Sermon 12/10/25 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Readings:  Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7; Psalm 66: 1-11; 2 Timothy 2: 8 - 15; Luke 17: 11-19

In 1939 a motivational poster was produced by the Government of the United Kingdom in preparation for World War II. The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.  Although nearly 2.5 million copies were printed, and the Blitz did in fact take place, the poster was only rarely publicly displayed and was little known until a copy was rediscovered in 2000 at a bookshop in the north east of England.  It has since been re-issued by several private companies and has been used as the decorative theme for all sorts of things – T-shirts, coffee mugs, table mats, flight bags, hoodies and so on.  You’ve seen it, I’m sure.  It says “Keep Calm and Carry On”

It was meant to evoke the Victorian belief in British stoicism – the "stiff upper lip", self-discipline, fortitude, and remaining calm in adversity – and eventually became recognised around the world.  One can almost imagine that if Jeremiah were aware of it, he may well have written the same words in his letter to the exiles in Babylon.  Jeremiah, unlike his contemporary Ezekiel, was not taken into captivity so in his letter sent to King Nebuchadnezzar – you could almost call it a general epistle as it’s addressed to the remaining elders, the priests, the prophets and all the people in captivity – he transmits the word of the Lord.  Maybe the exiles as outsiders and foreigners in a strange land, bewildered and dislocated have been asking “What should we do?”  The letter advises them to build houses, live in them, plant gardens, eat the produce, get married, produce children so that you don’t die out.”  It sounds a bit like keep your heads down, get on with it, live simply, keep calm and carry on.  But there’s more to it than that, more to it than stoicism, more to it than simply looking to themselves.  Jeremiah also enjoins them to seek the welfare of the city where you are, and to pray for its welfare.  Words perhaps echoed in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus enjoins his listeners to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.[1]  They are to look beyond themselves as well.  To me, the message is to be humble, to be prayerful and to seek the welfare of all.

In my own spiritual journey, I have come to love the balance of Benedictine spirituality – the balance between worship and work undergirded by prayer and simplicity.  The basis of Benedictine spirituality is the Rule of Benedict, and I could go on at some length here about how relevant the Rule of Benedict is to the modern world, how the foundations of the way of life that the rule preserves are really the very foundations that the modern world lacks, but at the same time needs.  But there’s just one aspect I want to concentrate on this morning – and that aspect is the one that Benedict gives the most attention to in his Rule.  The Rule has 73 chapters, for want of a better word, and by far the longest and most detailed is on humility.

The American Benedictine, Sister Joan Chittister, has written a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict and she opens her comments on the chapter regarding humility in this way: “If the modern age has lost anything that needs to be re-discovered, if the Western world has denied anything that needs to be owned, if individuals have rejected anything that needs to be professed again, if the preservation of the globe in the twenty-first century requires anything of the past at all, it may well be the commitment of the Rule of Benedict to humility.”[2]

By way of background the Roman Empire in which Benedict wrote his alternative rule of life was a civilization in decline.  The economy was getting worse, the helpless were being destroyed by the war-like and violent, the rich lived off the backs of the poor, a minority powerful few made decisions that profited them but plunged a powerless majority into chaos, the empire expended more and more of resources on a militarism designed to maintain a system that was strained from within and threatened externally.  I think we can recognise some of those characteristics today, and they were certainly present in Jeremiah’s time.   It was into this environment that Benedict dropped his rule – a rule for privileged Roman citizens that called for humility.  When you hear this word humility, I wonder what thoughts or word associations spring up in your minds?  I’m not going to ask you what they are, but rather I’ll nail my colours to the mast.  The word itself comes from a Latin world “humilitas”, related to the noun “humus” which means “earth”.  So humility means in one sense being properly grounded.  Jeremiah reminds the recipients of his letter to be properly grounded, to keep their feet on the ground if you like, as they seek to maintain their lives, identities, their culture and faith while at the same time seeking the welfare of everyone. As Christians humility means having a proper sense of ourselves in relationship with God, or a proper sense of ourselves in a universe of wonders.  When we make ourselves God, that’s when trouble starts.  Humility is the basis for right relationships in life – relationships that affirm, that recognise the wisdom of others, that we are not the last word or the right answer or the clearest insight into anything.  Our answers to questions, our insights are all valuable, but they’re part of a great mosaic of life.  Humility for Christians particularly lies in learning to listen to words, insights, directions even, of one who may be a voice of Christ for us at any time.  That won’t always be when we’re listening for God in prayer.  It might be someone else, a spouse, a supervisor, a friend, a child, a spiritual director.  A prayer that I first heard from Libbie, I think – and you may have heard it too – is to pray as we go about our lives each day that we may see Christ in others, and they might see Christ in us.  We could pray “hear” as well as “see.”

However, the notion of humility has become distorted.  Over the centuries the concept humility has become confused with lack of self-esteem, a sense of unworthiness.  I began to reflect on this very early in my ministry –in the Diocese in which I was ordained the practice was just before the communion for the priest to say the words from St. Matthew’s Gospel “Lord I am not worthy that I should come under your roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”[3]  I could never say those words myself and still don’t.  I felt so strongly about it I wrote an essay at the time on the confusion between humility and unworthiness. One of the earliest Eucharistic liturgies we have is from the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus – and in that we’re told that during the Great Thanksgiving the priest gives thanks at length that we are counted worthy to stand before God.  In the Eucharistic context, the whole action of the eucharist – worship and praise of God, hearing and reflecting on God’s word, reflecting on our own lives and confessing where we have fallen short, hearing God’s forgiveness pronounced brings us to a point where we can stand confidently, worthily before God – but we do so all too aware of our place, having that sense of ourselves in relationship to God and others  which is the basis of humility.  C.S. Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity” that “true humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

Mention of the Eucharist is perhaps a convenient segue to my second point (don’t worry, there isn’t a third).  Eucharist, as you no doubt know, come from the Greek word for giving thanks. And our Gospel reading from Luke this morning is about the value of being thankful.

We’ve read that ten lepers cry out to Jesus for mercy, and all are healed. However, only one out of the ten comes back to give thanks – this story’s always given me great hope in my baptism ministry by the way.  The one who comes back is a Samaritan, an outsider, a foreigner, recognises who he really is in relationship to the divine presence – and gives humble and grateful thanks. Archbishop Jeremy comments on today’s Gospel in a short video clip in “Focus”.[4]  He says, “Jesus notices the gratitude and names it as faith. Gratitude is more than good manners; it is a way of seeing the world.  Meister Eckart once wrote that if the only prayer you say in your entire life is “thankyou” it will be enough. Gratitude shifts our perspective.  It opens our eyes to God’s presence in healing, in community and in the everyday gifts we often take for granted.  The Samaritan’s return reminds us that gratitude itself is transformative.  It deepens our relationships with God and with one another. In a world that teaches us to strive for more, Jesus invites us to stop, to notice and to give thanks.  For in thanksgiving, we discover the fullness of life.”  

So, I guess we can distil today’s message as “Live simple, humble, prayerful and thankful lives.  In doing so we can find God’s grace and fullness of life.”

© The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman


[1] Matthew 5:44

[2] Chittister Joan The Rule of Benedict – A Spirituality for the 21st Century Crossroad New York 2010 p76

[3] Matthew 8:8

[4] https://anglicanfocus.org.au/2025/10/07/sundayiscoming-reflection-12-october-2025/

Sermon 5/10/25 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Readings: Lamentations 1: 1-6; Psalm Lamentations 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1: 1-14,

Luke 17: 1-10

 

Let me assure you that it is not the case that, faced with this morning’s readings, Fr. Denis has decided to have a day off.  Before he began his locum ministry with us, he had agreed to take the services at St. Luke’s Ekibin, his home parish this Sunday and next Sunday.  Very early on, he asked me if I could cover these two Sundays, to which I happily agreed…..that was before I’d looked at the readings for today which, apart from the second reading challenge us with their difficulty.  The Lectionary for today gives a choice for the Psalm.  I’ve perhaps added to the difficulty by choosing the portion of Lamentations Chapter 3 instead of Psalm 137, as psalm of the exile.  But you may have noticed that in the choice of music, Christopher has covered that I guess with his prelude and with the motet the Lucians will sing at the 9am service.   Psalm 137 begins with “By the waters of Babylon” but ends with some even more difficult verses than we have this morning.

 

I chose to include both readings from Lamentations as after I’d looked at the Lectionary, I said to Christoper I had the drift of a sermon in my mind.  And in a sense Fr. Denis set the scene last Sunday in his opening remarks on the reading from Jeremiah.  He said that it was then a time of great turmoil and danger, the small city of Jerusalem was being threatened by the armies of Babylon invading from the north.  The city was besieged for a time, then it happened.  If you delete Jerusalem and Babylonians and insert Gaza City and the army of Israel, you’ll catch my drift.  It’s a tragic and awful irony.  An ancient lament can speak to us today.

 

Babylon struck and destroyed Jerusalem, including the prime place of worship, the temple built by King Solomon.  All the people were forced to flee apart from a very few who remained – the remnant.  Most were taken into exile in Babylon where they struggled to retain their sense of identity and culture – how could they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?  Everything that had given them meaning, purpose and identity – land, dwellings, family, faith, culture, governing institutions was stripped away.  What could they do?  They responded by gathering a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of their city.  Some of these were most likely written by Jeremiah himself, hence the Lamentations of Jeremiah.

 

Next Tuesday, 7th October marks two years since the unprovoked attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli families and young people enjoying a music festival. 1200 people were killed and many others taken into captivity as hostages – 48 are still held with no certainty as to how many are alive or dead.  So began the seemingly inexorable march to the awful and seemingly unending tragedy we now see every evening on news bulletins and on all the other media that people use today.  Everything is being stripped away from the citizens of Gaza.  As Anglican Christians we can’t stand aloof.  Here’s an account of a recent incident at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, an Anglican facility managed through the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem: Yesterday, Sunday, August 17th at 12:15 am, armed members of a local outlaw band entered the grounds of our Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, demanding treatment of one of their wounded gunmen. The medical staff complied and treated him promptly and with full respect. After doctors discharged him in good health, members of the band set on fire the hospital morgue and staff prayer room, blocking the hospital entrance to prevent firefighters from entering to extinguish the blaze. The fire came close to tents serving as the hospital's emergency department. Doctors and nurses evacuated patients. Both sections were left severely damaged. Once members of this first band departed and the staff resumed normal operations, a second group of outlaws stormed the campus. Its members shot into the air and shouted for two hours. This attracted an IDF drone. Without its operator giving due warning, the drone fired into the hospital compound, killing seven and severely wounding five.[1]  This, I think encapsulates the complexity, horror and futility of what is happening now.  What do we do?

 

Part of what we may do, I think, is rediscover the poetry and power of lament, much more usual in other cultures today than our own.  Read again the lines from Jeremiah – they capture the grief and bitterness and seeming hopelessness of what has happened.   The city is personified as a widow but it’s a lament of the whole community and the suffering and grief is unbearable – the loneliness of the city, bitter weeping, treachery, suffering and servitude, nowhere to rest, constantly being pursued, enemies prospering.  Another verse of Chapter 3 of Lamentations reads “My soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is.”[2]  Surely in compassion we can lament with and for the people of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Israel  and all other places of suffering and despair where there seems to be no end to hatred and the bitterness and violence engendered by it.  Laments in Scripture is an honest expression of pain; they provide a sacred space to voice deep sorrow, confusion, anger, and dismay to God, acknowledging the horrors of the world and one's own suffering.  Laments don’t ignore or gloss over suffering, but bring questions like “How long, O Lord?” directly to God and call for God to hear and respond.  So, laments aren’t passive, they appeal to God’s character, God’s nature to act.  A core purpose of lament is to move from pain and confusion toward hope and renewed trust in God's promises, even when suffering continues.  We see all of this in the readings from Lamentations this morning – the cry of desolation turns into a moving expression of trust in God’s love and grace “But this I call to mind: and therefore, I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”[3]  This most certainly does not mean that everything suddenly turns out for the better; we cannot succumb to the temptation to rush to easy answers or the quick fix, but we can who God is and what God has done and long for the day when heart wrenching suffering will be overcome.  The English poet and priest Malcolm Guite writes in his introduction to his anthology “Love Remember – 40 poems of loss, lament and hope” We yearn for trust, recovery and hope and hardly know whether, when or how to trust that hope, perhaps poetry..can help us as we feel our way forward[4]  I think the poetry of Lamentations can help us.

 

As Christians, how does that help us?  I think we must let the Hebrew Scriptures speak with their own voice.  It would be all to easy to read “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” and to see there – as some do – some kind of prediction of the saving acts of God in Christ.  But I think there is a distinction to be drawn.  The laments of the Hebrew scriptures – there are many in the Psalms too – looked back to what God had done and expressed the fervent hope that during both personal and national suffering God would act in the same way again.  There is a potential danger I think – if we continually look back, we can become stuck in our suffering, old pain, old conflicts, old hatreds can be repeated.  Christian hope looks back – it remembers the saving acts of God in Christ but then firmly sets its face to the future.  For me, Christian hope always looks forward.  The eucharist we celebrate together each Sunday exemplifies this – “do this in remembrance of me”, we hear as we look forward to the heavenly banquet.  The great thanksgiving prayer in the third order of Holy Communion in the prayer book expresses it like this “Father, as we recall his saving death and glorious resurrection, may we who share these gifts be renewed by your Holy Spirit and united in the body of your Son.  Bring us with all your people into the joy of your eternal kingdom there to feast at your table and join in your eternal praise.”[5]  Hope firmly grounded in resurrection faith brings with it the possibility of transformation and renewal.  I think this is the faith that the writer of the Letter to Timothy as we’ve heard read this morning reminds him about and urges him to rekindle – the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

 

So, as we see unfolding tragedy each day we can lament, remembering that lament is not only for the suffering, but also with the suffering and yet holding on to firmly grounded hope that there will be and end, and the possibilities of transformation emerge.  Signs of that hope always appear – a few months ago I saw on a TV news bulletin vision of some children in Gaza.  Against a backdrop of destroyed buildings, they had found a piece of concrete culvert and a plank of wood.  They’d made a seesaw and were playing on it.  What a great sign of hope I thought at the time.  I wonder what has happened to them – have they survived?  I hang on to the hope that they have.  Let us pray:

 

Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair, Lord in the suffering, this is our prayer.  Bread for the children, justice, joy, peace, sunrise to sunset, your kingdom increase.    Lighten our darkness, breathe on this flame until your justice burns brightly again, until the nations learn of your ways, seek your salvation and bring you their praise.[6]

© The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman


[1] https://anglicanoverseasaid.org.au/our-work/disaster-response/emergency-appeal-ahli-arab-hospital/

[2] Lamentations 3:17

[3] Lamentations 3: 21-22

[4] Malcolm Guite Love Remember – 40 poems of loss, lament and hope Canterbury Press, Norwich 2017 p xiv

[5] A Prayer Book for Australia p 177

[6] Together in Song No 690.

