Holy Adventures

Exodus 16:2-15       Matthew 20:1-16

There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share.

I have carried those words with me for years, and I am so glad I get to share them with you now, so soon in our time together, because they are so precious to me.

I first encountered them years ago when I visited a dear friend’s extraordinary new church that she planted in Los Angeles, California, called the Garden Church. It didn’t have a building. It began in an abandoned city lot—hard-packed earth where cars had once parked—and they had turned it into an urban farm and an outdoor sanctuary. They grew food together. They worshipped together. They ate together. Their altar was the stump of a cedar tree, lavishly soaked in holy oil. Housed and unhoused people gathered around the same table. And my wonderful friend Anna, the priest who planted it—(and who actually came here incognito before I started!)—described her dream as: “A church that’s in a garden, a garden that is a church.” Each week, nobody quite knew how many people would arrive for worship, how many would need feeding afterwards, or how they would pay their staff, let alone their priest. So, part prayer, part prophecy, part desperate determination, they learned to sing: There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share. And somehow, again and again, there was.

Which seems to me to be exactly where our readings take us this morning.

The Israelites are in the wilderness. They are hungry. Frightened. Complaining.

These people have escaped slavery. Their whole lives have been controlled by somebody else. They have known absolute powerlessness. They don’t know where the next meal is coming from. And God gives them manna—this unknown, strange substance that seemingly falls from the sky becomes bread for today. Enough.

But the miracle is not simply that food appears. It is how the food is gathered and shared.

We are told: “Those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage.” Everyone has enough. And when somebody tries to hoard it—to keep tomorrow’s bread for themselves while others may still be hungry—it rots.

Manna teaches Israel a new economy. Pharaoh’s economy accumulated, exploited and enslaved. God’s economy provides enough for each day, enough for each person, with nobody abandoned and nobody stockpiling what everybody needs.

And then Jesus tells this extraordinary story about a vineyard. We know it so well that we tend immediately to allocate the parts.

Landowner: God. Workers: us. But Jesus doesn’t say that.

Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

And in Matthew, the kingdom of heaven isn’t somewhere we go when we die.

It is God’s future breaking into the present.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

So, the question isn’t: Which character is God? The question becomes: Where is heaven breaking into earth? And I think we see it most clearly at the end of the line. Because there are people still standing in the marketplace at five o’clock. All day, employers have come and gone. And nobody has chosen them. Jesus doesn’t tell us that they slept in. He doesn’t say they couldn’t be bothered. When they are asked why they are still there, they simply say: “No one has hired us.” Nobody chose us.

Imagine standing there while somebody chooses the younger person beside you. The stronger one. The whiter one. The one with better English. Then someone else. Again and again. Until eventually you are the one still standing there. Not chosen. Not wanted. Not enough. And you are still standing there because there are people at home who need to eat, and you know going home empty-handed is not an option.

And then the extraordinary thing happens. At the end of the day, those workers receive a whole day’s wage. Enough.

Not because they have earned it. Because they need to live.

A day’s wage was not a luxury or a prize. It was what might put bread into their children’s hands that evening.

And that is where grace asks a completely different question from merit.

Merit asks: What have you earned?

Grace asks: What do you need?

So where is God in this story? Instead of putting God in the landowner’s clothes, look down the line, towards the back. Look for the people nobody chose. The overlooked. The unwanted. The ones still daring to hope. God is always there because that is where the kingdom keeps breaking in. Where those who have been told they are not enough discover that there is enough for them too. Enough, and some to share.

And then we come to this table. And we hold out empty hands. Nobody asks how productive we have been this week. Nobody calculates how many hours we worked in the vineyard. Nobody asks whether we have earned what we are about to receive.

