Holy Adventures

Matthew 11.16–19, 25–30: One final sermon…

Eleven years ago today I knelt in Durham Cathedral as the bishop laid his hands on my head and ordained me deacon. Just over six years later—248 weeks ago—I stood right here to preach my first sermon in this place. We didn’t know each other then. We had no idea how this journey would unfold or how long we would be together. But this week I found myself going back to that very first sermon. I told you that someone once said every preacher only has one sermon. At the time I thought that was ridiculous. Surely every Sunday is different. Each gospel passage asks something new. But gradually I admitted that perhaps they were right. And my one sermon is this: Follow Jesus. Return continually to this holy meal. And always… lean heavily on the side of grace.

And for the last 248 Sundays I have basically preached exactly that sermon.

Sometimes through kindness. Sometimes through justice.

Sometimes through stories from our refugee friends, or in silent peace vigils.

Whether in sunsets by the ocean, or wandering in the wilderness.

Through lament and with dancing… Underneath every sermon has been the same invitation. Follow Jesus. Return continually to this holy meal. And always lean heavily on the side of grace.

In some ways today’s gospel feels like the perfect place to end. Jesus looks back over his own ministry and says something wonderfully honest. John came fasting. People said he had a demon. Jesus came feasting. People called him a glutton and a drunkard. Whatever God did…somebody found fault. John wasn’t respectable enough. Jesus wasn’t respectable enough either. One was too wild. One was too free. Neither fitted the mould. But, Faithfulness has never depended on fitting the mould. And perhaps that is one of the hardest lessons of discipleship. If we spend our lives trying to please everyone, we never get on with the work of the Kingdom.

And today is a glorious invitation to lay that burden down. To stop believing faithfulness is measured by popularity. To stop carrying burdens Christ never asked us to carry. And instead to get on with the work of Christ: The work of feeding. Forgiving. Welcoming. Reconciling. The work of disturbing injustice. The work of becoming bread for a hungry world. Because that is what this table has always been about.

This week someone said something to me that I will never forget. She said, “You really love this holy meal. I’ve never seen anyone love it the way you do. It has been the basis of your whole ministry here.” And she is right. My whole priesthood, actually…

Whenever I wonder what to preach…I come back here.

Whenever I wonder what the Church is, or could be…I come back here.

Whenever I wonder what God was asking of us…I come back here.

Whenever I need bread for the journey because the task feels too big or too hard…I come back here, because everything is here.

It is where strangers become family, and enemies kneel side-by-side. Hungry people are fed and sinners receive mercy. Here Christ gives his entire self away. Again. And again.  This table has never simply been something we do. It has always been about becoming who we already are. Every week we arrive carrying our lives; A tangle of joy and grief. Questions and doubts. Failures and fears. Hope and celebration. Everything that makes us human. Everything that longs for the divine. We bring it all here. And we simply hold out empty hands. And Christ does exactly the same thing every single time. He takes, blesses, breaks and gives. Bread. Wine. Grace. Again. And again. And somewhere along the way I realised, that isn’t only what Christ does with bread, it’s what Christ does with us. He takes ordinary people. He blesses them. He allows them to be broken open by love. And then he gives us away for the life of the world.

That is the shape of the whole Eucharist; not simply what happens at this altar, but what happens when we leave it. The dismissal has always mattered just as much as the gathering. We are fed so we may feed. We receive mercy so we may become mercy. We are forgiven so that we may forgive – more than that, that we might become forgiveness. We are loved so that we may become love. The Eucharist is God’s way of transforming the world, one ordinary disciple at a time.

And then Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Come to me. All of you. Not… Come when you’ve got everything sorted. Come when everyone approves of you, and you’ve finally proved yourself. Simply…Come to me. All of you. That has always been enough. There is nothing more.

Five years ago I began this ministry by asking one question. Will we follow?

Today I leave you with another. Who will we become?

Friends, I truly believe that we become the church we collectively choose to be. So, will we instinctively find fault? Or instinctively extend grace? Will we add to one another’s burdens? Or help carry them? The deepest question is this: Will we simply receive the Body of Christ, or will we become the Body of Christ— broken, and given, for the life of the world?

That choice has never belonged to the priest. It belongs to every disciple. If there is one thing I hope you remember about our time together, I hope it is the power, and transforming grace of this table. Because what happens here doesn’t belong to the priest. It doesn’t even belong to the Church. It belongs to Christ. And Christ will still be here next Sunday. As he has always been.

In a few moments you will do what we have done together for 248 weeks.

You will come to this table – not because you must, but because you may… I hope you will come hungry, and hold out empty hands. Then Christ will place himself into them, and send you back into the world to become what you have received. To become what you truly are.

So…one last time…let me preach my one sermon.

Follow Jesus. Return continually to this holy meal. And always, always…lean heavily on the side of grace.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Matthew 10: 24–39

What a gospel for my first Sunday back… “Have no fear… nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered… what is whispered in the dark, proclaim from the housetops.”

Well… here we are.

I saw this passage was in the lectionary for today when I was beginning to wonder if I might be able to come back. When I read those words I knew it was time – because it reminds us that truth is biblical, and speaking truth is holy and sacred, and a demand from Jesus. So, a bit like Jeremiah, “within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” So let’s dive right in.

Many of you will know I have long been obsessed with kindness. It is my favourite fruit of the Spirit, and for decades I have been on a one-woman campaign to raise the profile of kindness. In our first year together, our word of the year was kindness. It was the basis of our “where everyone is welcome” slogan, and I return to it over and over, and always will.

