Past Sermons preached by
Bishop John Bayton AM

Presentation of Christ

5^th February 2006

Without apology I remind myself and you my friends yet once more of our need to interrogate the Scriptures at four levels of comprehension – the literal level, the moral level the allegorical or metaphorical level and the spiritual level.

Of the four Gospels, perhaps Saint Luke being a ‘gentile’ and not having come out of a Hebrew background, is closest to our own cultural imagination. As he himself informs us he sits down to write his gospel and has in front of him a large body or earlier writings - “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand….” - and so is able to edit earlier material in the context of deep theological reflection and present us with a beautiful structured Gospel.

He draws a comparison between two annunciations – to Zechariah and Elizabeth, John’s parents, and Mary. John the Baptist is conceived in the old age of his parents. Jesus is conceived virginally. “With God, nothing shall be impossible” – two ways.

He brings the two expectant mothers together to show which is the greater and in this exchange – the visitation at Ein Kerem – we have the first example in history of pre-natal awareness. “At the sound of your voice the babe in my womb leaped for joy”. And in this exchange we are challenged to consider our (contemporary) attitude to when viable life begins. And our attitude to abortion.

Truth is not ultimately subject to my intellect. Outside the text of this sermon may I say we don’t have to defend religion by proving everything. We believe not by reason but because of the deeper mystery revealed.

Categories beyond our experience to describe lie in the area of faith. As I consider many of the present day commentaries on the Christian faith made by radio and TV gurus I conclude it is a great danger in eliminating mystery from religion.

Compare the two births- John and Jesus. In both accounts Luke refers to the ‘eighth day’ . Then follows detailed birth of Jesus and the point to which our liturgy moves today. The old passes away, the new has arrived.

Narrative becomes the vehicle for proclamation. The story becomes the vehicle for telling out the Good News of salvation – GOD IS WITH US. Nothing less. This is the heart of the proclamation of the Church . It was for Luke, it is for us. No matter in what circumstance of life we find ourselves, God is with us.
And all before Jesus has uttered a single word. This is the powerful theme of the Christian myth. Jesus the unspeaking Child ushers in the new Age. (So much for ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’)
And it is in the Virgin Mary that we find the fulfilment of the faith of all the great women of the First Testament – Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, , Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Jael, Judith and all those in the line of Christian believers who point to the role of women in salvation history.

For Luke the City of Jerusalem and the Temple loom large. He always situates his story in real places in the real history of known people. Read Chapter 3 of his Gospel where he sets the scene for Jesus ministry – In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was Governor of Judea, Herod Tetrach of Galilee, Philip tetrarch of Abilene….during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…..”

This is not P.D.James or the author of Harry Potter’s exploits, but Saint Luke. Narrative becomes proclamation. That fourth level of comprehension And the signs to which he alludes in the infancy narratives come straight from the Book of Wisdom (Wisdom 7 v 4-5) – signs of a new Davidic king. The sign of the Ox and the Ass of Isaiah 1 v 2-3. where the prophet bewails the hard-headedness of the people of Israel. Luke reverses this tragedy when he placed the Ox and the Ass in the stable at Bethlehem.

At the end of the Barley Harvest ( End of September early October) at the time when shepherds bring their flocks in from the desert to glean the stubble left by the reapers and to provide fertiliser for the following year, and thus engaging in a symbiosis –

shepherds and farmers (remember Cain and Abel – ad lib) before the onset of the northern hemispheres winter, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Or was it in Nazareth?

On the eighth day Jesus was circumcised and thus made a member of the Chosen Race, all in accordance with the Law of Moses. Mary then began her period of purification (again according to the Law see Leviticus 12 v 2-8) When he was one month old Mary and Joseph took him to Jerusalem and again according to the Law (Exodus 13 v 1-2) he was redeemed by an offering of five shekels (Num 3 v 47-48) . Luke does not mention this but says two turtle doves or two young pigeons were offered for Mary’s redemption. Here we have echoes of the presentation of the little boy Samuel (1Sam 1 v22-24 when of course there was no Temple in Jerusalem) and of the prophet Malachi “The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his Temple… vide Handel). Saint Luke’s use of the Greek word Hierosolyma - Holy Salem or Holy Space interests me no end because of the architectural device mandorla the intersection of two circles one representing the outer world and the other representing the inner world. More of that another time.

Jesus comes to fulfil the Torah and to the sacred space of the centre of the entire cosmos in order to fulfil all righteousness. The only begotten Son of God presented in the Temple as the firstborn of all creation.

For the front of today’s pew sheet I have drawn an icon in the traditional Byzantine style of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Let us look at it and examine it for a few moments. There are four figures in it symbol of perfection. The old man Simeon whose name means “God has heard”. Simeon’s Nunc Dimitis is one of Luke’s most beautiful poems. Let us read it together – on page 11 of APBA.

Simeon is the one who holds the Christ Child. Simeon is not a priest, he is what we would call a ‘layman’. Why is sit that the Christ Child should be presented to a layman. Very profound stuff here! Saint Luke says of him that he was ‘righteous and devout’. What role did he have in the cult of the Temple ? We do not know, but he was obviously there on that day at the will of God for this purpose.

The eighty-four year old prophetess Anna whose name means ‘Grace’, ‘Favour’, daughter of Phanuel of the Tribe of Asher, symbolising the patient waiting for the Lord.

By holding together these two old people St Luke seems to be saying that God needs, requires, desires, in fact demands the unity of the masculine and the feminine in his plan for the salvation of the world. Remember Elizabeth and Zechariah ? Man and woman have the same gifts and the same measure of responsibility before God. Joseph holding in his hands two young pigeons which seem to be willing sacrifices. And Mary. Theotokos. She who bears God to the world.

The Old Testament – the Pentateuch, the history books, the prophecies, the wisdom literature are equally grist to the mill with the earliest Christian authors for Luke. All hold reference to the Presentation. Which is beyond human understanding.

Today, once more we are caught up in the “Never Ending Story”. Not simply narrative, but proclamation of the Good news that “nothing in the entire universe will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

The Conversion of Saint Paul

29^th January 2006

The village of Gish in Northern Galilee lies on the Via Maris – The Way of the Sea on the ancient trade route from Egypt Damascus and thence to Mesopotamia. At the time of the Exodus God’s Yahweh told Moses not to go that way, so they stumbled their way around Sinai and the Wilderness of Tzin and settled at Jabesh Gilead for 38 years where they seem to have forgotten everything Moses had ever taught them. Gish today is Christian Arab territory, the people predominantly Maronite. [I had the privilege of painting an Icon of St Maroun for the Church there in 1996]. Not far away lie the ruins of the first century city of Gamla where Josephus the Jewish General fell off his horse in battle and rather than commit suicide like his fellow officers, defected to the Roman Legion and went on (as you well know) to be the great historian of the Jewish people, name change and all - Flavius Josephus. Gamla is a magic place with steep cliffs where eagles, kites and vultures soar as easily as 21^st century para-gliders. There are Dolmens there, strange pre-historic stone altar-like edifices which mark the entrance to the Underworld, like Hawthorn bushes, so it is said. Graves? Altars of sacrifice? Who knows.

Nearby, on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus is the Crusader fortress known as Nimrod’s Castle. Further up the road is Druze country where men wear baggy trousers like oversized babies napkins, designed to catch their Messiah whom the prophets say will be born of a man.

The locals say that the man we know as ‘Saul of Tarsus’ was in fact born in the village of Gish and it is here that, on his way to persecute the early Christian Church he, like Josephus fell off his horse at the sight and sound of the true Messiah – Christ.

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, Lord?” [Every Jew answers a question by asking another question, as you know.] “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting”. I AM. The first of his seven great post resurrection “I AM’s”. (Do you remember the seven great “ I AM’s”of the Gospels? [The Door. The True Vine. The Good Shepherd. The Light of the Cosmos. The Bread of Life. The Resurrection and the Life. The Way the Truth the Life.]

Saul is led blind into Damascus to the house of Judas where a disciple, Ananias by name laid hands upon him healed him and baptized him. [Luke records this conversion in Acts Chapter 9] Paul himself tells his own story but does not speak of the ‘Damascus road’ experience Galatians 2 v 13 + It is certainly worth reading both passages and comparing them. Paul himself speaks of his early ministry not in terms of weeks but in terms of years, first his three years in Syria and Cilicia where not even the disciples knew who he was and then fourteen years later when he went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus. In this passage (Gal 2 v 4) we have the seeds of the earliest division in the Church. As a result of this Peter James and John were to be apostles to those under the Law and Paul and Barnabas Apostles to the Gentiles. Nasty stuff, insincere disciples, much bad feeling between Peter and Paul. Do read it.

Here in contrast with what Luke writes, that Saul went immediately to preach the Gospel, Paul himself gives himself three years of theological reflection and fourteen years before he meets up with those who had known Jesus from the beginning – Peter James and John to whom he refers “reputed to be pillars of the Church”. He also refers to Jesus own brother James of whom he says Peter was afraid. Read Galatians 2 v 14 where Paul accuses them all of hypocrisy.

What’s new in the Church ???

Now, who is this Saul of Tarsus who has become the Apostle Paul. Saint Paul. First he must have been a man of some influence and substance to demand of the High Priest letters to give him the authority to persecute the Christians of Damascus. Had he in fact known Jesus. Almost every scholar I have read says ‘No, he never knew Jesus; no he never saw Jesus.” We will look at that in a moment.

Paul is by his own voice a Pharisee born into the tribe of Benjamin. He is also a tentmaker. He is the person responsible for the stoning to death of Stephen the first Christian martyr. He is the person obviously known to the High Priest for he goes to him and asks for letters to persecute the Damascene Christians. Why would the High Priest send a scholarly Pharisee to Damascus anyway. Unless of course that scholarly Pharisee were a high ranking policeman with trade friends amongst the Roman Quartermasters.

“Who are you Lord? “I am Jesus (remember me? In the Garden of Gethsemane?).Surprise surprise? No shock. Horror. No wonder the sight of Jesus “whom you are persecuting” blinded him and left him with a sight impairment for the rest of his life too. No wonder he did not want to see anyone for three years. No wonder he did not want to confront Peter James and John for seventeen years.

As we consider these things another question arises. Why would the Jerusalem priests want to kill him and why, he being a devout Pharisee would appeal to Caesar for Justice unless he really understood first hand what had happened to Jesus when He was brought before the Court of Rome under Pontius Pilate.

And here is a puzzlement. Most scholars say that Paul had never seen Jesus in his lifetime. But what does Paul himself say about this? ? “Yes even though we have known Christ ‘after the flesh –ei kai egnokamen kata sarka - 2 Cor 5 v 16 – yet from here on we know him no more. (my own translation). Or as the RSV puts it – “even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view we regard him thus no longer”. Ambiguous but do think about it. This mysterious passage says to me that the words “after the flesh” mean, or at least imply that Saul had actually known Jesus before the death-resurrection.