We simply hold out our hands. And bread is placed into them. Enough. The bread of heaven. The bread of tomorrow. A tiny taste, here and now, of the world God is bringing into being… A world where nobody is forgotten, or disposable, and nobody is left at the end of the line without enough to live. A world that is clean and safe. A world in which resources are shared equitably, and those who have been given least are given more, until the evil imbalance of provision and power is put right. Here we eat the bread of that longed-for tomorrow. And then we are sent out to make that tomorrow possible. To stand with those at the end of the line. To notice those nobody else chooses. To make sure people have enough. To give hope where the world has withdrawn it. Is that fair? Not according to the arithmetic of the marketplace. But is it just? Absolutely.

Marketplace fairness says: You receive what you earn.

Kingdom justice asks: Does everyone have enough to live?

And grace says: There is enough for you too.

So thank God the kingdom is not governed by the arithmetic of the marketplace.

Thank God it is grace.

From the garden, to the wilderness, to the vineyard, to this table, the promise remains the same: There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share. Amen.

                                                Exodus 14:19–31 | Matthew 18:21–35                         

The wind moves.

The waters divide.

The earth is revealed.

And the people walk free.

Did you hear that in our first reading? It sounds like creation happening again. In Genesis, darkness covers the deep. God’s Spirit moves over the waters. The waters divide, dry land appears, and life begins. Now, in Exodus, there is darkness, wind, divided water and dry land once again. But this time, what emerges is not simply the Earth; it is a people. People who had been enslaved, and exploited walk through the sea to freedom. This is a new creation.

God creates a way where there was no way—a framework within which freedom becomes possible. Israel is no longer Pharaoh’s property. They are God’s beloved people. This is why Exodus belongs within the Season of Creation.

Creation is constant; God’s continuing work of making space for life: bringing possibility from chaos, life from death and freedom from captivity. God creates the way into freedom. Then the people must walk through it. And they decide what they will carry with them.

Years ago, I went to live and work in India, with charities seeking to end human trafficking and disrupt modern slavery. There, I met people for whom Exodus was not an ancient story. It was their story. The people who have haunted me most were not only the girls trafficked into brothels, but the women who ran those dark, stinking places. The women, not the pimps; the older brothel madams. Many of those women had once been trafficked girls themselves. Others had been born in brothels to women who were sexually enslaved. Exploitation was the only world they had ever known. When they became too old to be profitable—or when HIV or other illness had ravaged their bodies—some were given another role within the same brutal system. They became the women who managed the brothels and recruited the next generation of girls.

The enslaved child became an adult who helped to enslave others.

The victim became an agent of the system that had first consumed her.

I don’t tell their story to excuse the terrible harm done to the girls they recruited. Nor to blame them for failing to escape (most were never offered any real path to freedom). I tell it because even though they appeared to be in charge, they had merely been moved from one room in Egypt to another. The system offered them survival only by making them serve the power that had destroyed their childhoods.

The thing with oppression is that it doesn’t only wound people; it teaches wounded people to reproduce the wound.

Egypt gets inside us. And even when a path into freedom appears, we carry the habits and chains of captivity with us. And that is where Matthew’s Gospel takes us.

Jesus tells of a servant who owes his king a debt so enormous he could never repay it. The servant pleads for patience, but the king does something extraordinary: he cancels the debt completely. A path opens. The servant walks free. Then he meets another servant who owes him a much smaller amount. He seizes him by the throat and demands payment. Although the second servant pleads for mercy, the first servant refuses, and has him thrown into prison.

He had received mercy but refuses the extend it.

He has received freedom—but immediately creates captivity for somebody else.

He has crossed the sea but had then rebuilt Egypt on the other side.

That is the warning at the heart of Jesus’ parable.

God’s mercy is not simply something we receive. It is an invitation into a new way of living. We are forgiven so we might become forgiving. We are liberated so that we might liberate others. We are shown mercy so that mercy might enter the world through us.

So where have we received mercy but refused to pass it to others?

Who do we keep imprisoned in the worst thing they have done?

Where has our own woundedness begun to wound somebody else?

