Year C	Table of Contents Year A	Year B
29^thNovember 2009-Advent I-The Reverend Philip Gill	28^thNovember 2010-Advent I	27^thNovember 2011-Advent I
6^thDecember 2009-Advent II-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	5^thDecember 2010-Advent II	4^thDecember 2012-Advent II
13^thDecember 2009-Advent III-The Reverend Jenifer Inglis	12^thDecember 2010-Advent III	11^thDecember 2012-Advent III
20^thDecember 2009-Advent IV-The Reverend Philip Gill	19^thDecember 2010-Advent IV	18^thDecember 2012-Advent IV
27^thDecember 2009-Christmas I-The Reverend Philip Gill	26^thDecember 2010-Christmas I	25^thDecember 2012-Christmas Day
3^rdJanuary 2010-Christmas II-not available	2^ndJanuary 2011-Christmas II	1^stJanuary 2012-Christmas I
10^thJanuary 2010-The Baptism of our Lord/Epiphany I-not available	9^thJanuary 2011-Baptism of our Lord/Epiphany I
17^thJanuary 2010-Epiphany II-not available	16^thJanuary 2011-Epiphany II
17^thJanuary 2010-Epiphany II-not available	16^thJanuary 2011-Epiphany II
24^thJanuary 2010-Epiphany III-not available	23^rdJanuary 2011-Epiphany III
31^stJanuary 2010-Epiphany IV-not available	30^thJanuary 2011-Epiphany IV
7^thFebruary 2010-Epiphany V-not available	6^thFebruary 2011-Epiphany V
14^thFebruary 2010-Epiphany VI/Transfiguration-not available	13^thFebruary 2011-Epiphany VI
21^stFebruary 2010-Lent I-The Reverend Philip Gill	20^thFebruary 2011-Epiphany VII
28^thFebruary 2010-Lent II-The Reverend Jenifer Inglis	27^thFebruary 2011-Epiphany VIII
7^thMarch 2010-Lent III-The Reverend Philip Gill	6^thMarch 2011-Epiphany IX/Transfiguration
14^thMarch 2011-Lent IV-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	13^thMarch 2011-Lent I
21^stMarch 2011-Lent V-The Reverend Jenny Inglis	20^thMarch 2011-Lent II
28^thMarch 2010-Palm/Passion Sunday-Lent VI-The Reverend Philip Gill	27^thMarch 2011-Lent III
Triduum	3^rdApril 2011-Lent IV
The Three Great Days of Easter	10^thApril 2011-Lent V
1^stApril 2010-Maunday Thursday-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	17^thApril 2011-Palm/Passion Sunday-Lent VI
2^ndApril 2010-Good Friday-The Reverend Philip Gill	Triduum
4^thApril 2010-Easter Day-The Reverend Jenifer Inglis	The Three Great Days of Easter
11^thApril 2010-Easter II-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	21^stApril 2011-Maundy Thursday
18^thApril 2010-Easter III (ANZAC Commemorations) -The Reverend Philip Gill	22^ndApril 2011-Good Friday
25^thApril 2010-Easter IV-The Reverend Jenifer Inglis	24^thApril 2011-Easter Day
2^ndMay 2010-Easter V-The Reverend Philip Gill	1^st May 2011-Easter II
9^thMay 2010-Easter VI-The Reverend Jenifer Inglis	8^thMay 2011-Easter III
16^thMay 2010-Ascension I-The Reverend Philip Gill	15^thMay 2011-Easter IV
23^rdMay 2010- Pentecost-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	22^ndMay 2011-Easter V
30^thMay 2010-Trinity Sunday (Pentecost I)-The Reverend Bishop Barbara Darling	29^thMay 2011-EasterVI
6^thJune 2010-Pentecost II-not available	5^th June 2011-Easter VII
13^thJune 2010-Pentecost III-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	12^thJune 2011-Pentecost
20^thJune 2010-Pentecost IV-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	19^thJune 2011-Trinity Sunday (Pentecost I)
27^thJune 2010-Pentecost V-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	26^thJune 2011-Pentecost II
4^thJuly 2010-Pentecost VI-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	3^rd July 2011-Pentecost III
11^thJuly 2010-Pentecost VII-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	10^thJuly 2011-Pentecost IV
18^thJuly 2010-Pentecost VIII-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	17^thJuly 2011-Pentecost V
25^thJuly 2010-James Apostle and Martyr-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	24^thJuly 2011-Pentecost VI
1^stAugust 2010-Pentecost X-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	31^stJuly 2011-Pentecost VII
8^thAugust 2010-Pentecost XI-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	7^thAugust 2011-Pentecost VIII
15^thAugust 2010-Pentecost XII-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	14^thAugust 2011-Pentecost IX
22^ndAugust 2010-Pentecost XIII-No Sermon	21^stAugust 2011-Pentecost X
29^thAugust 2010-Pentecost XIV-The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	28^thAugust 2011-Pentecost XI
5^thSeptember 2010-Pentecost XV-Holy Eucharist, The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	4^thSeptember 2011-Pentecost XII
5^th September 2010-Pentecost XV-Evensong, The Reverend Dr Brian Porter
12^thSeptember 2010-Pentecost XVI- The Reverend Dr Brian Porter	11^thSeptember 2011-Pentecost XIII
19^thSeptember 2010-Pentecost XII-not available	18^thSeptember 2011-Pentecost XIV
26^thSeptember 2010-Pentecost XVIII-The Reverend Jenny Sumpter	25^thSeptember 2011-Pentecost XV
3^rdOctober 2010-Pentecost XIX	2^ndOctober 2011-Pentecost XVI
10^thOctober 2010-Pentecost XX	9^thOctober 2011-Pentecost XVII
17^thOctober 2010-Pentecost XXI	16^thOctober 2011-Pentecost XVIII
24^thOctober 2010-Pentecost XXII	23^rdOctober 2011-Pentecost XIX
31^stOctober 2010-Pentecost XXIII	30^thOctober 2011-Pentecost XX
7^thNovember 2010-Pentecost XXIV	6^thNovember 2011-Pentecost XXI
14^thNovember 2010-Pentecost XXV	13^thNovember 2011-Pentecost XXII
21^stNovember 2010-Christ the King/Last Sunday after Pentecost	20^thNovember 2010-Christ the King/Last Sunday after Pentecost

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The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Eucharist, September 26^th 2010

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

Luke 16:13-31

1Timothy 6:6-19

What have we done for Lazarus?

The gospel reading that we have just heard is found only in Luke; it is said to be one that is not only powerful; it also has extraordinary attention to detail. Along with the parables of the Ten Virgins, Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, this parable of the Rich man and Lazarus was one of the most frequently illustrated parables in medieval art, and I would add, some of the more recent art. (pictures) Lazarus is the only one named; the rich man however has over time been called Dives (Divees) from the Latin word for rich man.

It is a story told by Jesus of the relationship between two men who most likely saw one another each day. It is a story of opposites; one of these men was rich and proud, indifferent to the needs of the poor. The other was a poor and humble man; it is a story told in life, and in death. One of them will go to heaven the other to hell.

We hear of the rich man who is dressed in purple and fine linen, and of his life of excess. The colour purple in biblical times was a symbol of power and wealth. The dye used was very expensive, called Tyrian purple; it originated in Tyre in Lebanon. This dye was made by crushing thousands of sea-shells, the Mediterranean Murex; it took ten thousand shells to colour one toga! So this purple dye was worth more than its weight in gold; and was therefore a symbol of wealth and power.

And then we see Lazarus, the beggar, dressed in rags, lying at the gate of the rich man’s house, begging to satisfy his hunger with whatever fell from this man’s table, and struggling to survive day by day, while dogs licked at the sores covering his body. Both of these men do however have one thing in common; they will die. This is also something that we have in common with them, for we will all face death eventually. Can we imagine the funeral that the rich man would have had, probably one that would have been remembered for quite some time; compared to that of Lazarus?

Lazarus in death is taken by the angels into the arms of Abraham, while the rich man finds himself in Hades. Tormented, he is now begging Abraham to send Lazarus with a drop of water to quench his thirst. How the roles of these two men have been reversed. The rich man has not been condemned because of his wealth, but because he was indifferent to the plight of Lazarus. Abraham reminds him how he failed to listen and learn from the teachings of Moses and the prophets. And even in Hades his heart remains hardened; there is not one word of remorse or regret. He asks only that Lazarus be sent to warn his brothers, so that they will not be condemned. Abrahams response they already have all the teachings and warning from Moses and the Prophets and have not listened neither will they listen to someone who rises from the dead.

There are several themes running through this passage, which can give us food for thought! However, the point of the parable told to us by Jesus is showing us Gods concern for the poor. It is one of compassion and love for others, the treatment by society of those less fortunate. Jesus wants us to listen, to hear, and to act upon what we learn from this parable.

The rich man, like so many today, had fallen into temptation trapped by various senseless and harmful desires. I think that we can all think of someone who falls into this category. The rich mans heart was hardened against the words of Moses and the prophets. He was wealthy, he was haughty, failing to do good works; he did not share, he was not generous with his wealth.

What we have here is a story teaching about compassion, or rather, the lack of compassion. Lack of compassion can characterise any of us in the various aspects of our lives. Being rich is not confined solely to how financially rich we are; we are all rich in so many different ways. In our education, health, intelligence, friends, families. Our love of God is found not in wealth, power, or prestige, but in the deeds that we do.

There are people whose lives have been changed dramatically by this parable; one was an intelligent and gifted young man, who became a theologian, organist, philosopher and physician. He felt the need within him as a Christian to repay to the world something of the happiness which his faith had given to him. For this young man the rich man in this parable was Europe, and the poor were the people of Africa. The name of this young man……. Albert Schweitzer, he believed that his missionary work was one of service rather than conversion. Schweitzer personally raised the funds required to finance his mission to Africa where he built a hospital at Lambarene. The funds that he raised from personal appearances, royalties from his books, plus donations from around the world were donated towards the hospital. When Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace prize he used the prize money to start a leprosarium at Lambarene.

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things…

(Is 58:9-11).

I recently came across this country and western song, it is amazing what one can find on Google!!!

Only a tramp was Lazarus sad fate;
he who lay down at the rich man's gate.
He begged for the crumbs from the rich man to eat;
he was only a tramp found dead on the street.
He was some mother's darlin, he was some mother's son;
once he was fair and once he was young.
Some mother rocked him, her darlin to sleep;
but they left him to die like a tramp on the street.
Jesus, He died on Calvarys tree.
Shed His life's blood for you and for me.
They pierced His sides, His hands and His feet;
and they left Him to die like a tramp on the street.
He was Mary's own darlin, he was God's chosen Son
Once He was fair and once He was young
Mary, she rocked Him, her darlin to sleep
But they left Him to die like a tramp on the street.
If Jesus should come and knock on your door
for a place to come in, or bread from your store,
would you welcome Him in, or turn Him away.

Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper

As I read this song I was reminded of Mother Teresa who based her whole ministry on Matthew 25:35-40

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or see you thirsty and give you drink? The king will say to them in reply, Amen, I say to you, whatever you did to one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.

When Mother Teresa looked into the eyes of those she literally pulled out of the gutter, she saw Jesus Christ. She said, They are Jesus. Everyone is Jesus in a distressing disguise; for she knew when she was holding the starving, the dying, and the sick-she was actually holding Jesus Christ in her arms.

Mother Teresa once said Christ prays in me, Christ speaks in me... Christ looks through my eyes, Christ speaks through my words, and Christ works with my hands. Christ walks with my feet, Christ loves with my heart. Today our poor of the world are looking up at you. Do you look back at them with compassion? Do you have compassion for the people who are hungry? They are hungry not only for bread and rice; they are hungry to be recognized as human beings. They are hungry for you to know that they have their dignity, which they want to be treated as you are treated. They are hungry for love.

www.suffering.net/servmo

As mentioned earlier, we can be rich in so many ways, but what is this richness worth without compassion. What have we done with our riches? Have we learnt anything from this parable? What effect if any has it had on our lives? What have we done for Lazarus, for those less fortunate than we are, less rich in so many different ways? What have we done for those we see daily in our lives? When we read this parable are we aware that not only do we have the words of Moses and the prophets, but also of the one resurrected from the dead. What is it today that hardens the heart to Jesus teaching; and what are the implications for this world and the next?

As Paul writes in 1 Timothy, They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

(Conclude with the words of Schweitzer) The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

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The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

SEPTEMBER 12th 2010

The Reverend Dr Brian Porter

Luke 15:10-19

BACK TO CHURCH SUNDAY

Today parishioners in the 250 or so parishes of our great Diocese of Melbourne and all over the 23 Dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia are taking part in Back to Church Sunday. Parishioners have been encouraged to ask friends and family to this special service.

Come as you are is the theme of the day. The idea is that through a personal invitation to a friend or acquaintance or family member, those who have stopped attending or who have never been might be encouraged to come along. Our Australian Anglican bishops agreed to this initiative at one of their annual conferences following the success of Back to Church Sunday in the UK when 15% of attendees became regular worshippers once again and 50% remain open to further invitations. So to those of you who have responded, I say Welcome!

I remind you of that famous story in the Gospels of Zacchaeus, who, because he was a short man, climbed a tree in order to see Jesus as he passed down the road. Their eyes met, they engaged in conversation, and Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus into his home and into his life. Zacchaeus experienced the joy of knowing Christ and his life underwent a radical transformation.

Recently in the parish of Box Hill I took a funeral and said to the widow that she would be most welcome to come to St Peters as she made huge adjustments in her life. I was overjoyed when the very next Sunday she appeared and I asked several kind parishioners to make her feel welcome. It is amazing just how influential a personal approach can be. My tap on the shoulder of teenage schoolboys in my 40 years as a school chaplain has again and again resulted in a boy taking very seriously at a key point in his life the intellectual challenge of faith as a response to some of lifes mysteries. Old boys often say to me Chaplain, I remember that time when in Chapel you challenged me to take seriously belief in Jesus Christ and the church and I have been going ever since and am a churchwarden in my parish today. Or Dr Porter or Brian as they call me after a few beers, I ended up going forward to confirmation and have lately offered myself for ordination as a priest. We can never underestimate the importance of a personal invitation.

That is why I am a priest today because my parish priest (who had the interesting name for a priest of Fr Laity) tapped me on the shoulder and said that I should consider the priesthood as a vocation. Priests he claimed were neither more nor less than ordained laity, and the church had a definite need for more good lay people and ordained lay people. He was fond of saying: Never forget that Christ has no hands but our hands, no voice but our voice, no eyes but our eyes to do his work today. An ordained priest or a member of the priesthood of all believers – which is the laity according to the profound insights of Martin Luther and the Reformers – is meant to be a walking sacrament, an outward and visible sign of the love and care of Christ. So to those of you who have responded to an invitation to come here this Sunday, I say from the bottom of my heart:

WELCOME to Holy Trinity!

This fine parish is in transition while it awaits the appointment of a new Vicar, we hope by Christmas. It is an unusually well-attended church. Last Sunday 100 people gathered here which in this small building means a full church. There are not many churches in Melbourne which can say that the church is so well supported at worship Sunday by Sunday. It has had good and faithful ministry over the years and has a wonderful team of lay leaders who continue to be its backbone. We are fortunate to have inherited from our forbears such a handsome plant. Buildings matter of course because quite often people are drawn to a church for aesthetic reasons. Architecture and quality liturgy and music are magnetic influences for some. Last Sunday late afternoon we had a superb choral evensong with our fine choir which attracted 35 people on a cold winter afternoon to listen to traditional music. We have a fine pipe organ and Hugh Fullarton is acknowledged to be one of the best young organists in Melbourne. Hugh is continuing in this role but his work load is such that he is shortly handing over the direction of the choir to another. But more important than aesthetics is the sense of welcome and family belonging which is paramount. The church after all is people not buildings. We take seriously the ministry of food and hospitality and serving the needs of special interest groups. Our pastoral care program is very well coordinated. We like to feel that we are hospitable, but one cannot be hospitable without guests. Here in this holy meal Jesus not only plays the host but he is also the guest and he becomes the banquet. That’s the deepest meaning of the Incarnation, that God let go of hosting long enough to become guest as well.

