The Magnificat of 2023

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16   The Magnificat       Romans 16:25-27     Luke 1: 26-38

Back in July, while I was in England, my dad asked my family ‘if you were a contestant on mastermind, what would your specialist subject be?’. And we thought long and hard about our answer. His was episodes of the dare-I-say dated crime drama Columbo, and the races of one specific horse of the 1970s. But mine would be the life and works of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And, if I can peel your thoughts away from what your mastermind specialist subject would be, let’s consider Jesus’ mum.

In place of our psalm today we read those glorious words of Mary’s song of social justice, the Magnificat. My favourite Magnificat-fact is until as recently as 1986 it was against the law in at least two countries for it to be recited, in public.  In Guatemala and India, the government banned this passage because they recognised its power and they feared that if the poor or oppressed heard it, there might be an uprising, a revolution.  Mary’s prophetic view of this world is not just a system that is a bit better than the old one. It is a brand-new creation, and it makes the old order unrecognisable.

This wide-eyed girl said a defiant yes to a new world order and agreed to fulfil her part in it and I want to do the same. I want to be that radical, that defiant, that obedient. But do you know what I only just realised this week?

As much as I love Mary, as much as her words are indelibly inked on my skin, as much as her YES has got me into all kinds of holy trouble and led me to this, I’ve often kept her as that teenage mum. Apart from an occasional moment or two, she’s mostly been singing the Magnificat or birthing in the stable. But this week, I read this poem and it has woken something up in me so I wanted to share with you these words from the writer Katie Baker.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards.

I listen calmly while the angel brings me news that will shake my life beyond all measure.

I accept what has been ordained for me.

I am young and dressed in blue.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards.

Despite travelling almost 100 miles on a donkey across a desert and giving birth in a stable, I am still immaculately clean and tidy, cradling my infant son, unperturbed by my surroundings.

I am still young and dressed in blue.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards, welcoming shepherds from the nearby fields and strangers from afar; a person who treats such events as if they happened every day, calmly pondering on them in my heart.

I am still young and dressed in blue

But is this really me?

Do you have any picture of me beyond that of Christmas cards?

Where is your picture of me in the temple, as Simeon tells me how a sword would pierce my soul?

The angel brought greetings and told me not to be afraid, so I am calm on your Christmas cards; but do you never see the terror in my eyes as I hear Simeon’s haunting words and I do fear what is to come?

Maybe you do have a picture of me 12 years later – but have I aged in your eyes?

Am I calm and serene, frantically searching for my son, lost on return from the temple?

He was calm – but not I.

I was frantic.

Do you have a picture of me 30 years after your first picture of me?

Am I still dressed in blue?

Are there lines on my face?

Is my hair now grey?

Do you see me at the wedding feast, recognising deep within that his time was coming and he would soon be no longer mine?

Do you see me hurt by his rejection when he declared that all the world was his mother and his brother and his sister.

I knew that he had a greater purpose – but do not imagine that there was no pain for me in this. How I aged in those three years.

But am I still young in your picture?

Was I not grey-haired as I stood at the foot of the cross?

Do you know what it takes to watch your son being crucified?

Some parents still do.

As they pierced his side, my soul, too, was pierced.

Do you have a picture of me – in tears, distraught at the anguish of my son?

Or am I still the Mary of your Christmas cards?

They laid him in a tomb – it seemed so final – it seemed I had lost him for ever.

Where was the angel now to tell me not to be afraid?

My fellow countrywomen kept vigil; I was not alone in mourning.

But you who know what happened next, do you let me grieve for the end I thought he’d reached?

You know the end – you know the triumph of his resurrection, the Kingdom without end – and knowing this affects your picture of me.

I remain always young and dressed in blue, calm and serene, humble and willing – never allowed to show fear, hurt, anger, pain and grief.

For many I remain the Mary of Christmas cards.

If I am to be called blessed, please remember all I stand for.

As you receive your cards this Christmas, please look at me and remember that this is just the beginning.    

Isn’t that wonderful?

The Mary of my knowledge was wild eyed, brave hearted, defiant and rebellious – a real revolutionary – but I had kept her young. By doing that I had denied Blessed Mary of burying her child. She knew that pain. And when he ascended he left again. I denied her of that too. She is so much more than we might have space for in our minds.

So before we dash headlong into Christmas Eve, before we celebrate her in carols and candlelight let’s just pause and consider the lifelong love of this earthly Mother, chosen for great things, and fully human.

And may we be inspired by that wild teen to whisper our own yes to God’s call, for the rest of our lives, not just for this snapshot, or this chapter. May our own yes be as bold as Mary’s and as lifelong. And might it even be as wild. Amen.

The beginning of the Good News…

Isaiah 40:1-11                   Psalm 85                 2 Peter 3:8-15a                 Mark 1:1-8

 

Hear the voice of the prophet St Maria Von Trapp echoing down the ages, as her voice cries out in the Sound of Music, and she proclaims, ‘let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…’.  She was onto something because way, way, before Maria’s sage advice, so St Mark was saying the same. ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’, he said. The beginning.

