exclusion, remain unnamed, and live under systems that deform body and spirit. Their persistence reveals the nature of God’s justice in a world out of alignment.

The bent woman in Luke 13 is physically crippled by a "spirit of infirmity," representing social and economic oppression. Her bent spine symbolises the crushing burden of debt and exploitation in an imperial economy. Jesus’ act of healing her is both medical and political; he sets her free, invoking the Sabbath command to release those bound by servitude and debt. The widow in Luke 18 continues this work of Jubilee politics (the release of debt and slaves every 50th year). Her plea for justice addresses systemic injustice, seeking recognition and restoration in a legal system designed to silence and exclude. Like the bent woman, she refuses invisibility. Both women embody a faith that refuses to yield to an unjust status quo; the kind of faith Jesus references at the end of the parable, asking, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Both women stand upright not only physically but in moral stature, confronting a world that tells them to remain small and silent, and insisting that the reign of God begins with justice now.

 

The Magnificat and the Widow’s Cry

The persistent widow’s cry echoes Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). Both proclaim the divine reversal central to Luke’s Gospel: the proud brought low and the lowly lifted up. Mary’s song is a prophetic overture, and the widow’s persistence enacts this vision of the hungry being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. The widow embodies the same hunger for justice, confronting an unjust judge who personifies heartless power serving wealth and status. Both highlight the gulf between privilege and poverty and refuse to accept it as unchangeable.

 

Persistent Widows in the Genealogy of Resistance

Throughout Scripture, persistent widows represent courage that bridges despair and hope. Esther risks her life before the king to save her people. Rachel weeps for her children and refuses consolation until justice is done. Naomi and Ruth navigate systems designed to abandon them, transforming solidarity into survival. Judith and Tamar use courage and cunning to expose hypocrisy and violence. The story of Rizpah is an Old Testament equivalent of the persistent widow. King David handed over the 7 sons of Saul for execution by the Gibeonites who impaled them. The mother of two of the deceased, Rizpah, held vigil day and night for months, protecting them from birds and wild animals. Her persistent public act of mourning shamed David into retrieving the remains of both Saul’s family and her sons, giving them a proper burial. Rizpah’s persistence exposed injustice and prompted the king to act with compassion.

Luke’s widow stands in this lineage of women who bend the arc of history through moral imagination and determined hope. Like the bent woman, Rizpah, Esther, Naomi and Ruth, the persistent widow teaches that faith is not passive piety but embodied persistence: the daily work of crying out, standing up, and refusing to let injustice have the final say. Together, these stories form an icon of Sabbath Economics: liberation, redistribution, and renewal. Their defiance unmasks the false gods of hierarchy and wealth, and their endurance calls the Church to rediscover what it means to pray with faith and resistance.

 

Seeing as They See

To hear the parable of the persistent widow correctly is to regain apocalyptic sight: to see through illusions of fairness and order projected by empire. The widow sees from the underside of history. She does not wait for resurrection to change the world, she rises herself, every day, to demand justice. Those living with privilege—including affluent Western Christians—are often resistant to this biblical testimony, even while professing loyalty to Scripture’s "authority." Luke’s parable remains a "text of terror" for the comfortable church but also an invitation to relearn the economy of grace and practise Sabbath economics: a radical rhythm of release, redistribution, and rest that reorders human community according to God’s justice and joy. This parable challenges the comfortable and summons conversion, calling us to reclaim Sabbath economics where worth is found not in accumulation, but in compassion and justice.

 

Contemporary Discipleship and the Practice of Persistence

The interconnected Lukan stories serve as both ancient mirrors and living maps for today. The bent woman, the persistent widow, Mary, and others, depict humanity’s struggle for healing and integrity within unjust systems. Faith is not belief detached from the world, but a practice of resistance, standing upright in systems that deform human dignity. Discipleship in every era must take the form of persistent prayer embodied as public action. The persistent widow’s cry is echoed today in those demanding fair wages, housing, climate action, and truth about histories of dispossession. The bent woman’s healing lives on wherever communities lift bodies from humiliation and scarcity.

Faith communities following Jesus in Luke’s pattern are called to be schools of moral imagination, listening to the voices of the poor and excluded, exposing systems of exploitation, and creating small economies of grace that make another world possible. These communities read Scripture for courage as much as consolation and pray not for escape from history but for strength to engage it redemptively. Mary’s song continues to call the Church to magnify the God who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly. The widow’s voice reminds us that prayer is not passive, and justice cannot wait. The healing stories teach that spiritual renewal is inseparable from social repair.

To follow Jesus in this vision is to become a people who see what empire hides, who cry out until the powerful hear, and who, like the women of Luke’s Gospel, keep faith alive until justice is done.

Sermon Notes Sunday 12th October

Luke 17:11-19 by Desiree Snyman

Square Pegs. Round Holes.

To the Crazy Ones

(Inspired by Steve Jobs, Think. Different.)

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently.

They are not fond of rules and have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them,
but you cannot ignore them, because they change things.

…Maybe they must be crazy.
How else can you look at an empty canvas and see a work of art,
sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been sung,
or look at a scarred world and glimpse the kingdom of God?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see the visionaries of grace.
Because the people who are bold enough to believe that love can change the world are the ones who do.

Who Were the Samaritans?

The Samaritans were a small community who claimed descent from the ancient Israelites of the Northern Kingdom. After the Assyrian conquest in 722 BCE, the Assyrians exiled the upper classes and brought in other nations to resettle the land. These new peoples intermarried with the remaining Israelites.

When the Judeans later returned from exile to rebuild the Temple, the Samaritans offered to help but were rejected because of their mixed heritage and differing worship. From that time, hostility grew between the two groups.

By Jesus’ day, Samaritans were seen as outsiders. Yet in Luke’s Gospel, they often appear as models of compassion and faith, showing that divine mercy reaches beyond boundaries of religion and culture.

 

More Than Thankfulness

At first glance, the story of ten lepers seems like a lesson in gratitude. Yet Luke always invites us to see differently. Jesus travels through the borderland between Samaria and Galilee, a space of transformation. The ten lepers, doubly excluded by illness and impurity, cry out from a distance, calling him Master (epistata), a word Luke uses for disciples. Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests, and as they go, they are cleansed (katharizo). One of them sees he is healed, turns back, glorifies God, and gives thanks (eucharistōn).

Turning Back with the Samaritan

I have every confidence that all ten were grateful. If I step into the story, I find myself running with the nine to the temple, doing what I am told. They do what Jesus asks of them. It would not occur to me to do otherwise. The nine do nothing wrong; they follow the rules.