If we were to do a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – which is a good exercise for the whole congregation to consider during a vacancy we could assemble a program for action during the next incumbency. Just do a quick survey in your mind. At Holy Trinity Surrey Hills what do you consider to be our

STRENGTHS? WEAKNESSES? OPPORTUNITIES? THREATS?

Now lets attend to the Gospel for today because we are in duty bound to sit under the scriptures Sunday by Sunday. Martin Luther reminds us that Wherever the bread is broken, the Word should be spoken. Today in Lukes Gospel, three parables of Jesus are deliberately bound up together. God is like an obsessive woman who spends hours searching for a lost coin, when it will undoubtedly turn up anyway. God is like a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep at the risk of a savage end in the wilderness, and goes searching for a single lamb. God is like the loving father of two selfish sons who couldn’t care less about his feelings, but who nevertheless demonstrates his passionate love for them. This parable is misnamed the Parable of the Prodigal Son when it should be the Parable of the Loving Father. God, says St Luke, is like this. Or to paraphrase Archbishop Michael Ramsey: God is Christ-like and in God is nothing un-Christlike at all.

So todays Gospel speaks to all of us. At some point in our lives we have all experienced lost-ness but the Hound of Heaven does hunt us down. We might abandon God for a time for intellectual reasons or because we blame God for things which go wrong or because lifes inexplicable mysteries overwhelm us – but the Loving Father will never abandon us. We are always within the range of the love of God. In a Roman prison once where Italys worst malefactors were incarcerated, old Pope John spoke to the hardened criminals about this very matter of feeling abandoned, but that God would never abandon them. From the back of the courtyard an anguished prisoner called out to the Pope: But Holy Father, how can God forgive me when I am in here for life for murdering my father and my mother? The old Pope said nothing in reply but left the platform and plunged into the crowd searching out the tormented murderer, went up to him and put his arms around him and embraced him.

Holy Trinity is a family church. Today we celebrate our family life and express the hope that that we will continue to be church in an attractive and winning way here in Surrey Hills. Ponder your own SWOT analysis.

Where do you see yourself as part of the STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, and THREATS? paradigm?

Let us pray:

For all that has been at Holy Trinity, thanks be to God!

For all that is Holy Trinity, thanks be to God!

For all that might be at Holy Trinity, thanks be to God! Amen

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The Fifteenth Sunday after
Pentecost

Holy Eucharist, September 5^th 2010

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

Luke 14: 25-35, Philemon 1-25

There but for the grace of God go I

John Bradford, (at)

We are here this morning because we have the freedom to enjoy life, we have the freedom to make decisions; we are here because the grace of God has touched our lives. We are here because of our love for God.

Todays gospel reading is certainly a difficult passage; which contains some rather strong statements. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and is in no doubt about the ordeals that lie ahead of him. He is not so sure about the crowds that are following him; do they truly understand the commitment involved with being one of his disciples? Jesus certainly does not mince words here as he addresses those who are travelling with him, he is not about to give them a false impression of discipleship. Discipleship is not to be undertaken lightly; to be a true disciple of Jesus demands total, unqualified commitment. How many of the crowd following were caught up in the thrill of the moment, listening to Jesus teaching, as miracles happened, but did not understand what it really meant to be a committed disciple. How many when they heard what Jesus had to say made the decision to turn and run for home, believing that Jesus was asking too much of them? There but for the grace of God go I.

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself. Here we see another use of hyperbole, an overstatement intended to make a point; this is one however, that has given rise to some consternation over time. Are we not told elsewhere in the gospels to honour our mother and father, to love our neighbours as ourselves, even our enemies, yet here we are being told to hate those of our family? We can resolve the greater part of the concern by looking at the definition of the word hate. Hate in todays culture can mean to despise, detest, abhor. In biblical times when we look at how this word was used or the Hebrew equivalent it means to love less. Jesus is asking for a total commitment to the kingdom of God, (love of God is to supersede all other aspects of love).

Jesus then states that no one can be his disciple if he does not carry the cross. The image that the crowd would have would have meant only one thing; crucifixion. Crucifixion was a Roman death sentence, one associated with thieves, murderers, political agitators, and slaves. We then have twin parables, one about considering the cost of building a tower, and one where the king, realising his army was outnumbered when preparing for battle sent his ambassadors to negotiate for peace before the battle begins. Here Jesus is emphasizing that one who is considering becoming a disciple should first sit down and count the cost, for example, are they up to the demands it will make on their daily life. By the grace of God they, (we), have the freedom to make that decision.

Jesus is nearing the time of his own death, and he wants those following him to be fully aware of what is expected of them. There can be no half-hearted measures to being a disciple of Christ; this commitment requires a sure faith and comes with responsibilities. Responsibilities that may give rise to anxiety, doubt, or even at times to be in conflict with others. The disciple is called to preserve life, to help it grow, and to give it flavour; the uncommitted disciple is likened to salt that has lost its flavour. By the grace of God, it is our responsibility that as Christians we give flavour to the lives of others.

The passage concludes with let anyone with ears to hear listen. Words that we have heard before and which follow a difficult teaching, but those who wish to hear will, after much thought, and through the grace of God will hear and listen.

The epistle to Philemon, and his household, to which we have listened this morning is the shortest of Pauls letters, one that we hear only every third year on a Sunday. (Year C.) It is one where we see what the consequences of being a disciple of Christ can mean, even in todays world. It shows the depth of human kindness; while in prison Paul is pleading for the life of another. Philemon, known to Paul, was a Christian known to open his house for use as a church. This is a story of love and freedom, Onesimus was a slave the property of Philemon; it is supposed Onesimus had run away possibly taking certain property belonging to Philemon. Slavery was very much part of the culture when this letter was written; slaves were those taken captive in battles, some chose to be slaves to pay off a debt. If a slave were to run away, and have the misfortune to be caught, then the penalty was in all likelihood, flogging and then death.

Onesimus finds himself in prison with Paul, and converted to Christianity he will have the responsibility of carrying this letter to Philemon. A letter in which Paul appeals on the basis of love to Philemon urging him to understand that in Christ the walls between slave and free are done away with. Paul is asking Philemon to respond in love; we are all born equal in the sight of God. Paul is asking for the freedom of Onesimus, as Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Paul is telling us that in Christ the walls between slave and free are done away with.

Sadly even today this is not so. Slavery may well have been outlawed, in the 1800’s but it is estimated that 27 million people live in slavery around the world today. Over one million children are trafficked each year, forced into prostitution, domestic, cheap, or other exploitive labour. Those most at risk are the poor and uneducated; sold by parents, or kidnapped. They are kidnapped from school, from where they are playing. Many never see their parents or brothers and sisters again! We have our Kids church service this morning, and I will see children who know what it is to be loved, cared for, enjoying the freedom of their life with their families.

Most trafficked children only come to the attention of the authorities if they do manage to escape or are found in a raid. These children are driven by fear; the traffickers/owners control them with threats, rape, violence and drugs, and even death. They are told that if they escape, their family will be killed; that if they try to seek help, they will be deported. Robbie Williams video, More precious than gold as Williams says, short video but definitely not sweet. Australia is also amongst the countries of destination for the sex slave trade.

If there is one abuse that offends our conscience in every way, it is the enslavement of a human being. No child should be born without hope; no person should live without freedom. -Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus, Cape Town, South Africa

Not only does trafficking violate every childs right to be protected and grow up in a family, it also deprives them of education, opportunity, hope, and love.

In the past many of the worlds religions condoned slavery. Today many people of faith are working to end slavery for good. Jesus demands unqualified commitment from his disciples; through the grace of God and the Holy Spirit we are given the means to make a difference in the world today.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen

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The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Evensong, September 5^th 2010

The Reverend Dr Brian Porter

Exodus 34: 29-35; Matthew 17: 1-2

Is there anything more beautiful in the memory than the human face? I am not thinking so much of physical beauty, even though every now and then the beauty of someones face catches my breath. When I take weddings the beauty of the bride and bridegroom, she so beautiful and he so handsome, fills me with joy. Rather I am thinking of that beauty of character which shines through even a quite ugly face such as that of old Mother Teresa of Calcutta: a persons inner light, a radiant goodness. She it was who dedicated the last half of her life to looking after the dying whom she began picking up from the streets of Calcutta so that as she said: everyone deserves to die in the sight of a loving human face. The Church has declared her a saint and the world awarded her the Nobel Prize.

Facial recognition is the very first skill we acquire as babies. Your mothers face is the first face you fall in love with. Indeed your primal love affair with your mother, now long forgotten, is really the most powerful, the most intense, of your whole life. Your mother is everything: food, security, comfort.

In the classical Greek theatre performed in a semi-circular amphitheatre with tiered seating and sharp acoustics in the sound shell, the actors wore facial masks so that they could be recognised even from the top tiers, and these masks were stereotypical so that good and evil, happiness and sadness might be instantly recognised at a distance. We each have our own gallery of masks in daily life don’t we: A schoolboys best behaviour mask when the Headmaster speaks to him; a teenagers seductive mask when asking parents to let them do something they might have reservations about; your surly mask; your grit your teeth mask when you happen to be asked to do something you do not wish to do.

Some faces are famous and some infamous: the whole world can recognise in a flash the Queen or Adolf Hitler. The best man alive today is 90 year old Nelson Mandela of South Africa whose smiling face might have been otherwise on his release from 27 years of cracking rocks in a prison quarry on Robben Island in Capetown Harbour. I bear no grudges, he said as he walked into freedom and became the first President of post-apartheid South Africa; Jesus has taught me forgiveness. And the world awarded him the Nobel Prize for Peace. He is a living legend.

Artists and portrait painters wrestle with capturing images of the human face, but every work of art falls short of the truth. Picasso once said that: Art is a lie which makes us realise the truth. For example when Andres Serrano produced a photo of a plastic crucifix immersed in a jar of yellow urine and called it Piss Christ, there was an uproar and the National Gallery of Victoria was pressured by the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne to withdraw the exhibit on the grounds that it was blasphemous. As with any work of art it depends on your point of view and so it was said that Piss Christ compelled us to remember the profound idea that when God came among us as a man we excreted him as a criminal executed on a cross. The first Christians could not bear the cross as representing obscene rejection–no crucifixes appeared in Christian art for three centuries–but then the cross came to be gilded and bejeweled and bathed in a golden sunrise of Love enlarged which is the Resurrection message of Easter morning. On the mountain top old Moses face shone when he saw God. Just so, on a later mountain top, Jesus face shone as a second and greater Moses. His disciples reported that they were in the presence of unimaginable beauty and glory as he was transfigured before their eyes.

A few years ago a sculptor, Mark Wallington was commissioned to make a figure of Christ to stand on a plinth of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square in London, so he went to a senior schoolboy for a model. The ordinariness of Christ as one of us is what I wanted to capture in my Ecce Homo which Latin phrase was Pontius Pilates exclamation when he showed Christ to the Jerusalem crowds on Good Friday: Behold the Man! Art is a lie which makes us consider the truth. A schoolboy representing Jesus Christ? I wonder?

Do not you admire portrait painters? Next time you are in Canberra do visit the splendid National Portrait Gallery. Portraitists have a genius to go deeper to interpret from the outward and visible, the moral and spiritual, to reveal the essential character of the subject. Often it is the eyes and the posture. Consider that famous portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven at the end of his life: this is a study in frustration as this majestic musical genius wrestled with his profound deafness. Imagine composing a grand symphony just on paper and in your head! Consider the visionary eyes as he stares into eternity and the grim jaw set.

In Canberra you will see there a fine set of portraits of former Prime Ministers of Australia: the mystical Alfred Deakin, the humble train driver Ben Chifley, the imperious Gough Whitlam, the patrician Malcolm Fraser, the larrikins John Gorton and Bob Hawke, and Paul Keating the haughty stallion.

John Hull, an Australian professor who went blind in his 40s has written movingly about the experience of losing his sight. He said in a radio interview that the saddest thing about going blind is not being able to see faces any more. The memory gallery of faces he remembers from his sighted years are precious: his mother and father, his wife, his children. And significantly his school teachers. We never forget the faces of our teachers do we? These days John Hull asks people whose voices he always remembers powerfully, if he can run his fingers over their faces. His fingers, as with all blind people, have become his eyes.

The old story from the Bible of Moses trying to see God on the mountain top reminds us that God has no body, no face but that there is an unimaginable glory nevertheless. The coming among us of God as a Man in Jesus of Nazareth is what we Christians cling to as absolutely fundamental. St Paul cottons onto this in a profound way when he reminds us that Christ has no face, no voice, no hands, no feet but ours to make radiant his love, his compassion, his forgiveness. Christ is in you the hope of glory is one of his most cherished affirmations. The New Testament says that No one has seen God. But it also says that Gods love has been placarded on the cross of Jesus.

Portraits and images of Jesus abound in the history of Christian art. But they are all lies which force us to consider the truth. What is the truth? Consider the mirror. What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do not forget that the mirror is a distorting glass which, because of the laws of optics, reverses the image. A portrait or a photograph is not a mere reversal. The master portraitist is Jesus Christ who, it says in the Gospels, once looked upon a rich man and loved him. Yours is a face deeply loved by your family and friends. But more profound even than their love for you is Christs love and Christs yearning that you will be Christ to others in the way you go about your life.

So in the bathroom mirror each morning study that ever so familiar face of yours. What does it tell you about the real you? Is it authentically you or is it a mask? Who am I? is the Big Question we wrestle with as we establish our identity.

Who am I?

Who loves me?

Who do I love?

How am I to cope with the unloveable?

Is Jesus to be at work in me today?

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The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 29^th 2010

The Reverend Dr Brian Porter

Luke 14: 7-14

Come up higher

There are often etiquette expectations surrounding where people are to sit. In the old days when people paid pew rents, there were assigned seats in churches and you can still see these in older churches or at least where name plates were once attached to the pews.

And there are very definite pecking order arrangements in high society. Two of my experiences spring to mind:

Muriel and I were once invited to dine at Government House Melbourne where the State Dining Room must be one of the grandest rooms in Melbourne and Australia. The table is very long and seats about fifty guests with the Governor and his wife seated facing each other at the centre of each side. Each guest has their own set of condiments and there is an impressive array of silver and glasses.

Then I was Acting Chaplain of my Cambridge College in 1975 when the Lord Bishop of Ely paid a visit to the College for an anniversary formal dinner in Hall. I was deputed by the Master to wait at the Porters Lodge to greet the Bishop on his arrival. So in due course a large maroon Daimler arrived with the flag of the Diocese of Ely fluttering on the bonnet with a chauffeur in a peaked cap at the wheel. I welcomed the Bishop dressed in purple and seated grandly in the back seat of the Daimler and prepared to accompany him to the dining Hall where the best College silver was on display. I saw the chauffer hovering and asked him if he were coming in too. Oh no Sir, he replied as he held up a small brown paper bag, I will have my supper in the Porters Lodge. Such is the strength of the British class system with its rigid boundaries!

Then there are quite ordinary issues of good manners which we once tried to teach our children:

• How to set a table and seat guests with the most senior guest to the right of the host and their spouse tor the right of the hostess.
• How to serve at table: I taught the children the mnemonic SLRR. Serve from the left and remove from the right, best remembered as Super Luxurious Rolls Royce.
• How to introduce people: Say first the name of the senior person, then the name of the person being introduced. Henry Higgins, may I introduce Percy Phipps.