 

And where did he start? Did he list the genealogy of the Christ child, like Matthew?

Did he start at the conception of John the Baptist or Jesus, like Luke? No, he didn’t.

For Mark, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, went back some 700 years before his birth with that glorious prophesy we heard in our Old Testament reading – See I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way, and his voice will cry out in the wilderness ‘…prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God…’

 

 

Jesus’ birth and what it meant for all humankind forever, was so significant, so transformational that it didn’t begin in that stable in Bethlehem. It didn’t even begin at his conception. It began millennia before, with Isaiah prophesying it and John the Baptist fulfilling it and that good news changed the world forever.

 

The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God is that the valleys are lifted up, the mountains are brought low, the rocky paths are made level and the barren land breaks into rich fertile soil. The sick are healed, the broken are made whole, the blind can see, the lame can walk.

 

And God’s glory is revealed. To everyone. Not just the religious few. Not just to those who, for whatever their credentials say, somehow apparently deserve it. Not only for the in crowd. And never at the exclusion of anyone else. The glory of the lord is revealed for all people. And that is good news, because it means we get to see it too. All of us.

 

 

So, if this is where the good news of Jesus Christ begins, where does Mark say it ends?  Does it end at the crucifixion when Christ takes his throne on that wooden cross? Does it end in his death in that stone cold tomb where, to the rest of the world, it certainly seemed to end? Does it end in the glory of the resurrection or the holy relay race of the Ascension?

 

No, the storytelling of Mark’s gospel ends like this…

 

Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation [and] 19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

 

 

So, really, it doesn’t end at all. Because, in Isaiah’s prophesy, and in John the Baptist’s mission, the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God really began – the good news that was in place since the dawn of time put skin on and came and lived among us and he brought the glory of God to a hurting world as a promise and a hope for all people. And that story, that mission, that good news has never ended. The disciples went out and preached everywhere and the Lord worked with them. And as they went, so they still go.

 

And for those of us who are trying to be followers of this God man, our job is to keep on going with that good news. To keep sharing it with all people. To keep telling that story. To keep proclaiming the word of the Lord. To walk with others through the valleys of despair until those valleys are lifted up; to remove the rocks of pain and sickness and struggle and loneliness from the paths of others, and to care for this world so that the barren places can become lush again. The beginning of the good news came. It is here. But the story is not over.

 

 

During advent we have time to pause, and take stock. It is the perfect time for us to consider our own part in the story of the good news of Jesus Christ. How are we contributing to it? Are we fulfilling our role? Is the story still being told in us and through us?

 

And today we celebrate the wedding of Cecilia and James. And we pray that their marriage will also be a significant part of the telling of this fabulous story of good news.

 

And every year, on this day, as you celebrate your anniversaries, I encourage you to pause and reflect, look back and look forwards, and see how you have told the good news story of Jesus in you love of one another and of others and, most importantly in your love of Him who loves you. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope: She is Fierce!

Isaiah 64:1-9     Advent Prose    1 Corinthians 1:3-9      Mark 13:24-37

 

Today is the first Sunday of advent, the start of our new year, and our theme is hope.

 

Last week, we heard Jesus’ familiar words from Matthew’s gospel, that said ‘when was it we saw you hungry and gave you something to eat, or thirsty and gave you something to drink. When was it that you were in prison and we visited you…’ and we heard Jesus’ reply; ‘when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me’ and I spoke about Ned in detention, and how we can see the Christ in the faces of those most in need.  

 

And the thing that always broke me most, about visiting Ned, was that he had given up on hope. He had had his hopes raised and dashed too many times in the 11+ years he was locked up. For him hope was too dangerous a thing. In one of his newspaper articles Ned wrote ‘hope is like torture to me. I can’t afford it’. It seems to me that one of the biggest crimes humanity can inflict on another is to remove hope.

 

 

And while it was Ned’s own court case that finally brought a change in legislation that ruled indefinite detention as unlawful – a ruling that brought hope to so many detainees – it still didn’t give hope to Ned. It didn’t free him.

 

This week, on Thursday, I got the very tiniest glimpse of what he had faced, and what it is like to feel out of hope because I got a text that said, ‘He’s out’…and a follow up one that simply said ‘free’. I facetimed him and saw him standing on the right side of the wire fences, with his bags. I got a picture message of him in the taxi, driving away from detention. But I didn’t dare hope it was true until I stood side-by-side with him in the city much later that night – outside, under a huge sky. Only then did I dare to hope it was true and that his future is free and bright. And I don’t know how long it will take for Ned to have hope that this is true, or that his future is bright.

 

 

Friends, there are some truly horrific things happening in our world today; I don’t need to tell you that. Climate change, global boiling, war, racism, oppression, slavery, huge inequality between the rich who just get richer and the poor who die from poverty. There’s injustice all around, and there is gut wrenching fear.