Forgiveness does not mean pretending harm didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean remaining in abusive or dangerous relationships, abandoning justice or removing necessary boundaries. Of course, we may carry scars across the seabed. Of course we will remember what Egypt did to us. But we do not have to carry Pharaoh’s chains so that we can fasten them around somebody else.

Egypt is not found only in personal relationships. We reproduce it whenever we treat any part of God’s creation as objects to exploit. The same belief that turns a human being into a commodity turns a forest into timber, a river into a drain and the Earth into a resource whose only value is what we can extract from it.

But people do not belong to Pharaoh.

The Earth does not belong to Pharaoh.

Creation belongs to God—and we belong within it, creatures among creatures, called to receive God’s gifts without turning them into instruments of captivity.

So, our response is not to admire Israel’s journey from a safe distance. It is to walk it.

Perhaps that means loosening our grip upon a resentment we treasure. Perhaps it means recognising where our comfort depends upon another person’s exploitation. Perhaps it means consuming less, wasting less and refusing to treat the Earth as disposable.

And I am not saying this is simple! It really isn’t.

Perhaps forgiveness begins with the prayer:

“God, I am not ready to forgive, but I am willing to become willing.”

God creates the way into freedom, but we must decide if and how we will walk through.

As God created in the beginning, so God still creates now…

The wind moves.

The waters divide.

The earth is revealed.

The people walk free.

The invitation is ours. May we cross with open hands. May the freedom we receive become freedom for others. And may the Creator make of us—and through us—a new creation. Amen.

Matthew 18:10–14

In 2023, I was in Nepal, visiting the children supported by an education and housing charity established by my previous parish. So when catastrophic floods struck last month, we were desperate to know whether they and their families were safe.

At least 1,200 people have died, and more than 4,000 remain missing.

One thousand, two hundred dead. Four thousand missing. Huge numbers.

Each one somebody’s child, parent or friend.

But I have not really been waiting for news of 4,000 people. I have been waiting for news of one: Sallu and Suraksha’s mum, Shanta. Not because her life matters more, but because I know her children. I know the people waiting for the phone to ring.

For me, this overwhelming tragedy has a name and a face. Shanta is not simply one among thousands. Not a statistic. She is the one.

And perhaps that helps us understand something about God.

We hear Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep, and we might immediately recall the super-familiar version in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus tells three stories together:

The lost sheep. The lost coin. The lost son.

Something precious is lost. Someone searches for it. What was lost is found. And everybody is summoned to rejoice. Luke’s emphasis is upon the joy of finding that which was lost. But Matthew tells the story differently.

Matthew places it in a whole chapter about vulnerability. The disciples begin by asking Jesus who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus responds by placing a child among them and speaks about welcoming them. He warns against causing a little one to stumble. And then he tells them about a shepherd with a hundred sheep.

One sheep wanders away and the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes searching for the one. Matthew’s version ends like this:

“It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”

The emphasis is upon the value of the vulnerable one. The one in danger. The one whose absence might go unnoticed among the ninety-nine.

Humanity may look at the ninety-nine and say: “At least most are safe. It is only one.”

But God says: “That one is mine.” For God, one is never just one.

And this is the Season of Creation. Throughout September, Christians around the world celebrate God as Creator. We remember that creation is not simply something God did a very long time ago and then walked away from. Creation is God’s continuing act and God’s continuing gift. And creation itself calls us to become collaborators with God: loving, tending and protecting all that God has made. We do not stand outside creation, looking in. We are creatures among creatures.

We belong to the same community as the trees and rivers, the birds and animals, the oceans and soil. Our lives are interwoven with the life of the Earth. So perhaps, during this season, the parable of the lost sheep can train us to see the whole creation as God sees it; the person hidden within an enormous number; the sheep separated from the flock; the single tree felled in a forest; the river that can no longer sustain life and the bird whose song is disappearing.

