St George's East Ivanhoe Website

Each Friday morning I rise early around 5.45am to go walking for an hour or two with a long time friend. Following our walk, and after we have discussed our medical issues then every subject under the sun including ethics, politics, religions and family are discussed and canvassed. Then we have breakfast at the North Rd Café. Our normal meal is poached eggs and bacon. Only one of us orders bacon and we share the serve. Then we often sit back, enjoy our coffee, and comment on the other walkers trying to think what work they did and whether they have also retired?

While our political views are very similar, although I am not as rosy eyed as he often is, and he probably thinks the same of me, we discuss the major ethical issues confronting and challenging our community life and what we believe have been the traditional views of the Australia we grew up in the post second world. These include, resilience, perseverance, tolerance, a fair go for all and a shared sense of tolerance for difference. We often end our walk describing ourselves as grumpy old men.

My friend is not a Christian, he would say atheist, I would say agnostic. He trained as a Christian minister in another tradition however he left the church and faith many years ago and has worked as a social worker, advocate and strong champion for the disposed and in particular older Australians.

Most of my friends no longer attend Church or practice their faith, but like my walking mate are honorable, trustworthy and compassionate people. I suspect some if not all of you here today would have similar experiences. Despite the negativity of the media along with the concerning behavior of some people there are “Lots of good and honorable people “. Many like my friends have a strong Christian /Church upbringing, but no longer see the need for the Church of for God. We would call them cradle Christians baptized as an infant and received the Church-leaving certificate at Confirmation or their teen years.

On the other hand, we are also seeing many who claim to be Christian blurring the lines on ethics and justice for ideological reasons, poor Christian understanding and self- interest, whether it be in the area of personal ethics, public service or the use of parliamentary privilege and benefits.

The 10 commandments as we read this morning from Exodus is one of three covenant stories we have been reading on Sundays over the past three weeks. They are not to be understood as many have in the past as simply a list of rules but rather a formula or strategy, an ideal, whereby God seeks an enduring relationship with the Israelites and the coming Kingdom or community of God. It is an invitation to be God’s people. If you wish, to live close to God the Israelites were to live compatible lives reflecting the very nature of God. God first,, others second and possessions least. As I said in my letter in this weeks bulletin this presents us somewhat of a challenge in today’s post enlightenment and postmodern world.

Henry Warnsbrough, leading catholic biblical scholar says we need to reflect and think on the 10 commandments not as prohibitions but as expressing positive values and understood as the basis of an ethical framework for enlivening and enlightening our search and journey to become fully human created in the image of God. So he sees ‘Keeping the Sabbath” implies freedom of worship and freedom of Leisure. I may have told you about by my first altercation with the Vicar of my parish around sport on Sunday.

Honour your parents, includes not only obedience of children, but real parental care for children, and of adult children for aged parents as well as other family values. I love reminding my children they will need to look after Judi and I in our doddering years.

No adultery, means fostering marriage and relationship bonds and yes no playing around.

No false evidence includes the right to free speech, innocent till proven guilty and a good reputation, free of slander, no brain washing or distortions by school systems or the media.

Similar laws can be found in other ancient law codes and religious traditions but to the people of Israel, as they are for us, they are a guide a pointer, an ideal to build God’s kingdom on earth both now and in the future. They are to help us define a common humanity based on trust and love.

The challenge for us is to ask ourselves the questions are these laws still relevant for us? The answer is yes, but the challenge is how.

Our rule of law is deeply ingrained in the Judaic /Christian tradition although not practiced as preached. The assumption of innocent until proven guilty often compromised or minimized by all forms of media, including Facebook and Twitter. False news abounds and racist, violent and abusive comments appear increasingly normal. Each day the laws of our nation are challenged, violated or ignored to address a particular cause or to satisfy the demands of a special interest group.

During Lent on Wednesday morning we are reading from Luke’s sermon on the Plain. Luke’s Jesus says love your enemies, if one takes your jacket give them your shirt, love your enemies, give to everyone who begs from you, if one strikes you give them the other cheek and on he goes. I wonder what sort of society we would have if we really lived according to the commandments and the teaching of Jesus.

In your own mind is any of the 10 commandments more important than the others. How about “thou shalt not murder”. How is this interpreted in war, or the aborting of an unborn child, or the right to take your own life?

I do not have any absolute answer to these questions challenging our community life or any simple,” you must or you must not”, other than to say that our freedom as human beings is not absolute. Individuals or nations for that matter cannot live without consequences for their actions .The human condition as is the whole of creation is rather about relationships, social cohesion, stewardship of resources, compassion, and for the Christian our faith, hope and trust in God.