 

And yet, hope seems to be relentless in her pursuit of us. It’s almost like, whatever injustice humankind inflicts on another, still hope will find her way through – like poppies pressing through the concrete – we somehow can’t move without being bombarded by the blessings of the creator. Just like the fig tree in this morning’s gospel, so hope is sprouting her own leaves everywhere I look. She is all over the place and she is totally beguiling!

 

 

Hope is a fierce beast.

She is told she is torture and cannot be afforded, and yet she whispers quietly into detention cells and writes court cases to make indefinite detention illegal for all people, forever. And she wins.

She gets put on the back-burner but she refuses to stay there.

She stands, defiant, when the dangers and difficulties and darkness of this world threaten to overwhelm her. And she just lights a tiny candle to illume the whole place.

She dares to believe that another world is not just possible, she is on her way and on a quiet day, she can hear her breathing.

And she does all she can to live in that world today – as if it is already here.

 

 

Today marks the beginning of this new season of advent – a period of waiting. But in this period of waiting, we are not waiting hope-less and we are not waiting idly.

 

We are waiting, with hope, for the fulfilment of the promises Jesus made to return. And as we wait, so we are spotting signs of where Jesus is already alive and well and working. For us, hope isn’t torture and it can be afforded, because we can see, in part, that which we are waiting for. God is already here – always has been, always will be – what we are waiting for is already bursting out and springing up.

 

 

And it is characterised by hope. It is hope that the day of salvation is here…and coming…that it’s something that is not just possible but is on its way. It’s hope that says ‘even after 11 years we believe your freedom is possible and we will be with you until that day comes…and beyond’. It is the hope that says, ‘for you it is torture and cannot be afforded so we will hope for you until the time you can hope too’.

 

The springing up of the Kingdom of God looks like light in dark places, work for the unemployed, food for the hungry, release for those who are indefinitely detained, housing for the homeless, clothing for the naked, healing for the sick – hope for those who are in the depths of despair.

The unravelling and revealing of the Kingdom of God among us is pure hope for today and the future. It is hope-filled and hope-giving.

 

 

Hope is coming. It is on its way. And hope will not disappoint us.

And as we encounter those who are without hope right now, may we offer ourselves to be bringers of it. May we commit ourselves to noticing – like with the reminder last week to see Christ in the hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and lonely and imprisoned. May we need to notice those for whom hope is torture and offer to sit alongside them and hold that candle of hope for them, until they can hold it for themselves. Or, as Jesus put it in this morning’s gospel reading – ‘what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake’.

 

Friends, hope is all around us and she is unstoppable.

So let’s keep awake; let’s spot it, and spread it, and be it! Amen.

 

Christ the King 2023

EZEKIEL 34:11-16, 20-24  PSALM 100      EPH 1: 15-23     MATT 25: 31-46

Today we celebrate Christ the King. In liturgical terms this Sunday is the baby of the family, only initiated in 1925, in response to the reign of Mussolini, and the rise of fascism. It was put into the church calendar to remind her people that Christ is Sovereign, not Mussolini.

In the 1920s, the church may well have needed reminding that because Jesus is King, Mussolini is not. And isn’t it ever thus? Today perhaps the church still needs reminding that because we believe Christ is our Ruler, then it means neither Charles nor Albo nor Biden nor Netanyahu nor Zelensky, nor anyone else, past present or future, can possibly be sovereign. Not in the real order of things.

So what does this rule and reign look like? What does it mean for us who try to follow the true King, and live in his alternative kingdom?

I came to the scriptures late this week, but it turned out they had already been chasing me. When I read the gospel reading, we’d already heard it at morning prayer and I’d already made the journey to Yongah Hill Detention Centre to see Ned.

In the 2+ years I have been visiting Ned we have sat in a variety of prison visiting rooms, on screwed down chairs with no natural daylight. Very occasionally we have been given a glass of water. But this week there is a new ruling. Now visitors can bring in factory-sealed snacks to share. So, with my cellophane neatly in place, I arrived at the soulless, colourless, miserable detention room with sweet baklava and biscuits and sour cherry juice, and we sat and shared this mishmash meal together. And while I joked to Ned that this was the first time we had been out for dinner, and I didn’t rate his choice of restaurant much, the food we shared felt almost as sacred as our holy meal here. It was a communion of sorts.

And when I read this gospel passage ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, … I was in prison and you visited me’ I knew afresh that, although it looked to those stone-faced eager-eyed guards that this was just a detainee and priest eating pastries, I knew, I know, that we were eating with the Christ; that we could see him, if we cared to notice, in the faces of each other, in the eating and drinking and in the visiting.

And I heard Clare O’Neill spouting vitriol on sky news about the release of people from indefinite detention, and I heard her describe them as deplorable and disgusting. I heard her say ‘I don’t want these people in our country’ and I dared to believe the truth that if we draw the line of who is in and who is out, then we are in danger of creating a divide and discovering we are on one side and Christ is on the other.