Why on earth would the High Priest being an aristocratic Sadducee possibly have anything to do with a Pharisee unless of course this particular Pharisee held some position of authority in Judaism, such as e.g the role of Inspector of Police. In which case was Saul of Tarsus there in the Garden of Gethsemane when the ‘temple police’ arrested Jesus. As we consider his role in the martyrdom of Stephen it is possible. Tentmaker? Of what material were tents of the 1^st c AD made? Animal hides. Particularly sheep skins. As at the present day when all Bedouin tents are made of sheep skin walls and goat hair roofs. At the time of Jesus 20,000 sheep were slaughtered at the Feast of Passover alone. That’s a fair trade in tents. And who would have been the largest purchaser of such tents? The Romans.

You have hard me say (many times) that everything in the whole of creation evolves. That includes holy scripture. Matthew’s Gospel written “some time before 70AD” gives us an account of the Last Supper with the words of institution. (Matt 26 v 26) Mark, written about 55AD gives us an abbreviated form (Mk14 v 22. Luke, written 59-63AD (Lk 22 v 19) gives us two cups the first after Grace and the second after the supper itself. John does not mention the Institution at all. He is writing his gospel to those who were living the Eucharistic life and therefore were well acquainted with the words of Institution.

Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians at the end of his stay in Ephesus, that is about 55AD. Admonishing the Corinthians for disparaging the Lord’s Supper. So he is writing IN the history of the Eucharist, not ABOUT it.

Yet Paul is not a bit concerned about the birth, life and ministry of the Lord. He tells it as it has been revealed to him by Christ. When was that ? As we seriously consider the evolution of scripture, Paul’s ‘revelation’ seems to have been granted before any of the Gospels were in fact written down.. Which raises for me the question, ‘did the evangelists have access to Paul’s manuscripts?” Pure conjecture you say? That’s OK by me. My desire is to encourage you to study the scriptures for yourselves and critically examine all the events literally, morally, allegorically and spiritually.

All this of course raises the question about the nature of Paul’s Conversion and what the Lord actually revealed to him. In an instant or over a period of time.[It is said that a drowning person ‘sees’ their entire life in a moment of time].

For me, the Conversion of Saul of Tarsus was (as it were) the end of a whole host of incidents that led up to it – Saul the Temple Inspector of Police with direct personal access to the High Priest. Saul with the Temple Police at the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Saul, Stephen’s executioner listening to the martyrs recitation of God’s plan for salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Saul persecutor of the early Christians suddenly confronted with the Truth. And having the humility to ‘repent’.

From his own words we learn that after his sight had been restored he took himself off to Arabia (Petra?) for three years and then, went about his own ministry for fourteen years before he even met with Peter James and John. From this we learn of the need for us all, after every traumatic, dramatic or novel occasion in our own lives to withdraw in order to reflect on what is really happening. For that is what it is about. Not “What’s going on here”, but “what is really happening”. We are to live lives of reflection, not ‘action and reaction’ as is happening in Jerusalem right now. Nothing is to be gained by unthought reaction.

From Paul we learn many wonderful and exciting things. (1) this life is not simply a preparation for a better life. Paul recognised his own need to be faithful in this life.

(2) The Lord who calls us by our baptism is himself faithful. He will never forsake us.

(3) If Christ is not raised from the dead then we, of all people are the most to be pitied. But he is persuaded that “nothing in the entire universe is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

4. If we truly live the life of Christ then we will be persecuted for it. From the life of Christ I learn that everything in my life that is good and true and noble and just will be crucified. Everything in my life that is good and true and noble and just will be raised up on the last day.

Paul’s majestic poetry – in Corinthians, in Galatians, in Ephesians in Philippians is written “for our learning”- about the life that ended in his own martyrdom. Yet he can say in his last letter to Timothy (2 Tim 4 v 7), “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will give m on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearing”.

Epiphany 3 - God’s Environment

22^nd January 2006

Jonah 3 v 10 “And when God saw that they repented of their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”

On Monday morning of last week, just as Anne and her friend Jennifer were leaving for their usual Monday morning walk around Blackburn Lake, two people a man and a woman walked into our front garden. Both carried brief cases and both looked like Jehovah’s Witnesses, which of course they were. I was dressed in a pair of old shorts and a Jerusalem Tee shirt and I was in the midst of pruning rose bushes. They introduced themselves by their ‘Christian’ names and I gave them mine. They said they had come to talk with me about an important matter and I replied by saying, “I guess your important matter is religion” to which they agreed. I then said, “I must tell you, ‘I am an Anglican bishop; I am a professional minister of religion and though I respect your views and your right to hold those views, I do not agree with them – you are Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t you? To which they replied “yes” – I simply cannot agree with you.

We talked on for a bit and they told me that according to the Book of Revelation God was soon to gather up his elect (and I gathered I was not going to be numbered among them), God was going to go to war at Armageddon and all the evil people who did not subscribe to their doctrine would be gathered up and burned in the Lake of fire.

I asked them if they had ever been to Armageddon to which they replied Armageddon was not a place but an event in God’s time. Now I told them that I go regularly to Armageddon – Tel Megiddo Har Meggido in the Jezreel Valley and that it is a mystical place, and like John’s Apocalypse is Poetic. Imaginary. Mythical.

How sad that people still believe in a destructive, capricious, vengeful god

No sooner had the God of the Hebrew Scriptures created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them than he, in the days of Noah wiped it all out. He destroyed his creation by flood because of the evil in the world. Things settle down for a while and then in the days of Abraham God’s Yahweh comes down to have a look at all the baddies in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham argues with him and because in the end he can’t find five honest men God wipes them off the face of the earth.

Then in the days of Moses he drowns the armies of Egypt’s Pharaoh in the Red Sea.

He liberates the Israelites and leads them out into the wilderness for forty years because he cant trust them. In fact at one stage he tells Moses “I am sick and tired of this grumbling mass of humanity; I will destroy them and make of you a great nation”. Moses argues with Yahweh and he relents.

Next God’s Yahweh leads Joshua across the Jordan River into the Land of the Canaanites the Jebusites the Amonites the Hivites the Hittites the Girgashites the Amorites (and the Vegemites) and under direct orders from the Almighty Joshua perpetrates the first holocaust, killing all the men women and children, all beasts and cattle – everything. There is no-one to argue with God over this. Ethnic cleansing.

We move then to the time of the Kings and to God’s hatred of the Philistines. “Wipe them out” cries God.

Then Ezra comes on the scene and under God’s instruction commands the Israelite men to put away their ‘foreign wives’ – racism at its best as the ‘foreign wives and their children’ are sent away in the pouring rain.

Then Job. And the capricious God sends the powers of nature and God’s own enemies to wipe out Job’s family and all that he has in order to win a bet he had placed with Satan.

God, so it seems cares little or nothing for his natural environment or for the human beings he put in charge of it – “subdue the earth…..conquer the planet!!! Use the natural resources of the earth indiscriminately. Man sits over and above the natural environment and is its master.

This theology ruled for countless centuries. Until Jonah. And in the book of Jonah we discover God has moved in hit own thinking about his creation to the point where he actually cares for it – human beings, cattle and even a choko bush.

So we come to Jonah whom God calls to go to Nineveh to tell them “In three days I’m going to destroy the lot of you.” But this time they repent. Here we have communal repentance for the first time. We have witnessed individuals repenting such as David who after that marvellous dialog with Nathan the Prophet is able to say, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nevertheless God lets the little boy die for the sin of his Father and Bath Sheba.

It seems as though God is himself evolving in his awareness of the sacredness of what he has created. Has God had an epiphany? Heresy ? maybe, but it does raise for me the serious and exciting question of ‘The Evolution of Consciousness”.

Does God simply watch unmoved as we, his human creation simply destroys God’s Creation, the natural environment of earth. Or is it inconsequential in the context of the vastness of the cosmos. It wasn’t inconsequential the last time. Last time God stepped into his creation himself and redeemed humanity in the Cross- Resurrection. The Cross-Resurrection however is not simply an event in history, it is the daily experience of God in God’s relation to his creation. On-going.

And it seems to me and there are many pointers to uphold this view, that man, humanity, anthropos is on the way to self-destruction. We have the capacity to destroy what God has redeemed – the whole of creation.

Again it seems to me that as Scripture unfolds notions of human consciousness evolve. Knowledge evolves incrementally. Little by little human consciousness is confronted by mystery. Mystery (as you may have heard me say) is not “that which is hidden” but “That which has yet to be revealed.” Little by little we discover God’s mind for God’s creation.

There is a great question here (for me). Is there a great body of knowledge in the all-knowing mind of the omnipotent God that God releases a little bit at a time? I mean is there somewhere in God’s cyberspace the knowledge of everything that IS. Is it that God chooses to release it a little bit at t time, in accordance with humanity’s ability to receive it and understand it and use it or abuse it.

As I look at my own computer and the ‘world wide web’, and as I plug into it,(the www) it seems to me that almost, if not everything that human beings have ever learned or know about is accessible in cyberspace. But ‘What or Where is cyberspace?.” Is this knowledge finite or does God add to it as God Himself ‘discovers’ more and more about Gods-self. As I interrogate Scripture it seems to me that this is a distinct possibility. And very very exciting.

In Genesis God creates. Then God, incapable of comprehending what he has done, destroys his creation. He sees everything that he has made to be good yet he curses it.

Scripture unfolds in this way until the Book of Job where God seems to have come to some kind of revelation about his own nature. Then comes the Book of Jonah when God Himself ‘repents of the evil that he would have done, and he does not do it’. What a revelation that is. God suddenly comes to his own senses and chooses not to destroy the Ninevites and their sack-cloth covered blankets. God even rebukes Jonah for not having compassion on the choko vine.

Scripture continues to evolve. God’s original edict to humanity “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” is turned on its head in the Resurrection of Christ. We are now, after all, not destined for oblivion, but for new life in God Himself. What is this ‘final’ revelation. Is this ‘final’ revelation actually ‘final’ or is there something else beyond our wildest imagination set in the future as God discovers more and more about his own nature. Of course the Church has taught that this is IT. So the Church teaches us to dismiss any other revelation.

What is IT ? Ah, there is the mystery.

The Church has decreed (maybe even invented) dogmas to satisfy the faithful. But what if these ‘dogmas’ turn out to be provisional? What if they even turn out in the long run to be disputable or even false (as Article 19 of the Articles of the Church of England suggests - “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.” Wow!! Only the C of E is right ! After all. What arrogance. As though Revelation concluded with the English Reformation.

Whilst there is a little ‘tongue in cheek’ about that, there is nevertheless a great seriousness about it to be considered. Wrong? Or incomplete.

It is my opinion (not ‘credo) that revelation is not complete. God has yet many wonderful things to reveal to us about Gods-self. And maybe, even God has more to learn about His creation also.

In the last Book of our Bible in the Apocalypse which we know as The Revelation to John God says to the angels to whom in the beginning of creation he had given power over the natural order, “do not hurt the earth or the seas or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads”.

