Sermon Notes 13th August 2023
Geoff Vidal

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28, Matthew 14:22-36 

The Friday congregation is a little more senior than we are on Sundays. The pews are harder on bottoms on Fridays so there is a shorter service of only the Gospel reading and two hymns. On a Sunday we often have the First Testament reading and there is a little more time for the sermon on Sundays. I try to work out what will be helpful to share in that time taking into consideration that there are differing expectations. Some people are wanting to learn new things and some people are hoping that they will have the things that they know confirmed. There’s no way we will all think the same things at the same time: we are all wonderfully different. But, thank goodness that we are not all clones of each other. 

Both the First Testament and the New Testament include the instruction that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. Loving God by using all our mind is as important as loving God with all our heart and soul and strength. Some people find home groups (or life groups) help them to grow in their love of God. Books help growing minds; last week Desiree spoke of the helpful Julia Baird book “Phosphorescence”. At least one person who comes each Friday watches Christian TV early each morning. Another very popular connection with God is the TV program Songs of Praise (although watching Songs of Praise might be using more heart or soul than mind).

I am truly blessed in that I have an opportunity to meet with a few other men most Tuesday mornings and chew over a range of different theological and ethical ideas. We agree on lots of things but at times I am challenged by new ideas. I have to think differently and to consider why I think the way I think. 

Loving God with all your mind mostly comes down to trying to comprehend how we envisage God and what is our understanding of Jesus. 

So, perhaps we come here to church very sincerely looking for a clearer understanding of who Jesus really is. Or maybe you would like to have your thoughts of Jesus confirmed. Possibly we a seeking a better knowledge of God. You might have come to church today trying to figure out where God can be found. 

There is a funny story of a misbehaving boy being given a “talking to” by a priest. When asked the question “where is God?”, he became extremely distressed and ran home telling his mother “they have lost God down at the church and are blaming me for it!”

Well, just where is God? Maybe the Bible readings we have heard today can help: 

The reading from Genesis is more than just the story of Jacob’s older sons being so fed up by the way he favours and spoils their young brother, Joseph, that when they have a chance, they get rid of Joseph. They don’t kill Joseph as a few of them wanted to do, but they have him sold as a slave to be taken to Egypt.

There’s a reminder in this story of the power of evil in the world. Oppression isn’t a problem “out there” with slave traders and Pharaohs. Oppression happens very close to home when there is not peace between brothers or clans. 

This story of Joseph being taken to Egypt as a slave is the link between God’s promise to Joseph’s ancestor Abraham and God’s rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. God was present and involved in the lives of Abraham and Jacob and Joseph and in the life of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. 

It’s distressing to hear survivors of the Holocaust (or relatives of victims) question the presence of God arguing that, if God did exist such horrors would not occur. I have read a book by Rabbi Kushner (a prominent Jewish theologian in New York) who tells his readers that it is much more helpful and appropriate to focus on the positive story of God in the Exodos of the slaves from Egypt than the evil actions of Nazi Germans.  

However, there are times when we wonder where God is. Why wasn’t God there to stop that disaster; that flood or fire or car crash or the abuse of that child or wife. Although we wonder where can we find God, the strange thing is, that, in fact, it is God who comes to find us.   

Our Gospel story from Matthew reminds us of how God (who we think we are looking for) can come to us unexpectedly. The story begins with Jesus, at the end of a busy day, sending his disciples away and going off alone to a secluded place to pray. Jesus often went away to pray when he had been busy. Each of the Gospels record that, when there was a lot going on, Jesus first priority was to get in touch with God in prayer. 

In this story today, we have a clear contrast between the situation of Jesus and that of his followers. When evening came Jesus was praying alone, but his disciples were in a boat, battered by the waves. They were a long way out from land, and they had the wind against them.  

Late in the night, Jesus comes to them out of the darkness, walking across the waters. Yet, despite their need for Jesus, the disciples are terrified at his presence. They yell out, “It is a ghost!”. Jesus reveals himself to them saying “It is I” and he encourages them by saying “Take heart; do not be afraid”. 

Now, Peter is prepared to take a risk if Jesus asks him to. Peter says, if it is Jesus, he will only have to tell him to come across the water to him, and he will do it. Initially, Peter places his trust in the Lord, but then he becomes really scared as he looks away from Jesus and becomes focussed on the storm going on around him. However, as Peter starts sinking, he calls on the help of the Lord, and Jesus holds him and keeps him safe. In Peter's situation of little faith and doubt, his Lord has stood by him.  

Jesus and Peter get into the boat, the wind drops, and the disciples are very aware that Jesus has rescued them one more time. They boldly proclaim: “'Truly, you are the Son of God.”  

It would be a pun, wouldn’t it, if I said, “Most Christians are in the same boat as the disciples and Peter.” But we are!  We are not always confident that Jesus is present with us. We often begin with the great courage which only faith can give us. However, this courage of faith seems to disappear when a storm blows up in our lives. We are not very confident when we are being knocked around by all the problems that trouble us in our lives.  

This Gospel story is a great reminder that God is present even when we don’t expect it and, ultimately, we are dependent upon the gracious help of our Lord. It is in knowing the presence of Jesus that we are able to get across whatever stormy patch we find ourselves in. Jesus is the one who is close to God, who gives us the example of looking to God for guidance and strength.  

However, even when we have our moments of believing that God is right there (thinking that God is present with us), our faith can be a bit shaky. Our faith can be very tentative if we have to jump out the boat into stormy water.  

The encouragement is for us to know that, when difficulties come our way, it is possible to find that God is truly there; it is possible to find assurance that God is present coming out of the darkness into our lives.  

Encouragingly, Peter's story, and the story of disciples who thought Jesus was only a ghost, reminds us that even people with only a little faith can still find that Jesus is not far away - just out at the edge of our vision we can find Jesus coming in towards us; Jesus wanting us to see him and draw him in to us. 

Yes, Jesus still comes, reaching out his hand and catching us, pulling us up out of the strife we are in, calming the things swirling around us, leading us into the safety and peace which only God can give. Blessing us with peace which is beyond our understanding.

Sermon Notes 6th August 2023
Desiree Snyman

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.” 

The above tale of transfiguration from “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” is about the total transformation that love brings about in a human person. As I have said before, spiritual evolution is less about saying prayers and more about becoming prayer. Spiritual maturity is less about doing and more about being. 

The Transfiguration celebrated on the 6th of August is the central feast day for Eastern Orthodox spirituality and epitomises the journey of what it means to be human. The transfiguration embodies the doctrine of Theosis, the journey of being made into God. Deification or apotheosis is the journey of being made into the Divine and it is a cooperation or a surrender to Great Creator Spirit. If theosis sounds a bit like blasphemy it may help to remember that the chief commanders in the fight for orthodoxy and the ones who actively fought heresy said that the point of life is the integration of our divine and human selves. Irenaeus said that the glory of God is the person fully alive, fully human, and fully divine. Athanasius said that God became what we are (human) so that we could become what God is (Divine). A common analogy to explain theosis is metal placed in fire. While remaining metal the metal placed in fire nevertheless obtains all the properties of fire namely heat and light. Another example is a drop of water in the ocean. While a drop of water is not capable of creating a tsunami, once immersed in the ocean, the droplet becomes one with the ocean. Similarly, our destiny as human beings is such utter immersion into the ocean of God’s love that we become partakers of the divine nature (II Peter 1:4). 

I agree with those who say that the Transfiguration was not so much about the transfiguration of Jesus but more about the transfiguration of the disciples. They had accessed deeper levels of their spirituality and were able to see Jesus, and themselves, from a different point of view. Jesus, like Abba Lot, had become all flame but the only reason the disciples could see it was because they themselves were all flame. 

Hold onto the idea that it is the disciples themselves that were transfigured. The inspiration for the text is of course Old Testament stories. Moses goes up a mountain and spends time alone with God face to face. Moses shone so brightly that a cloth was placed over his face because people could not look at him. Also remember the start of Moses’ spiritual evolution was his experience of the burning bush. The bush shimmered with light so bright it should have burnt to the ground. Moses experienced God, the “I am” or Yahweh through the transfiguration of nature.  

The idea of Jesus shining or Moses or the disciples or Abba Lot becoming all flame may seem too ethereal to be “real life.” The transfiguration is at best a cute metaphor or an inspiration for prayer. I too thought that the story of Abba Lot’s fingers becoming “ten lamps of fire” was magic realism; until I read Julia Baird’s book “Phosphorescence.” Julia writes that scientists have long been fascinated by the phosphorescence of creatures - fire fly plankton, glow worms, ghost mushrooms and more. Scientists now describe creatures that absorb light as having phosphorescence and those that produce their own light as having bioluminescence. A 2009 experiment explored whether we humans had bioluminescence. The researchers put five able bodied bare-chested Japanese men in darkened, sealed rooms for up to 20-minute intervals every three hours for three days. Extremely sensitive cameras found that the men glowed, especially around the face. While the intensity of light emitted by the body is one thousand times lower that the sensitivity of our eyes, the fact is, we humans glow. 

I realised that the transformation that love brings about, transfiguration, theosis or the story of Jesus or the disciples being transformed into light, is more real than I realised.  

All of you listening here today (or reading this text) already have this inner light, you already glow. You yourselves are the proof text that this transfiguration is a reality. It is precisely this inner light that has brought you to this moment carrying you through days of profoundest grief. It is precisely your bioluminescence nurtured by the love of God, nature, family, and friends, and sustained by your ability to pay attention and take notice that has carried you through wounds which are intolerable to bear. Anyone reading these words has danced in the refiner’s fire, the fire that does not consume. The presence of any doubt within you, the existence of any questions and the scars of any wounds you carry are portals to the light. As we allow our bioluminescence to shine let us receive a blessing from John O Donohue:  

You have travelled too fast over false ground.
now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up.
to all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rai.
when it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
taking time to open the well of colour
that fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Excerpt from the blessing, 'For One Who is Exhausted,' from John's books: Benedictus (Europe) /

To Bless the Space Between Us (USA).

Sermon Notes 23rd July 2023
Desiree Snyman

I want to focus on the experience of anointing. Jacob’s experience with a dreaming-stone that he anoints is our entry point. The stone, likely a meteorite, is a fragment of the heavens that settles onto the land. This stone, born of the heavens and the earth, births a vision from the earth to the heavens. Jacob’s vision is of a ladder. Like a cosmic tree, it yields a flow of energy between this world and the heavenly spirit world. Jacob’s cosmic spirit dream of a ladder uniting earth to heaven with winged messengers (angels) flowing up and down is reminiscent of the ancient archetypal tree of life found across the ages in diverse cultures. The tree of life appears in Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) as a diagram where each of the numbered branches represents the attributes of God. In Norse mythology an enormous ash tree connects the nine worlds, including the underworld, the earth, and the realm of the gods. The Assyrian tree of life represents a series of nodes and cross branches with winged genies on each line. A winged genie is a bearded man with an eagle head and angel wings. See how similar it is to Jacob’s ladder? In Christianity the tree of life is the cross. Saint Bonaventure taught that the healing fruit of the tree of life is Christ himself. In eastern Christianity the tree of life is the love of God. Saint Isaac the Syrian says that "Paradise is the love of God, in which the bliss of all the beatitudes is contained," and that "the tree of life is the love of God" (Homily 72). 

The I Am that will later speak to Moses through the burning bush speaks to Jacob through the meteorite-stone: Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. Jacob is stunned. He calls the wilderness spot “The Gate of Heaven.” He sets up the baetyl or sacred stone as a pillar of witness. The pillar stone is a shrine at “Beth-El,” the “House of El.” El is a Canaanite Deity. Jacob anoints the iron-mineral petrified rock with christening oil. The rock pillar is now more than rock it is a “Living Being.”

The Urartian tree of life, Urartu Helmet fragment(Public Domain, Wiki Commons).

That Jacob sets up a “pillar” is surprising. Hebrew religion later forbade erecting pillars as they were associated too closely with Canaanite religion and were seen as a phallus symbolising union with the gods. See Exodus 23:24; Deuteronomy 7:5; Leviticus 26:1, Hosea 3:4 and Micah 5:13. 

Jacob offers a challenge: if this God that overshadows the mountains (El Shaddai) will give him bread and clothing on his journey he will embrace Elohim as his deity and that very stone as “El’s House” or Bethel. Jacob wants bread from stone and later Jesus in his own wilderness will be tempted to turn rocks into bread.  

The anointing of the pillar stone is the very first time in Biblical history that anointing occurs. A wild, unmanufactured, undomesticated rock petrified from stardust and earth, in the middle of the desert wilderness, is anointed, “in-christed,” re-created as a Christ, an anointed one. The rock is ritually re-created as “Christ”. The anointing of the rock is significant, it announces that this is the place where God is experienced, touched, tasted. The rock is like an anchor to the spiritual realm that is always around us. Where else does anoint occur in the scriptures?  

As we travel through the scriptures anointing is associated with priests and kings. A member of the Levite tribe, Aaron is anointed. The songbook, the psalms, sings about community saying “behold how good and how pleasant it is when God’s people dwell together in harmony. It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes (Psalm 133). It is not only priests that are anointed but kings and queens too. A prophet Samuel anoints Saul as the first king of the Israelites. Anointing empowers people to perform a certain task and protects them in carrying out their work.  

In psalm 23 anointing is associated with healing. Sheep were driven to near madness with flies laying eggs in their eyes. The shepherd would anoint the sheep’s head with oil which would wash out the flies and prevent further infestation, providing healing and relief to the sheep. 

To summarise, anointing in the Hebrew Scriptures makes present three realities:

1.   when something or someone is anointed, they are re-created ritually as a Christ, an anointed one, a place where God is found.

2.   Anointing also empowers and protects people for a particular task, for example as a priest or a king.

3.   Anointing is also a sacrament sign of healing.  

In the New Testament it is Mary Magdalene who is most closely associated with anointing. Some authors suggest that Jesus learnt the practice of healing from Mary. The Feast Day for Mary Magdalene is 22 July. The “Bearer of the Anointing” Mary Magdalene is present at the critical moments in the Jesus story. In the same way that Jacob “in-christed” the rock so too does Mary Magdalene “in-Christ” Jesus. Christ means anointed one. Jesus has this name because of Mary. Mary anoints Jesus as the Christ. When Mary anoints Jesus, she reveals to us Jesus’ deep and true nature. Mary is the Beloved Disciple for two reasons. First, Mary understood the deep message of Jesus better than any of us, there is much we must learn from her. Second, she represents what it means to love with body, mind, soul, and spirit; she loved deeply and fully. 

Mary is referenced a few times in Scripture but comes to prominence as we enter Holy Week and especially in John from chapter 12. The scene in John’s Gospel is a sensory overload. Lazarus has been raised from the dead and is in the room, in a shaman-like state, neither fully present nor fully absent. He carries on him the stench of death. Into this odour of death Mary opens the perfume of Spikenard. She anoints Jesus’ feet with oil and her tears and massages them dry with her hair. It is a shocking image and one few of us are ready for. She has anointed him, made him Christ, priest, and king.

Spikenard is only mentioned in one other book of the Bible. It is featured in the Song of Songs, which is written in the form of love poetry, expressing God’s love for us. In the Song of Songs (1.12-14), the woman has anointed herself with spikenard as the king, the woman’s beloved, is reclining on his couch.

While the king was on his couch,
   my spikenard gave forth its fragrance.
My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh
   that lies between my breasts.
My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
   in the vineyards of En-gedi.

