Sermons

Be the change you want to see in the world. A saying many of us might know well. But a saying that might feel tone deaf in the current climate we find ourselves in. While others of us might hear its shadow side — where change relies on the individual while corporations and governments get away with murder. And yet, no matter what our relationship is with this phrase, it keeps finding its way into our common language for a reason. And today, we find it quietly submerged in our reading. But before we get into the depths of it, we find ourselves, first, in the waters of Epiphany — a season of God’s revelation in Christ. A season that begun with the Magi: wise ones from the Persian region, likely practitioners of Zoroastrianism and astrology, believe it or not. And, despite what our Christmas carols suggest, they were not kings, they weren’t necessarily three, and they were most likely not just men. Thanks, patriarchy. Rather, they were people who defied the power-hungry and fear-filled orders of Herod during a dangerous and destructive time to follow a different kind of authority. They brought gifts — frankincense, myrrh, and gold — strange and impractical offerings for a newborn, yet rich with meaning. Gifts that reveal Jesus’ birth into kingship, his ministry of peace, and his embalming at death. In today’s text, we are fast-forwarded from Jesus’ birth to decades later, where he stands at another threshold, another beginning. This time not in a stable, but in the wilderness; not among angels, but among crowds. He insists on submitting himself to an ancient Jewish ritual of purification, alongside the hordes of ordinary, unwashed people who have come to be baptized by John. This ritual was not simply about being cleansed; it was about repentance — the Greek word, metanoia — meaning a turning, a bodily acknowledgment that something in life, and something in us, must change. And the place where this happens matters. The Jordan is the river God’s children once crossed for one of the greatest turnings: to leave their oppression behind and enter a new relationship shaped by God’s love. The Jordan, in other words, marks the place of change, of transformation, and of belonging. And we get a peculiar dialogue between John and Jesus. John insists that it should be Jesus baptizing him, not the other way around. But Jesus refuses. Even though he has no need of repentance himself, he steps into the water in solidarity with the masses — the very people he has come to save — to fulfil all righteousness. A righteousness not of moral perfection, but of relationship. And it is there — in the water — that the heavens open. God’s Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Another showing of God’s revelation. And it is here where Jesus’ identity is named not apart from relationship, but within it — with the crowd, with creation in the water, with John, and with God. And it is this paradox, of power through belonging and belovedness, that makes his ministry possible. A paradox we saw at his birth, a paradox we will see in his healings, his teachings, and whenever he is eating, and a paradox we will see laid bare on the cross and an empty tomb. And even though this text is about Jesus’ baptism and not ours, it has deep implications for us as we live into this season of Epiphany. A reminder that baptism is not a one-and-done ritual, but a threshold we keep coming back to, a crossing we return to again and again, a way of living into our belonging and belovedness in God and in one another. A truth we are meant to be reminded of every time we take a shower, every time we forget an umbrella on one of Melbourne’s unpredictable downpours, and every time we plunge ourselves into Port Phillip Bay. A reminder we need more than ever. Because this week alone gives us enough evidence that we’re living in dangerous and destructive times ourselves. For us in Melbourne, we only need a whiff of our ash-filled air to be reminded of how climate catastrophe is not a theory but a lived experience for our friends and family a few kilometres away that is only getting worse. For us in Australia, the growing rhetoric of division between Jew and Muslim, Israel and Palestine, continues to push us and our politicians to choose sides instead of choosing humanity, excusing violence against some while grieving it in others, all while failing to remember that every life — without exception — is held by God. And for us as a world, it can feel as though we are witnessing the demise of democracy and the rise of dictatorship in the so-called land of the free, sitting on the edge of our seats, wondering what horrors may now come rushing through the door that has been flung wide open. And yet, even though these times of danger and destruction might feel foreign and new to many of us, there is really nothing new about it. This seems to be the ebb and flow of what it means to be human, living in this beautiful and yet flawed world where our power-hungry and fear-filled egos often take the reins. This does not excuse the hands involved in destruction, but it does reveal its ancient pattern. Any historian would be able to attest to this, and indeed, most religions name this pattern too. There is, hidden within the DNA of the world, times of birth, times of peace, and times of destruction. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we see these patterns play out in our own lives as well — a pattern God submits God’s self to: bearing birth, bearing peace, and even bearing the cross; God, in other words, bearing all of what it means to be human. And in this season of revelation, the Magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are the first signs of how Christ will enter into the patterns of our world, not to be conformed by them but in order for us to be transformed despite them. And this is what Jesus’ baptism reveals before he begins his ministry — a kind of baptism that doesn’t stop the destruction of the world, but rather one that quietly testifies to a love more powerful than any destruction. Because Christ did not come to change the world. Christ came to change our hearts. And I’ll say that again — because it’s hard to hear in a society and a church that so often prides itself on action: Christ did not come to change the world. Christ came to change our hearts. Now, this does not mean we abandon justice or stop striving for peace. It means we begin somewhere different. We do not respond to the Herods of our world with Herod fear and outrage ourselves, but from the place of being reoriented and turned around. In other words, we start from the place of reclaiming, believing, and embodying the truth of who we are and to whom we belong. Because here’s the thing: the world’s problems will not be solved by a democracy held to account, peace between religions, or voting in the most integrous person (as important as these things are); they will be solved by people who no longer live in amnesia, people who submerge themselves amongst the crowds and the waters, people who, in other words, turn again and again to the ancient truth of who we are and to whom we belong. For it was this turning that sustained Eddie Jaku through the horrors of Auschwitz. In his memoir, The Happiest Man on Earth, Eddie reflects on how his survival was not born from strength or willpower, but from his daily choice to remember people as beloved and to refuse to let his heart harden. He formed relationships of belonging with fellow prisoners, exchanged what little food he had, and insisted on seeing his captors as beloved, even as his own body was starved and brutalized by them and even as his friends and family were murdered by them. And it was this remembering that he came to understand was the source of his freedom — a freedom no camp, no loss, and no horror could ever take from him, a freedom rooted in the refusal to let destruction deceive him of the truth of his belovedness or anyone else’s. And if this kind of freedom can exist in the darkest times and places in our world history, then perhaps what Christ came to awaken in us is not control over the way we think things should be, but the courage to keep turning our hearts toward God and one another — the very kind of turning baptism marks within us, a turning that does not end when the waters dry but continues every time we choose relationship over fear, compassion over control, tenderness over withdrawal, a turning that keeps whispering to us again and again that belonging and belovedness is not something we achieve, but something we believe. Because isn’t this what we’re all searching for at the end of the day? Beneath the striving and the scrolling, beneath the need to live busy lives, why self-help books are a multi-million-dollar industry, why the spiritual-but-not-religious movement keeps growing, why consumerism is so successful, why we keep hoping the next book, the next practice, the next experience might finally quiet the ache — because in our searching and our longing we are reaching for what is already true, already within us. Our trouble is not that we are not enough, but that we forget, and in our amnesia we begin to listen to voices of fear and unbelonging, especially, if not particularly, our own. Baptism does not make this truth any more true, but it gives us a way to remember and return to the threshold of what has always been true since the beginning, when Spirit hovered over the first murmurs of creation, to when Spirit hovered over us as we were being knit together in our mother’s womb, that our belonging and belovedness is all we need to be the change we yearn to see in the world. And so, in a time when new life feels laughable, peace feels distant, and destruction surrounds, becoming the change is not denial or gaslighting and it’s not forcing ourselves to be something we are not. It is remembrance — a remembrance that does not come through force, but through surrender, not through external circumstances but internal revelation, a transformation that may not change the world the way we want it to, but one that changes what we are truly longing for — our hearts, a change that begins when we choose to remember, when we choose to trust, and when we choose to embody the truth of who we are and to whom we belong. So remember your baptisms, for it is how we become the change God has called us to be in the world.

We arrive at today’s scripture like we arrive at a beginning—standing at a threshold, between what has been and what is still unfolding. And there is something about a beginning, a new year, that loosens our imaginations to quietly consider what might yet be made new. For some of us, this might be the only time of year where we give ourselves permission to hope, to dream, and to imagine what might be possible. And to kick us off into this new beginning, we’re given Isaiah’s imagining—one of tangible and tasty images. The only place in the Bible, in fact, where we’re given this much description of food and drink. And so, it’s a scripture we’re meant to really sink our teeth into. But it’s also a scripture that was meant to be sung. And in its rhythm and reverberations we just heard read, maybe we can even begin to imagine this day of celebration and restoration: a time where all people are gathered on the mountain of God, sitting at the table of God with rich food filled with marrow and well-aged wine; a time where the covering of sorrow and suffering, despair and death is lifted; where every tear is wiped dry, where death will be no more, and where we will be glad and rejoice at last. But do we really let these images sink into our minds, mold into our muscles, and become a part of our marrow? Do we let hope become part of our body, our breath, and our being? Or do we, like the wealthy guests invited to a master’s banquet, turn away?

While I was doing my period of discernment a few years ago before candidating with the Uniting Church, I was encouraged to take an improv workshop. Even though I was new to improv, never having done drama in my life, there was something about it that was deeply intuitive. It reminded me of my early childhood days in a way that I had completely forgotten—some of which were the most nourishing times of my life. It wasn’t because of the clubs I was a part of, the vacations I went on, or the kinds of toys I had. It was because of my imagination. I remember how easy it was to jump in and out of different personas, like becoming a witch with my friend next door, making potions out of her mother’s herb garden, or becoming one of the Spice Girls and performing in the corner of a playground—I was Posh Spice if you were wondering. But my fondest memory by far was spending the weekend creating a world with a bucket full of street chalk. I remember the freeness of my imagination as I drew out railways, roads, and restaurants on the blank canvas that was the driveway. And when the masterpiece was done, I would take a cardboard box and make it into a car as I drove around the world I created. I didn’t care that in rainy Vancouver, the clouds would come and wash away my world as quickly as I had created it. It was just an excuse to do it again the next time the sun came out.

Looking back at it now, there was nothing that filled me with more joy than the simpleness of creating something out of nothing. And it made me realize that, as children, imagination is as natural and as necessary as the air we breathe and the water we drink. It was second nature to me, and my hunch is, it was second nature for you. And then something happens. We grow up and we enter the real world. In the song “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” Matt Shultz sings, “Money don’t grow on trees, we got bills to pay, we got mouths to feed, there ain’t nothing in this world for free.” In other words, we set limits on our lives, boundaries around what’s possible. We let the fast-paced rat race and the frequency of our news inform our worldview of what’s fact, what’s fiction, and what to be frightened of. But this doesn’t just happen during our Monday to Fridays. We often bring this temperament to the places we worship, not wanting it to disrupt us too much from our real world. And so, if we’re not paying close attention, church can become a tempered and tame animal within our calculated control. And when a hint of imagination does surface, we might feel that it is either too dangerous or too disillusioned. We mock it, we smother it, but at worst, we crucify it and leave it in the realm of our childhoods. And yet, as Carl Sagan once said, “Imagination can carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”

And this is the wisdom our scripture in Isaiah is tapping into: that our imaginations are necessary for the fullness of life and are often stimulated, if not activated, in the presence of nothing. For this was the context in which the prophet Isaiah was writing—amidst a time where the Jewish people were covered in sorrow and suffering, despair and death, exiled from their home and their place of worship. In other words, a time of extreme change and extreme loss. Does this sound familiar? As we look at the state of our church, our country, our world—or maybe even our own lives in a rapidly changing twenty-first century? Imagining hope seems like it should be the last thing on the menu. And yet, as we hear in our scripture, this defiance despite reality is actually what begins to change hearts and lives and eventually leads God’s people into new ways of experiencing God in seemingly desolate, despairing, and desert times. It’s like how Jim Wallis says it: trusting God in spite of all the evidence, and then watching how the evidence changes.

Now hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that we should use our imaginations to escape the realities of this world. I’m not saying imagination should take the place of acting for justice in the world. And I’m not saying that imagination is reserved for those with nothing. What I am saying is that when we give our imaginations over to God, it becomes the key that connects us to God’s real world. George MacDonald put it this way: “It is by imagination God enters into our world, so that through imagination we can enter into the world of God.” And it is through this kind of imagining that we can begin to join in God’s feast—but it might not be as comfortable as we think it is. It is a feast, after all, that reorients all our misconceptions of who gets to take part. It’s a feast for all the wrong kinds of people: Pharisees and foes, sinners and Samaritans, the disenfranchised and the desolate. But this is the song being sung in Isaiah today, and it’s not the only place where it’s sung. Hannah echoes this deep knowing when she sings, “Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more.” And again, this tune is carried by Mary when she sings, “The Lord fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.” And Revelation takes these songs of God’s feast of celebration and restoration—of wiping away tears and swallowing up death forever—and riffs them into the here and now. Notice the present tense: “It is done.” Because the thing about our Christian story, about the Christ event, is that time and space collapse so that the day of God’s feast is not just at the end, not just at the beginning, but here among us now—the Alpha through to the Omega.

God, who from the beginning made creation out of nothing, makes Jesus out of the nothingness of this world: dust of the earth, matter from an unmarried Jewish teenager. He had Isaiah’s, Hannah’s, and his mother’s song sung to him while he bounced on Mary’s knee. He lived out these imaginings in his ministry, eating with all the wrong kinds of people and every uninvited guest, feeding the hungry, healing the hurt, freeing the enslaved, wiping away every tear from every eye. And it was the power of this imagining that led him to his death and resurrection, where he swallowed up death forever. And here’s the wild thing: we are left with the rhythm and reverberations of this imagining now.

So when we participate in the mysterious ritual of communion, we are meant to make real the fact that we are participating in God’s holy feast, where every tear is wiped dry, where death is no more, and where gladness and rejoicing are realized at last. When we eat what seems like nothing in these small bits of bread, we are eating the rich food filled with marrow at God’s table where all things are made new. When we drink this ordinary, non-alcoholic juice, we are drinking the well-aged wine from the spring of life where the covering of sorrow and suffering, despair and death is passing away. These are the bits of nothing—the mustard seeds, the pinch of yeast—that yield radical celebration and restoration in God’s real world. A feast that will happen on the last day, has happened since the beginning of time, and is happening here and now.

You see, communion isn’t just about eating these visible signs of God’s promise; it’s about embodying them. While we’re standing idly, we’re invited to imagine wildly the glass ceilings of our imaginations being shattered in light of what is possible. We’re invited to join in these songs of old sung by the prophets so that we might live this radical feast in our lives. And we’re invited to let these visions melt into our minds, mold into our muscles, so that they might become part of our marrow. Because when we come to the table, we have a profound opportunity to partake in the new heaven that is coming into this world—a world where all will gather at God’s feast on the last day, from the beginning, and even here and now. And perhaps this is exactly the kind of invitation a new year gives us as well—not a promise that everything will be as we hope for, not a denial of the grief, loss, or uncertainty we carry from the year before, but an opening—however small—to give our imaginations over to God so that we might live in God’s real world: a world where God is still creating something out of nothing, still setting tables in the wilderness, and still inviting us into a future shaped not by fear, but by fullness. So whether it be through a bucket full of street chalk, a mustard seed, some bread, or some juice—what do you imagine? For it is the power through which we can participate in God’s feast at last.