Here in the end of Revelation God seems to have discovered something new about the creation which he had, once upon a time given to humanity to do with whatever men chose to do with it. God calls us now to an awareness that every one, everything in creation is interdependent. Destroy the earth and you destroy yourselves. Omnipotence and omniscience are both fictions. Everyone, even God is vulnerable (as the Cross informs us) Because Christ is revealed as the “Light of the Cosmos” every single person is responsible for the sanctity of the cosmos.

The Old Testament notion that man stands above the rest of the created order is a heresy. If we are not able to understand the rhythms of the cosmos, the ecology, the natural order, if we continue to pollute the creation, then we are doomed. In the face of global worming and its corollary (as we observe in Russia today) global freezing, we simply cannot afford to support those who continue to abuse the natural order. Now can we wait until some fictitious time when clever people will discover new ways of running our motor vehicles or warming our bodies or freezing our sausage rolls. We must co-operate with God who (so it seems to me) is trying to tell us something about what He Himself has learned - God is holy; we are holy and so it the entire cosmos..

Epiphany 2

15^th January 2006

St John 1 43 – 51

To exegete this marvellous, mystical passage which is the Gospel for today’s liturgy, let me take you back to the Book Genesis Chapter 28 and the narrative of the trickster Jacob who is about to get his comeuppance for swindling his twin brother Esau, but who in search of a wife, comes one evening as the sun was setting to a ‘certain place’ {Whenever we read of a ‘certain place’ we can be assured we are about to enter the realm of mythology. Like “once upon a time” as the Book of Genesis begins, as the Book of Job begins… as the gospel of John begins….”

Jacob comes to that place the place which Indigenous Australians would call “the Place of the Dreaming”. He finds a large stone and sets it down as a pillow upon which to rest his head. Here the narrator again confronts us with myth. This is the ‘mythical stone’ upon which the kings and queens of England and Scotland have sat to be crowned. So it is said.

Jacob lies down to sleep with thoughts of his god in a far away land. This is his Dreaming (as our aboriginal friends would say) and in his dreaming he sees a ladder set up from his stone pillow on the earth to the heavens above, with angels ascending and descending. He wakes from sleep to say, “Truly God is in this place. What a revelation. His god is not simply a tribal god watching over and influencing his own tribe, God is everywhere, even in this Dreaming Stone. He calls the place Beth-El – ‘House of God’

We move forward in our story to Genesis 32 verse 22ff. Jacob leaves the house of his father-in-law Laban and sets out to establish his own fame. He and L aban mark their boundaries beyond which each of them promises never to move. Then we come to the night before Jacob is to meet Esau. Jacob sends all his Tribe , all his herdsmen and shepherds, all his wives and children across the River Jabbok .

We are not told whether or not he fell asleep, but a man comes and wrestles with him until the morning light. In fact Jacob encounters God who wounds him, and Jacob prevails. He is given a new revelation and a new name. He is no longer Jacob the trickster, he is Israel, which means
”He struggles with God”.

Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan river. John declares his cousin to be “the Lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world”. Ione of John’s disciples, Andrew leaves his master and comes to Jesus as the Lord’s first disciple. Andrew then goes home to Bethsaida (the House of the fishermen) andbrings his brother Simon to Jesus. When Jesus sees Simon he says, “so you are Simon, from now on I’m going to call you Peter.”

Then Andrew sets out to find another prospective convert to the new rabbi – Nathanael, highly intelligent, scholarly mystic and, one might add, cynic (in the classical sense). “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote about in the Torah, and about whom the prophets also write, Jesus from Nazareth, the son of Joseph”. “Nazareth!” replies Nathanael, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”. Of course not, for Nazareth is not mentioned anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures. No-one from Nazareth could possibly bring Good News, nothing from Nazareth could possibly fulfil the hopes of Israel.

Not to be deterred, Andrew says , “Well, come and see for yourself”.

As they approached Jesus, the Lord said, “Well, Here indeed is an Israelite in whom there is no more Jacob”.

How do you know me?” asks Nathanael. “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree I saw you.” “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel”.

Because I said I saw you under the fig tree you believe? You shall see greater things than this. You shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”.

Hers indeed is one of the most powerfully mystical passages of the great mystical gospel of John. Jesus ‘sees’ Nathanael. He ‘sees’ into his mind. He knows that Nathanael under the fig tree is meditating upon the passage of what we call the book Genesis, of Jacob and the Dreaming Stone and of the passage where Jacob wrestles the angel of God and becomes what God always knew he would be, the Father of many tribes, the first to realise that God is not simply a tribal neighbourhood deity but Lord of the Universe.

Beth-el is a mystical place, one of those places which, when one has been there and experienced something of the ‘Other’ one is convinced that the “Other Place” as C.S. Lewis knew it in his beautiful allegorical narrative of Narnia “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” lies just beyond the back of the wardrobe. And the childlike in heart have access to that place where it is possible to live out a whole lifetime in a moment.

Nathanael knew that, and Jesus know that Nathanael knew it too.

What then do we derive from this encounter of Nathanael and Jesus in today’s gospel? For myself the assurance that whenever we fall to meditation we fall into the hands of the Living God, the One who knows us, who ‘sees’ into our hearts and minds and who knows that we are capable of far more than we can ever imagine.

Hers in this account we have another tale of a name-change. In the list of the Apostles of Christ we have one Bartholomew – an Egyptian name – Bar-Ptolomey, most probably an Alexandrine Jew of the Diaspora as he apapears in the list of Apostles in the other three Gospels. Here his name is revealed to us as Nathan-El. Like Jacob whom we know now as Israel. .

Who could possibly have believed that Jacob who had been a trickster, a crook, a thief from his mother’s womb the one who stole his brother’s birthright and his brothers blessing would be what he ended up being – the One who struggled (wrestled) with God and prevailed. God does not want us meekly to accept what ‘fate’ hands out to us in our baser nature, God expects that we too like Nathanael, should struggle with God in the Scriptures and prevail and become what God always intended we should be.

The words of the prophet Samuel find their echo here in this ancient Dreaming Story - “God does not see as humans see.” God sees our potential as Children of God, not as humans see – crooks and thieves and tricksters.

Baptism of Christ

8th January 2006

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove…….”

As I read in the newspaper of the de-classification of documents relating to the diaries of Winston Churchill’s private secretary, I was moved to go to my library shelves and read some of my own early diary entries. How interesting it is, not only to re-read stuff that one had written so long ago, but also to remember stuff that one had long forgotten.

My own diaries for many years have taken the form of Sketch Books with added notes.

One particular diary entry was written on the beach at Bali. I had gone there as one of three Australian delegates to the first Asian Christian Art Association. That day I was sitting under a thatched roof of a hut in company with my friend Albert Moor Professor of Religious Studies, Otago University, New Zealand and an Indonesian artist, Dhoti. Dhoti was telling us how the Balinese feared the water and how they could not understand how so many foreigners came to Bali to swim in the sea. To them the waters of the sea were the place of evil. The monsters of the deep dwelt there. Fishermen must placate the waters before launching out to gain their daily catch, by placing flowers and lighted candles on small rafts to drive away the evil spirits.

How right they were – the Boxing Day tsunami…..

We engaged in a serous discussion about what the bible had to say about water. In the beginning God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. God drew the created order out of the Chaos of the dark waters and for the Hebrews the “waters below the firmament” were the dwelling place of the ‘monsters of the deep’. “Save me O Lord for the waters have come up to my neck” of [Psalm 69 verse 1]. “There is that Leviathan..” The place of the crocodile and the hippopotamus of Egyptian mythology. All life is drawn out of the waters of creation according to Hebrew mythology…. This also is a fact of life.

The traditional stories, and the art that underpins those stories not only of our own Judeo Christian scriptures relate to conditions of life and enable people to adapt to the inner life of their own external environment.

So it is with the icon of the Baptism of Christ that attaches to this sermon. The physical landscape depicted here, like the landscape which we personally inhabit is also the topography of our inner life.

Deep down within the peaceful environment of our lives is the agent of chaos, depicted here by the little guy at the feet of Jesus, seen emptying his jar of dark waters into the clear waters of the River Jordan.

Jesus is up to his neck in watery chaos.

This is true for all of us who are called to live out the Baptized life, we live in the atmosphere of creation but also of chaos. In what Rowan Williams describes as “the neighbourhood of God”. In Baptism we are identified with Christ’s creative life and his chaotic life. It is not all beer and skittles! It is over the chaos of life that God in Christ addresses us, call us into our vocation and into our ministry. Jesus deliberately steps into that life. You will note that in our icon, St John the Baptist does not stand in the waters, he stands on the margins, on the bank of the Jordan. So do the adoring angels. Jesus is contaminated by the chaos, by the darkness of this world and indeed, as the scriptures tell us, he spends most of his time in the company of those whose lives are also contaminated by weakness, illness, madness, dis-ease and death. That is his destiny, to be identified with the agents of the darkness of this world the prostitutes, the tax-collectors, the lepers, indeed with those whom the world most despises. In this – his commitment to Baptism “Suffer it thus far…” he accepts the gone-wrong-ness of the world, the contamination of the natural order in order to be open to the Spirit.

Two weeks ago, at Christmas e were confronted sith the vulnerability of the Son of God who chose to become one with us as a baby, totally dependant upon the will of others. As we contemplate his Baptism we are confronted again with the vulnerability of the Son of God in his nakedness in the Jordan River. Was there a crowd of people there? We can hardly imagine John the Baptist without a crowd. A crowd of ‘gawkers’, just as there was a crowd of ‘gawkers’ ridiculing the naked Christ on Calvary’s Cross – “He saved others he cannot save himself.” Such is God’s vulnerability..

In our own Baptism where we were “buried with Christ….in order to share his Resurrection” and we share his vulnerability. We are cast into his ministry to those most contaminated by the sin of the world. “Forasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.” As time unfolds it will become dangerous for people to be followers of Christ, just as it was in the first centuries of Christianity. We must learn to accept our vulnerability as disciples and get on with our discipleship, like him, up to our neck in the contamination of the world, remembering that in the end there is a Judgment of Good News.

Did you notice in the version of today’s text that Jesus saw the heavens “torn open”, not simply ‘open’ but deliberately torn. Like the veil of the Temple at his death – “Torn in two from top to bottom” – from heaven to earth (in the language of myth).

In the mythical language of indigenous Australia we observe the same elements. Every living creature has its own mystical life and language, waterholes are holy places, mountains and valleys are the creatures of Rainbow Serpents’ creating. Every person his or her own ‘augud’ (totem), his or her own ‘dreaming’ and the narrative stories of these ‘dreamings’ are told, sung about and danced out in corroboree and by such the myth of the tribe is actualized. In the same way, the myth of our tribe is narrated, sung out and danced out in our own corroboree – the liturgy of the Eucharist in which the myth of our Tribe – Christianity – is made real in present time.

So in the icon of Christ’s Baptism we may read the story, we may sing the songs, we may dance the dance of life, re-creating ourselves by the Holy Spirit in the mystery of Resurrected Life.