When we read this passage of the Gospels where Mary anoints Jesus, we can put ourselves in the place of Mary and ask ourselves if we love Jesus as much as she did. Mary offers a story and a wisdom that we need to live the Gospel. Mary teaches us to not only listen to the Gospel, to spread the Gospel but to be the Gospel. All the canonical Gospels call Mary the apostle to the apostles. In our liturgy and theology let us restore Mary’s voice and teachings to the story of the cross and Resurrection. Mary is there throughout the journey from the table to the cross from the cross to grave from the grave to the cave and from the cave to unitive consciousness. Let us also recapture the sacrament of anointing. Within the context of the resurrection, anointing becomes the ritual most closely associated with the passage from death of self to fullness of life, from egoic alienation to “union with God. As such, it conveys the very essence of Christianity’s transformative wisdom.

Sermon Notes 16th July 2023
Desiree Snyman

How do you do the right thing when you live in a society that is built on doing the wrong thing? How do you live with justice in an unjust environment? How do you live a lifestyle of kindness and gentleness when those around you thrive on indifference or worse exploiting others with cruelty for personal gain? How do you advocate for what is life giving in a death dealing situation?  

Schindler’s List is one example of how to do what is right in the midst of what is wrong. Based on the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, the movie directed by Steven Spielberg tells the true story of Oskar Schindler. Schindler was a German businessman who saved over a thousand Polish Jews from the Holocaust during World War II by employing them in his factory and protecting them from deportation and extermination in Jewish Concentration camps. In order to maintain his business and save as many lives as possible, Oskar Schindler was careful to maintain a close relationship with the SS Officer in his town, often bribing him to keep his Jewish workers safe. An industrialist, a member of the Nazi party, a flawed human being, Oskar tried to live with justice in a situation of immense injustice: “I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org/oskar-schindler). Thomas Keneally said that: “He negotiated the salvation of his 1,300 Jews by operating right at the heart of the system using all the tools of the devil - bribery, black marketing and lies” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org/oskar-schindler). The point about Schindler’s List is the creativity and courage in saving lives in a Nazi Germany that mechanised the death of Jewish people. The example of Schindler’s List serves as a way to interpret the parable of the Sower.  

Jesus' listeners were aware that there was no escape from the foreign adversities that stood before them. They were faced with the challenge of adapting to a society tainted by oppressive Roman colonial forces. However, they were determined to discover and experience God's kingdom right in the midst of those difficult circumstances and this is the point of the parable: to experience God’s kingdom in the midst of unsolvable injustice and exploitation. 

The political, social, and economic realities behind the parable of the Sower describe the pain and oppression that the Jewish people lived under. Rome conquered Judea, Galilee, and other parts of Palestine in 63 BCE. The Romans imposed tribute upon the Judeans and Galileans. Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) and Herod Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE) were client kings of Rome who taxed the local peasant classes. The Galilean peasantry were thus burdened by four levels of taxation: the Roman tribute, Herod’s taxes, the tithes demanded by the priests and rent for leased land (see Hopkins 2002:204-208). 

What we find in the parable of the Sower is not a farming story, but a portrait of the brutal political, social, and economic situation in the time of Jesus. The elite believed that the harvest belonged to them in the form of tribute, taxes, tithes, and rent. The legacy of the Roman empire is civilisation in the form of plumbing, engineering, building, governance, law and above all roads. The Sower sows and some seed falls on the road, some is eaten by birds, some strangled by thorns. The seed falling on the road brings to mind the visceral image of the roman roads taking wealth out of the rural areas into the silos of the city. In the mind set of peasant audience the road siphons produce out of the regions into the city through taxes, tithes, and rent. The anguish of seeing your harvest taken away by the elite is heightened when the birds eat what is sown or the thorns strangle life out of your crop. This is precisely the emotional landscape of a 1st century Galilean peasant farmer, your livelihood eaten away or strangled to death by rent, taxes, and tithes.  

There is hope, one part of the harvest belongs to the farmer and when this harvest is shared the kingdom of God is manifest within the challenging realities of political, social, and economic oppression. Yes, large parts of the harvest do go to Rome, the Temple, the Jewish elite, and the landlords living in the cities. The edges of the fields were untaxed and left for gleaning. The harvest that is left untaxed can be shared to make the kingdom visible, by giving to everyone who begs from you (Mat. 5.42), doing to others as you would have them do unto you (Mat.7:12), lending and expecting nothing in return (Mat. 5.42). In other words when the leftover harvest is shared with others in need the kingdom of God has arrived. 

There are moments recorded in scripture that bring the parable of the Sower and the abundant harvest to life. The early church in Acts described how they "... had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them among all, as anyone had need" (Acts 2:44-45). The feeding of the multitude when interpreted as a miracle of sharing is another example of an abundant crop being shared. 

The parables Jesus tells are not earthly stories with heavenly meanings but earthy stories with heavy meanings. Designed to unsettle the mind the parables are meant to shock our consciousness into the upside-down logic of Jesus’s Sabbath message as summarised in Luke 4: Good News to the poor, freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, Jubilee cancellation of debt, a circular economy of assets shared and liberty from slavery. The question Jesus and his audience had was how to live the kingdom of God and practice Jesus’ politics of the New Heaven and New Earth amidst the military oppression of Rome. 

How do we cope in an exploitive world? How do we exercise a choice to share, to care, to have compassion on the least, the lost and the last in a world that abuses the vulnerable as steps on a ladder to get ahead? In Nazi Germany Schindler found a way to save lives in a system designed to kill as many Jews as possible; he is a modern example of the parable of the Sower coming true. And what about us? Can we too envision and live out the vision of the kingdom of God? We are centuries and kilometres away from 1st century Galilee yet the brutality of exploitation by corporate, global capitalism is a subtler mirror of Roman colonialism. Explosive rent strangled the livelihood of Galilean peasants as much as it exhausts the people living in our suburbs. We are all compromised, the clothes we buy are made in sweat factories, the food we eat is harvested by people living in slavery conditions and the taxes we pay finance weapons of destruction. Do we give up because it is all too hard? Or can we be clever, creative, and courageous in manifesting the kingdom of God that is already present in the world by trusting in the lifestyle Jesus exemplified as the best, most prosperous, most joyful way to be human: The Good News to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom to captives, refugees and asylum seekers, the cancellation of debt, the circulation of assets.

Sermon Notes 9th July 2023
Desiree Snyman

Please may I borrow your imagination? Picture the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, no not with blonde hair and blue eyes, a woman with long, dark hair, olive skin and of middle eastern descent. She is tall, stunning, and magnetic with an inner luminescence that draws people to her presence (Wisdom 7.22). She is powerfully intelligent but also artistic and practical (Wisdom 7.22-24). For example, she has built her own home (Proverbs 9.1-6). The wooden beams holding up her roof were crafted by her (Proverbs 9.1). The stained-glass windows were designed and made by her. If you step out of the house, her garden flourishes with the best and most abundant crops (Wisdom 6.16). On a regular basis she opens up her home to the most vulnerable. She walks through the markets handing out party invitations calling people to feast at her home (Proverbs 1.20). She prepares a banquet for them with bread she has made herself and roast lamb from her small farm (Proverbs 9.1-6). People eat the best food at a table that she herself has made (Proverbs 9.2). After the meal she invites everyone to dance and even the most reluctant dancers with two left feet cannot help themselves and join in the ecstasy and joy of dancing the night away. She is warm and funny and sometimes plays tricks on people. She is also boldly outspoken; she points to the corruption of greedy businessmen and con artists exploiting the most vulnerable. Her home is a safe haven for those who need to recover from life’s worst stresses (Wisdom 4.11). She is a counsellor, a spiritual director, a community leader, a wealthy business leader, mentoring and advising politicians who serve the common good (Proverbs 8.14). Can you picture her? She has a name. In Hebrew she is Chokmah. In Greek her name is Sophia. In English we call her Lady Wisdom, or Wild Woman Wisdom. 

For the writers of our sacred texts, wisdom was such a powerful energy in the universe that one could almost speak about wisdom as if wisdom was a person. You can read about Wild Woman Wisdom in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus better known as Sirach or the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Song of Songs, the book of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon. 

So who is Sophia, or Wild Woman Wisdom? She is a master craftswoman and according to Job, “we have heard reports of her but “God alone has traced her path and found out where she lives.”  

In Wisdom 7.22 Woman Wisdom is a people loving, intelligent, holy, has unrestricted moving, free from anxiety. She collaborates with God and is responsible for creation: 

26 For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
27 Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;
28 for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
29 She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
30 for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail. 

Wild Woman Wisdom visits the markets and invites people to come and play, to tell jokes and to laugh at their mistakes. Proverbs 8.1 asks: “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand.” 

Almost every feature of Matthew 11 can be traced back to the Jewish wisdom literature found in the Hebrew Scriptures and Deuterocanonical books. The development we see in Matthew is that Jesus is now characterised as Wisdom. Just as Wild Woman Wisdom received everything from God so Jesus receives everything from God. Just as Woman Wisdom gives understanding as a gift so too does Jesus reveal wisdom to those around him. Woman Wisdom is people loving (Wisd. 1.6) so too is Jesus. Just as Woman Wisdom calls people to play so too does Jesus. In the same way that Woman Wisdom condemns corruption, so too does Jesus in the ”Woe to you” statements. 

“Come to me and rest” is a beautiful invitation from Jesus. Matthew 11.28 is based on Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach 51.59, written by a scribe in about 125 BCE:

”Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? I opened my mouth and said, Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money. Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction; it is to be found close by. See with your own eyes that I have laboured but little and found for myself much serenity. Hear but a little of my instruction, and through me you will acquire silver and gold.” 

As Woman Wisdom’s prophet and messenger Jesus calls out to all who are tired and weary and promises them rest and restoration. Jesus condemns how scribes and pharisees use the law as a weapon to abuse people with burdens hard to bear. Instead of being a sacred and beautiful gift that sets people free to live a full and happy life, the rabbis had twisted the meaning of the law such that it was a heavy burden especially on those who were already weary. For example, there were more than 600 laws regarding what one could not do on a Sabbath. Jesus was not crucified by atheism and anarchy but by law and religion. 

While our postmodern Christianity does not have a heavy attention to the detail of the law, we are not that much better. The model of Christianity we have adopted suggests we have only done enough when we are running on empty. I grew up as a Methodist. John Wesley was the quintessential model of a good Christian. John Wesley was famous for instructing: “Spend and be spent in spreading the Good News. I took that to heart. Being spent is not much fun, nor do I really think it is Gods will that we should be burnt out.  

I agree with Barbara Brown Taylor who writes that some of us “have made an idol of exhaustion.” Somewhere along the way, “sold out for Jesus” had become “worn out for Jesus.” For example, the familiar prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola captures a tendency to overwork:

“Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do your will. Amen.”  

We in the church sometimes equate busyness with our worth; yet busyness is the single greatest obstacle to holiness. Some measure love of God with how many extracurricular activities are squashed in - small groups, ministry teams, mission trips, retreats, service projects, committees. I am deeply concerned at the ways in which church ministry tires people, leaving them running on empty. In contrast Matthew 11.28 invites us to count the cost, and to give up toil in favour of rest.  

Excessive busyness, even in the name of religion unfolds from a deep soul wound. Resting in Jesus provides a promised respite for the tiredness of our souls. A closing image may illustrate how. The movie “The Mission” describes how two Christian leaders respond differently to the threat of violence when a place of sanctuary for the Guarani tribe is attacked by Portuguese military, following the 1750 Treaty of Madrid. The start of the film depicts a group of missionary monks enduring an arduous hike through dense rain forest before scaling a high mountain to reach the mission station. Included in the group of missionary monks is an abbot father, the leader of the group, and a new convert Rodrigo Mendoza. The new convert is a former mercenary and slave trader who has been convicted of murder. As he endures what is really a tough hike through the South American wilderness of Argentina, he drags behind the symbols of his previous life wrapped in a bagged net. The heavy burden includes swords and armour. Some may identify with the symbol of Rodrigo dragging a heavy burden in that the expectations we place on ourselves wear us down. At some point a well-meaning monk tries to free the new convert from his burden but he merely reattaches himself to his burden and continues the long walk. 

When Rodrigo reaches the top of the mountain with his burden catching  on roots and tree branches and almost pulling him down, it is a local tribe member who cuts his burden loose. 

The weight falling away from a weeping Rodrigo is a very powerful moment in the film; it is this image that comes to mind when I read these powerful and memorable words from Matthew 28.11: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls.” 

Sermon Notes 2nd July 2023
Desiree Snyman

Akedah, translated as “the binding of Isaac,” is the Hebrew word summarising Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son. If one hoped for Biblical family values, then Genesis 22.1-14 may not be the “go to” text. A shocking story of potential child sacrifice, one wonders why the earliest editors included the Akedah as part of the authorised sacred text. To state the obvious, we are shocked by God’s request that Abraham sacrifice his son and Abraham’s lack of argument. That Isaac is a treasured, much-loved, longed-for son is emphasised in the opening narrative: “And He said, “Take your son, your favoured one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” Moriah was the location of Solomon’s temple and today is under Muslim control, it is the Dome of the rock.  

The only thing more disturbing that Akedah is the commentaries on the Akedah. Commentaries admit that God could never ask for child sacrifice and highlight the faith of Abraham who knew that the Lord would provide. If Abraham knew the Lord would provide why then go through the charade of binding Isaac and holding a dagger to him? Is that a normal expression of trust in God? Other commentaries comment on God testing the faith of Abraham. Let’s just make it a blanket rule that if you are in a relationship with anyone, (a partner, a spouse, a parent, an employer, a divine being) and they want to test your commitment to the relationship by asking you to sacrifice a child, leave. That is next level coercive control toxicity. 

In the episode following the Akedah Abraham goes down the mountain with his servants, Isaac’s name is absent: “Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba”. How does a father son relationship recover from a near sacrifice?  

Hineni

What I would like to focus on today is the word “Hineni”.  Hineni is Hebrew for “I am here, present, for you”. It’s the first word Abraham speaks in verse 1 and the last word he speaks in verse 11. Until he has to answer Isaac’s question, that lone word in Hebrew is the only thing Abraham says in this story. 

Hineni means more than “Here I am Lord.” Hineni implies being fully present, fully grounded. Hineni is a genuine openness, a commitment to the other and a self-emptying surrender. The three persons of the Trinity offer hineni to each other. The Creator is fully present to the Word who replies with Hineni, I am here, giving myself to you as you give yourself to me. 

Abraham uses the word Hineni three times in Genesis 22.1-19.

1.    Hineni is Abraham’s reply to God in Verse 11: “Sometime afterward, God put Abraham to the test. He said to him, “Abraham,” and he answered, “Hineni.” This the first time that Hineni is used, even though God has spoken to and called to Abraham many times up to this point.

2.    Hineni is also Abraham’s reply to Isaac in verse 6: “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the firestone and the knife; and the two walked off together. (7) Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Hineni, my son.”’

3.   When a ram is caught in the thicket a messenger calls to Abraham and this is the third time hineni is used in verse 11: “Then an angel of the LORD called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Hineni.”’ 

Hineni is recognising the other. Hineni is being accessible to the other. Abraham is as open and receptive to God as he is to Isaac and the messenger.  