The Samaritan turns back and thanks Jesus. His worship recalls other moments in Luke where those who see God’s mercy glorify God: the shepherds at the manger, the widow at Nain, the bent woman healed, and the centurion at the cross. Jesus calls him a foreigner (allogenēs), the same word engraved on the Temple’s balustrade warning outsiders not to cross. The irony is striking: the one forbidden to enter the holy place now kneels before the true Holy of Holies. The excluded one alone sees that the glory of God has moved from stone temple to living mercy.

Seeing Differently

Something about the Samaritan enables him to see differently. The others were grateful and obedient, yet he follows a deeper call of the heart. What made him turn back? Why did he see what the others did not? His difference is his gift. It is the courage to see life differently, to step aside from the crowd, to trust an inner freedom that leads him toward love. This is where revelation happens. It is what allows him to kneel in wonder and hear Jesus say, your faith has made you well. Barbara Brown Taylor reflects, “I know how to obey. I read my Bible, say my prayers, pay my pledge, and keep the ship of the church afloat. But I do not know how to be in love. I am one of the nine, but I am intrigued by the tenth leper, whose passion is confounding.”

Turning gratitude into communion.

For the first time in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says to a man, “Your faith has saved you”. He has said it before to two women, one who anointed his feet, and one healed of a hemorrhage. Later Jesus will say to a blind man who cries out, Son of David, have mercy on me, “Your faith has saved you”. Luke delights in these pairings, showing a Gospel that welcomes all.

The Samaritan’s faith is not mere belief but seeing differently, turning gratitude into communion. He does not just obey; he returns. He glorifies God where God is now found.

Where Is the Tenth?

Perhaps it is no surprise that the Samaritan fell behind. Even healed, he remains an outsider. And I wonder how many of our own temples still make others feel the same. How often do we forget those paused at the doorway, unsure of our language, customs, or songs? Church can be a hard place for those whose wounds still show. I am grateful for the Samaritans, those whose faith may yet heal me.
Their faith saves me too.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes,

“Where are the nine? Jesus asks… but where is the tenth? The one who followed his heart instead of his instructions, whose thanksgiving rose up from somewhere deep inside that it turned him around, changed his direction, led him to Jesus, made him well? Where is the one who loved God so much that obedience was beside the point?”

In the Company of Samaritans

In the company of Samaritans, we find a gratitude that heals, a gratitude that sees the Holy where the rules say it cannot be.

Blessed are the ones who see differently,
the square pegs in the round holes,
the ones who dare to believe that love can change the world,
because they are the ones who do.

Who are those that help us see differently today?
The ones whose minds and perceptions move to a different rhythm.
The neurodiverse, the dreamers, the artists, the questioners,
those who notice what others overlook,
who find beauty where others see disorder,
and who remind us that there are many ways to be whole.

They are our Samaritans.
Through their difference, we glimpse the wideness of God’s mercy
and the unexpected shape of grace.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. 1993.  The Preaching Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications.

Luke 17:5–10: “Increase Our Faith”

Each of the four Gospels highlights a different aspect of the Christian journey. Matthew’s Gospel asks: “How do I face change?” Mark’s Gospel answers the question: “How do I move through suffering?” John’s Gospel proclaims the joy of union with God, when we can say with Christ, “The Father and I are one.” Luke-Acts offers a manual for how we mature in loving service.

Luke 17:5–10 is a vivid metaphor of maturing in loving service. A servant ploughs the field, tends the sheep, and then comes inside to serve at the table. Ploughing, shepherding, and table service epitomise how the early church understood the essence of Christian ministry as humble, self-giving love expressed in practical service.

The servanthood is not that of a reluctant slave oppressed and coerced into work. The image is service not slavery. When we experience the joy of union, of being loved moment by moment by the divine lover, and when we are caught up in the breath of God’s love our response is to fall on our knees and ask how we may be of service so that others might experience the depth of this joy, this love, this union with the divine.

A similar analogy might be found in any vocation of service. Once a doctor has finished a consultation with one patient, he or she does not ask to be congratulated; instead, they wash their hands and welcome the next patient. A teacher finishes teaching a grade 8 class mathematics; he or she doesn’t expect rest or medal but prepares the classroom to welcome the next cohort of students. Caring for family is the Gospel journey of maturing in loving service. Any caregiver who has lovingly prepared a meal and fed a dependent child does not ask to relax or for a reward; they continue the evening routine by bathing the child, readying them for bed and perhaps even telling them a bedtime story. The analogies here tell a story of continued care for another in self-sacrificing love when the false self or ego is subdued in any act of service.

The disciples cry out, “Increase our faith!” But Jesus gently redirects them. The issue is not the size of their faith; it is the focus of their lives. “Increase our faith” is an anxious prayer of those who have made the issue about themselves, their small, anxious selves. In focusing on their faith or the amount thereof they have lost sight of the broader mission: loving and serving God through loving and serving others. Faith matures when it flows outward in service, not when it spirals inward into self-concern. Here we are offered insight into the capriciousness of the ego, the false self, the small self; it will even use religious means to centre on self away from authentic love.

I find the Gospel lesson helpful; in moments when doubt or fear cause us to spiral inwards and focus on the small, individual self, a gentle invitation to turn outwards with love and the focus on light takes me back onto the road of loving service.

The “Scream” of Climate Anxiety

 Edvard Munch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this week, driving to work and listening to climate reports, I noticed school children waiting for the bus. I had what I might call an “Edvard Munch Scream moment”. I felt suddenly overwhelmed: What kind of world are these children preparing for? A world where education feels fragile; where governments flirt with authoritarianism; where climate change brings floods, droughts, and pandemics; where new gas and coal projects are approved even as ecosystems collapse.

Australia’s own National Climate Risk Assessment has laid out what is at stake: severe risks to defence and national security, very high risks to our food production and economy, and whole ecosystems – coral reefs, forests, river systems – showing signs of collapse. The Australia Institute warns that fossil fuel exports alone are fuelling global destruction, adding more emissions than nearly any other nation on earth.

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/devastating-climate-risk-assessment-shows-fossil-fuel-exports-must-end/

Spiralling inwards and focusing on my existential dread, the horror of my complicity in damaging the earth and my fear for the future was paralysing and of little use to the world. The invitation to focus on the author of Faith, the Christ, and to spiral outwards in loving service to the type of world I want to live in helped me step out of Edvuard Munsch’s “Scream” and embrace the little faith, hope and love that I did have, even if it was very small, smaller than a mustard seed. Reading the Gospel hand in hand with Joanna Macy’s four step spiral empowered me out of the small, cramped self.

I find Joanna Macy’s wisdom deeply helpful. She describes a spiral of active hope that mirrors our gospel call: four movements that reconnect us to life and lead us outward in love. I share but one outline of Joanna Macy’s work in the hope that your curiosity might be stirred to explore her writings and wisdom further.