The challenge for us is not to trivialize, abandon, or ignore the 10 commandments but rather to embrace and connect with them in a vastly different time and world of today.

As the journey to Jerusalem continues the cross and the suffering cross looms before us showing us that in Christ’s loving acts of service and concern for the other we are challenged to rise above a rigid and legalistic interpretation of the Law but rather a society that the commandments envision, respects boundaries and affirms relationships as central to loving God and your neighbour.

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Bulletin for 4th March 2018

 

When was the last time you heard or read a sermon on the subject of death? It is not the subject of dinner party conversation normally, unless it is in the context of a mass killing, like the recent one in the United States, one of many gun killings over the past twelve months. As a priest one is privileged to be part of conversations on death, the rituals associated with celebrating one’s life and the committal of our earthly remains to God. On such occasions I remind those gathered to share and celebrate in the life of the deceased that from love we come and to love we return.

In today’s Gospel Mark presents the human and divine aspects of Jesus’ natures. He is fully incarnate, mortal and immortal. He is also living in the shadow of death. Jesus is not immune from physical death. He teaches his disciples that he will certainly die and his death will include suffering and in the same breath he will rise again.

We Christians are at times at pain not to talk about the crucifixion but instead race to the resurrection of Jesus. Understandably it provides comfort. The season of Lent bids us to sit at the foot of the cross and in the shadow of the one who gives all for the other, that is both you and I. Today’s Gospel reminds us that we are called to live our lives, to journey, to share in the joys and pains of life in the full knowledge that from God we come and to God we return. This is the promise of the resurrection and to live in this knowledge is not only comforting but also human.

Shalom

Ray

Second Sunday in Lent. 25^th February 2018

Genesis 17:1-7,15,16

Roman’s 4:13-25

Mark 8; 31-38

“If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.

Like death, suffering is not a subject that normally brings great joy to our lives, or we take lightly, or fully understand. It remains one of the mysteries of life. The subject is not common dinner party conversation and although Christians for many generations have endeavoured to explain the place of suffering and the end of our physical life in a meaningful way the success I believe has only been minimal.

Over the last week I have had a number of occasions to speak about our earthly mortality {death} to individuals facing life defining surgery, talking with them about their fears, hopes and joys of their lives. The second occasion by my attendance at a funeral on Friday for a woman over the age of 90 who was a member of the parish in which I grew up. She was a woman of immense faith that survived many crises in her parish over the 20 years of her membership. She virtually never moved from Richmond and she hoped, as she told the vicar that heaven would be like her beloved Richmond and family.

The presence of death and suffering seems contradictory to the Christian claim of a God of justice and goodness, an all-powerful God who created the world. As the actor Stephen Fry said a number of years ago and he is not the only one, how could one believe in a God who allows so much suffering in the world? Why does a healthy young man die of a melanoma, or a newborn baby contract a life threatening illness? Watching a loved one die of a debilitating or degenerative disease is difficult to understand. Likewise we struggle when we see on our televisions the faces of children dying, of preventable diseases and hunger, of war games by the powerful and yet we seem powerless to intervene and respond. Where is God we ask? The life experiences of millions of people seem contrary to God’s benevolence and justice. Perhaps part of the answer lies in our understanding of the term all powerful God. The book of Genesis reminds us that out of Love God created the heavens and the earth and this is the same love that set free humanity with free will to live life to the fullest. How much of our suffering then is a result of our brokenness and separation from God?

The death of a child is vastly different from the death of a 90-year-old parent who has lived life to the fullest. The suffering being inflicted upon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of freedom remains tragic.

There have been times in the history of the Church when the presence of suffering has been explained as divine punishment. Today thankfully such views are rejected by mainstream and enlightened Christians and churches and only expressed by what I call the “ Fringe”, largely fundamentalist Christians who fail to understand Divine love. . Such comments should be challenged vigorously. Yet the presence of suffering remains and its place within the creation a challenge for both people of faith and those with non. Often we feel naked with nothing or little to offer in answering such a profound question as suffering.

Suffering in scripture is not unknown or uncommon. The book of Job recounts the story of Job, an upright and just person before God, who is inflicted with a range of terrible diseases, and despite the encouragement of his friends to outrage against God and to accept the punishment because of his own actions, Job remains faithful and obedient, while trying to understand the reasons he has been so inflicted.

Job struggled with his affliction- he struggled with God and the meaning of life that included suffering. Suffering which he could not explain and seemed contradictory. Likewise the Disciples in today’s gospel did not listen. Suffering associated with discipleship was not what they wanted to hear.