Not for nothing then, as the ancient Hebrew myth of birth reminds us, does the Angel who sends us into this world lay her finger upon our lips (to leave that dimple between lip and nose) and whisper –“Sshhhhh” .

The Conversion of Saint Paul

29^th January 2006

The village of Gish in Northern Galilee lies on the Via Maris – The Way of the Sea on the ancient trade route from Egypt Damascus and thence to Mesopotamia. At the time of the Exodus God’s Yahweh told Moses not to go that way, so they stumbled their way around Sinai and the Wilderness of Tzin and settled at Jabesh Gilead for 38 years where they seem to have forgotten everything Moses had ever taught them. Gish today is Christian Arab territory, the people predominantly Maronite. [I had the privilege of painting an Icon of St Maroun for the Church there in 1996]. Not far away lie the ruins of the first century city of Gamla where Josephus the Jewish General fell off his horse in battle and rather than commit suicide like his fellow officers, defected to the Roman Legion and went on (as you well know) to be the great historian of the Jewish people, name change and all - Flavius Josephus. Gamla is a magic place with steep cliffs where eagles, kites and vultures soar as easily as 21^st century para-gliders. There are Dolmens there, strange pre-historic stone altar-like edifices which mark the entrance to the Underworld, like Hawthorn bushes, so it is said. Graves? Altars of sacrifice? Who knows.

Nearby, on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus is the Crusader fortress known as Nimrod’s Castle. Further up the road is Druze country where men wear baggy trousers like oversized babies napkins, designed to catch their Messiah whom the prophets say will be born of a man.

The locals say that the man we know as ‘Saul of Tarsus’ was in fact born in the village of Gish and it is here that, on his way to persecute the early Christian Church he, like Josephus fell off his horse at the sight and sound of the true Messiah – Christ.

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, Lord?” [Every Jew answers a question by asking another question, as you know.] “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting”. I AM. The first of his seven great post resurrection “I AM’s”. (Do you remember the seven great “ I AM’s”of the Gospels? [The Door. The True Vine. The Good Shepherd. The Light of the Cosmos. The Bread of Life. The Resurrection and the Life. The Way the Truth the Life.]

Saul is led blind into Damascus to the house of Judas where a disciple, Ananias by name laid hands upon him healed him and baptized him. [Luke records this conversion in Acts Chapter 9] Paul himself tells his own story but does not speak of the ‘Damascus road’ experience Galatians 2 v 13 + It is certainly worth reading both passages and comparing them. Paul himself speaks of his early ministry not in terms of weeks but in terms of years, first his three years in Syria and Cilicia where not even the disciples knew who he was and then fourteen years later when he went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus. In this passage (Gal 2 v 4) we have the seeds of the earliest division in the Church. As a result of this Peter James and John were to be apostles to those under the Law and Paul and Barnabas Apostles to the Gentiles. Nasty stuff, insincere disciples, much bad feeling between Peter and Paul. Do read it.

Here in contrast with what Luke writes, that Saul went immediately to preach the Gospel, Paul himself gives himself three years of theological reflection and fourteen years before he meets up with those who had known Jesus from the beginning – Peter James and John to whom he refers “reputed to be pillars of the Church”. He also refers to Jesus own brother James of whom he says Peter was afraid. Read Galatians 2 v 14 where Paul accuses them all of hypocrisy.

What’s new in the Church ???

Now, who is this Saul of Tarsus who has become the Apostle Paul. Saint Paul. First he must have been a man of some influence and substance to demand of the High Priest letters to give him the authority to persecute the Christians of Damascus. Had he in fact known Jesus. Almost every scholar I have read says ‘No, he never knew Jesus; no he never saw Jesus.” We will look at that in a moment.

Paul is by his own voice a Pharisee born into the tribe of Benjamin. He is also a tentmaker. He is the person responsible for the stoning to death of Stephen the first Christian martyr. He is the person obviously known to the High Priest for he goes to him and asks for letters to persecute the Damascene Christians. Why would the High Priest send a scholarly Pharisee to Damascus anyway. Unless of course that scholarly Pharisee were a high ranking policeman with trade friends amongst the Roman Quartermasters.

“Who are you Lord? “I am Jesus (remember me? In the Garden of Gethsemane?).Surprise surprise? No shock. Horror. No wonder the sight of Jesus “whom you are persecuting” blinded him and left him with a sight impairment for the rest of his life too. No wonder he did not want to see anyone for three years. No wonder he did not want to confront Peter James and John for seventeen years.

As we consider these things another question arises. Why would the Jerusalem priests want to kill him and why, he being a devout Pharisee would appeal to Caesar for Justice unless he really understood first hand what had happened to Jesus when He was brought before the Court of Rome under Pontius Pilate.

And here is a puzzlement. Most scholars say that Paul had never seen Jesus in his lifetime. But what does Paul himself say about this? ? “Yes even though we have known Christ ‘after the flesh –ei kai egnokamen kata sarka - 2 Cor 5 v 16 – yet from here on we know him no more. (my own translation). Or as the RSV puts it – “even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view we regard him thus no longer”. Ambiguous but do think about it. This mysterious passage says to me that the words “after the flesh” mean, or at least imply that Saul had actually known Jesus before the death-resurrection.

Why on earth would the High Priest being an aristocratic Sadducee possibly have anything to do with a Pharisee unless of course this particular Pharisee held some position of authority in Judaism, such as e.g the role of Inspector of Police. In which case was Saul of Tarsus there in the Garden of Gethsemane when the ‘temple police’ arrested Jesus. As we consider his role in the martyrdom of Stephen it is possible. Tentmaker? Of what material were tents of the 1^st c AD made? Animal hides. Particularly sheep skins. As at the present day when all Bedouin tents are made of sheep skin walls and goat hair roofs. At the time of Jesus 20,000 sheep were slaughtered at the Feast of Passover alone. That’s a fair trade in tents. And who would have been the largest purchaser of such tents? The Romans.

You have hard me say (many times) that everything in the whole of creation evolves. That includes holy scripture. Matthew’s Gospel written “some time before 70AD” gives us an account of the Last Supper with the words of institution. (Matt 26 v 26) Mark, written about 55AD gives us an abbreviated form (Mk14 v 22. Luke, written 59-63AD (Lk 22 v 19) gives us two cups the first after Grace and the second after the supper itself. John does not mention the Institution at all. He is writing his gospel to those who were living the Eucharistic life and therefore were well acquainted with the words of Institution.

Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians at the end of his stay in Ephesus, that is about 55AD. Admonishing the Corinthians for disparaging the Lord’s Supper. So he is writing IN the history of the Eucharist, not ABOUT it.

Yet Paul is not a bit concerned about the birth, life and ministry of the Lord. He tells it as it has been revealed to him by Christ. When was that ? As we seriously consider the evolution of scripture, Paul’s ‘revelation’ seems to have been granted before any of the Gospels were in fact written down.. Which raises for me the question, ‘did the evangelists have access to Paul’s manuscripts?” Pure conjecture you say? That’s OK by me. My desire is to encourage you to study the scriptures for yourselves and critically examine all the events literally, morally, allegorically and spiritually.

All this of course raises the question about the nature of Paul’s Conversion and what the Lord actually revealed to him. In an instant or over a period of time.[It is said that a drowning person ‘sees’ their entire life in a moment of time].

For me, the Conversion of Saul of Tarsus was (as it were) the end of a whole host of incidents that led up to it – Saul the Temple Inspector of Police with direct personal access to the High Priest. Saul with the Temple Police at the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Saul, Stephen’s executioner listening to the martyrs recitation of God’s plan for salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Saul persecutor of the early Christians suddenly confronted with the Truth. And having the humility to ‘repent’.

From his own words we learn that after his sight had been restored he took himself off to Arabia (Petra?) for three years and then, went about his own ministry for fourteen years before he even met with Peter James and John. From this we learn of the need for us all, after every traumatic, dramatic or novel occasion in our own lives to withdraw in order to reflect on what is really happening. For that is what it is about. Not “What’s going on here”, but “what is really happening”. We are to live lives of reflection, not ‘action and reaction’ as is happening in Jerusalem right now. Nothing is to be gained by unthought reaction.

From Paul we learn many wonderful and exciting things. (1) this life is not simply a preparation for a better life. Paul recognised his own need to be faithful in this life.

(2) The Lord who calls us by our baptism is himself faithful. He will never forsake us.

(3) If Christ is not raised from the dead then we, of all people are the most to be pitied. But he is persuaded that “nothing in the entire universe is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

4. If we truly live the life of Christ then we will be persecuted for it. From the life of Christ I learn that everything in my life that is good and true and noble and just will be crucified. Everything in my life that is good and true and noble and just will be raised up on the last day.

Paul’s majestic poetry – in Corinthians, in Galatians, in Ephesians in Philippians is written “for our learning”- about the life that ended in his own martyrdom. Yet he can say in his last letter to Timothy (2 Tim 4 v 7), “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will give m on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearing”.

Epiphany 3 - God’s Environment

22^nd January 2006

Jonah 3 v 10 “And when God saw that they repented of their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”

On Monday morning of last week, just as Anne and her friend Jennifer were leaving for their usual Monday morning walk around Blackburn Lake, two people a man and a woman walked into our front garden. Both carried brief cases and both looked like Jehovah’s Witnesses, which of course they were. I was dressed in a pair of old shorts and a Jerusalem Tee shirt and I was in the midst of pruning rose bushes. They introduced themselves by their ‘Christian’ names and I gave them mine. They said they had come to talk with me about an important matter and I replied by saying, “I guess your important matter is religion” to which they agreed. I then said, “I must tell you, ‘I am an Anglican bishop; I am a professional minister of religion and though I respect your views and your right to hold those views, I do not agree with them – you are Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t you? To which they replied “yes” – I simply cannot agree with you.

We talked on for a bit and they told me that according to the Book of Revelation God was soon to gather up his elect (and I gathered I was not going to be numbered among them), God was going to go to war at Armageddon and all the evil people who did not subscribe to their doctrine would be gathered up and burned in the Lake of fire.

I asked them if they had ever been to Armageddon to which they replied Armageddon was not a place but an event in God’s time. Now I told them that I go regularly to Armageddon – Tel Megiddo Har Meggido in the Jezreel Valley and that it is a mystical place, and like John’s Apocalypse is Poetic. Imaginary. Mythical.

How sad that people still believe in a destructive, capricious, vengeful god

No sooner had the God of the Hebrew Scriptures created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them than he, in the days of Noah wiped it all out. He destroyed his creation by flood because of the evil in the world. Things settle down for a while and then in the days of Abraham God’s Yahweh comes down to have a look at all the baddies in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham argues with him and because in the end he can’t find five honest men God wipes them off the face of the earth.

Then in the days of Moses he drowns the armies of Egypt’s Pharaoh in the Red Sea.

He liberates the Israelites and leads them out into the wilderness for forty years because he cant trust them. In fact at one stage he tells Moses “I am sick and tired of this grumbling mass of humanity; I will destroy them and make of you a great nation”. Moses argues with Yahweh and he relents.