Todays Gospel story about seating comes from just such a culture which was prevailing in Jesus day when society was strictly hierarchical and place was jealously guarded and you could be publicly humiliated by being told to remember your place.

At a deeper level the story is about finding your place. And to find your place you need to know who you are and this involves a measure of self-acceptance. It is to embrace humility.

Humility has a fine etymology: it is the same as for humanity - humus - earthy, being close to the ground.

From time to time, as I have told you before, I have worked all day as a volunteer at Sacred Heart Mission St Kilda where 300 very poor people are served lunch every day of the year. They are among the poorest of Melbournes poor. How would you feel if I invited you to come down to Grey St Kilda to have lunch? I once invited a parishioner in another of my locum parishes. His reaction was immediate Oh No Fader! I could not do dat! The gulf was too great and too rigidly fixed for him because he had worked all his life in Indonesia as an upper class Dutchman.

And yet Gods humility in coming to us as one of us. At the first Christmas. Gods humanity. The earthiness of Jesus who demolished class and gender barriers, who dined with outcasts and sinners and affirmed women, who criticised sharply those puffed up with their own importance and who denounced the status consciousness of the Pharisees who loved the seats of honour at banquets and public recognition and adulation.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells a story of an experience he always remembered vividly as a little boy when the famous anti apartheid activist Fr Trevor Huddleston, was his parish priest at Sophiatown, a South African slum. Fr Huddleston was a grand upper class English blueblood who had become a monk in the Community of the Resurrection which ran parishes in Johannesburg. As Fr Huddleston went about visiting in the parish he would greet young Desmond Tutus mother by raising his hat to her and shaking her hand with a smile when normally whites in apartheid South Africa would ignore the poor Africans. The little boy never forgot this courtesy extended to his mother. When he was ill in hospital in Sophiatown, Fr Trevor came to visit him every day.

Then Archbishop Frank Woods in old age, rather bent and crippled came into the Womens Hospital by train and tram to visit my wife who had had an operation. As he came to leave the Archbishop said Muriel may I bless you? The sweetness of that gesture has never been forgotten.

Humility. Humanity. Humus.

In a moment at the altar rail we are all one. Brothers and sisters, all one. No distinctions of age or race or colour or class or wealth. We are all one.

Humility. Humanity. Humus. Of the earth, earthy. Amen

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The Twelfth Sunday after
Pentecost

August 15^th 2010

The Reverend Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

Heb 11: 29-12:2; Luke 12: 49-59

There’s a disquieting martial element in Christianity is not there?

Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war

With the cross of Jesus going on before

Soldiers of Christ arise and put your armour on

stand then against your foes in close and firm array etc.

Yet at the same time there is all that Messianic material we listen to in Handels immortal music at Christmas from Isaiah about the coming of the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Then during Holy Week we remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, meek and lowly, coming as a bearer of peace rather than as a warrior King. We recall too some of Jesus last words to his disciples: My peace I leave with you. The meekness and mildness and humility of the gentle Galilean still have a drawing magnetism. And we prefer it too don’t we to the vexilla regis prodeunt–The royal banners forward go which we sing in procession on Palm Sunday.

So todays Gospel from Luke sits uncomfortably with Jesus pacifism. A very different feisty and disturbing Jesus says to us this morning:

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. And these divisions have been legion in 2000 years of Christian history. So many horrors have been unleashed in the name of Christ: the Crusades for one thing were a brutal attempt to wrest the Holy Land from the Muslims, with Christian warriors marching to war, slaughtering soldiers and civilians alike, raping, pillaging and destroying in the name of Christ. In late medieval Spain Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Jews from Spain if they would not convert and this hatred of the Jews continued for centuries culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. Then Francos Spanish Civil War conducted by that most Catholic dictator also saw much slaughter with Spain and Germany in alliance.

Then there have been in history those continuing internecine wars between Christians in England and Ireland: between Puritans and Cavaliers, between Catholics and Protestants. Ireland still has its troubles. Think of the bickering strife amongst quarrelsome Christians and those endless feuds about doctrinal niceties and hostility towards other religions. Within our own Anglican Church since the Reformation it us almost at times as if we are truly schizophrenic because of high church and low church feuding. Many Anglicans detest other Anglicans of a different hue. And the struggle for a better deal for women and gays in the church continues. Go to most churches in Sydney Diocese and the pattern of worship would be largely unrecognisable.

65 years ago this year Christian America detonated atomic bombs above Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing 230 000 people in a flash brighter than a thousand suns and injuring and maiming just as many, as well as leaving a diabolical genetic legacy which goes on being transmitted. Did you read Malcolm Frasers eloquent cri de coeur in The Age on 6 August calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. May I quote him: The grim reality of nuclear weapons is stark. In an afternoon they could lay waste much of the earth and end human civilisation. The weapons currently held by nine nations are the equivalent of 15,000 times the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The USA as the most Christian nation on earth should lead the world in nuclear disarmament urges Malcolm Fraser in his eloquent calling for nuclear disarmament.

So let those uncomfortable words of Jesus in todays Gospel perplex and puzzle you just as they continue to challenge Biblical scholars: I came to bring fire to the earth…Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No. I tell you but rather division. Christianity seems schizoid in its message does it not: father against son and mother against daughter. You do not know how to interpret this present time! We certainly look out on our troubled world with a sense that we may be living in the end time. This was also a common belief in Jesus day when the first Christians believed that the coming of the Messiah heralded the End. Many had their bags packed.

So what did Jesus really have in mind? Is it something like this? It is going to take real courage and conviction to follow me. Not everyone, even in your own families, will want to follow me. But if you really are my disciples, you will follow me, standing for what is right and true, no matter the consequences. The roll call of martyrs is eloquent testimony.

My own family is a case in point: it is anything but a monochrome representation of Christian allegiance: I have two adult children. My daughter has given up church going entirely mainly because of what she has seen Christian people do to her mother in all the struggles to see women admitted to Christian ministry. My wife Muriel has been vilified, scape-goated, and been the object of demonization and ostracism, even to the extent of receiving a death threat. She continues however, buoyed up by her radiant faith in the goodness and the godness of Jesus. Some concluding words of Archbishop Roger Herft of Perth preaching a few years ago at our parish church of St John’s Camberwell ring in her ears: At heaven’s gate we shall be judged by our scars. Our son continues as a sort of Anglican institutional buttress: that is he offers support but mainly from outside. You see, he is a war historian and international military strategist, more in tune with the Crusading temperament of the two hymns with which I began. But he still believes in the old story of Jesus and his love because he sees in the world today, as does Malcolm Fraser, the self destructive capacities of the agents of darkness. And Christianity does have that confrontational capacity when evil abounds as it did within Nazism and Stalinism. We admire the last Pope who more than anyone worked for the Iron Curtain to be torn down.

Let me conclude with that peerless exhortation from todays Epistle:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Amen

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The Eleventh Sunday after
Pentecost

August 8^th 2010

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

Luke 12: 32-40

Hebrews 11: 1-3; 8-16 (17-28)

Genesis 15: 1-6

Faith is?

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen

Hebrews 11: 1

I came across this little story recently; a crowd watched as a young man walked across a tightrope over the Niagara Falls. He then asked them Do you believe that I can walk a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Yes, they all replied, they had just seen him do it. Then he pushed a wheelbarrow on a tight rope across Niagara Falls following which he asked those watching do you believe I can push a wheel barrow across the tightrope. Yes, was the reply, because they had just seen him do it. Finally a friend got into the wheelbarrow and the tightrope walker pushed the man in the wheelbarrow across the tightrope. When he had finished this feat, the tight rope walker asked Do you believe that I could push a wheel barrow containing a person in it across the falls. Yes, they all amazingly replied because they had just seen him do it. Then he looked at the crowd and asked, Who is next? This is Belief versus faith!

So, what is faith? (Wikipedia.) Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea or thing. The word faith an refer to a religion itself or religion in general, and also the acknowledgement of, or a total commitment to religion or faith belief.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Paul Tillich writes, There is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular which is subject to more misunderstanding, distortions and questionable definitions than the word faith. 1

The Lord came to Abram in a vision, Do not be afraid. I am your shield your reward shall be very great. Abram listened, and had faith when God sent him on a journey. Abraham had faith when God told him that he would have an heir, a child of his own, and the child would become the leader of nations. Abraham had faith when ordered by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Moses, had faith when he obeyed Gods command to free the Israelites from Egypt, faith parted the Red Sea allowing them to cross to safety. Moses had faith as they journeyed towards Canaan, a land God allowed him to see but not enter. Job, a blessed and righteous man had faith, Job may have asked for an explanation from God but never accused or blamed God, despite much suffering.

Faith is a gracious gift from God; one that is a journey, into the past of our ancestors and beyond, it is a gift that leads us into the future. The Letter to the Hebrews part of which we have listened to this morning is a strong statement of faith. This letter was written as an anonymous sermon to encourage an early Christian community, both Jew and Gentile, to continued hope and faith in times of hardship. The extensive use in the book of Hebrews of Old Testament figures illustrates the promises of God made to these exemplars of faith and hope, who suffered, yet remained steadfast in their faith; promises that have now been fulfilled in Christ.

The Danish Philosopher and Theologian Soren Kierkegaard says, Life is to be understood backwards, but is lived forwards. In essence life can be interpreted only after it has been experienced, but the past informs our understanding and grasp of the future.1 It is not uncommon for us to look back on our lives, times of nostalgia, but I wonder do we tend to focus on the good times and not the bad? I remember the special times we spent together as a family, or the one day each summer when my father would take me to London. Not thinking so much that my father worked six nights a week and not uncommonly seven nights a week to provide for his family. Would we really want to go back to the past? There have been and continue to be amazing changes in medicine, technology, communication etc.

So, can we ask ourselves where is my journey taking me, from where have I come, where am I going? I reflect on my journey of faith, from being baptised and raised in a Christian household; to wandering away from God for many years. However the seeds of faith had been given to me by my father. (Seeds depicted here on my Ordination stole.) Like a mustard seed, when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all, it grows up and becomes the greatest of shrubs. This mustard seed continues to grow!! We cannot know what God has planned for us, where our journey will take us; it can be an amazing one if we listen to the words of Jesus, Do not be afraid little flock.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Our journey of faith is one of not being afraid; faith is making purses for ourselves that will not wear out, where no thief comes, where no moth destroys. Faith is being dressed and prepared for our journey; faith is having the lamps lit for the journey. Faith is trusting in God as we journey through life of being aware that God is always calling us into a new life, into the future, a future of hope and joy. Faith is the courage to trust in God when we are faced with making sometimes daunting decisions, unsure if this is part of Gods plan for us. This is a time to listen to Jesus, Do not be afraid. Faith is to have the courage to place ourselves into the hands of others when times become so difficult. There may well be times on our journey when the road becomes so narrow, not unlike a tightrope, when we struggle to maintain balance. Times when we struggle to hold onto our faith; possibly in times of darkness, when we may fall into the valley of despair. Do not be afraid Jesus says to us. Our companions on the way are ready to support us; this may be the time to have the courage to let go and rest, rest in the prayers of others.

Faith is individual; we each have our own thoughts, ideas, and our own way of committing to our journey. Faith is also a communal journey; it was faith that drew the disciples together as they journeyed with Jesus. As Christians we live our faith forward, looking to the future. So how do we stay ready, prepared, how do we keep our lamps lit; what keeps us healthy on our journey, how do we make purses for ourselves that never wear out? Our life is a pilgrimage, one that draws us to church each week, to a community of faith. As companions on the way we encourage and support one another as we come to a resting place each week; one where we can refresh and revitalise ourselves. This is a place where we can receive the spiritual food to continue on our journey. Food that keeps us prepared, spiritually healthy, through scripture, prayer, liturgy, music. Our lamps are kept lit as we gather around the table to share in Holy Communion. We share a meal of many courses on our journey, a meal that will be completed in the future in the heavenly banquet. Faith draws us together each week as we journey with Jesus.

Faith is a journey, it is our past, it is our present, and it is leading us into our future. We are somewhat more fortunate than our ancestors from the Old Testament. We have the words and witness of those who journeyed with Jesus, who were there at the crucifixion, who were witnesses to the risen Christ. In chapter 12 of Hebrews we will read, Therefore, since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

Prayer by Thomas Merton.

1 P. Tillich Ultimate Concern, Harper and Row:1965

2 www.utas.edu.doc/humsoc/kiergegard/resources. Last accessed 6/08/10

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The Tenth Sunday after
Pentecost

August 1^st 2010

Eccles 1: 2–2:23; Luke 12: 13–21

The Reverend Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

The Rich Fool

Today’s Gospel about the rich fool makes us feel distinctly uncomfortable for by the world’s standards, we are rich, very rich, many of us millionaires, a descriptor which is rather a debased coinage these days. If we take into account the value of our homes in middle-class Melbourne and our superannuation nest-eggs, most of us are millionaires. The Business Review Weekly lists people among Australia’s richest only if they are worth $10 million. By contrast United Nations researchers currently estimate that there are 800 000 people who today are starving and that two billion of the worlds people (that is one third of humankind) live at our Australia is a Lotus Land.

I have spent my entire career amongst the children of the very rich. Indeed when I became Chaplain of Canberra Grammar School, at my first interview with the Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, he unsettled me by asking me to justify wanting to be a priest in a rich and privileged private school. I think I replied by mouthing some platitude or other about helping to raise consciousness amongst the rich young men of the school about wealth carrying with it responsibilities to be good stewards of Gods bounty. Platitudinous it may be, but I still hold to that ideal. At Melbourne Grammar School with Year 12 many of whose families were multi millionaires, I ran a short course based on that marvelous film Wall Street in which Gordon Gecko’s unforgettable line is: The point is ladies and gentlemen, greed is good. Greed works, greed is right.

Earlier in the Gospel, a rich devout young man like the thousands I have taught in my day asked Jesus: Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Disarmingly, disconcertingly, challenging, Jesus tells him to do something extraordinary: Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor! When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Notice that Jesus did not tell him to destroy his material wealth. He tells him to give it to those who are in need of it, the poor. There are two different needs made plain here: the material needs of those who have very little of the physical necessities of life, and the spiritual needs of the very rich. Jesus tells him that there is one thing he lacks, not that he has one thing too many. The young man needs to be free of that which for him has become a barrier to following Jesus on the path of the Kingdom.

This is not meant to be a comforting story. Jesus turns from the young man to his disciples, and thus to you and to me when he says How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! Not, notice, how hard for the rich. Just how hard. It is hard for everybody. Total commitment is not for everyone. Your bacon and eggs breakfast calls only for a token commitment from the chooks, but a total commitment from the pig!

Today’s Old Testament lesson is from that gloomy book Ecclesiastes. The Teacher sees so much of our life as a striving after wind. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! But woven into the text of this book is the idea that all the material treasures we have are gifts from God to be enjoyed, especially wisdom, knowledge and joy. The way to find fulfillment is to take joy in these. Life is fleeting. (After all most of us here at Holy Trinity where the statistics reveal that the average age is 70, have about 3000 days left!) Therefore building bigger and better barns to add to our wealth is an exercise in futility.

When I retired from Melbourne Grammar School, I decided to practice what I had preached and to witness to my faith and to use my new found leisure to some good purpose, so I became a volunteer at Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda. Down there each day of the year 350 hot meals are served to the poorest of Melbourne’s poor. The food is all donated and is high quality: on my first day I spent an hour peeling prawns, admittedly doing a bit of quality control sampling myself a dozen or so juicy crustaceans! The labour at Sacred Heart is provided by volunteers who arrive early and begin the enormous task a preparing a hot meal, setting the tables, serving the food, clearing the tables and washing up. So each day, about 30 volunteers are rostered and they see at first hand the long procession of the homeless, the addicted, the single and battered mothers, the alcoholic and the disturbed come for basic no-questions-asked charity. The church-going volunteers thus see Jesus lined up in the queues in many different guises asking for a cup of water and being given, surprisingly, a delicious seafood risotto.