If I were God, this is not the story I would write myself into. A story where God is revealed not through power, productivity or prestige but ordinary, unimpressive presence. Let’s recap. We’re out in the backwaters, trailing an unmarried Jewish teenage girl with no power, pedigree or prophecy-shaped résumé. Nothing special about her at all, in fact—except an alarming willingness to trust and say ‘yes’ to an angel named Gabriel who shows up unannounced and asks her to carry the savior of the world. In other words, a story where God not only becomes human but asks permission to do so. This is not only the last thing I would think of—it is the very last thing I would choose. To surrender my hearing, sight, speech, power, control, and independence for nine months in the dark interior of a nobody’s womb. I would not opt to be born after days—if not weeks, if not months—of travel to my non-father’s hometown, only to arrive during peak census season, all the rooms in the inn taken, like a badly planned Airbnb. All while those who weren’t even worthy enough to be counted in the census to begin with—shepherds minding sheep on the night shift—become the first witnesses to my birth. When you really sit with it, it’s hard to imagine anyone could think up this story at all. There’s a saying that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys enough time, one of them might eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare—but I can’t imagine, even with infinite time, they’d ever end up with a story like this one. Which makes it all the more astonishing that we’ve managed to take something so absurd, provocative, and frankly obscene, and domesticate it. Tinsel hung. Presents wrapped. Cookies baked with the cricket humming in the background, fighting to be heard over Mariah Carey’s anthem. But perhaps it’s understandable. Because this God who enters the mess of our time and space—who becomes fragile and finite flesh—doesn’t do this for spectacle. God does it so we might do the same. And this is no easy task: to inhabit our own fragile flesh fully, so that we might truly inhabit the messiness of the space we’re in and the time we’re given. Especially in a world that, more and more, seems marked by unpeace. Because even though many of us have been looking forward to and will enjoy peace today, there will be those of us carrying a kind of unpeace. One that rises to the surface, particularly on this day. It reminds us of loved ones lost. Of estranged family members. Of the quiet grief we’ve normalized throughout the year but feel the edges of on a day like this one. And even if our own personal lives are bathed in peace, we don’t have to look too far to see the unpeace all around us. An unpeace we’re still reeling from as a nation, after witnessing the second-largest mass shooting unfold in Australia since colonization. An event that might feel like an anomaly to us, but is a day-to-day reality for many across the world. This unpeace shows up in scarcity too. Not only in resources, amid an escalating cost-of-living crisis during a season of targeted consumerism, but in the nagging ache that arrives after the wrapping paper has been recycled and the guests have all gone home. It is an unpeace that, if we allow it depth and space, opens questions we might rather avoid: What does true peace look like—between Jews, Muslims and Christians? What does true peace look like within the complexity and diversity of Australia? And, if we are brave enough to go further—to reach for the question beneath the noise and the issues pressing in on us—what might true peace look like within ourselves? Earlier this week, I was speaking with one of you as you shared your distress about the events at Bondi, and how this atrocity reopened wounds from long ago. We lamented how such a thing could happen during such a holy time—Chanukkah, the summer holidays, the Christmas season. And although in an ideal world peace would be maintained at all times, especially during holy days, the irony is Chanukkah itself arose out of destruction and scarcity. And Christmas arose under a similar dreary sky where the clever marketing scheme of Caesar Augustus, known as the Pax Romana, was written into law. A scheme, as history buffs would know, subdued, silenced and stole from its people while enacting war upon war, all in the name of peace. The author of Luke doesn’t include this detail by accident. The author frames it deliberately, placing the Christmas story right in the middle of it. It would seem God doesn’t wait for the world to be perfect, for the stars to align or for circumstances to be just right. God enters into the mess of real lives in real time. And in this story, God enters Bethlehem some two thousand years ago—amongst bogans in the backwaters—to birth something “holy” under this dreary sky. A word we not only associate with a day like today, but a word we have too often understood to mean pure, flawless, and untouchable, too often tied to moral behaviour, something we’ve conflated onto our modern-day Santa Claus and his naughty-or-nice list. But this is not holiness in the Bible. And this is not holiness in the Christmas story. The Greek word hagios means something different. Literally. To be set apart—not above the world, not as better than the world, but deeply within the world. And the author of Luke uses this word not to cultivate private piety, not to polish the perfect parts of ourselves and not to condemn the body, but to show how holiness moves through bodies, through time, through space, and through history, where we are, as we are, in the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives. Hagios is what the angel Gabriel pronounces over Mary, hagios is what Elizabeth prophesies from her own womb, hagios is what Mary sings in her Magnificat from her growing belly, and hagios is what the babe will not only be baptized into but what his ministry will grow out of. A holiness that enters into the messiness of our world and our lives. Good news that refuses to wait for our world—or even ourselves—to be anything other than what we are, and yet refuses to leave us that way. So when the angels appear in Luke’s story, they do not announce an escape from the world. They do not promise that suffering will end or that everything will suddenly fall into place. They speak instead into fear, into darkness, into a Roman-occupied and oppressed Judea, into fields where shepherds are working the night shift, and they say: Do not be afraid. Not because everything has been made right in that moment, but because the inbreaking of this kind of holiness will subvert the ways we have learned to live in unrest and invite us to see our bodies as the very place where peace is born. This is not the peace of empire or of the Pax Romana. This is not a quiet, polite peace grown out of our colonial culture. This peace is not the absence of suffering or denial of despair. Peace, here, is the presence of God in the midst of pain, persecution, and powerlessness—refusing to let them have the last word. And Luke is careful about where this kind of peace is born. Not in Rome. Not in Jerusalem’s halls of power. But in the small, unglamorous, not-even-a-town called Bethlehem. In a manger, wrapped in bands of cloth. Amongst ordinary folk. Amongst uncounted shepherds. A peace that rises from the margins, from fragile, finite flesh, from the sweat and the tears of a mother giving birth, next to a man who has no gain in this pregnancy, and a babe who cries in the middle of the night. And God does this—not for spectacle—but so that we might do the same. This is what holiness is. And this is what the incarnation—that is, God taking on flesh—is all about. If I were God, this is not the story I would write myself into. And maybe that is precisely the point. God’s peace is far more radical and far-reaching than anything I could even begin to imagine. God chooses not to bring salvation through acts of power in perfect Christmas pies or perfect lives but in fragile and finite flesh, in bodies that ache, in lives that grieve, in a world that reels in sorrow and suffering. This was true then and this is true now. For this is the scandal of Christmas: God takes on flesh not to remove us from the world, but to heal it from within through us. Because Christ’s birth is not a story that happened once upon a time in a land far away. It is a story that keeps happening. It is born whenever peace is practiced in the midst of unrest, whenever presence is chosen over power, and whenever we dare to believe our flesh is where the holy chooses to be born. Because, even though this is not the story we would write ourselves into, it is the story that writes itself into us. Merry Christmas.

I remember my first arrival in Sydney nearly a decade ago. Australia, to me then, lived in postcards—The Crocodile Hunter on my TV, and the dusty pages of Bill Bryson’s Down Under. I didn’t know what to expect, but wonder found me quickly. Within an hour of landing, crossing the Harbour Bridge, my face pressed to the glass of the taxi as the Opera House rose into view. No postcard had prepared me for that moment. And yet, it’s not why I continue to be drawn back to this city.

Days later, walking the Bondi to Bronte coastal path with the sea unfolding endlessly beside me, I kept walking just beyond Coogee when I noticed a small sign I nearly missed: McIver’s Ladies Baths. Curious, I followed a narrow staircase down to a weathered woman seated at a kiosk—sun-bleached hair, salt in her skin, and a voice heavy with lived years. When I asked what this place was, she smiled knowingly and began to tell a story I could tell she had told more than a thousand times.

Over 150 years ago, she said, this pool was born of sexism and segregation, but it had been sustained ever since as sanctuary. A place where women could float on waves, rest on rocks, and simply be. She spoke of Muslim women who come here often—some for whom this is the only semi-public place where layers can fall away and sunlight can kiss their skin. Then she leaned closer and told me something older still: long before colonization, Indigenous women gathered on these rocks for ceremony and birth. Listening to the sea. Honouring life. A place where they, too, could just be.

For two dollars to enter, the story alone was worth it.

As I stepped into what seemed to be the same open air I had just been standing in, I felt as though I had crossed into a completely different world. Women of every age, body, and culture shared the water—serious swimmers cutting laps, gentle floaters bobbing with the tide. Some lay sprawled on warm rocks, topless and unbothered, while others carefully unwrapped their hijabs, letting their hair fall free. I spread my towel on the stone and felt, perhaps for the first time, the quiet, intoxicating power of a women’s-only space.

It’s not that I had never been in one before. I’m an avid user of public toilets—especially these days. But this space was different. There was a legacy here, etched into stone and salt, shaped by years upon years of bodies being protected rather than policed. Something the First Peoples of this land were onto long before fences or gates existed—something etched into creation itself. A sacredness that listened. That allowed bodies to rest and breathe and be.

And even just beyond this small space carved out for women’s bodies, for many people this is what the coastline itself represents. It’s why people travel to Bondi from all over the world, and why it became refuge for our Jewish neighbours fleeing persecution nearly a hundred years ago. And it’s a sacredness that came immediately to mind when reading our story today, even before the events that unfolded last week.

A sacredness that is not accidental or invented. Because from the very beginning, sanctuary was etched into creation. Before there were walls or temples or laws, there was water and land and breath. There was a God who hovered over the deep—not rushing, not conquering, but making space for life to emerge. God needed this space too, resting and just being on the seventh day.

Sanctuary, in other words, was the constant and first posture of God toward the world. And it’s where sanctuary was also etched into us—the heartbeat of what we are and what we are called to become. And why, when we turn to the Gospel, we are not given stories of spectacles of power, but stories, time and time again, of sanctuary. And so, it’s fitting that even before Christ was born, sanctuary was the first instinct of his mother.

Our scripture takes place in a time when violence was the very air that was breathed. And into this world, we are given the scandal of Mary. And she is a scandal. Even in our own day, to be an unmarried pregnant teenager can invite scrutiny and judgement. In Mary’s time, the consequences could have been dire. Community exclusion and shame would have been the least of her worries. It is not unreasonable to imagine she feared for her life. And yet, when Gabriel invites her into a future that defies the stronghold of patriarchy at great risk, Mary says yes.

What happens next, the text is silent on. Does Mary leave in haste because her community has turned against her and she fears for her life? Does she simply want to be with her relative who is experiencing a similar miracle in her own body? Or was she following something deep in her womb—the subtle and persistent prompting of the Holy Spirit? My hunch? All of the above.

Away from judgement, fear, and punishment, Mary steps into the unhurried and unheard-of women’s-only space of safety and sanctuary. A sanctuary made possible because, just before our story begins, the loudest voices fall silent. Zechariah—Elizabeth’s husband and the voice of institutional certainty, explanation, and the one who defines and divides what is holy and what is not—is made mute. And Joseph, a man positioned within lineage, legacy, and rightful order, is given no words at all.

And into this quiet, something else is allowed to emerge. A space shaped not by power or productivity, but by presence. A space where layers can fall away. A space where bodies are trusted and Spirit is heard. The blessing of Ruach—the Hebrew word for the breath of God that hovers rather than conquers. The voice of Sophia, who does not shout from thrones but calls from crossroads, kitchens, and kicking wombs.

Here, Elizabeth feels the child leap within her like a sudden wave against rock. Here, prophetic words rise in her—not forced or rehearsed, but breathed into being by the Holy Spirit. And here, Mary lays herself down on the warm stone of this sanctuary and sings, debatably, the most powerful song ever sung. A song that sings truth to a soured system that uplifted pride, worshipped the powerful on thrones, and kept the rich full of good things.

She sings not because everything is safe, but because she is held. She sings not because her world has changed, but because she has space to tell the truth. This is not a place of fast answers or problem-solving. It is a place that reveals the power of watching and waiting, of her body learning to let go into a salvation free from the violence that enveloped her world and her life.

For three months, Mary and Elizabeth eat together, sing together, and watch each other grow. Nothing is produced. Nothing is proven. And yet everything is happening in this unhurried meeting between two women. For it is here where God chooses to make God’s way through bodies watching and waiting with one another—where God chooses to slowly, steadily, and scandalously weave salvation into being.

And this is the power of sanctuary. Because places hold stories, bodies, and grief. They hold what we cannot carry alone. This is what the Judean hill country was for Elizabeth and Mary—a place where sacred space did something quietly revolutionary. It suspended the punitive patriarchal culture long enough for tenderness to take root. And in that place, two women in impossible situations did not simply survive; they gestated salvation together.

And the Bondi coastline—once holding stories of wonder, healing, birth, and sanctuary for Indigenous folk, for women who could finally be, and for Jews who could finally survive—now holds our groans too deep for knowing as flowers are laid, candles are lit, and tears are mixed with saltwater. Our windowsills where we have lit candles, and the church railing where we have tied ribbons, now hold our lament and our desire for healing and peace.

And this tragedy—if we let it—has the power to shake us awake to a truth we are prone to forget in the ordinary, day-to-day rhythm of our lives: that we cannot live without sanctuary. Because without places where we can be held, where the cry of the Holy Spirit can pour out of us, where our bodies can finally unclench, where we can stop performing and simply be—we fracture. We lose our capacity to grieve, to listen, to sing truth.

And when this happens, fear controls us. Our nervous systems become overrun. We numb. We harden. We react. We divide. We pick sides. We demonize. We politicize. Worst of all, we refuse hope.

But when we give ourselves permission to be unhurried, to breathe, to weep, to tremble, to pray, and to let the possibility of the Holy Spirit enter the impossible of our situations, something shifts. We return to the sanctuary already etched in us—the heartbeat of what we are and what we are called to become.

But this is where we so often get stuck. Because when violence erupts, our instinct is to do. To react. To respond. To repair. To prove—to ourselves and to one another—that we are not indifferent. But violence does not only break laws or systems. It shakes us to our core, lodging itself in bodies, memories, and communities. And though actions are important, those wounds cannot be reached by action alone.

I felt that tension myself this week—sending emails to synagogues I’ve never been in relationship with, posting prayers on social media to people I somewhat know, and lighting candles on my windowsill I would promptly forget about. None of this was wrong. In fact, there was much good that came from these actions and the communities of solidarity formed through them. But I began to notice how easily doing kept me from the deeper work of sitting with what the violence had shaken my body awake to.

What I sensed was a call to return to the sermon Spirit was prompting me to write before the shootings took place—to return to the saving power of becoming sanctuary. For this is the way healing actually begins. Not just for the world, but for us. Where our bodies soften. Where fear loosens its grip. Where Spirit can breathe again through places that have clenched shut.

This is the slow, unsexy, unshowy, overlooked work of the gospel. Creating spaces—like this one here at church—where truth can be spoken, grief can be held, and hope can be sung into being. A sanctuary that gives rise to what’s needed more than candles and flowers: the sanctuary of unhurried time and space to show up as our true selves, in our tears, our fears, and our deepest desires.

It is here we might forge true friendships like the one between Elizabeth and Mary. Where salvation is gestated in these small communities of faith, yes—but more than this, where salvation can be gestated with all creation: with Jews, with Muslims, with coastlines, with people who don’t look like us, believe like us, or act like us. A sanctuary of unreactive and unhurried time where we can eat together, sing together, and watch each other grow.

And so, as we continue to sit in the aftershock of last week, what has your body been shaken awake to? What are the sanctuaries in your own life God is calling you to return to in haste? And how might God be inviting you to become a sanctuary for the life of the world?

Because when we say yes to the way of the Gospel, the way of Gabriel, and the way of God that challenges our world, our need to react, and our need to do, we become the place where healing can begin, where the impossible can be sung into being, and where the slow, steady, scandalous work of salvation can be born at last.

And so we are invited now to pray and to light candles for what has been shaken awake in us this week—our deepest griefs and our deepest longings—so that we might witness in one another the cry of the Holy Spirit breathing and speaking through us in this sanctuary of time and space. You are invited to come forward and simply light a candle without words. Or, as you light a candle, you may pray your heart’s cry out loud.

We are given a text today that stands sharply against what has become of Advent in our western world. We have taken the concept of “preparation” to mean making a way for a Christmas of comfort, cookies, and chocolate-calendar countdowns. A brood of vipers, a baptism of fire, a winnowing fork, chaff that will be burned with an unquenchable fire, a call to repent, an unruly man wearing camel’s hair, a leather belt with locust and wild honey dripping from his beard in the middle of the wilderness. A scene that doesn’t exactly scream “the cute and cuddly baby Jesus” we’re expecting in just a few weeks. A scene you and I would probably go out of our ways to avoid being confronted by ourselves. But a scene we need more of in our church and in our lives, particularly as we wait and watch for the absurdity of a God who takes on flesh and fire. For it is a story we have become too used to, a story we have, literally, romanticized the hell out of. But it’s a story that is meant to shake us awake, or rather, turn our world upside down. Because, as we’ll see over the coming weeks, there is nothing cute or cuddly about this baby. And it’s a story that needs the wilderness.

All good stories do. In Star Wars, the wilderness becomes Luke’s proving ground—the place where he’s stripped of certainty so he can learn to trust a power beyond himself. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is led through the wilderness toward Mordor, carrying the burden that will ultimately save the world. But the wilderness isn’t just necessary to create an interesting character arc—there’s something at the heart of all these stories that taps into the human longing. Something that tastes, smells, hears, looks, and feels like new life—not just in Hollywood, but in our own lives.

I can’t help but think of my own Mordor story—literally, climbing the same mountain Frodo did in New Zealand. I mean, my motivation was slightly different… But going to the wilderness on the other side of the world seemed like the kick in the ass I needed. At that point in my life, what I thought my future would be and how I thought God worked was crumbling beneath my feet: questions, dreams, and yearnings that were quietly silenced by my Christian community of the day. What once was my “comfort zone” was starting to suffocate me and had begun to feel more like a façade—with those in my circle more concerned about keeping up appearances while my heart was yearning for real answers and the truth about who God really was.