1.   Coming from Gratitude

Macy says that we begin with gratitude. Sometimes when life is hard it is enough to be grateful for the breath in our lungs, for the beauty of dawn, for the kindness of a neighbour. Gratitude grounds us in what we love, and reminds us why we care. It steadies the heart and gives us resilience for the work ahead.

2.   Honouring Our Pain for the World

From gratitude we move to grief. We name what is broken, the rising seas, burning forests, and unravelling climate systems. This is lament, a practice our Scriptures know well. As the reading from Lamentations models, to honour our pain is to tell the truth before God and one another. Shared grief breaks isolation and softens our hearts for compassion.

3.   Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes

Gratitude and grief open us to a larger vision. We are invited to see, as Macy says, with new and ancient eyes remembering our kinship with all creation, and recognising that what happens to Earth happens to us. Indigenous wisdom, systems thinking, and our own biblical vision of shalom teach us that justice is ecological as well as social. This wider vision enlarges our belonging and calls us into deeper responsibility. We discover an ecological identity where we are a small part of the wider cosmos, not separate from creation.

4.   Going Forth

Finally, we act. Going Forth means turning love into practical steps, however small. Each of us can ask: What is mine to do? Advocacy, community projects, daily choices, shared prayer all count, no act is wasted, faith can be smaller than a mustard seed and bring about transformation. The spiral continues, for each act of service brings us back to gratitude again.

In moments of dread when we cry out with the disciples, “Increase our faith,” Jesus reminds us that faith is not about magnitude but direction. Not inward into despair, but outward into love. Not paralysing self-focus, but humble service: ploughing the fields of justice, tending the sheep of God’s flock, serving at the table of community.

This is the path of Christian maturity. This is how faith grows. And this is how we, even in the face of the scream, live as people of faith, hope and love. Mary Oliver’s poem “Summer” can offer a structure for our meditation on spiralling outwards into love and service:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Joana Macy resources:Website: https://workthatreconnects.org/

Podcasts: https://www.soundstrue.com/a/resources/we-are-the-great-turning-podcast/ Books: https://www.joannamacy.net/main#books

·      World as Lover, World as Self

·      A wild Love for the world: Joanna Macy and the work of our time

·      Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects

·      Active Hope: How to Face
the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy

·       Widening Circles, a Memoir

Sermon Notes Sunday 28th September

Luke 16:19-31 by Chris Lockley

Thirteen years ago, I was diagnosed with one of the big bad cancers. My GP managed to get me into a specialist surgeon within three days – a professor at the then new Macquarie University hospital. When Madeleine, my wife, and I went to see Professor John, we were still in shock. We had no idea what kind of future we would have. We had made it through those three days on a razor’s edge of anxiety.

When John met us at the door to his office, we suddenly felt enveloped by kindness. As he led us into his room and sat us down, it was as if we were the only two people that mattered to him. He was 100% focused on us. He asked how we were coping with the cancer news. He asked about us and how we were feeling. It was as if we were the two most important people in his world. We felt understood. We knew we were not alone. We found confidence.

When we were finished, John’s secretary took us into her office to work out all the practical details for the surgery. We then moved back to the reception desk – and saw John greeting another couple into his office. I waved to thank him for his help, but he didn’t see me. He was 100% present to this next couple who needed him. They were now the most important people in his life.

What we experienced with Professor John was EMPATHY.  We’re familiar with the word sympathy – which is very different to empathy. One is not necessarily better than the other. They’re both appropriate depending on circumstances.

Very simply, sympathy is feeling for someone, and what they are experiencing. It’s about what we feel. But there’s a certain distance involved. We don’t get involved.

Empathy is feeling with someone. It’s more about the other person’s feelings than our own. It’s seeing things from another person's perspective, seeking to understand, feel and respond to their experience. It creates connection.

Showing empathy recognises that sometimes the best place to start is to simply recognise what someone is going through, as best we can, listen to their pain, and be with them through the tough times. But it doesn’t stop there.

Karen Armstrong’s book “12 steps to a compassionate life”, says empathy is a crucial step towards compassionate action.

The second person I want to tell you about is a very old friend who I hadn’t seen for about 45 years until last year. Tracy was a quiet young high school student in the fellowship group when I’d last seen her. Now she is a Professor of Nursing at a Sydney university. She’s literally written the textbook on nursing. Tracy’s main area of research is empathy, the crucial and the positive impact it has on patient care.

One thing that Tracy’s research shows is that empathy can be learned. My own observation is that it comes naturally to some people. But even if it isn’t a natural inclination, we can learn behaviours and skills to demonstrate empathy.

This link will take you to a You Tube video by one of the leading advocates of empathy, Brene Brown. It’s a three minute, animated video which very helpfully and simply demonstrates empathy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEsjzzqbLIk

Crucial to understanding today’s Bible passage – which I will get to soon – is the recognition that empathy is not just exercised in one-to-one relationships.

It also has implications for how society operates and how we shape our communities, including our churches.

Public policy which neglects empathy can become cruel and inhuman. In our country, we only have to look at the heartbreaking human cost of Robodebt to find an example of policy without empathy. Or institutional cover-up of child and sexual abuse - including in the church.

Historian Hannah Arendt described this at its worst: that the death of human empathy signals a civilisation descending into barbarity.

And now a very different take on the subject from one of the best known – and wealthiest – people on the planet, billionaire Elon Musk. Back when he was a friend of President Trump, in the midst of his work closing down the U.S. overseas aid program, Musk made the comment in a radio interview: “the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy”.

Musk isn’t alone. Julia Baird has written about an anti-empathy movement in the U.S. which sees empathy as dangerous and toxic…even sinful! Yes, there are extreme right Christians denouncing empathy. According to even conservative writers, this movement is obsessed with ignoring suffering and silencing the voices of the dispossessed. It argues that love – especially love for strangers – is a distraction.

Christian nationalist pastor Josh McPherson says the word needs to be struck out of the vocabulary because “empathy is dangerous, empathy is toxic, empathy will align you with hell”.

And in something that sounds like it’s out of The Handmaid’s Tale, he also says that “women are especially vulnerable” to empathy and that husbands should exercise control over who their wives spend time with. (Please note, these are not my comments. I find them appalling.)

Baird points out that “none of these anti-empathy guys quote the actual Bible to make their point.” Because, of course, the Bible is PRO empathy! In fact, today’s gospel reading about the rich man and Lazarus talks about the harmfulness of a lack of empathy.

A little biblical background. The story is only found in the gospels in Luke. Its background demonstrates how not everything Jesus said – his teachings and stories – was his own original material. He draws on his Hebrew tradition and heritage. For instance, we can trace some of his teachings – such as the greatest commandment – back to Rabbi Hillel the Great, who lived 100-150 years before Jesus.