Hineni, Martin Buber and “I-Thou”

Martin Buber (1878-1965), a Jewish philosopher and Zionist Jew originally from Germany, made a remarkable contribution to the interpretation of the word "Hineni". Escaping from Nazi Berlin in 1938, he found sanctuary in Israel and began lecturing at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. One of the profound interpretations of Hineni can be credited to Martin Buber. Perhaps you have heard of Martin Buber’s classic “I-Thou”.

An over simplified explanation of the book is to consider the quality of our relationships with God, creation, ourselves, and others. One quality of our relationships is summarised as “I-It”. We treat others and even God as an object. “I-It” relationships are transactional, we are only interested in others to the extent that they can offer something to us.  

In contrast are “I-Thou” relationships. I-Thou relationships are a sacred encounter where we relate to others being to being. It is these “I-Thou” relationships that “hineni” defines. Buber's teachings regarding "hineni" highlight the profound impact of authentic interactions. By engaging in an "I-Thou" relationship, individuals can forge deep connections, discover profound meaning, and undergo mutual transformation. 

One metaphor that may help in understanding Buber’s interpretation of “hineni” is that of a snail. The outer shell of the snail represents the ways we protect ourselves from each other by putting on masks or playing power games. When the snail sticks its body out of the shell it is vulnerable. Similarly, “I-Thou” relationships imply vulnerability, being accessible to others, genuine, agenda free listening. This is precisely what is required of non-indigenous people always but especially during NAIDOC week. Aboriginal people are tired of “I-It” relationships. We non-indigenous people are invited to say “hineni” to Aboriginal people.  

Hineni and NAIDOC week

Sunday 2 July 2023 marks the beginning of NAIDIOC week, an opportunity to say “hineni,” to truly listen. The words of Glen Loughrey summarise what Aboriginal people are asking for in the Statement from the Heart.

·      We do not seek revenge; we seek to walk across the land together building a better future for this country.

·      We seek recognition in the 1901 Constitution, the birth certificate of this nation.

·      We seek a Voice on matters that impact our sovereign relationship with country and kin.

·      We seek a treaty over time identifying how we live together, sharing this space based upon being included in the Constitution.

·      We seek the opportunity to talk about the truth of what happened and what it feels like for both of us to live in this space called Australia.

·      We seek the opportunity to make the changes necessary to become a just and whole nation through Makarrata, the coming together after a dispute.

What would be the effects of non-indigenous Australians responding to Indigenous Australians with “hineni”? Glen says that: 

An opportunity has been offered to all non-Indigenous people to begin the process to right the wrongs by welcoming us into their world as equals, persons with a voice, able to contribute equally as co-sovereigns of this land. This invitation is not given to our own people. It is extended to you and if you accept, you will share the blessing of wholeness it leads us toward. We will no longer be persona nullius. We will be seen.

Sermon Notes 25th June 2023

Doug Bannerman

Genesis 21.8-21  

The story of Hagar is heart wrenching to say the least. Hagar is an Egyptian slave who has sought asylum in the land of Canaan. She is a refugee.  

Abram has also recently arrived in Canaan from Egypt, and his part in the story pivots on two women – Sarai, his wife, and Hagar her maid.[1] As the wife of a wealthy herdsman (Genesis 13.2), Sarai has privilege and power, although she does not escape the limitations of strong patriarchal social structures. She is, however, barren, a terrible affliction for the couple – to be without a family was to be without identity. So, Sarai tells Abram to secure a child through Hagar.  

Ironically, when Hagar finds that she has conceived, she has the insight that she is other than a tool; she is a real person, with identity. She has experienced a new reality that challenges the power structure. So, in the face of Sarai’s jealousy, Hagar takes command of her own life and runs away to the wilderness, a hospitable place symbolized by a spring on the way to Shur.[2]  

An angel of the Lord comes to her, declaring that if she returns to her mistress, her son, who is to be named Ishmael, will give rise to innumerable descendants (21.10 – 11). For the first time, a character addresses Hagar by name; and for the first time, Hagar speaks. ‘You are El-roi’ [the God of seeing] … ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’ (21.13). A unique encounter in the OT – to see and be seen by the Divine.  

The encounter has the threefold character of Annunciation – that is to say the prediction of a male child, naming the child and foretelling his future life. As the first to receive an annunciation, Hagar, the Egyptian refugee, becomes the prototype of special mothers in Israel.  

The name Ishmael, however, has two meanings; comfort and suffering. The divine promise of Ishmael means a life at the boundary of consolation and desolation. Hagar returns.  

And Hagar Bore to Abram a son,
and Abram called the name of his son,
whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.

Now Abram was eighty-six years old
when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. (16.15-16)

We note, that the very first word of this part of the story was Sarai (16.1); but the last is Abram, an ending that continues to undermine Hagar. It may restore her name, but it silences her voice. It stresses not her motherhood but Abram’s fatherhood. The report that Abram named the son Ishmael obliterates the power that God gave to her. And Sarai receives no mention at all. Both Hagar and Sarai are sidelined.  

Following this, Sarai and Abram become Sarah and Abraham, symbolic of the promise of a new covenant, that Abraham will become the ‘ancestor of a multitude of nations. Hagar disappears but her story remains. Ishmael now becomes the object of divine rejection because Hagar, not Sarah, is his mother (17.15-21).  

We have arrived at today’s reading. Sarah, observing the healthy growing boy Ishmael at play with her son Isaac, is vexed. She does not want Ishmael to share Isaac’s inheritance; and so, she commands Abraham to cast out the foreign woman and child.  

Abraham is unhappy on several counts, both personal and legal;[3] but God reassures him; ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman …’ (21.12-13). God diminishes Hagar by calling her ‘this slave woman’, and further diminishes her when, in the wilderness, does not appear in person, but speaks remotely from heaven:  

What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him (21.17-18). 

Hagar cries out in distress, but God hears the voice of ‘the boy’. Hagar loses her God given identity as mother and as one whom God sees, to become once more ‘slave woman’ – an object, a refugee with no identity.  

Read in the light of contemporary issues and images, Hagar’s story depicts oppression in three familiar forms: nationality, class and gender. 

‘Hagar the Egyptian is a maid; Sarah the Hebrew is her mistress. Conflicts around these two women revolve around three males. At the centre is their common husband. To him belong Ishmael, child of Hagar, and Isaac, child of Sarah. Through their husband and his two sons ,these females have clashed. From the beginning, however, Hagar is powerless because God supports Sarah. Kept in her place, the slave woman is the innocent victim of use, abuse, and rejection.  

‘As a symbol of the oppressed, Hagar becomes many things to many people who find their stories in her: she is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the … bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying on handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others.  

‘Hagar is a pivotal figure in biblical theology. She is the first person in scripture whom a divine messenger visits and the only person who dares to name the deity. Within the historical memories of Israel, she is the first woman to bear a child. This conception and birth make her an extraordinary figure in the story of faith: the first woman to hear an Annunciation, the only one to receive a divine promise of descendants, and the first to weep for her dying child …  

‘Beyond these … distinctions, Hagar foreshadows Israel’s pilgrimage of faith … As a maid in bondage, she flees from suffering. Yet she experiences exodus without liberation, revelation without salvation, wilderness without covenant, wanderings without land, promise without fulfilment, and unmerited exile without return. This Egyptian woman is stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted for the transgressions of Israel. She is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, bruised for the iniquities of Sarah and Abraham; upon her is the chastisement that makes them whole.[4]  

‘Hagar is Israel, from exodus to exile, yet with differences. And these differences yield terror. All who are heirs of Sarah and Abraham, by flesh and by spirit, must answer for the terror in Hagar’s story. To neglect the theological challenge [that] she presents is to falsify faith.’[5] [6] 

Miraculously, Megan McKenna salvages some hope from the debris. McKenna used to work with a group of maids in a local motel, where they watched soapies and read scripture together during their breaks. They were absolutely delighted to hear the beginning of Hagar’s story. One woman, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, said in her halting English: ‘Oh, now Sarai gets a tase of her own medicine. Now she knows what it is like to be a slave and be treated like dirt all the time. Serves her right. She doesn’t like it – well, we don’t either. We don’t live just to clean toilets, iron, and clean up after others and to be pushed around’. When they got to the bit when Hagar runs away, the women at the motel cheered Hagar on. But then, when Hagar is told to go back to her mistress, they ‘cried out loudly against this’[7]. But then one of them said, ’She has to. She has to think of her child not herself.’ There is a time to rebel, a time to run and a time to endure.  

Consolation and desolation.  

The magic of this little group is that, ‘what followed at the motel were their own stories – of being maids in the houses of the rich, getting pregnant by the husband … and being thrown out …’ Such is the lot of refugees around the world – and even worse for those who are unable to flee from their places of affliction because rich nations close their borders.  

As we come to the close of Refugee Week, may we consider our part in their stories of alienation and desperation.  

Amen. 

Doug Bannerman 2023

[1] Later God renames the couple Abraham and Sarah.

[2] Very different from Israel’s Exodus when ‘Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur, they went three days into the wilderness and found no water’ (Exodus 15.22).

[3] Normally, if a slave-wife had borne children, she was not to be expelled or sold (so, Hammurabi’s laws, § 146), thus Abraham’s unwillingness to do so. See Kenneth A Kitchen The Bible in its World: The Bible and Archaeology Today (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1977 Pbk.) pp168

[4] cf Isaiah 53.5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

[5] Op cit Phyllis Trible Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984) p28

[6] Shocking as this tale may be, equally shocking is the manifest evidence that the narrators have deliberately attempted to make the male, Abraham, the dominant figure. For example, the narrators rob Hagar of her grief by changing the unambiguous feminine form of the verb forms to masculine constructions. Such alterations make the child lift up his voice and weep. But such masculine emotions cannot silence Hagar. A host of feminine verb forms throughout this section witness unmistakably to Hagar’s tears. See Phyllis Trible op cit.

[7] Megan McKenna Not Counting Women and Children: Neglected Stories from the Bible (New York: Orbis Books 1994) P177

Sermon Notes 18th June 2023
Desiree Snyman

A reflection on Matthew 9.35-10.10: noissim esreveR

One of God’s great apostles/disciples/saints is Teresa of Avila. One of the doctors of the church, Theresa has taught us much about our oneness with God. You may remember the story of when she was travelling by cart when one of the wheels was stuck and the cart tipped over spilling her into the mud. Covered in dirt, wet and cold Teresa complained to God “Why are you doing this to me?”. The Lord replied, “Teresa this is how I treat my friends.” Teresa answered, “Is it any wonder you have so few?” 

The Gospel reading today is clearly about us, the apostles/disciples/saints of God. Like Teresa and the first 12 apostles, we too are friends of God participating in God’s mission. Like Teresa and the early apostles we are sent by Jesus as Jesus to live out the transformation that love brings about. Much like Teresa, we know that being sent by Jesus as Jesus won’t win us any awards. The reward for participating in God’s mission is humiliation, as Jesus himself explains in Matthew 10.24: “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!” 

Jesus’ ministry of healing and preaching is a sign that God’s kingdom is now and in the world. The vision of the kingdom of God is a call for the personal and societal transformation that love achieves. God’s kingdom challenges Rome’s oppression with justice and Rome’s greed with freedom. In Matthew 9.35 “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing is established as a pattern that the apostles imitate.  

The ministry moves from the hands of Jesus into the hands of his 12 disciples.  As Jesus teaches, preaches, and heals, now the disciples are sent in twos to teach, preach, and heal: ”As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment”. 

Compassion

The pivot on which the ministry flows from Jesus through to the disciples is compassion (see Mat. 9.36). If the ministry of Jesus is one wheel and the ministry of the apostles is another wheel then the axle connecting the two wheels together is compassion: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9.36). The Greek for compassion is σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai). An onomatopoetical word, splagchnizomai imitates the sound of gut movement. Compassion is the gut-wrenching response to corruption and the pain it causes community. The phrase “sheep without a shepherd” is borrowed from Ezekiel 34.5 and is a criticism and indictment on the political leadership. Instead of caring for people, Israel’s leaders were feeding off people – they were cannibals. Compassion is not an intellectual exercise but a movement of the gut, the intestines twist and knot together in response to suffering. In other words, our response to suffering and injustice is not a mechanical action, but an outworking of bodily emotion, of gut felt care and empathy expressed in concrete engagement. Mission without love is like trying to drive a car with wheels but no axle. Without that intense compassion and love our work fails to be God’s mission.  

World Refugee Day 

World Refugee Day is June 20. As a church we honour refugees on the closest Sunday, today on June 18. Refugee week has 3 intentions:

1.    To honour those people who come to us as refugees, giving thanks for the skills, talents, and diversity they gift to us.  

2.    To lament the reason for forced displacement. 

3.  To encourage communities to receive people who are refugees with hospitality. 

Who or what are refugees? People who are forced to leave their homes because of violence or persecution are described as refugees. The term refugee is an international, legal term that designates a crime against people. Refugee is not an identity; it is not who people are. Refugee is something that happens to people.  Refugee is a status – not an identity. 

Australia is a signatory to the UN convention and its 1967 protocol. As Australians it is useful to remember that: 

·        ‘Article 14: Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries, asylum from persecution.‘ (1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights). 

·       While it is usually illegal to enter a country without a valid visa, it is not to be considered as illegal if it is for the purpose of seeking asylum (‘Article 31: The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence). 

·       People seeking protection must not be prevented from entering a UN Convention signatory country. They must not be returned to a country where their life or freedom is threatened. (The 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, UNHCR) 

·       92% of people arriving by boat since 2008 have been assessed to be genuine refugees, fleeing things like war, persecution, genocide, and torture. (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Asylum Trends Australia, 2012-13 – Annual Publication, page 30) 

·       There’s no such thing as a queue. Anyone who wants to claim asylum must leave their home country first, so they flee to other countries. This is the standard way to seek asylum.  “The concept of an orderly queue does not accord with the reality of the asylum process.” (Asylum Seekers and Refugees.  What are the facts, Parliament of Australia website) 

·       Australia receives a fraction of the world’s asylum seekers each year. In 2013 alone, Sweden received 54,300 requests; France received 60,100; USA received 88,400; and Germany received 109,600 requests for asylum. In 2013, 24,300 people requested asylum in Australia. (www.unhcr.org)

(Source: https://br4r.org.au/facts-figures/). 

Refugees are apostles

I suggest there is a close link between being a disciple and being a refugee. Being a refugee and being a disciple has much in common.  

1.    The link between being a refugee and being a disciple is established in the early Christian movement. Following the resurrection of Jesus, the early disciples had to flee Jerusalem and seek asylum in other countries because people like Saul who became Paul were killing them.  

2.    Matthew 10 cements a close link between persecution that leads to people seeking refugee status and persecution as a disciple: “10.23When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.”  

3.    Like refugees, disciples also “10.19Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”  

4.    Seeking asylum and being sent by Jesus as Jesus to proclaim the Good News are similar in that both seek hospitality in new areas: “ 10.11Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy and stay there until you leave.” 

My suggestion is that we receive people who are refugees as apostles sent to us by God in Jesus to cure our ills, to raise to life the parts of us that are dead, to cast out our demons and to proclaim God’s faith to us. World Refugee Day is not about what we can do for refugees but what they can do for us. Refugee day is about noissim esreveR, reverse mission. We consider the ministry that refugees offer us as apostles, rather than what our mission to refugees might be.  