So, logically, I quit my job, packed up my bicycle, and caught the plane to a country I knew nothing about but where I thought God might meet me in my anguish. Cycling through rain, wind, heat, sleeping on strangers’ couches as my resources dwindled—I didn’t find what I thought I was looking for, nor did I uncover any answers to the questions that seemed to be burning me alive. But what I did find was new life. Or rather, new life kept finding me… in the elements, in the unknown, in the kindness of strangers, in the rawness of being utterly outside my comfort zone and shaken awake to my own complicity in maintaining the status quo. So by the time I came home, something had been released—my spiraling thoughts, my anxious questions, the Christian community I finally had the courage to leave, and the tight grip on life I didn’t know I could let go of. God met me in the wilderness. And it changed me.

For this is exactly the rhythm that happens throughout all the stories in the Bible. From Abraham to Moses, from Esther to Ruth, from Mary to Paul. The wilderness has the power to change us—if we let it. For it’s the place where the old can pass away and where we can begin to hear the voice of the one who is begging to birth something wildly impossible and wondrously new.

Which is where we find ourselves today. Our scripture opens with the words “In those days…”—words the prophets of old used whenever God was about to turn the world upside down. The author of Matthew wastes no time doing exactly that: re-centering the status quo. You see, people were used to travelling to the centre-square if they needed something done. And yet, our text subverts this notion; the people go against the grain, against the flow of traffic, to witness what they believed to be the biggest thing that will ever be done. Because they hear in John’s voice echoes of the prophets past that were preparing the way for the long-anticipated promises to be fulfilled.

And if this wasn’t enough, John’s appearance seals it: the camel’s hair, the leather belt, the wild diet—he is dressed exactly like Elijah, the prophet who confronted complacency head-on. The prophet who never died and was, therefore, expected to appear before the Messiah was to arrive. And so, John doesn’t just echo Elijah; he stands as the rough, disruptive embodiment of him—the ultimate sign that God was preparing something new by sending this messenger who refused to play by the rules of polite and politically correct religion.

And the people are onto it. They can taste, smell, hear, see, and feel in John’s words, his battered appearance, and questionable diet that this is the moment their ancestors and they themselves have been waiting for. So they join John by subverting the status quo, going against the grain of the center of power, to meet him and what he signaled was coming in the wilderness. For they knew the wilderness was where God had always stripped away the old and initiated the new. And they knew the wilderness had the power to change everything.

Which is why John preaches “repentance.” A word that has more recently been used to keep people locked into shame, self-hatred, and oppression in order to retain control by the religious powers that be. But a word in desperate need of reclamation. For it literally has the power to birth new worlds, bring heaven to earth, and is meant to liberate us from any notion of shame, self-hatred, and oppression. The Greek verb metanoeō means to turn around or to change heart: a verb that, when done honestly, is meant to lead us into forgiveness, healing, and freedom from the harm we receive and the harm we cause ourselves and others.

But I think the church historian Ronald Allen says it best: “to repent is to take a clear-minded look at the ways in which one’s life colludes with the assumptions and behaviors of the old age. To turn away from such complicity and to turn towards God liberates us into the attitudes and actions of the realm of heaven.” Which is perhaps why John the Baptist in our reading pairs repentance with the kingdom of heaven that has come near.

I don’t know about you, but for me, I need this kind of repentance at least 100 times a day. Because it’s much easier to keep with the status quo. To stick with old beliefs, old patterns, and old ways of doing things. To submit to the systems that often benefit us and allow us to coast until our last days. To harbor old perspectives and clouded vision because it’s comfortable. And yet, this coming of Christ disrupts the old in every way, shape, and form.

For if there’s one thing God does time and time again, it’s revealing salvation through a subversion of the way we think things work and the way we think God works. A revelation that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen when we’re comfortable but when we journey to the wilderness—the only place where we can truly allow and even yearn for the discomfort of a winnowing fork to burn the chaff, that is, the parts of us that do not bear the fruit of new life.

And it is not an easy journey. It requires us to step outside our comfort zones—to listen deeply to the unruly voices of our time—to let go of our old ways of being—and to see where God is being birthed just on the edges of our imaginations, our beliefs, and our status quos. Sometimes this might mean physically going to the wilderness—in which case I highly recommend New Zealand. But most of the time, the invitation is spiritual—just as it was (or, rather, wasn’t) for the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They made the physical journey—but their hearts were still clinging onto old ways of being, old systems that benefited them, and were either too afraid or too doubtful of the kind of new life John’s baptisms were a foretaste of.

And so John calls them a brood of vipers—harsh words that a Canadian like myself can barely utter, but necessary because of how imminent and urgent true salvation was—and continues to be.

So here, in this Advent season, God is calling us back to the wilderness, particularly as we’re surrounded by the comforts of nostalgia, cookies, and chocolate-calendar countdowns—not to shame us, but to free us. Not to deprive us, but to strip away the stories that keep us numb. Not to scare us, but to turn us around so we can see the new thing God is already birthing at the edges of our lives. Because the wilderness has the power to change us—if we let it.

So the question this Advent is not, “Are you prepared for Christmas?” but rather, “Are you prepared to go to the wilderness to meet the God who will change you?” Because we are meant to become a people who are shaken awake, turned around, set ablaze, released of the chaff in our souls so we might embody a life more wild than we could ever imagine.

Because, in just a few weeks, the baby we’re waiting for will be birthed—not a cute and cuddly infant, but the absurd embodiment of a God who takes on flesh and fire to remake, renew, and revive the world. And Advent is its spark. So repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near—and it’s about to change everything.

What are you hoping for? This is a question our season of Advent brings to the surface – begs of us – and burrows beneath our skin – like an itch for the next 25 days. A question that is meant to invite us into the stance of ‘waiting and watching’ for the presence of God who – as we know – moves where she will. But it’s a question that has, unfortunately, become highly marketable. A question we might ask one another as we look to ‘the big day’, preparing the home, mailing cards and buying gifts – what has become a symbol of care, connection, and belonging. Not bad things, of course, but becomes problematic when Christmas-culture takes the place of God. When our hope lies not with the God who takes on flesh but, rather, with the coca cola coloured Santa Clause, the sparkling lights, the perfect Christmas lunch and, of course, an Australian Cricket win. For others, ‘What are you hoping for?’ can become a question of dread, feeling like the only kind of God we see is the kind we play ourselves, with pen and paper in hand scribbling down wish lists to fulfill the hopes of others. What are you hoping for? A question that not only arises in this season but a question that was on the tips of peoples’ tongues a couple thousand years ago. Enter the Gospel of Matthew. A Gospel we will be journeying alongside this next year. A Gospel, you’ll find, is the first in the line-up, with Mark, Luke and John following. A Gospel meant to lead us into all other Gospels. And, if we had to reduce Matthew’s audience to a single image, it might best be pictured as a Gospel where Jesus is at the table with all his beloved and bewildering relatives, full of love and life, as well as discomfort and disagreement. A table where they freely criticize and complain about each other, but a table where anyone else looking in, dare not say one bad word. Not too dissimilar from what some of us might experience at our own tables in just a few weeks. And so, when we hear (and we will hear) harsh texts from Matthew this next year like we have today – just think about the brutal honesty, the embarrassing relative, as well as the deep care and compassion that often meets us at these tables, in the presence of loved ones. Historically, Matthew’s world is in ruins. The Jerusalem Temple – the center of religious life, identity, memory and holiness – has been destroyed. They are living in the shadow of disaster, trying to make sense of a world where the symbols of God’s presence have been shattered. Before our scripture they’re asking, ‘what does this mean’, ‘why did this happen’, and ‘when will the Son of Man, the Messiah, come in their glory?’ These questions are urgent. They have waited centuries for the long-promised Messiah. What we call “Christmas” had life-and-death consequences for them. Their hope was not a sweet tradition with gift-giving and pine-trees all aglow; it was a longing for salvation in the face of Roman oppression and persecution. And, as Jesus often does, he answers their questions without answering their questions. He does not concern himself with any of the who, what, where, when, why anxieties but, instead, answers a question they did not ask: ‘how then shall I live’? And to this, he says ‘be ready’, ‘keep awake’ – ‘expect the unexpected’. And he does this by drawing on Noah not to frighten them, but to give them a frame they already know. In the days of Noah, life moved along in its ordinary rhythms — eating, drinking and marrying — with no dramatic signs to warn anyone of the flood that would overwhelm the earth. The point Jesus makes is not about the rising waters itself, but about the ordinary routines that surrounded it. People were simply living their lives, unaware of the larger story unfolding around them. In the same way, he tells his listeners that God’s movement won’t arrive with advance notice or tidy explanations. It will come quietly, suddenly, in the midst of regular days and familiar schedules. Which is why the only real instruction he gives is to stay awake — to cultivate a posture of attentiveness and expectation. Because the presence of God will probably not break through in things like a coca cola coloured Santa Clause, sparkling lights, the perfect Christmas lunch or an Australian Cricket win. (But we can cross our fingers.) What are you hoping for? This is also a question the Uniting Church has been asking itself for a while now as numbers drop and younger generations are scarcely seen in our spaces. Leaders my age hear a repeated refrain: we hope young leaders will bring back young people. A hope that often expects change while staying the same – what the well-known proverb calls the definition of insanity. But maybe, beneath all this waiting and watching for more people to show up, is an unnamed desire in the depths of our souls. A longing for renewal. For life. For a hope that actually saves, despite whether or not we get bums in pews and despite whether or not the Uniting Church survives. Because maybe our task is not to wish society would conform itself to our ways, as some sort of continuing form of colonization – maybe our task is to wake up to its hunger. Because people — of all ages at the depths of their souls — are longing, watching and waiting for a spirituality that is awake. One that expects the unexpected. One that resists the gods of boxing day sales, cold culture and curated content. A spirituality that meets them with something that looks, sounds, tastes, smells and feels like salvation — real salvation — that is, the reawakening presence of God that lifts the weight of expectation and reconnects us to what is fiercely alive. Because people are tired. Tired of performing. Tired of producing. Tired of feeling alone in a loud, glittering rat-race. Tired of callous structures and cold rituals. And tired that Christmas comes around so quickly. They long for a way of being that feels spacious, sacred, and real. They long for a God who meets them not only in ecstasy or demise but in the humdrum, mundane and ordinary of their lives – between eating, drinking, and marrying. They long for a hope that doesn’t collapse on December 26 or whenever the Boxing Day test ends. If the church is awake to this longing, we have a gift to offer. If not, people will look elsewhere – as they are already doing. Because, you see, our scripture reading today is not directed towards the masses, towards our society, or even meant to be an indictment on our consumer-Christmas culture (as much as it would be nice to point our fingers at it). It is a text for the people who have gathered at God’s honest, uncomfortable yet loving family table – a text directed at us: that is, people who show up in these humble gatherings who feel a spark and a desire to follow this God who doesn’t become concrete, doesn’t become a theory but becomes flesh. A people who have a responsibility to take seriously this call to stay awake and expect the unexpected if not for ourselves, then for the life of the world. Because just like Matthew’s audience and their historical setting, it seems as though we are only awake to our demise. We have fallen asleep to the God who always breaks through even, if not especially, during the demise of our institutions, our customs, our cultures, our churches and expectations. Yet deep down, in the depths of our souls, beneath our quiet politeness at these pews – we want to be shaken awake. We want to believe this Messiah is not theory but reality. Why else do we come to church? Why do we provide for those who are struggling to get by? Why do we care for those on the margins? Why serve one another, pray together, sing together – unless we’re hoping to encounter the God made flesh? Unless we’re hoping for a salvation that reawakens the presence of God in us? Because our scripture today is not talking about a salvation where some will be taken and others will be left behind in some sort of ‘end of world’ drama like the TV series ‘Left Behind’ would have us believe. Salvation is the loosening of burdens we were never meant to carry. It is the freedom from the expectations of society, culture, church and even ourselves. It is the awakening of our souls to the God who is not dead but alive. Who is not asleep, but awake. Who has not only come and is on their way – but is here with us now. So, be ready. Stay awake. Expect the unexpected if not for yourself, then for the life of the world. Because the Son of Man wasn’t just born on December 25th 2000 some years ago, the Son of Man is coming in their glory, birthing amongst us — in our eating, drinking, and marrying — to offer us a way of being that shakes us awake to our soul’s deepest ache: a hope that saves. So—what are you hoping for? Because it might already be being birthed in the humdrum, mundane and ordinary of your life.

When I was studying theology back in Canada, one of my professors asked a question I’ve never quite been able to shake. But it’s a question that kept rearing its head the longer I sat with our Luke reading today. He said something to the effect of, “God loves us… but does God like us?”

It sounds simple, even cheeky, but it forced me to think of how God sees us. Because “love,” in the way we often throw it around, can make us feel unseen. And I think it’s because the word love has become so overused and over-romanticized that we’ve become desensitized to what love often requires from us.
“I love you,” said an ex-boyfriend who I’d barely been seeing for a month.
“I love my footy team,” we say — which is only proof that love can make us delusional.

But at its worst, love can be twisted as an excuse to do untold violence onto one another, particularly in the church.
In the name of love, Christians ripped Indigenous children away from their families.
In the name of love, queer folk have been pushed out of the church, condemned, or told to hide their true selves.
In the name of love, women have been told to stay silent and cover themselves for thousands of years.
“Quiet, Piggy,” some men still say.

And yet, in order to be truly loved, we have to be liked. And to be liked, we have to be accepted. And to be accepted, we have to be truly seen — the awkward bits, the tender bits, the different bits, the uncomfortable bits, the parts we’d rather hide, the parts society tells us to hide. And that is terrifying.
Because what if people don’t like what they see?
What if God doesn’t like what God sees?
Or worse yet, what if I don’t like what I see?

And this is where the ego comes rushing in. The part of us designed to protect our true selves — the part that armours up, defends, hides, curates, spins a better version of ourselves so we never have to risk exposure. The ego thrives on being in control, in putting others down so we don’t become the victims ourselves. The ego is terrified of being seen. Because if we are truly seen, the ego has nowhere to hide.

And yet, there’s something about this kind of seeing — this divine seeing — that shimmers all throughout Jesus’ ministry. The way he sees the woman at the well. The way he shows us how the father sees the prodigal son. The way he sees the overlooked, the shamed, the ones who don’t fit in, time and time again. And on Christ the King Sunday, the power of this seeing stands at the centre of the gospel — not from a throne, not from a crown looking down, but from a cross, looking right at us, face to face.

Admittedly, it’s a strange scripture to find ourselves in at the end of our Pentecost season before we begin anticipating Jesus’ birth. But perhaps it’s precisely the kind of strangeness we need in order to understand a God who chooses to reveal God’s self in an unmarried Jewish teenager’s womb.

And so we find ourselves at Golgotha, the Skull, where the Roman officials are hurling hurt upon hurt — not just through the physical pain of crucifixion, but through their egos. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One!” they say, while an inscription of mockery hovers over him: “This is the King of the Jews.” But Jesus looks past their insults — past the ego-driven sarcasm to scapegoat, scavenge, and scorn. It is as if he sees them for who they truly are, prompting Jesus to respond: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Meanwhile, one of the criminals joins in with the crowd, speaking to Jesus from the same grasping ego: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself — and us!”
But the other… the other sees something different.

In Jesus — stripped, bleeding, humiliated, utterly vulnerable and utterly visible — he sees the naked truth: that this crucified one is the king. A king unlike any Caesar he has ever known. And yet there’s something about this exposed, crucified one who doesn’t turn away from suffering but shares in it, that is strangely powerful. A paradox the Roman officials and the first criminal miss completely because they’re still thinking about earthly kings, earthly messiahs, and earthly rulers.

To the second criminal, it’s the nearness — the unguarded visibility — that makes his honesty possible, allowing him to make one of the most vulnerable requests we hear in Luke:
“Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”
Not “save me.”
Not “fix this.”
Not “prove yourself.”
Not “forgive me.”
Not “remember a different version of me.”
But remember me, just as I am, when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus responds not with theological explanation or grand declaration, but with the kind of nearness that only comes from someone who genuinely delights in you:
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

And this is interesting: he doesn’t use the criminal’s word kingdom. He uses the Greek word paradeisos: the garden — the place of original intimacy, where Adam and Eve could truly be themselves before the slippery, slithering ego told them they were unworthy, unfit, unlovable, and should hide. The place where humanity was unashamed and utterly seen, perhaps for the first and only time.

And it’s striking that nowhere else does Jesus use paradeisos except in this text. It’s almost as if it culminates everything he has been saying throughout his ministry:
Where the Kingdom of God is a feast where all are welcome;
where the last shall be first;
and where the rich are sent away empty.

But here, in Jesus’ last breaths, he breaks open what this kingdom truly looks like: a paradise that is personal, intimate, and vulnerable.

In Jesus’ eyes, the second criminal is not the “criminal” the state reduced him to. As he is laid bare and unguarded, he is seen for who he truly is: beloved and holy.