Next God’s Yahweh leads Joshua across the Jordan River into the Land of the Canaanites the Jebusites the Amonites the Hivites the Hittites the Girgashites the Amorites (and the Vegemites) and under direct orders from the Almighty Joshua perpetrates the first holocaust, killing all the men women and children, all beasts and cattle – everything. There is no-one to argue with God over this. Ethnic cleansing.

We move then to the time of the Kings and to God’s hatred of the Philistines. “Wipe them out” cries God.

Then Ezra comes on the scene and under God’s instruction commands the Israelite men to put away their ‘foreign wives’ – racism at its best as the ‘foreign wives and their children’ are sent away in the pouring rain.

Then Job. And the capricious God sends the powers of nature and God’s own enemies to wipe out Job’s family and all that he has in order to win a bet he had placed with Satan.

God, so it seems cares little or nothing for his natural environment or for the human beings he put in charge of it – “subdue the earth…..conquer the planet!!! Use the natural resources of the earth indiscriminately. Man sits over and above the natural environment and is its master.

This theology ruled for countless centuries. Until Jonah. And in the book of Jonah we discover God has moved in hit own thinking about his creation to the point where he actually cares for it – human beings, cattle and even a choko bush.

So we come to Jonah whom God calls to go to Nineveh to tell them “In three days I’m going to destroy the lot of you.” But this time they repent. Here we have communal repentance for the first time. We have witnessed individuals repenting such as David who after that marvellous dialog with Nathan the Prophet is able to say, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nevertheless God lets the little boy die for the sin of his Father and Bath Sheba.

It seems as though God is himself evolving in his awareness of the sacredness of what he has created. Has God had an epiphany? Heresy ? maybe, but it does raise for me the serious and exciting question of ‘The Evolution of Consciousness”.

Does God simply watch unmoved as we, his human creation simply destroys God’s Creation, the natural environment of earth. Or is it inconsequential in the context of the vastness of the cosmos. It wasn’t inconsequential the last time. Last time God stepped into his creation himself and redeemed humanity in the Cross- Resurrection. The Cross-Resurrection however is not simply an event in history, it is the daily experience of God in God’s relation to his creation. On-going.

And it seems to me and there are many pointers to uphold this view, that man, humanity, anthropos is on the way to self-destruction. We have the capacity to destroy what God has redeemed – the whole of creation.

Again it seems to me that as Scripture unfolds notions of human consciousness evolve. Knowledge evolves incrementally. Little by little human consciousness is confronted by mystery. Mystery (as you may have heard me say) is not “that which is hidden” but “That which has yet to be revealed.” Little by little we discover God’s mind for God’s creation.

There is a great question here (for me). Is there a great body of knowledge in the all-knowing mind of the omnipotent God that God releases a little bit at a time? I mean is there somewhere in God’s cyberspace the knowledge of everything that IS. Is it that God chooses to release it a little bit at t time, in accordance with humanity’s ability to receive it and understand it and use it or abuse it.

As I look at my own computer and the ‘world wide web’, and as I plug into it,(the www) it seems to me that almost, if not everything that human beings have ever learned or know about is accessible in cyberspace. But ‘What or Where is cyberspace?.” Is this knowledge finite or does God add to it as God Himself ‘discovers’ more and more about Gods-self. As I interrogate Scripture it seems to me that this is a distinct possibility. And very very exciting.

In Genesis God creates. Then God, incapable of comprehending what he has done, destroys his creation. He sees everything that he has made to be good yet he curses it.

Scripture unfolds in this way until the Book of Job where God seems to have come to some kind of revelation about his own nature. Then comes the Book of Jonah when God Himself ‘repents of the evil that he would have done, and he does not do it’. What a revelation that is. God suddenly comes to his own senses and chooses not to destroy the Ninevites and their sack-cloth covered blankets. God even rebukes Jonah for not having compassion on the choko vine.

Scripture continues to evolve. God’s original edict to humanity “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” is turned on its head in the Resurrection of Christ. We are now, after all, not destined for oblivion, but for new life in God Himself. What is this ‘final’ revelation. Is this ‘final’ revelation actually ‘final’ or is there something else beyond our wildest imagination set in the future as God discovers more and more about his own nature. Of course the Church has taught that this is IT. So the Church teaches us to dismiss any other revelation.

What is IT ? Ah, there is the mystery.

The Church has decreed (maybe even invented) dogmas to satisfy the faithful. But what if these ‘dogmas’ turn out to be provisional? What if they even turn out in the long run to be disputable or even false (as Article 19 of the Articles of the Church of England suggests - “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.” Wow!! Only the C of E is right ! After all. What arrogance. As though Revelation concluded with the English Reformation.

Whilst there is a little ‘tongue in cheek’ about that, there is nevertheless a great seriousness about it to be considered. Wrong? Or incomplete.

It is my opinion (not ‘credo) that revelation is not complete. God has yet many wonderful things to reveal to us about Gods-self. And maybe, even God has more to learn about His creation also.

In the last Book of our Bible in the Apocalypse which we know as The Revelation to John God says to the angels to whom in the beginning of creation he had given power over the natural order, “do not hurt the earth or the seas or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads”.

Here in the end of Revelation God seems to have discovered something new about the creation which he had, once upon a time given to humanity to do with whatever men chose to do with it. God calls us now to an awareness that every one, everything in creation is interdependent. Destroy the earth and you destroy yourselves. Omnipotence and omniscience are both fictions. Everyone, even God is vulnerable (as the Cross informs us) Because Christ is revealed as the “Light of the Cosmos” every single person is responsible for the sanctity of the cosmos.

The Old Testament notion that man stands above the rest of the created order is a heresy. If we are not able to understand the rhythms of the cosmos, the ecology, the natural order, if we continue to pollute the creation, then we are doomed. In the face of global worming and its corollary (as we observe in Russia today) global freezing, we simply cannot afford to support those who continue to abuse the natural order. Now can we wait until some fictitious time when clever people will discover new ways of running our motor vehicles or warming our bodies or freezing our sausage rolls. We must co-operate with God who (so it seems to me) is trying to tell us something about what He Himself has learned - God is holy; we are holy and so it the entire cosmos..

Epiphany 2

15^th January 2006

St John 1 43 – 51

To exegete this marvellous, mystical passage which is the Gospel for today’s liturgy, let me take you back to the Book Genesis Chapter 28 and the narrative of the trickster Jacob who is about to get his comeuppance for swindling his twin brother Esau, but who in search of a wife, comes one evening as the sun was setting to a ‘certain place’ {Whenever we read of a ‘certain place’ we can be assured we are about to enter the realm of mythology. Like “once upon a time” as the Book of Genesis begins, as the Book of Job begins… as the gospel of John begins….”

Jacob comes to that place the place which Indigenous Australians would call “the Place of the Dreaming”. He finds a large stone and sets it down as a pillow upon which to rest his head. Here the narrator again confronts us with myth. This is the ‘mythical stone’ upon which the kings and queens of England and Scotland have sat to be crowned. So it is said.

Jacob lies down to sleep with thoughts of his god in a far away land. This is his Dreaming (as our aboriginal friends would say) and in his dreaming he sees a ladder set up from his stone pillow on the earth to the heavens above, with angels ascending and descending. He wakes from sleep to say, “Truly God is in this place. What a revelation. His god is not simply a tribal god watching over and influencing his own tribe, God is everywhere, even in this Dreaming Stone. He calls the place Beth-El – ‘House of God’

We move forward in our story to Genesis 32 verse 22ff. Jacob leaves the house of his father-in-law Laban and sets out to establish his own fame. He and L aban mark their boundaries beyond which each of them promises never to move. Then we come to the night before Jacob is to meet Esau. Jacob sends all his Tribe , all his herdsmen and shepherds, all his wives and children across the River Jabbok .

We are not told whether or not he fell asleep, but a man comes and wrestles with him until the morning light. In fact Jacob encounters God who wounds him, and Jacob prevails. He is given a new revelation and a new name. He is no longer Jacob the trickster, he is Israel, which means
”He struggles with God”.

Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan river. John declares his cousin to be “the Lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world”. Ione of John’s disciples, Andrew leaves his master and comes to Jesus as the Lord’s first disciple. Andrew then goes home to Bethsaida (the House of the fishermen) andbrings his brother Simon to Jesus. When Jesus sees Simon he says, “so you are Simon, from now on I’m going to call you Peter.”

Then Andrew sets out to find another prospective convert to the new rabbi – Nathanael, highly intelligent, scholarly mystic and, one might add, cynic (in the classical sense). “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote about in the Torah, and about whom the prophets also write, Jesus from Nazareth, the son of Joseph”. “Nazareth!” replies Nathanael, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”. Of course not, for Nazareth is not mentioned anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures. No-one from Nazareth could possibly bring Good News, nothing from Nazareth could possibly fulfil the hopes of Israel.

Not to be deterred, Andrew says , “Well, come and see for yourself”.

As they approached Jesus, the Lord said, “Well, Here indeed is an Israelite in whom there is no more Jacob”.

How do you know me?” asks Nathanael. “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree I saw you.” “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel”.

Because I said I saw you under the fig tree you believe? You shall see greater things than this. You shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”.

Hers indeed is one of the most powerfully mystical passages of the great mystical gospel of John. Jesus ‘sees’ Nathanael. He ‘sees’ into his mind. He knows that Nathanael under the fig tree is meditating upon the passage of what we call the book Genesis, of Jacob and the Dreaming Stone and of the passage where Jacob wrestles the angel of God and becomes what God always knew he would be, the Father of many tribes, the first to realise that God is not simply a tribal neighbourhood deity but Lord of the Universe.

Beth-el is a mystical place, one of those places which, when one has been there and experienced something of the ‘Other’ one is convinced that the “Other Place” as C.S. Lewis knew it in his beautiful allegorical narrative of Narnia “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” lies just beyond the back of the wardrobe. And the childlike in heart have access to that place where it is possible to live out a whole lifetime in a moment.

Nathanael knew that, and Jesus know that Nathanael knew it too.

What then do we derive from this encounter of Nathanael and Jesus in today’s gospel? For myself the assurance that whenever we fall to meditation we fall into the hands of the Living God, the One who knows us, who ‘sees’ into our hearts and minds and who knows that we are capable of far more than we can ever imagine.

Hers in this account we have another tale of a name-change. In the list of the Apostles of Christ we have one Bartholomew – an Egyptian name – Bar-Ptolomey, most probably an Alexandrine Jew of the Diaspora as he apapears in the list of Apostles in the other three Gospels. Here his name is revealed to us as Nathan-El. Like Jacob whom we know now as Israel. .

Who could possibly have believed that Jacob who had been a trickster, a crook, a thief from his mother’s womb the one who stole his brother’s birthright and his brothers blessing would be what he ended up being – the One who struggled (wrestled) with God and prevailed. God does not want us meekly to accept what ‘fate’ hands out to us in our baser nature, God expects that we too like Nathanael, should struggle with God in the Scriptures and prevail and become what God always intended we should be.