In the last three months I have been encouraged to revisit kindness many times. What I hadn’t previously understood was how complicated kindness becomes when fear enters the room. Maybe I had confused kindness with keeping the peace. Avoiding conflict. Absorbing the hurt. Staying silent. Sometimes silence is wise. Sometimes it is the kind thing to do. Sometimes silence helps people heal. But sometimes silence protects the very things that cause harm. And when that happens, silence is no longer kindness—it becomes complicity.

That is where today’s Gospel meets us. Jesus says, “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.” We often hear that as a warning—something terrifying. But I am beginning to see it not as a threat, but as a promise. A beautiful, holy promise. A promise that God is always moving towards truth. Towards light. Towards healing. Because healing can only begin when truth is allowed to exist.

Truth-telling is an act of love. A deep kindness. Not because truth is always comfortable, but because reconciliation cannot grow in the shadows. What is hidden must be brought into the light so that healing, justice and peace can take root and flourish. Once again, we have so much to learn from our First Nations siblings, who continue to teach us that truth-telling is not about blame, but about healing relationships and creating a future built on honesty, justice and hope.

And yet fear makes truth difficult. Fear of conflict. Fear of consequences. Fear of upsetting people. Fear of what might happen if difficult things are spoken aloud. That is why Jesus says three times in this Gospel: “Do not be afraid.” Because fear should not determine who we become.

One of the hardest lessons I have been learning these past few months is that good people become complicit in unhealthy things not because they are cruel, but because they are afraid. I have been that person—and it hasn’t helped. We tell ourselves we are keeping the peace. We convince ourselves we are being kind. But fear does not produce the kind of community Christ calls us to be.

And then Jesus says something even more confronting:

“Do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Jesus’ sword is not a sword of violence, but a sword of truth, and truth divides.

Not everyone welcomes the light. But the Gospel has always been about bringing things into the light, where healing can begin. It has never been about protecting darkness. The Gospel is the continuation of the story of God whose first words were: “Let there be light.” And it was good. Light has always been the goal.

This year I missed Holy Week. I missed Easter. I missed Pentecost.

And yet those seasons have been teaching me anyway.

Easter reminds us that truth cannot stay buried forever. The powers of the world tried to seal the tomb, close the story, and keep everything hidden. But the stone was rolled away. The light returned. Life returned. Hope returned. Darkness did not win.

And Pentecost reminds us that fear does not get the final word.

The Spirit pushes frightened disciples out of locked rooms and into the light.

Again and again, God moves people from fear to courage, from secrecy to truth, from darkness to light.

And that is why I have always loved that we live and worship in a place called Beaconsfield.

Because a beacon has only one purpose: to carry light. To make light visible. To help people find their way. A beacon doesn’t create light; it simply refuses to hide it. And that is the calling of the Church. To carry the light of Christ into every place where fear, silence, or harm threaten to take hold—especially the darkest places. And to do so with kindness.

A deeply radical and courageous kindness that seeks healing for all people.
A kindness that protects the vulnerable and tells the truth.
A kindness that refuses to let fear—or silence—have the final word.

Because beacons were never made for the daylight. They were made for the dark.

And we get to decide… what kind of church we will be.

May we speak truth with kindness and always be bearers of the Light. Amen.

Exodus 17:1-7       Psalm 95     Romans 5:1-11     John 4:5-42

As we began Lent there were two gardens, remember?
Then there were two different calls: one for Abram, and one for Nicodemus.

And today there are two thirsty peoples. Two places where the human heart discovers its thirst. One stands in the wilderness, dust in their mouths, uncertain what tomorrow will bring, asking: Is the Lord among us or not?

And one — one of my favourite women in all scripture — stands at a well, carrying a quiet, complicated life. The kind of life that cannot be summed up quickly. The kind we learn to carry without explaining. The kind others only ever see the edges of. A life shaped by choices made and choices taken away. By moments of courage, and moments we would rather forget.

She comes for water. Nothing more. Just water. But perhaps she has come for something else too. Because anyone who has lived through real thirst knows that it changes the way you see everything.

On Wednesday this week a very excited Deb greeted me at my front door, grinning from ear to ear and jiggling from foot to foot (never approach me, lest you end up in a sermon). She said, “Can you believe what has happened?”

And then, completely thrilled, she told me that this week, for the first time in five years, the drought in South Australia has broken.

When a land has waited that long, thirst is no longer abstract. The earth cracks, rivers shrink, wells run dry, even the land itself seems to thirst. And when the rain finally comes, it feels almost like grace. Which makes this story by the well feel very close to home.

In our Old Testament reading we are in the wilderness, where the people thirst.

They quarrel with Moses. They demand answers. Why did you bring us here to die?

And God provides. Water from the rock. Provision for a thirsty people. Jehovah Jireh.

But something different happens at the well. Jesus sits there, tired from the journey, under the hot noon sun. And when the woman arrives, he says something unexpected.

Give me a drink. The story turns. Because suddenly it is not only the woman who is thirsty. God is thirsty too. This is the great surprise of the gospel. In the wilderness, God gives water to thirsty people. But in Christ, God comes near. God sits down beside us in the dust and heat of ordinary life. God becomes vulnerable enough to ask something of us. Give me a drink. And yet, in the same breath, the one who asks for water is also the one who gives it. The thirsty Christ is also the source of living water.

And the woman is confused. “You have no bucket. The well is deep. Where will you get this living water?” She thinks Jesus is talking about water you can draw.

But Jesus is speaking about something deeper.

“Everyone who drinks from this well will thirst again. But the water I give will become a spring within you. A spring of living water.”