Even though I grew up in the Church, it wasn’t until I was at a Christian camp — lost in the waves of music with 100 other kids my age — that I experienced God for the first time. The evening held a series of gentle invitations to open our hearts and let God be present in us. And before I knew it, I found myself on my knees in ecstatic tears, feeling for the first time the very tangible presence of this holy one.

But now, as I look back, I think God’s presence is less about God coming upon us whenever the stars align, and more about letting God see all of us. Because that experience was not only about encountering God, but about letting God encounter me. Once I let go of my defences, pretences, and posturing — once my ego had nowhere else to hide — I could feel the invitation to take on the same lens with which God saw me. A lens that searches out the edges, the margins, the vulnerabilities, and sees their holiness.

Because when I came home from that camp, I had changed. I felt seen — and I wanted to see others, truly, for the first time. It was there that God placed within me a desire not just to care for those on the margins, but to see them the way God saw me. To witness their dignity, their wholeness, their vulnerability in a world full of fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation — and to speak the name God had already placed upon them: beloved and holy.

This is why I found myself working with people with disabilities and in aged care. Why I still feel led to Pride Marches. Why I listen to the people who hold the oldest continuing story on this land. And why, eventually, I found myself as a minister in the Uniting Church — a church that aims to align itself with those on the margins but, more than this, a church I wasn’t rejected from. A church where I could let my vulnerability and my marginality shine without fear, shame, judgment, or condemnation.
Although far from perfect, it is a church that orients itself toward this way of seeing — aiming to be Jesus’ eyes in a world bent on seeing red.

And this is the power of the Jesus story — particularly the power of Jesus reigning and ruling from the cross, not from a throne, not from a crown looking down. This power of presence, from the place of vulnerability and marginality, is one that changes hearts. It invites us to live without the fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation society throws at us — and, more often than not, that we throw at ourselves.

Because sometimes, if not most of the time, we are our own worst enemies, cursing ourselves more than we curse others. And yet we are invited to turn back to the boldness and faith of the second criminal — or rather, the second person. By seeing the exposed and vulnerable Christ, he is able to truly see himself: his worth, his belovedness, despite the body he inhabits on the cross and a state that names him criminal, condemned, and corrupt.

And so he reaches for his true place in God’s world — God’s kingdom, or rather, God’s paradise. And this invitation is not for tomorrow. It is imminent. And it is for everyone. A paradise where the cross does not have the last word, but where God’s truth does — a truth that shows us that God not only loves us, not only likes us, not only accepts us, but truly sees us: beloved and holy.

But like the second person on the cross, we have to let ourselves be seen. We have to let down our defences — the parts that armour up, defend, hide, curate, spin, and control. We have to believe that who we truly are is worthy of being seen — and worthy of living without fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation.

Because on Christ the King Sunday, the power of this seeing stands at the centre of the Gospel — not from a throne, not from a crown looking down, but from a cross that looks right at us, face to face, daring us to see as God sees us: beloved, holy, and utterly worthy of paradise now.

What if the Christian life was less about what we do and more about what we don’t do? Less about theologies we uphold and more about thoughts we let go of? What if the real challenge of the Christian life is to be still? A notion that contrasts sharply with our western way of living, where we base one another’s merit and our own, on how much stuff we have going on. In fact, it’s become a stripe of honour to share just how busy and, therefore, how very important we all are. It’s something I’ve been keenly aware of myself when I stepped into chaplaincy – constantly needing to remind myself that I was literally paid to be still. And so I made a pact with myself that I would never tell people how busy I was. But the irony was almost comical. Everyone else would tell me how busy I must be instead! And so, I wonder – honestly – if the biggest threat in our modern world is not polarizing politics, waging wars or even the cost-of-living crisis. I wonder if it’s the inability to be still. But something happened this past week that caused most of the world to enter the quiet, even if it was only for a minute. At 11am on Remembrance Day, people stopped what they were doing, and put down their phones. It’s a moment that holds feelings of gratitude, regret, sorrow, anger and pure presence at the horrors of war. A moment that recognizes we wouldn’t be able to say how busy we all are if it wasn’t for the real sacrifices that were made in these wars. And it’s a moment that makes us keenly aware of how blessed we are not to be living through these horrors, at least here in Australia. And yet, it strikes me that this minute of silence is perhaps one of the only practices people across the world observe at the same time. The only kind of silence many will willingly and consciously enter their whole lives. And it’s understandable. Our world is not only a noisy place; despite the relative freedom we reflected on, on Nov 11, our world is still filled with all kinds of horrors that keep us reactive, in fear and clinging to the edge of our seats, as we ask, when will it all fall apart and are these the signs of collapse? So when we hear today’s Gospel reading — stones thrown down, wars and insurrections, nation rising against nation, famines, plagues, betrayals, persecutions — it doesn’t sound like the end of the world. It sounds like the news. And it was. Because the author of Luke isn’t describing a distant future, they are writing from the world they knew then: a world where the Roman Empire had destroyed the temple, levelled its stones, scattered its people, and left an entire faith community wondering how to live when the center of their world had ended. And so Luke, as well as the other Gospels, emerge from this ache, the literal rubble they are standing on, amidst an ending that is already underway. And into that world — a world that looks uncomfortably like ours — Jesus speaks three quiet, impossible things: Do not be terrified. Do not prepare your defense in advance. In your endurance, you will gain your souls. And perhaps this is what the mystics, the saints, the desert mothers and fathers have been quietly whispering for centuries — that endurance is not preparing more but releasing more. That the true work of salvation is not found in our striving, but in our surrender. St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish Carmelite poet, mystic and companion of St Teresa of Avila, lived and breathed this surrender. Imprisoned by his own religious brothers for daring to call the Church back to simplicity, he spent months in a dark, airless cell with barely enough space to kneel. The only light he would see was when he was brought out for public lashings and the light that would dimly stream through a hole from an adjoining room. He had no change of clothing and only lived on water, bread and scraps of salt fish. Yet, in that darkness, when all his earthly attachments had been stolen from him, he began to glimpse the light that no cell could shut out. It was there he wrote of this realization particularly in his most famous work, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’: that it was in being stripped of everything where his soul met God, truly, for the first time. And it’s in this strange union that we might be able to begin to understand Jesus’ strange words amidst the darkness of his time and our own: that the only thing that endures is the soul in union with God. Everything else is always ending. For the world ended when the Temple stones were thrown down. It ended on the shores of Gallipoli, it ended in Auschwitz and Hiroshima. It is ending in genocides in Gaza and Sudan, in the slow burn of a planet gasping for air, in corrupt leaders who use God’s name to build their own empires and ballrooms and it ended that fateful day on the cross. And yet, amid all this ending, Jesus does not tell us to fight harder or shout louder. He says, “Do not be terrified. Do not prepare your defense in advance. For in your endurance, you will gain your souls.” The disciples wanted signs, warnings, strategies – to know what was going to happen. They wanted to get ahead of the end that was coming. But Jesus invites them into a deeper knowing: a wisdom born of unknowing, a surrender that trusts God will meet us not in our readiness but in our release. A release we catch a glimpse of on the 11th hour of the 11th day on the 11th month. A release we catch a glimpse of at our Meditation groups on the 11th hour of every Wednesday. Because it is in these moments — when our defenses fall, when nothing is produced or performed — that something sacred begins to speak. Not our words — but the Word rising from within, groans, perhaps, too deep for words themselves. A wisdom Jesus calls “testimony”: the Greek marterion — meaning ‘to bear witness’. That is, not a rehearsed speech, but a life that listens deeply and watches carefully to the God who is always drawing near. And we can only bear this kind of witness when we enter the stillness. This is what St. John of the Cross found — that as the walls closed in, a different space opened, a space no person could destroy: his enduring soul in God. And when he finally escaped that cell, his life blossomed into a ministry he never could have prepared for. Because it was born not from readiness but from surrender. Now hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying we need to lock ourselves in cells or meditate for hours. I’m not saying suffering is a doorway God requires. And I’m not trying to gaslight those who are feeling the real impacts of the load they take on in their lives from caring, working and just generally trying to hold it all together. What I am saying is this: the kind of stillness Jesus speaks of is born whenever we stop resisting reality and start resting in the truth of God’s presence within us. Not in withdrawal from the world, but in a way of truly entering it — where endurance is not grinding effort or trying to make sense of the noise, but rather an endurance that witnesses the presence of God even as the world ends again and again and again. So I wonder: if our busy-ness comes not from doing too much but, rather, from doing apart from God? And I wonder if our constant state of noise is drowning out the still, small voice that longs to show us what salvation looks like here and now, in that still, small space within us? Because we in the Uniting Church are do-ers. We show up. We step in. We serve where others won’t — and that’s holy. And yet, the shadow side of this is when I’ve asked what makes our action Christian rather than simply just good, I have found many Uniting Church folk struggling to find an answer. And yet, the difference couldn’t be clearer than day. An answer we are given decisively in our scripture today: Our action is meant to flow from the place where our souls are united with Christ — not action for God, not action to prove God, but action from God. Because when we live from the un-busy center — the still point where God and soul meet — our work ceases to be striving. It becomes participation in God’s quiet salvation already unfolding within us. And so, it’s this truth that might just get at the crux of our world issues – a way that just might save our souls, mine, yours and everyone else’s: a way that loosens our grip on the endless doing as if our busy-ness will save us. A way that stops us building defenses against what is already passing away. A way that lets the stones fall. A way that lets the noise still. A way that trusts that even as the world ends — God is still being born in the rubble. And in the silence — a similar silence that falls each year on the 11th month, of the 11th day at the eleventh hour or at 11 here on a Wednesday — may we remember that God’s Word has never needed our preparation, only our enduring, unprepared and testifying souls. So what fear is God inviting you to let go of? What preparation is God asking you to release? And how is the Spirit – the same Spirit that hovered over the silence before the world began — bearing witness in you? Because when the world ends — as it always does — it will be in the stillness where God’s quiet strength will save us.

Do you believe in the resurrection? It’s a question that might make some of us squirm in our seats in our highly scientific, post-Christian society. A question that can pigeon-hole us into one of 2 answers. And it’s a question that might hit us differently, particularly after reflecting on loved ones past at our All Saints Service last week. But it’s a question that not only got laughed at, scoffed at and scratched many a head at 2000 some years ago, it’s a question that continues to elicit a similar response today. So in our last few weeks of Pentecost, perhaps it’s fitting to sit at the fire of this burning question before the awe and anticipation of Advent. To stand before its harshness so we might hear from the one who upturns all our assumptions and expectations: where the last shall be first, where the poor will inherit the kingdom of God, where the hungry will be filled with good things, where those who weep will be filled with laughter, and where death itself will be undone. And our scripture begins with, not all, but some Sadducees who do not believe in the resurrection. They’re in the Temple—still ringing from the echo of corruption, with tables upturned and coins clattering the chapter before. And it’s clear that they’re trying to trip up Jesus. They use the authority of Moses and his levirate law to ask whose wife a hypothetical widow will be in the resurrection if she’s married not once, not twice but seven times to brothers who keep dying. It almost sounds like those ridiculous questions we were asked as kids in school… you know the ones: “If Sally has 10 socks and she puts 3 socks on her goldfish, how many socks are still dry?” It’s a wonder how any of us made sense of anything from math class. And yet, somehow, this is exactly how resurrection is treated: —abstract, absurd, a puzzle to solve rather than a story to enter. But Jesus doesn’t play their game. Instead, he completely dismantles the marriage system altogether. Although the levirate law attempted to ensure women weren’t left without, it was ultimately flawed as it only served as a bandage over the corrupt societal system of patriarchy. To be clear, Jesus is not saying we will not be reconciled with our spouses at the resurrection. What Jesus is saying is that the need for this levirate law will not be necessary because there won’t be patriarchy at the resurrection. Can I get an ‘Amen’? A statement that would have been so incomprehensible at the time… And yet, Jesus is getting at something far more liberating than they could ever imagine. Because what he does next gets to the heart of their question: He uses the same authority of Moses by revealing that the resurrection didn’t start with him, but reaches all the way back. But he doesn’t use the argument of God’s laws given to Moses, he goes back further… Back before the 40 years of wandering in the desert, before the moment of splendour on Mount Sinai, before the dry path that guided the Israelites across the Red Sea and before the plagues. He goes back to the moment that started the Exodus story, of God’s people being led into freedom: the precipice on which the possibility of the Israelites’ liberation hinged on: a moment in the middle of the wilderness, where a bush is burning but not consumed, where a shepherd who was living a half-hearted life in hiding and humiliation responds to a voice calling from flame. And there, God awakens Moses from his hollowness, declaring: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry; I know their suffering, and I have come to deliver them. I AM WHO I AM, the God of your ancestors. This is my name forever and this is my title for all generations.” Admittedly, a rather strange moment to point to, to prove the resurrection. But in this strangeness we see that Jesus is pointing to something far more radical and far-reaching than what we may have first thought this story meant. Jesus reminds them that in this holy moment, God claims, in no uncertain terms, that it is God’s nature, God’s very name that reveals resurrection. “I AM WHO I AM” — not, I was who I was. In other words, this is a God who sweeps the floor with death, who gathers within God’s self, not the dead, but the living Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A God whose liberation does not end with breath, but carries through the grave itself to strangely, mysteriously and powerfully enter Moses’ story. A connection that silences the Sadducees and satisfies the scribes because, in Jesus’ answer, is the burning truth about the God who refuses to leave us alone, dead or alive. Whose very name is connected and dependent on our living, breathing names, from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to me and to you. Now, when I first read this scripture earlier this week, I found myself squirming at the thought of preaching about life after death. I tried to safely navigate to a sermon about resurrection now so I wouldn’t have speak about this strange thing. But what I realized was that a lot of my anxiety and discomfort was coming from a place of immense privilege, of not really needing to be liberated. And I think this gets to the crux of our struggle in progressive churches in the West. Many of us have become intellectual and theoretical about resurrection because, well, we can be. One of the curses of living in a developed country is the belief that we don’t need to be liberated. We have convinced ourselves we can save ourselves with enough comfort, cushioning, cash and control. In other words, we miss the fire of resurrection when we believe we have nothing to be freed from. We forget that resurrection is not only personal but cosmic — a liberation of all that has been bound, all that has been silenced, and all that has been crushed beneath the weight of the world’s systems. In other words, we forget we are not truly free until all are free. But if you listen to any gospel spiritual, resurrection is not an idea, it’s not a theory and it’s not an intellectual exercise — it’s fuel, it’s hope, it’s survival. For enslaved African Americans, whose songs like “Wade in the Water” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” rose from fields soaked in tears and sweat, resurrection was resistance. It did not minimize or excuse their suffering — it declared that suffering would not have the final word and that all things, inevitably and eventually, would end in God’s liberation, if not in this lifetime, then the next. Their songs sang of a day when death itself would loosen its grip — when the world would rise from its own tomb and breathe again. Harriet Tubman was one of many enslaved African Americans during the 19th century who believed this and sung it with her whole heart. After escaping enslavement herself, she could have rested in her new found freedom. But she knew, intrinsically, that true liberation isn’t just personal, it’s bound up with the whole of creation. And so, she risked her life on over a dozen occasions to come back and guide hundreds to freedom through the Underground Railroad. She would sing the Gospel hymn ‘Go Down, Moses’ to encourage the people she was leading to freedom, eventually being called ‘Moses’ by those who followed her. And it was because Tubman believed in a resurrection where the last will be first, where the poor will inherit the kingdom of God, where the hungry will be filled with good things, where those who weep will be filled with laughter, and where death itself will be undone. In other words, she was awake to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob living in her, moving her along the Underground Railroad, despite whether she would see the end of slavery in her lifetime or not. Spoiler alert: she did. And this same liberation is what resurrection still promises us now, even in our scientific, post-Christian society. So, perhaps the question isn’t whether you believe in the resurrection but rather, where is the burning flame of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s God in your life? Because we are all a slave to something. Tubman knew this better than most when she said, “If I could have convinced more slaves they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.” And though we may have not known the kind of enslavement Tubman or the Israelites faced, here’s the thing: the greatest lie the Western world has ever told us is that we are free. Many of us if not all of us find ourselves enslaved to systems that subtly and seductively dwindle God’s resurrection. As much as Jesus was tearing down the patriarchy in our scripture, we still live in a society marred by domestic violence, as patriarchy seems to be continuing on in many ways unscathed. We live in an economic system that still puts the first, first and the last, last, that blesses the rich and feeds those who are already full. And we only need to look at this past week to see how easy it is to mistreat creation and get lured into gambling culture, justifying and even making a public holiday out of cruelty and addiction. And so, because we live in the real world, resurrection can’t be a theory. The stakes are too high. It must be a story to embody. A story that started with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that flared up in a burning bush, that led an enslaved people to the Promised Land, that walked out of a tomb in Jerusalem, that sings in slave fields, mourns with mothers who have lost children, and comes alongside us even now. Because liberation is inevitably and eventually breaking through. And the power of this cannot be understated. Whether it be in this lifetime or the next, all systems of suffering, greed, and domination will fall away and even death will be freed from its own sting. So, where is the burning flame of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s God in your life? For this God is not a God of the dead, but of the living — who meets us in fire, awakens our hollowed hearts, and whose very being, whose very name, is wrapped up in our liberation, so that all, one day, will be free.