Today’s story is a traditional legend originating in the Jewish community in North Africa 100 or more years before Jesus.

Why is this story recorded in Luke? Luke’s gospel is characteristically concerned with outcasts, the poor, and marginalised. It is especially inclusive of women and children, and others of low social status. I suspect the story is included to reflect and shape the values and ethics of the early Christian community. Luke did the same thing in Acts in describing the life of the early church – where wealthy Christians sold what they had to support the poor and the whole community.

We’ve heard the story read so I don’t need to go over it again in detail – except to point out the rich man’s complete lack of empathy for Lazarus who was dying at his doorstep, in obvious distress and neglect. And following his death, when they experience a reversal of fortunes in the afterlife, the rich man does not repent. He expresses no regret for the way he treated Lazarus in life.

There is no recognition by the rich man of his lack of empathy or compassion for Lazarus. He is still motivated by self-interest.

Firstly, his own interests – he wants some cool water and thinks that Lazarus is still his inferior and should come and serve him.

And secondly, his interest is for his brothers – NOT that they should change their behaviour for the sake of the poor whom they are neglecting to bring about some justice and healing. No, he still doesn’t care about the poor. He doesn’t want his brothers to suffer his own fate. His interest remains on the wellbeing of those who are part of his circle. There is no sign of empathy for the suffering of the poor and marginalised his brothers are neglecting.

Psychologist Gustave Gilbert interviewed Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials. He said after all his work examining the psyches of those who committed the most horrendous acts of World War II that he had come close to finding a definition of the nature of evil. He wrote: “It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants . A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

Empathy is a core Biblical practise.


(Romans 12:15) “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep”. (1 John 3:17) “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” 


And let’s not forget one of Jesus’ key parables, about a certain Samaritan, noticing an injured man by the road, moved with pity to help, despite the danger to himself. It’s such an iconic image, that “Good Samaritan” has become a metaphor for compassion even for those who don’t know its biblical origins.

But perhaps the greatest example of empathy in scriptures is God’s empathy for humanity in becoming human.

As Paul described in Philippians 2, Jesus was the human expression of God’s empathy, emptying himself and entering into our human experience – becoming one of us. The culminating expression of this empathy in Paul’s thinking was Christ’s death on the cross – God’s ultimate identification with humanity.  

When we act with empathy – when we work for empathy in our society and institutions – when we make it a building block of our church community – we are expressing the core nature of God and walking the way of Jesus.

Sermon Notes Sunday 29th October
Desiree Snyman

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (One love)
Hear the children crying (One heart)
Sayin', "Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right."
Sayin', "Let's get together and feel all right."
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa … (Bob Marley and The Wailers) 

Copyright restrictions prevent us from publishing or playing in full Bob Marley’s anthem “One Love”. “One love, One heart” expresses the type of love that unites, includes, and transforms. To my way of thinking, the reggae beat to “One Love” needs to be heard as an ear worm as one considers the sacred text exhortation today “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself. 

There is a deeper meaning behind the song than a simple call for unity. One Love addresses the repression and violence in the Jamaican 1976 elections and the unrest caused by the hostilities between the national and labour parties. Since then, the anthem “One Love” retains a message of hope and healing in the context of upheaval – a message as pertinent today as it was then.  Bob Marley’s inspiration is also the path into today’s ubiquitous message of Love God, neighbour, and self:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Matthew 22.37–40.

Before the two great commandments made it onto page 120 of A Prayer Book for Australia, before it was written in Mark 12:28-34, Matthew 22:34-40, and Luke 10:25-28, it was intoned from the Hebrew Scriptures.  

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 and Leviticus 19.18

Believe it or not, Jesus did not invent the Two Great Commandments, he adapted them from two books in the Pentateuch, the Torah.  Deuteronomy 6.4-5, the Shema, asserts:

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Love your neighbour as yourself is from Leviticus 19.18:

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.

Jesus combines these two sacred texts, the Shema from Deuteronomy. and a liturgical text from Leviticus into one sentence. The first time the unity of love of God and love of neighbour is noted, is in Mark’s Gospel, written about 30 years after the teaching of Jesus.  

Mark 12:28-34,

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

When Mark writes his Gospel, the Shema from Deuteronomy is expanded: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Yes, Mark adds “mind” to how we love God. In Mark’s Gospel there is a friendly debate happening, it is a scribe who asks Jesus the question about which law is greatest, and the scribe is very pleased with Jesus’ answer.  

Matthew

In Matthew’s Gospel, the scribe disappears, and an argumentative lawyer asks Jesus for one great commandment, Jesus replies with two commandments: The second commandment is like the first “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Notice that the first part of the Shema disappears. Verse 40, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” is significant. The emphasis of the Law is the love of God. The Law expects that we orientate our entire existence towards God at that God is at the centre of all we think and do. The message of the prophets on the other hand is about properly loving neighbour with justice and mercy. Jesus is an evolutionary prophet, seeing beyond either or thinking. For Jesus it is both, and. For Jesus it is not about love of God or love of neighbour, it is love of neighbour and love of God at the very same time, in the very same moment. This is how I interpret the Zen koan type question Jesus throws back at the argumentative lawyer:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? 45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

For a dualistic thinker the world is divided into black and white, inside, and outside, neighbour and enemy, God and human. Jesus sees the oneness of all reality. When he asks how David can call his son Lord, the lawyers can’t answer the problem. We the reader know that Jesus is the son of David and the Messiah at the very same time. The non-duality hinted at in Matthew reaches full flourishing in Luke.  

Luke

Luke is written by a gentile for gentiles so the references to the Hebrew scriptures are lost completely. In Luke 10 it is not Jesus who gives the two great commandments but a lawyer who gives one sentence. A man approaches Jesus asking a deep existential question and like the good facilitator he is Jesus throws the question back, “what do the scriptures say?” The lawyer replies ““You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” 

Notice how the distance between love of God and neighbour is decreased from being in two separate books in the Hebrew Torah until in Luke’s Gospel the two loves are distilled into a single sentence, rather than two teachings knitted together from two different books of the Bible. The unity of love of God and love of neighbour continues to develop in scripture. For example, in a letter from John: “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20 NRSV) 

How we love something is how we love everything.

If we take these two commandments and think of them as two steps to a life worth living, we may have missed the point entirely. Some people describe a vertical relationship with God being honour for God and a horizontal relationship of love of neighbour. It’s a mistake because God has never been “up there”, there is and has never been any “vertical” relationship with God ever. At any rate, this has never made sense to me because if we are going to numerate the loves, I notice three, the love of God, the love of neighbour and the love of oneself. Furthermore, any spiritual practice devoted to loving God is more accurately a space to allow God to love us. For all who think the sacred is “up there”, the unity of love of God and love of neighbour redirects, the sacred is not up there but in the neighbour, in you. To come back to Bob Marley, there is only “One Love”. Life is all one love, one love, one love, one love. Love of God, neighbour and self, is deeper than love, it is about union, what Julian of Norwich calls oneing.  