Whenever we say one is in, and another is out we will always find Jesus is never quite where we expect him to be. Because in his alternative rule and reign, he will always be found on the margins – his Kingdom flourishes and grows and blossoms right there on the edges, because that is where the hungry and thirsty and lonely and sick and naked and imprisoned and enslaved and hated people are found. Those are our King’s people – they are the people of the Kingdom. They are his family. And if we are hungry or sick or detained or bought and sold or despised – then we are first in line to his throne.

And for the vast majority of us who aren’t counted in that number, we should make certain sure we are in their company, because in the feeding and visiting and sharing and giving, in the hanging out on the margins, with all that might cost us and all that might take, it is there that we will meet Christ.  It’s there we will be changed. We might need to move ourselves from our comfort to discomfort, from wealth to poverty, from fitting in to being judged and excluded, but the riches we find there will be beyond measure. Hang out in the darkness because that is where the true light breaks in.

You know, I was brought up in a church that was all about making sure you were on the right side of the line – you’ve got to be sure you’re a sheep not a goat because Jesus is coming back, and he’s going to send you to fire and damnation if you’re on the wrong side of the divide. That theology was damaging to me – is damaging – and I could never find the good news. It was a rule of fear and didn’t help me know how to be free to live now. So, when I read these verses about judgment and separation and eternal punishment I don’t know what to do with them. But I do know this: our King is a king of love, a gentle servant shepherd, a just and righteous King and this passage says he does the dividing. It’s up to him and it’s not up to me.

It is up to him, but he is very clear on the bit that is up to me – feed, give, clothe, care, visit, notice others and take light to the places of darkness. Simple, clear instructions for living. And if we focus on that, if we focus on the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, if we focus on making sure our welcome is unconditional and inviting, if we add our voices to the light instead of the darkness of exclusion and judgment then we will see the Christ. And we will know him. And we will learn we are blessed by the Father since the foundation of the world.

And as we gaze out from the good pasture of our lush grazing land among the flock, so we may see that the goat pen is empty because all have been gathered in.

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.

Amen.

Rivers of Justice

Amos 5:18-24                   Psalm 70    1Thess 4:9-18                  Matthew 25:1-13

And so it was, at 4am on Tuesday morning in the recent past, 6 sleepy pilgrims piled into a minibus to make the journey to watch the sunrise over Everest. They quietly climbed the steps in the inky darkness, to reach their vantage point and the air was still and cold as it awaited the dawn. And then, just as the birds began to clear their throats for the first song of the day, one pilgrim – Christabel by name – broadcast through the darkness, ‘I feel like a foolish virgin for not bringing my coat’. And then, lo, within a week of returning from the trip, we have the exact same parable before us, and how is a preacher to reflect on these holy words when all she can hear is the warbling of a cold pilgrim, ringing in her ears?

And, more seriously, how is one to pass over the prophesies of Amos when they are sounding so close to the experiences of our global family, right now. And today is Remembrance Sunday and it feels so hollow a thing that we might cast our minds back to the world wars of the last century when we could more easily, and more painfully, cast our eyes over the world news this morning.

Amos woefully prophesies that the day of the lord ‘be darkness, not light – pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness’. Pitch darkness, like a group of women huddled over snuffed out lamps, wondering how they will bring back any kind of light to be able to find their way to the wedding banquet. Pitch darkness that can only be lit by those who would share their own wealth, with those who are without. Darkness that might only be lighted by the one who is the true light. The light of Christ.

That darkness is what life looks like for so many, so often.

The darkness of despair and depression. The darkness of poverty and hunger.

The darkness as they lie in wait, listening for the next bomb to fall, hoping to hear their baby cry, instead of the deep ugly silence of death.

Amos paints this picture of deep darkness. Then God speaks, cutting through the prophesy to say, ‘I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. I will not accept your offerings. I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen…’

But the message of the parable that goes alongside this prophesy is the bridegroom appears when it is darkest. The Holy One, arrives at midnight and brings light. Those bridesmaids needn’t have gone to find the all-night oil shop – they simply needed to go to the source of Light – the one who spoke into darkness and created light at the dawn of time – they simply needed to arrive empty handed and say, ‘I have nothing and I need you’. And light would have been their gift, their reward for their vulnerability and their honesty.

Amos’ prophesy is clear – God didn’t, doesn’t want religion.

God doesn’t want crowds or big displays or sacrifices or offering or music.

God wants us. The whole of us. And God wants us to take that precious gift of light to the darkest places. To go to those darkest places and kick them until they bleed light. And we are sent with one challenge – one purpose:

To let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.

And I have thought about that verse all week. I love it so much. But in this world, where yesterday’s headline says Israel is urged to stop bombing babies in Gaza, where hospitals don’t have enough power, let alone bed-space, staff or resources, to care for those in need, where fires and volcanoes are raging and children are being recruited as soldiers. In this world, on this day, what on earth does justice rolling like a river even look like. And how can we be bringers of it. What can we even pray, let alone do.