We all yearn for peace—no matter when you were born, what you’ve experienced, or where you’ve lived.

But peace has both started and ended wars—what differs is our interpretation of it: how we achieve peace, who gets to enjoy it, and who suffers because of it. This was the Pax Romana in Jesus’ time—peace that was twisted by an oppressive empire that denied people their dignity and right to life. And we’ve seen this subversion of peace repeat since—Hitler claiming peace once Jews were erased, and now the government that represents these same persecuted people is promising the same kind of peace once Palestinians are erased.

But we don’t need to look abroad to see how peace is used as a pawn to uphold power and suppress people. Here in Australia, peace can often be wielded to placate the population while privileging the few. No matter which government we vote for, there’s no way around it: this unpeace shows up in our black and white data. Indigenous Australians make up 3.8% of the population but account for 32% of the prison population. Despite decades of feminism, women still only earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn, and 1 in 3 women have experienced violence since the age of 15. Our Trans community fear the denial of peace in their own bodies as they wonder whether what’s happening in America will trickle down here. The cracks in the NDIS system are still leaving many vulnerable people without the real support they need. And many of us here today wonder what peace we’ll receive as we age in a society that often neglects and discredits its elders.

Because we’re often sold on these systems that accept this rhetoric of peace, people often feel the societal pressure to submit, to stay silent, to surrender to the status quo because our culture demands it of us. Australians, in particular, are known for following the rules, sometimes to a fault, in order to keep the peace at all costs. And one of the best ways this is packaged and produced in the West is through the wellness industry. As people were turning away from rituals of peace offered in mosques, synagogues, temples, and churches with the rise of modernity and capitalism, the void was filled by expensive elixirs, exercises, exotic retreats, and expansive breathing techniques—all promising peace in the body, mind, and soul while using the same mechanisms of capitalism and consumerism that have led to a civilization of unpeace to begin with. And look—I, myself, am an avid practitioner of yoga, meditation, and deep breathing—practices, I swear, have kept me out of jail.

But the peace in our scripture today, the peace promised by Christ and God’s imminent kingdom, could not look more different from the way peace has been packaged, produced, and promised in our society. Peace, as Jesus preaches it, is meant to disturb us, it’s meant to move us, and it’s meant to undo us. For Christ’s peace is not a coping mechanism. It is not a commodity. It is not something we achieve. It is something we receive. And it is something that sends us. The peace Jesus proclaims is not passive—it’s powerful. It’s not polite—it’s disruptive. It doesn’t make us comfortable—it makes us courageous. Above all, it is the most powerful thing we could ever imagine, for it is the only kind of peace that has the capacity to transform the world.

Our scripture follows from our text last week, of letting everything go in order to follow the way of God’s imminent kingdom. It begins with the sending of the 70 or the 72, depending on the translation. Even though most of us are more familiar with the sending of the 12 in Matthew’s Gospel, Luke is making a very different kind of point in our text today. For the number ‘seventy’ is not just a number—it’s a signpost. It reaches all the way back to Genesis, to the Table of Nations—a list of every people, tribe, and culture that made up the known world. Seventy names. Seventy people. Jesus is sending not just insiders. Not just the elect. Not a closed circle of power but a movement of labourers all throughout the world, for the harvest is plenty.

And how are they sent? Not with weapons. Not with scrolls of doctrine. Not with excuses. And not with delay. They are sent with nothing. No bed to lay their heads on. No time to bury their dead. No purse or bag to put their things in. And no sandals to walk the way upon. The only thing they have are empty stomachs and the kingdom of God on their tongues—a state, in other words, of complete vulnerability, of entering peoples’ cultures, customs, and quarters on their grounds and in their homes. To show up, regardless if they are rejected, to not only be vessels of peace to them but, first and foremost, to become recipients of their peace.

Peace never comes about through power but rather, like a shy animal, needs to emerge on its own terms and in its own time. It needs to feel safe, heard, and met with understanding. And this is why the 72 don’t go to the town square to pronounce God’s kingdom but go to individual homes instead, one by one. For this is how true peace is established—not through mass consumption and proclamation but by entering another’s household, listening to them, eating their food, and hearing their stories.

Our scripture shows us the revolutionary power of this act. For the last part of our scripture jumps forward in time to when the 72 return to Jesus, pronouncing how even the demons submitted to them, how Satan fell from heaven like lightning, how they were given power to tread on snakes and scorpions and all the forces of evil—and how nothing could hurt them. Images that may make us squirm in our seats as rational, progressive Christians, but images that are not only meant to widen our imaginations but embolden and hasten our call to become labourers of God’s kingdom ourselves.

Because the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And as we look around us in the world that we are living in, as we continue to face atrocities triggered by world leaders—from missiles firing on the least of these to mismanaged economies favoring the rich—the embodiment of evil is not just a concept, it’s real. It’s thriving. It’s organized. And it’s often sugar-coated by policy, promises, and peace. The second greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was the good guy.

So the peace Jesus gives is a peace that reveals the evil in our world. It is a peace that stands in the face of empire, lifts the veil off lies, and breaks the silence of fear. It often looks inconsequential, insignificant, irrelevant, and sometimes outrageous. But it’s from this place of absurdity, vulnerability, and intimacy that we actually begin to see what is true: that the Kingdom of God has come near. That this kingdom does not rely on tanks, trusts, or treaties. It certainly doesn’t rely on prime ministers, presidents, or policies. It comes in the most counterintuitive and seemingly counterproductive way possible: in weakness, in listening, in empty hands and full hearts, one by one, relationship by relationship. Not from a place of superiority but standing heart to heart with each other, bearing witness to people of peace who are all around us, despite the evidence. Sometimes this feels like being sent out into the midst of wolves.

The other day, as I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, I came across a story that stopped me in my tracks. The African-American lecturer and activist Loretta J. Ross shared how her sense of call was attending Ku Klux Klan rallies—not to confront or condemn but to listen, to understand, and to meet their hatred with compassion on her lips and peace in her heart. Though she is a survivor of unimaginable violence, she chose not to perpetuate the cycle of hurt, choosing a different path instead: not of hatred but of peaceful transformation.

Why? Because she was haunted by C.T. Vivian’s words, an aid for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “When you ask people to give up hate then you need to be there for them when they do.” Although not everyone in the KKK was challenged and changed by her peace, this did not stop her from being a presence of peace anyway. She ultimately found that this small yet outrageous act became part of her life’s work to help people who did leave hate groups. Through it she found something wildly unexpected: once she got to know them, she couldn’t hate them anymore. For they found that they loved one another, and in this bonded state, they shared a peace that surpassed all understanding. Change didn’t happen by pushing people away—it started by meeting others in peace wherever they were and wherever they were at, so that they might remember and re-embody who they are too: people of peace.

Our scripture is inviting us to let go of the idea that we must be ‘doers’ or ‘creators’ of peace but rather ‘affirmers’ of what’s already true in me, in you, and everyone—that we are all, at our core, people of peace who constantly need to remember and re-embody this truth. This is why we gather Sunday mornings, week after week, year after year. True peace can only exist when two or more people gather face to face, heart to heart. But it starts by leaving everything we once knew behind, to go to where the people are, to sit beside the unhoused on sidewalks, listen to stories of joy and hardship at Centre 81, eat with survivors of domestic violence, and show up in schools for kids in heartbreaking situations.

All this talk about the kingdom of God is somehow wrapped up in these small and seemingly inconsequential and irrelevant meetings of subtle peace. Our call, like those of the 72, is less about creating or bringing this kingdom ourselves and more about affirming what is already true. We need these kinds of witnesses more than ever: people who refuse to view the world through the lens of hectic headlines and hardened hearts, where people are continually treated as products, pawns, poverty cases, or unforgivable enemies.

This is the labour that is required to affirm and witness the Kingdom of God that has indeed drawn near. This is the labour that undergirds our Christian story to begin with: a God who came into the unpeace of our world, into the shame and oppression instituted by the false peace of an oppressive government, to show true peace, affirm people’s inherent dignity by touching lepers, liberating those denigrated by their sex, feeding those without food, and eating in the homes of the most despised in his society—with tax collectors and prostitutes.

But it starts with letting go—a death to our pride, our need for comfort, our idolization of security—so that we might begin to remember, re-embody, and indeed perceive the kingdom of God that has already drawn near. For this is the power of Christ’s peace. And when we receive it—when we use it as a lens in which to see the world—it has the power to transform everything, upturn graves, and affirm the only truth that matters: that the Kingdom of God has come near. No matter what empire says otherwise, this truth is already at work, where the unpeace of evil is falling from heaven like a flash of lightning.

Here’s the secret: we are all yearning for peace—every one of us—for this is who we all are at the end of the day. All we need is more labourers, 72 to begin with, and then the whole world, to bear witness to this truth that is already producing a harvest beyond our wildest imaginations.

People often assume that just because I’m under 40 in the UCA, I must know what young people are like. But as I spend most of my week working in aged care, I am more likely to understand people in their 90s than those who are 19. And it’s because we are living in a time of exponential change, where the gaps between generations are growing further and further apart. Historians compare the time we’re living in to the quake of the 1500s—a time where human imagination transformed completely, with people like Leonardo Da Vinci bringing the worlds of art and science together.

Then there were the likes of Martin Luther who started a reformation, disrupting corrupt religious power, while the printing press meant Bibles were placed in the hands of lay folk for the very first time. Meanwhile, explorers like Christopher Columbus crossed oceans, expanding—and exploiting—new worlds. In other words, it was a time of seismic change: it shifted how people saw themselves, their faith, and their place in the world.

And now, the same tectonic hum is under our feet. Some of us knew what it was like to grow up without electricity, and now you FaceTime your grandkids across continents. Like our ancestors, we too are being asked to reimagine everything—faith, identity, community. And yet, some things do not change: our yearning for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life.

Because, against every headline predicting Christianity’s demise in these changing times, earlier this month an article in The Economist collating recent polls tells a different story: in the West, Gen Z is turning to church. Did you hear that? 19-28 year olds—independent young adults of their own volition—are going to church. For years, younger people were walking away from the church—for good reason. The legacy of colonisation, the pain uncovered by the Royal Commission, theologies that shame and exclude—none of it went unnoticed.

But something is shifting. Young folk are returning. It’s not a huge number, but it’s not declining, it’s not plateauing, it’s slowly increasing. Now, this is not because the church got it right, but because this generation is hungry—hungry for community, for a truth that isn’t self-made, for a purpose bigger than personal success and hedonism. Something statistics are revealing is attributed to the suffering of the pandemic and the spiritual cost of being locked down and separated from one another. And so young people are looking for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life—not just in the life of the world, but in the church.

And into this moment comes our story from Luke. Jesus, we’re told, “sets his face toward Jerusalem.” He doesn’t delay. He turns with clarity toward a city that will break him—and redeem the world. This isn’t a march of triumph to Jerusalem. It’s a walk into rejection, betrayal, suffering—the way of the cross. But he goes anyway. And already, his disciples don’t get it. When a Samaritan village refuses him, they ask to call down fire from heaven. They still think change and transformation comes through force, through fear, through firing missiles and fueling genocides. But Jesus will have none of it. He rebukes them. The way to the kingdom is not violence, not control, not dehumanisation, not an erasure of a people. Not then. Not now.

People begin to come up to him: “I will follow you wherever you go,” they say. But Jesus doesn’t sugar-coat it. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” This is not a journey of comfort. There is no stopping point. No settling. Only movement.

Another says, “First let me go and bury my father.” Reasonable. Honourable. Pastoral. But Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Because the kingdom of God does not wait for closure. It asks us to step into life even while our hearts are still filled with sorrow, even while we’re still holding death in our hands.

A final voice: “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus responds: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” For Jesus knows we are always tempted to look back—to cling to what’s familiar, to what once worked, particularly in a time of change. But you can’t till new ground with your eyes on the past. You can’t be part of God’s kingdom if you’re always longing for yesterday, resenting and lamenting the present.

And yet, that’s where many of us are. Stuck in the grief of what church used to be. Stuck in our disorientation, clutching to it like it’s holy. Stuck in fear of being left behind as the tectonic hum of change rattles under our feet.

And yet, underneath these seismic shifts of our current world—the rise of technology, globalization, new ways of thinking and new ways of being—have we really changed all that much? Have we ever not been in need of Christ’s way? Because despite these changing times, the only earth-rattling event that has and ever will have the capacity to truly transform us is Christ: where truth, transcendence, and the Spirit of God is embodied.

For this Christ, full of truth, transcendence, and God’s Spirit, was on the way not to keep the status quo, not to keep things as they were, but to change the world completely: to upturn empires, to bring God’s love closer to us than our own skin, and to overturn every grave. This Christ was paving a way that comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comforted, that altered the course of history, of time and space forever. And he didn’t wait for people to come to him—he met them where they were at, speaking their language, entering their cultures and customs and religiosity, listening to their sorrows, their yearnings, and their hope of liberation in the context they found themselves in as Jew or Greek, Judean or Samaritan, female, male or eunuch, slave or owner, tax collector or prostitute.

Which paved the way for the event of the cross, the hush of the tomb, the joy of the resurrection, and the liberation of the Spirit—the only event that will ever truly change us, transform us, and save us. Not clinging to the past. Not clutching onto the culture of our church, but setting our face towards God’s Kingdom that not only is coming but has already arrived. And Jesus keeps calling us forward into this ministry—not just those who work for the church, but everyone.

And just like in our 2nd Kings reading, part of setting our faces towards Jerusalem (the way of the cross that leads to new life) means paving a way for those who are beginning to turn their faces towards this way too. Because the Kingdom of God is not just for us—it’s for everyone. And so, we are called to pass the mantle on just as the mantle was passed onto us. To let go of the idols we have made of our ecclesiology, our buildings, and the way we think ministry should look like, in order to make space and listen to those who are rising up amongst us. Because no matter how much has changed over the course of history or our present age, some things do not change: the way of truth, transcendence, and the Spirit of God that breathes new life.

And so, as the ground continues to shift beneath us, this is not a time to cling to what we’ve known. Yes, the grief of change is real. But we are called, through our tears, to set our face towards God’s Kingdom, to take up our mantle so we are ready to pass it forward. To let whatever small offering we have be the seed that grows the mustard tree, be the yeast that rises bread, be the Spirit that moves all nations to speak. To let go of all that hinders this way—even if they are good and honourable things in our culture, in our society, and in our church.

Because here’s the thing: the Church was birthed through change—not despite it. The first church was responding to the historical and cultural needs of its time. But more than this, it was responding to the wild ways of the Spirit that challenged tradition that no longer served, blew down man-made boundaries, and created new paths of speaking and being in bodies because of the resurrection. In other words, and in the words of my Church History professor, ‘if the Church doesn’t change, it’s simply not Church’.

And so, just like the first gathering of people in the upper room, we are invited to participate in God’s kingdom by listening to one another in different languages, cultures, contexts—and yes, even those from different generations—to meet those who are often missing in these pews where they’re at, no matter how foreign and uncomfortable it may make us feel. But only then will we see what was prophesied by the prophet Joel and preached by Peter: that God has poured out God’s spirit upon all flesh, that our sons and our daughters shall prophesy, and not only will the old dream dreams, but the young shall see visions. Because the kingdom of God is not some far-off goal. It’s imminent; indeed, it has already arrived. Not in the safety of nostalgia, but in the risk of the cross that promises new life, in the courage to follow even when the road is unclear, in the willingness to let go so that something new might rise, in the courage to pass the mantle onward even when clinging to it feels like safety.

Because despite the tumult and turmoil we are living through, some things do not change: our yearning for truth, transcendence, for the Spirit of God that breathes new life. It just might look and sound a little different from what we’re used to. But we are called to set our face toward Christ, no matter the cost.

And so may we take our hands off the excuses and the grief we are clinging to and place them, instead, on the plow to till the soil of what’s coming next. Not only for us, but for those who are already setting their face on the only thing that will ever truly change and transform: the kingdom of God. No ifs, no buts.

Sometimes we forget the power of our stories — the creative force that has shaped us and sent us. The hands that have folded bread into our palms. The water that has quenched our thirst. The wind that has whispered our names. This is why history matters — both the world’s and our own — for only by remembering the tale of our becoming do we know where we’re going. In other words, our stories remind us of what we are doing here.