The words of the prophet Samuel find their echo here in this ancient Dreaming Story - “God does not see as humans see.” God sees our potential as Children of God, not as humans see – crooks and thieves and tricksters.

Baptism of Christ

8th January 2006

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove…….”

As I read in the newspaper of the de-classification of documents relating to the diaries of Winston Churchill’s private secretary, I was moved to go to my library shelves and read some of my own early diary entries. How interesting it is, not only to re-read stuff that one had written so long ago, but also to remember stuff that one had long forgotten.

My own diaries for many years have taken the form of Sketch Books with added notes.

One particular diary entry was written on the beach at Bali. I had gone there as one of three Australian delegates to the first Asian Christian Art Association. That day I was sitting under a thatched roof of a hut in company with my friend Albert Moor Professor of Religious Studies, Otago University, New Zealand and an Indonesian artist, Dhoti. Dhoti was telling us how the Balinese feared the water and how they could not understand how so many foreigners came to Bali to swim in the sea. To them the waters of the sea were the place of evil. The monsters of the deep dwelt there. Fishermen must placate the waters before launching out to gain their daily catch, by placing flowers and lighted candles on small rafts to drive away the evil spirits.

How right they were – the Boxing Day tsunami…..

We engaged in a serous discussion about what the bible had to say about water. In the beginning God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. God drew the created order out of the Chaos of the dark waters and for the Hebrews the “waters below the firmament” were the dwelling place of the ‘monsters of the deep’. “Save me O Lord for the waters have come up to my neck” of [Psalm 69 verse 1]. “There is that Leviathan..” The place of the crocodile and the hippopotamus of Egyptian mythology. All life is drawn out of the waters of creation according to Hebrew mythology…. This also is a fact of life.

The traditional stories, and the art that underpins those stories not only of our own Judeo Christian scriptures relate to conditions of life and enable people to adapt to the inner life of their own external environment.

So it is with the icon of the Baptism of Christ that attaches to this sermon. The physical landscape depicted here, like the landscape which we personally inhabit is also the topography of our inner life.

Deep down within the peaceful environment of our lives is the agent of chaos, depicted here by the little guy at the feet of Jesus, seen emptying his jar of dark waters into the clear waters of the River Jordan.

Jesus is up to his neck in watery chaos.

This is true for all of us who are called to live out the Baptized life, we live in the atmosphere of creation but also of chaos. In what Rowan Williams describes as “the neighbourhood of God”. In Baptism we are identified with Christ’s creative life and his chaotic life. It is not all beer and skittles! It is over the chaos of life that God in Christ addresses us, call us into our vocation and into our ministry. Jesus deliberately steps into that life. You will note that in our icon, St John the Baptist does not stand in the waters, he stands on the margins, on the bank of the Jordan. So do the adoring angels. Jesus is contaminated by the chaos, by the darkness of this world and indeed, as the scriptures tell us, he spends most of his time in the company of those whose lives are also contaminated by weakness, illness, madness, dis-ease and death. That is his destiny, to be identified with the agents of the darkness of this world the prostitutes, the tax-collectors, the lepers, indeed with those whom the world most despises. In this – his commitment to Baptism “Suffer it thus far…” he accepts the gone-wrong-ness of the world, the contamination of the natural order in order to be open to the Spirit.

Two weeks ago, at Christmas e were confronted sith the vulnerability of the Son of God who chose to become one with us as a baby, totally dependant upon the will of others. As we contemplate his Baptism we are confronted again with the vulnerability of the Son of God in his nakedness in the Jordan River. Was there a crowd of people there? We can hardly imagine John the Baptist without a crowd. A crowd of ‘gawkers’, just as there was a crowd of ‘gawkers’ ridiculing the naked Christ on Calvary’s Cross – “He saved others he cannot save himself.” Such is God’s vulnerability..

In our own Baptism where we were “buried with Christ….in order to share his Resurrection” and we share his vulnerability. We are cast into his ministry to those most contaminated by the sin of the world. “Forasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.” As time unfolds it will become dangerous for people to be followers of Christ, just as it was in the first centuries of Christianity. We must learn to accept our vulnerability as disciples and get on with our discipleship, like him, up to our neck in the contamination of the world, remembering that in the end there is a Judgment of Good News.

Did you notice in the version of today’s text that Jesus saw the heavens “torn open”, not simply ‘open’ but deliberately torn. Like the veil of the Temple at his death – “Torn in two from top to bottom” – from heaven to earth (in the language of myth).

In the mythical language of indigenous Australia we observe the same elements. Every living creature has its own mystical life and language, waterholes are holy places, mountains and valleys are the creatures of Rainbow Serpents’ creating. Every person his or her own ‘augud’ (totem), his or her own ‘dreaming’ and the narrative stories of these ‘dreamings’ are told, sung about and danced out in corroboree and by such the myth of the tribe is actualized. In the same way, the myth of our tribe is narrated, sung out and danced out in our own corroboree – the liturgy of the Eucharist in which the myth of our Tribe – Christianity – is made real in present time.

So in the icon of Christ’s Baptism we may read the story, we may sing the songs, we may dance the dance of life, re-creating ourselves by the Holy Spirit in the mystery of Resurrected Life.

Not for nothing then, as the ancient Hebrew myth of birth reminds us, does the Angel who sends us into this world lay her finger upon our lips (to leave that dimple between lip and nose) and whisper –“Sshhhhh” .

St Nicholas

4^th December 2005

St Mark 9 v 36 Jesus said, “If anyone would be first he must be last of all and servant of all. And he took a child and put him in their midst and taking him in his arms he said to them, ’Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever does not receive such a child does not receive me.”

And St Mark 10 v 13ff. And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. Jesus saw it and was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child shall not enter it” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.

Each time I make the journey from Jerusalem to Mount Sinai I spend a night in a Wadi near to the village of Bier Zuriah – the “Little Well” – which is the home of the second and often the third wives of Bedouin men who live with their first (or Principal) wives in the town of Nuweiba on the Gulf of Aquabah..

This is a village of no men. The women and their children live in community and share their poverty. Their men come to them only to give them more children.

The little children wear cast-off clothing – T shirts that advertise the designer labels of many famous Houses, dresses often far to large for their meagre frames. They are bare footed and scramble across the hot stoney ground of the Sinai desert as though their feet were shod with leather. Sweet children who sell trinkets – geodes, keffyiahs, bead necklaces to pilgrims and tourists such as ourselves.

Bier Zuriah lies on the ancient Pilgrim Way from Cairo to St Catherine’s Monastery on the holy mountain.

Three trips a year are enough to get to know (‘en passant’)though never by name, for to ask their name is to rob them of their true Self, some of these little people.

From time to time a child invariably a boy whom one has got to know a little will have ‘disappeared’.

I often wondered what had happened to these “little people”, so I asked our Egyptian Coptic Christian friend Dr Rabia.

No child born into any family in this part of the Middle East has any part, place or inheritance in the family until the day its father bends down, picks it up, lays his hand upon it and blesses it. From that day onward the child belongs, not only to the family, but to the tribe and to the spiritual inheritance of the people. It has always been so in the Mediterranean. Sadly it is invariably only little boys who are so blessed. And when they are admitted into the family they no longer wear cast off T shirts and short trousers, they are clothed in the white galibeh and wear the traditional head-dress of the tribe. For the most part their mothers never see them again. For little girls the culture is quite different. Most of them remain with their mothers as children of second and third wives until their first period when they assume the traditional dress. Should their father pick them up and bless them they then begin to wear the dowry head-dress and are generally affianced to some man of their father’s choosing and traded along with maybe a camel or two or these days a Utility truck.

It was so in the days of Jesus. Bride price meant “First Wife”. Other girls became and become ‘second wives” – second class citizens. It is therefore no wonder the disciples were angry with the parents who brought their children to the Lord. They knew intuitively that Jesus had something better for them. Such an act would have seriously impacted on their culture. And Jesus knew that.

What Jesus did was of course very offensive, even scandalous to the disciples, not simply because children were considered to be a nuisance to be kept in place on the fringes of society , but because Jesus was admitting to his Father’s Kingdom little people who did not even have a place in their earthly family.

Not only did Jesus pick them up, he did what was even more offensive – he ‘stooped down’, he ‘held them in his arms’, ‘embraced them’ and ‘ laid his hands upon them’ and ‘blessed them’. In fact Jesus assumed the role of Father to these “little people”.

This, in essence is what is happening today. In some churches it would be an offence for a child to assume a liturgical role in the life of the community of faith. Worse, imagine the concept of “Boy Bishop” in a highly conservative Anglo Catholic parish, or in a fundamentalist low church parish where in neither parish would a woman, let alone a child be given the authority to read the Gospel, or to bless the congregation..

But here we are and we gladly submit ourselves to the authority of our own parish children today.

“Unless you accept the kingdom of God as a little child, you shall not enter it.” This is not ‘play acting’ it is accepting the legitimate and proper role of children within the Divine Liturgy of the Church.

The Twentyfifth Sunday after Pentecost

13 November 2005

Judges

Recently, in fact while I was in Israel-Palestine a few months ago the Government of Israel ‘disengaged’ from Gaza and dismantled the 21 Jewish settlements that had been illegally built there. It was a time of great tension. This ‘disengagement’ was not the result of dialog or discussion with the Palestinians, but was rather a unilateral action pushed through by Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon. This means of course that Israel is still legally and morally bound by the conventions of international law to be responsible for the security of all who live in the Gaza strip.

Aharon Barak, Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme court said, “Judea and Samaria and Gaze area are lands seized during warfare and are not part of Israel.” His judgment upheld the Resolution of the United Nations of some fifty years ago that declared Gaza and the West Bank to be “unlawfully occupied territory”.

Thus the judgments of the UN and of Israel’s own Supreme Court are vindicated.

That does not mean ‘at last there is prospect for peace’. Not at all.

Last week I had an e-mail that told me my friend Ibrahim who has a small gift shop opposite the main gate of St Georges Cathedral has learned that “The Wall”, that thirty foot high concrete separation wall is now about to run right through his own ancestral home in East Jerusalem. This means he will no longer be able to get to work, nor will his children who are receiving their schooling at St. Georges be able to get to school. So much for lawful judgment. Ibrahim joins thousands of other Palestinians who have been grossly affected by military rather than lawful judgments.

What has all that got to do with us who in the readings of our Divine Liturgy have been encountering some of the Judges of the Old Testament these past weeks, who thismorning have heard read part of the story of Deborah a ruler and judge in Israel. What does judgment mean in scriptural terms.

[recount the story of Deborah.] “Thus once more the Israelites did that which is evil in the sight of the Lord”. This is the constant theme in the Hebrew Scripture. “So the Lord sold them over into the hand of Jabin, a Canaanite king who ruled in Hazor. They lived under his rule for twenty years” His army commandeer was Sisera. Israel appointed yet another woman – Deborah - to lead them.

Deborah called up Barak (same name as Israel’s present Chief Justice) and urged him to rebel against Sisera. He was scared so he said to Deborah, “why don’t you come with me?” Deborah said, “OK, but you will not get the credit for this, the credit and fame will go to a woman”.