So I took a look back to that stunning text from that River Documentary we heard last month and I read these words…

Where rivers wander, life flourishes

For rivers are world makers.

The mystery and beauty of a wild river is beyond our ability to comprehend

And I imagined justice cascading down ravines, rather than water, and bringing life.

The narrator went on to say…

To think like a river means to dream downstream in time

To imagine what will flow far into the future from our actions in the present

To be good ancestors to those who come after us

Downstream of us…

And that is our goal. That is our aim as followers of the Light, as those who are trying to live by the commands of the one who says the final word to darkness; to make the future better and brighter for those downstream. And for this we must pray.

Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.

And we pray until we find a way of being that river of justice, until we find ways to trickle righteousness to places in deepest darkest need. And we pray for light.

So let us pray…

All Saints Day, 2023

Revelation 7: 9-17          Psalm 34            1 John 3:1-3         Matthew 5:1-12

 

I have a favourite story for All Saints’ Day and as I am writing this in the airport hotel at Kuala Lumpur, on my way back from Nepal, I can’t check if I told you the story last year, or the year before, so please forgive me if you’ve heard it before, and just enjoy it again…

 

The story goes that there was a little girl, wandering through an English cathedral with her mum and as they walked through the ancient church, so the mum was pointing out each of the saints, memorialised in the stained-glass windows. This is St Peter; this is St Mary and St John and St Francis and so they went on. And then the little girl tugged on her mum’s arm, and she said, ‘I get it! The saints are the ones the light shines through…’ and I think that is probably the best description of a saint I have ever heard. A saint is the one the light shines through.

 

Crafting a sermon about the ones the light shines through is easy work after a week in Kathmandu with IGWR. In Giving We Receive is a charity that was set up here, some 13+ years ago, to care for some of the poorest children in Nepal; it links sponsors with children, to fund their education and housing and food and to show them that there is definitely still hope in the world, there is still light, and it shines in the darkest places.  Many of you are supporters of this amazing work, and I met many of the children you sponsor. Some of you have even been up to see the work, first hand, and can tell your own stories. And I am also aware that we are not the community that we were 13 years ago, and some people may not know about the transformative work that happens in Nepal – and just how many examples there are of living saints being the ones that the light shines through.

 

So let me tell you about Raja, or Saint Raja as he should now more accurately be known.

 

Raja is a big man with an enormous heart. He lives on the 3rd floor of a tall house, with his wife and daughter. The two floors below him accommodate 16 children who otherwise would almost certainly be street kids. He oversees another children’s home, a stones throw away, and 9 other tin sheds or single rooms where mothers live with their children and have no way of paying for their food or education. At the moment Raja is uncle to 41 children and he knows their stories and he knows their dreams and he is determined to break the cycle of poverty and change the destiny that the world dealt to them. And with his big voice and his cheeky grin and his high standards and his boundless energy and endless problem-solving abilities, Raja shines light. It bursts out of him. And he goes to the darkest places and shines it right there.

 

Like the day when he found Rita left in a garbage bin, literally thrown away, aged 2, because she had special needs. Or when he discovered Ajay and his siblings, begging on the roadside to raise funds for their alcoholic parents so they could buy their next drink. Ajay, covered in 60% burns, inflicted by his parents, so they could earn more to “pay for their child’s medical treatment”. Or when he met Sunita, who had been trafficked twice – sold by her brother both times – and left with her two beautiful and clever kids with no way of being able to afford to shelter, feed or educate them. Or when he found three brothers trying to survive in the jungle, the youngest being under 18 months old. Or the boy living in the liquor store to escape his violent and abusive drunk dad, covered in human bite marks and with complex broken bones.

 

The work we started here, and continue to fund, goes to those dark places and shines brightly. That light says darkness doesn’t get to win. And that light says blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the hungry and thirsty and blessed are those who are mistreated and hurt and hated. The kingdom of heaven is yours.

 

I spotted this light shining through Raja easily and straight away. But as the week went on so I began to realise the most grace-filled, redemptive thing I’ve seen for a long time. You see, Raja went and took light to the darkness and as he left each situation with those precious kids in tow, so a light was lit in them; a tiny flicker at first, but every good deed, every meal, every hug, every day in the community of their new 41-strong family, the light is tended to, the flames are kindled and protected and they grow into true brightness.

 

The saints are the ones the light shines through. And it shines through every single one of those tiny saints. They have seen light and then, quite by consequence, they have begun shining light. They needed hands and feet and funds to take the light to them but they quickly discovered the light is catching and they are now the hands and feet that take the light to others. Saints are the ones the light shines through and it they are shining brightly in the IGWR houses in Nepal.