The example of some of the richest people in the world in using their vast wealth to improve the quality of life of the majority is admirable. There is Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world, who has recently given his $40 billion to the richest man in the world, Bill Gates of the Microsoft Foundation which is the worlds major philanthropic trust, having Africa as it main focus, as well as under-writing American universities and my own Cambridge University.

Let me conclude: I have met in hospital many very rich people who say to me: You know Father; I would give everything I have to be able to get up out of this bed and walk away. At the funeral of the American multi-billionaire JD Rockefeller, the question was asked as it is often asked by the curious after the death of a fabulously rich person: What did he leave? and the wise reply was: Everything!

The Gospel of God come among us in great humility in Jesus, the friend of outcasts and sinners, has an insistent imperative. The most important moment in this service will be the moment we go out the door at the end, fabulously rich and gifted as we are, determined to leave this life the better for having been here. Amen

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James Apostle and Martyr

Who was St James?

25^th July 2010

Matt 20: 20-28, Acts 11: 27-12:3

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

Today as the church calls us to remember St James; (St. James the Great) we can learn much about ourselves and our human frailties as we journey through the life and story of James. James was one of the three disciples closest to Jesus, the others being his brother John, and Peter. James was present at the Transfiguration, and along with John and Peter were the only ones allowed into the room to witness Jesus healing Jairus daughter. James was among the eleven Apostles who saw the risen Christ. He would also have the unfortunate claim to fame of becoming the first Apostle to be martyred. Following the death of Jesus James went to Spain, and according to tradition remained there for nine years. The famous Basilica of Saint James of Compostela is one of the most frequented pilgrimage sites, is named after the Apostle. James returned to Jerusalem after nine years, where he continued the healing and teaching ministry of the early church, that Herod Agrippa for reasons of personal gain had James brought before him and sentenced him to death by the sword; James was beheaded in 44CE. It has been reported that a scribe at that time was so moved by James fearless confession of Jesus Christ crucified that he converted to Christianity begging forgiveness; this convert was executed alongside St James.

In today’s gospel we hear of a mother who wants the best for her sons, James, and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee. This mother was eager for her sons to have the place of highest honour, to have power within the ministry of Jesus. The scripture passage that we have heard follows the third Passion prediction, and it is soon evident that all present have no clear understanding of what Jesus had so recently told them. The journey to Jerusalem will culminate in his suffering and death on the cross, in the ultimate sacrifice. The request of the mother totally ignores Jesus teachings about serving one another and suffering.

Though James and John say they accept the cup, they do not understand, nor do the rest of the disciples just what it truly entails. Instead they begin to argue amongst themselves, the others are jealous and angry at James and John trying to get special power. This is power play at work, it has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and is evident here as the unity of the disciples is threatened. Times have not changed, power play continues in society today; and is one unfortunately that the church is not immune from either.

It would appear that the disciples have made their own assumptions about what this journey to Jerusalem means. So convinced are they with the plan that they have in mind for Jesus becoming the King of Israel. They fail to hear Jesus’ repeated warnings; they fail to see that it is going to be so very, very different. So caught up in the thought of power, position and prestige were they that they were becoming like the people the gospel meant to overthrow.2 Who was going to be the right hand man of Jesus his head honcho when he was sitting on the throne? They had faith but alongside that was ignorance. They did not understand the responsibilities, the consequences, they failed to understand the seriousness of the sacrifice being a disciple of Christ often involves.

Jesus aware of this asks James and John if they are aware of what they are asking, are they able to drink from the cup that he is about to drink. Their response, we are able elicits from Jesus the reply you will indeed drink from my cup, unknown to them Jesus foretells they would indeed pay the ultimate sacrifice. Their misunderstanding prompts a teaching from Jesus, one exemplified by him throughout the gospel on ruling through service to one another. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life for the ransom of many. This is the King as servant, paying the ransom; setting free those enslaved in sin, trapped in the lust for power, lost in the darkness. This is the ultimate sacrifice, one that we will celebrate in the Eucharist shortly, where we will hear again the words. This is my blood of the new covenant shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. I was first introduced to the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer early in my theological studies; a Lutheran Pastor, he was also a great and gifted theologian and teacher. Bonhoeffer was concerned and quite vocal regarding the Hitler regime; about a power that made Hitler its idol and god. He expressed concerns about what was happening to the Jewish people and to the church in Germany. He argued that Christians should not retreat from the world, but should have a duty to act within it; that the church should be active in the world if it were to be a true church of Christ. Unwilling to take up arms and fight in the war he was with the help of friends enabled to continue his work for the Confessing church. Combining this with a political underground movement he soon became a strong spiritual influence on the growing opposition in Germany. Arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo for his supposed involvement in a plot to kill Hitler Bonhoeffer inspired many while in prison and concentration camps. Some of his greatest work came from letters and papers smuggled out by guards who respected and believed in him. While in prison Bonhoeffer was always concerned for others, he obtained permission to care for the sick, even holding services for the prisoners, bringing comfort to the anxious and depressed, especially in their last hours. Bonhoeffer would be moved between various prisons and concentration camps before being executed without trial at the concentration camp at Flossenburg on 9^th April 1945. The late Bishop Bell of Chichester writes that Bonhoeffer was a martyr many times before he died.3

Esther John was born Qamir Zia, so moved by the faith of her Christian teachers she began reading the bible, while reading chapter fifty-three of Isaiah she was taken by a sense of conversion, this faith grew privately and strongly. Frightened at the prospect of a Muslim marriage she ran away from home. She would go on to become a missionary and teacher, teaching women to read, working with the in the fields. She was found murdered in her bed. She was buried at Sahiwal in Pakistan, and has been honoured by the Anglican Church among one of the ten noticeable Christian martyrs of the 20c, demonstrated in a series of statues found above a doorway of Westminster Abbey, Bonhoeffer has also been honoured in this way.

1. One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.

2. One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

3. (a) One who endures great suffering.

(b) One who makes a great show of suffering in order to arouse sympathy.

The word sacrifice has been adopted by the secular world, and has over the years taken on another meaning, often devoid of its religious context. Fiddes 1 Past Event and Present Salvation, discusses this change, if you like the slippage of the word in today’s society, from the literal to the spiritual. The spiritual sacrifice need not only be confined to the Christian aspect, but one that may come from the heart, for example, a person giving their life to save another, as we have just heard; or parents making a financial sacrifice to enable their children to have an improved education. Over the years Christians continue to offer spiritual sacrifices that may take on various forms, a commitment to God, in the form of ministry, prayer, and working for God in the community and the world. Among these are Christians, whose lives may include, hardship, exile, even martyrdom.

Are we willing to take our responsibilities as Christians as being Christ-like seriously? Are we able to put aside our fears, are we willing to face possible rejection, taunting, hostility? What are we willing to sacrifice to enable us to take the love and compassion of Christ within us into the community? Sacrifice is symbolic of the healing, creating, forgiving and reconciling work of God effective in Christ. What can we sacrifice to help others to set them free, to help them find their way out of the darkness?

(Rom 12.1) I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. We as Christians are being asked to metaphorically sacrifice our lives in order to live as God in Gods mercy and by Gods grace, through the sacrifice of Christ has made possible for us.

Finish with the prayer used by Pilgrims on way to Basilica of St James of Compostela.

O God, be for us a companion on our pilgrimage:

a guide at the crossroads, a comfort in our weariness, a protection in danger, shade in the heat, light in the darkness, consolation in discouragement, and strength in our intentions: so that with your guidance we may arrive safely and with joy, at the end of our journey to our heavenly home to be with Jesus Christ our Lord forever. Amen

1 T. Wright, Matthew for eveyrone

2 D. Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship.

3P. Fiddes, Past event and Present Salvation (Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1989), p.62

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The Eighth Sunday after
Pentecost

July 18^th 2010, Luke 10: 38–42

Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

Martha and Mary

Printed on today’s pew sheet is a small reproduction of Rembrandts memorable painting of the scene. It is an unusual Biblical story in many respects: for a start it is a story about women and housework! Its dramatic tension is the tension between the two sisters in their confrontation over the preparation of a meal for the Master who sits between them. Most women I feel sure sympathise with Martha. How often have you women been left to do the lot alone? Why do not other family members lend a hand? Being a bit of a Martha husband I prepared the Sunday roast before I came here this morning: my wife and I believe in gender equality and so we share domestic tasks.

Historically, male Christian preachers have concentrated on the story as a clear example of the need to establish religious priorities. Martha, the doer, has represented practical Christian service. Mary, sitting at Jesus feet, represents pious prayer and spiritual devotion. The gender issue is there in a muted way because Marys silent submissive role is portrayed as indicating the proper behaviour of women, in contrast with Marthas trivial hectoring.

Modern feminist commentators have tended to overthrow these stereotypes of practical service as distinct from prayer and meditation, doing as opposed to being. Living the Christian life has always polarised this struggle. Both the active and the contemplative life are important in the disciple. My schools motto Ora et labora expresses the two poles ever so succinctly: Pray and work. A ditty from Luthers Reformation went like this:

Martha and Mary in one life

Make up the perfect Vicars wife.

So we need to ask if doing and being must always be at war?

Naturally some people are activists while others are contemplatives. Some are extroverts while others are introverts. Myers Briggs personality tests help you to establish your Type. I am an INTJ if you are into that typology. There are 15 others. Look up Myers Briggs on Google and see what type you are. I think there’s something in it.

Pious prayer and religious devotion, for both men and women, has been hailed by interpreters as the superior option for Christians. This is rather ironic given that practical service is what most Christian men and women have actually been expected to provide down the ages. Parish life still revolves around the Marthas whose practical helpfulness keeps the show on the road, from mowing lawns and organising fund-raising, to sitting on Vestries and pouring the tea. Only the clergy and monks and nuns have been expected to give priority to prayer and reflection.

Modern commentators have however, pointed out that Mary, sitting at Jesus feet, was in the position of a disciple, a pupil, learning from her Master, so that she herself could teach. Nor was Martha the nagging housewife of traditional understanding. She was in fact a disciple of real significance, the first to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah when her brother Lazarus is raised as recorded in the Fourth Gospel.

Surely it is no accident that these two women are sisters–two sides of a coin. So the story is not about the competing claims of doing and being, so much as about priorities. Jesus does not regard Marthas busyness as the problem. Rather, it is that her busyness is distracting her from her first priority, which should be her relationship with God in Jesus. That is where Mary is right, in her sense of priority. Her calling into relationship with God is her first and foremost vocation: what God asks of her in service is secondary.

Mary sat at Jesus feet instead of helping her sister, not because pious prayer is more important than busy activity, bur because she loved him and wanted, first and foremost, to be with him. After all, as the novelist Iris Murdoch asserts in her wonderful novel The Sea, the Sea, if you long and long to be with someone, then you love them, and what matters more than this in life? Iris Murdoch follows this up with another memorable insight that Love is the painful realisation that someone else is real. Jesus promised Mary that this would not be taken away from her–that longing just to be with him. This longing to abide in him is one of the great motifs of the Fourth Gospel. This longing to be with someone, is what lasts long after old age or illness or retirement or retrenchment or anything else has robbed us of our busyness. And at the end of our days it becomes a longing to be with Jesus which is far better as the New Testament asserts.

Somehow we have to help both clergy and laity focus on this priority of being in continuous loving relationship with God in Christ. It is not easy. Busyness is at the heart of modern life, at almost every stage. We oscillate from the frenetic demands of school and tertiary training to employment to parenthood to community activity to voluntary service, to hectic social lives, to caring for the aged parents, with so little time to be still. What is this life so full of care, if we have not time to stand and stare? as the Welsh poet tramp WH Davies puts it.

Even retirement has become a complex phenomenon. Relief from the employment treadmill is quickly overtaken by anxiety about how to fill the new free time. It is so tempting to rush into a range of fresh activities to fill the diary and crowd the days.

So then, where are we as we sit at Jesus feet today and learn from him?

This famous story about Martha and Mary is not about an opposition of activity and contemplation. Christians have always realised that prayer and activity should not be opposed. The monks have always taught that we should develop a cloister of the heart, a way of carrying contemplation with you whatever you are doing. The idea was to pray constantly–not by spending your life on your knees in a church or chapel, but by making every part of life a prayer. Muslims are so much better that this than we are in their constant invocation of little arrow prayers. When we say Goodbye to someone we are really saying God be with you. Here is an example of what comes as second nature to Muslims who say formal prayers five times a day and have little catch phrases which are uttered in everyday speech: God be praised, God willing, God forgive me, If it be God’s will and so on. Goodbye has survived in our Christian culture as a vestigial God reference of this sort. Buddhists practise contemplating the isness of things and mindfulness as they go about their day, meditatively and contemplatively. They will pause and look intently at a flower for a few minutes absorbing its beauty and its isness. Practising the presence of God in daily life is something that we disciples of Martha need more and more on our journey. Choosing the better part, the part of Mary, is not so much about finding a place in your life for God, but realising that God in Christ is there already if you have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts open to Loves calling. Amen

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The Seventh Sunday after
Pentecost

11^th July 2010, Luke 10: 25–37

Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

The Good Samaritan

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan almost by heart. So much so that it has lost its shock value. To its original 1^st century Jewish audience however it would have been as outrageous as for us to hear a story about a good Nazi or a good paedophile.

The Samaritans were regarded by Jews as beyond the pale, dangerous outcasts to be shunned.

Let me rehearse the story of that famous Good Nazi-Oskar Schindler who is the hero of the Australian writer Thomas Keneallys novel Schindlers Ark. Steven Spielberg turned the story into a film, Schindlers List in 1993. The novel is based on the true story of a Nazi businessman who rescued 1200 Jews from the Holocaust.

Here are the historical facts:

Oskar Schindler was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1908 and became an industrialist operating enamelling and munitions factories in his own country and Poland. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1939 and a war profiteer who negotiated a deal with the Nazis to obtain 1000 Jewish forced labourers to work in his factories because they cost him very little. In 1943 he was so horrified to see some of his Jewish workers being rounded up in the Krakow ghetto to be despatched to a concentration camp that he decided to protect his-Schindlerjuden (Schindlers Jews). His factories had special status as businesses essential to the war effort and his labourers as vital for maintaining the flow of materials for Hitler to wage war. In this way Schindler’s Jews were protected and their children were smuggled out of the ghetto and delivered to Polish nuns who either hid them from the Nazis or claimed that they were Christian orphans. Schindler used bribes to escape prosecution for forging their identity papers.

After the War, Schindler was regarded as a hero by the Jews. When he died penniless in 1966 his last wish was that he be buried in Jerusalem-My children are there. This wish was honoured and the inscription on his grave on Mt Zion reads The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews. It was written of him at the time that his exceptional deeds stemmed from just that elementary sense of decency and humanity that our sophisticated age seldom sincerely believes in. A repentant opportunist, he saw the light and rebelled against the sadism and vile criminality all around him.

Let’s return to the parable:

Jesus might have made the hero of the story a Jewish person going to the aid of an outsider, am enemy. But most shockingly, it is the Nazi, the Al Qaeda terrorist, the paedophile, who is the agent of mercy. Help comes from totally unexpected quarters.