In the Gulf of California lives a tiny porpoise called the vaquita. It is the smallest porpoise in the world, and lives nowhere else on Earth. Vaquitas become trapped in illegal fishing nets and drown. Their numbers have fallen so drastically that there may now be as few as ten vaquitas left. Ten. Not ten thousand.

And we might ask: Would it really matter if they disappeared?

The oceans would remain enormous. There would still be dolphins and whales and other kinds of porpoise. It is only one species among countless others.

But there it is again: Only one. One missing sheep. One missing mother. One endangered species. And to God, one is never just one. The shepherd does not decide a one per cent loss is an acceptable outcome. They notice who is missing and goes to the one in danger. That is the movement of God. And it must become the movement of God’s Church.

The Season of Creation calls us to notice what the world has learned not to notice.

To value what the world considers expendable. To protect what cannot protect itself.

To go towards what is vulnerable, separated, endangered or lost. That is what it means to go looking for the one.

We cannot rescue everyone. We cannot repair a devastated country by ourselves.

We cannot single-handedly save every endangered species or halt the warming of the planet. But the thought that “I cannot do everything” must never become “there is nothing I can do.” We can give. We can share. We can press our political leaders to act seriously on climate change. We can welcome those displaced by poverty, disaster and conflict. We can notice the family waiting for news, the species approaching extinction.

Caring for creation is not an optional extra for Christians who happen to enjoy “the outdoors.” It is the outworking of our love of God and neighbour. When the climate changes, people suffer. When habitats are destroyed, creatures disappear. When one part of creation is wounded, the whole of creation is diminished.

And in a few moments, we will come to this table. We will bring bread and wine: Grain and grape. Soil and water. Sunshine and rain. All joined with human labour.

Creation will be gathered into our hands and offered back to its Creator. And God will return it to us as the life of Christ. Here, creation becomes sacrament.

God takes the ordinary gifts of the Earth, transforms them and then transforms us. And after we have received, we are sent out to give ourselves for God’s beloved creation—over and over again.

As we pause for this month of Creation Season may we learn to look again:

To see Shanta among four thousand missing people.

To notice the absent one within the flock.

To stand in awe before the vastness of the ocean—and still care about perhaps ten remaining porpoises. When we learn to see like that, we begin to reflect something of God. One beloved creation, held together in God, where not one animal, human, plant, tree or species is ever just one. And if they are not expendable to God, they cannot be expendable to us. Amen.

Exodus 3:1–15 | Psalm 26:1–8 | Romans 12:9–21 | Matthew 16:21–28

We have now been together for the grand total of twelve days. Not quite two weeks.

Maybe it feels longer, because we’ve already fitted quite a lot in: a Sunday, a midweek Mass, a parish council meeting; we laid Allan to rest; and I popped over to Adelaide for four days for the national conference for ordained women.

But cast your mind back, if you can, to last Sunday.

Jesus said: “I will build my church.” And I suggested those might be some of the most important words for us as we begin this new chapter together.

I will build my church. That is Christ’s promise. Not you. Not me. Christ.

Today, our readings take us one step further.

If Christ is going to build God’s church — right here, in North Beach — what will that church look like? I think today’s readings give us three things…

First: it will be a church that burns with the glory of God.

Our Old Testament reading tells us, Moses is going about an entirely ordinary day when something catches his attention. A bush is burning, but it is not consumed.

And Moses says: “I must turn aside and look.”

A surprisingly calm response to a blazing fire that isn’t destroying the tree…

But he stops. He looks. There is something here. Something different. Something that makes him stop what he is doing and come closer. And God says: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

You may have noticed I celebrate the Eucharist barefoot. My training priest used to do it, and I thought it was gross. The floor was freezing — we were in the north-east of England — and his feet were not pretty. “You’ll never catch me doing that,” I remember saying. And yet… Often, when I say Mass, I take off my shoes. Because I need to remember: The place on which we stand is holy ground. There is nothing magical about being up here. My words don’t make this holy. It is holy because God is here. Christ gathers his people, speaks to us in scripture, and meets us in bread and wine. The Spirit moves among us. God builds and draws and calls and creates and sends us out. God comes so close, right here. My longing is that St Michael’s will burn with that glory. That our neighbours might encounter this place and it might make them stop and think: There’s something different here. I need to look. Not because we’re flashy or clever or successful. But because there is something here. Something alive and compelling and holy. Actually, not something. Someone. God is here.