Stephen Ames, a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne and scholar has written about the presence of evil and suffering in the world as a necessary part of God’s creative act of love, finally to be understood in the time of God. Our world could not be our world without the presence of suffering and evil as a consequence of God’s giving over to human kind the creation. From God’s love we come and to God’s love we return.

In today’s Gospel we have three themes. The theme of listening, the theme of listening and not always getting it right and the theme of not liking what we hear. In this case words of suffering. Peter did not like what Jesus had to tell them. If the truth is known none of the disciples were too keen on what was said. Peter named the fear and then proceeded to correct Jesus on his mission. Peter was bold. He spoke what the others thought. The disciples had not signed on as followers of Jesus to see him die. Peter was sure Jesus was wrong. They had not signed on to place their own lives at risk of death, beatings or imprisonment. When Jesus responds to Peter you can sense their surprise, even bewilderment on their faces. This was not their plan. They were planning a revolution to overthrow the rule of the Romans in Judea. As one reads the words of Jesus it is hard to not over emphasis the critical importance of today’s Gospel and the questions it raises for those who seek to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Mark does not portray Jesus as some sentimental wishy-washy messiah, but rather a radical and even subversive bearer of God’s dream and hope for the creation. Jesus knows what is a head. He knows evil exists in the world and that the powers to be of the day will do everything possible to stop him.. To have faith in the promises of God, although at odds with the agenda of the world, takes courage and ridicule and suffering. Jesus felt his humanity at this time, his fear and even ambivalence, but also understood his calling as the Gospel’s record. .

As I said earlier, on Friday I attended the funeral of a woman in her 90’s, the salt, glue and heart of her parish. A parish that had been through many ups and downs, challenges and even scandals over the 70 years she had been a member and worshipped Sunday by Sunday during all these occasions. During all these parish difficulties her faith remained intact and grew to embrace difference in her community along side the importance of family friends and relationships. She was an inspiration to others and her God was present in all her ways. On receiving the last rites of the Church she said in her quiet way her readiness to meet her God. She only hoped there was a bit of her parish in heaven. She did not fear death but embraced it as the next part of journey.

In his response to Peter in today’s Gospel Jesus challenges public opinion about himself as a miracle man and healer. All along the disciples fail to understand or have any real insight as to the mission of Jesus. This same lack of insight surfaces again in the gospel passage which follows {the alternate Gospel reading for today} Jesus journey’s with Peter, James and John to the mountain top where for a brief moment together they have a magical moment, a foretaste as the disciples understand it as what life should be about and they want to keep it for ever. A moment of euphoria for them . Jesus however has other ideas and they come down from the mountaintop and he goes about healing and teaching among the people, upsetting the religious and the political leaders of the day. He has commenced the journey to Jerusalem and he understands in his own heart and mind what the disciples cannot grasp for themselves -that he will experience great suffering before finally being vindicated by God. The same theme is present in what we have read this morning and marks the turning point in Mark’s Jesus. This whole scene makes sense when viewed in the context in which the account is told. Through most of the earlier parts of the gospel, the focus is on the activities of Jesus evidenced by his healing and engagement of others than the Jewish people. All this begins to rile the authorities. All along the disciples show little insight to what is happening and being said. They see and hear but do not understand.

Peter voices the concern. He was aware of the objections growing against Jesus. I suggest he saw the implication of what Jesus was now expressing while his own hopes for a messiah were different. Suffering and rejection were contrary to his plans and the words of Jesus at odds to the liberation they hoped for. His mind was elsewhere. He now begins to see the future through a different lens one fraught with danger. He even I suggest perceives that the journey Jesus was embarking upon was of “divine necessity”. Jesus responds to Peter with a different perspective, a divine perspective and not the logical and rational approach of common sense. The journey ahead will involve risk and suffering. It is a necessary track for it leads to resurrection and hope for all humanity.

In the lead up to today’s Gospel Jesus had taught his disciples many things- but like them unless we hear the challenging and confronting words we fail to hear the fullness of our mission. Too many Christians want to wrap Jesus up in cellophane, or carry him around in a box under our arms and bring him out when we need him. Others want to dumb down the demands of the Gospel message to being nice, avoiding conflict and do not challenge. Yes all of these are important but not sufficient.

The biggest challenge we face as a church and as individuals is not to be subverted by the culture of which we are part and not to aspire to wealth, status and power or be caught up in unsavoury and rescue actions.

To live according to the cross demands sacrifice, making friends with you enemy, welcoming asylum seekers and refuges, being a strong voice for the powerless.