Just as Jesus sent the apostles to share God’s love with the world so too are we to see those who identify as refugees as sent to us by God to save us from our sins, the sins of indifference, consumerism, fear and a lack of compassion. Jesus sent apostles to “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers,* cast out demons.” May refugees be our apostles who cure our sickness, the sickness of having too much. May refugees be our apostles who raise the dead, the dead parts of our society who have forgotten compassion. May refugees be our apostles who cleanse our leprosy, the leprosy of fear of the other. May refugees be our apostles who cast out our demons, the demons of rampant capitalism. The question is this, if God’s sends us refugees (apostles), will we welcome them and allow their peace to bless our space? Or will they be rejected, forced to turn their backs on us, dusting their feet off as they leave? Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of a lack of hospitality. Will we be hospitable to the apostles that are sent to us as refugees?  

12As you enter the house, greet it. 13If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15Truly I tell you; it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgement than for that town (Matthew 10.12-14). 

Sermon Notes 11th June 2023

Geoff Vidal

The world has not yet recovered from all the things interrupted by COVID 19. Families are having their lives devastated by the many deaths from COVID which continue but are not regularly reporting in our media. Businesses succeed or fail depending on how well they deal with interruptions to the supply of material and disruptions to transport. A key element to success in any military operation is how well people of all ranks cope with interruptions. Generals in command must be able to deal with unexpected changes to the situation and, to be effective, soldiers and sailors need to show initiative and react quickly to any development in the battle. As a flying instructor I spent a lot of time training students to effectively deal with interruptions.

How do you handle the interruptions which invariably occur in everyday life? What do you do when you have just served a meal and there is an interruption? Some people let their answering machine take care of inconvenient phone calls (or wait to hear who is calling before picking up the phone).

Sadly, we don’t often have young children here with us at St Barts. When children are in church their parents are mostly anxious that the kids don’t make any noise which “interrupts” the service. And owners of mobile phones which ring during a service are embarrassed as they try to turn it off. I was very impressed by the gentle way Bishop Phillip dealt with a person who loudly interrupted an ordination service in our Cathedral.

The Genesis reading today, reminded us of the story of Abram (who later became Abraham). His life as a wealthy 75-year-old farmer was dramatically interrupted by God. We are told that the Lord said to him “go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you”. Abram went and this life-changing move was followed years later by another totally life-changing interruption to the lives of Abram and his wife Sari (now named Sarah). She became pregnant very late in life and their son Isaac was born.

I’m sure you are able to recall the stories of many other Biblical characters who found their routine, peaceful lives interrupted by God: Noah, Moses, Job, Jeremiah, Jonah, indeed all the prophets.

My thoughts on interrupted lives have been influenced by a lady named Peta Sherlock. She was one of the early women priests in the Anglican church here in Australia. Peta would probably prefer to be known as a scholar rather than a prophet.  Around 30 years ago, she would write each week some really helpful comments on the Gospel reading for the coming Sunday which were published in the Melbourne Diocese newspaper.

The 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne and is regarded as Scotland’s national poet. Biographers have described Burns as a “wilful agnostic”. In Burns poems he made it clear that he doubted the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife. He often criticized the church. One of his statements was that "Churches are built to please the priest". In Dunedin, which is in a very Scottish part of NZ, they erected a large statue of him just outside the Cathedral with his back to the church. He is responsible for the well-known quote “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”.

I wonder if Robbie Burns was aware of this passage we heard today (chapter 9 of the Gospel according to Matthew). If he had read this part of the Bible and thought about it, he would have discovered that interruptions are a part of what Jesus brings to our lives.

It’s a good idea for us to make allowance for unforeseen interruptions. It’s very wise for us to be prepared for the interruptions that Jesus can bring to the things we have planned for our lives.

In this passage Jesus was the first one to interrupt. Jesus interrupted a man who was sitting down carrying on with his very lucrative job. Jesus saw the tax-collector Matthew working away at his job and said to him “follow me”. Out of the blue, this man was given a new opportunity. He was given a supporting role in ministry supporting someone he had never met before.

The miracle is that Matthew simply got up and followed this person who brought new life. As he began this new life, Matthew invited his new leader and the other disciples to come and have dinner with him and his old workmates. The Pharisees didn’t like that. They asked the disciples “why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” It sounds more like an accusation than a question!

There’s a couple of things to note here. These Pharisees who prided themselves in their knowledge of scripture and their conformity to it openly acknowledge Jesus as a teacher. Jesus overhears them and, not very subtly (actually quite sarcastically), Jesus says to these teachers, “go and learn what this quote from the prophet Hosea means “(God says) I desire mercy, not sacrifice”.

The next thing we are told is that Jesus was interrupted at his dinner. There is an extraordinary request made for Jesus to go and heal a young girl who had died. A leader of the synagogue who had nothing else to lose thought that, if this Jesus could touch his daughter, she would live. So, he bursts into the dinner party and asks Jesus to come to lay his hand on the girl.

Then Jesus’ journey to this bereaved father’s house was interrupted by another lady in desperate need. She had been suffering for 12 years and she thought that, if she just touched Jesus’ cloak, she would be made well.  Jesus turns and sees her. He says to her, “Take heart; your faith has made you well”. We aren’t told whether this desperate woman has a big bucketful of faith or just faith the size of a mustard seed. However, she has faith and she is made well. This woman (whose name we don’t know) is able to return back into the society that had shunned her for years. Twelve years of living death is replaced by newness of life. 

Finally, at the synagogue leader’s house, when Jesus says to the crowd “Go away, the girl is not dead but sleeping” they laugh at him. But there’s yet another interruption.  The laughing crowd and the flute playing mourners are dramatically interrupted by life itself coming into their midst.

These events are all presented to those who read their Bible in a really matter-of-fact sort of way. Matthew tells this series of stories so simply and so quietly that we could easily miss the point.

Matthew got up without a word and followed. Jesus got up without a word and followed. He told the crowd making all the commotion to “Go away!”

New life comes immediately, silently, without commotion. The woman was healed by a touch. Jesus simply commended her for her faith. 

The girl was not dead, only sleeping, and once the musicians and the wailing crowd were dismissed, Jesus took her by the hand and she got up.

These proceedings are followed by a noisy telling of the story being spread throughout the district, but the events themselves were quiet.

There’s no doubt about it; no matter how well organised we are, interruptions will happen. Interruptions will spring up unexpectedly and demand our attention. Perhaps, when we are on our way to do something important, we will have something creep up on us and grab our coattails.

That’s the way of it! Our real ministry is mostly quiet! Because faith that simply gets up and follows the call is mostly quiet.

Even miraculous new life comes without fuss and commotion

Sermon Notes 4th June 2023
Geoff Vidal

We are in white today but next week the liturgical colour goes green. Green (which represents growing) is the colour for “ordinary time” or the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost. 

These green times are bracketed by special days. The Sundays after Epiphany are between our celebrations of the Baptism of the Lord and Transfiguration. The Sundays after Pentecost lie between Trinity Sunday and Christ the King. When this pattern for the Church’s Liturgical calendar was developed, the intention was for Trinity Sunday to represent a summing up of all the divine activity church people have celebrated since the beginning of Advent.  

The idea was that, in celebrating The Trinity, we would also be reminded of everything that God has done in creation. That is why we heard those first verses from Genesis today. They are a reminder of God’s ongoing work with everything created. As Jenny read the creation story to us, we were reminded that God says it is “good”; (we humans are “very good”). The fact that God created everything (including the stars billions of light years away), and God is pleased with it all, is the key point. It doesn’t really matter how it was created but it does matter why. We should spend time talking and thinking about the “why” of creation. 

So, today we are set the task of dealing with the Trinity. That’s a tough job! Our Christian God, The Holy Trinity, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a great mystery. Boldly, we humans try to describe this elusive mystery, which we recognize as God, in words. 

However, we have a bit of a spiritual problem when we let ourselves be trapped by trying to find words to describe the mystery of the Trinity. Rather than trying to describe the Trinity, perhaps we should just be open to the mystery itself.

And it is a mystery! How can there be three persons and one God? It’s not entirely satisfactory to talk of ice, water and steam being one substance. Or three leafed clovers. Something you might discuss with our musician, Ros Sharp, is that in music you have more than one thing happening at a time. It is important in music that each note be sounded clearly and distinctly, yet we enjoy hearing a mass of different notes all played at once. Multiple notes become a beautiful single harmonic sound in music. Harmony does not make a big deal of individual notes but rather rejoices in their interesting relationships, contrasts, and contributions to one another.  

Although we can’t adequately describe it, it is this Trinitarian nature of our God that really sets us apart from other religions. I am sure each one of us has had the experience of being in a conversation where the topic of religious differences has come up and someone has said “Well, the Christians and Muslims and Jews shouldn’t be squabbling. They all worship the same God, don’t they?” 

Can you imagine someone answering, “No! Christians do not believe in some solitary, generic, vague, easily managed, and inoffensive god, Christians believe that God is Trinity.”  Perhaps there is a really sincere intent to be inclusive and peaceable when someone says, “Christians and Muslims worship the same God,” or when some scholars speak of Jews, Muslims, and Christians as members of the “Abrahamic faiths,” (saying that changes Jews and Christians into less offensive “Judeo-Christians”). People might say these things because they have a genuine desire to bring unity and harmony. However, we can’t escape the reality that, like it or not, this challenging and mysterious Holy Trinity of the Christian Church makes us unlike any other religion. Because God the Holy Trinity is so different from every other idea of God, we try very hard to avoid talking about Trinity. We know that we will end up in strife if we have something to say. 

We just don’t have language, which is adequate enough to describe this Holy Trinity, let alone explain why we believe that is what God really is. Even carefully and sincerely (without being defensive or argumentative) trying to define the Trinity can be really unhelpful. One of the problems we have as humans is that our greatest gift, language, is also our greatest danger. We can destroy ourselves by our words. 

In our Gospel reading today, Matthew tells us about the final meeting of the disciples with the risen Lord Jesus. There is a lot of significance in the setting. The risen Jesus is back in Galilee; this remote and despised area where he began his teaching is where Jesus now concludes his teaching.  And Matthew says that it takes place on a mountain (that’s where Jesus is tempted by Satan - that’s where Jesus speaks his most famous sermon – Jesus goes off alone to pray on a mountain - the transfiguration of Jesus occurs on a high mountain). Now the ending comes on a mountain.  Also, there’s a reminder of Old Testament mountains that were places of divine work and revelation. So, Matthew’s mention of a mountain here creates a level of expectation.  

Matthew tells us that, here on the mountain, Jesus who had refused Satan’s offer of “all the kingdoms in the world”, now says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  

Sometimes these last few verses of Matthew are used to “prove” the Holy Trinity because, in them, Jesus told his followers to baptize new disciples “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. But this isn’t meant to be a lesson from Jesus on the Holy Trinity. When the risen Lord Jesus appears to his followers, we are told that “they worshipped him; but some doubted.” That’s me too! Most of us are a mixture of belief and doubt as individuals, as Anglicans, and also as a congregation. 

Again, I think there’s a language problem. Here, “doubt” does not mean disbelief or rejection. Doubt means hesitancy or uncertainty. Jesus risen presence did not instantly change people of little faith with a faltering understanding into spiritual giants. We hesitate to believe. But even though we are hesitant to believe and we feel a bit uncomfortable saying the Creed, there is a flame in our doubting that can be fanned into life. 

We should actually be encouraged because Jesus doesn’t rebuke the doubters! Jesus simply gives his final instructions. He says, “Go and make disciples of all nations”. That’s why we end our services with the instruction “Go …. to love and serve the Lord” Each week we are being reminded to “Go and make disciples”. The Roman Catholic expression “Mass” has its origin in the Latin word they heard at the end of the service meaning “Go now!”. All followers of Jesus are sent out into the community to love and serve and to be makers of disciples.

The word translated here in Matthew as “Go” is a continual verb in Greek grammar which more accurately means “Go always” or “keep on going”. So, this final chapter of Matthew’s Gospel hasn’t ended; it is still being written today in the mission and teaching of Jesus’ disciples. 

And the God who has given us this instruction (this mission) to make disciples is impossible to define. Even without difficulty of the Trinity, you can’t define God. You are not able to put God in your pocket. There is no “Connect with God” app available for our iPhones and iPads.  

For nearly 2000 years, countless millions of Christians have found life with God is an adventure, a journey, a leap into the unknown. How often have you come to church, fairly confident that you are on the right path in your Christian living, rather firm in your faith, only to be surprised by something you heard in the Bible reading?  How often have you been unsettled by what was said in a sermon? Have you been really challenged by the comments of some fellow Christian?  

Maybe that’s God working to stir up our brains. But, here’s another mystery; no matter how much we learn, there is still more to learn. This is not a drag: it’s actually exciting to discover something new. We are in deep strife if we ever think that we have no more to learn. We need to be open and willing to change our mind. 

Here are a couple of helpful quotes. There’s an English proverb which says, “Wise men change their minds, fools never.” Jonathan Swift (who wrote Gulliver’s travels and was an Anglican Priest; Dean of the Cathedral in Dublin) said “Never be ashamed to admit that you have been wrong, 'tis only saying that you are wiser today than you were yesterday.” There is always an opportunity and a need to be ready to change our minds. This means that people who have been churchgoers all their lives are no further advanced than the brand-new Christian getting involved with “Church” for the first time. 

Perhaps the point is not to try to understand the Trinitarian God, but to simply love God.  To be at peace in the knowledge that “Jesus loves me” To rejoice in the knowledge that God loves us so much he gave his Son so that we will not perish but may have Eternal Life.  

Matthew ends with Jesus saying “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” What a wonderful promise! There are no conditions for us to meet. There is nothing we must believe. Whether we recognise it or not, Jesus Christ is always with us.

Sermon Notes 28th May 2023
Doug Bannerman

Chapters 7 & 8, the keystone of the Book of Signs in the Gospel of John, are dominated by a motif of strong conflict, and describe the manifestation and rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

They include most of Jesus’ responses to objections to messianic claims made for Him; and they are characterised by unusually sustained, sharp, controversial notes; all of which are wrapped in rapid exchanges, in which the narrator does not allow Jesus a speech of any length without interruption. There is a sense of urgency. The evangelist clearly aims to create a vivid and urgent impression of the persistent and murderous intentions of those opposed to Jesus and what He represented. [1]

There are repeated statements that Jesus’ life is in danger, with attempts to arrest him or lynch him on the spot.[2] Jesus avoids going to Judea because the Jews are looking for an opportunity to kill him. The people of Judea are afraid to even mention his name. When Jesus asks, ‘Why do you seek to kill me?’, the people of Jerusalem are surprised at the boldness of ‘one whom they seek to kill’. They try to arrest him ‘but no one laid hands on him’. So they send the police to arrest him, but that effort goes belly up. And, in the Temple, Jesus says bluntly to them, ‘you look for an opportunity to kill me.’ And they pick up stones to throw at him; but, Jesus hides himself and leaves the Temple.

The action is staged during the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus has come up from Galilee for the festival, where the drama unfolds upon a double stage. In the foreground Jesus confronts the crowds attending the feast; in the background, the authorities deliberate and plot against Him. The narrative portrays a context of intense conflict, acute danger and hostility; and, today’s gospel reading is placed bang in the middle of it all.

One of the most distinctive ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles[3] was that of libations of water. On each of the seven days of the Feast, water was drawn from the Siloam reservoir, taken to the temple, and poured over the altar of burnt offering. One of the traditional readings for the festival is Zechariah 14, which describes the approaching day of the Lord. The symbolism of the water pouring over the altar summarises, as it were, several OT passages that speak of a river of living water which is to issue from the Temple mount, and become a source of life and healing far and wide.