That sort of role reversal can happen to us in daily life when we are taken by surprise after having been deeply hurt by the unexpected actions of others. After all, disagreements are commonplace in family life, in community life, in church life, in the life of the nation or the international community. When we disagree we are faced with two options: the first is to resent, distrust and hate the other, to trample on any notion that there is goodwill and integrity on the other side. We so often impute base motives to the other do not we?

The other and much harder option in a disagreement is to accept that we disagree and that the disagreement is profound and perhaps irreconcilable. Then the imperative-the imperative of the Jesus ethic-is actively to seek the well-being of the adversary. By understanding that the enemy is as capable of good actions as we are, then we re-structure our interior landscape. We can disagree. We can seek restorative justice. We can seek justice without vengeance. Where there is justice without compassion there will be anger, violence and murder. When justice is compassionate we restructure our ideas and methods of dealing with those with whom we are in fundamental disagreement. The skills involved in conflict resolution are at the heart of peace-making and peace-keeping in so many human endeavours these days are not they?

Let me be practical:

You don’t have to like the adversary. But you are called to love the enemy, to turn the other cheek, 70 times 7 and all of that. Liking is not the same as loving. You and I dislike some people we relate to in daily life but there is a deep imperative, because of our Christian profession, to love them. It’s the limitless cost of discipleship.

The old adage was that we are to hate the sin, but love the sinner. I am counseling several teachers at the moment who have been convicted of paedophile offences. The depth of their self-hatred is fathomless. Forgiveness of self is as hard as it is to realise the depths of Gods forgiveness as I said last week in the context of people not coming to communion anymore because they feel so unworthy. If we all felt like that then our churches would be truly empty.

As Christians we are to become what we already are.

You are a husband or a wife: become one.

You are a son or a daughter: become one.

You are a father or a mother: become one.

You are a forgiven sinner: become one.

You are a lover: become one.

You are a friend: become one.

You are a child of God: become one.

Justice has to be tempered with mercy.

Jesus said to the lawyer: Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

He said: The one who showed him mercy.

Jesus said to him: Go and do likewise. Amen

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The Sixth Sunday after
Pentecost

July 4^th 2010, Luke 10: 1-12; 17–24

Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

The kingdom of God has come near to you.

We have all had dazzlingly unforgettable moments when we have met a world famous person and had a memorable encounter with a famous person. I once met the most famous woman in the world today and the best man alive in the world. Here are two of my experiences:

Firstly I once had an unplanned meeting with the Queen and had a brief conversation with her. It was in Canberra where we lived at the time with our two small children. Come Sunday morning after Church we decided - royalists as we then were - that we would go and show them the Queen as she visited the War Memorial. As we left the Chaplain’s house our daughter Emily hastily picked some flowers and made a small posy just in case. Along the path, very thinly lined with people, came the Queen, so Emily leaned out and proffered her posy. The Queen stopped, stooped, and accepted the flowers with the greeting How very kind! Then she looked up and saw me dressed in my priests collar, and being Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she knew that I was safe and one of hers, so she said to me: Do you live here? Yes, Your Majesty, I am Chaplain of Canberra Grammar School. How very interesting. I have just been to All Saints’ Church down the way. Yes Mam. That Church began its life as a Mortuary Chapel in Sydney and was transported down here stone by stone. So I believe. Thank you very much. Good morning. Muriel, having collected half a library of Royal picture books since childhood, had almost swooned, but had had the good sense to take this photo of the encounter which sits proudly on a chest at home together with a framed invitation to a Garden Party at Bucking ham Palace we once attended when I was a student at Cambridge.

Secondly, Nelson Mandela who in my opinion is the best man alive in the world today: I didn’t actually meet him but I did meet and have a laugh with Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was the host at a conference Muriel and I attended in Capetown. She represented Australia at a meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council and I accompanied her as a spouse. All the other spouses were women and a special program had been organised for us by the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs Tutu. So each day I set out with my harem on sigh-seeing expeditions. On one of these days we drove south to the Cape of Good Hope where we saw the majestic mingling of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Came noon and I said to Mrs Carey that we had better be getting back to the University because President Mandela was due to address the conference at 2 pm. I was seated in the front of the Government limo with a flag flying on the bonnet as we sped back to Capetown and drove up to the University entrance just on 2 pm. Huge crowds of students were assembled, excitedly dancing and singing as they awaited the arrival of their hero, President Mandela. Our car pulled up and I stepped out! There was a huge roar of disappointment because it was obvious that I was not Nelson. I waved cheerily and there was much laughter. But the President arrived five minutes later and my humiliation mattered not a fig.

All of us have in common another and greater brush with greatness. In today’s Gospel Jesus appoints seventy missioners, bestows on them his own authority, and sends them out ahead of him to every town and place where he himself intended to go. They are to cure the sick, and they are to announce, The kingdom of God has come near to you. That is how it is with the kingdom. It will not force itself upon any one and often manifests itself unexpectedly. It will not come to us against our will. It is made available to us. It is for us to respond, to decide to open our hearts and let the king come in. We can open the door, or we can to decide to shut him out. Remember Holman Hunts painting The Light of the World.

The kingdom of God has come near to you. This telling phrase occurs a second time in todays gospel when the missioners leave a town that has not welcomed them and their ministry. Jesus tells them to wipe the dust of that place off their feet and to say: Know this: the kingdom of God has come near you. This time the words are a sentence of condemnation to those who choose to ignore what is going on; this is what you have rejected. (As an aside do you realise that when you shut the front door having declined conversation with Jehovah’s Witnesses-I always say that I am a priest of the Holy Catholic Church which puts them off at once-as they go out the gate they will shake their foot symbolically. They are after all Biblical literalists and do what the Good Book enjoins!)

Shaking off the dust can apply to us as well. It is a metaphor for not holding on to hostility. For we know that we can load our spirits with negativity and it can block our spiritual growth. There is an expression that if we drink the cup of resentment, we poison ourselves. So move on, do not hold on to resentment and hostility: turn it into hospitality. Turn the other cheek. Forgive especially when it hurts. I have no doubt that Kevin Rudd will still be at communion at his parish church each Sunday.

Here in the Holy Eucharist week by week the kingdom of God comes very close. We are here in church each Sunday to have an experience of God in Christ mysteriously hidden in bread and wine. Well might we ask why it is that church-going has become a minority practice in our culture? People give up coming to the weekly love-feast for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the church itself is to blame. I no longer wear a collar on the train because I have been spat at. Some people give up because of a feeling of unworthiness. Guilt figures in the background psychology of many erstwhile communicants who were once taught that the kingdom of God is very close and is being formed in each of us day by day if we allow it. I have always taught confirmees that a resolve made at a moment of commitment early on to make one’s communion wherever possible every Sunday of your life is your acknowledgement that Christ is truly being formed in you day by day as an agent of God’s love, forgiveness and hope. So never hold back on the one hand, nor on the other let your church going become suffocatingly routinized, an anodyne for half-suppressed doubt.

A friend of mine, a former student now 32 has had 13 years of drug addiction, alcoholism, and because he has been a male prostitute, is now HIV/AIDS. He is trying to accept my constant reminders as his old chaplain that Christianity is a religion of rescue and that the kingdom of God has come very near to him. He rang last week after a relapse into grog and expressed once again his self-loathing and wretchedness. Once again I reminded him that he was loved and loveable. As I did this I recalled George Herbert’s lovely poem:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack.

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lackd anything.

A guest, I answerd, worthy to be here.

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah my dear

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marrd them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love who bore the blame.

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love and taste my meat.

So I did sit and eat.

So then remember that the kingdom of God comes close to you once again this morning. Jesus, I will remind you in a moment is present in the bread and wine as he promised. His kingdom is inaugurated: it is around you, within you, here and now. Welcome its coming. Greet the king of your heart. Rejoice for He is in you the hope of glory. And as you hold out your hands recite that George Herbert couplet:

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine

Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine. Amen

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The Fifth Sunday after
Pentecost

27^th June, Luke 9: 51-62

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, my strength and redeemer. Amen

Where is Jesus asking us to travel not yesterday but tomorrow? Tom Wright

Well I think that we can honestly say that todays gospel is one that is quite challenging! Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem; there will be no looking back for him. Jesus is on a mission and is determined to follow Gods will no matter what the obstacles, or dangers. It is the turning point in the gospel, and the next ten chapters will consist of his teaching along the way. Teaching his followers what it truly means, and what it will take to become one of his disciples. Jesus does not mince words in this passage; he gives a harsh and a realistic view. He leaves no doubt that there will be difficulties, challenges, and certain expectations. Is there a difference in being a disciple yesterday, today, or tomorrow?

Jesus sent messengers on ahead of him and they entered a village, not just any village but a Samaritan village. There was an inherent tension between the Jews and the Samaritans, bitterness still remained after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. The Samaritans were not known for their hospitality towards pilgrims on their way to the festivals as they saw them going to the wrong place, they are making a mistake. So was it really a surprise when Jesus was refused hospitality there? There is a touch of humour in what happens next, and is reminiscent of Elijah (2 Kings 1: 10-12) James and John, ask if they should command down fire from heaven to consume the village! This highlights not only the disciples fear, and misunderstanding about the Samaritans ;( is there something familiar here, can we love our enemies?) There is also their misunderstanding about Jesus; they will eventually learn that the power of Jesus lies in his self giving love and sacrifice, and not of wonton destruction towards those who reject him. If we face rejection are we able to shake the dust off our feet and move on?

We then encounter three people each approach Jesus and offer to follow him. I have read recently that if all Christians everywhere were to live to this teaching literally we would constitute a family of happy but homeless people, surrounded by decomposing loved ones!1 So this passage of scripture is one that can be said to be hyperbole, a rhetorical device used to get a message across. Should we be surprised with Jesus response, after all the three do come with their individual conditions attached? To the first we have the saying, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. The expression Son of Man, when translated from Greek to Hebrew means something like human being. The animals have their homes with their associated creature comforts, something that Jesus, the human, will not have. There is also a political allusion here, in the context of this journey that will end with the death of Jesus on the cross.

Then we have the second encounter; if taken literally can be extremely challenging it was the custom, and, expected of the son to bury his father. However, here it has been said that this man’s father was still alive, and that he was in fact using family responsibility, if you like procrastinating. He wanted to follow Jesus but had other things to do first. Jesus response was, if you really want to follow me, you will be willing to do so now. Can we also look at it as a call to compassion, one that has authority over other calls to caring. Where possibly at times family values may blind people to what real caring involves, prevents them from seeing what is happening to others.

And now we have the third encounter, one that is unique to Luke, and also quite opposite to the story we have heard from 1 Kings, where Elisha is given permission to say farewell to his family. This will not be so for this follower, there is to be no looking back. No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God. This is quite a harsh response, likening the challenge of discipleship to that of a farmer behind a bullock ploughing a field; the farmer must keep his gaze fixed on a point at the other end of the field to ensure that the furrow is straight. If he turns to look back he will end up with a crooked furrow. Another way to picture this is one of a ballet dancer who when learning to spin needs to be able to stay focussed on that one spot so that when the spin is complete they do not fall over.

Yes, this can be seen as a challenging passage of scripture, but then isn’t that what Jesus is about? Challenging us to become his true Disciples; challenging us to become the person that God meant us to be. We are to set our face towards the one true God, to put aside our fears, and our prejudices, our perceived hurts, our personal concerns. We are being encouraged not to lose focus by looking back. Discipleship has no time for looking back; it needs to focus its energies on the present and on the future.

What does this mean for us as individuals and as a faith community in a time of change, of uncertainty? We are being encouraged to look towards the future; to not look back. To dwell on the past can be fraught with danger to the extent that we lose our focus, that our prejudices and concerns may indeed prevent us from looking forward to the future. I will admit that I find it difficult not to look back at times, to reminisce on how things used to be, the missed opportunities. However I have learnt over the past few years it is o.k. to reflect on the past if we learn, and grow, and move on. The trick is not to dwell on or become lost in the past.

The theme of journey is paramount in this passage and at Holy trinity we are on a journey. Our challenge as a faith community is to move forward, to journey on with Jesus. Are we willing to look and see that we are focussed in the right direction? Are we prepared to look forward, to the demands of the present and of the future?

To be a disciple means more than just listening, more than learning; it takes a commitment and supreme loyalty. There should be no half measure, no distractions from true discipleship. As Christians we should be prepared to make difficult choices, and we do need to have confidence in God even when times appear to be so difficult. Let us not forget that we are also human and we do and will make mistakes. I expect that at times my furrow has been, and will be a little crooked. Are we willing to learn and accept the responsibilities expected of us as Christians? Are we prepared to look to the future to explore ways of inviting others to join our journey as we proclaim the Kingdom of God? Those who follow Jesus are spiritually alive.

There may well be times when we will be afraid, times when we wonder what we have done. Jesus got frightened, wondered what he had done, and asked God to get him out of it at Gethsemane. Our journey is not an easy one and we are not being asked to do this on our own. God’s unconditional love surrounds us, the teachings of Jesus help us to live out our Christian life, and the Holy Spirit within will guide us along the way, if we ask.

In the words of Willimon, We pray for strength, we ask for forgiveness when we fail, and renew our determination to walk the way with him. And the good news is, we journey not alone.

1 Richard Leonard SJ Preaching to the Converted.

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The Fourth Sunday after
Pentecost

June 20th 2010, Luke 8: 26–39

Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

Demons

When I was a studying the New Testament at Cambridge, my lecturer, the famous author of Honest to God, the God-talk Bishop John Robinson, quoted Bultmann, the modernist German biblical scholar’s opinion of the story of Jesus expelling demons into a herd of Gadarene swine as presenting the unsophisticated with preposterous material to feed his credulity and at the same time inviting the scorn of the sceptic.

For today’s Gospel passage bristles with problems of interpretation.

Its earliest audience in the second century would have been resolutely literalist, believing in demons, devil possession and exorcisms. Some still do, such as those crass American Sunday television evangelists; so too does the Pope, who only the other day spoke about The Devil as a reality in his thinking. Thus Dualism still survives in the highest places: that is the belief in an antithesis of God, a personified focus of evil as opposed to a focus of good. In some Pentecostal and Catholic churches, services called exorcisms, for the expulsion of evil spirits, are still held. We all know what Dawkins and Hitchens as vocal contemporary and scornful atheists would make of this, dismissing it as medieval mumbo jumbo.

Now I would be the last to dismiss evil as a reality, but like many of you, I find it difficult to hold to a personification of evil, even though there are manifestly evil people around. Read the court reports day by day or the tabloid press. That Austrian father who imprisoned his daughter below in the cellar and had seven children by her; or the child soldier killers and rapist militia in Central Africa to this day. Or Pol Pot in Cambodia or Mao or Stalin or Hitler in their day in this war-haunted last century.

Other somewhat quaint questions of interpretation of this passage arise: was Jesus a speciesist practising cruelty to animals? Then there is the economists question: how could he deliberately ruin the livelihoods of the swineherds? Then Jewish scholars ask what was a herd of pigs doing in Jewish territory when pigs were abhorrent to them? Were the Jewish swineherders deserving of punishment?

The geography is also problematic: the Gerasene/Gadarene area was miles from the Sea of Galilee, much further than a short panicked canter down a hillside to the cliffs.

Let’s look more closely at how the story has been exegeted down 2000 years: in the second century this deranged or possessed man, run out of town by his Jewish family and friends, living naked in the cemetery, would have been seen by the locals as manifestly impure, a pariah, a genuine outcast. He was a demon-possessed maniac living in a tabu place–a cemetery near where pigs wandered freely. Its first hearers would have seen the demons name, Legion, as a personification for the menacing Roman power and thus the story is a clear promise that Jesus will ultimately triumph over the legions of Rome currently persecuting the Christians under Emperor Nero and his ilk.