Sermon 29th June 2025 | Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul

Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul 

Readings:  Acts 12: 1-11; Psalm 34: 1-10; 2 Timoty 4: 6-8, 17-18; John 21: 15-22

We’re celebrating the Feast of Peter and St. Paul, Apostles and Martyrs today – and rightly so.  St. Clement, Bishop of Rome in the late first century identified Peter and Paul as outstanding heroes of the faith.  Some believe Clement was actually ordained by St. Peter.  Others that he knew St. Paul personally – that he is the Clement mentioned as a co-worker in Chapter 4 of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.[1]  The Festival was certainly being observed by the mid third century, and probably before.  In 258, their supposed remains were moved on this date so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands during the persecution under Emperor Valerian.  St. Augustine wrote, “Both apostles share the same feast day, for these two were one; And even though they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, and Paul followed. And so we celebrate this day made holy for us by the apostles' blood. Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labours, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith.”[2]

You’ve no doubt heard the expression “To rob Peter to pay Paul", meaning to take from one person or thing to give to another.  The phrase dates back to Middle English in at least 1380. It may have had religious connotations as the Feast of Peter and Paul was widely celebrated in England in the Middle Ages. But English folklore has it that the phrase alludes to an event in mid-16th century England in which the abbey church of Saint Peter, Westminster was deemed a cathedral by letters patent; but ten years later it was absorbed into the diocese of London when the diocese of Westminster was dissolved, and a few years after that many of its assets were expropriated for repairs to Saint Paul's Cathedral.  Asset stripping even then?

So, what might we take from Peter to give to Paul, and what might we take from Paul to give to Peter?  Let’s first look at them in turn.

Of all the apostles, we probably know the most about St. Peter from the scriptures. Peter ran a fishing business in Bethsaida  He was named Simon, son of Jonah or John. There is an account of how Peter's mother-in-law was healed by Jesus at their home in Capernaum  so Peter was married or possibly a widower.  In Matthew and Mark, Jesus called Simon and his brother Andrew to be "fishers of men" In Luke, Simon Peter owns the boat that Jesus uses to preach to the multitudes who were pressing on him at the shore of the lake at Genasseret.  Jesus then amazes Simon and his companions James and John (Andrew is not mentioned) by telling them to lower their nets, whereupon they catch a huge number of fish. Immediately after this, they follow him

The Gospel of John gives a somewhat different account of "The First Disciples"  In John, we are told that it was two disciples of John the Baptist (Andrew and an unnamed disciple) who heard John the Baptist announce Jesus as the "Lamb of God," and then followed Jesus. Andrew then went and fetched his brother Simon, saying, "We have found the Messiah," and then brought him to Jesus. Jesus then gave Simon the name "Cephas," meaning 'rock', in Aramaic. 'Petros' is the Greek equivalent of this. He is also frequently mentioned in the Gospels as forming with James the Elder and John a special group within the Twelve Apostles, present at incidents at which the others were not present, such as at the Transfiguration of Jesus. He often confesses his faith in Jesus as the Messiah.   He is with Jesus at his arrest; he follows to the high-priest’s palace where he denies Jesus.  He is first into the empty tomb.  He is an influential leader in the early church – and his work was not without its dangers as we heard in the first reading

We also know that Peter often misunderstood what Jesus was on about, was impulsive and impetuous and often blurted out things at inappropriate moments.  Jesus was sometimes exasperated by him, at one stage telling Peter to “get behind me Satan.”  And yet it is Peter who gets it right, too.  He is the one who in a moment of insight, or an inspired guess, sees the Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.  And when people are deserting Jesus, and he asks the disciples if they want to go as well, it is Peter who speaks for them all and says “Lord, to whom will we go.  You have the words of eternal life.”   I think it should give us great comfort in our own ministries that Peter often blundered around – and yet he is now one of the towering figures of our faith.  Filled with the Holy Spirit, he gives the first great sermon of the early church as he addresses the crowds in Jerusalem. He travels eventually to Rome where in a persecution by Nero around the year 64 is executed by crucifixion, some early church writings, from Origen for example, or in the non-canonical Acts of Peter say that he is crucified upside down.

God works in and around and through all our blunderings and mistakes as long as we are faithful as Peter was.  We celebrate him as an apostle – the word means one who is sent, and as a martyr – and the word originally simply meant a witness.  So, we can pray in the spirit of St. Peter that we too may be people sent out to witness to the good news of Jesus Christ – to be witnesses of the resurrection in our own place and time.

To St. Paul – different from St. Peter in so many ways.  For a start, he was a Roman citizen born in Tarsus in modern day Turkey.  They shared a Jewish faith – Paul stridently so.  We first encounter him in Chapter 7 of the Acts of the Apostles when Stephen is being stoned to death. The coats of the mob are laid at the feet of a young man named Saul who approves of the killing, we’re told. Saul is a willing and significant participant in the subsequent persecution of the church and is soon heading to Damascus to arrest followers of “The Way”.  On his own way, he is dramatically encountered by a vision of Jesus.  In Damascus he is ministered to by Ananias who tells him he has been chosen by God to bring his name before Gentiles and kings and the people of Israel.[3] He certainly does this and his enormous influence echoes down the ages – much of current Christian theology has its roots in Paul’s writings.  He confounds the Jewish people of Damascus by proving the Messiahship of Jesus and then returns to Jerusalem, tells the disciples what has happened to him, and returns to Tarsus.  We meet him again in Acts 13, this time in Cyprus, now named Paul, and he begins the first of his three great missionary journeys throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor and Greece.  Throughout all of these, he encourages, praises, cajoles, berates, rebukes the churches he visits.  He writes to the Ephesians “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”[4]  To the Galatians he writes “You foolish Galatians, who ha bewitched you”[5]  He suffers great privations – shipwreck, imprisonment, beatings, persecution, hunger, thirst, sleeplessness.[6]  He continually writes to the churches he visits – in fact his Letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest written of the New Testament, pre-dating the Gospels.  Others write in his name following his example and witness.  He’s described as persistent, patient, insistent in ethical conduct, courageous, humble, angry and harsh sometimes, and uncompromising.  He had a severe argument with St. Peter about ministry to Gentiles. He continues to attract the attention of scholars.  Professor John Barton is his wonderful History of the Bible rather drily notes “The interpretation of Paul is a major scholarly industry, and no consensus threatens.”[7]  John Barton also writes of what’s called a New Perspective on Paul which began in the 20th century.  This approaches Paul’s great theme of salvation by grace through faith not from a modern Western point of view, but by situating Paul in his historical context.  Not everyone accepts this, but, says John Barton, it has opened a fresh way of seeing Paul against the backdrop of his time.[8]  Those of us using the Bible Reading Fellowship notes will have noticed a similar approach taken by Helen Miller in her notes on 1 Corinthians in the current issue of “Guidelines”.  It certainly gave me some fresh perspectives on Paul.  Eventually, Paul, intending to make another journey to Spain is taken into protective custody, we might say now, brought before the Governor Felix in Caesarea, sent to Rome where he arrives after a hazardous journey, preaches in Rome for about two years, and then , then, according to Eusebius the early Christian writer is killed during the persecution under Nero.

So, what might we take from Peter to give to Paul, and what might we take from Paul to give to Peter?  Well, nothing actually.  It’s the wrong question to ask.  Peter and Paul were created in God’s image and likeness and given different gifts and talents to serve God through Christ. We give thanks today that they kept the faith to the end and can take heart that even the most unlikely companions can serve God together.[9]

Perhaps we can go back to where we began and say with St. Augustine” Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labours, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith.”

 

[1] Philippians 4:3

[2] http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/195.html

[3] Acts 9:15.

[4] Ephesians 1: 15

[5] Galatians 3:1

[6] 2 Corinthians 12: 23-28

[7] John Barton A History of the Bible – The Book and Its Faiths Penguin Random House UK 2020 p15

[8] Ibid p179-181

[9] Fresh From the Word Rosalind Brown Canterbury Press, Norwich UK 2016 p397

© The Reverend Bill Crossman

Sermon 15th June 2025 | Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday 15 Jun 25 

Readings: Proverbs 8: 1-4: 8:22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5: 1-5; John 16: 12-15

Canon Rosalind Brown is a former Canon Librarian of Durham Cathedral and has written some lovely hymns, too.  Quite a few years ago, she was guest speaker at a Clergy Summer School at The Southport School.  In her notes for today she tells of a tiny stone church in Northumberland in northern England, reached by a narrow, wooded lane.  She writes that nothing prepares you for what you see inside on an overcast day (not an unusual occurrence in Northumberland, I have to say).  The dark nave is effectively invisible, and your eyes are drawn to a beautifully lit tiny apse. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts” is inscribed above the gold altar frontal.  She writes that the church is a window into the Trinity, because the only appropriate response is to worship, to join the angels’ cry “Holy, Holy, Holy”[1]

It’s Trinity Sunday! The day supposedly when clergy faced with the daunting task of preaching about the Trinity take a break and arrange a guest preacher – anyone seen Valerie this morning?  Trinity: One God in three persons is the central mystery of our faith.  But as St. Augustine warned 1600 years ago, “There is no subject where error is more dangerous, research more laborious, and discovery more fruitful than the oneness of the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”[2]

Preachers may (or should) rightly feel unequal to explaining the Trinity.  I think this his little verse puts the preacher’s dilemma nicely:

I wanted to study the Trinity
For my PhD in divinity.
But my little grey cells
Were unable to delve
The mysteries of triune infinity. 

You’ve probably heard from the pulpit quite a few analogies in an effort to explain the Trinity in simple language, and I must admit I’ve used one or two as well, but they are all inadequate.  Here are a few, and why they don’t really work:

1.     Trinity is like water. Water can be a solid (ice), liquid, and vapour (steam), and yet all three forms are still water. Likewise, God manifests Godself in three different ways in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Or Trinity is like a man or woman; he/she can be a husband/wife, a father/mother and an employee.

 Sabellianism (named after Sabellius, a third century priest and theologian) taught that God is one person that manifests Himself as either the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit (one god, one person with three different manifestations instead of one God, three persons) and the Nicene Creed was developed in part to counter this.

2.     Trinity is like the sun; God the Father is the sun; the Holy Spirit and the Son are represented by the heat and light.

Arianism (named after Arius, also a third century priest) believes that the Son and the Spirit are created entities (like the heat and light) and therefore subordinate to the Father.  It caused significant rifts in the early church.  The Council of Nicea was called in an attempt to resolve the conflicts.  In the end, Gregory of Nazianzus, who along with Basil of Caesara and Gregory of Nyssa tidied the whole thing up said “My inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils.  On the contrary, it usually increases them.”

3.     Trinity is like an egg which has a shell, an egg white and a yolk with all parts making up the egg, and much like how all three make up the egg itself, so does each member of the Trinity. Similarly, the trinity is like an apple that has skin, flesh and a core. All the parts are uniquely different, but they are all one apple. Or the Trinity is like a three-leaf clover – the three leaves make up the three-leaf clover together.

 Partialism (also from around the same time as the other two) taught that Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are components of the one God. Each of the persons of the Trinity is only part God, only becoming fully God when they come together.

 Are there any good analogies about Trinity? I don’t think so. No human language or categories or constructs can ever fully talk about God. We cannot make God in our own image. We simply let God be God – to come before God “in reverence and awe.”   The whole focus of Trinity Sunday really is not how to understand the Trinity – who among us can?  The focus should be on how we can live lives following to example of God the Trinity. although this is very important) but to live and follow the example of God the Trinity.  Today’s readings can help us.  Rosalind Brown comments that the Gospel readings in recent weeks have emphasized abiding in Christ[3], and thus, in Christ, being in relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Through abiding in Christ, humanity shares the life of God, not becoming God, but being drawn into the life that the Son shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  There is a Greek word for this which I won’t bore you with, but one way of understanding it is through the language of dance - an eternal dance of the Father, Son, and Spirit sharing mutual love, honour, happiness, joy, and respect, and living an eternal relationship of self-giving.  In Christ, we’re invited to join in the dance. “Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance said he; and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.”[4]

In the reading from Proverbs, God acting through Holy Wisdom calls us wherever she may find us – on the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads, by the city gates, by the portal – the entrance to the temple – and so finding, we’re invited to find life abundantly in the life of God.  Paul in writing to the Romans affirms that it is through Jesus Christ that we have access to God’s love and grace and can proclaim our hope of sharing in God’s glory, experiencing – sometimes through suffering – that God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus’ message continued through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, reflecting his message and values. The Holy Spirit’s gifts are not found primarily in speaking in tongues and Pentecostal drama but in living in the way of Jesus, welcoming, embracing, healing, and nurturing.[5]

Trinity Sunday is a celebration of an eternal relationship (or dance) of love mutual love, honour, happiness, joy, respect, and self-giving which distinguishes us as Christians – we alone hold to the trinity as a way of speaking about God.  Therefore, if we live the Trinity, people should be able to see there is something different, something joyful about us in everything we do. For example, right where we are now, the welcome that people experience on coming to church should be different, special, joyful reflecting the joy of relationship that is at the heart of the Trinity.

As we celebrate the gift of the Trinity today, can we together re-kindle the vision of being a welcoming community of faith, inspired by the relationship that is the Trinity to be open-hearted, joyful and loving in our relationships with everyone – not just those we meet here this morning, but with everyone we shall meet each and every day.