Off they went to battle and Barak prevailed over Sisera’s army and there was not left one man among them. The battle weary Sisera made his way to the tent of Heber the Keneite who was a friend of King Jabin. Heber’s wife Jael met Sisera, took him to her tent and when he asked for a drink of water she opened a skin of milk and gave him to drink. He then lay down and fell asleep. When Jael was sure that he was in a deep sleep she took a tent peg and a hammer and drove the tent peg through his temple into the ground. The bible says “He died”.

So it was that Deborah and Jael became heroes of the faith in Israel.

They join that great line of heroes of the Jewish Faith about whom Apollos in his Epistle to the Hebrews writes – “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice and gained what was promised.”

It is in the spirit of such heroes that the judgments and justice of modern Israel are founded.

Yet if we look closely at these people what do we find. Certainly not the law of Love that Jesus taught, no but the law of eye for eye and tooth for tooth. Barak the coward hanging on to Deborah’s skirts. Samson murdering thug, womaniser and racist. Jephtha who murdered his own daughter – as did Agamemnon who murdered his daughter Iphegenia, except that in good Old Testament style Jephtha’s daughter doesn’t even have a name! Jephtha the pinnacle of domestic violence and child abuse.

David? I have spoken of David before. Adulterous murderer, robber, thug who gave to the world the ‘Absolom syndrome – O Absolom my son, my son, would to God I had died for you, O Absolom my son, my son,” In other words, Thank God he’s gone. Credited with writing the Psalms . Really! Ended his days with a beautiful young woman as his hot water bottle! More historical evidence for King Arthur than for King David. Samuel who hacked King Agag to pieces “before the Lord”.

And Joshua himself who at the Lord’s command perpetrated the first holocaust.

Is the bible true ? Wrong question. Again. It is the physical, sociological and imaginative maps that give the texts their context. Not the words themselves however much we might sanctify them by repeating “this is the Word of the Lord”. By so doing, so often we tribalize God and make him out to be singularly prejudiced in favour of his” Chosen people” and clearly the enemy of all others. When all the others symbolize ‘evil’. Ancient Israel was built on military might with God on the side of his own armies, indiscriminately occupying the lands of the twelve ancient tribes (or kingdoms) Philistines, Anakites (territory including the five great cities of the Philistines – Gad, Gath, Gaza, Ekron, Ashdod), Rephaites (Og the king of Bashan) , Hivites, Jebusites, Perrizites, Amorites, Moabites, Gibeonites, Ammonites, Geshurites, Girgashites, Gebalites (see Joshua 11 )….. and his armies having defeated all these people God claimed all their lands for his own Twelve tribes. In the same way as English colonizers claimed all the land of Terra Austriala del Espiritu Santo – the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit – for their God and king, declaring it all to be terra nullius – a land without laws. Everything in ancient Palestine was declared evil, null and void before the coming of the Israelites. So it is today for the Zionist settlers.How does the judgment of Israel’s present Chief Justice on June 09 2005 stand against all this conquest – “Judea, Samaria and the Gaza area are lands seized in warfare and are not part of Israel.” Is the Judge speaking ‘generally’ or is he speaking in the particular, for if ‘generally’ then surely he is saying the “conquest of Canaan” at the time of Joshua is null and void! This has enormous implications for Zionism.

What would Christ’s judgment be? “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you” “Now is the judgment of this world, …..and I if I be lifted up will draw all people to myself.

The Twentyfourth Sunday after Pentecost

30 October 2005

Moses Seat - Authority

The two great figures of the Hebrew Scriptures are Abraham and Moses. We acknowledge them also in our Christiana scriptures. Apart from Mahomet they are the two great prophets of Islam. We speak of the three great Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. [ I wonder about Buddhism and Brahma. Is the Brahma of the East the Avr’ram of the Holy Land? ]

We have begun a Bible Study on Thursday mornings interrogating the text of the Abraham Saga. I have called this “A Foundational Myth”. [‘myth’ as meaning “that which is essentially true”.] Apart from the study per se, we are engaging in an exercise of ‘understanding’ the faiths of Judaism and Islam. Adonai is Abraham’s God. Yahveh is Moses God. Allah is the God of Islam. For the Christian, Jesus is Lord. .

Abraham is the receptor of Covenants. Moses is the Lawgiver. Jesus is the initiator and inventor of the New Covenant. He is also the fulfiller of the Law. He, like Abraham is the eternal pilgrim, but unlike Abraham Jesus knows his destination. He is no ”wandering Aramean”.  Like Moses Jesus is the Prophet, the Preacher, Teacher and Healer. He sits on ‘Moses Seat’ as the Authority of and for the New Covenant. He is the preacher (proclaimer) of the Coming of the Kingdom of God, he teaches the values of the Kingdom of Heaven and he is the Healer and reconciler of all people, things, the only mediator and advocate. He sits on Moses Seat as the preacher and teacher with authority from God to do so. On the Cross he both priest and victim, the perfect sacrifice offered to the Father. Neither Moses nor Abraham were priests though Abraham offered sacrifice, even to the frightening point of the Aquedah.

Since the destruction of the Temple in 70AD Judaism has had no sacrificial priesthood. Salvation comes through observation of over 600 laws. [ I am aware that this is a simplistic view but that view is wrought out of my own experiences of living in a multi-faith country- Israel-Palestine with both Jews and Moslems.] Rabbis are not ‘clergy’ in the sense that we understand that word. Islam knows no mediator, no priest, no sacrificial offering . Every Moslem has direct access to Allah and Islam has no clergy, even though we may hear frequent references to Moslem ‘clerics’ in the secular news.

What is a priest in the Christian tradition in post-modernity ? What do we mean by ‘clergy’ in our own tradition in a post modern church?

The Qu’ran is to Islam what Christ is to Christianity. Mahomet is to Islam what the Blessed Virgin Mary is to Christianity – the receptacle for the Word of God.

In Judaism Moses not only receives the Law, he receives every interpretation of the Law. For this reason those who expound the Torah (Law and its every interpretation) sit on ‘Moses Seat’.

In the same sense, in the Christian Church, the Bishop who is the inheritor of the Preaching and Teaching ministry of Christ has his ‘cathedra’ – chair, in his cathedral. This is ‘Moses Seat’ and from it, in earlier times the Bishop always sat to preach. Today it seems the only time the Bishop sits to Preach and Teach is at Ordinations and Confirmations. When making an ‘infallible pronouncement’ the Pope of the Latin church speaks “Ex cathedra’ – from the chair (or throne)- Moses’ Seat.

It is my opinion that (1) because Christianity and the Synoptic Gospels are inheritors of an ‘Eastern’ culture and (2) because of the present Israel – Palestine conflict based on the ‘old’ law – “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” and (3) because of the escalating world climate of terror, it is becoming more and more important for us to know about the culture, religion and authority of Judaism and Islam and what ought to be the Christian response to violence and terror. Does the present war in Iraq reflect Christ’s teaching about the values of the Kingdom of God? Perhaps I should say, “Is there a Christian teaching about ‘Just War’ in a post modern Church or are we stuck with an older (Augustinian) paradigm.

We must interrogate our own Faith in order to know what is required of us under Christ’s law of Love. This involves us in an understanding of the Doctrine of the Trinity which is a doctrine of Holy Community. The Church as community must reflect the reality of the community of the Holy Trinity – love. [“love your enemies….]

What do we understand of Christ as the fulfiller of the Torah (Law and all its interpretations) the One who speaks from Moses’ Seat as ‘The Authority’. What do we understand of “Christ as God” in the context of Jewish and Islamic doctrine that (1) God does not have a Son and (2) God-in-Christ dies upon the Cross. How can God die?

Christ proclaims “No one can come to the Father except through me” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father”. How do these sacred texts stand up alongside “eye for eye. Tooth for tooth” (which in its day was a just law)

Faith for the strict observant Jew comes through strict observance of the Law.

Islam proclaims “I cannot know God for myself, I can only know God through the texts of Qu’ran” We remind ourselves Abraham knew God without any text. Until Sinai Moses had no text. The texts were not written down until 1200 years after Abraham.

For the Christian, Faith is a relationship, not a keeping of Laws or rituals and Prayer is the intimate relationship between ourselves and the Eternal God, a dynamic consciousness.

For the Moslem, Prayer is not a moment of mediation but a moment of obedience. The five prayers of the Moslem day are set down, unalterable. The Moslem fulfils the law of Islam by the physical act of praying five times every day.. There is no ‘intercession’ such as we pray it. Everything in life is “Insh’Allah”. Many Moslems believe that we Christians pray in order to alter the mind of God, which is not true of course. Also for the Moslem, Christianity is ‘folk lore’. The Moslem believes that Jesus came as a prophet to ‘correct’ the earlier revelation which we call the Old Testament. He had a particular role in history like John the Baptist. Like John, Jesus fulfilled that role and that was the end.

Salvation does not come through the Cross and Resurrection, but through Mahomet who is Allah’s prophet, and through the Qu’ran. The Qu’ran is not open to interpretation. It cannot be read in any other language but Arabic. It is too sacred to notate the texts. [ a prophet is one who can shape the beliefs and opinions of humanity. A prophet does not foretell, a prophet forth-tells.] Moses was a prophet because he was able to shape the political and religious beliefs of the Israelites.

However, like the Jew and the Moslem, Jesus proclaims a tribalism that needs our careful interpretation. “Who is my mother and my brother? Whoever does the will of my Father, the same is my mother brother…..” Interpretation of the text leads to certainty for some, then to literalism, then to fundamentalism. Scripture must be read at four levels of comprehension – literally, morally, allegorically (metaphorically) and spiritually. Scripture is not about God’s intervention into history, or into our own personal lives. God is not known by the rituals of prayer and fasting and so on. God is known only by Faith. What about when we don’t have faith ? what about ‘doubt’ you say. We live in doubt. There are no certainties apart from the faith that leads us into the life of Christ.

Sadly for many young people in our own country Judaism, Christianity and Islam are discredited religions so they turn to the East and embrace Eastern meditative techniques. But that is another story for another time. The rich traditions of our own Faith are there for us to study for in them we find revealed the true humanity of God. Unike Judaism and Islam the Faith of Christ is not based on a set of rules, as St Paul reminds us “If there was a law that could save us that law would have been given”. Christ does not stand “outside” that tradition but Christ himself is the tradition and is what gives meaning to creation because he offers us spiritual freedom. In Christ we see what may be constantly discovered rather than that which lies in the past.

All three of the great Abrahamic Faiths speak their certainties from Moses Seat.

As we read the texts of Abraham (written down twelve hundred years after the death of our forefather) we learn that it is Abraham who keeps God alive. Without the experience of Abraham there is no knowledge of God in the scriptures. This also is true for our own lives. To know God is to know Grace. And we see Grace, we discern Grace, we find Grace in the lives of other people. “He who has seen me has seen the Father ” says Jesus. “Forasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.” God cannot be ‘known’ only worshipped in the Spirit of Christ.