A few centuries later when the Church had received official endorsement by the Emperor Constantine after 317 CE and was preoccupied with doctrinal definition and God talk, the story would have been viewed as a refutation of heresy. Scripture was taught then as having various layers of interpretation:

literal: Christ has complete power over evil;

allegorical: swinish people are likely to perform swinish acts;

moral: we should strive not to be swinish people:

prophetical: Christs judgement will prevail over the wicked on the last day.

In the early modern period de-mythologising of the Gospels took over: the owners of the pigs were Jews for whom keeping of swine was illegal, so this is a warning about just punishment being incurred for the breaking of the law.

Today the vogue liberal interpretation of the story is that it is predominantly spiritual and symbolic. Not one respectable modern commentator seriously believes in the Devil or demons. But all still believe in Christianity as a religion of rescue. For the disturbed, the modern rescuers are Christ figures: loving counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, family members who go on loving and caring, and then of course the Church, God bless it, despite all its woes and imperfections, runs its modern social welfare and rehabilitation programs and rescues the down and outs. Consider Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda or the Salvos or the Bakers Delight bread distribution from here at Holy Trinity to St Marks Fitzroy at each weekend.

Also when you stand alongside someone who has transgressed, you are Christ for them: I was always profoundly moved in the old days when I drove past Pentridge Prison on a Sunday afternoon and saw the queue of wives, children and friends waiting to visit those locked up. Or when I go to court as a referee, as I have done twice lately to support a teacher up on sexual abuse charges, his career and indeed his whole life shamefully ruined, and witnessed his wife and mother there to stand alongside him while his demons are paraded before the judge and sentence is pronounced. Christ is present, as ever it has been so, in the carers supporting the outcasts and sinners.

Finally let me be personal: I have demons and I am sure that you do also. They need to be named. What are your demons?

This naming entails great self-knowledge and humility. In the old days scrupulous manuals for self examination were published. Here is one I used when I was a theological student. I quote from this, my College Prayer Book with a long list of questions to put to oneself for examination of conscience before sacramental confession:

Are you slack, indolent, a lover of flattery? do you abhor criticism and resent reproof? do you desire to have your way in all things? do you love unkind gossip? do you indulge in morbid fancies of imaginary backslidings, disliking yourself inordinately, or do you think you are superior to others? Are you somewhat snobbish and Pharisaic?

This one amused me in a college setting with 100 students being fed three times a day in the Dining Hall:

Do you relish too much, second helpings and gluttonous self-indulgence etc.

Such demons as these were to be named by pious young ordinands and sent galloping towards the cliff edge.

Here is another little servers manual of mine dated 1955 when I was a keen young Anglo-catholic altar server at St Agnes Glen Huntly. The questions for self-examination include:

Have I neglected grace at meals?

Have I been irreverent in church, looking about, laughing, sitting instead of kneeling?

Have I made my communion without self-examination beforehand?

Have I stayed away from church when I ought to have gone?

Have I been cross when found fault with?

Have I been greedy or dainty?

Have I made fun of good people?

Have I stolen money from mother’s purse? Or fruit from a neighbours tree?

Have I had impure thoughts and done shameful things alone? (Teenage boys then and now often worry excessively about this particular demon.)

Amusing maybe and quaint. But truly it is not a bad practice from time to time to do some honest self-analysis or even to compile a list of your demons which need your personal exorcising. Especially those huge demeanours which feed our guilt and stir our conscience.

But we must beware of being guilty of guilt. Guilt is a healthy governor of conscience, but it can cripple. And for a lifetime.

One last word from TS Eliot with its unforgettable healing imagery:

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere. Amen.

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The Third Sunday after
Pentecost

June 13^th 2010, Luke 7: 36–8: 3

Dr Brian Porter

Locum Vicar, Holy Trinity Surrey Hills

An Extravagant Gesture. The Kiss and the Anointing

There is a beautiful altar frontal in a side chapel of Lincoln Cathedral. It is made of sensuous black velvet and in the middle is embroidered a pair of feet festooned with a shock of golden hair cascading down to the feet. It takes one aback because it is such an arresting image. The original Bethany story in today’s Gospel would have been far more shocking to Luke’s original audience.

Why, we might wonder?

No respectable woman would approach a rabbi.

No respectable woman’s hair would not be covered in public. No respectable woman would touch a man in public let alone continuously kiss and bathe his feet with her tears, anointing them with costly ointment, then dry them with her hair.

The incident plumbs the depths of audacity and sensuality.

Traditionally, commentators have focused on Jesus and this nameless woman, sometimes and arguably identified as Mary Magdalen. They then go on to talk about the Lords kindness to a repentant sinner. But Luke has other intentions. His focus is on the different ways Simon the Pharisee who is host at the dinner and this anonymous woman relate to this charismatic crowd-gathering rabbinical visitor, this mesmerising Carpenter of Nazareth. And the thrust of Lukes description of the encounter is really directed at Simon the Pharisee who represents us. As the spotlight turns on us at The Meal this morning we are to ask ourselves who we are more like: are we more like the woman or more like Simon, that pillar of social respectability?

A word on the kiss:

I have spent forty years among teenage schoolboys who by and large are uncomfortable with tactility except it seems, on the football field. But the kiss, that most sensuous of human encounters, starts to loom large for them as the hormones course the veins. We all remember our first post pubertal kiss. But is it not so, that we have little recollection of the very first primal kisses lavished upon us by our mothers: the memory bank does not go back that far. But Freud has taught us that the love affair with our mothers is foundational and there is really no later love affair more intense or formative than that largely unremembered love affair with our mother who is-all in one-food, security, adoration and endlessly comforting tactility. Later on in life those of us who are connubially fortunate sometimes ponder with sadness and wonderment just how so many people made lonely by bereavement or enforced celibacy must long to be touched, kissed, embraced. That observation of one of the fathers of the Church is very poignant for some:

All our life said St Augustine, is to be exercised in longing. Many people long to be loved and embraced. Do not we all!

Ponder for a moment: What do you in fact long for?

A word on the perfumed ointment:

A friend of mine knows a lot about fragrances. He writes unusual books. The titles testify to this: The Smile (a study of portraits because Angus is a gallery curator). The Kiss. Perfumes. Here is a comment he makes on the great fragrances of the world:

A brilliant perfumer may devise an imaginary world no less powerful, or intimate, than that of a great composer or painter, and in calling on our capacity to discover there, some memory of childhood, or a long forgotten experience, or cherished lover, they are in the same business as the artist who breathes warmth into flesh or produces the illusion in landscape of a rush of energy or of calm.

I like that testament to perfumers.

We all have our favourite recollected fragrances.

I recall that my mother so loved the fragrance Jicky by the Parisian perfumer Guerlain that as a romantic teenager I saved up a small fortune to buy a tiny bottle of Jicky at the perfume counter in Myers and gave this costly treasure to her on her birthday. Then later when Muriel and I were in Paris on our honeymoon I exercised the same extravagance. Jicky for me might be the same as that alabaster jar of ointment at Bethany.

Now in today’s Gospel passage that alabaster jar of precious ointment represented perhaps that woman’s wealth, her most treasured possession, perhaps her financial security. It was a supremely extravagant gesture. We can imagine that the fragrance released filled the whole house. Its perfume has certainly lingered on in Christian story-telling down the ages.

Let me conclude with some wise words from a modern commentator which remind us of where we are and what we are about this morning:

At table, Jesus meets us, again and again. We are all guests here at the Lords table. The question is never will Christ welcome us, will there be a place for us, is there room for the likes of me? The question is always will we welcome the Christ who welcomes us? The clue is how well we know ourselves. Am I well enough acquainted with my own human frailty to let Christ in? Have I faced the truth about myself, looked into my heart and experienced my own essential poverty? Do I come warm-hearted to Christ, and with empty hands? Is there anything of this woman about me, or am I cold and closed in on myself like this Pharisee? He omits all the traditional duties of the hospitable host. He does not bathe the travellers dusty feet, fails to greet him with a kiss, offers no anointing of the head. Neglectful and mean, he is shown up by the woman’s lavish display. In more ways than one, she is careless and carefree, where Simon is locked down and locked up. The good religious man gives nothing, seems incapable of giving anything, while she cannot help herself giving everything. For all his efforts to please God, Simon simply cannot do it, because it seems he has never known himself accepted, never experienced God’s delight in him, never allowed God to forgive and embrace him. Luke’s admonishment is: The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

So this week as the fragrance of todays Gospel lingers, tell someone that you love them. Love is a sacramental thing and requires enfleshing. Put your arms around your beloved, your spouse, your closest friend, your child, your pet, and tell them that you love them. Make an extravagant gesture.

Send a cheque to Anglicare or to World Vision or Care Australia. Don’t hesitate to give the locum a smile, or at least invite him home for some Earl Grey and a Scotch finger. And as you hold out your hands for the bread and the cup at this Christian love feast remember that couplet of George Herbert:

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine

Which my God feels as blood; but I as wine

Amen

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Trinity Sunday

The first Sunday after Pentecost

A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

The first Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday 30^th May, John 16:12-15

Bishop Barbara Darling

Bishop of the Eastern Region

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer Amen.

Thank you for your invitation to be here with you as you celebrate your Patronal Festival on this Trinity Sunday. I would like you to imagine that you are introduced to a man Stephen through your work and you find out he is an experienced architect. Then you meet him at a photographic exhibition, and discover that not only is he a keen photographer, but he has also been on a flight to Antarctica like yourself and taken many pictures, so you enter into a very interesting conversation with him. Two months later, you meet up with him again at a family wedding where you discover he is related to the groom, while you are related to the bride. You have a further conversation with Stephen and meet his family, and gradually get to know and like various aspects of this person.

Or perhaps it is a woman called Jocelyn you meet in different contexts. You find out through work that she is a physiotherapist and enjoy sharing with her at that level; then you meet while you are accompanying a friend to the dog show and find out that Jocelyn has several King Charles Spaniels and is a keen shower of these dogs. Later you visit a large Anglican church in another neighbourhood to attend a baptism. You meet Jocelyn and discover that she worships there regularly and you have a lot more in common as you share in a cuppa afterwards. In each case, there is one person, with various different aspects of their lives–aspects that help us as we meet them to get to know them in various ways.

Trinity Sunday each year allows us to explore different aspects of our God–helping us to discover a little more about the wonder and majesty of God, Gods transcendence and otherness, and also Gods immanence or ability to be right here with us in a personal and relational way.

In the early church, this Sunday was observed as the octave of Whitsun: that is, the eighth day of Pentecost. In the later Middle Ages, this day began to be kept as a celebration in honour of the Trinity–one of the last great Christian festivities. It concludes the commemoration of the life of Christ and the coming of the Spirit and thus brings together the three persons of the Godhead.

Our readings today are all carefully chosen to fit in with this theme. The Old Testament reading shows playful Wisdom as delighting in the self-proclamation of herself as the first product of Gods actions, as one who reveals the presence of the Maker at creation. Psalm 8 is a wonderful psalm of praising God, who created the world for the sake of humanity, and assigned humans a place of dominance in this creation. The Epistle to the Romans speaks of each member of the Trinity and the Gospel reading does so too as it announces the coming of the Holy Spirit. There is no Biblical passage that clearly announces a developed doctrine of the Trinity as such, but there are passages like these ones chosen for today, that help us to understand more about God as Trinity–three in one and one in three. Let us look more closely and see what we can discover about the Trinity from two of these passages and how they can help us in our Christian living and thinking.

Paul in today’s extract from Romans chapter 5 shows us how God is revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We see here how God gives us peace, lavishes us with love and invites us to share in the glory of Christ, both now in the present reality and in the future. This is able to happen despite and in the midst of any present sufferings and difficulties. Christ is the one through whom Gods peace or shalom becomes a reality and is our mediator, granting us access to God’s grace. Through Christ our suffering can lead to perseverance and perseverance to hope. The Holy Spirit is given to us so that we can experience the love of God through the power of the Spirit.

We see here and in other pages in the New Testament, how the work of God embraces salvation history. The love of God stands firmly at the beginning while it is the glory of God towards which all things move, with the reconciling peace of God enabling an ongoing relationship between God and us. The role of Christ throughout is that of a very active agent through whom we can experience God’s salvation. Paul puts this in a concise phrase in 1 Cor. 8:6 when he says that we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Then as the third part of the Trinity, we have the Holy Spirit who is the one through whom and in whom we actually experience the love of God. It is the Holy Spirit who gives the concrete form to divine love and does so within us as God’s self merges with our own selves.

Our gospel reading for today is the final in a series since Easter Day that have come from Johns gospel–we go back next week to the Year of Luke and pick up again from Lukes gospel. But here, today, we have the fifth and final saying about the Holy Spirit from Jesus farewell discourse in John’s gospel. In John chapters 14, 15 and 16 we have already heard that Jesus will ask God to send the spirit of truth to be another counselor to be with the disciples forever. We also heard that the Holy Spirit will be sent from God in Jesus name to teach and to remind the disciples of Jesus words, that the Spirit, sent by Jesus but proceeding from God, will bear witness to God and that on his departure Jesus will send the Counselor to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgement.

Todays gospel continues in a similar vein to these other statements about the Holy Spirit. It does so in a way that is particularly relevant for this Trinity Sunday. Jesus admits that he has not covered all situations and needs with his disciples. He promises that the Holy Spirit will provide them with future guidance in many different ways and situations, so that the Spirit will guide them into all truth and will declare to them the things that are to come. By doing this the Spirit will continue to guide and enlighten the whole church. We are to continue looking for the Spirits guidance in new and perhaps radical ways, as Gods church is not just a monument of ancient records and traditions.

Finally, Jesus assures us in our gospel reading that the Holy Spirit will not speak or act independently, but rather will glorify Christ and will reveal only that which comes from Christ or from God. This guideline has helped those over the years in the church, and will continue to help people seeking to know if something is true to Gods will. Are these actions and words of these people in accordance with what we know of God and of Jesus Christ? God would not want us to do or say something that was in opposition to the principles of Gods love and salvation as set out already in Scripture. The church affirms the Holy Spirit as from God and as from Christ and as witness to that which God has revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

For example, when people in the church at Corinth were carried away with enthusiasm for the Spirit, Paul used the principles already laid out for the church by Scripture plus their belief in Christ, to test the behaviour of the Christians in their little house church. Paul uses the Godhead to remind them in 1 Cor 12: 4-6 of their responsibilities and boundaries. He says: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit: and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

Some people think that the doctrine of the Trinity is remote, ancient and irrelevant, but this is not the case. The affirmation of God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit has been and is essential for the health of the Christian faith.

How does the doctrine of the Trinity fit in with you as a parish named in honour of the Trinity, and currently undergoing change and perhaps a time of uncertainty about the future? You will soon be saying farewell to your Vicar Jenny and to Philip, as they move on to a time of leave and then into new ministry. I would like to thank them publicly for their time here with you and for their pastoral care, leadership, love for the liturgy, and seeking to move your parish forward. You will miss them and be able to look back and thank God for the things they have shared with you and for the love of Christ they have shared with you. You will then be having the Reverend Brian Porter as your locum, while your incumbency committee meet with me and Archdeacon Peter to seek the person of God’s choice as your new incumbent. This could take some time, and the locum period can be a time of working out under God what kind of Vicar God is leading you to and the tasks that lie ahead for you as a parish. As you seek to work out your plans to grow, to find sufficient funding and to reach out to those in the neighbourhood, may you hold onto the reality of the Trinity. God is three in one and one in three. We see especially in Johns gospel the closeness of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May you be reminded of this closeness as you seek to have one mind as a parish, united in the power of Gods Spirit.