The Reverend Bill Crossman

[1] Fresh From the Word  Rosalind Brown Canterbury Press, Norwich UK 2016 p308

[2] https://joeyechano.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/trinity-sunday-gods-unfathomable-love.  The examples of analogies below are also drawn from this

[3] e.g John 17: 20-26 – Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

[4] Together in Song No242

[5] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2016/05/the-adventurous-lectionary-trinity-sunday-may-22-2016/

© The Reverend Bill Crossman

Sermon 1st June 2025 | Seventh Sunday of Easter

Seventh Sunday of Easter  -Year C 

Acts 16: 16 – 34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22: 12 – 22; John 17: 20 – 26 

I hear the reading from the Acts of the Apostles and I find myself asking a couple of “Why?” questions.

1.  Why didn’t Paul reveal himself as a Roman Citizen when he was arrested? That would have stopped the beating that the magistrate ordered.  Being a citizen of Rome meant you couldn’t be tortured or whipped without a proper trial – so why did he and Silas keep quiet here, especially because if the reading continued another few verses we’d have heard Paul revealing himself as a Roman citizen and refusing to leave the jail until the magistrate himself comes to apologise and walk him out through the gates.

Of course, if they had claimed this privilege it would have immediately set them apart from the Jews and gentiles they were bringing to faith.  They would be the ones holding the upper hand, the oppressor’s whip hand, the ones backed by all the power and authority of the Roman Empire.

After all their whole purpose for being there, their ‘Why’ for crossing over to Macedonia and so to Philippi, was to help the people by bringing them the good news of Jesus.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, they might have said, we are all invited to be God’s new creation, restored to wholeness - set free from half-lived lives of people held captive by prejudice, fear and darkness – set free to live into the fullness of their created being.

All it takes is to know Jesus and the way he lived his life of love with the outcasts and marginalised, emptying himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness (Philippians 2:7).

Could Paul and Silas have done that if they themselves lived different, privileged lives?  Like Jesus, they needed to be incarnate, to be with the people that the Holy Spirit had lead them to.  They needed to face the challenges the people faced, talking their talk, walking their walk.

It’s the basis of all caring relationships – being able to be in the place where the other is, but with one special difference – living by a higher / different truth.

Think of Nelson Mandela held captive in prison for 27 years.  He writes: “As I walked out the door towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

What strength, what confidence in the knowledge of his own worth – to be able to say who I am is not determined by the way others have treated me, but by the way I act, the choices I make in my day to day life. 

He has said: I choose to live my life challenging the forces that enslave others.    And so apartheid as an official Government policy disappeared.

Paul, Silas, Jesus, the saints – they all challenged practices that privileged one group of people over another.  The power of God called forth from them actions that defied the powers of the world. 

Particularly the way they have practiced the love and forgiveness that Christ demonstrated towards their oppressors, to those who harmed them.

It is this love alone that can change the world.

When Jesus prayed for his followers, as we heard him do in the Gospel reading, he prayed that they be one – that the unity between God and Jesus would be the same unity growing between Jesus and those who come to whole and fulfilled lives through him.

We know Jesus brought us to ‘oneness’ with him by coming to live with us – by showing us how to live as God’s people, by trusting God’s presence with him.

It is how we are called to be.  Indeed it is his commandment as I have loved you, so you are to love others.

The second why question is this:

 2.  Why didn’t Paul and Silas cut and run when they had the chance after the earthquake released them?  It seems like a miracle, an act of God, doesn’t it.  Of course it’s lucky they didn’t – they’d have missed the opportunity to ‘save’ the jailer and his family – both literally from the magistrate’s punishment and spiritually because the jailer came to faith in God revealed in Jesus.

I guess the answer has to be for the same reason that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, knowing the authorities were plotting to kill him.

This is a different kind of freedom isn’t it, freedom to give life away, to live in faith with open hands

Paul and Silas could only live prayerfully, guided by the Holy Spirit, trusting the presence of God with them.  They stay, God uses them – they tell the jailer about Jesus and salvation and the jailer is transformed – he is baptised and he shows them hospitality, caring for them, washing their wounds.

 

These two questions lead me to a third Why question.

3. Why am I, why are you, why are we so vital, so important, so loved, that Jesus would die on the cross, that Paul and Silas would be flogged, that they would stay risking further imprisonment and punishment instead of looking after themselves and running away? And the answer is God. It seems that the whole God Head – Father, Son and Holy Spirit have the one passionate desire that we be God’s new creation.

That’s why the peace Jesus brings to his disciples after his resurrection is so important – it removes all the barriers that hold us trapped in the pits of the dark truths we know about ourselves.  Jesus actions after the resurrection, the confidence he places in us at his Ascension assures us that each of us are a beloved child of God.   We can allow ourselves to be drawn into Jesus and so into union with God.  And this is just what Jesus desires.  The evocative image in Revelation is of the passionate longing a bride and a groom have for each other. This is the desire God has for us.   

WHY questions – Why side with the outsider? Why set aside our own priorities for the sake of the needs of others? So, why do I, why do we, find ourselves testing the water temperature – splashing in the shallows rather than taking a deep breath and diving, head first – striking out for the deep.

Listen, the beloved calls, come.

The Venerable Valerie Hoare. 

Sermon 25th May 2025 | Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sixth Sunday of Easter 

Acts 16: 9-15 Psalm 67 | Revelation 23: 10 – 14; 22:22 – 23:5 | John 14:23 – 29

How do you know God’s will for your life?  Does God speak directly to you?  Has an angel appeared to you?  Or do you just have a deep sense of disquiet until you change your direction?  Conversely do you have a deep sense of peace when you are doing what you think God wants you to do?

Few of us have direct communication from God and not everyone has a Damascus Road experience that turns our life around, but most of us know when we are/are not traveling in the right direction.

In our modern rational world, many of us tend to be suspicious even dismissive of intuition, visions and dreams.  There is a temptation to place them in the same category as fortune telling or reading palms or tea leaves; as something that is incompatible with faith. 

Yet unless we are attentive to our inner lives, how are we to know God’s nudging us to attend to the many and varied ways in which God might be trying to get our attention?

One thing is for sure; we should not be critical or suspicious of those who have a more finely tuned intuition than we might have, or of those whose vivid dreams are in fact a portent of what is to come.  The Bible is quite clear that God ‘speaks; in many and varied ways’ and that includes through dreams.

Joseph’s dreams alienated him from his brothers and yet they came to pass in a way that saved his entire family from starvation.  Joseph was also able to interpret the dreams of the baker, the cup-bearer and even of Pharoah – which ensured that Egypt survived a catastrophic drought.  Daniel interpreted the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.  In the New Testament we learn that a different Joseph moved his family to Egypt after being warned in a dream.

It is Peter’s vision of the unclean animals that convinces early believers that they should not exclude anyone on the basis of their diet and, in our reading today Paul is not the least embarrassed to admit that he changed his plans on the basis of a dream.

These dreams take us to the heart of what is necessary. Today, Paul’s dream of the Macedonia Call depicts the driving forces of our mission as Christ followers. 

In seeing a man begging for help, our hearts are touched with compassion – just as Paul’s was but while we may immediately start thinking blankets / food, medicine, even the left overs from our Garage Sale, Paul sees the spiritual reality of the need in Macedonia.  He sees that people need God and so need him to respond to that need on behalf of God’s realm – surely you remember the words in the letter of James where he talks about the need for action as well as faith.

Paul’s obedience to his call to share the Good News resulted in meeting not a man from Macedonia, but Lydia, a woman, a worshiper of God.  God opens her heart to the message Paul brings, and she becomes a leader in her community. 

It is God who is in charge of this mission, God who sets its direction and God who determines results.  All that God requires of us is to have listening hearts and obedient actions.

The Venerable Valerie Hoare. 

Sermon 18th May 2025 | Fifth Sunday of Easter

Fifth Sunday of Easter 

Readings : Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-34

 Jesus says Now the son of man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him John 13:31

What do you reckon glory means?

We know the Gloria, (Glory to God in the highest), we know that The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we behold his glory.

Worship, magnificence / radiant beauty, renown, honour / distinction, success.  It seems being glorified sets one apart makes the person / object / event stand out from what we call normal.

Glory is the inbreaking of God realm and the fulfillment of God’s promises.

It is the revelation of God’s character, love and purpose through Jesus the Christ.

But we’d better not delve too far into theology before we remember where we are in John’s Gospel. 

It’s the night before Jesus died, He has washed his disciples’ feet and shared a meal with his friends, Judas has just been identified as the betrayer and has left the community and gone out into the night.  Peter is about to hear that he will soon deny knowing Jesus and the community v.38.

Now, in the darkness, is the time. 

Darkness – because we / because they do not trust the Word who is the light come into the world.  Cowering in the dark is safer (in the bed, under the blankets) but it lets the evil perpetrate. 

In John 3:19 we hear the light has come into the world, but we have loved the darkness rather than the light.

It seems we trust, feel safer, in darkness rather than the light.

But into the night comes the brightness of God’s glory, light shines into the darkness – the big bang of the new creation.

And it is at this moment that Jesus gives his new commandment – to love one another – it seems innocuous enough to a small likeminded band who all follow Jesus, certainly seems easier to obey than his outrageous command to love our enemies that evangelists Matthew and Luke record (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27)

But even as this command is being given, the sins of greed and self-preservation are already breaking into the first community of disciples.

So why didn’t this community collapse then and there? Because Jesus is already in the process of fulfilling the command—for them and for us.

It is the love of Christ made known on the cross that compels us to love one another; it is this love, self giving love, that continues to grow Christian faith communities across time and space.

There’s a story it comes out of Africa.

A young man presented himself to a household asking for a job as a domestic servant.  He was hired and quickly proved himself to be capable and trustworthy.  What a gem, they thought. 

It therefore came as a complete shock when three months later he came to the homeowner and asked for a letter of recommendation to a Muslim who lived in a nearby town. 

“Why do you want to leave,’ he was asked?  ‘We’re really happy with your work.  Do you need more money to stay?”

“No,” said the young man, “I’ve decided to become either a Christian or a Muslim so this way I’m seeing close up the way people of faith live and behave.  Then I’ll decide”

Jesus, in today’s Gospel says I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  John 13: 34-35.

We’re forever being challenged to live into an ever-widening, ever expansive circle of life – as a community, in our neighbourhood, in our families, and as individuals. 

Don’t shy away from them – they’re the narrow gate we have to pass through.

For Evangelist John glory, real glory is to be seen when someone who should occupy a majestic and exalted place instead accepts a lowly place of service, taking up a towel, pouring out life for others.

Our first reading told us what it looked like for the early church, Peter’s vision of the sheet coming down from heaven holding animals that Jewish law classed as unclean – not fit to be eaten.  But Peter heard God speak, saying Get up Peter, kill and eat. (Acts 11:7)

In this way Peter came to a great truth – that God shows no partiality (Acts 10:34), His eyes were opened to the wideness of God’s mercy and love. 

I love the way the body of believers in Jerusalem responded to Peter.  They’d summoned him with a What on earth are you doing! Explain yourself direction.

But when Peter told his story they were silenced.

They recognised the continuity of action from Jesus to Peter, and they praised God, glorified God.

We are called to live this same continuity of action by living out the love and grace of Jesus, to extend God’s love through word and deed and in this way love others as Jesus has loved us.

We called to live the heaven on earth of John of Patmos’ vision.

Irenaeus – a 2nd Century Evangelist who was the Bishop of Lyons, said:

The glory of God is a human being, fully alive; the life of human beings is the vision of God.

Let it be our prayer that our lives reflect God’s glory as we embody the grace and truth – the freedom we’ve received.

 Christ is Risen – Alleluia, He is Risen indeed, Alleluia.

The Venerable Valerie Hoare. 

Sermon 11th May 2025 | Fourth Sunday of Easter

Fourth Sunday of Easter 

Readings - Acts 9.36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7.9-17; John 10.22-30

 What tone do you think Jesus uses when he says to his disciples  I am the Good Shepherd?

It could be compassion (green pastures and still waters?), could be assurance of presence (I’m with you in the valley of the shadow of death), could be instructional (my rod and staff will comfort you); could be giving assurance of strong support (I lay out a table of bounty for you so your enemies see what they’re up against) or perhaps it’s celebratory (welcome you’ve reached your true home where you know peace.)

 I reckon it depends on what’s going on in your life when you hear his words – and that’s the point Jesus is making in today’s 3rd and final section of what scholars call his ‘Good Shepherd’ teaching. 

You had to be here last year and the year before to hear the other two sections – our 3 year reading plan expects us to remember!  (Or you could pick up a Bible and read the whole of Ch 10 yourself.)

Prior to today’s reading he’s told us about being the Shepherd – a political statement of authority, leadership and mutual responsibility (GS looks after me, I’m answerable to you), he’s told us about being the gate, the way that can be opened or closed – a religious assertion with both spiritual and judicial elements, and this year he’s saying to the temple hierarchy that they fail to hear and see and recognise the identity of Jesus.   They are outside the kingdom of God

because they do not recognise or accept his relationship with God.

Simply put, Jesus is saying that their failure to recognise him, Jesus, as showing them how to live as God’s people is because their values, attitudes and behaviours are putting an uncrossable barrier a yawning chasm / a brick wall between them and God.

It seems that rigorously keeping the laws, the traditions and commandments handed down by their ancestors was not a guarantee of God’s favour – to belong required listening to the voice of Jesus, being in relationship with him, following him.

In V. 27 he says clearly My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me

And all this is taking place at the feast of dedication, a time of renewal – held during the time of darkness, winter, in the part of the temple that survived from the time of Solomon, the place where the kings of Israel passed judgement. 

Let me remind me that scholars see John’s Gospel as being full of symbols – light/ dark; sight/blindness; belief/doubt, resurrection life/violence and death – he’s speaking to us, are you in the dark, is it night or are you standing in the light?  Is it winter for you?  Are you among my sheep?

The Gospel shows us the signs of life and invites us to decide for ourselves.

A number of years ago Doug and I took a 3 week walk across the narrow bit of England – from the Lakes District to the North Sea.  It was spring, and one of our many delights was to see the newborn lambs in the fields.  We’d walk into a field and as one all the mums would raise their heads and let out a bleat – and, as one all the lambs would scamper straight back to their mum and get straight down to the serious business of suckling.

Weeks later at the end of our walk things had changed. We’d enter a field, as one the mums would raise their heads and bleat, and the lambs might raise their heads, might check us out, but they definitely didn’t rush back to the comfort, security and safety mum offered.