This is what the Basis of Union is to the Uniting Church: a document holding together the story of Christ that pours itself out into how we are called to be united — not only between denominations but with the world itself. It hums with movement and conviction, reminding us that God is less a noun and more a verb — restless, reconciling, and fiercely alive. And this God has and continues to call us into this slight yet significant difference ourselves.

In fact, the Basis goes out of its way to say the Church is not a denomination, not a building, not a culture, not a continuing city, citadel or cathedral we construct to crown ourselves — but a people. And not just any people: a pilgrim people, never stagnant, never stationary, but always on the way toward God’s kingdom, where Christ feeds us with the wild wind of Spirit so we will not lose the way.

This heartbeat — united yet always uniting — was the very reason for our birth. We weren’t motivated by wealth, power or efficiency, but by the powerful verb of confession: repenting of the sin of denominationalism, the idolatry of our own nouns, our cherished cultures, and our comfortable structures. So on June 22, 1977 — forty-eight years ago today — the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches laid down those nouns and picked up a verb: uniting. A verb whose ripple widens — among our three streams, among all churches of the world, among the whole world itself — but, above all, toward the One who was reconciling the world to himself to begin with. God the verb. Happy birthday, indeed.

Today’s scripture tells a story that lives in the same spirit that birthed the Uniting Church — a story of naming and repenting idolatry. A story of movement — of prophesying and pilgriming, of watching and waiting, of eating and resting, of seeing and hearing. A story sandwiched in First Kings, where God’s people again and again turn to idols and away from God’s life-giving covenant. And a story where God keeps sending prophets to speak on God’s behalf — to call out idolatry and injustice, and to invite repentance so the people might return to the living movement of God’s Torah.

The story of Elijah.

A drama of epic proportions, swinging from blistering highs to bone-deep lows. Just before today’s reading, Elijah is blazing with confidence on Mount Carmel. He stands alone against the prophets of Baal, calls down fire, and watches heaven ignite the drenched altar. The crowd falls on its face, shouting, “The Lord indeed is God!” Elijah runs before the storm, cloak flapping, heart pounding with triumph.

And then, the ground falls away. One furious threat from Queen Jezebel, and the prophet of courage becomes a fugitive of fear. Elijah flees south, deep into the wilderness, until he collapses beneath a solitary broom tree and sighs, “It is enough, Lord. Take my life.” The one who prayed for fire now prays for an end.

Yet God doesn’t turn God’s back on Elijah — God moves closer. An angel taps him awake with bread and water. Rise. Eat. The journey is long. Twice the angel comes, and twice Elijah rises, strength renewed with every humble mouthful. For forty days and nights, he walks to Horeb — the mountain of encounter, whose other name is Sinai — where Moses met God in a law of love all those years ago.

But the parallels don’t end there. Just as Moses rebuked God’s people for worshipping a golden calf, Elijah rebuked the false prophets for worshipping Baal. Elijah, like Moses, journeys through wilderness with manna provided along the way to the same mountain where divine encounter had once split the world open. And it is here where Elijah wedges himself into a cave’s shadow and waits.

This is no coincidence. Elijah expects what Moses saw — the wild movement of wind, earthquake, fire. God in utter action. But instead, the hurricane tears through — and God is not in the wind. The earth shakes — but God is not in the quake. The fire roars — but God is not in the flames.

Then, something unexpected. Something never heard before in Judean history: God’s movement so slight and so subtle you could almost miss it — the sound of sheer silence. A whisper thin as breath on glass.

Elijah wraps his cloak around his face, steps to the cave’s edge, and hears a question — not condemnation, not rebuke, but invitation: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And in that hush, God sends him on the way: to return, to anoint, to raise up, to keep moving.

Last weekend, like most of the world, I was transfixed by the hyperbolic scene playing itself out in America. As the US president was celebrating his birthday that conveniently shared the same date as the 250th anniversary of America’s military, squeaky tanks rolled down DC’s streets lined with a dismal crowd of MAGA supporters. A scene that gave off North Korean, Russian, and Nazi Germany vibes, yet also a feeling of juxtaposition while over 12 million people across America in over 2000 cities called out America’s non-king. A non-king that continues to lead through the ways of injustice, the idol worship of power and greed, and who knows nothing of the law of love passed down through the ages in a religion he claims to align himself with.

But it was a particular scene from one “No Kings” protest that captured the hyperbole of this day to a tee: there, amongst the protesters in Philadelphia, was a large, floating golden calf balloon complete with orange hair, a red tie, and a blue suit — aptly named The Trump Golden Calf. A rebuke on the very people who see themselves as God’s people, who, just like the Judeans in Exodus and First Kings, without knowing it, have turned away from the God of justice and covenantal love. And for a country that calls itself “Christian,” this is not just a rebuke on its Christians but the nation as a whole.

Now, it’s easy to be an observer of this story — to judge and criticize harshly from these Australian pews as we look to the people who have raised up a false god in America. It’s just as easy to distinguish ourselves from the unobserving-covenantal Judeans, Ahab and Jezebel, who turned their backs on God toward Baal. But what’s not as easy — what’s far more tedious and gut-wrenching — is to look upon the Baals in our own life that are often covered by good intentions and societal expectations. Because an anniversary, like any anniversary, should not just invite us into celebration and showing off all our accomplishments as they parade themselves in front of us on squeaky wheels. It should primarily lead us into deep reflection — of why we are the Uniting Church in the first place, how we are doing with the sin we first repented from those 48 years ago of making gods out of our nouns, and what we are doing here.

Over the last month, a group of us have gathered on Wednesday nights to wrestle with these themes through the movement of the Holy Spirit. We’ve shared stories of the creative force that has shaped and sent us — of bread in our hands, water to our thirst, wind whispering our names, despite whether we came from Nunawading, Forest Hill, or Mitcham. Some stories told of burning bushes. Others of movements as quiet and invisible as a breath on glass.

Again and again, the theme that continues to emerge from these gatherings is this: that life with God is bound up in the unknown, the unexpected, the uncertain. That it’s often at the crossroads, the dead-ends, the depths of brokenness — ours and the world’s — that God shows up. Sometimes as loud as a burning bush. Sometimes quiet as a whisper. Often, in ways completely unexpected.

This is always the story of faith.

From Moses to Elijah, God appears where we least expect — trees aflame, parting seas, manna from the heavens, a still small voice — but always when we turn away from the glitter and glory of our golden calves and our Baals. And this God of the unexpected doesn’t just stop in the Old Testament, but personifies this truth in the most unlikely place of all: the body and flesh of a babe in an unmarried Jewish teenager’s womb. Born in obscurity, crossing boundaries, breaking bread with the lost and the least, turning tables, telling parables that confuse more than clarify.

Jesus the anti-noun, the embodied verb of God — the one who meets us not in certainty, but in our unraveling. Not in strength, but in surrender. And like Elijah, like Moses, like every weary pilgrim before and after — we are fed for the journey by the God who moves through the wild wind of Spirit.

For this is the God we follow. Not a noun we define, not a system we control, but a verb that forever spills forward — restless, reconciling, and fiercely alive.

So — what are we doing here?

Because this isn’t just a story to remember. It’s a story to live. Which means the Uniting Church must keep being what it dared to become: a verb. A movement. A people not settled in structures, busied in buildings or bureaucracy, but sent into the world.

We must not go the way of golden calves and those polished idols of nostalgia, safety, nationalism, or ecclesial pride — even when we expect it of one another. Even when our society expects it of us. Even when world leaders demand it of us. And even when that means we find ourselves in desert places and uncertain spaces.

Because in clenching onto the dead weight of certainty, we will be trading it for the living Spirit that moves where it will. Because here’s the thing: God has not stopped moving. God is still whispering. Still calling us forward. Still placing warm bread in our hands and saying, “Rise. Eat. The journey is long.”

So let us be pilgrims again. Let us be the Church that confesses rather than conquers, prophesies rather than pretends, waits rather than wallows, listens rather than lectures, moves rather than monuments itself.

Let us be the Church that gathers at the cave’s edge, wraps our cloaks over our faces, and says yes — even when we do not know the way.

Because Christ has walked it before us — the same Christ who knew what it was to despair, to wander forty days in the desert himself, and who found himself utterly abandoned on the cross and yet paved the way for the liberating movement of resurrection — the wild Spirit of new life.

And we do not walk alone. For this Spirit walks beside us as pilgrim people, even here and even now — never stagnant, never stationary, but always on the way toward a promised goal. Not toward our man-made cities, citadels, or cathedrals, but toward God’s kingdom, where Christ feeds us so we will not lose the way.

So, yes — happy birthday, Church. But now, let us rise and eat. For the journey is long.

Today we enter into the wild story of the birth of our Christian church: the culmination of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection being made manifest in our lives and our lungs. But like most Christian holy days, Pentecost has morphed and emerged from our Jewish siblings’ sacred celebrations. It comes from Shavuot—the story of when Moses received the commandments from God. A remembrance fifty days after Passover, when Spirit passed over Jewish households and led them to liberation.

And it is in the wilderness of their liberation, on Mount Sinai, where God creates a covenant with them—commandments of right relationship, or rather, a law of love. A story Jews remember, recite, and revere every year during Shavuot, every week on Sabbath, and every day by binding these commandments—literally—around their arms, hearts, and heads in the prayerful practice known as Tefillin.

Our Christian story takes this remembrance of liberation, this fulfilment of Spirit and laying down of law, and adds a new dimension: the wildness of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. An event that culminates in the gift of the Holy Spirit, who transcends all boundaries and comes upon all bodies. For here is where the Christian Church is birthed: during the celebration of Shavuot, where Judeans from across the nations gathered.

And it is in this context where a sound like the rush of violent wind fills the space, and divided tongues, as of fire, appear among them—resting on each of them as they begin to speak in one another’s native languages. Some were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” while others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Enter Peter. Yes, that Peter—the same Peter who, only a few weeks earlier, denied Jesus not once, not twice, but three times. And somewhere along the way, this shamed Peter is now living into Jesus’ prophecy of him: that he, of all people, will be the rock on which Christ’s church will be built. And in this first gathering of church, he preaches his first sermon, using the words of the prophet Joel, addressing both the perplexed and the pessimistic about how Spirit will pour out upon all flesh—indiscriminate of any division or duality.

A radical notion during a time when societal, economic, and political systems relied on the division of genders, young and old, slave and free, Jew and Gentile.

This is wild.

There is no room for division amongst an indiscriminate Spirit who transcends any and all of our boundaries, dualities, and labels. For this is the same Spirit that liberated our ancestors and is now coming to us—and I mean all of us—now. The same Spirit that hovered over the dark void before creation; the same Spirit that called a trepid Moses through a burning bush; the same Spirit that separated the waters of the sea to lead God’s people into liberation; the same Spirit of cloud and consuming fire that met Moses on Mount Sinai as laws of love; the same Spirit that revealed to Elijah that God’s fearsome power is sometimes best heard through a still, small voice; the same Spirit that bore God’s son in Mary’s womb, moving her to prophetic singing of joy and justice; and the same Spirit that descended upon Jesus in his baptism and guided him in his life, death, and resurrection.

This is what our Pentecost story is inviting us into—a moving forward into new, yet ancient, ways of being where boundaries are broken and God’s love breaks us open, gathers us in, in all our diversity so that Spirit might fall upon our flesh.

But just like the amazed and perplexed who gathered in that place, we might ask: What does this all mean? In a subdued and sceptical society and church, how does this story of God’s wild Spirit actually make itself manifest in the mundane moments of our modern lives?

When I first moved to Australia, one of my first jobs was with Jewish Care, where I worked in a department that offered health care services to survivors of the Holocaust. It was here that I heard first-hand accounts of Auschwitz and the toll of displacement on those who found their freedom in the furthest country they could think of. But it was through travelling a calendar year with them—watching how their story of covenant was lived out through their holy days, Sabbath gatherings, and through wrapping God’s commandments literally upon their flesh—where I saw the power, or rather, the chutzpah, that these words had in their lives.

Despite the terrors they had endured, this chutzpah came from being able to locate their identities, their faith, and their place in their covenant with God—a covenant they retold every year, every Sabbath, every day. They knew who they were and to whom they belonged because of the power of this story. And boy, does it have power.

Remember the Roman Empire? Like a cancer, its rule and oppression spread across territories, persecuting the Jews for centuries. And yet, it was the Roman Empire that fell—and this small group of oppressed people who survived. In fact, as one survivor told me, this is the Jewish story echoed through most of their holy days:

Chanukkah—when the Jews weren’t killed by the Greeks.
Purim—when Haman’s plot to kill the Jews was foiled by a young Jewish girl, Esther.
Passover—when the Jews weren’t killed by the Egyptians.
Yom Kippur—when God decided not to kill the Jews for worshipping a golden calf.
And Yom Hashoah, observed only a few weeks ago—a remembrance of those murdered in the Holocaust, and a celebration that again, Judaism did not die.

And this is what my Jewish colleagues and clients told me time and time again: it was because they had God’s covenantal story beating in their blood, breathing through their lungs—every Shavuot, every Sabbath, every second of the day.

Now hear what I’m not saying: I’m not saying these stories privilege the state of Israel. And I’m not saying these stories of survival justify the eradication or genocide of any other people. Just as stories have the power to bring God’s love into the world, the wrong re-telling can warp a story as pure and holy as love and communion with God into the worst kinds of evil.

But what happens when we don’t embody our story at all? When we don’t let its wildness sweep through our bones, our beings, and our breath? When we isolate the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from the embarrassing strangeness of Pentecost?

What happens is we lose the ability to hear, to see, to dream, to prophesy, and to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, we lose the ability to be church.

Yet Pentecost is our remembering of what it means to be church. It is a re-enacting of God’s covenanting that wildly moves beyond any boundary we create. It is a re-telling of the covenant that moves and breathes in us, begging to break our hearts open so we might join in the raucous joy of God’s law of love embodied in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—an event that has given us this church and will continue to move across culture, time, and space, and any and every other boundary we create.

In other words, Pentecost is the culmination of our Easter season, where we are now invited—through the power of the Spirit—to commune in this wild kingdom of God not in a world far away, but here and now, upon all flesh.

A kingdom that invites us to turn from our tools of division and toward God’s wild diversity. A covenant beckoning us to join the same story the saints, angels, and ancestors are all wrapped up in—even, and perhaps especially, as the church dwindles. Even, and perhaps especially, when we deny Christ again and again and again.

This is wild.

And it is in the wild power of this remembering and reciting—of opening ourselves to its ramifications—where God’s Spirit of prophecy, visions, and dreams can still fill rooms, loosen tongues, and break down the walls that divide. This story still has power to come alive and breathe new life in and among us, even in this broken world, even in the Uniting Church, and even here at Whitehorse—through the outpouring of these gatherings, through the projects you support and will share about after service today, and through the outpouring of your love in this community and the world around you.

So recite it—every year, every Sabbath, every day. Write it on your arms, your head, and your heart.

For this is our story, living and breathing in us and among us: the Church, where Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are being made manifest in our lives and our lungs.

What makes you feel at home? 

Most of you know by now that I’m from Canada. And it never fails to bring warmth to my heart everytime I can talk about it, how proud I am of its people, its culture and its over-the-top and without fail politeness. It’s a country that welcomed my dad from Hong Kong over 50 years ago where he became the first asian RCMP officer in Western Canada, that’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for those playing at home, with the red suit, big boots and a horse for a sidekick. And it’s a country that gave home to my mom and her ancestors for 7 generations. And yet, despite the beauty and nourishment it’s given to my family and family-past, there’s always been a force beyond myself, a restless spirit of sorts, beckoning me elsewhere, a yearning and a searching for home where I could truly grow into who God was calling me to be, where I could truly feel my heart enriched, my lungs expand, and where my soul could feel at peace. These are the characteristics of home. And even though Canada had all the hallmarks and the workings for this to be true for me, home turned out to be falling in love with an Australian and moving to Melbourne. 

The things we do for love, or rather, the things we do to feel at home. 

But my experience is hardly unique. People have always immigrated—uprooted their lives—for similar reasons. On the surface, it might be for safety, opportunity or, like me, love. But beneath it is the deep desire to become the person they were born to be or, in other words, to embody peace within their own flesh and blood. 

In this way, home is less about geography and more about identity, belonging and, whether we realize it or not, transformation.

In other words, less about where we live, and more about who we’re becoming.

What makes you feel at home? 

And our scripture today is the embodiment of this truth. It follows last week’s passage where we explored the law of love and its radical implications. Today, in the continuation of what scholars call John’s “farewell discourse,” Jesus prepares his disciples for what’s coming—the cross, yes, but also the radical ramifications of the resurrection. 