That’s the first characteristic of the church Christ is building among us. It burns with glory.

Secondly: Christ builds a church that loves differently.

Paul says: “Let love be genuine.” Genuine. Not merely polite. Not really nice. Genuine love. And in case we’re not sure what that means, Paul makes it extraordinarily clear.

• Contribute to the needs of others.
• Extend hospitality to strangers.
• Rejoice with those who rejoice.
• Weep with those who weep.
• Live peaceably with all.
• If someone is hungry, feed them.
• If someone is thirsty, give them something to drink.

Unfortunately, genuine love is inconvenient. It notices, comes alongside, gets our hands dirty. It costs us something — time, money, effort, emotion. It’s hard work. And it is utterly transformational. It is the only kind of love I want to be concerned with. And then Paul pushes it even further: “Overcome evil with good.” The world already knows how to return anger for anger, hurt for hurt, hatred for hatred. But Christ builds a church that is different.

We don’t overcome hatred with better hatred. We overcome evil with good.

Perhaps that is how the glory becomes visible: a community that genuinely, practically and inconveniently loves differently.

And thirdly — and this is the biggest one: Christ builds a church of people who give their whole lives to him. Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That is an enormous ask. Whole-heartedly. No half measures. Your whole life. One of the speakers in Adelaide put it like this: the call of Christ is to hand over all that we are to God — all that is good in us, and all our sin and darkness too. It is what we do in baptism. We give ourselves to Christ. And then we spend the rest of our lives learning to live that way, until our baptism is finally completed in death. And I want to be really clear here. We don’t give our lives to the Church; this one or any other one.  We do not give our lives to an institution. And certainly not because we like the music, or the liturgy, or the morning tea, or even the priest.

None of those things is worth giving your life to. Christ is. And Christ alone.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Take up your cross and support a religious institution.”

He says: “Take up your cross and follow me.” We give our lives to Christ. But something extraordinary happens when we do. Christ gathers us together. Following Jesus is deeply personal, but it is never merely private. Christ calls us to himself, and in calling us to himself he joins us to one another. That is the Church. Not the object of our devotion. Not the thing we worship. But the Body that Christ makes out of those who follow him. And then he sends that Body into the world. So, Christ has hands, feet, eyes and a voice and heart here in North Beach. Ours. We give our lives to Christ. And Christ takes those lives and gifts and people — and makes them his Body. Perhaps that is how these three things finally belong together.

Last Sunday we heard Christ’s promise: “I will build my church.”

This Sunday we begin to see what that church looks like.

A church alive with the glory of God

A church learning to love as Christ loves

And a church made up of people who hear Jesus say, “Follow me,” and are learning, day by day, to give their whole lives.

Glory. Love. Life. Not a church we build for Christ.

A church Christ builds for us, with us, and from us.

May it be so in this place, amen.

Matthew 16.13–20 | Romans 12.1–8

Didn’t we have a fabulous time on Tuesday night? It was such a beautiful start to this next chapter. There was a moment where I managed to get lost in church. I aimed for the vestry and ended up facing a wall… which is quite impressive, given the size of the building and the fact that I am now apparently in charge of it. But perhaps it’s appropriate because we’re all finding our way. We’re learning names and stories and rhythms and where things are kept. And I love that. Because so much is possible. And into all that possibility Jesus gives us this extraordinary promise: “I will build my church.”

There are all sorts of questions we could ask this morning. What kind of church are we going to be? What might change or grow? Who might come? Where will we be a year from now? I am ridiculously excited about those questions.