May you look forward with hope to the future, not focussing on the challenges that you may encounter, such as an ageing population or declining finances, but seeking to be people of God whose witness will encourage others and lead to welcoming new people into your community. Above all, be people of prayer–praying for the Reverends Jenny and Philip, for the other Reverend Jenny and Reverend Brian as he comes, and for your incumbency committee in their responsibilities.

Down through the centuries, Gods love has unfolded itself. The Spirit, continuing the living revealing presence of the Son in our midst, will make Gods truth ever clearer to us until that day when we will finally be led into its fullness. The mystery of the Trinity–Father, Son and Holy Spirit united in love-will no longer be something out there. It will be something that we can all share in and understand more fully. May our understanding of who God is be deepened and strengthened by examining the reality of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit–creator, redeemer and sustainer.

Let us pray: using an old Celtic prayer to the Trinity:

We walk in the joy of the creator

We walk in the love of the Son.

We walk in the power of the Spirit

God the Creator, bless our eyes as they see,

God the Son, be ever close to us,

God the Spirit, protect and guide us. Amen

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Day of Pentecost

A Sermon for the Day of Pentecost

Sunday 23^rd May

The Reverend Jenny Sumpter

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with the love for you. Amen.

Pentecost Sunday is the 50^th day after Easter and is one of the three most prominent feast days of the liturgical year. This is the day that we celebrate the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the first disciples, the day the church began to reach out around the world. Around the walls you can see the word for welcome in many languages. You may also have noticed an abundance of red! Red vestments, balloons, doves, and streamers, even pomegranates! Red-symbolizes the joy and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is associated with the birth of the church, with the descent of the Holy Spirit Christs mission on earth is complete. There are many images associated with the Holy Spirit, and I will speak of three this morning, the dove, the wind, and the light.

The first Pentecost, and the disciples are gathered in one room, they are on their own; they no longer have Jesus with them. They are praying, possibly they are trying to decide what to do next, or maybe they are hiding, afraid of the crowd. This is after all the Jewish Feast of Weeks, one of the three Pilgrim festivals; when the Jews gathered to celebrate the time when the Ten Commandments were given to Moses. So it would not have been an ideal time to be on the streets as a Christian!

Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, it filled the entire house. Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them and rested on each of them, on all who were in the house. This certainly does not sound like the peaceful dove that we usually associate with the Holy Spirit. This is not like the Holy Spirit that descended like a dove on Jesus at the time of his baptism, empowering him for his ministry. There is the dove that returns to the Ark with an olive branch in its beak, or the dove which is so often associated with peace, and with a feeling of calm.

The early Celtic Christians used a wild goose to symbolize the Holy Spirit. The wild goose is noisy, untamed and uncontrolled. I think this fits in more with today’s story as the Spirit moves around the room like a violent wind before settling on all present within the house. Outside the crowd gathers to find out what the disturbance is all about, there are Parthian, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. The crowd is amazed when they are able to understand what the disciples are saying; were the disciples speaking different languages? Or were they able to communicate with the crowd in ways other than words?

What historical event occurred for Luke to write this account, certainly something happened. What we do know is that the disciples are no longer confused, or unsure of what to do, nor of how they were going to spread the gospel.

Luke uses dramatic imagery and symbolism that has been powerfully interpreted by many artists over the centuries. Whatever happened on that day we do know that the disciples were never the same again. Gone are the people hiding away in fear, they have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. United they go out with courage to passionately proclaim the gospel to all nations. John’s gospel tells us the Advocate,^* the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. The disciples have been empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Ruach, in both Hebrew and Greek translates wind, breath, Spirit. The Holy Spirit is likened to the wind, the wind from God that swept across the water at the time of creation. The wind of God breathed the breath of life into Adam. The wind of God gives life. The wind of God is invisible, mysterious, and powerful; the wind of God which we cannot see or control. I came across this poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti recently.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

John likens the Spirit to the wind, in his gospel he tells us the wind blows where it will, you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

We cannot see the wind of God, but the spirit is all around us like the wind blowing in the trees, like the movement of the balloons here this morning. God is all around us; God the spirit is also within us. I wonder are we always open to the spirit within? Have we become complacent, possibly too comfortable with our faith? Or are we hiding away like the early disciples; frightened, unsure of what is happening; or uncertain about how we can go out and proclaim the gospel?

Is it possible for us to escape this wind? The Psalmist writes, ⁷Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? ⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. ⁹If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, ¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (139)

Perhaps we need the wild goose to shake us out of our complacency? We need to be open to the movement of the spirit within, and able to use the gifts that have been given to us by God. This gift of the Spirit is active and changes the way we live in the world and with one another. As Christians we are called upon to share Pentecost daily with others in our journey with God. Christ’s message is in our lives and our faith becomes real. We all have been given gifts to help us share the gospel with one another, with people we meet out in the community, in the home, or in the work place. Recently one of our parishioners recounted a day when three different people approached her in her work place. Young and old, each had experienced trauma, distress, anxiety, and grief. These people were seeking help, needing to talk. The Holy Spirit was there in all her glory enabling, healing, calming, soothing. By listening and talking with these people the ministry of Jesus was being proclaimed.

We each have gifts that we can use to strengthen the church, it does not necessarily mean that we all have to be out there on the street corners shouting forth the gospel. Maybe you have been reading a passage from the bible, or a psalm, one that you have read so many times before and yet on this occasion it speaks differently to you? What was the Holy Spirit telling you? Sometimes it is possible to share this with another person and there is much joy to be found in sharing a favorite reading, psalm, or hymn when visiting people.

How can we find the courage or the means to go out and speak Gods word? It could possibly mean using a language or idioms that we are not accustomed to. If Jesus were here today how would he communicate with the young, the homeless, or the illiterate? Jesus is here today walking with us; the Holy Spirit empowers our ministry.

As a church we are experiencing a time of change; there are those among us who have feelings of uncertainty, doubt, and fear. Can we follow the example of the disciples, working together, sharing our gifts? We need to be open to the Holy Spirit who will enable us to find ways to move forward. We need courage to actively seek ways to introduce people to a life with God, and to spread the gospel amongst all peoples.

The third symbol for the Spirit is light, I am the light of the world, said the Lord, and whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life. We do have the courage to take the light of Christ, of the church into the world. We are doing it daily in the way we live out our faith. It is not always easy for us to talk openly to others about our faith, to proclaim the gospel. But it is not what we do-but what Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit is able to do through us. If we are open to the Holy Spirit within then we also can be empowered, as were the disciples.

The prophet writes:

Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit upon all people; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. ²⁹Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

Joel 2: 28-29

We are the church; and we rest assured that God never gives up on the church, never gives up on us. The light of the church will never go out. As Christians the way that we live our lives is an outward sign of the inward working of the Holy Spirit. May our hearts be set on fire with the love for God.

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The First Sunday after
Ascension

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Ascension

Sunday 16^th May

The Reverend Philip Gill

Jesus prayed, I in them and you in me that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me.

Perhaps the disciples thought it would be an easy task. Tell people of the loving God who sent his son, who forgives our misdeeds and who promises eternal life and the penny will drop then they will believe. Why would not they? Is not this really, really, really Good News? Things appear to start off well. On the day of Pentecost Peter preaches to the crowds and three thousand are converted–instant mega church! Later the Holy Spirit overcomes several groups of people who are converted, it seems, instantly. Maybe these are seekers, those attuned to the voice of God made plain through the Apostles. But then they begin to run into harsher ground.

Paul and Silas found themselves in prison because they had interfered in the local economic power structure. In the course of their preaching they encountered a slave girl whose extrasensory powers made money for her owners. She recognised Paul and Silas as men of God and made it known to everyone in town by shouting, These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation. She shouted so long and so persistently that Paul could stand it no longer and exorcised the spirit that gave her the power of divination.

The owners of the slave girl, now deprived of a valuable source of income, arrested Paul and Silas and marches them to prison. Perhaps Paul might have been a little more circumspect in his response to the slave girls adoration, a little more strategic in his actions. I can imagine Silas saying, It’s a fine mess you’ve got us in this time Paul. But the story makes the point that proclamation of the Good News of God may step on toes, offend the status quo and even have an effect on the vital hip pocket nerve. These are some of the reasons why this News of God is not always received as good, but there are other reasons and in his book Losing my Religion, Bishop Tom Frame tries to understand the phenomenon of unbelief. In an attempt to relate to those who do not join churches, Bishop Frame tells this story:

When I considered joining a political party some years ago I decided against becoming a member because I was appalled at the absence of focus and what appeared to be a lack of organisational oneness; I didn’t want to join any group whose identity was disputed and whose agenda was unclear. It would be easy to take such a similar view of some religious communities in Australia. Perhaps many people do–it would explain why belief in God is much more common than active membership of Churches, mosques or synagogues. (1)

Rather than considering the reasons for unbelief I would rather contemplate the experience of belief. It is the final and heartfelt words of Bishop Frames book that provide a map for the journey I really want us to make this morning:

Despite the difficulties and the problems associated with believing in God, I am still confronted by Jesus words and works, and by the conviction that his dying and rising has transformed human history. When I am persuaded that the claims made about him are false, exaggerated or misunderstood, there will be only one alternative. I, too, will lose my religion. (2)

Some would say there are convincing arguments for unbelief: the presence of suffering; no need of a heavenly authority in a world that values liberal democracy; the attraction of a worldview dominated by scientific method and discovery to name a few. But the possibility of the presence of God has challenged minds through the centuries up to and including our own. One of the most interesting arguments for the existence of God comes from the 11^th century archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm.

One night Anselm was contemplating the first verse of psalm 14, The fool says in his heart, there is no God. Yes, thought Anselm, but even such a fool has some idea of the God he is rejecting. So what would be an adequate way to think of God? He came up with this argument:

God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

We could immediately challenge him and say well this is only mind play, because I can conceive of something does not mean it exists, think of the unicorn for example. The difference is that no one claims existence as property of the unicorn but millions claim that God exists and anyway, if I were contemplating that which nothing greater could be conceived and called it God, a God that exists would naturally be greater than a God that does not.

Perhaps not too many people have been converted from their unbelief by St Anselms argument. That was never really his aim. Anselms motto was that faith should seek understanding, rather than that the human mind should seek to construct its own God. I do not think anyone would claim this to be a watertight argument for the existence of God, and some famous philosophers have claimed to discredit the argument. God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived challenges the mind of faith rather than converts the heart of unbelief.

If these arguments are inconclusive we need other reasons for our beliefs and for our membership of the Church. I think the existence of the church is one of the best arguments for the existence of God. Bishop Frames experience suggested that while he was put off by the lack of organisation of the political party he was willing to endure the vagaries of church life and the ups and downs of Christian commitment.

I had a similar experience once. When I first became interested in photography and had bought my first SLR camera I went along to a local camera club. While people were polite I soon realised that the focus was on the technical aspects of the craft and people were in deep conversations about their cameras, film and locations. I felt there was more than a touch of, mine is bigger and better than yours. I never went back. Over the years I’ve experienced my fair share of similar talk from Christians and yet this is the group to which I have chosen to stay with–give my life to in fact. There are many reasons we do this, for some worship might be an important part of their faith, many make deep and lasting relationships and others may genuinely enjoy or at least feel it is important to engage in the internal wrangling that is part of church life. For many church life is important even if we can’t quite articulate exactly what it is that draws us to belong.

It is in worship we encounter the stories of Jesus and of Gods people through time. We hear stories that, often at the same time, resonate with our own lives and take us to levels we could not otherwise imagine. Who among us, like St Paul, has not been annoyed with someone else, and yet, even from this situation, which begins with angry confrontation, God draws what is good–the bringing to faith of the unbelieving gaoler.

In the Gospel this morning Jesus prays for the unity of his followers. Just think of it, his prayer comes as part of the farewell discourse. This is the time between the Last Supper and his betrayal and death. It stands to reason Jesus would have been focusing on what was important–crucial. And yet we know from other Gospel accounts that unity was not always a hallmark of the disciples who, like everyone else, showed signs of envy, competition, and mutual suspicion.

Whatever their individual foibles the disciples as far as we know remained faithful to their master and gave their lives in his service. In this they were essentially unified. I like to take this view of the church today: if we are going about the work of sharing the Good News of God and working to sustain each other in worship and fellowship, we are essentially in unity.

Through all this comes the hope that is modeled in the Book of Revelation. This book, written during a time of persecution of the young church was nearly left out of the canon of Scripture because of its wild imagery. The Book of Revelation offers the hope of the final triumph of God, of good over evil. This hope is worth sharing in and worth sharing widely. It is worth thinking deeply about and even critically about.

In the readings this morning we may note that any good coming from the situations they describe comes through difficulty and hardship. So in the end the proof of God is not in the mind or even in the heart but in the living.

1. Frame, T.R. Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia, University of New South Wales: Sydney, 2009, p169.

2. ibid. p304.

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The Sixth Sunday after Easter

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Easter

9^th May 2010

The Reverend Jennifer Inglis

At the last supper Jesus explains to those gathered about his immanent departure. He tries to help the disciples to understand that he needs to return to his father in glory and that this will be good. He hopes very much they will come to see his meaning. He offers reassurance that through abiding in his love they will know the mutual indwelling of he and his Father. Finally Jesus offers two gifts–one the promise of the Holy Spirit or Advocate and second, he assures the gathering of the gift of peace, or Shalom.

The first hint of Jesus immanent departure occurs after Jesus washes his disciples feet at the last supper. He dips a piece of bread and gives it to Judas Iscariot telling him to do what he is going to do quickly. The farewell discourse begins as soon as Judas goes out. There is a very dramatic sentence that now sets the scene: And it was night (Chapter 13.30b). The very next verse (13.31) we hear: When he had gone out, Jesus said, Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. The farewell discourse continues from that verse through chapters 14, 15 and concludes at the end of chapter 16.

Hence our reading today from John chapter 14 is set within the farewell discourse of Jesus. Rather than being read like an historical document or a newspaper we read it with eyes of the person looking for the theological meaning of Christ. This morning we note the role Jesus has in preparing his disciples for his departure–the ascension, and the early church for the coming of the Holy Spirit as Advocate. Yet Jesus here is not just a describer about what is to come he is also the key character around which will others will play their parts such as Judas the betrayer and Peter the denier.

We take the calls from this gospel this morning: the call to abide with humble authenticity, the call of listening for the Spirit teacher guided toward peace or shalom. George Herbert reflects a life of a humble authenticity. Born in 1593 he was destined for public leadership and service but when King James the first died followed by some important patrons and his own mother he decided on parish ministry. His friends were extremely annoyed and begged him that such a calling would be a waste–such was the esteem and statesmanship with which he was held. His humbling response:

It hath been formerly judged that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be of the noblest families on earth. And though the iniquity of the late times have made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible; yet I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities to advance the glory of that God that gave them. And I will labour to be like my Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful and meek example of my dear Jesus. (1)

As parish priest in a small church in Bemerton near Salisbury and his ministry ended four years later when he died just short of his fortieth birthday. His poetry reflects his life–of constant examination to the error of his ways, of seeing God in the beauty and tragedies around him. How does George Herbert deal with the human journey those early disciples would have wrestled with as they contemplate the call to abide.

The Quip (2)

The merrie world did on a day
With his train-bands and mates agree
To meet together, where I lay,
And all in sport to geere at me.

First, Beautie crept into a rose;
Which when I pluckt not, Sir, said she,
Tell me, I pray, Whose hands are those?
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.

Then Money came, and chinking still,
What tune is this, poore man? said he:
I heard in Musick you had skill:
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.

Then came brave Glorie puffing by
In silks that whistled, who but he!
He scarce allowed me half an eie:
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.

Then came quick Wit and Conversation,
And he would needs a comfort be,
And, to be short, make an oration:
But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.

Yet when the houre of thy designe
To answer these fine things shall come;
Speak not at large, say, I am thine;
And then they have their answer home.