 

Of course, you don’t have to go to Nepal to find those whom the light shines through. We see it here, in the faces of one another, so often. In those who choose kindness and care and put themselves out to help others. Those who feed the hungry, show mercy, pray deeply, mourn fiercely, chase justice, seek peace and pursue it, those who live lightly and love outrageously. Saints are the ones the light shines through and you are here just as clearly as elsewhere.

 

And this saintly ‘glow’ I’m speaking of isn’t based on one’s good works, although that might make it easier to spot, it is entirely based on the work of the one true light, the light of the world, shining in and through each person beloved of God, shining through everyone.

 

But what I am left pondering is this…

~ how much does the light shine through me? How much does it shine through any of us?

~ and what might we need to do, or stop doing, to proverbially polish those cathedral windows to let the light shine brighter?

 

The saints are the ones the light shines through. Or as another one who clearly meets that saintly criteria, the amazing poet Amanda Gorman puts it – there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it. Amen.

 

The trouble with radical inclusion…

ISAIAH 25: 1-9       PSALM 23       PHIL 4:1-9      MATT 22:1-14

On Thursday this week I sat in the amphitheatre, feeling the weight of the things of this week – the referendum, the events in Israel/Palestine, and I was mulling over this difficult parable for today. As I sat there, the dark coloured circle on the ground caught my eye. Have you noticed it? It goes around the edge of the lower section, circling around the cauldron, and it is made of hundreds of tiny stones. Many of you will know this much better than me but I remembered being told that when the east end building project was completed, those black stones were all lose and they were there to represent all the people who would gather in this place, who would come from all over, together, to worship. What an incredible analogy. And then it became clear that this was too tempting a thing – some people were picking up stones and throwing them and damage was being caused and they were becoming trip hazards…so the black stones representing the people gathering to build this worshipping community were securely concreted into place.

Forgive me for any inaccuracies of my retelling of this piece of history, but it reminded me somehow of this morning’s wedding banquet with its questionable guest list, and the risks associated with it.

It’s a remarkably awful story, by all accounts.  In it we meet this king who is so keen to fill the hall for his son’s wedding banquet that he sends his slaves to tempt the guests with descriptions of luxury food. They don’t want to come; instead, they turn on those who invited them and the slaves are killed.  The king is enraged and redoubles his efforts, killing those who killed the slaves and burning the whole place to the ground. And then a new invitation is issued, and suddenly everyone is invited – the good and the bad – as many as it takes to fill the hall in the place where half the population has just been murdered.

And I find myself wondering what the atmosphere would be like, with smoke and the smell of death heavy in the air. I imagine myself there. And I look to my left and see someone I like. And I look to my right, and I see someone who I really don’t want to be beside. But everyone is invited – the good and the bad – all the little black stones, gathered, all in the circle.

And that’s the thing. In the King’s banquet we don’t get to choose who comes. It is all by the King’s invitation. And we don’t get to tidy it up by concreting those stones into place. We don’t get to decide that having everyone – all the stones – is too messy or too dangerous and we don’t get to say when enough is enough. Because the King – or the more perfect version – God, keeps on issuing the invitation, over and over again. And that gets messy and dangerous and uncomfortable but it is also beautiful, because it is steeped in grace and mercy and unconditional abundant welcome and there is no concrete in sight.

And today, following yesterday’s news, it means people who believed with all their hearts that yes was the right outcome are as invited and as welcome to sit at the table as those who believed that no was the best outcome for this country and its people at this time. And we sit at the table together, and we approach this table together. Even though it is painful and hurts.

And considering this past week’s news it means that the victims and perpetrators of war are all invited to sit and eat together because the invitation to the banqueting table, in the Kingdom of Heaven, is an invitation to all.

And if there is still a list of who is in and those who are out then it is not God’s table. If everyone truly is invited then this is much more difficult, much harder work, much less palatable.  

True inclusion is messy stuff and I don’t know what to do because concreting it neatly into place, or closing the doors and saying we’re done here is easier and it feels preferable. But trusting in the grace of God that allows even me to approach this table of mercy means having to extend that same grace and mercy to people don’t agree with and don’t want to be there. And that’s the truth.

Everyone is welcome is great, until it means we approach the true banqueting table alongside those who, like this morning’s story, have murdered our friends and neighbours.

I want to be genuinely delighted that all are welcome – even after having seriously considered and weighed what that truly means. That is where we need to be travelling as a bunch of Jesus followers. And it is costly and big and a life’s work, but it is full of the grace that each of us are utterly dependent upon. Imagine if we could truly model that here. May it be so.

I’m going to end with a poem by Jan Richardson, called, AND THE TABLE WILL BE WIDE

And the table will be wide.

And the welcome will be wide.

And the arms will open wide to gather us in.

And our hearts will open wide to receive.

And we will come as children who trust there is enough.

And we will come unhindered and free.

And our aching will be met with bread.

And our sorrow will be met with wine.

And we will open our hands to the feast without shame.

And we will turn toward each other without fear.

And we will give up our appetite for despair.

And we will taste and know of delight.

And we will become bread for a hungering world.