Lent is a time for “metonia”- rethinking the way we look at God, how we understand the world and the way to understand our discipleship.

On Ash Wednesday we were marked and confronted with the sign of the cross and our own mortality. “ Remember from dust you were born and to dust you will return”..

Today Jesus speaks with authority and we are called to respond not as bystanders or passive recipients but as living water.

The cross of Christ is the sign of God’s ultimate justice and love for all humanity. Jesus Son of God shared our human life embracing the brokenness and pain of humanity, so that we can gain a moment with God, a glimpse of God and the eternal presence.

May we be like those who give thanks to God for their life knowing that from the love of God we come and to love we return.

Amen

The season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday.

The Christian tradition has always taught that spiritual growth and development involves prayer, study and work. As with many things in life it is important that from time to time we review, take stock and reflect on who we are and our responsibility and place in God’s creation.

The season also provides us as a community of faith the time for repentance and recreation. One of the differences it seems to me at the present time between those of Christian faith and the wider secular world is the notion that we are the forgiven and yet broken people of God. The Christian understanding of justice in our community is not about revenge or punishment but about forgiveness and restoration.

This is not to say that people should not make amends for crime or mistakes. It is often I know difficult to reconcile the act of a crime and justice for the victim, but it is not helpful when political and community leaders seek to raise fear among the populace, ignore facts and fail to understand the importance of rehabilitation and treatment for offenders and long term social cohesion in our life together.Jesus the victim of our brokenness is the one who forgives and provides the model for our life together.

During this season of Lent it is my prayer and hope that you will avail yourself of the Sunday Taize meditations, the Wednesday Eucharist’s and the reading of Mark’s Gospel as your Lenten discipline.

Shalom Ray

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ST George’s Ivanhoe Easy

LENT 1

18^th February 2018

When I was a teenager a few years ago now I experienced Lent as a time of endurance, a sombre period that one had to “bare and grind ones teeth over” rather than as a time for reflection, recreation, repentance and preparation for the Feast of the Resurrection we celebrate on Easter Day, by the way not Easter Sunday. The themes of fasting, prayer and repentance were more of a hindrance than help. They were always framed in the negative and often sent me on a guilt trip. I know I was not alone and many people who have abandoned faith speak about a guilt psychosis bordering on spiritual abuse brought about by the way faith was presented and taught. AS we have been reading from Mark’s Gospel we learn that the teaching of Jesus embraced challenge, openness and listening not manipulation and pressure. Over the years my understanding of God has changed dramatically from my teenage years, and even further since ordination. I understand increasingly the message of the Gospels as good news seeking to liberate us from the shackles we bind around ourselves and the false senses of security we create for self-protection. As I said on Ash Wednesday Lent is a time to reaffirm that the God of the Christian faith is not some far off spectator, running the world on miracles, nor the old man and distant God of the views of Philip Adams, Christopher Hitchin Richard Dawkins and the like{ I would not believe in a God they describe} but rather the God who experienced the humiliation of rejection and death at the hands of those he loved and cared about, and came to be with. Lent is a time to remind ourselves that God is not a genie in a bottle that we let out from time to time to suit our own needs but the one who was the victim of those who plotted to kill him, experiencing a vile and excruciating death.

I am pleased that over the years the emphasis of the season of Lent has shifted and while the themes of prayer, fasting and repentance are still central to the churches observance, the wallowing, in guilt, in our sin, has shifted ground to an understanding that encourages and stimulates us to think about new opportunities for us to know the loving nature of God’s being and the ache God feels when we are separated from the experience of Divine love.

The first two Sundays in Lent call us to focus on God who answers our insecurity and anxiety if only we will embrace his offer. Where did the world come from

One of my favourite authors is Philip Yancey a Christian from the evangelical tradition in the United States who writes about his experiences as a Christian pastor. In his book titled “Soul Survivor, How my faith survived the Church” he tells the stories of some well known individual Christians and their early experiences of church life including those of Martin Luther King, GK Chesterton, Dr Paul Brand, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Ghandi, John Donne and Henry Nouwen. Each of them have been bruised and scared from their relationship with the Church and their involvement in the community of faith, yet each has sustained a search and journey with ”the hope “of gaining a “glimpse of God,” free of the paraphernalia and dogmas so often associated with Christian belief and practice.

The book is without doubt very much about Philip Yancey’s own bruising, faith journey and brokenness, recognised in part through the struggles of others. He speaks about the abuses hurled at Ghandi and his family, the struggles of Martin Luther King with his own church, his infidelity, his vulnerability, his long absences from home, and the threats to his life. He describes how King was “demonized” by large sections of the Church who believed that “whites were meant to rule over blacks”.