Love means that we are in God

In every moment that we love God, we are loving our neighbour. The best way we can love God and the best way we can love our neighbour is to love ourselves. Lady Julian of Norwich uses the idea of “oneing” to describe divine union that love brings about. In chapter 53 of Revelations of Divine Love, she writes,

“This beloved soul was preciously knitted to God in its making, by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is oned in God. In this oneing, it is made endlessly holy. Furthermore, God wants us to know that all the souls which will be saved in heaven without end are knit in this knot, and oned in this oneing, and made holy in this holiness.”

Love is more than an action or a feeling, it is a state of being. God or neighbour are not the objects of our love. In any moment of loving, you, God, and neighbour are one. If God makes God’s home in me, and God makes God’s home in you, then it is the God in me loving the God in you.

The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . And the soul who contemplates this is made like [the one] who is contemplated. 

(Julian of Norwich in “Showings”, Chapter 22 (Short text), trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Paulist Press: 1978), 164).

The point about love is oneing, in any moment of authentic love, we are oned with God, oned within ourselves and oned with creation. I would like to end with a quote from Rowan Williams:

The whole story of creation, incarnation, and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ's body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God's giving that God's self makes in the life of the Trinity. We are created so that we may be caught up in this, so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God.

(by Rowan Williams in an essay originally delivered as the 10th Michael Harding Memorial Address to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in 1989).

Sermon Notes Sunday 22nd October

Geoff Vidal

Matthew 22:15-33

I have found these last few weeks particularly distressing. Very hostile points of view have been blasted at us in media. People demand that we accept what they say without any discussion or search for understanding. There seems to be no attempt at seeking common ground or compromise. The VOICE referendum polarized opinions rather than drawing our nation into agreeing that there is a better way of working out how we do things. We have a horrible situation in the middle east with no obvious willingness to find ways to end conflict. Meanwhile the war in Ukraine forgotten and places of dreadful food shortages are ignored. That probably sounds a bit depressing, so let me tell you a Good News story. 

There was a time when US Presidents thought deeply about people who were even fighting and killing Americans; enemies were not to be annihilated but prayed for. Every year Roosevelt attended a special service at St. John’s church in Washington to commemorate his first inauguration. In 1944, as WWII was being fought, a junior Episcopalian Priest named Johnson was given the job of planning the service at St John’s. Rev Johnson decided to include a controversial prayer, one entitled “Prayer for Our Enemies.” The other clergy at St. John’s were critical of what Johnson planned to do. They told him “The White House would never authorize that prayer in wartime,” “It would be misunderstood throughout the country; the publicity would be terrible, since the Biblical instruction to pray for our enemies was scarcely understood, even by Christians in this country.”  

When Roosevelt read over the proposed service, however, he scribbled a note next to the prayer: “Very good – I like it.” Roosevelt recognized that humility, not hatred or anger, was the proper attitude for a nation whose men were under fire. So, gathering in the church at 10:30 on the morning of Saturday, March 4, 1944, the President of the United States, his Cabinet, and the senior officials of a nation that was fighting a major war bowed their heads as these words were prayed: 

Most loving Father,
who by thy Son Jesus Christ
hast taught us to love our enemies and to pray for them,
we beseech thee, give to those who are now our enemies the light of thy Holy Spirit.
Grant that they and we,
being enlightened in conscience and cleansed from every sin, may know and do thy will, and so be changed from foes to friends united in thy service;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

(From American Gospel: God, The Founding Fathers, and The Making of a Nation, Jon Meacham, Random House, Inc., 2006, p.167-8.) 

That was 1944. Now, opponents are demonized and we are being bombarded by statements seemingly not up for discussion or thinking through. A commentator recently described us as living in our own bubble of opinion. 

The last few weeks readings from Matthew have reported parables told by Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem early in this incredible week of Jesus life between him riding the donkey into town and being crucified. (It’s now probably the Tuesday of Passion Week or Holy Week). And while people (even ourselves) might be saying “here we go, yet another parable we have to listen to”, Jesus began by asking “what do you think?” 

The Friday people hear me week after week beginning the service by saying “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” These words continue on from where we stopped in Matthew 22 this morning and describe Jesus’ answer to the next question he was asked; “which commandment is the greatest?”  

We are to love God with all our mind. We are to think! I appreciate the way the teaching of Desiree and Doug makes me think. I looked up some quotes on thinking. 

“It isn't what people think that is important, but the reason they think what they think.” EUGENE IONESCO 

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” WALTER LIPPMAN 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death”.  BERTRAND RUSSELL 

Well, what happened after Jesus asked the Chief Priests and elders in the Temple “what do you think?”? 

Matthew tells us that the Pharisees and the Herodians joined forces and went away plotting a strategy to trap Jesus. It is amazing that these two groups joined together. The Pharisees are nationalistic Jews and the Herodians are followers of Herod, a collaborator of the Romans and therefore a traitor to their people. These opposing groups have the common intent to trap Jesus and show that he was no better than any other Rabbi.

They begin by saying, “we know you tell the truth”. But they aren’t interested in the truth. They don’t want to know the truth. They want to trap Jesus by putting him in a situation where they expect that his response would either cause him to be alienated to a major part of the population by supporting the Roman occupiers or that he would lay himself open to a charge of treason. The word “trap” reveals the motive in this; this is not a dispassionate inquiry into what was the proper attitude to have to the Roman occupiers and their demand for taxes to be paid. These opponents of Jesus aren’t really interested in knowing the right attitude to Roman authority. They just want to put an end to the trouble Jesus is causing. 

So, they ask Jesus this question about taxes. Using a coin to make the point, Jesus answers their question by telling them “give to the emperor the things that are the emperors and to God the things that are God’s”. This statement is sometimes taken to be a teaching about two powers; political and religious. But, if we really think about it, we are being pointed in the direction of something much more profound. Jesus has opened up a debate about worship. Jesus has been asked to judge the comparative worth between two valuable things. 

A piece of metal is made valuable when the image of the Emperor (Caesar Tiberius or King Charles) is stamped on it. We are made valuable because we have the image of God stamped upon us; Genesis says all of us are made in the image of God. Lots of these gold coins with Caesar’s image stamped on them are still around. Coin collectors all around the world are excited that they own these coins almost 2000 years after they were first circulated. Caesar's image, his reputation, his golden impression has lasted 2000 years. Even in hundreds of years’ time, a person who owns one of the coins will be reminded of Caesar and the Roman Empire. His image has stuck; we still render unto it in one way or another. 