And we will become drink for those who thirst.

And the blessed will become the blessing.

And everywhere will be the feast.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants – Australia 2023 edition

Isaiah 5:1-7         Psalm 80:7-15              Phil 3:4-14          Matthew 21: 33-46

On Friday I spent hours trying to form a sermon from this morning’s gospel passage. Honestly, it was mediocre at best, but I knew I would be at synod all day yesterday so I figured it would have to do. When will I learn that God will drop God’s words into my heart whenever God chooses – like last week with the church that was falling into ruins analogy!? So, it will come as no surprise to you, but still a surprise to me that, at the opening Eucharist early yesterday, the members of Synod were treated to a sermon by the Reverend Canon Uncle Glenn Loughrey, Chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council, and priest in the diocese of Melbourne. He blew us all away with his words about this coming week’s Voice to Parliament Referendum, and as he spoke – not on this passage at all, but on something quite different – so the meaning of this passage from Matthew’s gospel took on a message I couldn’t ignore. I scribbled in my synod books and here is my reflection on the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, the Australia 2023 edition.

Listen to another parable… there were landowners who planted a civilisation.

The land was rich and prosperous for almost 60,000 centuries and then Tenants came – uninvited tenants – and they took the vineyards and the watchtowers and the land and their children and their country. And they turned the landowners and their children and their children’s children into their slaves. They beat them and stoned them and put them to death. They stole the land, kept it and dominated it.

And the landowners, for 60,000 years still lived in hope that there might be relationship – that tenants and landowners might be able to live together well. The first landowners didn’t want to own the land in domination – they wanted to share their beautiful land and its produce and wealth with the tenants, and their families and visitors who came to explore and enjoy it. But never was it thus, because the tenants rose up, took over, and kept from the landowners what was theirs.

And now we are at harvest time again – this week, this Saturday, in 2023. And again, the first landowners are sending their own children to claim their harvest. And they are not asking for everything, just for what they are owed – they are not even asking for all they are owed – just a small share of it.

And whether we like it or not, we are part of the group of tenants. We hold in our arms the entire harvest and it is for us to share. It is our chance of repentance for the years we have been greedy and grabbing. And it is time.

It is time to give to the landowners what is rightfully theirs – theirs and their children’s. And it is time to do this small thing that says thank you for the years you have shown patience and perseverance in considering that these tenants are worth investing in – worth keeping on sending their children to, to make another attempt and another one, and another one, to receive what is theirs and share with us what we already have.

And when the spirits of the first landowners see what we tenants do, what will they think?

Will we give them their produce at this harvest time?

It is time.

It is time to say yes.  Amen.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants

Isaiah 5:1-7        Psalm 80:7-15             Phil 3:4-14         Matthew 21: 33-46

Martin Luther apparently once said ‘sometimes you have to squeeze the biblical text until it leaks the gospel’. I can think of several passages like that but none more so than the one we just heard from Matthew; this parable of the wicked tenants. Let’s squeeze it and see if we can get it to leak gospel for us.

So, we have this landowner who plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a winepress, builds a watchtower, and leases it to tenants before going off to another country. Harvest comes and he sends his slaves to go and collect his profits. The tenants don’t want to hand it over, so they beat the first guy. The landowner sends more – they get beaten and killed and stoned, so he finally sends his son, thinking he will be respected, but they kill him too.

And I have so many issues with this passage, even in those short few verses, because it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

First, the landowner – he takes all this time and effort and money to create his perfect vineyard, for himself and generations to come, and when he ups and leaves, he keeps sending people to get what is owed to him even though they can’t bring him his wealth because they are killed or injured. And then, eventually he sends his own son…even though he knows full-well how the people before him were treated. That is dangerous, foolish even.

And then we have those tenants – the violent, murderous tenants – and they somehow believe that if they kill the slaves they will get to keep the harvest, and if that wasn’t crazy enough, they seem to think that if they kill the son, the heir, then they will actually get to keep his inheritance. And it may be tentatively possible, but it is certainly misguided. It’s actually insane.

For centuries this parable has been used to fuel an antisemitic rhetoric so it’s even more disagreeable for that reason, but the truth is, it just doesn’t sound like good news.  It doesn’t sound like the gospel. It doesn’t sound like God.

Can we squeeze this passage, so it leaks the gospel? Well, as I read, so I began to find the first leak in the actions of that landowner. Initially I felt mad with him – why had he upped and left? The landowner represents God, and don’t we believe in a God who neither leaves nor forsakes us, a God that is not far off; the one Isaiah describes as our Beloved in the prophesy we just heard. That God is nearer than our own breath. In my musing I felt abandoned by that Divine Landowner until I realised, he hadn’t disappeared at all. He was near enough to send his own slaves and servants and even his son to the vineyard.