Throughout this discourse, Jesus doesn’t offer an abstract theology to puzzle over. He offers embodiment. He doesn’t call us to memorize a creed—he calls us to become it. This farewell isn’t really about Christ’s leaving. It isn’t about God’s incarnation in him either. It’s about Christ’s incarnation in us. It’s about Christ making home in us.

The word ‘dwelling place’ or ‘home’ is referenced twice in John 14. Once in verse 1 and again in our reading today. These are the only places in the New Testament the Greek word, monai, is used and it gives us a particular way in which we’re meant to imagine home. Although verse 1 has notoriously been mis-translated into, “In my father’s house are many ‘mansions’, the image that comes to our modern minds couldn’t be further from the truth. The actual meaning of the Greek word is the opposite, meaning ‘small’ or rather ‘tranquil and safe’ rooms and is pointing to the ways in which first-century Gailileans actually made home. 

Picture a simple structure—one level, walls of mud and stone, a flat roof of beams and thatch, and a large open courtyard at the center. Around that courtyard, rooms were added over time, one by one, as families grew. Each small room might have held a whole nuclear family, while the courtyard was shared space—for cooking, conversation, and community.

This was the architecture of everyday life in Jesus’ world. Some homes even grew so large they could shelter a hundred or more people. These homes weren’t strong by today’s standards, the walls were thin, and the roofs were flimsy but they were strong in something deeper and stickier: identity, belonging and peace.

Again, like our Revelation reading a couple weeks ago, the kingdom of God continues to be less about gold thrones and fluffy clouds after our bodies have died and decayed and more about an ever-expanding home for the richness of diversity in all people that doesn’t create division or dissonance – but rather the opposite – peace, in our living bodies. 

And so when we get to our scripture today, about God making monai in us, we get a far more interesting picture. Christ, in his farewell discourse, isn’t just going away to make an ever-expanding, community-rich and peaceful home for us after we die, this Christ event and the coming of the Holy Spirit is actually meant to do something to our finite, failing yet beautifully woven-together bodies: it’s meant to expand us so that we might become who we all long to be at our deepest core: bodies of peace. This is less about belief systems and more about an embodiment that sets us apart to be God’s monai, God’s home, where Christ’s life, death and resurrection live and breathe and have its being in us, right here right now. 

So here’s the question I’ve been holding—not just for this church or this denomination, but for the wider Church, especially in this time of grief and fear as pews empty and properties are sold: what might it mean to take this seriously? What if the Spirit is not evaporating but expanding? What if this is not loss, but invitation—to reflect anew on what monai looks like in us, not in buildings but in bodies?

What would it mean to truly believe that the only temple God has ever longed to dwell in is the human heart… is our human heart?

When I lived in China nearly 15 years ago, I got to witness this kind of embodiment in an underground christian community. At the time, religious institutions and particularly Christianity was not allowed to be practiced. And yet, this group of 50 or so people found a way to gather week after week, in a school basement, in a neighbour’s living room or discreetly eating together in a restaurant to embody and to make home the Spirit of peace within community and within themselves. And this community was vibrant, unaffected by the ills of what could happen to them because they knew the truth of Easter. They understood that resurrection isn’t a one-time event. It’s not linear—it spirals. It expands. It’s making monai not in buildings or temples or societal structures, it’s making monai in our momentary matter, in real time, in real bodies. 

And the Christ event is still unfolding—in us, through us, around us.

And we need to remember this, that’s re-member, that’s re-embody this more than ever.

For we live in a world where power still crucifies the peacemakers. Where leaders cling to their own palaces, their own kingdoms, their own mansions, while the poor and displaced search for a home to breathe. We live in a world built on unease, unrest, anxiety, and the myth of scarcity.

And what’s needed—desperately—is people who are becoming monai. People who have made room for God’s peace to dwell. People whose lives have become courtyards of grace.

Because what prompts our scripture today is Judas asking how it is that Christ will reveal himself to his disciples and not to the world. And Jesus’ answer? By making home in his disciples will Christ be known to the world. 

So what makes you feel at home? 

Because in answering this questions will we discover what we are truly searching for has already been given to us. The home we are looking for has already been expanded within us. Here, the only place where true peace is possible. 

So breathe deeply. Take down the dividing walls. Open the door. Let peace become the supporting beams of your body.

For resurrection is imminent, it’s making home in you, breathing through you for the life of the world.

I often hear it said that Good Friday is easier than Easter Sunday. Something about Jesus’ torture, crucifixion, abandonment and death seems to resonate for us in a world where there is torture, crucifixion, abandonment and death all around us. At its best, Good Friday can be a kind of compassionate catharsis, an acknowledgment of the ways we suffer, cause harm to one another and how we all will someday die. It’s comforting to know the God of all creation has subjected God’s self to the weight of what it means to be human and can even use the most heinous human experience and heal our darkness and our sins.

In other words, the shepherd becomes a lamb.

But at its worst, we stay in Good Friday. We forget that Good Friday is only ‘Good’ because of Easter Sunday. And we can slip so easily into a world that spins our fear, dismay and distress. We become controlled by our triggered and overstimulated reptilian brains, finding our body in a state of fight or flight. And, over time, this becomes our new normal.

I found this particularly true when I went camping recently. As there was no place to charge my phone, I didn’t—and began to breathe more deeply than I had in a long time. Eventually I found myself exploring the most radical thing we can do as modern people: nothing. It was only a couple of days, but when I came back to Melbourne and finally charged my phone, I realized not only how stuck into the news I was but how much of the news was stuck in Good Friday.

This disaster. That death. This disillusioned world leader. Whatever Karl Barth meant when he said, “Preach the gospel with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” he didn’t anticipate headline bait that pings and buzzes on billboards and screens all around us—and within our own pockets.

But lucky for us, we’re given six weeks to sit in the mystery of resurrection. And perhaps it’s because of how hard it is to stomach. After all, it did take the disciples a few showings to grapple with the unbelievability of such an event. And we need the time, ourselves, to let resurrection become our reality too—to let it overtake us moment by moment, membrane by membrane, so that we might have the audacity to embody this good news and bring it into the world. But not just into the world around us, but within us: into our minds, our hearts, our souls, and our strength. Because as much as modern history has obsessed about the question of whether or not the resurrection ‘actually’ happened, a far more interesting question—a question that will actually lead us deeper into the heart of God—is this one: what does the resurrection do in you?

Which leads us to our scripture today in the Book of Revelation. A book good progressive Protestants tend to avoid—or at least, dance very carefully around. The imagery it holds, the amount of ecstatic experiences John describes, and the gobsmacking and often grotesque signs and symbols would simply do anyone’s head in. And we have good reason to be cautious—there have been plenty of people who have used this radical book to bring fear and doom into an already fear-filled and doom-filled world. But this doesn’t mean we avoid it altogether. It belongs within the realm of this Easter period—and it shows us, or rather, shouts and sings at us, what resurrection not only does to our minds, but what it does to our whole beings and our whole lives.

Our scripture begins with “After this I looked…” which often implies a new scene—or rather, a scene that is expanding in width, depth, and dimension. God’s kingdom is not finite, it would seem, and is perhaps more synonymous with the never-ending expansion that takes place in our galaxies. And then there is a multitude. Not a multitude of uniformity but a multitude of diversity, equity and inclusion—the ultimate DEI hire. For there is an uncountable amount of people from all nations, tribes, and languages all standing before the Lamb, robed in white with palm branches in their hands. A scene synonymous with Jesus’ triumphal entry. And they cry in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.”

But it’s not just people—angels and elders and creatures stand around this throne who fall to their faces in worship, singing: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Then we’re given the phrase, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” which, to be clear, is not about purity culture but rather about a great reversal: what once was considered unclean and unacceptable, foolish and embarrassing, is the means by which the multitude experience resurrection, a transformed life, new possibilities and new hope. In other words, it’s not wealth or power or anything else that is leading them into springs of the water of life where every tear is wiped away—it is through this lowly one, this Lamb, and (what should be) the foolishness, the embarrassment and the horror of what humans have done to this one on the cross.

And so what we see in Revelation 7 is not some superfluous, warm and fuzzy scene—rather, we are given a revolution that is radically inclusive, politically motivated and utterly cosmic. For it is not Caesar who is seated on the throne, nor is it any elected politician, president, prime minister or pope—it is this humble Lamb who is our true leader, our true Lord and our true shepherd. For this Lamb has brought and is bringing a resurrection that collapses any sense of human-made construction of time and space, any human-made construction of division in difference, any human grasping for power and control—and is remaking and resurrecting all of this world, all of who we are, all our bodies, even our bruises and broken bones.

A scripture, in other words, that doesn’t concern itself with the question of whether the resurrection happened or not, but rather concerns itself with what Christ’s resurrection is doing. And it is remaking this earth, overturning every tomb, bringing the diversity of the whole world before the throne of this Leader, this Lord, this Shepherd who became a Lamb like us for our sake. And the multitude’s response? A political proclamation that Caesar is not God. A cosmic worship that not only joins with the multitude of all peoples and all creation across time and space, but a worship that transcends every ounce of their own bodies in shouting, singing and bowing their whole lives down at this throne.

But what does the resurrection do in you?

Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just a one-time event that happened two thousand some years ago that we are meant to sit here and debate whether it happened or not. Resurrection is not a hypothesis in need of means-testing. Resurrection is an overturning. Christ’s was the first fruit—the first tomb that was overturned to overturn all tombs that precede it. Including the tombs of all nations, all tribes, all languages, all genders and all sexualities. This includes my tomb. And yes, this includes yours. This is the basis of our faith—why we have churches, schools and hospitals. And, even though we may have forgotten, this is why we wake up on a Sunday morning and come together to sing, to pray, to provide for one another and to proclaim who our true Lord is—because Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed.

But we often forget the magnitude of this truth. We carry on in our humdrum lives as if resurrection is something to think about on our deathbeds or to discuss as a cerebral exercise in church but not something we are invited to embody ourselves here and now. In other words, we feel more comfortable living in the reality of Good Friday but have lost what is good about it.

And this is not to deny the real torture, crucifixion, abandonment and death that our world faces and that we hear about day in and day out. But as Christians and as the multitude professes, we live in the truth that this is not the end. That one day hunger and thirst will be no more. That one day every tear from every eye will be wiped dry. And because the resurrection collapses any human-made notion of time and space, division and dualities, this day is not only in the future, after we have died, but has also come amongst us and within us here and now.

And we do see it. Every time sustenance is given through the Food Bank. Every time safe housing is given to women fleeing domestic violence. And every time we remember that right now, all around this country and all around the world, there are millions of people of every nation, tribe, language, gender and sexuality who are shouting, singing and bowing down to this risen one who is overturning all of our tombs. Because you see, resurrection is not about trying to convince ourselves whether it happened or not—it’s about how we are meant to see the world through. A truth meant to filter through our eyes and our ears, our hopes and our fears, so that all our hearts, minds, souls and strength embody this reality here and now and forevermore.

For this is what is often missing in our churches—why, I believe with all my heart, there are no longer multitudes in churches in the West. Because we have not let Good Friday—that is, the torture, the crucifixion, the abandonment and the death of our world, our church and our lives—become the means by which Christ is bringing resurrection even here and even now. For if there is anything that Christ always does, it’s this: remaking, renewing and resurrecting all our Good Fridays—on deathbeds, in divisive politics and despairing catastrophes—into Easter Sunday, not just after we die but amongst us and within us here and now.

So what does the resurrection do in you? May it shout within you. May it sing through you. And may it bring you to your knees as you join the multitude of all God’s creation, proclaiming, pronouncing and professing that death has lost its power and new life is coming for us all—and, indeed, already has.

Last week I attended one of the discussion groups at the aged care facility where I work. A group that chews the fat, reminisces the past and heartily debates the future all over a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey.

On this particular occasion, one of the residents (half way through his own glass of wine mind you) asked me how I felt about my homeland, Canada, becoming the 51st state. A question that has been poked at me one too many times this past month. A joke I wish I could laugh at or have a calm response to after having a glass of wine myself – but alas, no drinking at work.

And so, in lieu of falling into despair or rage at this dear resident who was only trying to get my goat (mission accomplished) I turned the question on him: how did he feel about the current state of the world? Now this man, a man well into his 90’s, responded by saying that it feels like it did back in England, a childhood marred with fear – where he remembers his mother waking him up in the wee hours of the morning to hide in a bunker as bombs fell from the sky while wondering if he’d ever see his own father again.

They say history repeats itself. They say we should listen to our elders. Maybe if we did, history wouldn’t have to repeat itself. But it’s not just the lessons from the 20th century we seem to be forgetting; this is true across all human history, at least in the West, and true in all the stories we read in the Bible.

We find ourselves constantly forgetting and then remembering (often when it’s too late) that peace is not only hard-won but hard-kept. We forget that peace is, in fact, a state that we actively choose for our world, our countries, our societies, our churches, and ourselves. A state, it seems, that is becoming more elusive not only in our world but within ourselves.

For one of the biggest crises of our time, a crisis that continues to remain hidden in the shadow of the cost of living or the demise of Western democracy, is the mental health crisis. At no other point in history have we seen youth struggling as much as they are now with depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicide, with over 40% of young Australians experiencing a mental disorder.

In other words, peace of mind and peace on earth has always been elusive but now, like at other points in history, it seems to be evaporating.

Wind the clock way back and this was the state in which Jesus was living too. A time where peace was elusive, where a ‘false peace’ ruled the land instead. A peace instituted by the Roman Empire called the Pax Romana – that is, a peace enforced by imprisonment, murder or, worse yet, crucifixion if anyone were to challenge or disrupt the rule of the Empire.

A peace that kept the power, the privilege and wealth within the cloisters of the 1% – that is, Caesar and his right-hand men (and I can guarantee they were men) – while everyone else, some 95% of the population, were living paycheck to paycheck, starving or starving to death.

And with this context in the forefront of our minds, we meet Jesus today on the Mount of Olives, where he tells his disciples to get him an unridden colt to ride into Jerusalem with. An image echoing and fulfilling the prophecy preached from Zechariah where the Messiah will come riding not in pride or prestige, as Caesar would, but on a lowly colt. A humble entrance to bring an end to unrest through the kingdom of God — the peace of heaven — coming to earth.

And so, when the multitude of disciples see this scene, with Jesus fulfilling scripture passed down from generation to generation, their natural instinct is to strip, to take off their cloaks. Now, I thought it would be less offensive for us to be waving palm branches today. You’re welcome.

But as it is, a multitude of disciples lay their cloaks on the ground to line the path for Jesus’ humble and non-triumphal entry. As he makes his way down the mountain, the disciples break into joyful noise, singing, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some Pharisees in the crowd tell Jesus to stop his disciples – we don’t know if they’re embarrassed or afraid for Jesus’ life (both are probably true) – but Jesus responds, saying, “If these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

In other words, this is not only the right response to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, it is a response instinctually embedded not only in humans but in the whole creation, stones included, in the face of God’s peace coming to earth.

And so our scripture today is a joyous and a hope-filled one. But it is also a story of deep paradox, for it seems like the Pharisees and Jesus are the only ones in the know that this joyous and hope-filled entry is only the beginning of the path that will lead to something more heinous than you and I could ever truly imagine: the cross.

But this is often the way of peace – a word that sounds soft, supple and spineless. A word that avoids disagreement and dissonance. A word we use in church so often that it’s lost its chutzpah. “Peace be with you,” we say smiling at one another, as polite, mate-worthy Australians. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The Greek word for peace, Eirene, comes from the word eiro — to join or bind together. A force that brings together that which has been separated or divided. It’s in this union where we get the resulting feelings of Eirene — that is, a sense of harmony that is not just the opposite of war but is what it means to be joined and bound to God independent of outward circumstances.

Peace, in other words, is not only meant to transform us into harmonious beings but is the very adhesive that binds us to God. And it’s controversial. It’s controversial in a world that literally profits off division, dissonance, and unrest. It’s controversial in a world that worships Caesar — the ceaseless rat-race and capital at all costs — corrupting our relationship with creation.

But it’s in its controversy, in its radical subversion of the status quo, and in its inability to shut up where all the transformation lies.

And so it’s not a coincidence that we meet Jesus today on a mountain — a place that was symbolically understood as where heaven and earth meet, or rather, where they are bound together. And as Jesus is coming down this mountain, something deeply instinctual releases in the disciples gathered. They throw off their cloaks and, for many of these disciples, this would have been the only thing that they owned. The only thing shielding them from the elements, and giving them their last bit of worth in a society filled with shame and poverty.

And yet, they, like Mary who poured 300 denarii worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet, do know what’s going on, perhaps even more than the Pharisees. They see and they know that Jesus, not Caesar, is the king long awaited since the proclamation from Zechariah. And so they shout, they proclaim, laying everything on the line, laying all they have at the feet of the true king’s peace and glory coming to earth.