Because the thirst of the human heart is rarely just about water. We thirst for peace that holds when life shakes. For forgiveness when the past will not leave us alone. For love that does not disappear when we fail. We thirst for a life that is more than survival.

And Christ says: The water you seek is already closer than you think. Some people say many of us live slightly dehydrated without noticing. The body simply adjusts. And perhaps the soul does the same. We learn to live with a quiet thirst.

So look at the movement of the story.

In the wilderness, God gives water to a thirsty people.

At the well, God sits among us, tired and thirsty, asking for a drink.

And now the movement continues. God places the water in our hands. Because the living water does not stop with us. It becomes a spring, the first rains after a drought. Flowing outward. Toward the thirsty places of the world. Toward the neighbour who needs kindness. Toward the stranger who needs welcome. Toward the friend who needs mercy.

This is not a circle. This is a deepening.

Provision. Presence. Participation.

God gives. God comes near. And then God says to us: Now you know what living water looks like. Now you know how it flows. So now; go and be living water for one another.

The world is thirsty; for mercy; for truth; for hope.

And Christ says to us: Become the spring. Be the rain for a thirsty world.

Amen.

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7         Psalm 32   Romans 5:12-19          Matthew 4:1-11

There are two gardens in our stories today. Two gardens, one overarching story:

The first is full. Fruit hangs heavy. Water runs clear. God walks at dusk. Nothing is lacking. Humanity breathes air that still carries God’s breath. They are made in God’s image. Formed by God’s hands. Held in God’s presence. They are already beloved.

But they do not truly yet know it — not deep in their bones. Not in the place where fear lives.

And so a whisper enters. Did God really say…?

It is such a small sentence. But beneath it lies a deeper question: Are you sure God is for you? Are you sure you are safe? Are you sure you have enough? Are you sure you ARE enough?

And because belovedness is not yet trusted… the fruit becomes irresistible. Not because they are wicked. But because they are afraid. Afraid there is more they must secure. More they must become. So the hand reaches. Trying to grasp what they believe has been withheld. Trying to become like God… while already bearing God’s image.

That is the heartbreak of the first garden. Not that they were unloved. But that they did not trust that they were.

There is a second garden. A wilderness.

Stone. Dust. Silence.

Jesus has just come from the river. And the last words spoken over him are this:

Son. Beloved. Pleased.

Before he heals anyone. Before he proves anything. Before he performs a single miracle. Beloved. And the Spirit leads him into the desert. Not to test his strength…

but to test his remembering.

Forty days of hunger. Real hunger. The kind that strips you back to instinct. And into that hunger comes the voice.

If you are the Son of God…

It is Eden again. The same ancient destabilising.

Are you sure? Are you certain of who you are? Are you enough?

Turn these stones into bread.

Secure yourself. Feed your fear. Don’t trust provision.

But this time…the hand does not reach. Hunger remains. But belovedness remains too. And it runs so much deeper, so foundational, so fundamental. Beloved as identity. Jesus does not grasp… because he trusts what has already been spoken.

Throw yourself down. The tempter recoils.

Prove it. Make belovedness visible.

But Jesus refuses. Because belovedness does not need performance. It is settled ground beneath him.

Take the kingdoms. Another jibe.

Power. Security. Control.

A way to never feel vulnerable again. But again — he refuses. Because he will not secure himself against a world already held by God.

So we stand between two gardens. In the first, humanity grasped…not because it was unloved…but because it did not truly know and trust that it was loved.

In the second, Christ releases…because belovedness is no longer in question.

Adam reached to become what he already was.

Christ refused to grasp — because he already knew.

That is the difference. Not love given…but love trusted.

And somewhere between those two gardens… is us. Because temptation still sounds the same.

Are you sure you are safe? Are you sure you are enough? Are you sure God will provide?

And when we do not trust the answer…we grasp. We hoard. We prove. We secure ourselves against imagined abandonment. We reach for fruit we do not need…

because we fear we are on our own.

Lent begins here. Not with willpower. But with remembering.

Remembering what was spoken over us long before we proved anything.

Child of God. Beloved.

The wilderness does not make us beloved.

It reveals whether we trust that we already are.

Two gardens. One where humanity forgot who it was. One where Christ remembered.

And the long journey of Lent is the journey back to trusting what was always true.

Beloved. Amen.

In the Cave: A Feminist Descent into Genesis

I want to begin not just with the passage — but with my relationship to passages like this. Because my draw toward what Phyllis Trible called “texts of terror” did not begin in a library. It began in prayer.

Years ago, before I began training for ordination, I found myself in conversation with God about human trafficking and modern slavery. And I remember asking, in that slightly accusatory way we sometimes do:

“God, what are you doing about human trafficking?”

And the response that came back was as simple as it was disarming:

“What are you doing about it, Gemma?”

Which, I’ll be honest, was not the answer I was hoping for.

But once the question had been asked, I couldn’t un-hear it.

So I did what any modern discerner of vocation does…I turned to google…

I typed: “Where is human trafficking worst in the world?” The UN reported at the time that India was the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman — and Mumbai housed the largest red light district in the world. And I remember thinking:

Well… if I’m going to do something about it… I probably need to go to the worst place, right?

I handed my notice in at work, early, ahead of starting ordination training and went to India instead. And in many ways, that journey, that deep care for women and girls who were traded for sex, became an unexpected aspect of my call to priesthood, which I recognise is not necessarily the most typical discernment pathway. But it is also the reason passages like this one refuse to remain abstract for me.

Because once you have sat inside systems of sexual violence… once you have listened to women whose survival stories defy moral neatness… texts like Lot and his daughters stop being ancient scandal. They become mirrors rather than myths.