The Twentythird Sunday after Pentecost

23 October 2005

“Jonah”

Part One

The sermon today is written in words and painted in pictures. ‘Jonah’. Jesus told the “faithless generation” of his own day, the people who were constantly looking for a sign, that “no sign shall be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah, for as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights – 72 hours - , so must the Son of Man be in the belly of the earth”- precasting of course his own death and burial. The sign of the prophet Jonah is also the sign of Jesus Resurrection. For the past six weeks we have been sharing a Bible Study of the book of Jonah and it seemed good to me that I should try to gather up some of the insights we gained during that interrogation. The response to the Thursday studies encourages us to continue with a bible Study so next Thursday (Thursday of this week) we will begin to search the narrative of Abraham for some other insights.

I have long been fascinated with Jonah, as a narrative, as a form of prayer, as an expression of the Wisdom of God. Although the book is set in the ancient history of the Middle East when Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

Is it a true story ? Wrong question. What is the purpose of the book of Jonah. The author sets the tale in the 8^th century BC but most probably it was set down in the 5^th. From a scholarly point of view the importance of the book lies in the evolution of prophecy in ancient Israel. However important it is historically, it is the ‘myth’ of the book that is important. It is the narrative of spiritual journey and it refers to our own self – ego.

God intends that Jonah should go to Iraq the prophet Nahum speaks Iraq as “…city of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty, no end to the plunder… horsemen charging, flashing sword and spear and piles of dead, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end – they stumble over the bodies. [Nahum 2 v 12 – 3 v3+4]. The history of Nineveh, indeed of Iraq is filled with such images of destruction, down to this day.

To go to this dreadful place God calls Jonah. “Go and proclaim liberty to those captive to sin”. How would you respond to such a call ? Holy Smoke! “Lets get out of here. No wonder Jonah fled from the Lord. Yet maybe it was not just the thought of his own inability to cope with such a mission, maybe Jonah could not possibly believe that God could show mercy to such sinful people. This being the case, Jonah acts as judge.

So he goes ‘down’ to Joppa. ‘down’ to the quay. ‘down’ into the ship, ‘down’ into the bilges of the ship and finally ;’down’ into the belly of the great fish.

But his physical journey has only begun. He has yet to engage on his emotional journey and then on his spiritual journey. Justas we have to do. Instead of heading East, he heads in the exact opposite direction. Nineveh was his call. Spain was hie destination.

His journey however was not ‘west’ but ‘down’. This is the descent into Self that each one of us must make if we are to find the Lord.

The Lord hurls a great storm against the ship. Remember the great storm of wind that the Lord hurled down upon Jesus and the disciples in the boat on Galilee’s lake. Physically. Morally. Allegorically. Spiritually. The storms of our own life – death, bereavement, loss of identity, sickness, failure, wrongful dismissal, oppression, illness, innocent suffering…..

The narrative describes how often we ourselves are being “torn apart’ by such things. And, like the mariners, we become afraid. We ask “Where is god in what is happening to me”. “I cannot possibly see how god could allow such things as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, sudden death, accidents, to happen. “Where is god in all this turmoil”. The mariners were afraid (v5), their fear becomes ‘a great fear’ (v 10) until in verse 116 their fear turns to dread, such dr4ad as makes the hair of the head stand up on end. (That is if you are lucky enough to have any hair on your head), an awesome dread such as we have all felt at some time in our lives. (Boigu)

The mariners and their captain are all good men. (not Christians). The captain searches for Jonah and finds him asleep down below. Ever felt like that – the desire to go ’down below’, pull down the blinds, climb into bed with the sheet over your head, curl into the foetal position and go to sleep. We have all felt like this at some stage. Jonah is asleep to his own identity. He has abdicated his responsibility as prophet, as leader, he has no self-respect, no faith, no confidence in his own ability to do what God has asked him to do. So the captain says, “So, you are asleep. Wake up and call upon your god”. Have you heard these words before? Yes, in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus says to Peter, James and John, “Wake up and pray”.

In all such situations in our own lives, the antidote to ‘giving in’ is prayer. Prayer means work. Jesus works while the apostles are asleep. The mariners work hard at their oars while Jonah is asleep. In the boat on the Lake the disci-les ask Jesus, “don’t you care if we perish”. So Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind and there was a great calm.

God is in the midst of all storms, physical, emotional, spiritual, cosmic. Fancy the prophet of the Lord Jonah having to be reminded by the pagan captain to say his prayers!.

Jonah comes onto the deck and they ask him all the questions people ask in pubs or upon first acquaintance – “Where do you come from” “what do you do” “what is your religion” Here on the deck of a boat is Jonah’s opportunity to witness to his faith. He tells them. Evangelism is opportunity. You cannot structure it. “What the must we do” the mariners ask Jonah. “Throw me overboard”. But they would not consent to this act of collective murder. When we are tempted to think that it is only Christians who are loving, caring, compassionate, it is good to look at this bit of the book of Johan, where there are as many gods as there are people. They rowed all the harder. Neither can Jonah bring himself to commit suicide by throwing himself overboard. He knows that he cannot solve the problem he has caused . They all pray - three things (1) for self-preservation. (2) for release from guilt and (3) the prayer of acceptance.

In the end Jonah enables this collective bunch of multi-cultural mariners to offer their sacrifice. Whereas they had prayer “each man to his own god, now there is a community of Faith praying to the Lord of heaven”. Over he goes.

But God has something else in mind. Enter the great fish. Jonah begins his great night journey. The fish turns out to be Jonah’s salvation. Exactly the opposite of what one would expect of the great white shark. Jonah descends to the Underworld.

What a metaphor. To Sheol. To Hades, like Orpheus. Like Odysseus. Like Dante. For this is the great universal myth. We must all descend to the place of the Dead just as Jesus did after the Crucifixion. Literally? Morally? Allegorically? Spiritually.

The ‘death’ of Jonah is one of the great universal myths. The death-Resurrection or Christ is our great myth and it is actualised in our time by ritual, the ritual we call ‘Eucharist’. It is essential that we preserve the myth of the tribe. Absolutely essential.

For this reason it is essential that someone is set apart by God to re-hearse the narrative of Christ’s death-resurrection in a ritual form

As you are preparing to welcome a new parish priest it is important for you to hear that this is why you must have a priest. Not only to offer spiritual leadership, not only t preach and teach, tend to the pastoral needs of the people (important as these things are) but your priest is set over the parish to keep above in this world Christ’s sacramental presence. To “tend the holy fire”. To BE and not necessarily to DO, apart from “do this to re-member me”. Re-membering, the opposite of dis-membering. Re-membering is what Jonah did in the belly of the great fish and his prayer is the recognition of the unity of the conscious world and the unconscious life that God calls us to lead. It is not the prayer of fear (such as the mariners’ prayer was). It is not the prayer of intercession, or of adoration or of praise. It is the prayer prayed “Out of the depths have I called upon you O Lord, O Lord hear my prayer”. It is the mystical prayer of Christ the Great High Priest as recorded in the 17^th chapter of St John’s Gospel, the prayer Jesus prayed in the midst of his own mid-life crisis.

Now I want you to imagine what the sun-bakers of St Kilda beach, the surfers of Torquay and Bells Beach would have thought as they saw this great fish rock up to the shore, open its wide mouth, burp and vomit this dishevelled prophet of the Lord, Jonah, complete with brief case, Bible and afterbirth of new life out onto the beach. How relieved the fish must have been to have got rid of his duodenal prophet.

I wonder what Jonah’s wife would have said. When he got home, “That you dear?”

What happens next is what happens to each and every one of us who has failed.

God gives us a second chance.

Jonah’s second chance will need to be subject of another homily.

The Twentysecond Sunday after Pentecost

16 October 2005

“The Glory of the Lord”

Recount the narrative of Moses and the Glory of the Lord.

I look out of my study window and wonder at the prolific growth of the hedge I planted along the fence line two years ago. I walk out into my front garden and wonder at the beauty of the roses which seem to have ‘come out’ all of a sudden . I walk into the kitchen clutching Friday’s edition of the Age newspaper and I wonder at the beauty of Anne’s African violets on the window sill and outside in the back garden the blossoming eucalypts and the flock of colourful birds having the nectar breakfast. A beautiful clear blue sky complimented by a delightful crisp morning light. There has been a light shower of rain overnight. How great is God in the goodness of his creation. The glory of the Lord is revealed in his creation as St Paul rightly reminded the early Roman Church.

I pick up my paint brushes and do half an hour on my latest painting – the peaks of the Sinai mountains in the early morning light. As I paint I do my early morning meditation, continuing my reflections on that awesome place where God’s Yahweh revealed Himself to Moses as the prophet huddled in the cleft of a rock. “You cannot see my face and live” says the Lord, so he passes by, showing Moses his rear end. Once again I remember climbing that holy mountain. How many times?

I consider how God lets us know, a little bit at a time of his revelation of wonder.

Down below on the plateau the Israelites cavort around the golden calf wishing like crazy that they were back in the land of Egypt with their true gods.

I go back to my study with a cup of Russian Caravan Tea and write the pew sheet letter for Sunday and e-mail it to Sandra. I read my e-mail one from London, one from Philadelphia, one from Brisbane telling me that the church I designed for the parish of Kenilworth is to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary this week. One from our daughter Janey in Hong Kong, one from Robin Richards, and a few more, and I marvel at the ways in which God has revealed his will for humanity by revealing so much of the wonder of his created order to engineers and scientists. It is now 6 o’clock on a bright and beautiful Friday morning. Too early to ring Eliza to wish her a happy 12^th birthday.

I reflect on the performance we saw earlier this week of the play “Odyssey” at the Malthouse Theatre, one of my most favourite narratives of a journey from brutal masculinity to gentle femininity and I think how much influence the Greek Myths have had on our theology and religion. Perhaps on Jesus himself as she watched the Theban Plays at the theatre in Sepphoris. There is a most powerful scene in the play ‘Odyssey’ where the hero Odysseus descends to the place of the Dead, the Underworld where he is confronted by the shades of a number of souls whom he has known, admired and loved. It is a grim place, a place of remorse and boredom, a place of ‘nowhere’, a place about which we read in the Biblical account of King Saul and the Witch of Endor. And I wonder again how greatly influenced were the Jewish Scribes in their search for something better than ‘No Place’. Nothing-ness” in the life after death. A reaching out for what we know (because of Christ) of the Resurrected Life.

We remember that Jesus gave the keys of this ‘Underworld’ to Simon Peter at Caeserea Philippi. Yet the Church has persisted with a doctrine of this shadowy place – Purgatory. Paradise. Sheol. And forgotten, or at least overlooked the Glory of the Lord in the life after death. How very sad. What has Sinai and the Glory of the Lord have to do with me, a post-modern artist-would-be theologian?

I see the Glory of the Lord in my Garden, in the sweet birds, in the life of 12 year old Eliza, in the violets on the window sill, in my own reflections of many journey up the Holy Mountain and the sheer awesom