These slightly older lambs heard, but they’d stopped listening and responding.

We live in a world of competing voices.  Do we as Christ’s followers discern and follow his voice, his word, amidst this cacophony?

Do we choose to ‘come to ourselves’ like the prodigal son did and open ourselves to God?

Do we claim our freedom to embrace and commit to hearing the radical voice of Jesus, to letting his words guide us and bind us.

I’m always amazed when I read the stories of the call of the disciples – Jesus walks by, says to them, follow me and they immediately drop their nets and follow!  They left everything else so they could be part of bringing in God’s realm, God’s kingdom.

Most of us find that hard because changing – opening our hearts and minds to other ways of being and doing is challenging

I have great empathy for the temple authorities; they were doing what they had been taught by all those who had gone before them.

Justin Welby, the ex Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking to a businessman who started the conversation by saying: "We differ on many things, but at least we can both agree that the church exists to do good".

Welby says “It was too easy a full toss for even a non cricket playing Brit to miss, "no", I replied, "we disagree on that. The church exists to worship God in Jesus Christ, and to lead as many people as it can to be His disciples. When we do those things we don't do good, we change the world."

 Hearing his voice, following his way. 

If we fall back on our own resources we’ll find emptiness and be lured into despair.  But if we listen and are open to Christ and bring ourselves, offering ourselves, witnessing to the transforming love of God, saying ‘here I am’ we find not ease, not comfort but peace and hope

 Christ is Risen Alleluia!  He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

 

The Venerable Valerie Hoare. 

Sermon 25th April 2025 | Second Sunday of Easter

It was during the eulogy at my Uncle Guy’s funeral in the late 1980’s that I first heard ‘landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915’.  My mind jerked out of reverie – What?  Could that be true?  Uncle Guy on Gallipoli – admittedly Uncle Guy was a bit alternative - he lived in isolated bushland at Belmont with his family, and had been a lighthouse keeper for all of my youth.

 I decided it couldn’t be true, because the speaker also said my grandfather had also been with him that 25 of April.  My Grandfather, the somewhat staid, boring, banker

 At my G’father’s funeral about 10 years later I heard the story again. 

If it was true, why hadn’t I known that when they were alive?

 These days it’s easy to hop on line and fact check – blow me down they had both served at Gallipoli and then on the western front.

 Like Thomas I wasn’t believing what others told me, I needed personal verification.

 And today’s Gospel shows us that that’s fine by Jesus.  He validates Thomas’ need for physical presence, to reconnect before he could process the reality of resurrection.  

After all resurrection is an absurd idea - that the vine could find and reconnect to a fallen branch!

Mind you, Thomas was no more doubting than the other disciples.

After all, they (in Evangelist John’s Gospel) have already heard the testimony of Mary Magdalene who found the tomb to be empty,

 Peter and John who rushed to do their own fact checking of the empty tomb,

and the majority of the disciples who’d gathered together in a locked room on the evening of what we now recognise as the day of new creation - the 8th day.

 Jesus entered into the midst of their fear filled huddle and stood among them – peace be with you, he said, – and they recognised him and rejoiced – and then he breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, commissioning them, sending them out with a ministry of forgiveness.

 So why, a week later were they still huddled in the locked room?

Their eyes and ears may well have ‘seen the Lord’ but their hearts and souls were not fully engaged.  They hadn’t begun their mission.

They still feared. 

 Seems coming to faith and belief is not a linear process – more one of backtracks and detours, fits and starts.  And into this confusion comes Jesus, haunting the places of death, like a shepherd seeking the lost, bringing peace and abiding presence.

I hear the words from a millennium later when Dame Julian wrote but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

 The UK journalist Lamorna Ash says that all any of us want to hear.  Despite the resurrection, deep down we know that all won’t be well, it just won’t be.  Not one of us will make it through, even Lazarus goes on to die – but the resurrection stories we’ll be hearing over this Easter season all tell us that it’s OK – death has been defeated, the goodness of life is definitely affirmed and there’s a promise that we, all of us, are made for a future, for eternity.

Christ is God’s justice.

 Archbishop Jeremy’s moving tribute marking the death of Pope Francis this week, quoting the Pope’s own words, speaks in a similar vein telling us that the future has a name, and that name is hope.

Not a hope based on naïve optimism that ignores the tragedy of evil, but the virtue of a hope based in hearts that don’t close themselves down in the darkness of fear, don’t get stuck in some past longing of imagined glory or that just scrapes dismally along in the present, but hearts that clearly see and move towards a tomorrow where there is restlessness and joyousness.

 That is a restlessness for a world that better reflects the realm of God and a joyousness that comes through encounters with people everywhere – the sick and suffering, the marginalised, those in prison, refugees, the homeless, the lost, the lonely, hearts that care for creation and welcomes interreligious dialogue. 

 I read restlessness as actively participating in God’s dream that we live as Jesus did, loving and caring for others and joyousness as we see God’s love setting people free to live lives of wholeness

 It brings me back to the commission Jesus gives to the disciples in their locked room.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  Do you hear echoes of Jesus at the Last Supper – I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  John 13:34-35

 After all if we have received the love which restores meaning in our lives, how can we fail to share that love with other?

 The question we all must ponder is does my life bear witness to my faith?  I don’t think any of us want our family and friends to wait till they hear our eulogies for them to know the truth of our deep and abiding faith.

 There’s a blessing in the prayer book (p. 69) typically used at the end of services of confirmation. Its preamble, I think, speaks to  us today:

 Go forth into the world in peace,

be of good courage.

Hold fast that which is good,

Render to no one evil for evil,

strengthen the faint hearted,

support the week;

help the afflicted, give honour to all;

love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit

 

The Lord be with you. 

The. Venerable Valerie Hoare. 

Sermon 18th April 2025 | Good Friday

Good Friday 18 April 2025

 Readings: Isaiah 52:13 – 53;12; Psalm 22; 1 Corinthians 1: 18-31; John 18:1 – 19:42

Those who have been doing the Hope 25 Lenten Studies have, in Week 3 become acquainted, or re-acquainted with the Servant Songs, or the Songs of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah.  There are four altogether, and we’ve heard the fourth and most striking of the Songs read this morning, beginning at Isaiah 52:13. Without going into all the details of academic debate here, some say the servant is an individual, a figure from Israel’s past who intercedes for others, bearing their punishments and afflictions.  Others say the servant is a community, more specifically the nation of Israel at that particular time I hasten to add.  In this, the Fourth Servant Song, the shadows darken, and the suffering of the servant confronts us.  The servant is marred beyond human semblance, despised, rejected, a man of suffering (or sorrows), afflicted, wounded, bruised, oppressed, a victim of injustice, cut off from the living, stricken, crushed with pain.  When you take those words from the text and put them all together, the image of suffering is almost overwhelming.  Yet there is another side – the song speaks – or maybe sings – of a redemptive suffering, of a faithful suffering servant bearing the sins of others.  Posthumously, the servant is vindicated by God.  I don’t think myself that we can say, as some do, that this passage is a direct prediction of Jesus – it must be allowed to stand on its own as part of sacred scripture, yet it is easy to see how from the very earliest times, in fact from the Gospel writers,  Jesus became identified with the suffering servant of Isaiah, indeed Jesus’ own sense of identity and mission may have been shaped by the figure of the suffering servant.

Psalm 22 reflects the image of suffering and taken together, this Psalm, the reading from Isaiah and Good Friday itself force us to confront the whole question of suffering.  It is easy to look away.  It is easy, like those in Isaiah, to hide our faces.  It is all too easy to bypass Good Friday, to jump quickly from Jesus’ entry in triumph into Jerusalem to the joy of Easter Day.  During my ministry, more than one person has said to me during Holy Week and Easter each year that they don’t like Good Friday, or they don’t like coming to Good Friday services because it is all too hard.  And so it is.  But we must wrestle with it all – there can be no resurrection without the cross.  We need to recognize the awfulness of the cross – it was used by the Romans as an instrument of state sponsored terror.  Crucifixion was for anyone who challenged the dominant power.  It still is.  Not literally, of course.  An article in “The Guardian” written some years ago by two Adelaide writers, one a pastor, the other a commentator on social justice and religion makes this very point. The article is headlined “Who will we crucify this Easter? Same as always: those who defy power and privilege”[1]

Jesus dies like a rebellious slave or common criminal, in torment and shame.  Early Christians wrestled with this. Justin Martyr wrote in the second century “They say our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the eternal word of God.”[2]  The crucifixion did not appear in Christian art until the fourth century.  Is this because it was too difficult to contend with?  Even then, art sanitized what crucifixion was like.  A few years ago, Libbie and I attended a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion here in Brisbane.  It was a sublime performance, wonderfully presented, an extended musical reflection on Christ’s suffering – yet the act of crucifixion itself takes place off stage, and we are left to imagine.

Where is God in our experiences of suffering and abandonment? We try to justify our sufferings, and let God off the hook, by too easily asserting that suffering is allowed by God as part of “God’s plan” and all will be well in the end. Theologically and from our human experience this affirmation is problematic and difficult to support.  All is not always well – at the graveside, in traumatic experiences, in agonizing deaths.  All the gospel writers in their own way try to make sense of the crucifixion for their readers.  Luke for example addresses his gospel to “most excellent Theophilus”, a member of the elite, so Luke frames the passion as the martyrdom of an innocent man.  John refers the crucifixion back to the story of the serpent being lifted up in the wilderness – the point of curse becomes the point of blessing.  Mark refers to the suffering servant. The scriptures point to a number of ways in which the crucifixion can be thought of – there is no single way.

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”, we will sing.  Well, we weren’t physically – but we are all part of a culture that has an ambiguous relationship to violence.  In one sense we recoil from it, yet in other ways there is and always has been a dark current of violence in our society.  You only need to read T-shirts at the shopping centre or bumper stickers as you drive around.  Recently, the police have laid several charges against people making death threats on social media platforms against those with whom they disagree. We live in a world characterized by both implicit and explicit violence against the Earth in our greed and misuse of resources, the violence of child and adult slavery and sex trafficking, disparity between the wealthy and vulnerable, often maintained by violent means, state sponsored terror, mob violence, religious violence, grinding oppression, the plague of domestic violence.  Evil resides within each of us. Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”[3] Are we any better morally or spiritually than many of those who shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion, those who stood idly by doing nothing to prevent it, and implicitly sentenced Jesus by their being swept up by the mob?  

For myself, one way in which I try to make sense of all of this is to think of God as a fellow sufferer – that on the cross it is God who suffers, that there is no suffering into which God does not enter, that God suffers with us in all that besets us.  The German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell during the Second World War that only a suffering God can save.  Some would want to go so far as to say that divine suffering is a heresy, based on the belief that the divine nature is incapable of suffering and that Jesus’ suffering touched his humanity but left his divinity unsullied.  With others I believe that the deeper heresy is the belief that God does not suffer with the world.  God is not indifferent to human struggle and pain. A passionless, unfeeling, remote God can neither heal nor save.  In contrast to a passionless deity, for me a meaningful vision of Good Friday proclaims that God suffered on the cross in an act of supreme self-giving and love.  The suffering servant reveals to us, I think, something of the true nature of God.

It can be difficult to admit our complacency and culpability in the world’s violence, it can be difficult to admit the ways we crucify our Lord, yet if we can on Good Friday answer “yes” to the question, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”  we can also say “yes” to the grace that feels our suffering and regret and repentance, that feels the pain of those broken by the world’s greed and complacency, and we can live in the hope that the One who suffers for and with us also forgives and transforms will enable us to rise up renewed and transformed.

See, as they strip the robe from off his back

And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,

The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,

And love is firmly fastened on to loss.

But here a pure change happens. On this tree

Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth. 

Here wounding heals and fastening makes free,

Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.

And here we see the length, the breadth, the height,

Where love and hatred meet and love stays true,

Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light,

We see what love can bear and be and do.

And here our Saviour calls us to his side,

His love is free, his arms are open wide.


[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/30/who-will-we-crucify-this-easter-same-as-always-those-who-defy-power-and-privilege

[2] Justin Martyr First Apology Chapter 13

[3] Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon 17th April 2025 | Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 17th April 2025

Readings:  Exodus 12: 1-14; Psalm 116: 1-2,11-18; 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-7,31b-35

The Maundy Thursday service on the eve of Good Friday begins the Sacred Three Days of our redemption. This is a celebration: a celebration of our Lord's institution of the sacrament of his Body and Blood, and the beginning of our three-day celebration of redemption. But it is pervaded by the shadow of the Cross. Jesus gathered with his disciples in the context of the greatest of all events in Israel's history of the saving power of God, the Exodus and Passover. Yet the normal joy of such an evening was muted by betrayal, failure of his friends to understand what he was doing, and his own fear of what was to come.

 It was a farewell dinner in which Jesus, by washing his disciples' feet sought to illustrate, for one final time, the character of love and ministry which is central in the life to which he calls us: self-giving love to the point of dying for one's friends. In our readings this evening we hear the ancient instructions for celebrating the Passover – the reason Jesus, his disciples and the crowds of pilgrims were gathered in Jerusalem.  The Second Reading is Paul's account of the institution of what we now call the Eucharist; and finally, John's account of the moment when Jesus washed his disciples' feet.

 This holy meal in which Christians continue to share is grounded in denial, betrayal, a disciple’s suicide, a Messiah’s death, the body and blood of this crucified Messiah, and . . . dirty feet.

Jesus gave the mandatum– from which we get the word “Maundy” - to wash one another’s feet”– after he showed his disciples how to do it. This act of humility, he said, is not some kind of side show but absolutely integral to life in the reign of God. It is servant leadership learned in the doing of it.  He said of sharing the blessed and broken bread and poured out wine – do this to remember me.   He could almost have said the same about washing feet.  What would the reaction be like if we washed each other’s feet every Sunday?

We remember in a particular way.  For Jewish people who gathered for Passover, it was no mere memorial.  They believed that in their Passover meal, the events became real and present to them, that they became a part of it.  As Christians, we have the same sense when we celebrate the Eucharist – it is not just a memorial.  The events became real and present to us.  The Gospel writers had a word for this - “anamnesis”.  It’s the word Jesus uses when he says “Do this to remember me.  We are not passive observers – we enter the mystery – we enter into the events of this holy night when we act out the washing of feet.  We enter the events of this holy night as we give thanks for and share in the meal Jesus gave us as he was about to die.