It is the seventh and last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus enters the Temple with megaphone in hand, and cries out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, let the one who believes in me drink.’

He could not have picked a more dangerous occasion upon which to make this declaration. John reports that some of the crowd think he is the Prophet; others think he is the Messiah; and the crowd are furious.

Now, the Fourth Gospel is the only NT document which uses the term ‘messiah’ (Greek μεσσίας), a Greek transliteration of the OT Hebrew word ‘Māšîaḥ’ [מָשִׁיחַ] or more probably the Aramaic Mšīḥāʾ [משיחא],[4] literally ‘anointed’ or ‘anointed one’. The OT usage of ‘messiah’ is usually of a consecrated person such as a king or priest, or a Messianic prince in apocalyptic literature.

In John, it occurs first in the prologue and is there translated by the familiar word Christos (Χριστός), which is used everywhere in the Gospel, except where the Samaritan woman is made to say, ‘ “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ).’ (John4.25) The combination of Messiah and Christ here, is undoubtedly derived from the Aramaic Mšīḥāʾ Yēšūʿ [יֵשׁוּע משִׁיחָא] again a transliteration which forms the familiar ‘Jesus Christ’.

That said, it is extremely difficult to find satisfactory evidence of the absolute use of the term Messiah [מָשִׁיחַ] in pre-Christian Judaism.[5]

Furthermore, the term, Messiah, does not become common in Rabbinic usage until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.[6] ‘Messiah’ was not religious currency in the time of Jesus. The earliest traceable Rabbinic reference to the coming of the Messiah, per se, seems to be to Eliezer ben Jacob in 90 CE, the same period when John was writing the gospel.

It is clear, then, the Fourth Evangelist did not take the title Christ (Χριστός) simply from Christian tradition, but was familiar with its Aramaic original. So, John develops a doctrine of the person and work of Jesus with explicit reference to Jewish messianic belief, which we can summarise as: 1. The Messiah of the Jews is to be a descendant of David; 2. He is to appear no one knows whence; 3. He is to work signs and to reign as King; and 4. He is to abide forever.[7]

John does not affirm that Jesus is the Son of David; and if He is a king, His kingship is of an entirely different order; His origin is indeed mysterious, since He comes from another world; He does work signs, but in a more profound sense than the Jews imagine; and the death which appears to be the end of Him is in fact the climax and seal of His manifestation as the eternal Saviour of the world.

So, while formally, John claims for Jesus the Jewish title ‘Messias’ (Μεσσίας), in fact the Jewish concept of messiahship is ignored – and a doctrine of the Person of Christ is mainly worked out under other categories which are not those of Rabbinic Judaism.

However, in a visionary form, John submits the orthodox rabbinic doctrine that the ‘name of the Messiah’ was present with God before the creation of the world – that the Messiah’s coming was a part of the aboriginal design of God for the universe which God purposed to create.

During the first two centuries CE, Rabbinic thinking drifted slowly to associating water with the Spirit of God. The early 3rd century Jewish writer, Joshua ben Levi, like John, associated water with the gift of the Holy Spirit; which is a strong hint that this symbolism was already in view a hundred years earlier, when the John wrote, around 90 CE, that Jesus, ‘on the last, the great day’ of the Feast of Tabernacles cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’

An offering that the OT prophet Joel expressed with perfection.

And in that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine,
and the hills will flow with milk.

All the streams of Judah will run with water,
and a spring will flow from the house of the Lord

(Joel 3.18).

Doug Bannerman © 2023

[1] See C H Dodd The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (London ,New York: Cambridge University Press 1953)pp 345,346

[2] See severally John 7.1; 7.13; 7.19-25; 7.30; 7.33-34; 8.40-47 

[3] Tabernacles, or Shavu`ot [שָׁבוּעוֹ], falls 50 days after Passover. Originally a harvest feast, Shavu`ot now commemorates the sealing of the Old Covenant, when the Lord revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Christian Pentecost falls 50 days after Easter.

[4] Op cit C H Dodd p87

[5] Op cit C H Dodd p87

[6] See Israel Abrahams Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, and the composite Judaism and Christianity , especially in vol. II, The Contact of Pharisaism with other Cultures, ed. H. Loewe 1937

[7] Op cit C H Dodd p92

Sermon Notes 21st May 2023
Geoff Vidal

Carol and I have had a bit of a hectic homecoming from our great trip to Europe. I am so pleased that here in the Parish we have Rev Doug who led us last Sunday and who will do tag team with me over the next few weeks until Desiree returns.

The Friday congregation have heard me talk about noticing different things during our travels in Europe. Not just differences from what we find in Australia, but vast differences between cities such as Turin and Venice and Paris. The cathedrals and churches we visited were all different and of course we found the food was different in different places. We also noticed that people were different in the various places.

The thing I have been reflecting on is that, with the variety of cultures and situations that exist, people in a beautiful Italian cathedral or people under a tin roof in Arnhem Land are all worshipping the same God. In vastly different ways, worshipping people are connecting with same Creator God. Even though there are widely differing ideas of that God, there is connection. I’m sure that if every one of us was to attempt to describe God, we would each have something different to offer.

Despite the differing ideas people have of our Creator God, there is one thing that everyone has in common. That is a sense that, somehow, the way in which we are connecting with God isn’t adequate. There are many different ways in which people connect with God, but we all have room to improve that connection.

We need a willingness to understand more. Not so much facts, but ideas. I’m convinced that reading the Bible and pondering what we have read leads to greater understanding. Rereading and thinking; I know that I need to do more. Oswald Saunders (a missionary leader) wrote over 40 Christian books but is best known for saying “the only book you need to study to know what the Bible says is the Bible”

So, I am encouraging Bible reading; to read and think and read again. There will be new understandings.

Take every opportunity to think about what Bible is saying. Your new significant understanding might not be what you hear in a sermon or what someone writes in a Christian book or what someone else says in conversation. But I am convinced that with regular Bible reading you are sure to find something new that is really helpful in connecting you with God.

I have known people who have done some study of their Bible and, quite unexpectedly, have discovered a new understanding of a verse that they have known for years. They have told me “it’s as if I had just read that verse for the first time.”

I suggested to the Friday people that it is really worthwhile to read the Gospel for the next Sunday in advance (when the newsletter comes out). It is helpful to be ready for what is probably coming up in the sermon. Read the Gospel and think and wonder “what do I reckon about that? How does this help me know God?”

Well, the reading today (John 17) is a pretty tough one to do homework on or even to work with in formal studies. This passage would be a real doozey to tackle in a home group. It’s known as Jesus High Priestly prayer; probably spoken at the end of the Last Supper or perhaps on the way to Gethsemane. Scholars believe that the prayer is intended to summarize, in his own words, Jesus’ relationship with the Father and the relationship he would like his disciples to keep with him and the Father.

As Jesus begins this prayer, he makes the statement “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” That seems a straightforward definition. Eternal Life is not something measured in time, but relationship. It is in knowing God that we have complete fulfilment of our being.

But then Jesus says (in v4) “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do”.

It’s not easy to understand why Jesus says this while having dinner with his disciples before he was crucified. I spent some time researching this. I found the experts explain it by saying that at this time, even before the crucifixion, the glory of Jesus is already loose in the world. The things that Jesus has previously said and done have glorified God. So, Jesus’ desire to bring glory to God has been achieved already.

And (in v11) Jesus, standing in front of his disciples, says “Now I am no longer in the world”. How can Jesus be praying this when he is physically present with his disciples? The explanation must be tied in with an understanding of this “world” that Jesus says he is no longer in, being, not the physical earth, but “worldly things”.  Do you remember that in a Baptism, we promise that we will turn away from sin, the world and the devil.

I’m sure there are better ways of explaining this passage than I can give you. There are certainly a number of different ideas about what the Gospel writer is really telling us about Jesus praying. Could it be possible that all the different ways of interpreting this passage (and much more of the Bible) are correct? Perhaps the several different interpretations are each correct.

The last two Sunday readings were from John 14 and today are into John 17. We have skipped 16:12 in which Jesus says “I still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it. However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” 

In Europe there are guides everywhere. Guidebooks are helpful but real, live guides have the advantage of being interactive. Guides answer questions and are able to take you to the important things quickly. A guide helps you see new things. What new things has a guide shown you? 

One of the Bishops in Brisbane, Bishop Jeremy Greaves, says he thinks that this information that “when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” suggests that we are always on a journey into truth. The church has always suggested that a life of faith is a journey. We move from the font at the back of a church building to the Lord’s Table at the front. Our liturgy takes us on a journey through the Bible in a 3-year Cycle. As he encourages us to journey on, Thomas Cranmer (the brilliant person who pioneered the Anglican Prayer Book) uses the words “Hear, mark, learn and inwardly digest”.

Bishop Jeremy is helpfully pointing out that our Christian journey leads us into truth. To encourage people to move on in the journey, he asks “I wonder how many of you believe all the same things that you did when you were a child? As you did 10 or 15 years ago? Even 5 years ago?”  That is nice, polite way of him saying to the people of Brisbane Diocese, “surely you haven’t just stayed in the same place with your faith - surely you have travelled along in your Christian life over the years”.

Life is a journey from childhood to adulthood and older age and our faith is a journey of growth also. Ideally, our faith journey takes us to stronger connection with God. As with all journeys, there might well be some zig zags, some steep parts and tough patches, and maybe some dead ends. But, if we keep travelling, eventually we’ll come closer to God.  The reality is that if we stop travelling on this journey, if we stay in the same place, we will not get any closer to God.

I like the expression “dancing”. Bruce Fleming spoke of it last week. We dance around all the possible meanings of tough bible passages such as this John 17 reading today. Our dancing with scripture, our dancing with Jesus, with prayer and reflection and with the help of the Holy Spirit, will bring us to know the truth. If we dance long enough, we will find the truth.

It might be that, in the long run, our truth is different to the truth other followers of Jesus have found in other places and other churches. But let’s be confident that, when we are open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, whatever truly connects us with God is the truth.

This is something to keep in mind as celebrate Pentecost next Sunday. As we remember Jesus’ promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit - the guide to all truth.

Sermon Notes 14th May 2023
Bruce Fleming

Acts 17:22-31

This passage in Acts is often falsely presented as a badge of academic honour for Paul; “Look how he was invited to present to the Areopagus, the court of philosophers of Athens, the centre of Reasoners and Thinkers in the Ancient world. Paul has earned his place with Socrates and Plato.” That may have been the case in 400 BCE, but not now. Greece is now simply a part of the massive Roman Empire and the Areopagus court is now simply a civil court addressing concerns of a civic nature. Paul has been invited to present his agenda in order to vet him. This was not a 1st century equivalent of a TED talk to inspire inquisitive minds. It was a case of his reputation preceding him - a reputation for causing division, conflict and chaos. Even in Athens you can’t just pull out an accordion and start playing - you need a buskers license! Modern Universities have a similarly cautious approach to public lectures on their campuses lest they be accused of entertaining “hate speech” or inciting violence. “Cancel culture” was alive and kicking back in Athens but Paul succeeded in allaying any fears they may have had that his message represented a politically motivated attack on their guardian and patron, the Roman Empire.

He opens with what he hopes might establish some common ground between his message and this pagan jury. As he gazed at the temples and shrines around him, he saw a universal human quest for meaning and their acknowledgement of mystery in an alter to “an unknown God.” He hadn’t come not to insult their culture but to share the great revelation of hope - something new had entered human history in Jesus Christ representing and responding to our ultimate needs and aspirations. But it also judges our flawed belief systems, what the Jews called idolatry - allowing a thing that is not ultimate to have a claim over your life as if it was. Like your Facebook profile, job status, military power, income, or a fashionable cultural ideology. There is much we can learn about the Gospel and culture from this short account of where Paul places his focus.

We are often keen to prove our culture WRONG, and so move to the important task of getting them to repent, and thus become RIGHT, what we often call being SAVED. Paul shows us a more nuanced approach. If you want to persuade people about where they may be wrong, or perhaps are in need of some clarity or a new perspective, sometimes it helps to show them where they are RIGHT. A positive approach to engaging the culture is to understand it, to read some of their “contemporary poets” and to hear what they truly value and aspire to. We may discover we share some common ground with our agnostic and atheistic artists and thinkers. Like Paul, we can assert some of the things we believe by saying, “as some of your poets have said…” Paul did not begin by quoting the Bible in Athens! He only began by opening the scriptures when he was addressing a Jewish audience who shared his belief that the Old Testament texts were authoritative. A good start for Christians might be to stop quoting the Bible at non-Christians as if that wins the argument. 

So Paul did not begin with, “I hate your idols because they are an offence to the one true God and you are clearly breaking the first two Commandments.” Instead, he opened with, “I see you are a very religious people.” Such tolerance is astonishing coming from an orthodox Jew who absolutely abhorred idolatry. Then he seized on the place of confessed mystery - their alter to an “unknown God,” though that may just have been a concession for international visitors and tourists. They couldn’t cover every nation’s God in their temple precinct so they provide a place where those who don’t worship Aphrodite or Apollo may worship. But it is an opportunity for Paul to shed light on a “different” kind of God. 

Before he says more, he says something I think Christians zealous to spread the gospel, have largely ignored. Paul acknowledges God’s gift of life (breath) and space to every human and every culture in history to both thrive and to seek him. God welcomes the spiritual search of every culture our world history has known so we must not disparage our Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or indigenous fellow travellers in their quests.  God is glad that in seeking some may find him. Jesus said something similar - the one who genuinely knocks will find the door opens. For, as Paul proclaims,  God is not far from any one of us. Carried within each precious human soul is God’s breath and Paul’s first quote from the Greek Religious thinkers acknowledges that; “For in him we live and move and have our being.” That was written by Epimenides, a philosopher of the 6th Century BCE and it was spoken of the Greek God, Zeus, not Yahweh. The original context is quite amusing.

The Cretans had apparently, sometime past, built a tomb to Zeus. A tomb! In the famous book, Greek Religion for Dummies, it explains on page one that a God is immortal. Gods don’t die. So to build a tomb to Zeus is actually an insult, if not blasphemy. But certainly, very stupid. (Hence the term “cretin” today for someone really stupid!) 

They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,

Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.

But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,

For in you we live and move and have our being. 

Paul is affirming where Greek pagan theology gets it right. Then he commends their poems in which a personal relationship with Zeus is acknowledged by referring to humans as “his offspring.”  Aratus of Cilicia (Stoic, 4th - 3rdC) wrote, 

All the streets and all the market places

of humanity are full of Zeus.

Also full of him are the sea and the harbours,

and everywhere we all have need of Zeus.

For we are also his offspring. 

And Cleanthes (Stoic, 4th - 3rd C), wrote, 

The beginning of the world was from you,

and with law you rule over all things.

To you all flesh may speak,

for we are your offspring.

Therefore, I will lift a hymn to you and will sing of your power. 

That last verse could have been written by Hillsong, but it is about Zeus. Only after respecting their temples, their literature, their search for truth, their believing, and their doubting, does Paul introduce them to Christ - a new word of hope from God - of power and new life available to all. But this God transcends the human echo chambers of our idols - our own contrived statues and dogmas - that rule us and that we use to rule others. From these dead ends we need to repent. 

Paul shows the flaw in their system. If your insights are correct, and God is Creator and sustainer of life, and we are his offspring, then we are made in Zeus’s image! But your system has it backwards. You are the creators and have made the gods in your own image, reflecting your appetites, your value system (silver and gold), and even your bodies! And that is a great definition of idolatry - worshipping, binding ourselves to, or being ruled by something we ourselves have created. Even worse, we often use these constructs to lord it over others. 