And you begin to realise that the cave in Genesis is not distant at all.

So let us step toward the cave, where a drunken Lot lies unconscious, and his daughters stand outside, anxiously scheming survival, and explore three different caves that we might recognise here and now, to give us a different insight into this text of terror…

We begin with the widest chamber — the cave of the world.

Lot and his daughters arrive in the aftermath of catastrophic societal collapse. Violence. Terror. Cities reduced to ash.

For many women across the world, this cave is not metaphorical. I spent months working in Mumbai with women and girls trafficked into the sex industry — women whose bodies had become commodities in vast patriarchal economies. Hundreds of thousands of women in that district alone. Many sold as children. Many trafficked by family members. I remember sitting in a brothel drinking the most delicious mango juice I had ever tasted; so beautiful because it was bought for me by three girls who paid for it with money they had earned through sex. Squirreled the money away that was meant for the brothel madam and instead welcoming their unexpected guest.

And I remember learning something unforgettable there — that even in places engineered for degradation, beauty and tenderness will always survive. That does not soften the cave. It simply tells the truth that God’s image is not extinguished by it.

Trafficking reveals what happens when patriarchy is industrialised — when women’s bodies become currency, when survival is negotiated through exploitation. This is the cave of the world. Dark not because light is absent — but because power operates unchecked. How manipulated and tricked and frightened and longing for freedom those precious children are. And how comparable that is to those sisters, Lot’s daughters, enticed into the cave of patriarchal structures that says childless women are worth more dead.

The Cave of the Home

But the story narrows. Because the cave is not only global. It is domestic.

While I was in India, I undertook a research project in Bangalore with teenage girls trafficked across the Bangladeshi–Indian border. I asked them how they had been recruited… who had taken them. All but one had been trafficked by someone they knew — a family member, a boyfriend, someone they trusted.

Only one had been taken by a stranger. Trafficking does not begin in brothels. It begins in relationships, and homes, and in the fragile architecture of trust.

And suddenly the cave of the world does not feel far away at all. Because when harm enters through the family system…when coercion hides inside intimacy… when power operates in the place meant to protect…we are also speaking about family and domestic violence. And suddenly we aren’t in India, we are right here in Australia.

So I need to say that my reading of this passage is not only shaped by what I witnessed in Mumbai. It is also shaped by what I have lived. My first marriage was an abusive one. And for a long time, my home was very much my cave. Which meant that when I began listening to women’s stories of coercion and survival… they did not feel distant. They felt familiar. When the person we are supposed to be able to trust most of all, like a partner or a parent, becomes our captor or our chief threat, our world gets smaller, our options reduce, our hope is diminished and our life choices are all impacted by that. We do things and become things that aren’t who we once were and we almost become part of our own entrapment.

The Cave of the Heart

As my own healing unfolded, I began to realise that leaving the cave of the home was only part of the journey, because there was another cave I still carried within me.

Healing from family and domestic violence is not only about physical safety.

It is about confronting the internalised misogyny…the patriarchal scripts…the survival beliefs that have taken root in your own heart. The voices that tell you what you are worth. The shame that was never yours to carry. And I began to realise that my heart, too, had been shaped into a cave. Which is why I cannot read Lot’s daughters as abstract moral figures. I read them as women formed inside patriarchy… navigating survival inside collapse… carrying caves within them long before they entered the literal one. And I read them with far more grief than judgement.

Where Is God?

And I really wanted to explore this passage today, because it doesn’t come up in the lectionary, we always look away, and I find this one of the hardest passages to preach, because it resists resolution. It almost defies the gospel; No angel intervenes. No divine voice explains. No redemption arc tidies the story. We are left in the hideous hangover of regret and shame and incest and trickery, and I am left asking:

Where is God when humanity descends this far?

Perhaps God is present not as rescuer from above…but as witness within the cave.

Present in the grief beneath survival. Present in the longing for a world where women are not forced into impossible moral terrain, because patriarchy can mar the image of God…but it cannot destroy it.

And if this text tells the truth about the caves women are forced to survive in, then the Church has to become cave-literate. We have to know how to enter those spaces — not with judgement, not with easy theology — but with presence. We have to dare to go where harm, abuse and shame festers. Sit where stories are unspeakable. Carry light where light has been extinguished.

We are called to descend — into the caves of the world, the home, and the heart —
not as rescuers, but as witnesses, companions, and truth-tellers. And where those caves are sustained by patriarchy, violence, and silence the work of the Church is not only pastoral…but prophetic. Not simply to sit in the cave but to help bring about a world where no one is forced to live there again.

Our belief is that the gospel does not fear caves. It descends into them…and refuses to leave anyone there alone.

The call of the church is to raze those caves to the ground, along with the systems, structures, and ideologies that sustain them. And if we know anything about caves as a faith, it is this: they could not keep death captive.

May that continue to be so.

Ash Wednesday Homily

Isaiah 58:1-12       Psalm 51:1-17       2 Cor 5:20b-6:10             Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Many years ago, one of my priests gave some sage Lenten advice. She said: “Never visit a convent during Lent.” And we asked why. And she said: “Because the nuns all give up chocolate biscuits, so refreshments are limited.” Which, as spiritual guidance goes, is both deeply practical… and deeply revealing.

Because for many of us, that’s what Lent has become.

Chocolate.
Wine.
Social media.
Coffee.

The annual spiritual detox.

And don’t get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with giving things up. It can sharpen awareness. It can make space. But tonight’s readings push us far beyond chocolate biscuits.