But Peter with his enthusiasm characteristically misplaced, wants the full-service wash: “my hands and head also, please!”  Peter’s foolishness provides the opportunity for Jesus to suggest in advance another friend’s imminent betrayal: “you are clean, though not all of you.”

Peter’s misplaced enthusiasm. The silent treachery of Judas. This fugitive community gathered for the last meal of someone soon to be condemned as a state criminal. Strange beginnings indeed. 

Sounds like foolishness – which is probably why Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians “For the message about the cross is foolishness” ….and “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stranger than human strength.”[1]

Amid Peter’s misunderstanding and Judas’ betrayal, Jesus sinks down to the lowliest of places – that of a house slave - to reveal the true nature of servant leadership in the Kingdom.  This act of love shows truth - the truth of self-giving and self-emptying love. Jesus gives a new command – another mandate – to love one another as he has loved us.  Will that love be wasted on us?

Many of you know I’m drawn to the sonnets of Malcom Guite.  He comments: “All of this happens on the night Jesus was betrayed.  It is not when we have purged ourselves and attained some long-sought moral height that these things are offered to us.  It is here and now, in the confusion and ambiguity of our daily life, amid our darkness and disloyalty, where we need him most, he meets us”[2] – and I could add in all the current confusion and ambiguity of our world now, he meets us too.

Here is the source of every sacrament,

The all-transforming presence of the Lord,

Replenishing our every element,

Remaking us in his creative Word.

For here the earth herself give bread and wine,

The air delights to hear the Spirit’s speech,

The fire dances where the candles shine,

The waters cleanse us with his gentle touch.

And here he shows the full extent of love

To us whose love is always incomplete,

In vain we search the heavens high above,

The God of love is kneeling at our feet.

Though we betray him, though it is the night.

He meets us here and loves us into light.[3]

 

[1] 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25

[2] Malcolm Guite The Word in the Wilderness – A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter Canterbury Press Norwich 2014 UK p164

[3] ibid p163

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon 6th April 2025 | Lent 5

Lent 5 6 Apr 25 

Readings: Isaiah 43: 16-21; Psalm 126: Philippians 3:3-14; John 12: 1-8

 John 12:3 – “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.  The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”   An aroma can be a very powerful prompter of memory.  My first parish in this Diocese was Kingaroy - St. Michael and All Angels in Kingaroy was the main church.  A young woman had come back to Kingaroy for her marriage.  We were talking and we walked into the church together.  She took a deep breath and said, “I remember the smell – it smells like a church.”  And she was right in one sense, the church did have a quite distinctive aroma, born of years of being enveloped sometimes in dust from the huge peanut silos next door.  Aromas prompt memories - good or bad.  Some aromas just seem to pervade everything else and linger – the smell of freshly baked bread, the aroma of a great cup of coffee first thing in the morning, perhaps a favourite perfume, or the aroma of death. 

 John in the gospel reading has told quite an old story.  It appears in St. Mark’s gospel, probably the first written.  Forty years almost has elapsed by the time John’s gospel is written and the story has been reworked a few times.  In John, it’s a good woman, named Mary, a personal friend of Jesus.  In Luke it’s an unnamed sinful woman, it Mark and Matthew it’s an unnamed woman.  In Mark and Matthew, she anoints Jesus’ head, in Luke and John she anoints his feet.  Later generations wrongly imagined the woman was Mary Magdalene.  The differences go on.  In John, Judas objects.  In Matthew, the disciples object.  In Mark, some of those present object.  In Luke, Simon the Pharisee objects – the incident happens in his house.  But in Matthew and Mark, it happens in the house of Simon the Leper and in John, as we’ve read, it happens in the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus has just raised from the dead.

 Confused yet?  Amongst all the confusion, there is a consistent aroma that wafts through all the variations in the story, one of the few apart from the Passion narratives that is common to all four gospels.   So, if we stop for a while and sniff the air so to speak, what can we detect.  The real focus, it seems is on the response of the woman, but as we know from the story, her response is not always welcomed.  The focus of the protests is the waste of resources, and the suggestion that the resources should be going to the poor.  But above all of that, a person is responding to Jesus with love and generosity, extravagance even.  One writer comments that this isn’t the time to talk about budgets, but to value the person.

 And maybe as we concentrate on the aroma of generosity and extravagance, maybe there are some hints lingering from last week.  We heard the story of the man with two sons, and when we think of the stories again, the aroma of extravagance comes wafting back to us.  In one sense there’s a negative, the extravagant living of the younger son, but as he puts all that behind him, he is welcomed home by the father who throws an extravagant homecoming party.  Similarly, in the same chapter of St. Luke, the shepherd goes in search of the lost sheep, and when he finds it, he calls together his friends and neighbours and says “Rejoice with me” Let’s celebrate.  It’s an act of extravagance – one can only hope the lost sheep does not become part of the party!  The woman sweeps the house and goes on searching until she finds the coin, and in almost the same words that Luke in his account uses for the shepherd, she too calls her friends and neighbours together to celebrate.

 The same aroma of extravagance that pervades these stories from Luke pervades the story from John this morning.    A pound of perfume made from pure nard was, in those times about 400 grams of a very costly imported substance.  Nard is mentioned in the Song of Solomon as one of the perfumes with which the beloved is anointed.  It has overtones of sensual extravagance.

 But what, then do we make of John’s added comment from Jesus – there will always be the poor around, but you won’t always have me. Some of the scholars say that this comment was inspired from a verse in the Book of Deuteronomy.  It’s Deuteronomy 15:11 “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.”  In Deuteronomy, a response is commanded.  Therefore, when Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you.”, it’s not just a throw away line to suggest some kind of fatalism – the poor are always there and there’s not much we can do.   The question implicit in that statement is, “How will you respond to the need?”   Will you respond generously, extravagantly?  It goes to the heart of one of our Lenten disciplines – alms giving.  It goes to the heart of our own stewardship of all that God has given us. Do we respond extravagantly, generously, or begrudgingly like those who complain about the woman’s extravagance in the gospels. One commentator (American, I think) says: “The very soul of this nation will be shaped by how we answer.”  Applies to us just as well – as a nation and to our own souls.

 But as well as the aroma of extravagance that pervades this story, there’s another as well – the aroma of death.   These eight short verses at the beginning of Chapter 12 of St. John’s gospel are full of indications of what is to happen to Jesus.  This story follows immediately upon the story of the raising of Lazarus and the resulting plot by the council of chief priests and Pharisees to kill Jesus.  The ointment Mary uses was used in the anointing of bodies prior to burial.  John, of all the gospel writers, takes every opportunity to cast Judas in the worst possible light, so he adds a comment on Judas – the one who was about to betray Jesus – he writes.  So, Jesus’ betrayal is foreshadowed.  Jesus himself foreshadows his death as he rebukes Judas.  “Leave her alone”, he says, “she bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”  And in the next verses immediately following this morning’s gospel, the chief priests plan to put Lazarus to death as well, because they say that on account of him, many people were deserting them and believing in Jesus.  The fragrance of the perfume fills the house, but the aroma of death definitely lurks in the background as well.  In fact, as we draw closer and closer to Easter, this story in St. John’s gospel marks the beginning of the cycle of events leading to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.  The next day, John tells us, the great crowd that had come to the festival, for the Passover, hears that Jesus is coming to Jerusalem, so they welcome him with branches of palm trees as we will re-enact next Sunday.

 Mary in her extravagance shows her response to Jesus.  She anticipates in a sense the sacrifice that Jesus is willing to make by preparing his body for the death he is about to face, expressing her love for the one who gives his life in love for the world, for all of us.  This is the one of whom Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians, the one whose suffering Paul shares as he anticipates the resurrection he will also share.

Gestures of friendship and appreciation can’t always be measured by ordinary criteria.  When we want to show appreciation for a friend or someone we love deeply we can sometimes throw caution to the winds and go overboard.  Mary’s act of extravagance and celebration in the shadow of the cross is such an act.  It’s contrasted with a narrow and begrudging response.  As we draw towards the conclusion of this season of Lent, we catch this aroma of extravagance, of going overboard.  Maybe this is a time to commit ourselves anew to show no bounds in our love for Jesus, the one in whom God is about to do a new thing that transforms the death that lurks in the story to new life full of boundless potential and joy.

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon 30th March 2025 | Lent 4

Lent 4 30th  March 2025

Readings: Joshua 5: 2-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21; Luke 15: 11-32

Today is Mothering Sunday.  It’s also been variously called Laetare Sunday, Mid-Lent Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, and in England it’s also Mother’s Day.  It is a Christian festival in origin. During the sixteenth century, people returned to their mother church, the main local church or cathedral of the area, for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday. The name came from the Latin word for rejoice – the introit canticle on that day was from Isaiah 66:10 which begins “Rejoice Jerusalem” and describes Zion in distinctively feminine, maternal imagery Anyone who gathered in this way was commonly said to have gone "a-mothering", although whether this preceded the term Mothering Sunday is unclear.  Cakes called “simnel”, after a Latin word for fine flour were eaten. This Sunday was a break from the strictures of Lenten fasting – so it was also called Refreshment Sunday. Clergy wore rose coloured vestments instead of the Lenten violet to represent the note of celebration.  Later, in the 19th century particularly, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather, since on other days they were prevented by conflicting working hours.  One can imagine a massive movement of people.  In 1901 in England, almost 1.7 million women, representing just over 40% of the adult female working population were in domestic service. Children and young people who were "in service" (servants in richer households) were given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their "mother" church). The children would pick wildflowers along the way to place in the church or give to their mothers. The custom of simnel cake was revived.  By the beginning of the First World War, the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapse, but the daughter of an English rural vicar created a “Mothering Sunday Movement”, and the keeping of Mothering Sunday was revived.  Eventually, the religious tradition evolved into the Mothering Sunday secular tradition of giving gifts to mothers.  And it became mixed up with the secular Mothers’ Day with the influx of American servicemen during the Second World War, but we should recognize its distinctively spiritual beginnings – a thanksgiving for “mother” church.

How ironic, therefore, that the Gospel for today about a father and two sons has no mention of the mother.  Perhaps we can imagine the mother’s anguish at the younger son’s departure – even more so if word of his lifestyle in the foreign country gets back to her.  And perhaps we can imagine her rejoicing, too, when he returns.  This story is, along with the story of the Good Samaritan, one of the best known of Jesus’ parables.  In Luke 15, there are three parables all about “lostness”, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and then what we usually call the prodigal son.  It’s always been difficult to find an accurate title for the story – the “prodigal son” reflects a tendency to concentrate on the first part of the story to the neglect of the second half which concentrates on the father and the older brother and its unresolved ending.  The “Lost Son” brings out the connection with the other parables but isn’t really adequate as it still doesn’t represent the second part of the story.

Luke, as usual, tells the story wonderfully.  At its heart, the parable is, I think, about three things – grace (with which I would include humility), forgiveness, and hospitality.

The grace and humility of the father is highlighted.  Grace is so difficult to define exactly - in spiritual terms it refers to the great gift of God’s free and unmerited favour shown towards us.  In everyday terms it can refer to beauty or elegance, or a sense of consideration or goodwill for others.  But even if we can’t define it, we seem to feel instinctively when we are in the presence of a graceful person – and the father in the story is such a person, I think.  In the face of the young son’s initial graceless and arrogant conduct, he accedes to the request for the share of the property.  Strictly speaking, the young son should only get his share on his father’s death – he’s saying to the father, in effect “You’re as good as dead as far as I’m concerned.”    The younger son experiences a fall from grace and finds himself in humiliating, rather than humble circumstances.  But he comes to himself – it’s a moment of clarity and realism about his state at least, not necessarily a moral conversion.  He goes home and the father re-enters the story - full of grace.  He runs out, falls on his son’s neck and kisses him.  This was totally unconventional behavior for a dignified man with a sizeable estate in the Palestinian world.  To leave the house to meet one of lower rank, to run, rather than to walk sedately, to display emotion extravagantly in public: all this involves serious loss of face.  The father is unconcerned – he humbles himself.  And all of this contrasts with the graceless conduct of the older son.  The father goes out to meet him too, and speaks gracefully to him, and pleads with him.  There is no doubt in the father’s mind that he, too, is a son.  But the son is unmoved.  In the presence of the father, we are in the presence of incredible grace and humility.  Can we show the same grace and humility in our lives and relationships?

It’s a story about forgiveness and how forgiveness can transform relationships.  How many times should I forgive, Simon Peter asked Jesus – seven times?  Not seven times, but seventy times seven was the reply. [1] That implies an ample and over-flowing forgiveness – which we see personified in the father.  He has no place for “sin” or “repentance” – he doesn’t mention the words, although the son has been thinking in these terms “Father, I have sinned….”  The son doesn’t get the chance to give his prepared speech.  The father speaks in terms of “lost and Found” or “dead and alive”.  It’s a great example of how forgiveness can bring about restoration and transformation.  Forgiveness is not easy.  You will hear people say “Oh, you just forgive and forget”, which is a load of rubbish.  Some things can never be forgotten.  The son who was lost will always be shaped by his behavior, but he has been transformed. Perhaps to think of a modern parallel, sometimes we’ll see news reports or stories about former sports stars caught up in gambling or alcohol abuse for example, or others whose lives are full of potential, but have come off the rails and they’ve spent time in prison.  But somehow, they turn things around and you read or hear of them going around schools or junior sporting clubs to share their stories and encourage younger people to live well.    They’ve been shaped been shaped by their behavior, but their past stories have been transformed into a gift for others. Again, a contrast is drawn with the older brother and his unforgiving response.  He does not come across as an attractive character, but his reaction is understandable.  In a sense, we’re invited to feel his anger and resentment and to come to a decision – who will we be like?   Will we be like the father, or like the older brother?