And is that not the history of most religion, philosophy, cultural fashion, ideology, politics, and even theology throughout history? Humans build conceptual edifices of meaning and power and worship it, submit to it, enslaving themselves to it, yet also wielding them to colonise and control others. Christ beckons us to leave these systems of enslavement that, more often than not result, in abuse, exploitation, corruption and misery, and trust the true God who is the source of life and breath itself. The true source of all breath and life desires to embrace, love, free, heal, and exalt every human to a pedestal of glory. Jesus represents resurrection transformation and hope for all. Our human systems that degrade, control or delude each other are revealed as religious imposters. This is what Paul wants the Athenians to repent of and we need to repent of them in our own culture and churches as well. As we find the stories and aspirations within our own culture for truth and beauty, peace and grace, we can harness those voices and add them to our own witness to Christ.

Sermon notes 7th May 2023
Desiree Snyman

Introductory comments

Perhaps some of you glimpsed aspects of the King’s Coronation held on the 6th of May 2023 in Westminster. Amidst the pageantry, liturgical drama, and Anglican music at its best, did anything strike you as unusual or unique about the ceremony?  Personally, I was moved by the presence and involvement of other faith leaders in the ceremony. The image of Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish leaders bestowing on Charles the symbols of his ministry may seem in direct contrast to the Gospel reading John 14.1-14, especially in the light of phrases such as “I am the way the truth, and the light,” and “No one comes to the Father except through me.” What is going on with these Scriptures?

About John 14.1-12

The narrative context of John 14 is that Jesus has washed the feet of his disciples. The foot washing is the high point of Jesus’ teaching, a gesture of intimate, caressing service and a revolutionary symbol of true leadership and friendship. Remember in the foot washing Jesus totally reconfigures humanity’s relationship to the Divine. Jesus states categorically that we are not slaves of God but friends of God. While Jesus is still on his knees, drying his hands and while the disciples’ feet still tingle with the sensation of his touch, Jesus speaks to his closest friends about his imminent departure. 

The historical context of John’s Gospel is that a small, persecuted, and ostracised Jewish, “breakaway” sect is explaining to its wider Jewish community, why and how its belief system differs. What we read here is an intra-Jewish argument about what it means to be God’s people. What John 14 confidently and daringly preaches is that in the person of Jesus the Christ we have a world-defining moment that decisively changes the relationship between God and humanity. These words proclaim that because of Jesus we have a fresh understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be divine. These words affirm that Jesus is the tangible presence of God in the world and that God can be known in a powerful, real, and intimate way through that incarnate presence.

I am utterly heartbroken every time this stunning Scripture is used as a weapon or when these beautiful metaphors are abused and taken literally. Colonialism, crusades both ancient and modern, and the sad history of arrogant Christian superiority in aggressive, manipulative, and bullying evangelism have weaponised this Scripture to demonise other faiths and belief systems. 

John 14 is a text written in ancient Biblical Greek to and from a middle eastern Jewish sect living in and around 90AD. The phrases from John 14 become problematic when they are used to answer 21st century questions that had no relevance whatsoever to the early Johannine community. To use these verses in a battle over the relative merits of the world’s religions is to distort their theological heart. It is dangerous and destructive to throw John 14 around in this manner. If these verses make us religiously arrogant, then we have lost the point altogether. The words are not exclusionary. Rather they are particular, particular to a time, audience and place in history. There is beauty in this Scripture and comfort in its message: Do not let your hearts be troubled…believe in me…there is much space in God….make your home in God.  What could the metaphors John uses mean? I suggest that the message is that we are manifestations of God looking for God. 

We are manifestations of God looking for God.

My observation about the human condition is that we think there is something wrong with us … I do not know why we think this … but we do. Inside each of us there is a deep, congenital restlessness. We observe our restlessness and long for peace and centredness. We observe our anxiety, fear, and worry and long for faith. We think that this restlessness, fear, and worry are what is wrong with us. There is nothing wrong with us. We are not peaceful people who are sometimes restless. Our default is not faith with anxiety, worry, fear and emptiness only an illness to overcome. We are not restful beings who sometimes get restless, but restless beings who occasionally experience rest. Because of this we can find it difficult to concentrate during the day and to sleep at night. We go through life feeling like we are missing out on something, that life is more exciting and fulfilling for others than it is for us. Our achievements rarely satisfy us because we are always aware of what we haven’t achieved, of missed chances and failed possibilities.  

These emotions of wanting more, these experiences of anxiety, restlessness, loneliness, fear, and worry are not what is wrong with us. They are what is right with us. This is the divine fire within us calling us to our true centre.  

Here is the reason. Deeper than fear, worry, anxiety, and restlessness is the experience of our divine unity with God, our true home. We are manifestations of God looking for God. The only reason we can recognise restlessness, emptiness, loneliness, and anxiety is because of a previous experience of Infinite Unity with Infinite Love which is, and always has been, the still point of our turning world - home. The restlessness, anxiety and emptiness are our trigger to come home. We are like homing pigeons and the restlessness and emptiness we experience are our navigation home.  

There is an infinite longing in us that can only be filled by Infinite Love – God. Augustine’s quote is overused, but relevant in this case: “O God, you have made me for yourself, and my heart is restless until it rests in you.” 

The way to find home is to follow our longings and allow it to lead us to God. Perhaps an image will help. Imagine babysitting a very young child. The young child notices the mother’s absence and for a while the babysitter can distract them with toys, entertainment, and other stimulation. There comes a tipping point where only the mother’s voice will soothe the disgruntled child. Likewise, in trying to satisfy our congenital restlessness we can distract ourselves for a while with flashy toys and anesthetise our pain with an array of addictions and avoidance techniques. There comes a moment when these things no longer soothe us. At this point we turn to God the Mother’s voice in the depths of our soul and ground of our being, the one voice and one presence that can ultimately bring us rest.  

Concluding comments

In putting the above into practice Meister Eckhart is helpful: “Whatever state we may find ourselves, whether in strength or in weakness, in joy or in sorrow, to whatever we may feel attached, we must renounce it”. (Meister Eckhart, sermon on Luke 1:57).

“Do not let your hearts be troubled” means “do not become attached.” Whatever restlessness or emptiness we experience is a trigger to enfold us into God. Day by day, moment by moment, do not become attached. If you experience sorrow, loss or grief, feel it, it’s very real. But do not make the mistake of letting sorrow, loss or grief define you, or have the last say, it has no authority over you. Only the infinite generosity of God giving Godself to you in this very moment has the authority to name who you are. Similarly, in a moment of joy be detached from joy. Joy is finite, it passes. Joy also does not have power to name you, only the Infinite Union with Infinite Love defines who and whose you are. Every thought or distraction, every moment of longing or restlessness is an opportunity to let go and surrender to the ground of our being, the home of our infinite unity with infinite love. 

   Sermon Notes 23rd April

Desiree Snyman

Rainforest Labyrinth

If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend accepting an invitation to walk the rainforest Labyrinth at Brockley Farm created by Jenny and Charlie Handley. The labyrinth opens on the third weekend of each month. It is a work of spiritual, artistic, and architectural depth; displaying an inner geologically feministic and embodied wisdom, prophetically ahead of its time. A labyrinth is many things including a type of walking prayer or meditation. As you enter the labyrinth you head towards the centre before unexpectedly being flung to the outer rims. As you follow the path it draws you closer to the centre again before leading you to the edge. Faithfully following the concentric paths leads you ultimately to the centre – a place of womb-like safety and stillness. The centre is the still point of the turning world, where (in the words of TSA Elliot) 

“the dance is, 

but neither arrest nor movement. 

And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. 

Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. 

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, 

and there is only the dance.”

The labyrinth is a metaphor for our spiritual lives for none of us have a straight line to God. Like the Labyrinth we too walk towards the centre which is God before being suddenly flung out to the edges. 

Luke-Acts Labyrinth 

The whole Gospel of Luke is structured like a labyrinth with Jerusalem as its centre. The Gospel edges forward all the time to Jerusalem where the climax of the story happens. Jerusalem is a symbol for our life in God where the marriage between heaven and earth happens in us such that we become the living temple of God’s presence. However, the story moves towards Jerusalem in circles, not a straight line. The story moves towards Jerusalem and then journeys away. This is symbolic of our pathway to God. Who among us has arrived at a deeper faith via a straight path? Our own stories are about two steps forward, three steps back, moving around in circles and then finding God’s path again. The story takes two steps forward towards Jerusalem, one step back, before moving towards Jerusalem again. 

Where is God in the labyrinth?

Is the centre, the still point, the place where “most of God” is? Or is it at the entry? In the Gospel where is God? Is it in Jerusalem the centre of the story? In our lives where is God? Is “most of God” contained in the moments when we manage to collapse into the centre or when we are lost in darkness literally walking in circles?

It seems to be in these circles of walking away from the path that God rocks up. For example in today’s story, two disciples are leaving Jerusalem. Jerusalem, and their faith and their hopes for the future are behind them. They have literally turned their backs on the spiritual path. They are seven miles away from Jerusalem. It is while they are walking away from Jerusalem, while they are off centre, while in confusion, the Resurrected Christ rocks up. God is everywhere but most present on the road to Emmaus. 

Where is Emmaus?

The road to Emmaus is the place we go to if we are tired of it all. Emmaus is where we go when the false optimism of others makes us nauseous and poisons our already darkened mood. Emmaus is the place of low energy, low patience. Frederick Buechner writes that Emmaus is:

The place we go to in order to escape – a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, “Let the whole damned thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway.” . . . Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.

When I hear myself say “I think I need a drink” or when I am in a better place, “I think I need a run” then I know I am on the Emmaus path again. After I have binge-watched the fourth season of the latest Netflix offering, it sometimes occurs to me that maybe I am on my way to Emmaus again. Indeed, I am a slow learner. When my husband arrives home from work with yellow chips and a slab of chocolate I know it’s time to pay attention – I have learnt through observation that Emmaus is nearby. 

Easter hearts and broken hearts

It is on the road to Emmaus that the Resurrected Christ is present as a friend walking the road of life with us, a spiritual mentor drawing attention to God moments. Although the Emmaus story is a powerful experience of Resurrection, it is only an Easter story in so far as real space is given for darkness, doubt, and the absence of life. Tucked away in the encounter of the Easter Christ is the translation of one unusual Greek word that translates into four English words: “but we had hoped.” Four words, yet they are utterly heartbreaking and surely a summary of what it means to gain maturity. But. We. Had. Hoped. But we had hoped – a phrase that is so devastating because it not only speaks of the grief of loss in the present – it speaks to the emptiness of the future – a hole in future imaginings. 

But we had hoped – these words ring true for so many people that we have each walked alongside on the road to Emmaus. But. We. Had. Hoped: that the marriage would be forever…that the sick friend would recover…that the child would come home…that the family member would overcome addiction…But we had hoped.

Life is beautiful but there is also heartbreak and failure. And too often we gloss over this. We are a culture that can’t look darkness and brokenness in the eye. Someone shares the news of the death of a loved one, we sympathise and then change topic. Sometimes people even avoid those who have suffered loss; not because they do not care, but because they don’t know how to be or what to say – we are at a loss with loss. We find it hard to pause in the spaces of “but. We. Had. Hoped” and rush past with “She’ll be right mate!” The message is that there is still fear but the fear does not define you. There is still brokenness, but brokenness only defines you.

To be Easter people of the Resurrection we must be a people that makes space for broken hearts. We must be able to admit our darkness, our hurt and our betrayals. We admit to broken hearts not as a gateway to Resurrection but because its part and parcel of the mystery of being human. We are invited and allowed to admit and to accept disappointment – the cancer that returned – the addiction that was never overcome – the job that didn’t materialise – the prayer that was never answered – the longed-for child that was never born …

The image of Emmaus since early childhood has been burnt into my consciousness as a symbol of what it means to be a friend, a human, a partner, a parent, and church to each other. The walk to Emmaus is this: We walk alongside each other, listening in conversation. As we walk Jesus is present within us and between us and nourishes us with food that is not just food. Everything is sacramental and a path to tasting God. Cleopas and an unnamed disciple were on the walk to Emmaus. Why is the other disciple not named? He is not named because he is every man, woman or child who incarnates the Resurrection through love to another. The Resurrected Christ shows up not as a third person but as the energy of love communicated from the wholeness of one person’s love to another. This exchange of energy, or Resurrected love, invigorates the Resurrected Christ in the other and this is when the Christ “disappears from sight”.

One of my favourite Godly Play stories relates the mystery of Easter powerfully. 

The final plaque of “The Faces of Easter” by Jerome Berryman is as follows: 

“that afternoon Jesus died. The sky grew dark. Jesus was taken down from the cross and buried in a cave a great stone was rolled over the opening of the cave to close it like a door. 

Saturday was so quiet you could almost hear the whole earth breathing. 

On Sunday, it was the women who had the courage to go on to the tomb just to be close to Jesus. 

They wanted to remember even if it was sad. 

When they came to the tomb they found that the stone had been rolled back and that the tomb was empty. 

Jesus had died on the cross, but somehow, he was still present with them as he is with us, especially in the bread and the wine. 

When you look at this side – crucifixion – you know that the other side is Easter. 

When you look at this side – Easter- you know that this side – crucifixion – is still there – and you cannot pull them apart. This is the mystery of Easter and that makes all the difference.”

Sermon Notes 26th March 2023
Desiree Snyman

John 11

No amount of priestly training can ever prepare you for the confrontation of smell and the roller coaster memories of pastoral encounters the memory of smell speeds you through. It really, really messes with your head. One year, in Holy Week, I was called to the hospital to baptise a still born baby and pray the last rites. When I entered the hospital room I was hit by the overwhelming smell of death. In the rite of baptism, the chrism oil which has the potent scent of nard is used so that all may know the baptised person as “a little Christ”. When touching the still born child with the chrism oil, the smell of spiked nard fumigated the room, but the smell of death refused to budge. I spent a very long time with the grieving mother, even holding her still born precious child. I don’t know if the mother was aware of it but the whole experience was saturated in the tango of these two smells: pungent death and spikenard. Ever since, the stunning smell of spikenard is twinned with the pungency of death. 

The unity of John 11&12

I share this memory with you because my exegesis of John 11 is directed more by smell than any intellectual analysis of the Greek and literary structure of the text. The opening verses of John 11 are like falling down a rabbit hole: “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill”. The story of Lazarus and the story of Mary are inextricably linked for me…by smell. The opening verse of John 11 refers directly to John 12 where Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with expensive spikenard. When Mary anoints Jesus with spikenard, Lazarus is there alongside her, still carrying the odour of death, much like my pastoral encounter of the still born child anointed with spikenard and death. While the smell of death mingled with spikenard is what connects John 11 and John 12 for me, other researchers and academics have more sophisticated ways of noticing the connection between John 11 and 12. 

In arguing for the literary unity of John 11 and John 12, some authors remark that the three main characters: Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, are central to both John 11 and 12. Secondly, the raising of Lazarus in John 11 is stated as the reason the religious elite put Jesus to death in John 12. Thirdly, the glorification of Jesus also connects John 11 and 12. In John 11 Jesus says that the death of Lazarus is so that “the Son of Man may be glorified” (11.4). 11.4 connects to John 12.23; “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” There are not only literary features that unite John 11 and John 12, the theme of belief also joins John 11 and 12 into one literary unit. 