Because God, through Isaiah, speaks with startling bluntness:

“Is this the fast I choose — a day to humble yourself? To bow your head like a reed?
To lie in sackcloth and ashes?” Do you think surface gestures are what I’m after?

Because the people were fasting. They were praying. They were doing religion “properly”.

And yet injustice flourished. Workers were exploited. The vulnerable were crushed.

So God says: The fast I choose looks like this:

Loose the bonds of injustice.
Undo the yoke.
Let the oppressed go free.
Share your bread with the hungry.
Bring the homeless poor into your house.

It is devastatingly concrete.

And if we want to know what that looks like here — not in theory but in Perth — we do not have to look far.

The average life expectancy of a homeless man in our city is 44 years old in a nation where most of us expect to live well into our 80s, and beyond. That is not misfortune.

That is injustice written on the body. And it is particularly confronting for us, because homelessness is not distant from this parish. It unfolds right here on our grounds.

We pray and we worship …while just beyond these walls, people sleep on the earth.

And Lent refuses to let that sit comfortably.

Because Isaiah says the fast God chooses does not move the vulnerable on.

It moves the human heart open.

But that raises an almost impossible question: How do we face systems that fierce… that entrenched… that unjust… without becoming overwhelmed? Hardened? Numb?

How do we loosen bonds that feel immovable?

And this is where the Church, in her wisdom, places Psalm 51 in our hands.

Because before systems are transformed… hearts must be.

Psalm 51 does something Isaiah does not:

Isaiah addresses the world. The Psalmist addresses the heart.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God. And renew a right spirit within me.”

Not polish. Not tidy up. Create. Start again from the inside out.

Because we cannot dismantle injustice out there if we are unwilling to confront what lives in here.

We participate in the world’s breaking. We benefit. We numb out. We look away.

And yet the Psalm is not despairing — it is hopeful.

“A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Bring me your real self, God says. Bring me the unvarnished truth.

Because the fast God chooses is born when a human heart is broken open… softened… remade. Lent, then, is not a choice between inner repentance or outer justice. It is the slow, painful, holy work of allowing God to do both at once.

Which is why we come tonight for ashes. Giving our forehead to be marked is us asking for permission to stop pretending. Permission to name our fragility. Permission to admit what needs undoing — personally and collectively.

Ashes remind us: Everything performative will fall away. Everything curated will crumble. Everything false will return to dust. And all that remains is what is real.
Completely reshaped by the God who creates and loves and breaks and remoulds.

Isaiah brings this incredible promise that when this fast begins to take root:

“Your light shall break forth like the dawn… Your healing shall spring up quickly… You shall be like a watered garden.”

In place of ashes will be light, and repentance will bring repair.

So tonight, we receive ashes in the shape of a cross. A cross that tells the truth about the world’s violence… …and the deeper truth about God’s refusal to abandon it.

And we will hear again those words, ‘Remember you are dust…’

Yes.

But we are dust that God breathes life into. Dust Christ walked among. Dust that can be remade — heart first, world next. Dust that resurrection will one day raise.

And so, we begin Lent: Not just giving up chocolate biscuits…but in complete surrender to God, allowing God to break our hearts open, remake them in mercy,
and send us back into the world to live the true fast God chooses.

Amen.

Exodus 24:12-18                   Psalm 2          2 Peter 1:16-21                     Matthew 17:1-9

Last week Craig and Kennie and I were on holiday down in Denmark — wow, what a glorious place that is, in the truest sense of the word. Enormous ancient trees, so much green, the granite rocks and surely some of the most stunning beaches in the world. What a gift that was.

There was one moment that will stay with me for a long time. We were wading through a crystal-clear river, moving so quickly it carried us along or held us back, and as we walked the banks widened and we could see the whitest sand ahead — where the river met the ocean and the banks became beach. It was incredible. Take-your-breath-away beautiful. I said to Craig, “this is a moment right here.”

The Creator’s fingerprints were all over it. I’m sure it was the Holy Spirit’s breath I felt — not a gentle breeze at all. A mountaintop experience indeed. It belonged with Moses… and Peter, James and John… for sure.

But life isn’t always like that, is it? If we are honest, life as a follower of Jesus is much plainer, more ordinary — sometimes more painful and lonely — than these readings express today. Most of life happens not on mountaintops or in crystal rivers.

It happens on the ground.

But did you notice the strange thing about both mountains in today’s readings? It’s not what happens on them — it’s what doesn’t. Moses doesn’t stay. Jesus does not stay. No shrine is built, despite Peter’s enthusiasm. No one captures the light or preserves the moment. They go down. And that — more than the shining — is the revelation. Because glory is easy to believe in when you’re standing inside it. Anyone can trust God when the air feels thin and holy and everything makes sense. Anyone can sing Alleluia when the veil between heaven and earth feels gauze-light.

But on Wednesday we enter Lent, and if these readings give us food for the journey it is this: Lent begins when you walk back down the track. Lent is the descent.
It is the refusal to live only in peak moments — the holiday high, the answered prayer, the brief season when life feels held together.

Lent asks: will you still follow when the light fades?

Because the road down the mountain leads somewhere very specific.

It leads to hospital corridors where the news is not good.
To grief that feels like it might swamp you.
To marriages that fracture and injustice that deepens.
To doubt and boredom and bloody-minded determination, where faith looks less like light and more like stubborn presence — showing up again, and again, and again.

The mountain reveals who God is.

But it is in the valley that reveals where God is.

And the gospel insists: God is not only in the shining. God is in the descending.