Finally, the story is about hospitality – extravagant and overflowing hospitality which mirrors the father’s forgiveness. As in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, there is joy and celebration when whatever was lost is found.  So, there is a communal celebration.  Everything symbolizes the complete reinstatement of the younger son – bring out the best robe, put a ring on his finger (the ring then was a symbol of authority in the household), put sandals on his feet (members of the family wore sandals while slaves were barefoot).  The calf that has been fattened is to be killed and eaten at the feast.  There is music and dancing which the older brother hears.  One of the servants tells him what has happened “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.”  The older brother is overcome with anger and resentment and refuses to join the celebration.  We never learn whether he is later persuaded to join the party, or whether he remains outside bitterly nursing his resentment.  It leaves questions for us.  Where are we in the end?  Inside joining in the celebration, or stuck outside, hearing the music and the dancing but too angry to go in?  Can we cope with a God imaged by the father in the parable?  Do we find in ourselves some stirring of the resistance of the older brother?  Can we be part of a family whose hospitality is so extravagant and so understanding, indulgent even, of human failing as this?

So, sinfulness and repentance are not the main focus of the story.  Sure they are there – the overt sinning of the younger brother and the anger and resentment of the older.  But the emphasis is on grace, humility, forgiveness and generous, overflowing hospitality.  These are all good things to reflect upon in this season of Lent and to ask ourselves “How do we relate to a God who acts so generously like this?”

 

[1] Matthew 18:21-22

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon Choral Evensong – 16th March 2025 | Lent 2

Lent 2 - 16th March 2025 = Choral Evensong

Readings: Exodus 11: 1-10; Psalm 119: 121-136; Luke 22: 39-53

Luke 22:53 “When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me.  But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.

On Friday we were privileged to host the World Day of Prayer Service.  The focus of the service was the Cook Islands – 15 islands scattered over 2 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean with a population of 16,000.  However, there are 20,000 Cook Islanders living in Australia and 80,000 in New Zealand.  During the service we were introduced to a Cook Islander woman named Vainiu.  In her story she describes being taught in her own language, Cook Island Maori for the first three years of her education in the early 1960’s.  However, as she progressed English became the language of instruction, and they were told not to speak their mother tongue.  She describes how one day she was caught speaking in her mother tongue and as punishment was made to wear a cardboard sign that said, “I am a Maori speaker”, as well as being given a detention and made to pull out prickly weeds in the playground.   She describes how she was devalued and shamed by the school system and likened this to darkness.  She said “God goes with us to the darkness at the bottom of the ocean where there is no light, And God helps lead us out of darkness into a wonderful light.

Darkness in the scriptures is much more than an absence of light.  It represents, along with light, a fundamental duality that reaches right back to the creation.  In the first verse of our Scriptures, we read “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light….”[1]  Darkness represents nothingness, formlessness.  It has come to be associated with sin, evil, wilful disobedience to God.  And if you, as I did yesterday, put the word “darkness” into your favourite Bible browser, you’ll come up with 177 verses in which, for the most part, this duality between light and darkness is drawn.  Two or three examples – from Isaiah “Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness”[2], part of Isaiah’s denunciation of social injustice.  Or from Micah

“Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
   the Lord will be a light to me.”[3]

Or from St. John “And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”[4]

So, when Jesus says as his betrayers and the chief priests and the temple police come for him “This is your hour, and the power of darkness”, maybe he’s not referring just to the act of betrayal by Judas.  Maybe he’s indicating that at this moment, all the powers of darkness – nothingness, complete separation from God, untrammelled evil, a reversal of the goodness of creation are in the ascendancy and as we follow the story – the second readings for Sunday Evening Prayer during the Season of Lent take us through St. Luke’s Passion narrative, we’ll come to the point of Jesus’ death when “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon while the sun’s light failed.”[5]

Where does the power of darkness reside today – which powers of darkness may think their hour has come?  We’ve already had one example at the beginning of this sermon – the darkness of cultural devaluation and repression in Vainiu’s story.  A story, no doubt, all too familiar to our own indigenous brothers and sisters.  We see the darkness of conflict around the world – not only in the violence, injustice, awful injury, deaths of the innocent, but in literal darkness as the Israeli Defence Force cuts electricity to Gaza again, or Russia deliberately targets electrical infrastructure in Ukraine.  We see the darkness of gender-based violence not only in our own country but around the world.  This year’s ABM Lenten Appeal aims to support women to flourish as they build peace in homes and communities, gain confidence in the wider world and become economically empowered. It assists in supporting communities to be restored to wholeness after being trained in how to end gender-based violence and other injustices against women and girls.   Rallies held yesterday highlighted yet again the scourge of violence against women in our own society. There is darkness in the threats to properly functioning democracy around the world posed by authoritarianism, dictatorship, and wilful casting aside of proper diplomatic norms and long-standing alliances.  There is darkness in the influence those with money and perceived power have in the halls of some governments.  There is darkness in the threat posed to proper discourse by deliberate misinformation and disinformation propagated through the anti-social media.  You no doubt can think of other examples.

But as you read the final verses of the passage from St. Luke again, Jesus, in the midst of betrayal and impending arrest, remains composed and in control. Despite the pandemonium, and chaotic circumstances he demonstrates his divine authority and compassion - he heals the ear of Malchus, one of the mob come to arrest him. The hour darkness has come, but the one who said “I am the light of the world”[6] is still in control.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.[7]  The light of Christ still shines in the darknesses of our present world too – they may have their hour but, in the end, they will not overcome the light. In the first reading at the Eucharist this morning, we heard how a deep and terrifying darkness descends on Abraham.  Yet even in the darkness, God is there.  The smoking firepot and flaming torch that pass by him are vivid Old Testament symbols of God’s presence.[8]

In this Season of Lent we’re bidden to reflect on darkness in our own lives – and to expose that darkness to the light of Christ who is the world’s light, he and none other.  Born in our darkness, he became our brother.[9]

Let us pray:

God of tender compassion and mercy,

whose Son is the morning star

and the sun of righteousness.

let him shine in the darkness

and shadows of this world,

that we may serve you in freedom and peace;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

[1] Genesis 1: 1-3

[2] Isaiah 5:20

[3] Micah 7:8

[4] John 3:19

[5] Luke 23:44

[6] John 8:12

[7] John 1:5

[8] Genesis 15:17

[9] TIS 246

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon – 16th March 2025 | Lent 2

Lent 2 - 16th March 2025 

Readings:  Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 13: 31-35

 Lent, as you know is a penitential season when all of us are urged to reflect on our own brokenness, to reflect on the need for repentance.  The baptism service makes this specific.  “Do you repent of your sins”, the sponsors of the child are asked on his or her behalf, or in the case of someone able to answer for themselves, they’re asked directly. How do we understand repentance?

 We often overlay repentance with guilt – mistakenly in my view.  Repent comes from a word which simply means to turn your mind, to think in a new way about your life.  This isn’t to downplay its seriousness.  Jesus places a condition on it – “unless you repent”[1] he says, there are serious consequences.

 But again, this isn’t meant to weigh us down.  I think the notion of repentance as being a turning is helpful.  We turn from one thing towards another.  It’s made clear in the baptism service “Do you turn to Christ”. And it’s good for us to ask ourselves the same question during Lent. Luke Timothy Johnson, a significant commentator on St. Luke’s gospel writes that Jesus’ call to repentance has a specific quality.  He writes that it: “is not simply a turning from sin but an acceptance of the visitation of God in the proclamation of God’s kingdom.”   

There is an element of grace in repentance – grace being God’s free gift to us.  There’s more than a hint of it in the gospel story earlier in Chapter 13 when the fig tree is given a second chance.[2]  Repentance is not simply a turning from sin (which is described not so much as the biblical vice lists, but a deep alienation from God).  Repentance is the acceptance of the visitation of God.

 Abraham is visited by God as we hear in our first reading from Genesis this morning.  It’s important that we set the reading in its right context.  Remember the first verse – the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision.  What we have is the description of a dream.  It’s not the first time that God has called Abraham – a couple of chapters earlier in Genesis, Abram, as he is then called, hears the call of God to leave his home country and to travel to the land that God will show him.  Abraham in this dream is promised many descendants.  On one level, it’s quite a funny exchange.  Abraham is promised a great reward and his reply to God is sort of “That’s all well and good, but what can you give me anyway – I don’t have any children.”   Children were extremely important for inheritance.  And Abraham goes on “and what’s more, God, if I don’t have any children, all my inheritance will go to Eliezer of Damascus.”  The subtext is, I think “Perish the thought”.  Abraham goes so far as to accuse God of not giving him any children.  Eliezer is going to get the lot and it’s all your fault, God!  But the story also speaks to a deep fear.  Abram is afraid that he will die without an heir. He is afraid that his line, and the memory of his life, will end at his death.  No child has been born from his marriage to Sarah. He has parented a child from a slave, but this will not suffice in his own eyes and the eyes of his culture.[3]  But Abraham is shown a vision and despite his fears, his questions and his doubts about the way in which God’s promises were to be carried out, he has faith that God will be faithful to God’s promises.  “And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”  Or as one who is right with God.  Paul, in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians establishes Abraham’s legendary reputation for faith on the basis of this verse.   Abraham has heard the call of God, not just once or initially, but as a continuing invitation to follow and to trust.  Abraham accepts the visitation of God.  To live in faith is to trust that God will be faithful to his promises despite the questions and doubts and fears that inevitably arise – and so it is for us, too.

 The Apostle Paul has also heard and responded to the call of God as it has come to him through Christ Jesus.  We know from the account in the Acts of the Apostles how that call comes to him as he travels to Damascus.  Paul urges the Christians of Philippi to whom he writes to imitate his single-minded devotion to the call of Christ.  He acknowledges that there are some who live differently – he calls them “enemies of the Cross”, but he does not call for punishment or any thing like that.  He simply acknowledges it in sadness – in tears -  that they cannot set their minds on the hope to be found in Jesus Christ.  However, for those who trust that God will be faithful, he uses the image of citizenship – citizenship of Heaven.  Paul prized his Roman citizenship, but for him, his true and lasting allegiance was elsewhere.  I’ve referred earlier to the baptism service, and I often think there are quite a few similarities between the baptism service and a citizenship ceremony.  People come for all sorts of reasons, but fundamentally because somehow, they see the possibility or promise of a different kind of life.  They take part in a public ceremony at which promises of allegiance are made, certificates are given in recognition of this.  But just because people have gone through the ceremony doesn’t automatically make them good citizens – that depends on the decisions they take about their lives, the people they surround themselves with, how faithful they are to the promises of allegiance made to their new country.  Like Abraham, the question is – do we respond to God’s continual invitation and call, do we continually trust that God will be faithful.

 Paul’s own life was lived between two poles – Christ’s crucifixion and the expectation of his return.  Christian life is determined and shaped by the death of Christ on the cross, which calls us to the same kind of faithfulness and self giving love; and, on the other hand, Christ’s followers wait in hope for transformation – Paul describes it as the transformation of the body of our humiliation – other translations have “humble bodies” which I prefer – but transformation in order to be conformed to the body of his glory. 

 

In the gospel reading, the stakes are much higher.  Jesus is warned that his life is in danger. This is no news to him – he is fully aware of the dangers ahead of him. Herod is out to get him. But Jesus continues to teach. He must follow his vocation and in following his vocation, he finds his strength. His life gains perspective. It is all part of God’s holy story of salvation. In his book born of the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl quotes the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’.”[4] Jesus’ sense of purpose, his vocational sense, enabled him to face his fear of suffering and abandonment, trusting that his life had meaning and that God’s purposes for him were more enduring that Herod’s hatred.

 Repentance, which is where we began, and acceptance of the call of God makes transformation possible for us all.  Transformation may not mean that the physical circumstances of our live may change all that much, but it does mean that despite questions, doubts, fears, disappointments, extreme dangers, we will see our lives in a new light as having new meaning, new purposes, new hope grounded in the promises of God.

 Abraham trusted the God who called him, despite the questions he had, Paul trusted God’s call to him through Christ, Jesus trusted God’s purposes for him.  How much do we trust God’s call to us?

 

[1] Luke 13:5

[2] Luke 13: 6-9

[3] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2019/03/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-second-sunday-in-lent-march-17-2019/

[4] ibid

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon – 9th March 2025 | Lent 1

Lent 1 -  9 March 25

Readings: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11, Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16, Romans 10: 4-13, Luke 4: 1-15

 

Today as you know is the first Sunday in the Season of Lent.  In the early church, Lent was a time of preparation for those who were to be baptized at Easter or for those who were to be received back into the community of faith from which they had become separated – usually through wrongdoing.    Gradually, people came to see that, as the Ash Wednesday liturgy says, “By keeping these days with care and attention Christians might take to heart the call to repentance and the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel and grow in faith and devotion to our Lord.  So, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer and fasting, by self-denial and acts of generosity and by reading and meditating on the word of God, let us keep a holy Lent ……”[1]

 

Lent is a penitential season when we are bidden to take the journey into our hearts, and we express the penitential nature by some sombreness in our liturgy – the Ten Commandments can be recited, we don’t sing the “Gloria” for example, we don’t have flowers.  This sombreness is not so we feel beaten down as dreadful sinners, but as an expression that we’re on a journey and to provide some visible indication of the journey into our hearts that we are taking, and that it is indeed a different liturgical season.

 

The English word “Lent” initially simply meant spring (as in the German language Lenz and Dutch lente) and it comes from the Germanic word for long because in the spring the days visibly lengthen.   That’s of course a Northern Hemisphere reference. Today is also forty days before Easter, so traditionally was called “quadrigesima”.   I must admit that growing up as a good Methodist boy, quadrigesima and all the other gesimas were a mystery to me for a long time.  

But the number forty has many  symbolic Biblical references: the forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai with God[2]; the forty days and nights Elijah spent walking to Mount Horeb[3]; the forty days and nights God sent rain in the great flood of Noah[4]; the forty years the Hebrew people wandered in the desert while travelling to the Promised Land[5]; the forty days Jonah gave in his prophecy of judgment to the city of Nineveh in which to repent or be destroyed[6].  Forty usually represented a time of testing or trial.

Jesus retreated into the wilderness, where he fasted for forty days, so what is being described is highly symbolic. Jesus is tempted by the devil as we hear in the Gospel reading from Luke this morning.  He overcomes all three of the temptations by citing scripture to the evil one, at which point the devil leaves Him, angels minister to Him, and He begins His ministry.