In the last Chapter of his book he tells the story of the life of Henry Nouwen, “the wounded healer”. Nouwen a distinguished theologian and teacher priest struggled throughout his life with the image of himself as the responsible and obedient older brother. He describes the expectations of others on him and the sense in which he is held in esteem for his theological insights, his skill and his personality-and he struggles with the responsibility of being the older obedient brother, an image I suspect lingers not far from the surface in may of us. Throughout his life Nouwen struggles with depression, a crisis of sexual identity and loneliness. People respond to him for what he can offer to them but few recognise his own needs and feelings. He loves the Church for its potential and hope, yet despairs of its lack of pastoral sensitivity and at times ignorance and arrogance.{I should add that during my own ministry I have often encountered similar stories }

During my time as CEO of Anglicare Victoria I was privy to stories of hurt and abuse that people spoke about in their relationship with the church. A refusal to marry, baptize and conduct funerals were common experiences, not to mention violence. Many spoke about their wilderness experiences of being lost, challenged and alienated when a marriage or relationship breakdown occurred and stopped attending Church.

All of those Yancey wrote about suggests that the temptation at times must have been great to leave the Church and faith yet they have all remained faithful during times of testing and doubt. They saw beyond the glitter and tinsel of life to what really counts. What I describe as the great Christian narrative of redemption.

Both Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness unlike mark with few details are rich in images and ideals. Places of wilderness have grown in significance and importance in recent years as the “Greenies” and other environmentalists have reminded us of the importance of wilderness space for the health of our community. In recent years the church itself has rethought the place of the environment in creating and sustaining God’s kingdom. In Australia we have rediscovered the devastation that we have caused to our forests, our deserts and our waterways in recent years with growing concern about the change in climate and the impact it has on communities.

We have also re-discovered the place of wilderness as a place of solace, a place of inspiration, a place for reflection and essential for the health of our community.

I think it not ironic then that Jesus goes into the wilderness, living off what nature provides, almost an idealistic paradisiacal picture ministered to by Angels, locusts and wild honey. But it is also a time of challenge to his purpose and mission.

Before suggesting as some may that this is naïve idealism (I hope you suppress that thought) let’s at least reflect on how the wilderness space in itself becomes an alternative place for Jesus to engage with his God and to accept his mission. Picture this engagement of Jesus as having this kind of alternative or protest element to it. His abandonment of home and possessions, his questioning of family, and the priorities he set for himself in his engagement with the outcasts and sinners challenges much of what we would regard as normal and acceptable in our community today.

Jesus then lives the lifestyle of an itinerant journeyman. Here from the very beginning of his mission, we gain a glimpse that Jesus is protesting against the norms of the day, including lifestyle questions and issues. Alone and in exile he wrestles with himself as we so often do and with the options available to him. Here as Jesus puts himself to the test, we can see the connection with the story of Moses and the testing of the Hebrew people. The outcome for both is food or manna from God. As the story infolds, Jesus rejects compromising the will of God by his refusal of seduction by the powers of darkness contrary to God’s dream.

Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggerman, in his works entitled, “The Prophetic Imagination” sees exile and wilderness as the place and voice of hope.

If we think for a moment so often what we see as barren has much potential. Exile, Bruggerman says, is a time for discovery or rediscovery of the great Christian noble vision and it may be that we in the church at this time are in a place of wilderness, as we grapple with the coming and building of the Kingdom of God. Bruggerman says:

that the loss of the authority and dynasty and temple in Jerusalem is analogous to the loss of certainty, dominance and legitimacy in or own time.

Like Jesus a wilderness experience can provide us with the space and opportunity to rethink and even test our faith. It provides us with the opportunity to move from the centre, one of safety to the edge. Jesus knew he was moving away from the centre when he declared his mission to be God’s mission discovering true power and authority not as the world defines it but in a ministry of servant hood and being for the other.

Lent is a time to sort out and evaluate our priorities, to reaffirm our discipleship and to imagine what life could be like without money, power and control. Matthew is making an important yet simple theological point about the identity of Jesus. It is that in Jesus we meet God, who is not remote from us but shares our life and in that sharing redeems it. Like Ghandi, King and Nouwen he experienced exposure to the brokenness of the creation and yet remained Faithfull and committed to building God’s Kingdom.

During this Lent we are invited to be more than spectators to the drama that is to unfold. We are invited, even challenged to be active participants and to remember to do the right thing we also are tempted. By our deeds the Kingdom of God is known.

May this Lent be a time of recreation in your spiritual and community life?

Amen

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Bulletin for 18th February 2018