This is the part we resist. We love a God of radiance. We struggle with a God who walks steadily — willingly even — toward suffering. But Jesus does not come down reluctantly. He walks with clarity. Because what looks like loss… what looks like failure… what looks like the light going out… is, in the strange economy of God, the way glory travels — winning while looking like you’re losing.

We know the road of Lent leads to Passiontide, Holy Week, crucifixion. The cross will look like defeat. Silence like abandonment. Burial like the end of glory. But the disciples are being prepared — even here — to understand:

The light does not disappear on the way down the mountain. It relocates.
Into broken bodies. Bread torn open. Forgiveness spoken late.
Courage that only appears in the dark. The Transfiguration is not escapism. It is equipping for all God’s disciples – then and now – for all that lies ahead.

And before that road through Lent begins again, today we take part in the ancient practice dating back to some time in the 10^th century of burying the Alleluia — laying it down in the ground, silencing it for a season, trusting it will rise again at Easter dawn.

As I prepared, so I realised, some of you haven’t been here for this before, and may not know the story of our own miracle, birthed and witnessed here in 2022.

It was the first time we buried the Alleluia together. At the time many of us were deeply involved with detained asylum seekers — visiting detention centres, lobbying government, particularly supporting three remarkable men: Javad, Ned and Aref.

On one visit, Aref gave me his lunchbox — his only Christmas present — his name written along the side, plain crackers inside. He said to me, ‘take this and you’ll remember me every time you use it’, so we buried the Alleluia in Aref’s lunchbox.

We buried it as a prayer for those whose lives felt utterly devoid of glory. And we committed to praying for them throughout the 40 holy days of Lent.

And when we dug it up on Easter morning, Aref was here — free — standing among us, and that day became his literal baptism. I cannot explain what happened in those forty days. But somehow, we witnessed something close to resurrection.

And so today, in some trepidation, we bury the Alleluia again. And its absence becomes our prayer, or our nudge to pray, because every time we notice our church, our lives, or our world is less than glorious — less dazzling than we dream — that becomes our prayer.

We bury the Alleluia not because it is gone… but because it is waiting. Waiting in the dark. Waiting in the soil. Waiting in every place where light feels absent. Because the promise of our faith is this: What is buried with love…what is entrusted to God…what is laid down in hope……will one day rise singing. And until then, we walk the road down the mountain and through the valley together. Amen.

(Micah 6:1–8, Luke 2:22–40)

My Facebook memories popped up this week to remind me that sixteen years ago I preached this passage from Luke’s gospel for the first time. It is now eleven Februarys since I was ordained, and this reading crops up every first Sunday in February, which means Mary and Joseph, the baby, Simeon and Anna have returned again and again across the years. There’s something about Candlemas that keeps drawing us back, asking us to look again.

Candlemas began as something very ordinary. Before it was a feast of light or symbolism or poetry, it was simply a moment of religious obligation. Mary and Joseph bring their child to the Temple forty days after his birth, because that is what the law requires. They come to present him, to offer what they can afford, to do what faithful people do. They bring the simplest gift permitted, because they are poor, living without security, yet they fulfil their religious duties nonetheless.

For the first centuries of the Church, this day was known simply as the Presentation or the Purification. There was no drama to it. Just a poor family, four birds, and a child brought into the life of faith. Only later did the Church notice what Simeon says — that this child is salvation, revelation, light — and to realise that this quiet moment was actually a turning point. Candlemas sits at a threshold: between birth and ministry, gift and consequence. It is the moment when the baby stories end, and the long road toward the cross begins. One of our liturgical resources defines it as the moment we turn from the cradle to the cross, inviting worshippers to face the crib and then turn a full 180 degrees toward the cross. It’s a powerful image.

But despite the years of repeating this festival and hearing these passages over and over, this year, with Luke alongside those words from Micah, something landed for me in a new way. Micah gives us a courtroom scene. God calls the people to account and asks a devastatingly intimate question: What have I done to you? God reminds them of liberation, faithfulness, and rescue — and then we hear the people’s response. They start bargaining. Justifying. Proving their worth somehow. They bring burnt offerings, calves, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, even their firstborn children. It’s as if they are saying, tell us what you want, God. Tell us how to get this right.

And God’s answer is almost weary in its simplicity. It’s as if this holy judge in the courtroom is holding their head in their hands and saying, I don’t want any of that. I just want you to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. That’s it.

Standing between Micah and Luke, I realised something that feels obvious now, but somehow had escaped me before. This week I have seen the Bible in a new overarching way (for me) that I hadn’t quite seen before.

The Old Testament is a long, faithful, painful story of people trying to work out what God wants — and repeatedly not quite managing it. Not always out of rebellion or refusal, but simply missing the mark. In Genesis, people grasp at blessing instead of trusting relationship. In Exodus, they build a golden calf, not because they reject God, but because they want a God they can see and manage. In Samuel, Saul offers sacrifice out of fear and urgency, only to be told that listening matters more. And in the prophets — especially here in Micah — God finally says it plainly: stop bringing what you think will impress me. I want justice, kindness, humility.

And then there is silence. Four hundred years of waiting. And I imagine — reverently — God saying, They’re still not getting it. I’ve told them again and again what I want. Now I’m going to have to show them. And so God does. Not with a new list. Not with better instructions. But by coming in person.  Luke doesn’t give us an argument. He gives us a baby.

Here is the astonishing reversal Micah could never have imagined. Micah asks in fear, Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression? Will God require everything? Luke answers: God does not take our firstborn. God brings God’s own. Not in response to a demand, or to placate a vengeful dictator, but as an offering of love.And what does God bring to the Temple? Not power or purity. God brings vulnerability. Dependence. Trust. Mary and Joseph, in their quiet steps into the Temple, reveal something bigger than a baby. They show us how to live that command, that way of being, laid out in Micah 6:8.