The image of God is not stamped on discs of silver or gold. God’s eternal image is stamped on humankind. And thousands of years after people first started knowing God, even after the last man and woman are dead and gone from this earth, the image of God will live on in us for all eternity. 

So, the real question is “what is the comparative worth between God and Caesar (or God and politics)?” Maybe that’s the reason we come to church. Maybe we are trying to discover the relative worth of conflicting values in our lives. 

The question they asked Jesus was about “paying taxes” to Caesar. Jesus’ answer speaks of “giving back” the coin to Caesar. There are two very different things here, paying and giving back. The original Greek verbs express this it clearly. 

Jesus’ answer is not really “give”, but “give back”, to God the things that are God’s. Just what we are to give back is not specified. But perhaps it’s helpful to remember that Jesus was talking to people who knew scripture well. The people knew the Psalm that said, “The earth is the Lords and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). Whatever we have, including life itself, is on loan to us from God. So, we give back to God our lives by enjoying relationship with him; our “worship”. 

There’s not much time left now for us to start thinking deeply about the second part of today’s Gospel reading. And it would be a very long sermon if we started to look at how the Exodus reading about the conversation between God and Moses ties in with our Gospel. But there is a reason why Matthew tells us that Jesus was asked another malicious question, this time about resurrection. Pharisees believed there was a resurrection, but the Sadducees thought that there was nothing after death. Although this case brought up by the Sadducees could have happened, it’s most likely hypothetical, fabricated to confound the Pharisees and others who believed in resurrection. 

Jesus answers the question by saying “you are wrong …. Because you don’t know scriptures nor the power of God”. By God’s power, the resurrection will bring about a change in relationships and in some way, we will be “like the angels in heaven”. Jesus is really sticking it into the Sadducees here, because the Sadducees also denied the existence of angels. In the resurrection, relationships of family and marriage will be so much better than is possible on earth. Jesus then turns from God’s power in resurrection to the word of Scripture. Jesus reminds his listeners of the passage in Exodus where God tells Moses that he is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: they are alive to God. 

God is God not of the dead, but of the living. Here and in heaven.

That’s why we give back to him our lives …. Our worship! 

Sermon Notes Sunday 15th October

Doug Bannerman

Pentecost 20 Matthew 22.1-14 

The majority should have had the grace to deliver for the minority.
But we failed the grace test. (Katherine Murphy) 

I am in profound disagreement with today’s gospel, and I disagree with the inclusion of this parable in what purports to be good news, a parable that exemplifies the Roman Empire in every way.  

Empire bespeaks a centralized social power structure of hierarchy, violence, slavery, poverty, injustice; absolute values imposed absolutely. It bespeaks a voiceless, oppressed, population which has been subjugated for so long, that it is, by and large, unconscious of its situation. Think TikTok, or any of the social platforms that promulgate misinformation.  

Three points.  

This gospel encourages us to regard all synagogues as places of hypocrisy and violence, Jewish leaders as hypocrites and murderers. (4.1-11; 12.34; 16.1-14; 19.3).  

This gospel predominantly focuses on men; and although Matthew does reject patriarchy (19.3-12; 23.8-12), his frequent use of the phrase ‘God the Father’ strongly suggests a divine patriarchy ruled by God.  

This gospel does explicitly resist and expose the violent oppression of the Empire (Chs 2; 14.1-12; 20.20-28; 22.15-22); however, the alternative to Rome’s Empire, God’s Empire, uses the identical term, Empire, together with the concept of supreme power.  

So, Matthew imitates precisely what he rejects. In its enforcement of God’s will to solicit compliance (do it or else), God’s empire resembles Rome’s use of power. And Matthew’s treatment of these issues of ethnicity, gender, and power, assumes the audience will go along with the story, accept its violence, hatred and oppression; and accept the value that opponents are simply impediments to be overcome by whatever means.  

Now, in theory, democracy is much the better way. So, citizens of democracy might consider opponents to be uninformed, mistaken, unwise, or naïve; overly cautious or needlessly impatient; or perhaps that they are animated by a different hierarchy of values, that yields a moral intensity distinct from, but nonetheless commensurate with, our own. But, in practice, there seems to be considerable reluctance in Australian society to consider what it might mean to proceed together meaningfully as partners in shared democratic projects.  

We value free speech; but what makes speech truly free is the possibility of disagreement without enmity. Yet again, in practice, opponents come to regard each other as bigoted, toxic, dangerous, malignant, wilfully ignorant, cynically self-interested, fundamentally dishonest, inferior – and hence incapable of good-faith disagreement.  

Consequently, opponents become symbols to be appropriated for the prosecution of our own politics. And what matters then, is not what our opponents actually say or do, but rather what we have decided they stand for.  

Democracy is not just a form of government. It is also the moral aspiration for a society of self-governing political equals. Citizens are called on to be active democratic participants, but they must also acknowledge one another's political equality. Democracy thus involves an ethic of civility among opposed citizens, in which it is OK to disagree about a choice of actions to take.  

Furthermore, as Robert Talisse wrote, ‘democracy is the proposition that a stable and decent society can be maintained in the absence of lords, masters, sovereigns, superiors, and kings. Democracy is the rejection of political hierarchy.  

This insight imagines society as a dynamic organism in which people are open to changing their preferences and interests in the light of their interactions with others. Not merely a process of assertion and grudging compromise, but one of being mutually influenced as equal participants in a common effort; thereby cultivating the moral dispositions of sympathy, generosity, forbearance and mutual trust, qualities on which true democratic life depend.  

In short, democracy lives by and through acknowledgements of the moral reality of other persons. No democratic society can long withstand the corrosive effect of widespread envy, disdain, disgust, resentment, grudgingness, spitefulness and contempt. 

The greatest danger to the stability of democratic life is not when disagreements become interminable, but when they become incommensurable, with no common standard of measurement – which is to say, when both parties get caught in a state of mutual incomprehension. Contempt thins out democracy until finally it reaches the point of dysfunction.  

Contemporary political contempt tends to arise before moral consensus is achieved and tries to set new norms through intimidation, so as to redefine society’s moral parameters by brute force. Moralism without any of the hard work of moral persuasion. As Scot Stephens and Waleed Ali have noted,

Over the last decade, we’ve watched this dynamic play itself out repeatedly within and between opposing sides around such matters as sexual harassment and abuse, racial injustice, police brutality, climate change, membership of the European Union, vaccine hesitancy, LGBTIQ discrimination, religious freedom, and abortion. On each count, worthy goals of mutual consideration and common pursuit have been either brought undone or had their broader appeal severely compromised by the “hashtag politics” of moral intransigence – think (#GetBrexitDone, #BlackLivesMatter, #DefundthePolice, #SilenceIsViolence, #StayWoke, #ThereIsNoPlanetB, #IGotVaccinated, #SaveRoe, et cetera).  