This reading from Luke 4:1-13 is a traditional centrepiece for the First Sunday in Lent, and it should be. In so many ways, Lent invites us to explore our values.  Jane Williams in her 2019 Lent Book, “The Merciful Humility of God” comments that Lent is not primarily about giving things up or even denying ourselves.  It is about finding ourselves.  Along the way, she says, it will often feel like a journey of self-abnegation, but that is because our “selves” have been built on shaky foundations.[7]  Jesus takes this journey to discern on what foundations his life will be built.  The Lenten season similarly invites us to self-examination about the foundations of our lives.  Questions like:  What is truly important to us? Where are our deepest values and how do we embody them in daily life? Where is God in our lives? 

The traditional Lenten disciplines are gifts to help us concentrate our minds on what is important to us.  Taking on something extra in prayer, or reading of the scriptures, or other spiritual reading, giving generously, living simply, fasting are all to encourage us in, or even direct us to some serious self-examination and reflection on what really is important to us, what defines us.  Again, from Jane Williams “We are already beloved by God, and God waits, humbly, while we try to work out if this is enough.  It will mean putting aside other self-definitions, that may seem more obvious and dependable, but that will always take us back into the world where we are a commodity and treat others as such.  If we are defined by what we do or have, then there will always be others who do and have more and so threaten our self-definition.  But if we are brave enough to let God tell us who we are, then we are always and for ever the beloved ones (of God) alongside others equally beloved.” [8]

Although today’s gospel reading is often described as “Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness,” others prefer to describe it as “Jesus vocational retreat.” Throughout history, both Christian and non-Christian, young and not so young adults have gone on spiritual quests to discern their life’s path. These times set apart serve to help seekers discover their “true” nature or calling, the tasks that lie ahead of them, and their role in the community and the larger world.  The Community of the Way established at St. Francis’ College is a local example. It describes itself as a community of people who seek to follow the way of Jesus with prayerful hearts, enquiring minds, and compassionate lives.[9]

During his retreat or quest, Jesus discovers his vocation, but he also experiences temptations to turn away from the highest and best possibilities set before him.  In themselves, what is offered to Jesus; healthy food, security from danger, and power to change the world for the good seem attractive. The problem is that following these temptations might lead to a good life, but ultimately it will lead to self-serving and self- agrandizement. For example, the third temptation takes place on “the pinnacle of the temple”, representing the height of religious experience and achievement. Often the best things turned bad are the worst things of all.  A “religious” or “spiritual” life can be riddled with pride and a sense of distinction, judging others, looking down on them, despising God’s good creation.  Such twisted religion can do enormous damage in the world.[10]  It will not lead to the recognition of God as the source of life and to the richness and fullness of life that is and can be the glory of God in human experience.   The singer, Leonard Cohen once said in an interview that the real weapons of mass destruction are the hardened hearts of humanity.[11]

Temptation never ends for any of us.  The Gospel tells us that the devil left Jesus “until an opportune time”. We constantly make decisions, some of which bring us closer to, others of which take us away, from God’s visions for our lives. We are responsible for our choices.  Jesus makes choices in the desert.  He takes his own experience of God and the words at his baptism “You are my beloved Son” and chooses that this will be who he is.   Facing temptation can be a solitary process, but it need not be. Jesus does not go on this quest as some sort of rugged lonely hero.  He goes with his experience of God and with the force of the Holy Spirit with him. The Holy Spirit bookends this morning’s Gospel.  We’re told both at the beginning and end that Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit. Living our lives as a people of God requires a group of supportive companions, colleagues, and spiritual companions – that’s one reason we worship – to provide that group of spiritual supporters, a faith community that is absolutely essential to our Christian life and growth.

We embark on a holy adventure in this season of Lent. “May this Lenten discipline, which we undertake with love, turn our minds to things above.”[12]

 


[1] Lent, Holy Week, Easter Services and Prayers Church House Publishing with Cambridge University Press and SPCK 1986 p 14

[2] Exodus 24:18

[3] 1 Kings 19:8

[4] Genesis 7:4

[5] Numbers 14:33

[6] Jonah 3:4

[7] Williams, Jane The Merciful Humility of God Bloomsbury, London 2018 p9

[8] Ibid p20-21

[9] https://www.communityoftheway.org.au

[10] Guite, Malcolm The Word in the Wilderness - A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter Canterbury Press, Norwich p17

[11] This quotation is from Leonard Cohen’s March 30, 2007 appearance on the Norwegian TV talk show “Først & sist.”

[12] Together in Song No 463

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon – 2nd March 2025 | Transfiguration

Transfiguration – Sunday 2nd March 2025 

Readings: Exodus 34: 29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

As you know, we hear the Gospels read many times in the cycle of readings provided by our Lectionary.  This year of the liturgical cycle, Year C, is the year of Luke, so we read through his Gospel Sunday by Sunday.  Last year was Mark, next year will be Matthew …and we commence the cycle again.  We’ll get to Luke again in 2028.   Just for a while, I’d like us to try to imagine ourselves as members of St. Luke’s community who are reading his Gospel – or hearing it read - for the very first time.  Remember that not everyone was able to read then.

Luke’s story begins with him writing to Theophilus, possibly a patron, saying that he (Luke) has decided after careful investigation to write an orderly account so that Theophilus may know the truth.[1] We may well think, “who’s this about?” Remember, we’re hearing this story for the first time.  And before we know where we are in the story, angels appear foretelling the births of John the Baptist and Jesus.  Mary sings the praise of God – singing of a reversal – of the proud being scattered in the thoughts of their hearts and the powerful being brought down.[2]  We hear the miraculous story of Jesus birth, again with angels to the fore, and of the glory of the Lord shining around shepherds who are caught up in the story. Jesus is presented in the temple, and both Simeon and Anna recognize something special about the child.  We’re told on more than one occasion that the favour of God is upon him.[3] Jesus suddenly appears from Nazareth and is baptized by John in the Jordan River, and there’s this strange account of Jesus hearing a voice – maybe we’re a bit suspicious of people who say they  hear voices – but he hears a voice saying You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”[4]  And then he disappears into the wilderness for forty days, and after that he re-appears in Nazareth with a message to the members of the synagogue that the scripture from Isaiah about the year of the Lord’s favour has been fulfilled in their hearing[5] – something we’d all been longing to see – remember we’re first century Jewish / Gentile community probably living in Rome.

Then we hear of his healing in Capernaum in Galilee and his preaching in the synagogues of Judea.  He calls some disciples to follow him – and his fame begins to spread.  He heals a man with an unclean spirit, he heals the mother-in-law of one of his disciples, he walks around preaching, cleanses lepers, heals a paralysed man, heals a man with a withered hand.  People flock to hear him, so many in one instance he gets into a boat and sets out from the shore.  He’s beginning to get into arguments with Pharisees about what is lawful to do on the Sabbath and what he says is liberating.  And he tells stories – things we understand.  Stories of a sower, or a mustard seed, or a fig tree, or a lamp under a jar.  And as we hear these for the first time, we realise they’re about something more – they’re about how about God works and about how we should live our lives in the light of this.  There are even stories of him stilling a storm or walking on water.  And maybe some are beginning to understand even more what the stories are about – and there not so much about storms or the rest of it but they’re about who this person Jesus really is.  The sea, the waters were the place of danger, chaos, darkness and only God had power over those.  Maybe we find ourselves saying with those in the story of the stilling of the storm “Who then is this?”[6] The amazing things continue – he feeds a massive crowd, restores a young girl to life.  And then as Jesus is praying with his disciples close by, he asks them directly who the crowds think he is.  Peter guesses the answer to the same question we’ve probably been asking ourselves as we hear the story read.  Who is this person?  He says to Jesus that he is “the Messiah of God” And then Jesus shocks us by disclosing that he will be rejected and killed.[7]

Eight days after this incident, the story goes, we hear of this amazing mountain top experience – and the same words heard at Jesus baptism are heard again by those on the mountain.  We know from our own spiritual depths – remember we’re reading or hearing this story for the first time - that the place of encounter between God and humans is a mountain top – Moses and Elijah met God on mountain tops, and they’re part of this story.  Suddenly, the coin drops and we realize that the whole story up to this point has been a gradual revealing of who this person really is.  He is the Son of God.  He is bathed in light – just as Moses was, just as the shepherds were.  And then suddenly the story changes – we’re back down in the dirt and dust of the plain and Jesus says again what will happen[8] – betrayal and death and as the story goes on from this point it leads inexorably there.

Bring ourselves back to the 21st century now.  The whole Season of Epiphany we have observed up until now, the Last Sunday after Epiphany, has been like the first nine and a half chapters of St. Luke’s Gospel, a gradual revealing of who Jesus really is.  If you look back over the Gospel readings for the Sundays and major festivals in Epiphany, the stories and hints and clues are all there.  And now we come to this culmination, the story of the Transfiguration – the culmination of the hints large and small of who Jesus really is, and it’s a turning point.  Just as St. Luke’s Gospel turns its story towards the cross, just as the disciples head down the mountain, we’re headed in the same direction. We turn our faces toward suffering and the cross as we begin the Season of Lent on Ash Wednesday – next Wednesday.   The disciples with Jesus on the mountaintop – misunderstanding and dumbfounded - are thrust from the moment of glory on the mountain to the realities of life when they come down from the mountain and begin the hard way of the journey with Jesus to the cross.  He’s already said eight days before that if any want to be his followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross.[9]  They will soon learn what this means.  And so are we thrust from the moment of glory on the mountain to the realities of life on the plain and the journey to the cross.  It’s great to have the mountain top experience, but the test of our faithfulness is this: can we follow Jesus on to the cross?  Lent gives us the opportunity to test our faithfulness on that journey.  On the mountain, Peter is so eager to be with Jesus and make the moment last forever: will Peter be as eager when the going gets tough on another night?  We know the answer to that question.  But before we get too comfortable about that, the question is for us too – will we be as eager when the going gets tough?

Jesus has a way of taking us to the mountain top, of filling our hearts with joy, but he also has a way of leading us toward the cross.  In our Sunday worship we praise God, we lift our voices in song, but it’s not real worship of God until we come down off the mountain and connect our heavenly praise with earthly need.  We hear and listen to God’s word, then we get up and come forward and hold our empty hands out to be filled with God’s grace in the Eucharist, but then we’re told to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.  The American writer and United Methodist bishop William Willimon recounts a pithy old saying in some Pentecostal churches “It ain’t how high folks jump in church that make ‘em Christians.  It’s what they do when they hits the ground.”

The mountain and the cross connected to the suffering.  This is the tension in St. Luke’s Gospel; it’s the tension in the Christian life.  Glory is not just in the high moments, glory is not just in  acts of Christian service in everyday life, but it’s in the tension between the two.  Jesus’ disciples can’t stay on the mount of transfiguration.  If they wish to worship Jesus, they must follow him down the mountain and journey with him.  And because of Jesus’ gift of high moments of worship, so can we.  Will we journey with him through Lent as now we turn our faces toward the cross, remembering that we have the glory of transfiguration behind us and the glory of resurrection yet to come.

[1] Luke 1:3

[2] Luke 1: 46-55

[3] Eg Luke 2:40

[4] Luke 3: 21-22

[5][5] Luke 4: 16-21

[6] Luke 8;25

[7] Luke 9: 18-21

[8] Luke 9: 43-45

[9] Luke 9:23

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany – 23rd Feb 2025

Epiphany 7 – 23 Feb 25 

Readings:  Genesis 45: 3-11, 15; Psalm 37: 1-11, 40-41; 1 Corinthians 15:35-50; Luke 6:27-38

Some of you may know I’m a Legatee with Brisbane Legacy and until I began my locum ministry here, I was the Legacy visitor for Greenslopes Hospital – I’d visit once a week and go around the wards visiting Legacy clients.  I hope to take it up again when I finish the locum.  Earlier last year, I visited a woman on three or four occasions – she was younger than most of the older Legacy widows I was visiting.  She’d emigrated to Australia from the Ukraine quite a while ago.  On one particular visit she disclosed to me that her ex-husband in the Ukraine, a former soldier, had regularly beaten her - and in the course of doing so had told her to turn the other cheek “because that’s what the Bible says”.

The Gospel for this morning follows immediately that of last week – St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes.  I remarked last week that the Beatitudes were provocative and intentionally so.  As if they weren’t radical enough, Jesus takes his listeners further.  He begins a longish instruction at verse 27 “but I say to you that listen – love your enemies”, and to make sure no one is in any doubt, repeats it at verse 35 “But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.”  So, this is what we might call the central theme.  In between he gives a number of examples – practical application of the principles he has just laid out in the lives of his listeners; returning curses with a blessing, turning the other cheek, not asking for return of your own stuff that others may have taken and so on, ending with Luke’s version of the Golden Rule – “Do to others as you would have them do to you” – much quoted, but more often than not quoted quite divorced from its radical scriptural context.  All the examples Jesus gives involve responding to injury or unreasonable demand with nothing but generosity and the abandonment of all claims to retribution or restitution.[1]

How might we think about the Gospel today?  Jesus is not laying down maxims or attitudes to be followed literally.  But we need to recognize that some people do, and in doing so cause tremendous damage and hurt that is absolutely inimical to the Gospel and its values.  My example at the beginning is a case in point.  The words about loving your enemies and turning the other cheek are difficult. But to some people these words are more than difficult, they can cause a visceral reaction of spiritual and psychological hurt either because of the people that come to mind when they hear them or because of the context in which the words were quoted at them. There are people who hear these words as “Love the husband or partner who makes your life a misery with coercive control,” or “Do good to those who sexually abused you when you were a child; bless those who stole your innocence so blatantly that every relationship you have ever had has been a painful struggle; or pray for the one who beat or verbally abused your mother (in my case it was my aunt)  in front of you when you were a child.” There are women and children who have fled from their homes to escape the drunken rampages of a perpetually violent man, who have been told by some churches to turn the other cheek and go back and love him. Some of those women and children are now dead because of callous misuse of this passage.[2]

It may be useful to return to last Sunday’s sermon when I said that in the context of the Beatitudes “Being vulnerable provides scope for God’s power, for God’s way of working.”  Jesus is rejected by his own people – the self-satisfied congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth after he speaks of a reversal of the ways people expect things to be  – how God had acted through Gentiles.[3]  St. Matthew’s version of the same event adds the words “And he did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief.”[4]    Applying the same train of thought here – it’s the vulnerable who come under the grace of God.  Untrammelled, coercive, violent, rapacious use of power is not part of the Kingdom of God.  So maybe these words about turning the other cheek are addressed not to the vulnerable and suffering who in most instances don’t have much choice in the matter, but to the ones who do have a choice – those who hold the power.  Jesus was directing his words to those who were able to strike back.  He is saying, “Next time you are about to retaliate against someone who has offended you, stop and think, maybe this time you could think about it differently.  Don’t think about retaliation, maybe think about being merciful. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Jesus says – and his listeners then would have immediately recognised that he was referring to the Holiness Code at the heart of their own faith tradition, given its most concise expression in in the Book of Leviticus “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”[5]  Jesus is seeking to inculcate a fundamental attitude according to which one would be prepared to be vulnerable to a degree foolish by the standards of the world.  And this only makes sense in the context of the reversal inherent in the values of Gods’ Kingdom – the way God works in the world.  Advantages, disadvantages, power relationships are all turned on their heads.