Their justice is shown in faithful obedience while living under empire.
Their kindness is seen in the way they carry and protect this child.
And their humility is revealed as they offer poverty without shame, because they know their true offering is not the birds they carry, but their lives: all they have and all they are, all they have been and all they will become. And in doing so, they offer God’s own child — God’s own self — as they will be asked to do again and again, right to the end.

Simeon sees it. Anna sees it. Not because the offering is impressive, but because it is true. This is what God has always wanted. Not more. Not better. Not harder.

But our full selves. Our ordinary faithfulness. Our imperfect obedience.
Our willingness to show up with all we have.

Candlemas does not ask what we can bring to impress God. It asks whether we are willing to place our fear, our love, our uncertainty, our hope — our good bits, and even the parts of ourselves we carry with deep shame — into God’s hands. It asks us to bring our past, our present, and our future, and hand it all over. And the quiet, astonishing promise of this feast is that when we do, God receives it and calls it enough.

So here you are, in this temple. Lay it all down. You are enough. Amen.

Isaiah 9:1-4               Psalm 27:1-10           1 Corinthians 1:10-18                      Matthew 4:12-25

Without having been to the Sea of Galilee it is pretty difficult to imagine exactly what it’s like; the view, the sounds, the scents. Sometimes the gospel feels like it happens in a place far away; some kind of holy shoreline, with ancient boats and men in robes. But Matthew locates his writing in a specific time and place. He tells us Jesus doesn’t begin his ministry in Jerusalem. He wasn’t born in a place of polish, and he doesn’t begin his work in a place of wealth, power, or control. Matthew tells us that, after John’s arrest, Jesus withdraws to Galilee and goes to live in Capernaum, by the sea.

Capernaum was a working port town. A place of tides and trade. A bustling place of fishing, not the centre. Sound familiar? If we let the Gospel come close — Capernaum is Fremantle. Jesus doesn’t arrive in Perth. He arrives here, on the edge, at the waterside, along Derbarl Yerrigan. So, let’s imagine how it matters if Jesus came to begin his work here in the 1^st century, because this place had a story long before colonisation.

Walyalup was — and is — Whadjuk Noongar Country. The river wasn’t scenery. It was a living system of food, law, and kinship; a place of deep listening. Colonisation did not discover this place in 1829; It took it. Land was seized. Fishing was criminalised, and sacred sites were damaged or erased. Without treaty, or consent. And when Noongar people resisted — simply by moving through their own Country, fishing and surviving — they were punished and imprisoned.

We don’t have to imagine that history. We know the water’s edge. We know the stone walls of Fremantle Prison, where Aboriginal men were locked up for being on their own land, where control was enforced, where the cost of colonisation was made brutally concrete. Fremantle’s prosperity — its port, its trade, its growth — was built alongside this violence, and it is not ancient history.

And this is where Matthew places Jesus. Not above the harm. Not after the story is cleaned up. But inside it. Isn’t that always the scandal of where we find God? Inside darkness, oppression, injustice, mess? Not looking over, but looking upwards and outwards from within?

Matthew tells us that Jesus walks along the sea and sees fishermen at work —
Simon and Andrew, James and John — these young people, teenage labourers, working with their bodies, risky and exhausted. And if we imagine this is here in Fremantle, then widen the picture. Jesus walks past boats and nets — and past prison walls and holding cells. Past the people labelled trouble, criminal, disposable. And from here — not the religious centre, not among the respectable — Jesus says: “Follow me.”

This is where the scandal sharpens. Because Jesus does not assemble a tidy group. He calls fisher kids — poor, expendable. And later, he will later call a tax collector who collaborates with the empire. He will call them both, young and old, manual workers and professionals, criminals and judges, and they will both respond, together, immediately, follow me. No forwarding address, no job description, no idea of who it is doing the calling, or what they are following for. And the call will be so compelling, so compulsive that they will leave everything – family, business, background, debt, crimes, reputation – good and bad – and follow. That is wild. That is the scandal of the gospel.

People who should not stand side by side. People whose histories do not align. People whose presence together is already offensive. All together in one melding pot.

If we’re honest, it’s not a comfortable picture of the church. Fishers alongside tax collectors, like homeless people alongside rich homeowners, landowners, professionals, or like First Nations people, alongside colonisers. The poorest, alongside those who benefit from the system. The rejected, alongside those who enforce rejection. Together. Not because the harm is erased. Not because the past is resolved. But because Christ is walks here — and calls from the margins.

Matthew’s Jesus proclaims: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repentance here is not private guilt, or performative regret. It is a total turning around, a change of direction.

For a place like Fremantle — and for the church on this land — repentance means truth-telling, refusing silence, allowing those long pushed aside to be centred again, being in the mess together, not ignoring it or sanitising it, or despising it for being messy. The kingdom comes near not when the story is tidy, but when we turn toward the wound instead of away from it.

Matthew quotes Isaiah: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”

That darkness was not spiritual metaphor. Isaiah was speaking of occupation, violence and dispossession. And still, this is where Jesus begins. And when colonisers rock up to steal and destroy and whitewash and dominate, God shows up too and says – on you, you who sit in the region and shadow of death light has dawned. No wonder the disciples leave everything to follow! Not because the world no longer matters, but because it matters more.