Declaration and posturing take the place of persuasion, claims of moral superiority undermine the hard work of gradual consensus-building, and the vigilante impulse for summary judgment rules out the possibility of complexity, ambiguity, degrees of complicity, or doubt.   

In the middle of last Thursday night, when silence reigned and phantasies danced in my half-awake mind, I wondered if this is what Jesus would preach in this day and age about the democratic experiment that is Australia?  

When Jesus announced the realm of God, he envisioned a society governed by love – more peaceful, more compassionate, more equitable, and more just. And I believe that planted deep in our hearts, this dream defines our mission as a Church community. We are called to transform the hearts, minds, and politics of our cities and towns, our states, our nations, and the entire global community.  

A final word from the field of ethics …  

It’s important to keep in mind that ethical, dilemmas do not necessarily have simple solutions that will satisfy everybody. Even reasonable people can disagree about what course of action to take in a given situation. That’s fine. The important bit is not really the answer you come to, but the reasons you give to support it. That’s what ethics is all about: finding good reasons to act the way we do.  

The path to grace.  

Doug Bannerman © 2023 

Resources:

Scott Stephens, Waleed Ali ‘Uncivil Wars: How Contempt Is Corroding Democracy’ (Quarterly Essay 87, 2022)
Robert Talisse Sustaining Democracy (Oxford University Press 2021)
https://ethics.org.au/how-ethical-dilemmas-strengthen-our-moral-muscle/

Sermon Notes Sunday 8th October

Geoff Vidal

Matthew 21:33-46

For me, and most people I know, the best drama and comedy happens when the writer of a book or the producer of a movie is able to capture images of people behaving as we know that people do. A child finding wonder in something simple. Teenagers doing something pretty crazy because they think that they know everything. Someone looking in a mirror checking out a spot on their face when they think no one is watching. Mr Bean in Church. 

This parable of Jesus, reported by Matthew is a wonderful story of people behaving as people do. We are at a point in our fairly rapid journey through the Good News according to Matthew, where parables are coming thick and fast.  It is the week before Jesus is crucified and only a few days ago he entered Jerusalem on a donkey and made a big scene in the temple tipping over tables and chasing out money changers. 

Matthew says that Jesus has the chief priests and elders of the people listening to him as he told these parables to help his followers live life in the Kingdom of God. He began this series of parables recorded in Matthew 21 by asking “what do you think?” Often people talk about Jesus being a very good teacher, and here he is like a conscientious teacher preparing students for the HSC. He is encouraging them to chew over what they know themselves; asking “what do you think?” so they use their brains fully. Earlier in his ministry, Jesus summarised the commandments by saying that we are to love God with all our mind as well as our heart and soul and strength. 

And, if we are open to using our minds and learning new things, this parable today does give us something to make us think and use our minds fully. This is a parable that raises some doubts and makes us question things and think through all the possibilities. That’s the purpose of it. Jesus is encouraging us to perhaps even talk about these things; to share our thoughts about his teaching. I am just too Anglican to stop now and open the floor for anyone to share their thoughts (but in some other denominations they do). 

This parable today deals with a vineyard which has not given any fruit.  “Listen” says Jesus. And there is plenty of scope for listening and thinking: putting old images together and coming up with new ones.  

Jesus is capturing the image of people behaving as we know people do. The people Jesus is speaking to already know a fair bit about vineyards and owners. His listeners would have a good image in their minds of the people in charge of this vineyard - the tenants. They could probably say, “yeah, my cousin Joe runs a farm out on the Jericho Road”.  Jesus’ listeners would have been able to picture what he is saying about these tenants reacting violently to the owner’s messengers sent to collect the fruit of their work. 

What are the fruits in question?  This is a key question for the meaning of the parable. Grapes are just a metaphor. An understanding of what the fruits might be comes from the writing of the prophet Isaiah. These people would know Isaiah well. Isaiah was a frequently used scripture. Luke wrote that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue and a complete copy of Isaiah was found in Dead Sea scrolls.  

So, from an early age, the people Jesus was talking with would have been well aware of this teaching in Isaiah that Israel is God’s vineyard. They knew this prophetic teaching of Isaiah that from what had been planted, (that is to say God’s planting of his nation, Israel), the Lord expected justice, but there was bloodshed. God expected righteousness but heard people crying out for better treatment. The establishment of justice and righteousness is one of God’s major instructions (not just in Isaiah, but throughout all scripture). 

There is even an old Arab proverb, “one hour of justice is worth a hundred of prayer”.    

In this vineyard, which the Lord planted and cared for, justice and righteousness should have grown. A life of justice and righteousness was a way of showing the relationship between God and his people. Living a life of justice and righteousness was the way to show a desire to keep the covenant promise between God and God’s people. The God of life and love wants justice to rule in the midst of God’s people and wants the rights of everyone, especially the poor and the powerless, to be respected. That’s what it means to pray “Your Kingdom come!” 

But the people have chosen to not really bother about justice and right living. This is what our parable today is all about! The tenants have not practiced justice and they have not established righteousness. Their normal behaviour is to have contempt for other people’s lives. They even show that contempt to those sent as messengers by the owner of the vineyard. But, even worse, they have committed murders. 

In the Bible, oppression of the poor is frequently presented as murder. The tenants are not only murderers because they kill the messengers, (or even the son), but because they exploit the poor and totally disregard their rights. They are murderers from the moment they fail to produce the fruits of justice which the Lord requires, and as a result the Kingdom of God will be given to someone else.   

This is a powerful illustration.  But it isn’t just a story or a history lesson. How often in our daily news do we hear about people pleading for their fundamental rights. The right to safety; to be able to live in Ukraine without missile attacks or to live in Syria or Sudan without fear. The right to be an educated woman in many countries where women are not allowed schooling. We hear of people pleading for the right to eat; to not need to line up for a UN food handout or fresh water from the single tap in the village. So many people cry out for the right not to be discriminated against. 

I think the Gospel story today is in some way describing the rejection of Jesus' preaching by the leaders of Israel. Those listening to Jesus would have been well aware from their knowledge of Isaiah and their Jewish tradition that they were the caretakers of the vineyard of the Lord. So, Jesus asks “now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” and they answer, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants”. What Jesus has done here is to confront his opponents with judgement that has come from their own mouths. 

But it wasn’t just the opponents of Jesus in the temple who didn’t want to take on board what he was saying. Even Jesus’ closest followers didn’t want to hear Jesus’ prediction of his own arrest and death. 