The call to the authentic abiding with God in Christ Jesus asks us to notice what lures us away from Jesus–whether it is beauty, caught up in appearances; money, and its smug self-sufficiency; glory, blindly to oppress, wit and conversation, shallow and vain–a deep abiding relationship with Christ allows God to have that mutual indwelling. The second of the calls today is listening for the Spirit teacher guided toward peace or shalom. In her poem, O Comforting Fire of Spirit we hear Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) describe the Spirit (3):

O comforting fire of Spirit,
Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving life to All.

Holy you are in anointing
those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.

O sacred breath,
O fire of love.

You always draw out knowledge
bringing joy through Wisdom's inspiration.

The disciples had the difficult task of comprehending what was almost mumbo-jumbo to them–Jesus says he is going away but he will give them the counsellor or paraclete–the one who travels along-side. The Holy Spirit will be the new teaching Jesus, as it were. That John devotes three chapters to this narrative is testimony enough to the internal battle facing the disciples trying to make sense of Jesus figures of speech (16.25). Jesus says the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures [of speech], but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father. (16.25-28). At last the disciples can see some sense in his teaching: Yes, now you are speaking plain, not in any figure of speech! (John 16.29). There is the teaching Holy Spirit to, in Hildegards words draw out knowledge and cleansing a festering wound.

It would appear the disciples are teachable as they will have to endure the limbo of waiting for the counsellor, advocate, intercessor, comforter, strengthener–an all-round helper. (4) It is for us as the church today to be willing learners of the Holy Spirit. But amongst all this is insight about the human person to live so easily with fantasies: fantasies of greatness, fantasies of gloom and doom, fantasies of failure. Jesus undoes all these to place us in our true country, as it were, to abide, to hear the teacher of the spirit to accept the shalom of Gods wholeness with us. Fantasies undo us and let us down if we are going to be true to ourselves and to God. One of the roles of God in the church today is to expose our fantasies for what they are–to stem the flow of anxious nonsense that depletes ourselves and community. Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933) points out the dreams and nightmares of life and realises Gods call for good in the poem, Dreams and Nightmares (On reading 1 Kings 3:5-9; 9:2-9) (5)

Last night as I lay sleeping,
I had a dream so fair.
I dreamed of the Holy City, well ordered and just.
I dreamed of a garden of paradise,
well-being all around and a good water supply.
I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness,
and caring embrace for all those in need.
I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.

Last night as I lay sleeping.
I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven.
I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding
and maimed children.
I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved,
of the homeless left unnoticed,
of the dead left ungrieved.
I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages
and wars great and small.

When I awoke, I found you still to be God,
presiding over the day and night
with serene sovereignty,
for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you
our best dreams
and our worst nightmares,
asking that your healing mercy should override threats,
that your goodness will make our
nightmares less toxic
and our dreams more real.

Thank you for visiting us with newness
that overrides what is old and deathly among us.
Come among us this day; dream us toward
 health and peace,
we pray in the real name of Jesus
who exposes our fantasies.

We take the calls from this gospel this morning: the call to abide with humble authenticity, the call of listening for the Spirit teacher guided toward peace or shalom. The Holy Spirit equips the church of today but we do not expect to understand the mysterious ways of God overnight, and we are to be prepared to face the fantasies that can derail and self-destruct us. May the Holy Spirit guide us and teach us.

(1) http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/George_Herbert_The_Quip.shtml

(2) http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/George_Herbert_The_Quip.shtml

(3) Source: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Hildegard_Of_Bingen_O_Comforting_Fire_Of_Spirit.shtml

(4) Richard A. Burridge, Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C, in Roger E. Van Harn (Ed) The Lectionary Commentary: The third readings, the Gospels, Grand Rapids, Eerdemans, 2005, p.

(5) http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Walter_Brueggemann_Dreams_And_Nightmares.shtml

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The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Known by Our Love.

There is always the chance that God will upturn our comfortable lives and help us to see things in a new and better way.

by The Reverend Philip Gill

In 1938 just outside Belgrade in Serbia a monument was unveiled. The monument commemorates the unknown Heroes of the Balkan War of 1912 and the First World War. It bears no inscriptions except the dates 1912-1918. The monument is angular, stark and solid. Inside are several caryatids, which I have recently learnt are statues of women used as structural supports instead of columns. Their inclusion in the monument of the Unknown Hero represents the women of each of the nations of the then Yugoslavia who died in these conflicts. There is a 'hidden history' filled with unknown heroes, those whose lives, whose joys and sufferings, have been of benefit to others. There are millions whose heroic deeds have been forgotten or were deliberately kept secret from a sincere sense of humility.

How much this is a contrast to the life of Jesus. He was a preacher and a teacher and message was very public, but many preachers and teachers too have been forgotten (thank goodness). The contrast is highlighted by the fact that Jesus is not just remembered as good teacher or an engaging teacher but rather experienced as alive! Jesus continues to bring about in peoples lives experiences of joy, renewal, healing, peace and hope that those who followed him experienced. This experience of Jesus resurrected changed the bewildered disciples into apostles empowered to share their experience with others in the face of enormous risk. Jesus said that his disciples would be known by their love.

In the past weeks since Easter Day we have heard of several adventures of St Peter and the disciples. Remember Peter's initial response was simply, "I'm going fishing." He seems to me to be saying more than first meets the eye in these words. Is he just filling in time until the next chapter of Gospel story or is he returning the way things were before he met Jesus? Is he saying that it was great while it lasted but it is all over now? I wonder if you have ever made your way to a shop or even a friend's place only to find the door firmly closed with a sign, 'Gone Fishing.' Such a sign seems to put the person absolutely beyond reach - they may as well have gone to Mars - and trying to reach them by mobile phone would be useless.

But Peter and the others, even though they hang out their 'Gone Fishing' signs, are not out of the reach of the resurrected Jesus. They encounter him on the beach preparing their breakfast including fish cooked over the fire. Something that Jenny S included in here reflection on this Gospel at a recent Family Service struck me deeply. As Peter sat staring at the fire that morning he was reminded of that fire he stared into on the night he denied Jesus. At this meeting Peter is reinstated as a leader in the Church by Jesus' three-fold commission to "feed my lambs." There is no escape for him from the life he must now lead as an Apostle of Christ. Even the 'gone fishing' sign can not help him now.

In the reading from Acts today Peter's world and that of the Church were again upturned, if not completely shattered. Peter is a man who at heart wants to be faithful to God. At the heart of that faithfulness would have been obedience to the Laws as received in the Old Testament. In amongst them are many dietary requirements that express faithfulness. In a vision Peter saw what he would have believed impossible. In his vision Peter comes to see that in Christ these laws had been displaced by the crucial message of the invitation to all people to enter the Kingdom of God. This invitation includes Gentiles as well as Jews. This preparatory vision enables Peter to receive Gentiles as brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that he would otherwise been able to do. The vision became a reality.

What is important too in this story is the calm way Peter reports what had happened to his colleagues at home in Jerusalem. In an almost uncharacteristic way he resists losing his block and just tells the story. I had a vision from God that spoke of the inclusive mission of God, then I just happened to meet some Gentiles who wanted to hear about Jesus and as I was telling them they experienced the Spirit of God.

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

"When they heard this, they were silenced." We need to be reminded of many issues exclusion and inclusion in the light Jesus teaching that his disciples would be known by their love for one another. With hindsight we might ask why Peter and the others needed miraculous intervention in order to be accepting of those whom they would have considered other, different, foreign and even inferior. The lure of the comfort of being with those who are the same, familiar and equal is strong, overwhelming sometimes.

A story from Alice Springs:

A group of young leaders from Yuendumu, a remote central Australian Aboriginal community were ejected from an Alice Springs backpacker hostel in March 2008 because some tourists staying there complained they were 'afraid of Aborigines'. The 16 people in the group which included women and small children, had driven the 300 kilometres to Alice Springs for lifesaving training run by the Royal Lifesaving Society. Most were young leaders, chosen specially for their standing in the Yuendumu community. As they were moving into their rooms the resort manager told them they'd have to pack up and go because some tourists in the hostel had complained of being 'afraid of Aborigines' and these tourists 'bring in a lot of money'. The organisers of the trip are stunned. Angry about the incident, the CEO of the Royal Lifesaving Society is describing it as 'pure racism'.
From the website of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation.

We may contrast this to a story written by Rosa Brown who at age 12 formed a friendship with a young woman called Denada. Under threat of execution in Kosovo, Denada and her husband Mark escaped by plane to Australia but because they used fake IDs and passports where they were arrested and taken to Villawood Detention Centre. Rosa and Denada began corresponding. Rosa's story was published as part of a compilation of essays prepared by the Australians against Racism Initiative. Here is something of what she wrote:

Denada came to Australia for a better life but here she lost everything, she tells me. She lost her freedom, her identity, her family and friends, her birthplace and home. After being in detention for ten months Denada was starting to feel the strain. Her health was getting bad and she was losing weight, she even started taking depression tablets. My friendship with Denada has affected me a lot. I am now more interested in human rights and Denada's experience has made me more aware of how lucky I am. I often think about Denada and refugees and it makes me angry that there are detention centres in Australia.
From the website of Australians Against Racism.

I think the days of bemoaning that any country, Australia included, is or isn't a so-called Christian country are long gone, but we can and should witness to what we, as Christian citizens, would hope to be the quality of community life. Indeed Denada was released from Villawood and building her new life in Australia. There is in our community more than an echo of Christian compassion and hope for the future. All of us who claim to be Christian need to keep this hope alive. Each Christian citizen will have his or her hopes for the quality of our community life, but stories such as Peter's vision and Jesus' saying that we will be known by our love are foundational to our formulation of those hopes. These stories will underline our response to the 'others' that we meet.

We may prefer that our good deeds, even the best of them, go unnoticed and unrewarded. We may sometimes want to hang out the 'Gone fishing' sign. There is always the chance that God will upturn our comfortable lives and help us to see things in a new and better way. There is always the challenge that we are to be known by the quality of our love. The Church can never be a monument to unknown heroes. The Church is a community of living saints. And when we are tempted to hang out the 'Gone fishing' sign we must know that this is the very time the risen Christ comes to us and commissions us for service.

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The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Good Shepherd & ANZAC Day

After all, we are not just sheep.

Jesus gives the task of nurturing to all in the church, not just a few, all have a role in raising and calling.

The Reverend Jennifer Inglis

In the name of our living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Once there was a young person called Anna who was doing some drawing. Her mother going by asked her what she was drawing. Anna said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." Her mother expressed great interest, saying, "But no one knows what God looks like." Anna assured her mother, "They will when I've finished." What images do we have of God? Jesus as the Good Shepherd leading the flock is one such, and an enduring one. Even if Jesus was like a good shepherd, does that make us sheep? If we are sheep we face being culled, put to the market. We are made commodities.

Just in the past few weeks people who give various forms of leadership have come under great scrutiny with those on the sidelines offering alternately critique and praise. Whether in the church, government, football, police or fire authority, leaders in any field attract critique. There are different models of leadership that in themselves may not be right or wrong. But it is surprising how different contexts and expectations will alter perceptions. Unfortunately it is sometimes with the benefit of hindsight that new things are learned about leadership choices and actions.

Jesus offered various kinds of leadership but one that perhaps is conveyed when we think about good shepherds is the leadership of the servant who suffers, who lays down his life for his sheep. Whether this is an ideal model for the church with real human beings is another matter. Not many are prepared to lay down their lives, and since we are somewhat more thoughtful than sheep more is expected of us as a church than seeing leaders as us and them - rather all belong and all belong to one another in mutuality and reciprocity. Yet the servant leadership model is important for us to be aware of.

Jesus is not a hireling but truly knows his sheep. He knows what it is to be a sheep. John's prologue suggests that God comes into human form to dwell with us. The divine logos is at one, at home, with humanity. With Christ we are all one body even though we have differences. We come together with many different life stories but with one shepherd. We share common humanity and part of that is to accept all are made in the image of God.

In the Revelation to John the Divine 7.9-17 there is a vision of angels worshipping God...

'He who sits upon the throne will shelter them with his presence. (16) They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.'

We hear how the Lamb becomes the shepherd. God makes strong the helpless and in turn they become God's leaders. From the ashes rises hope. The humble are lifted; the child becomes a leader.

Jesus' humanity and divinity must have been a hard place to occupy. The Jews are disgruntled with him. Jesus' good works did nothing to convince or persuade the Jews that they were missing something, standing right before them. The questioning Jews were not part of the faithful mob or flock and Jesus did not give cheap or easy grace - that was his integrity in leading. The flock were those who believed with their whole being.

The Jews charged Jesus of blasphemy: he a man, making himself God. These people were not of the flock of 'the Messiah, the Christ.' In order to belong that mob one needed to believe. The works need to be accepted as divine and this belief 'can only be received by faith' (Barrett Commentary on John, p. 378). We know that belonging is two-way - a mutuality and recipricoty of giving and receiving. Jesus as the Good Shepherd says he knows his own and they hear Jesus' voice. As the body of Christ, the church offers identity and a way to make a commitment to Christ as opposed to belonging to a club with a possible take it or leave it commitment.

I had a few pet lambs over the years and small as they were each had a distinctive call. Their mothers would know their own by their voice and smell. My sister and I's pet lambs knew our voices and as soon as we were home from school would literally bound after us, throwing themselves before us for a bottle feed. Those caring for sheep come to know them by their names, their appearance and call. We sense that intimacy of knowledge in Jesus this morning, "I know my own and my own know me." Yet Jesus gives the task of nurturing to all in the church, not just a few, all have a role in raising and calling. We are after all not just sheep.

Jesus Christ was speaking to the Jews about eternal life. Jesus Christ says, "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish." Christ giving eternal life is the 'constantly recurring theme of the gospel, here stated parrisia, elsewhere expressed as water, bread, light, pasture, and so on.' (Barrett p. 381, commenting on John 10.28.) Peter ministered with this intention as well in the Acts of the Apostles this morning (9.36-43) as he heals Tabitha, which means Dorcas or Gazelle. Dorcas made the coats and garments the widows showed Peter when he arrived at her house. In Peter Dorcas met the good shepherd.

Coming to know Christ is a life-long relationship involving the valleys of darkness and the high ways of hope. We are encouraged to commit ourselves to Christ afresh each day and to hear Christ's voice in our lives and our contexts. Our response to being given hope in Christ is one of worship and service - giving that glory and praise so well articulated in the Revelation of John. Sometimes our response will be to offer leadership and sometimes it will involve being good at being lead.

If we were to draw a picture of God, how would we draw it? The great energy, life source. The true friend. The meanings we have in holy scripture about life, the mystery of the Eucharist, the sharing of food and fellowship. The fiery volcano, the gentle purple of the fragrant sunset resting on the water, the rock, the midwife.

Gracious God, may we follow wherever Jesus, the good shepherd leads us, listening for his voice and staying near him until we are safely in your fold, to live with you for ever. Amen. (After APBA Collect of the Day)

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The Third Sunday of Easter
with ANZAC Commemorations

Through crucifixion comes resurrection.

Ours is a sombre remembrance and rightly leads us to think of the futility of war and the great sacrifice made.

by The Reverend Philip Gill

I am very grateful to be commemorating ANZAC. I am very thankful for the freedom with which I have grown up and lived all my life. I cannot imagine the horrors of war or the anguish of a message that a loved one had been killed in action. Even the separation of family members must have been nothing short of heart wrenching. Then there is the aftermath: death; injury; trauma; anger; hatred and a thousand other things that make recovery difficult if not in some cases very nearly impossible.

At the foundation (but perhaps not at the heart) of what we commemorate in ANZAC is a defeat. The very conception of an assault on the Dardanelles has