Consider his actions and see if it leaks the gospel for you…

First, he sends his slaves. They don’t return, or they return battered and bruised. Then he sends more, and the same thing happens. And then he delivers his only son into the hands of those who have treated others so badly, even unto death. And he does it because he will do whatever it takes, risk whatever it is, to have a relationship with those tenants who are tending the land he has created.

One theologian put it like this, ‘This landowner acts more like a desperate parent, willing to do or say or try anything to reach out to a beloved and wayward child, than a businessman. It’s crazy – the kind of crazy that comes from being in love’.

And then Jesus turns to the pharisees and the chief priests who are listening to this story and says to them ‘when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They respond with a hefty sentence – he will put them to a miserable death – but we have the benefit of being post-resurrection people.

So, our Jesus question isn’t ‘what will he do to the tenants?’ it is more ‘what did he do?’ and the answer is quite different. The answer drips with gospel goodness – our Divine Landowner sent their only son, out of love for us, to open the way to life in all its fullness – to show us a new way to live – to tell death it is no longer the end – to kick the darkness until it bleeds light and to restore hope and peace and joy.

Didn’t our season of Creation remind us, just this past month, that we are the tenants of the land God created? That we have been left to tend and harvest and care for the earth? And do we believe that God will, is, returning – not in judgement, not in anger and wrath, but out of crazy outrageous love that means God will risk anything and everything to keep us as God’s children.

And how often we cling tightly onto all that is God’s. We hold onto the blessings we receive – even though they are directly from the throne room of heaven; all things come from you O God, and of your own do we give you. We have nothing of our own – everything is gift, pure grace and yet, we hold onto it all so tightly that we are at risk of smothering it, damaging it, even killing it.

So, the question is not ‘when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to us who are God’s tenants?’ The question is much more, while we are waiting for harvest time, and for the Divine Landowner to return, how will we tend and care for this part of the land God has entrusted to us. May we hold gently and lightly to all God has given and may we be effective stewards, not destructive tenants. Amen.

Maiden speech for Synod (Anglican Diocese of Perth 2023)

Madam President, members of synod,

Gemma Baseley, Rector of St Paul’s Beaconsfield

I rise to move motion 17.7 on Modern Slavery, which stands in my name and is seconded by Revd Tim Russell from All Saints College, Bullcreek.

I first learned about modern slavery in 2001. At that time, it was estimated there were 21 million slaves in the world. In the past year, that figure reached 50 million.

The average price of a human in 2023 is 66 aussie dollars and, in the 5 minutes it takes me to move this motion, another 10 people will have been bought and sold, worldwide.

And while modern slavery and human trafficking is not as prevalent in Australia as it is elsewhere, there is not a single country in the world that isn’t impacted by this crime; either as a place where people are bought or sold, a route they are trafficked through, or somewhere complicit in buying the goods and services they are forced to create.

In Australia there are thought to be more than 41,000 people trapped in slavery but those working on the ground believe that even if you add a zero to that figure it would still be a conservative estimate. Here, the most common forms of slavery are forced labour in industries such as agriculture, horticulture, meat processing, and construction, forced marriage, and commercial sexual exploitation of adults and children.

And we are not excluded from this crime. Due to globalisation, products of slavery are prevalent in our homes. According to the Global Slavery Index, produced by the Minderoo Foundation, the most at risk products imported into Australia are computers, mobile phones, clothing and accessories, fish, rice and cocoa. These come to us via the hands of 16 million people enslaved and exploited by global supply chains. The problem is immense – so huge that it feels impossible to imagine, but each statistic has a name.

So, I stand here today on behalf of Miriam, who was trafficked from Nigeria to London, where she was bought by three different Christian families, over ten years. She lived on the kitchen floor, eating scraps left by the children, and working 16 or more hours each day. Every Sunday, Miriam was taken to church and sat in Anglican pews, between her slave owners. When I met Miriam, she told me that, week after week, she hoped someone would ask if she was ok. She said she tried to communicate with her eyes that she needed help, but nobody noticed, and nobody asked. It took a raid from the home office for Miriam to be freed.

And I am standing on behalf of the man who walked into a church-run café and slid a piece of paper across the counter as he ordered his coffee, saying ‘I am a slave. Please help’. And those who were serving refreshments didn’t know what to do.

And I am standing on behalf of Ruqia Haidari, an Afghan girl from Melbourne who was sold into a forced marriage for $15,000 and trafficked to Perth. She confided in her school friend that she didn’t want to marry a stranger, but her friend didn’t know what to do and two months later she was murdered by her husband, In Balcatta, in this diocese.

I believe we want to help. We want to stop this crime against humanity and restore dignity for all God’s children, but we don’t necessarily know how.

This motion provides all faith leaders with opportunities for meaningful and appropriate training by Walk Free and My Blue Sky, via the Social Responsibilities Commission, so we can spot the signs, source effective referral pathways, and communicate effectively with those who are in our pews, our prisons, our care homes and our classrooms, so future Miriams and Ruqias and visitors to our drop-in centres might be safe and free.

I urge you to support this motion.