While our translations separate John 11 and 12 with chapter demarcations, the raising of Lazarus is directly connected with Jesus’ anointing by Mary and his sermon about death being the birthplace of new life (John 12.24). In other words, the anointing of Jesus is the major clue in fully appreciating the meaning of the raising of Lazarus, in the same way that Lazarus being raised foreshadows Jesus being Resurrected. The three scenes are a triptych, held together by the anointing: the Raising of Lazarus, the anointing, and Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The stench of Lazarus death (John 11.4) is co-mingled with the scent of spikenard (John 12.3).

When trauma challenges faith

By holding onto the memory hinted at the start of John 11, the anointing, we are held safe to face the trauma of illness and death in the remaining chapter. I use the word trauma deliberately because I suggest that this is how the story of Lazarus holds us when trauma challenges faith. If the point of John’s Gospel is that we might believe in Jesus Christ and believe that he is the Resurrection and the life and the light, what happens when there is death not life, the darkness of a cave and not life? Martha verbalises our struggles with faith: if you Lord had been here, my brother whom you loved would not have died. Mary repeats the same struggle: “if you Lord had been here…” These are our words too. If you Lord had been here, my loved one would not have suffered with cancer, with pain, with Alzheimer’s. If you Lord had been here, the longed-for child would be in my arms…. If you Lord had been here, my marriage would have survived…if you Lord had been here, my adult son or daughter would not have ignored me for 5 years. The trauma of faith is this – if Jesus is Life, why is there death? If Jesus is light, why must there still be darkness? 

The wounds of our doubt and our questions and our struggles with faith and belief are anointed by Mary. In the moment of this anointing, we might learn two important things: that Resurrection does not abolish death, it transcends death. Resurrection is the transformation of pain, not the banishment of pain.

Lazarus Mary Martha are a trinity that help us deal with the underserved pain, the unexplainable tragedy, the insanity, the absurdity and the pain of life. Death is anointed by Mary. We journey through death and pain not around it. Our faith wounds are anointed so that the scars are no longer obstacles to resurrection but the sacred wounds of resurrection.

Transformative spirituality 

The story of the raising of Lazarus and the anointing of Mary teach us that unless we make our wounds into sacred wounds, we are destined to be pain transmitters and not pain transformers. The death and raising of Lazarus, the anointing of Jesus and the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus become a universal archetypal map on how we alchemise pain; pain that is not transformed is transferred.

If we cannot find a way for our pain to be transformed, we may become bitter, cynical, and negative. If we do not allow our pain to be alchemised, we scapegoat our pain onto others, we export our hurt onto others, most often those closest to us and very often children. Psychologists call the process of transmitting our pain onto children the cycle of abuse, describing how abused children become adult abusers of children. Our human reaction is to fix pain, to control it or most foolishly of all to try to understand pain.

The story today is about the radical transformation of pain and consequently of history. The story today invites us to be fully present and conscious to our pain, so that we can break through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness becoming the wounded healers of the world. The story teaches us to hold onto pain until it becomes our resurrection. One poet who knew well the wisdom of tenderly holding onto pain until it transforms into Resurrection is Leonard Cohen. For example, Leonard Cohen explained that we are to forget our perfect offering, because there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. I end with his “psalm” that describes how Resurrection does not abolish pain but transforms pain.

O gather up the brokenness and bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry, the cross you left behind
Come healing of the body. Come healing of the mind.
And let the heavens hear it, the penitential hymn,
come healing of the spirit, come healing of the limb.
Behold the gates of mercy in arbitrary space
And none of us deserving, the cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing where love has been confined
Come healing of the body, come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding, that tore the light apart.
Come healing of the reason, come healing of the heart.

Sermon Notes 19th March 2023
Desiree Snyman

Wake-up! Grow-up!

A man knocks on his son’s door: “Jaime wake up” he says. 

Jaime answers: “I don’t want to get up!” 

The father answers: “you have to get up and go to school!”

Jaime says: “I don’t want to go to school.”

“Why not?” asks the father.

Jaime says, “I’ll give you 3 reasons why I won’t go to school.

1.    It’s dull. 

2.    The kids tease me. 

3.    The teachers pick on me.”

The father says “Wake-up! Grow-up! I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school.

1.    It’s your duty. 

2.    You are 45 years old. 

3.    You are the headmaster.”

The art of prayer, spirituality and authentic religion is waking up. We are invited to wake up to reality. In Ephesians the writer says, “Sleepers awake!” Some describe the journey of spiritual growth as “waking up!” I see in the text for today a map that landscapes our soul’s journey to spiritual maturity that we may use as a guide to growing-up in God. May it inspire us to dive deeper into God. 

The scriptures says that as Jesus walked along, they came across a man blind from birth. The disciples ask: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents? Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents.” 

This is a religious question and Jesus wants them to wake up from religion!

The disciples are operating according to the equation that if there is suffering there must be sin.

Jesus breaks this equation. 

Jesus breaks that religious belief. 

The equation of suffering = sin only survives if God is the Great and Angry Judge in the Great Somewhere in The Great Out There. Growing up spiritually means learning to see God differently and experience God within. 

One task is to explore different images of God. 

The image of God as almighty father is used only 12 times in Scripture, yet it remains a dominant image in church liturgy. Why? Why is it that people are so offended at other images for God? All it is, is an image. Perhaps we can gently suggest that sometimes we are guilty of the sin of idolatry: that we worship the image of God and not God. The image may point the way to God – we need to look at the way it is pointing and not the image doing the pointing. The journey to spiritual maturity requires using more and more images for God until we use no images – the way of illuminated darkness described by the unknown English mystic in the Cloud of unknowing who says that between me, and God is this cloud of unknowing that only love can pierce.

The Scriptures say that: “When he (Jesus) had said this (broken free from religious equations), he spat on the ground and made mud with saliva and spread the mud over the man’s eyes.” Jesus is redoing Genesis; this is about being recreated. In Genesis 2 we read that God a pottery maker takes some mud and fashions humankind out of the mud. God then breathes into the mud creature, and it begins to live. Mud in the Hebrew language is adamah. And from the mud, the adamah, God creates adams, mud creatures, humans. We are all adams, mud creatures. God then breathes into us God’s breath. We are mud clods, mud creatures, adams. But we have also been breathed into by the God of the Universe. We are thus sacred, we are divine. We are sacred mud clods. We get it so right. We get it so wrong. The getting it right is the divine breath within us breathing out. The getting it wrong is mud clod in us stumbling in darkness.  

The anointing with mud also recalls 1 Samuel 16 where the prophet anoints David King and Psalm 23 (God anoints my head with oil). The man born blind is anointing as a king in the new creation. This is the journey of all of us, when we are Christs, when we are anointed with the mud of the lamb, we are anointed kings and queens of the new creation.”

The Scriptures then say: “Go and wash in the pools of Sent. Then he went and washed and came back and he could see.” What could he see, what could we see? Perhaps he could see his unity with God. Later in John’s Gospel we will hear Jesus explains: “I and the Father are one. I am in God. God is in me. I am in you, and you are in me.”

The boundaries between you and God are an illusion. They do not exist. That is what the blind man sees for the first time: that the divisions between him and God, within himself and between other people are an illusion. And then he says I am (the man). God says “I am” at the burning bush. Jesus also says “I am” at his arrest in John 18. Your I am and the I AM of God and the I am of other people coincide. I AM is a literary feature of John’s Gospel, it implies being. In John 18 when Peter is asked if he is one of Jesus’ followers, he denies Jesus saying, “I am not the man”. In orders Peter’s non-being is contrasted with the being of the man born blind who says “I am the man.” The baptism, being able to see, knowing that your I am coincides with God’s I am: that is ultimate union, or “oneing” to use Julian of Norwich’s term. We are not saying that you are God. It is just that unity with God is so real and so strong that you don’t know where your you begins and where God ends. It is about becoming naked before the naked God, stripped away from our attachment to the ego. Catherine of Genoa, a famous mystic, went through the streets saying: “My deepest me is God!” Paul says it is no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me. It is total and utter unity with God – this is the adventure of spiritual maturity. 

In v21 the parents of the blind man say “he is of age”. This is the coming of age for each of us. Like Jesus, we are so filled with the presence of God that we become a source for that presence for other people. I love that the blind man washed in Sent. That is the message: that having been baptized in unity with God, we are of age, we are Sent as God-soaked men and women to drench the world with God’s healing presence. We no longer say prayers. We have become prayer. We call Christ the anointed one. If we allow the journey from darkness to sight, from immaturity to full maturity to take place, we become little Christs – anointed ones so filled with the presence of God that we become a source of that presence for others.

Sermon Notes 12th March 2023
Bruce Fleming

Can you remember those children’s puzzles where you had to identify 10 things wrong in the picture; the puppy only has three legs, there is no rope on the swing, a flower is growing out of the slippery slide? That is similar to the picture we get in this story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. Something seems out of place. Back then there were women’s spaces (kitchen, home) and men’s spaces, (fields, marketplace, town gate), and shared spaces, like the well. A factory in the 1950s was similar. Men are on the factory floor and women are in the typing pool or serving in the canteen. After work, men are in the pub and women in the kitchen at home. A shared space would be a restaurant for a family meal or a department store for shopping. Jesus is a Holy Leader - he has claimed the title Rabbi (a spiritual teacher to his people) - to bring them back to God and to bring God to them. But in this story, we find he is in a space with the wrong person at the wrong time.

1.     He should not be alone with a woman. The risk of gossip, impurity, temptation, and scandal for a Rabbi is too great. Similarly, in a #MeToo culture like ours, the workplace is fraught with sexual tensions and dangers. Jesus’ disciples certainly queried his behaviour (4:27)

2.     He is taking a drink from a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans simply did not share food utensils, meals, or wells, let alone relationships. This racial and religious divide was centuries old and from the Jewish point of view, the Samaritans were in the wrong. As for Samaritan brigands, they saw Jewish travellers as fair game.

3.     The woman is out at midday. A trip to the well is an early morning, or late afternoon task, conducted with social equals along gender lines. This woman is engaged in social avoidance and probably everyone prefers it that way. She is spared their contempt and they any guilt by association with a promiscuous woman. It would get the tongues wagging if the local Anglican minister had too many evening meals around at the recent divorcees house! Apparently, they love discussing theology - yeah, right!

Riddles (4:1-15)

After a genuine request for a drink, Jesus proceeds to talk to this woman in riddles, but his spiritual agenda is made clear early in the conversation. That he offers his truth, wisdom and concern to someone in her social, emotional and spiritual condition is revealed early. Something about her life seems to cry out for some level of healing or transformation - a better reputation, better social options, a better future. Jesus knows how she can move towards those precious things.

The literal refreshing water in the well is a powerful signpost to the real spiritual nourishment that Jesus is offering. Water really is a wonder product. We cannot physically survive a week without it, yet it also refreshes and cleans our bodies. Jesus offers her a new life in which she might find the inner resources and courage to attain some personal, social, emotional, and relational happiness and security. God’s loving spirit of embrace and acceptance is ready to nudge her in this direction, but she remains her own worst enemy at present. She clings to lifeless; it will take you nowhere, ends predictably, everyone else could see it coming, things! But a daily personal spring of clean water - clarity, purpose, hope, strength, confidence, self-worth, forgiveness, a new start - is available where she stands. She certainly leaps at the offer of easy water. I’m in if you’re promising fewer trips to the well!

Disclosure (4:16-26)

But if we want the freshwater Jesus is talking about, we need to let go of the stagnant stuff we’ve been drinking. Jesus now reveals that he knows a little of her painfully dysfunctional intimate life. Is she promiscuous to excess? Is she vulnerable and exploited by a succession of male abusers? Has she given up on herself as deserving of a loving trustworthy partner? Is she as much sinned against as sinning? What past traumas prevent her from building and maintaining good relationships? Does she always choose dangerous men? Does she always make herself sexually available early in a relationship? We do not know the answers to these psychological questions, only the sense of social chaos that seems to enmesh her.

Some social norms, like marriage, are used as weapons by a “moral majority” to shame and exclude outsiders, and the church has not been innocent of such behaviour. Some social norms, like marriage, represent a tried and tested model over thousands of years and thousands of cultures in which people, and their children, seem to flourish within secure and committed relationships. Marriage fits both those descriptions. All she knows is that her life is not doing so well outside those cultural norms, and that Jesus knows she is not doing so well. This, she realises, required some extra-sensory insight from Jesus - he must be a prophet or holy man!

The talk takes a sideways twist at this point, and she starts to evade with some classic, “pop-theology” and religious criticism. Or is she perhaps really quite literate in philosophy and ethics and here, at last, is a man who will talk at this level with a woman? I think the probable reason is that then, as well as now, “Religion” can offer anyone a very easy “out” when it comes to dodging moral scrutiny!

“Well, of course, there are so many different paths,” she counters. “I guess you have the traditions you were brought up with…as do we,” she goes on. “I mean, we have this sacred mountain, Gerizim, and you have yours, Mt. Zion, so who’s to say?” She gives a rueful shrug. “After all, doesn’t everyone think they are right?” The implication is this: Where you come from, maybe I am on the wrong path, ‘cos hey, according to you Jews, us Samaritans never get it right, do we? But can anyone really be so sure?

This type of moral and religious relativism steers a conversation away from personal relevance and towards universal doubt and abstractions. It puts all the “godbotherers” in their place. You see, if no-one is right, then no-one is wrong either, and no-one is accountable, to anyone, for anything, so no-one should judge anything, or anyone either. It is a valid observation with a false conclusion, as Jesus demonstrates.

Of course, every single culture or government or religion or moral idea that has ever existed or been expressed in the history of human behaviour is different from…well…the ones that are different! There are many different ideas and opinions on faith and morals. There are many different answers given on a maths exam. There are various opinions and witnesses in a murder trial. But that doesn’t mean that one of the answers can’t be, or isn’t, the correct answer, or a better answer, or an answer that is closer to the truth. Of course, in the absence of verification or certainty, it is best to be gracious, humble and understanding. And if you are certain that you do know, it is still best to be gracious and humble and understanding. “Humble” and “Tolerant” and “Peaceful” and “Non-violent” are just some of the different moral opinions open to us. But if no-one can know which values are the true ones, well then, how do we know if “humble” and “tolerant” and “peaceful” and “non-violent” are better than revenge, or intolerance, or greed or genocide - also approved in some cultures. People using the relativism argument to shut down other people’s opinions invariably exempt their own opinion from it.

What does Jesus do with this lazy and sloppy argument? He acknowledges the partial truth nestled within it. “Yes,” Jesus agrees, “We could talk of who’s got the correct Holy Mountain, or the correct baptism rights, or the correct gospel, or the correct atonement theory, or the correct sacred book, but that won’t alter the main point - God offers new life, to all who desperately need that saving chance of moral transformation and hope. In the midst of personal shame, chaos and dysfunction, renewal is possible. There is a “better” in both senses of the word - we can “get better” as in “improve,” and we can “get better” as in “be healed”. God works effectively outside, or even despite, all our religious and moral systems, Jesus asserts.