Following Jesus doesn’t mean escaping this place. It means learning to be a church that doesn’t hover above history, rushing to reconciliation without truth telling. But being a church that is willing to walk where Christ walked — alongside the water, by the prison, with the wounded, towards the poor and dirty, offering a promise of life, light, healing, forgiveness. And who doesn’t need that?

And as he called then, so he calls us now, together — not knowing exactly where we are going, but knowing who we are walking with. Sometimes we need the light, sometimes we are called to be the light. Sometimes we need healing, sometimes we are the ones to bring healing. We are both the called and the one calling. That is the church in its glory.

So if this is Fremantle, and if Capernaum is here, then Christ still walks Derbarl Yerrigan. Christ still calls fisher kids and tax collectors and First Nations peoples and settlers, those healed and those broken, alike, into a way of life that refuses domination, names harm, and dares to believe that the kingdom can take root even here.

The light doesn’t wait until the damage is undone. It arrives now. And the question left hanging in the salt air, blowing in on the Doctor, is not whether the call is scandalous, it is whether we will follow. Amen.

Isaiah 42:1–9  Psalm 29                   Acts 10:34–43          Matthew 3:13–17

One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard about the Australian education system is this concept of Beach Safe. From what I can work out, a whole year group of children arrives at their local beach with a couple of teachers, learns how to be safe … and then they go into the water on their own, while those teachers watch from the sand.

It reminds me of every child who learned to swim in my hometown in the 1970s or 80s. We would don our swimming caps — crying, if you were me — and make our way down to the overly chlorinated, freezing-cold pool. We would get in, while this ageless woman named Mrs Lee barked instructions from the poolside. The intention was to teach every child to swim. Some swam. Some sank. I was firmly in the latter category.

It wasn’t until my favourite auntie got right into the pool with me — supporting my stomach, placing a hand under my chin, making all the encouraging noises — that I ever learned to swim.

And that’s what came back to me as I read the Bible readings this week.

I learned to swim because someone got into the water with me — not because someone shouted instructions from a distance, no matter how skilled a swimmer they might have been.

And isn’t that what our Old Testament reading and our gospel are telling us too?

God isn’t found standing safely on the shore calling out advice — be braver, have more faith, try harder, don’t be afraid — while we flail in deep, unfamiliar water. God gets right into the water with us. That, surely, is the heart of the incarnation. The God who could have remained distant, or silent, or safely above it all, chose instead to put on humanity and come close — right beside us — doing life the way the rest of humanity does.

Isaiah speaks to a people who are exhausted, displaced, traumatised by loss. They are not coping well. And God does not say, You should have known better. God says instead — in the very next chapter — When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

Not if. When.

And not I will tell you what to do, but I will be with you — in the fear, in the crossing, in the unknown. And in this extraordinary moment from Matthew’s gospel, we see that promise take flesh and bones.

Jesus comes to the Jordan not because he needs repentance, but because this is what God is like. God does not ask us to go anywhere God is unwilling to go. Jesus steps into the same water as everyone else. He lines up with sinners, with the confused, with the weary, with those who don’t quite know how to stay afloat. He doesn’t hover above it. He doesn’t exempt himself. He wades right in.

And it is there — not on the shore, not in the temple, not after some great achievement — but there, in the water, that the voice comes:

You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.

Before he heals anyone. Before he preaches a sermon. Before he does anything impressive at all. Beloved first. Affirmed first. Held first.

And I don’t know how that makes you feel, but I find it a bit unsettling — because most of life works the other way. We belong once we’ve proven ourselves. We are loved once we’ve achieved something. We are accepted once we’ve shown we can cope. Why wouldn’t we project that onto God?

But baptism tells the truth:

You are not loved because you are strong.
You are loved while you are still learning to float.

And baptism doesn’t only tell us God gets into the water with us — it also trains us, calls us, and requires us to stay there. At school we didn’t just learn to keep ourselves afloat. We learned life-saving skills. We swam in our pyjamas, heavy and awkward. We dived down to retrieve bricks from the bottom. We learned what it feels like to move against resistance, to stay calm when everything feels wrong. It was training for emergencies. For the moment when someone else is in trouble.

And the world we are living in now is not a calm, supervised pool. It’s open water. It’s rough. People are tired. Many are sinking quietly, right alongside us.

In Christ’s baptism we are given a comfort and a calling. God in Christ gets into the water with us, and in doing so, shows us that we must be willing to get wet for the sake of others.

To move toward the struggling person rather than away. To resist the instinct to stay dry, safe, and distant.

And so the questions write themselves: Where are we needed right now?
Who are we pretending not to see?
And where, if we’re honest, are we avoiding the water altogether?

It’s one thing to admire Jesus standing in the Jordan. It’s another thing to wade in ourselves — into grief that unsettles us, into injustice that costs us something, into relationships that don’t come with neat boundaries.

Baptism names us as beloved — yes. But it also names us as participants in God’s life-saving work. Not as heroes or experts. But as people who know what it is to be held — and therefore dare to hold others.

Sometimes that will look dramatic. More often it will look small, costly, and unseen: staying longer than is convenient, standing with someone others step away from, refusing to look away when someone is struggling. And the grace in all of this is that the same God who got into the water with us is already ahead of us, beside us, between us and the deep.

We don’t save the world by our strength. But we do show up and get wet. We do stay present. And as we finish today, the water is still here. The font is still full of last week’s baptism. As you come forward for communion, or as you leave today, you’re invited to dip your fingers into the water — simply to remember you are held.

You are not alone in life’s waters. God has already gone into the water with you.

And you are sent — gently, bravely — to stay in the water with and for others.

Because the gospel is not shouted from the shore.
It is lived, again and again, alongside one another, in the water.

Amen.