I think it’s also useful to reflect that Jesus is not speaking just to individuals, but he was speaking to a group, a crowd, a community of God’s people.  In view of this kingdom relationship with God, the community is to be merciful, as God is merciful.  The community is to refrain from being judgmental.  If it forgives, it will experience God’s forgiveness, if it is generous in giving, it will meet with an extraordinary measure of generosity in return.  The sense is not that God waits to see the level of human generosity before deciding to be generous in return.  God is extravagantly generous.  But just as the volume of water one might draw from a tank depends upon the capacity of the vessel one brings, so the human receptacle determines the amount or measure God can give.  Any limitation stems from the human side.[6]

So the gospel should perhaps lead us to reflect on our own capacities; our capacity for mercy, our capacity for blessing, our capacity for generosity, our capacity for acceptance rather than judgmentalism, our capacity to put aside thoughts of retribution, our capacity for prayer, and above all our capacity for love.

As always, Malcolm Guite captures this beautifully in his reflection on Luke 6:37 – with a nod to John Lennon.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged

Imagine if we took these words to heart,

Unselved ourselves and took another’s part,

Silenced the accuser, dropped the grudge….

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Imagine if we lived our lives from this

And met each other’s outcasts face to face,

Imagine if the blood-dimmed tide was stemmed.

Forgive and you yourselves will be forgiven.

What if we walked together on this path,

What if the whole world laid aside its wrath,

And things were done on earth as though in heaven,

As though the heart’s dark knots were all undone,

As though this dreamer weren’t the only one?[7]

 

 [1] Brendan Byrne The Hospitality of God – A Reading of Luke’s Gospel Collegeville Press Minnesota 2015 p78

[2] https://southyarrabaptist.church/sermons/how-do-we-love-those-who-have-hurt-us-badly/

[3] Luke 4: 21-30

[4] Matthew 13:54-58

[5] Leviticus 19:2

[6] Brendan Byrne ibid p79.

[7] Malcolm Guite Parable and Paradox – Sonnets on the sayings of Jesus and other poems Canterbury Press Norwich UK 2016 p46 “Imagine”

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany – 16th Feb 2025

Epiphany 6 – 16 Feb 25 

Readings:  Jeremiah 17: 5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

The late Duke of Edinburgh apparently once said that people talk about high church and low church, but he liked short church.  It seems to me that after the massive effort of the Garage Sale, you might appreciate short church today, so just a few reflections on the Gospel for today – Luke’s version of the Beatitudes.  We’re told that Jesus meets the crowd on a level place.  On the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee there is a lovely, simply decorated and furnished Benedictine church on a small hill overlooking the water.  It’s reputedly the place of the Sermon on the Mount – St. Matthew’s version.  Between the hill and the lake is a large flat area – so you might be able to imagine how Luke’s version came about.  But we’re not here to think about geography – we’re here to think about scripture and theology and how we live our lives.

In contrast to Matthew’s nine beatitudes, Luke has four, followed by four corresponding “woes”.  Luke’s beatitudes are blunt and unqualified – “blessed are you who are poor” in contrast with Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”.  The beatitudes are provocative – and intentionally so. They are well known, but it can be easy to allow familiarity to blind us to the hard edge.  There’s a tendency as well to spiritualise Luke’s version by kind of importing Matthew’s version – Luke writes “Blessed are the poor” but some might want to say (and I’ve heard it said) that what he really meant to say is “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.  We need to sit with what Luke writes. Brendan Byrne comments that it’s outrageous in any age to bless (he uses the word congratulate) the poor on being poor, the hungry on being hungry, the weeping and the reviled on their present condition.  Correspondingly, he says, it appears foolish to declare unfortunate the wealthy, the well-fed, the laughing, and those who enjoy good reputations.  In one sense they are perfectly desirable states  of being.[1]

But Jesus has a completely different way of looking at it - the beatitudes and woes make sense in the light of the coming reversal of fortunes in God’s kingdom.  This is a prominent theme in Luke’s Gospel.  Mary in a sense sets the scene as she proclaims the same reversal in her song – the Magnificat

He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.[2]

Jesus does not endorse poverty or hunger – he’s insisting that what most people reckon to be advantages and disadvantages are reversed in the way God works in the world – God’s kingdom.

 Irrespective of geography or location, Luke, like Matthew, continues the vision of a countercultural or upside-down way of living by pronouncing blessing and well-being on those who, at first glance, appear to be at the margins of society and religious life.  Being vulnerable provides scope for God’s power, for God’s way of working.  By contrast, you might recall that two weeks ago we read St. Luke’s version of Jesus rejection by his own people – the self-satisfied congregation in the synagogue after he speaks of a similar reversal – how God had acted through Gentiles.[3]  St. Matthew’s version of the same event adds the words “And he did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief.”[4]  Wealth, pleasure, possession, power, and ease do not ensure blessedness.  I found a paraphrase of the Beatitudes which summarizes this well:

In today’s world…

 It’s good for the rich,

         they can buy whatever they want.

It’s good for the strong,

         they can take whatever they want.  They will also make the team.

It’s good for the winners,

         they get all the prizes.

It’s good for the smart,

         they get the good results, get to go to university, and get good jobs.

It’s good for the beautiful,

         they will get their pictures in magazines and get to be in movies.

It’s good for the grownups,

         they get to make all the plans.

 

Jesus says that in his kingdom…

 It’s good for those who know they do not know everything. 

         They belong in God’s world.

It’s good for those who are terribly sad. 

         They will be comforted.

It’s good for those who don’t get justice now. 

         They will get it.

It’s good for those who forgive and care about others. 

         God forgives and cares about them.

It’s good for those who are pure in heart.  They will see God. 

 

It’s good for the peacemakers. 

         They will be praised as God’s own children.

It’s good for those who are hurt because they stand up for God’s ways.

         They will be God's heroes and heroines.

It’s even good for you when people come after you because you follow me. 

         You will be rewarded. 

 

Where’s the reward.  There’s a great temptation to answer, “in heaven”, but it’s not what Jesus has in mind.  The point is, I think, that we are called in the present to live in a way that demonstrates what God’s future can be like.  We have a glimpse of this in today’s Gospel - we’ve seen what that future can be like because it’s already arrived in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  It might seem completely at odds with the way things happen in the world, but we’re called to believe this and live it.  In the words of the prophet Micah, we’re called to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.[5]  And when we do this, we find that the kingdom way of living is its own reward.

 

 [1] Brendan Byrne The Hospitality of God – A Reading of Luke’s Gospel Collegeville Press Minnesota 2015 p76

[2] Luke 1:51-53

[3] Luke 4: 21-30

[4] Matthew 13:54-58

[5] Micah 6:8

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany – 9th Feb 2025

Epiphany 5 - 9 th February 2025

Readings:  Isaiah 6: 1-8; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11

My last full-time parish as many of you know was Bribie Island, and often in the late afternoon or early evening I’d take a walk along Red Beach on the southern end of the island.  Sometimes I was the only person on the beach and on a clear evening you could see the lights in the high rises of Brisbane city coming on.  But sometimes too there were fishermen on the beach - professional fisherman with boats and nets and I’d see them hauling in their nets full of mullet mostly.  Nets absolutely full of them flapping and heaving.  It was quite exciting to watch.  I’d watch the fishermen too when we spent five years at Caloundra, so as we’re thinking about fishing this morning, here are some things I observed.

Firstly, the fishermen were always watchful.  I’d see them standing on the dunes at Bribie or on the cliffs at Caloundra constantly watching - looking out to sea.  Looking ahead, not behind. We’re in the business, Jesus tells us, of fishing for people - our core business if you like or one of them.  Another we don’t have time to go into today is the ministry of reconciliation, which St. Paul tells us we have.  But as we’re in the business, it seems to me that we need to be alert, always watchful, looking for opportunities, looking ahead and not behind.  The fishermen of Bribie or Caloundra were never going to spot any opportunities if they looked behind them, and neither will we.  That doesn’t mean we ignore or forget everything that has made us the people of God in this place - it’s history, shared stories, traditions.  But they can’t constrain us from looking ahead, looking for opportunity, looking for what God might have in store.

Secondly, as soon as they saw an opportunity - a school of fish they were off.  You could see them running for their four-wheel drives which towed their boats, nets all ready and piled in the boats.  It was like a Le Mans start - no standing in their way.  So, it seems to me that as soon as we see opportunities we should be acting quickly, no mucking around, but just going for it basically.  Libbie and I took the view in our parish ministries that if someone came to see us with an idea, we’d do everything we could to in our power to support it and to go for it.  Now of course not every idea is going to be a good one- you need to be discerning, but it’s important we grab the opportunities.  We were at Caloundra a couple of years ago for a service and I was humbled to see that an outreach initiative that began about 20 years ago with one lady coming to see me was still going.

Thirdly, as we all know, professional fishing is a risky business.  The fishermen I used to watch would head out into the deep just as it was getting dark.  These days, it seems to me, you don’t get much of a catch simply standing on the shore.  Ministry, outreach, fishing for people is a risky business and we should recognise this and be prepared to take the risks.  Sometimes I would see empty nets, sometimes we will make mistakes and miss out.  I don’t mean being foolhardy - the net fishermen I watched weren’t - they knew the risks and how to manage them.  But when it all pays off, the nets will be full, we’ll be amazed at the result, as were Peter and his offsiders.

 

A couple of additional observations from the readings:

Firstly, Peter’s experience mirrors the experience of many of us in faith communities, whether clergy or lay people.  We have worked really hard and tried to be faithful and yet sometimes things just don’t seem to work out.  We have tried all the latest programmes and the downward trend continues. And, yet God offers one more thing – launch out into the deep, go toward the horizon, be alert to new possibilities. Don’t give up, be faithful and join your imagination with action that goes beyond mere church survival; that always looks ahead rather than behind.

Like Jeremiah last week, Isaiah, who protests his inadequacy.  “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips”[1] when he sees the vision of God, Peter is similarly overwhelmed and protests his inadequacy. “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He knows his imperfections and he fears that he’s getting in over his head (which he is).  But how does Jesus respond?  Does he command him to repent?  No. Does he say, “Sell all you have and give half to the poor”?  No.    Peter and his friends have painfully explored their own unworthiness and weaknesses.  They are all too aware of their inadequacies and right at this moment of painful self- awareness, Jesus simply says “Follow me” and Peter, James and John join Jesus on the adventure.

Isaiah and Peter alike, all too aware of their weaknesses and imperfection, trust God to use it.  That’s the essence of humility.  We too are called to an essential humility, to own our foibles and fragilities, but to trust that in all the ups and downs of success and failure, God calls us to expect great things and empowers us to be more than we can imagine. 

Secondly, a brief word about language. As we’ve been thinking about fishing this morning, we’ve studiously avoided one inconvenient part of the fishing metaphor – when you catch fish either for livelihood or for leisure, the fish die.[2]  What are we to make of that?  Well, Luke is a great storyteller, and like all great storytellers, chooses his language carefully. When Jesus tells Peter and James and John that from now on, they will be catching people, the verb Luke uses is a combination word.  It combines the Greek words for life and catch.  It was used in connection with catching animals alive for keeping in some protected way - like netting fish for an aquarium.  Brendan Byrne comments that it resonates with a sense of life - it communicates the sense of “capturing”people with the Word and bringing them to a more abundant life of the kingdom of God.[3]  My point is that we too, in our fishing for people, must be similarly careful with the language we employ.

I want to conclude with a short parable: 

There was a group that called themselves The Fisherfolk Club. They started out as a gathering of people who earned their living fishing in the ocean. At first, only real fisherfolk could join. But not wanting to be selfish, and because they had nice facilities that needed to be paid for, they invited others to come in too.

In the club headquarters there were fish symbols galore, hooks, nets, floats and rods. All the members of the club, even those who were not fishers, wore old hats with lures stuck in them and tall wading boots which got quite uncomfortable on warm days. But they were proud to be fishers and so never took them off.

They had a well-stocked library of books about fishing. And several times a year they ran seminars at which world-renounced fishers were invited to come and deliver learned lectures. All the talk and all the activities of the club centred around fishing, but as the years went by, fewer and fewer of the members actually went out fishing.

Then one day, the club had a new member. They had not had a new member for some time, so this was an interesting experience. And the new member asked an interesting question. “When do you go fishing?”

Well, it turned out that members of The Fisherfolk Club had never caught a fish. In fact, they had never actually seen a live fish. And the idea that they should go out there in a boat or wade into the water came as quite a shock to them.

They had long meetings on the subject and finally came to the conclusion that the new member would have to leave. The new member obviously knew very little about what it really meant to be a member of The Fisherfolk Club.

© The Rev’d WD Crossman

 

[1] Isaiah 6:5

[2] I acknowledge that some sports fishermen and women release the fish they’ve caught.

[3] Brendan Byrne The Hospitality of God – A Reading of Luke’s Gospel Liturgical Press Collegeville Minnesota 2015 p67

We meet to worship on custodial land of the oldest living civilisation in the world. We pay our respects to both the Jagera and the Turrbal people and their Elders, past, present and emerging, for they hold the hopes, dreams, traditions and cultures of Aboriginal Australia. We acknowledge and respect their spiritual connection to country and their stewardship of the land that now sustains us all. We pray for ongoing reconciliation for all who call Australia home.