God offers life and operates in terms of spirit and truth, and those who respond to God do so in the same terms. Squabbles over buildings, geography, intellectual knowledge and cultures obstructs this central truth about God. Not every belief system points equally in this same healthy direction. Gandhi and Isis State take you to different places. Some things will turn out to be wrong, harmful and destructive. Not every Mt.Gerizim that humans build a temple on produces living water. Some wells are contaminated. Some lakes are radioactive. Some belief systems, like relationships, are toxic. But within his Jewish spiritual tradition, (and Jesus is quite clear about this), there is a type of God, a type of saving, a type of healing, that is true. And it is that spirit that Jesus honours and serves, and it is that spirit that empowers Jesus and empowers change.

God’s spirit doesn’t require a particular mountain or cathedral, or language or prayer book to transform people. But that is not the same as saying that some vessels aren’t more faithful bearers or witnesses than others, or that nothing substantial is being offered, or that nothing is required by way of a response.

The woman tries one last hedging move. “Gee, maybe you’re right. Have you heard the rumours these days of some expected Messiah, a chosen one of God, who could probably answer just these kind of questions for us - and then we’d know for sure.”

“Yes”, says Jesus, “You’re talking to him.” And that is Jesus’ astonishing claim that he does know. That he is not confused. Or a construct of the early church. Or a construct of John the Evangelist. Jesus knows what is needed for us in order to flourish as humans in partnership with God and with each other. If only we would drink from his well.

The Response (4:27-42)

It’s great to read a story where we get to see Jesus dizzy with happiness, so encouraged is he by the Samaritan woman’s response. The travel, the setbacks, the arguments, the challenges, are all worth it today!

She excitedly re-engages with her community telling them everything that had happened at the well. Jesus had to stay on for another two days, such was the community interest in his message. His disciples were also encouraged by the newly made friends in such culturally hostile territory. The temples on the top of Mt. Zion and Mt. Gerizim, with all of their priests, had not been able to achieve, and perhaps never even wanted to achieve, what God’s spirit achieved that day in Samaria, reconciliation and harmony between broken people and different races.

Jesus is overjoyed and explains excitedly, “Usually, as the saying goes, one person sews and four months later you harvest. Even then, someone else might reap what you had sewn. But today, we proclaimed the message and we saw a positive response immediately! And that’s what nourishes me, to represent the healing work of God in the world. It’s been a great day!” And who would have thought that the first Samaritan evangelist would be a woman of ill repute!

Jesus’ message did indeed have its origins in the Jewish culture, but it is bigger than the Jews now! In chapter four of John, Jesus went from being, “you, a Jew”, to “sir", to “prophet”, to “Messiah", to “Saviour of the World.” Now that’s progress! Later in John, Jesus says, “Heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents”, or to put it another way, God is stoked when one messed up person has their life turned around! And on this day, Jesus couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

Lent II   5 March 2023 Year A

Dr Murray Harvey

I have here a map. A map of the University of Kent.

A helpful guide produced for the 650 Bishops and 300 spouses who attended the 2022 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops at the University of Kent. A lovely campus on top of the hill overlooking the city of Canterbury.

I like navigating by a traditional, hard copy, paper map.

Finding my way around a large campus, set out in a circular pattern amidst parks and forests, a map was quite useful.

However, after about two or three days I still hadn’t managed to get my bearings. Unusual for me, especially when armed with a map. I wasn’t the only one – the campus was littered with lost bishops and their spouses, wandering aimlessly around in circles, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, asking each other for directions. Often seen holding up the map and turning it round and round.

As one person was overheard to say, just when you think you’ve got your bearings, it’s as if all the buildings move about in the night, and so the next day you get lost all over again.

On about day 3 or 4 an announcement was made during the housekeeping notices one morning: To avoid getting lost, please use your map. And oh, by the way, for your convenience, only the buildings and pathways that you need to know about are marked on the map. If there’s a building that we’re not using for the conference – it’s not on the map, and if there’s a road or path you don’t need to go down, it’s not indicated on the map either.

Fold up the map and put it away. Navigate by what you can see around you, because the map isn’t as useful as it was intended to be.

We are journeying through this season of Lent.

Lent is a kind of map that the church has given us for our spiritual journey.

But of course, our spiritual journey, while informed and resourced by the guideposts of the church year and liturgical celebrations, our spiritual journey is a pilgrimage which is different for each of us and an accurate map is a guide only.

We have to approach Lent with the eyes of faith for our spiritual journey. On the annual pilgrimage of Lent the Bible readings, prayers, music and liturgies nourish, guide and challenge us – as we walk with Jesus to Jerusalem; to his passion, death and resurrection.

Therefore, it’s not a journey that we undertake alone – it is a journey with Jesus – he is our companion and guide.

Nicodemus (as we read in today’s Gospel) was also on a journey and needed guidance:

·      He had already “made it” – as far as the society of his day was concerned.

·      He was a pharisee.

·      He was a leader in his community.

·      He had respect, a position of honour.

·      For many, he was a signpost, a guide, he knew the answers to the questions that people had; He was a man of knowledge.

But something Jesus had said or done had somehow changed him; he was now seeing things in a different light; now he had some questions of his own – questions he hadn’t had before; he was possibly seeing new signposts – but he wasn’t sure; and other more familiar signposts, he was seeing in a new light:

He says to Jesus …

No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God…

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?

How can these things be?

So he comes to Jesus for guidance

In Lent we open our hearts and lives to God’s guidance, growth and transformation.

Lent is a precious opportunity individually and communally to stop and reflect.

A time to look around us at the landscape of our lives and community:

To consider the opportunities and challenges

To be confronted by the fact that we haven’t arrived – that we are not yet what we are called to be.

To get our bearings from God through prayer and reflection.

You might say – well here we go again, we’ve been here before – Ash Wednesday – Lent Studies – Palm Sunday – Good Friday etc (replayed each year)

But if we’re honest the landscape is different every time. Those guideposts (liturgical and other) are the same and offer much wisdom – but I’m a different person than this time last year, as are you, because we’ve each been changed by the circumstances of our lives:

We’ve had yet another year of the pandemic

Floods

Maybe we’ve lost a loved one since last Lent or have faced some other major life change

Each Lent it’s like the University Campus I referred to earlier – it’s sort of familiar but it’s as if the buildings all move about in the night and we have to get our bearings afresh each new day.

In fact the buildings haven’t moved at all, it’s just that we’re looking at them in the light of a new day with different things on our mind.

Maybe God has begun to reveal something new to us this year – through our relationship with Jesus – or spoken to us in a new way – how will we respond and readjust?

Given the landscape of our lives right now, given where we are on our personal journey, what is God calling us to at this time?

What questions do we bring to Jesus today?

This is both a personal question and a communal one: as a church community, what is God calling us to now? What is our discernment of God’s call to us as a church community this Lent?

How does your personal journey and the gifts you have – intersect with the needs of the Alstonville Anglican community, the needs of the church right now?

By encouraging us to stop, reflect and think, Lent can help clarify where we are on our wider, ongoing journey and mission. The alternative reading for today was the Transfiguration – Jesus on the mountaintop with Peter, James and John. Like them we can’t stand still and build a tent here, we have to navigate onwards.

Our lives can be chaotic and unpredictable – as I said we are each a slightly different person now to the person we were this time last year because of the changing landscape of our lives – for which we don’t have an accurate map – where are we on our journey now and what is God calling us to be and to do?

In our discernment, what are the next steps?

Thankfully Jesus is on the journey too – and from the mountaintop of the Transfiguration we get a glimpse of his future glory.

Christ, whose insistent call disturbs our settled lives: give us discernment to hear your word, and generosity and grace to respond, so that your name may be glorified and your Kingdom prospered. Amen.    

Sermon Notes 26th February 2023
Desiree Snyman

Lent 1 Matthew 4

About the text

From a literary point of view, the scripture today is fairly easy to unpack. First, the temptations roughly correspond to and follow on from the Ash Wednesday readings through which the Spirit drove us into the wilderness of Lent. Lent is about fasting, prayer and almsgiving. The advice for keeping Lent is in Mathew 6: 

·      So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you…(almsgiving).

·      But whenever you pray, go into your room, and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret…(prayer for the sake of others).

·      Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites …(fasting).

The temptations described in Matthew 4 for Lent 1 correspond to Matthew 6 for Ash Wednesday. The temptation to turn rocks into bread (Matthew 4) relates to fasting (Matthew 6). The temptation to test God is about whether your prayer is in service of others or your own ego. Owning the kingdoms of the world and their splendour is about accumulating wealth or releasing wealth to the poor, the stranger and widows and orphans, the real shareholders of our excess.

A second aspect of our literary analysis relates to the intention of Matthew. We already know that the writer of Matthew’s Gospel wanted to depict Jesus as the new Moses. The Gospel of Matthew is structured around this theme of Moses and draws obvious parallels between the life of Moses and the life of Jesus. Moses came from Egypt; Jesus came from Egypt. Moses went through the Red Sea, Jesus in his baptism goes through the Red Sea of the River Jordan. Legend has it that Moses wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Jesus the fulfillment of the Torah will preach the new Torah in five sermons that structure the whole Gospel from chapters 5 onwards.

Third, there are other literary illusions that the writer of our Gospel today may want us to consider. When Jesus had passed his wilderness exam suddenly angels came and waited on him. The presence of angels remind us of Elijah’s time in the wilderness. Elijah flees into the wilderness after Jezebel sets out to kill him. Hungry, tired, fearing for his life, totally alone, feeling like an utter failure, questioning the reality of God, Elijah is waited on by angels. The angels offer the best advice to anyone experiencing amygdala hijack when the prefrontal cortex has shut down any access to logic: eat something, drink something, have a nap. 

There seems little point in unpacking in detail the meaning of the three temptations Jesus faced as it is unlikely that any of us will ever be tempted to change stones into bread and none of us would be tempted to jump off a high building to test whether God’s angels will catch us. If we have those temptations we need a diagnosis, not a sermon. I want to talk about the wilderness and the tempter instead.  

Our story in the text

In my prayer I sit with Jesus in the wilderness. In my prayerful imagination I find the whole experience of being in the desert with Jesus utterly attractive. I feel rejuvenated in the wilderness. The air is fresh and silent. The silence itself is nourishing, as is the solitude. Although I have a deep, deep love for people, the depth of my love for people is sustained by being alone and the aloneness with Jesus in the wilderness sunrise is stunning. I feel closer to God; there is something about the rawness of undomesticated wilderness that rewilds my inner spirit and strips off the ways I have tamed divinity. My inner architecture is reconfigured by the architecture of creation. Awe at the unthinkable, unsayable God pulsating at the heart of all that is, is breathtaking. In this desert I sense solidarity with the trees, the vegetation, and the insects and it instils a delicious a sense of oneness with Universe.

The pleasure at being in the wilderness is coloured by my experiences of going on Retreat at Sediba, a silent retreat centre in the mountains outside Johannesburg South Africa, to which I regularly escaped. Like Jesus I feel drawn to the wilderness by the Spirit. Like Jesus I am confident of the reality of God’s love that calls me beloved. However, it is still the morning of the first few days of the retreat when the wilderness feels so attractive. It is usually on the evening of day four that the tempter arrives.

The wilderness that in the morning of the first day called out like a lover turns on you, betrays you. Sleep alludes you. Fears and terrors magnify. Mosquitoes the size of spitfires add to your torment and Lord have mercy, there are so many of them. The solitude that in the morning was nourishing has twisted into the ugly monster of loneliness. The silence that was so stunning has become so very, very, very, loud. Who knew silence could be so deafeningly loud. The darkness and the silence magnify the slightest sound: your heartbeat sounds like an ear-splitting thunderstorm; the gurgle of your digestive tract sounds like the threatening waters of a flood. All mystical thought has taken flight, as has any thought of Scripture. You wonder if your sanity will survive the night of sheer and utter terror. And, where, the hell, (word chosen deliberately), is God?

The scripture describes ‘ha satan’, an accuser, a tempter. Perhaps the accuser is a metaphor for that internal, infernal voice of doubt and criticism. But let me tell you something, at two in the morning, alone in the dark, after no sleep, those terrors and fears take on demonic, solid form. So I can be comfortable with the translation of “the tempter” as “the devil”. At my moments of greatest doubt and weakness the terror seems to have corporeal form. 

Why would I peel back my skin and share a short excerpt of my minute wilderness experience?  I unravelled like a cheap jumper on day 4, day 40 would destroy me. I suggest that the wilderness may be something we are all too familiar with, perhaps in different ways. In telling you my story of Matthew 4 I hope to remind you of your own desert experiences and that you are not alone in going through them. 

I described Sediba, a silent retreat centre in the mountains outside the city of Johannesburg. I once took a priest friend and colleague with me on retreat. We had breath training at 4 in the morning followed by silent meditation from 5-7am. When he didn’t rock up for meditation on the morning of the fifth day I went looking for him and found him on top of the concrete sealed reservoir where he had been facing his own terrors, all night. He told me hadn’t slept. I said nothing. I put a blanket around him and sat in silence next to him, not because I was holy and meditating, but because there is nothing one can say. While I empathise with his struggle, it was a comfort to me to know that I am not alone in hearing ‘demons’ ; others fight them too.  

This is why I told you my story of my experience of the scripture in Matthew 4. I hope to remind you of your own nights of terror. Wilderness spaces come in many shapes and sizes, as does the tempter. At some point we all sit for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert wasteland. St John describes the inner wasteland of loneliness, doubt, emptiness, and bone-numbing fatigue as a dark night of the senses or a dark night of the soul. What about the dark night of sheer and utter terror that threatens to shatter your sanity?

For some, the wilderness may be the loneliness of the work car park, after you have been fired and have endured the humiliation of packing up your desk and have been marched out the office building by security because that is ‘company policy’. For others it may be the recovery room in a hospital where you think you may never recover from yet another miscarriage. For others it is the deafness of the silence after a diagnosis from a doctor. For some people the wilderness is the sheer loneliness after the funeral of a much-loved spouse or the unending ache after divorce. 

Whatever shape our wilderness takes, and whatever voice the tempter has, the point is that the wasteland is an aspect of our spiritual journey which we cannot do without. Nor should we want to. There is no way around the desert, you can only go through it. While never pleasant, the desert frees us. The wilderness experiences strips us right down to our True Self that is and always was naked and one with the Divine. The God of our Sunday School teachers and the God of our preachers and parents dies. We rebuild our inner being on the foundation of our own faith. Our own faith is hard won through wrestling accusers, tempters, demons and even angels that kick us in the hip before blessing us and leaving us to limp out of the desert forever crippled, but richly blessed by the experience.

The desert sand also blasts our eyelids off so that we can no longer close them to the pain of the world. Our eyelids are ripped off by desert sand and our watering eyes look through the ordinariness of our society to diagnose the sickness that ordinariness masks. Any wilderness restores our authenticity, it prevents us from being too comfortable with the temptations we have habitually accepted and considered normal and ordinary.

Hannah Arendt’s book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” offers a chilling, hyperbolic but true example of what happens when we refuse to go through the pain of the wilderness and attempt to go around it. Hannah’s interpretation of temptation is that:

Many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them, must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbours go off to their doom, and not to become accomplices in all these crimes by benefiting from them.

Hannah then concludes that the Germans had learnt to resist temptation. Hannah’s book shows us that we could become so comfortable in our day to day routines that we no longer question their very ordinariness, even when these ordinary processes automatise the wholescale murder of neighbours and friends.

Even Jesus’ invitation to be the Christ and to follow him are so well worn we no longer hear it and see it. However, our response to being in the wilderness defines our willingness to be truly God’s. May the Spirit who whispered your true name, “beloved of God”, who filled you then sent you into the desert, support you in your furnace of transformation.