But Jesus begins somewhere else: “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

And then Jesus says: “I will build my church.”

There is something important about the order. Before there are plans and possibilities and new ideas, there is Jesus. This is Christ’s church. And Christ is building it.

Then Paul says to the Romans: you are one body, but you don’t all have the same function. Different gifts. Different people. All needed. Apparently this is how God builds. So notice what Jesus says.

Not: Gemma will build my church.

Not: Parish Council will build my church.

Not even: the Diocese will build my church.

I will build my church. And I find that enormously liberating.

On Tuesday I said the Diocese has given us an extraordinary gift: three years of time and resources to discover what God is doing here — and how we might join in.

Discover, and join in. Because God is already here and we are co-creating with God.

And then Bishop Hans gave us an image I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. He said that when the Church is true to Christ, “our doors will be wide open and our tables will be long.” I love that. Wide open doors. Long tables.

When we think the door is wide enough — widen it again.

When we think the table is full — grab more chairs. Make it longer.

There are people in North Beach this morning we haven’t met yet.

Some may have been part of churches before. Some may have been hurt by churches. Some may never have imagined church could possibly be for them. Some are drinking coffee, walking the dog, heading for the beach, unaware that by this time next year they will be sitting with us. And here’s the thing: We need them.

Not because we need to fill the pews, or need their money, or need better numbers.

We need them because Paul tells us we are the Body of Christ.

And there are gifts missing from this body that somebody out there embodies.

There are voices we haven’t heard, stories we don’t know, ways of seeing God that might change us. There are things Christ intends this church to become that we cannot become until others arrive. The people who aren’t here yet are not the objects of our mission. They are part of the future God is building.

We’re not inviting people to join something we’ve already finished. We’re saying:

Come and help us discover what Christ is building. Bring your gifts, questions, doubts and story. Bring your past, present and future. Bring all of who you are, because together we are the Body of Christ. Make the door wider. Make the table longer.

And it is no accident that at the centre of our life together there is a table. This table.

Not my table. Not yours. It doesn’t even belong to the Church universal.

It is Christ’s table. And Christ decides how long it is.

There is an old invitation to Communion that I love. I used it here on Wednesday:

“Come to this table, not because you must, but because you may.”

And it ends: “Come and meet the Christ because together we are his body.”

What glorious theology. Not because you have earned your place or got everything sorted. Not because your faith is strong and your life tidy. Come because you may.

Come because Christ invites you. Come because grace has made a place for you and we need you to complete this body.

And if there isn’t enough room? Make the table longer.

Jesus was forever eating with the wrong people — those deemed too sinful, too difficult, too different. And Jesus kept sitting down with them. Another chair. Another place. Another person discovering: There is room for me too.

And that takes us back to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say I am?”

Friends, we don’t need the perfect answer before we approach this table.

Sometimes our answer is simply in approaching this table: open hands, open heart, ready to receive, prepared to be changed. And there we discover again who Christ is in bread broken, wine poured, grace given.

Our answer to that essential question is found in the church we will become.

If we say Jesus is the Christ, that becomes visible in who is welcomed, heard and valued; in who gets a chair; in how readily we move over when somebody arrives.

Bishop Hans laid down a challenge on Tuesday that I wasn’t expecting, and Jesus confirmed it in this morning’s gospel. It will be our benchmark for how we are going and growing as a community: If we say Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God…

How wide open are our doors? How long is our table?

May we be known as a place where there is always room.

Room for grace. Room for difference. Room for people we haven’t met yet. Room for God to surprise us. We don’t know what Christ will build here. Isn’t that exciting?

Because Jesus never said: Build me a church. Jesus said: “I will build my church.”

So may this be our prayer for our little church between the waves and the wild:

Show us what you are building, Lord. Show us where you are at work. Make the door wider and the table longer. And when we think there is no more room — give us the grace to pull up another chair. Amen.

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.