Could it be that the parable is trying to get us to ask ourselves if there isn’t some kind of similarity between these tenants who don’t try to be righteous and the way we live our own lives? Maybe we should be asking ourselves, “what is our attitude to the things we know Jesus taught?” “What do we, as individuals, care about the establishment of justice and righteousness?” “What are our fruits?”  

A prominent American Methodist Bishop of the 1930s, G Bromley Oxnam, spoke of the need for justice in the USA. He wrote “The Christian demand for justice does not come from Karl Marx. It comes from Jesus Christ and the Hebrew prophets”. 

Further along, in another couple of chapters, the gospel of Matthew will tell us what Jesus said about separating the sheep from the goats. We are told that failing to feed the poor or to welcome strangers is the same as denying Christ himself (which means condemning the poor and the strangers and Christ to death). 

Being Christian is precisely the opposite; it is giving life! This is what the gospel requires and if we put it into practice, the God of peace will be with us (Philippians 4:4-9).

That’s the really good news. The God of peace keeps coming to us. We simply have to accept that Jesus is our Lord and trust him. As the old hymn says, “Trust and obey .... there is no other way to be happy”.

Sermon Notes 1st October 2023
Doug Bannerman

Exodus 17.1-7 Matthew 21.23-32

Warren Carter[1] reads Matthew’s Gospel as a work of resistance written mainly for a Jewish religious group who survived Rome’s defeat of Jerusalem in 70 CE … although we may note in passing that this gospel does indicate some openness to Gentiles (Matthew 2.1-12; 8.5-13; 15.21-28; 28.19-20).

Carter locates the gospel’s audience in Antioch, the capital of the Roman province of Syria. Consistent with Roman practice, the city was a key unit in maintaining control over a much larger area. Also typical of the empire’s practice, Rome cooperated with, and utilised, the local elite in exercising control. The Legate or Governor was responsible for the administration of Roman law, and appeal to him, at least in theory, meant access to legal process and rights; but as numerous ancient authors have stated, judges and verdicts could be bought.

The city’s social structure comprised a small elite (5%-10% of the population) who controlled city life to their advantage. The non-elite, who served the needs of the elite, included a spectrum of the very poor to somewhat wealthy. In this structure, the elite’s social dominance rested essentially on economic and political power, considerable wealth derived from the land at the expense of day labourers, and public repute.

Chapter 21 begins with, in Carter’s words, ‘Making an Ass out of Rome’ as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21.1-11). Then follows ructions in the Temple (Matthew 21.12-17) and the episode of the cursed and withered Fig Tree(Matthew 21.18-22); thence to our gospel reading for today – Jesus’ Authority and the Parable of the Two Sons.

Grand entrances in the Greco-Roman world expressed the imperial mind-set, a demand for public recognition of brute power gained by military or political means. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the centre of power, is in contrast, a prophetic sign, a choreographed piece of street theatre. He adopts some of the trappings of Greco-Roman entrance processions and triumphs but reframes them in a very different context – an empire that seeks not to dominate, but to serve.

Similarly, the Fig Tree episode. A fig tree with fruit signified God’s blessing (Numbers 20.5; Deuteronomy 8.7-8; 1 Maccabees 14.12) a withered fig tree symbolized judgement (Isaiah 34.4; Jeremiah 8.13, 29.17; Hosea 2.12, 9.10, 16). The withered fig tree is an omen that represents the judgement Jesus has pronounced upon the Temple, upon the religious leaders, and on their Roman allies.

We already know that the chief priests and the scribes are allied against Jesus; but here, there is a different alliance. The elders are members of wealthy powerful lay families allied with the priestly elite and Pharisaic scribes in the Sanhedrin. This is the ruling body in Jerusalem, which has religious, economic and legal jurisdiction under Roman sanction. These dudes want to kill Jesus, by whatever means.

Now, the Temple is a place of worship, not teaching, which normally happens in the synagogue. Yet here is Jesus in the Temple, bold as brass, teaching. The religious elite interrupt, asking who gives him authority to do so. Their authority stems from their social status and power over others, and is based on birth (chief priests), training (scribes), wealth (elders), and political alliances.

And their question is a trap. If he claims his own authority, Jesus admits to having no institutional or cultural legitimacy, and appears to act against God’s purposes; if he claims God’s authority, he blasphemes (9.3) and violates the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin.

Jesus, however, outwits them. The questioners become the questioned. Jesus says to them, ‘I will also ask you one question: if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?‘

This question about John’s baptism evokes John’s whole ministry and his challenge to the religious and political elite (Matthew 3.1-12; 14.1-12). From heaven, the abode of God (Matthew 5.34), denotes God-given authority; human origin means its absence. So, asking about John is astute. In Matthew, John and Jesus are closely linked (Matthew 3.1-12; 3.13-17).

Their answer ‘We do not know’, is not the fruit of genuine ignorance – it is avoidant – and by choosing a path of non-commitment, they unwittingly betray their real commitment. By refusing to say that John’s ministry comes from God; they reject the idea that John and Jesus have God given authority. Again, that refusal reveals their own lack of validation. Like the Pharisees and their tradition, they are not God’s planting (Matthew 15.1-9, 13-14), but are of human origin.

Jesus thus exposes and discredits the whole religious leadership, saying, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’

He then introduces the parable of the Two Sons. The use of the word son invokes household relationships in which children honour their father by obeying him in all things. The first son declares that he will not obey, but in the passing of time, he changes his mind and does his father’s bidding. The second son declares that he will go to work, but in the passing of time, he changes his mind and does not go.

‘Which of the two did the will of his father?’ The religious leaders answer correctly. The first son does what his father wants; the second son does not. But the focus on father and the father’s will calls to mind God and God’s will (c.f. Exodus 20-23; Deuteronomy 5; Matthew 6.9-10; 7.21; 12.50) and, with that answer, they condemn themselves for not doing God’s will.

Not only have the elite rejected the justice and righteousness for which Jesus stands, but even when they have been offered time to change their mind, they do not – like the second son.

Now, all of this should not be generalized as condemnation of the various movements supposedly represented by members of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, elites of the prevailing religious culture, were a race apart. The main body of pharisees, scribes and priests devoted themselves faithfully to their craft, and as best they could, represented God’s will for justice, mercy and peace.

To conclude, we might ask ourselves if anything has changed? We also live in a world in which social and political power is exercised by wealthy, corrupt elites who do not have a clue about the lot of those who serve their purposes, who do not listen. And we are faced with the same conundrum faced by the early Christians – how do we effectively proclaim the values enunciated and lived out by Jesus?

The short answer to that is to enunciate and live out those values. Not so easy. But each individual effort to do so matters and is augmented when we do so from within the body of a like-minded community.

Doug Bannerman © 2023

[1] Warren Carter Matthew and the Margins: a Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (New Delhi: Rekha Printers 2007)