A peace that kisses and binds itself to their here and now despite their destitution, despite drawing dangerous attention to themselves and to Jesus, and despite the threat and the inevitability of the cross. For this king, riding on a borrowed, unridden colt, is bringing a peace that transforms. A peace that saves. And a peace that liberates. No Pax Romana. No Caesar or his right-hand men. No tax collectors and their tariffs. The only peace there is, is the one that binds us and brings us into the fold — the liberation and salvation of God.

And so there’s power in this symbol, in this entrance, in walking, marching, protesting, rallying, laying everything down, laying everything on the line and shouting the way of Christ’s peace that will not be silenced. It may seem innocuous, it may seem ineffective, but it is the way, the truth and the life of the one we follow.

This past week we saw this way of protesting and proclamation in over 1400 demonstrations across America, where instead of palm branches, placards and posters waved in the air by the hundreds of thousands standing up against the false peace of their president. Today at 1pm on the Princes Bridge, we’ll see this way of walking and rallying with religious and non-religious folk alike advocating for peaceful asylum for refugees.

We saw this way of laying everything on the line during the height of Nazism, where people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer bound themselves to true peace to participate in liberation not only for Jews, but for the world — which ultimately led to his execution. We saw it in Jesus, the one who was fully bound to God, leading the way of peace in his ministry, in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And we will see it next week in the washing of the disciples’ feet, at the Last Supper, and on the cross.

So will we be ruled by the false peace of our governments, our societies and even our own church?

Will we stand on the sidelines and keep the concept of Christ’s peace safely locked away in the confines of our minds, and in the comfort of these pews?

Or will we let the reality of Christ’s peace transcend our bodies, transform our hearts — despite embarrassment, despite danger and despite death — joining with the stones in praise, proclamation and protest of the one bringing a peace more liberating and more salvific than we could ever imagine?

May we be brave. May we be bold. And may it be so.

In this season of Lent, we are invited to let go and lay down our idols and our egos to enter the strange mystery of the Easter story — where the way of the cross leads to resurrection, to reconciliation, to the salvation of all creation.
This time has been a peeling back the layers of our hearts. A time to turn inwards with perhaps more intention than other parts of the year. A time to quiet our souls despite a world full of constant noise from false-gods spewing false-promises. All so that we might catch a glimpse of the one who is offering more and the best of than we could ever possibly imagine.

And it’s in this desert place of letting go and laying down, where we might find that we are no longer lost. That we are already forgiven. That scarcity is only a mirage. And though death might surround us, there is new life budding up between the cracks of despair.

And there’s no better story, no better parable, no better metaphor that can invite us into this reality than this one — a story deeply familiar but always confronting. A story that leaves us in suspense and tension. A story we keep coming back to again and again and again despite, or perhaps because of, its un-resolution. A story where we continue to misunderstand and miscalculate just how deep, how wide, and how unrelenting God’s love is for us.

Two brothers. One father. One ancestral land. The younger brother is too hasty, too honest, and too hedonistic. He follows the passions of his flesh as he asks for his share of his father’s inheritance before he’s even in the ground — all but wishing his dad dead. A request that will demolish the legacy of this land that was passed down from generation to generation.

And the father does not hesitate to give it up. He knows to love something you have to let it go… and so he does. The father sells the land without batting an eye and gives half the proceeds from the sale over to the younger son. There is no tough love, there is no trying to reason — there is only excessive, outrageous and, frankly, offensive love poured out without question and without hesitation.
And just as quickly as the younger son receives his inheritance, he squanders it. Left with nothing, divine karma enters the situation. A severe famine falls upon the region and, to add insult to injury, the younger son hires himself out to a Gentile feeding gruel to pigs — the ultimate Jewish joke.

At some point he realizes the absurdity of his situation, and decides he’ll hire himself out to his father. And so he picks up his suitcase full of cobwebs and shame and heads home. But before he can utter a word of repentance, his father sees him in the distance, hikes up his robe and sprints towards his son — not full of rage, but full of joy, embracing him with a love he can barely begin to grasp.
As soon as the son has breath enough to catch himself, he asks for forgiveness. But the father, ignoring him completely, calls out to his workers to bring a robe — not just any robe, the best one. To bring a ring — not just any ring, the best one. To bring sandals — yes, the best ones. And to get a fatted calf — the fattest one — so they can eat and celebrate, for this son of his was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.

If the story were to stop here, this would be enough for us to chew on and digest for the rest of our lives, and we would still not be able to fathom how deep, how wide and how unrelenting the father’s love is.

Except the story doesn’t end here. Excruciatingly, the camera pans out towards the edges of the party to the older son who is tired and dirty from a hard day’s work — the good and faithful one who has been waking up before the sun every morning and returning home late into the evening, working the land day in and day out for years upon years.

Rage begins to bubble up as he discovers the return of his younger brother — but not only this, that his father has given him the best robe, the best ring, the best sandals and the fattest calf to celebrate with. The father, seeing his obstinance and outrage, pleads with him to come in and celebrate. But the older brother refuses — he can’t, or rather, won’t accept rewarding bad behavior while he, the good and faithful son, has never even gotten so much as a goat.

But it’s here, at the end of the story, that we see how both sons have been getting it wrong this whole time. What they’re meant to have with their father is not about wills or wealth, not about what’s right or what’s wrong, not about cause and effect or quid pro quos. What’s at stake, and what their real inheritance is, is relationship — not just with the Father, but with each other:

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Notice the change in the possessive adjective from “my son” to “your brother.” A change that alters the course of the story, placing the decision in the hands of the older brother with this hanging climax: Does he join his brother’s party? Or does he refuse repentance, reconciliation, and relationship — choosing instead to hang his hat on what is right and what is wrong, following a philosophy of cause and effect, embodying a morality of punishment and reward, and practicing an economy of quid pro quo?

When I first began theological studies eight years ago, I was told to get a spiritual director. The advice then was that the road toward ministry would not be lined with roses — that our faith would be tested, that what we thought we knew about God would be upended, and that we needed a highly experienced practitioner to journey with us on the way.

Eight years later and I still have the same spiritual director who, when I’m in a crisis of faith (which happens more frequently than I’d like), still reassures me, saying, “Alisha, the longer you’re on the spiritual path, the harder it will get.” “Thanks,” I say. “Really comforting,” I say.

But the reason it gets harder is, frankly, to do with God’s excessive, outrageous, and offensive love. The call to repent — that is, to return to God’s unrelenting love and to become vessels of it ourselves — is damn hard work. It defies rationality and it defies our deeply reptilian responses to things like what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s just and what’s unjust, what’s worthy of forgiveness and what’s unforgivable
.
It requires a kind of desert seeking. It requires a kind of desert walking. And it requires a kind of death — a dying to ourselves that, frankly, does not get easier with time or experience. But it’s a death that enters into the strange mystery illumined in the strangeness of the Father’s love.

For this kind of love, it turns out, does not rely on a gooey feeling but rather works on our gooey hearts — a slow chipping away of our arrogance, ideals, idols and egos in order to become vessels of repentance, reconciliation, and relationship ourselves. That is, to become a people who let go and lay down the way we think it all should work and, instead, seek relationship with the whole of God’s creation… whatever the cost.

And this is not just when we turn away from God — it is when others, that is, the younger brothers of our world, turn away from God. A kind of love that seems unnatural, as it is for the older brother, and yet is the way of the cross. It is the way of resurrection. It is the way of reconciliation. And it is the way of salvation — God’s kingdom come.

This is the kind of love that seems to be missing in our world right now, where we see harder lines being drawn in the sand of who’s right and who’s wrong and who’s in and who’s out. A world where division, dissonance, and demonization are not just the status quo in America, but are well and alive and glorified in our society, in our politics, in our algorithms, and within ourselves as well.

Now this does not mean we turn a blind eye to injustice and inhumanity, but it does mean that we seek justice and peace through the way of repentance, reconciliation, and relationship with the whole of God’s creation. I hear last week’s lectionary reading from Isaiah echoing here: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

This is a way that is in the world but not of the world. A way that leads us to becoming vessels of something more beautiful and more salvific than we could ever imagine. A way that fills us with more and the best of than we could ever understand — God’s excessive, outrageous and offensive love for one another. This is the way of true justice. This is the way of true salvation.

For this is the strange and mysterious way of Christ that we are invited to follow. Christ is not a punishment-reward system, nor a quid pro quo handshake. In fact, the only equation there is, is this one: the older brother’s salvation is bound up with the younger one’s. My salvation is bound up with yours. And our salvation is bound up with creation’s.

And so this tension, this unresolved climax at the end of our story, is not for the sinners or the tax collectors of our time, as much as we might want it to be. But, as the beginning of our scripture implies, this story is for the Pharisees and the scribes — in other words, you and me: the older sons of the world who are already with the father. Who have taken steps towards the spiritual life that is not of our own thinking and not of our own way. A spiritual life that follows the way of the desert, the way of the cross, the way of resurrection, the way of repentance, and the way of reconciliation. A spiritual life that is wrapped up with the salvation of the whole creation — for this is our ultimate inheritance.

So, in these last few weeks of Lent — how might you be invited deeper into the desert? What are you still being invited to let go of and lay down? And how might you be invited to follow the way of the Father’s strange love?

For true life and true abundance come not by society’s sense of morality, not from wills or wealth, but by becoming vessels of the excessive, outrageous, and offensive love of God to one another. For it is the only kind of love that has saved the world and ever will.

As we’ve marked ourselves with ashes and opened ourselves to this season of Lent, we are invited into a stance that some of us (myself included) may have a knee-jerk reaction to. Words like submission, sacrifice, self-discipline, and repentance. Our reaction is often qualified, because these words have historically been used to control women, to scare people into church membership, and to justify absolute control. But their true meaning is far from this misuse—a truth that might prompt a different kind of reaction.

In fact, I’d like us to consider a different word: kenosis. From the Greek keno, meaning “to empty.” The 16th-century Spanish mystic, St John of the Cross, described it as a self-emptying of one’s own will to become entirely open to God and God’s will. Not a self-emptying to a man, or to a political leader, or to injustice, but a self-emptying to the way of God.

In Lent, we are invited with more awareness than at other times to enter kenosis. A season to remember that Jesus is Lord not just in our minds but with our whole bodies and souls. This means preparing ourselves for his way—a way laden with suffering, rejection, and death. And so we rend our hearts and strip ourselves clean from whatever hinders this way. Some may take up one or all three Lenten invitations: fasting, deepening prayer, or giving more of our time and talents to those in need.

This way subverts the patterns of the world—a world clinging to what is fleeting. It carries a paradox: when we lose ourselves in God, we become more of who we are—liberated, healed, and saved. In other words, if we try to save our lives we will lose them, but when we lose our lives for God’s sake we will save them.

A few months ago I stumbled across the podcast Soul Boom—a show about spiritual revolution hosted by actor Rainn Wilson (best known as Dwight Schrute from The Office). One of his guests shared a story of growing up in a rigid Christian household before exploring other forms of spirituality. What pushed him away from Christianity more than anything else was the teaching of an almighty, omnipotent God. When puberty brought questions he couldn’t answer, he abandoned his faith. He couldn’t reconcile the idea of a God who could do anything with the reality of injustice and oppression in the world. How could such a God be so powerless? How could we worship that kind of God?

This is not an uncommon struggle. It is a question raised across centuries—not only by atheists, but by most of us at some point in our lives. It is also at the heart of today’s scripture. Jesus is offered three temptations. On the surface, none of them are bad: food for the hungry, wise rule over the world, and good religion. He could have them all—for what? Just a bow of the knee, a kiss of the ring, a quick “praise be” to the devil. It sounds so simple. If it were me, and I could have my mortgage paid, patriarchy and capitalism dismantled, and the world handed to compassionate leaders—all for one quick nod to the devil—I’d take the deal. The ends would justify the means.

But this is not the way of Jesus. Even after forty days and nights of deprivation, he doesn’t take the bait. He who will one day feed the multitudes, be glorified, and reveal true religion through God’s reign of love, instead chooses the road less travelled: the way of self-emptying, the way of suffering, rejection, and death. Because the ends do not justify the means. In Christ’s perplexing wisdom, God’s reign is not won by shortcuts or bargains with evil. God’s way is kenosis—the mystery of the cross. For those who try to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for Christ’s sake will save them.

What we witness here is a complete reversal of human understanding of power. What the devil offered, Christ already had. He already had the power to feed, to heal, and to save. But his way subverted human logic. True power does not hoard control and resources at others’ expense. True power submits, sacrifices, and repents. True power is kenosis.

This is the only way we can enter true healing, true liberation, and true love: by becoming entirely open to God and God’s will. This God emptied God’s self into our world, became like us with flesh, sweat, and fragility, entered our despair and our inability to love, to reveal what true power looks like. A power that brings God’s kingdom here on earth. The power of kenosis.

Even in our sinfulness—even in our attempt to kill this revolutionary love—God continues to pour out God’s self. Even the cross cannot separate us from God. For this love is unkillable. It is the only thing that lasts, the only thing that keeps springing up anew: a love that gives itself away again and again.

This doesn’t mean evil has no consequences. We know too well the suffering caused by greed, corruption, and violence. But evil is fleeting. It always has been and always will be. In the face of the fake powers flailing about in our world, only one power lasts: a love that empties itself for others.

When we direct our whole lives this way, we live and breathe the only truth: Christ is Lord. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. No matter the headlines, no matter who rules nations or corporations, the powers of this world will wither like wood on a cross. Control, greed, and corruption will fade. They always have and they always will.

This is the subversive power of Christ: a power emptied for life, liberation, and salvation. And this is the mystery we are invited to embody in Lent—to give all we are and all we have to the one who walks the way of kenosis, the way of the cross, to bring salvation more beautiful and liberating than we can imagine.

And so, in a moment, we will embody this mystery at the Lord’s table. A feast where, with just one bite and one sip, we receive all the saving power of God. At this table we learn what true power is: bread broken, love poured out, a meal where everyone—exes and enemies, loved ones and ancestors—are welcome. This is the way of kenosis. The way of the cross. The way of God’s power come to earth, here and now.

We have come to the climax, the epitome of our Epiphany season of looking for signs of Christ’s divinity around us and within us. And we’re given this story of amazement, majesty and mystery as we look to a shimmering Jesus on a mountain, imbued with glory and Godliness. A story that well and truly yanks us out of the tropes of our rational, sensible and logical everyday lives and places us in a strange and other-worldly event: where glory is magnified and mystified in the body of Christ.

Jesus’ appearance changes and his clothes become as bright as a flash of lightning. But not only this, Moses and Elijah appear beside him, the former speaking about Jesus’ exodus which was about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem. Space and time seem to collapse in each other in this glorious moment as the past meets the present, prompting and pointing to the future.

And Jesus’ disciples are barely awake to witness it at all. A bad habit that will be echoed when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. They have been jolted awake by this transfiguration but even as Peter realizes how good it is for them to be there to witness it, he misses the point, he misses the mark and tries to capture this moment instead of basking in its mystery. But just as soon as Peter stumbles over himself, a cloud overshadows them, the mist of which, I imagine, fogs their vision, fills their nostrils, drowning out any other sound except for the voice that comes from it, saying, “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him!” And then, just like that, the moment is over. Jesus is alone again, the brightness as a flash of lightning dims and it is as if nothing has changed.

Except everything has.

This moment of transfiguration where Christ’s literal appearance is changed to reveal his glory doesn’t remain on the mountain but continues, as Moses declares, towards Jerusalem. For an exodus is about to emerge. An exodus that began by the Red Sea – a story of life and liberation from oppression and enslavement – is now continuing and will be fulfilled in the glory of Christ. An exodus Jesus shares just before our scripture that will be laden with great suffering, rejection, and death but ends in new life. And then he invites the disciples to join him, to take up their crosses and follow him promising that if they try to save their life, they will lose it, but if they lose their life for his sake they will save it. But first, before they embark, this moment. This mystery of change and transfiguration to lead them and guide them towards the way of exodus, the way of liberation, the way of glory.

There is something transgressive happening here in the transfiguration – glory is no longer reserved for mountaintops. It is the light on the path towards exodus, liberation, resurrection and God’s kingdom come to earth. It changes Jesus’ face— and it is meant to change the disciples’ faces too. When Jesus and the disciples descend, they are meant to carry this light of glory with them, themselves. But they miss it. They misunderstand it. They still don’t get that they are not mere bystanders. They are called to the same path of exodus themselves, to cast out evil, to heal, and to live and breathe the Good News into the world.

And yet, they fumble. They nearly fall asleep. They forget the power of prayer – why they were on the mountain in the first place. And when the time comes to embody this glory in the healing of a boy in convulsion, they lose their nerve, their knowhow and their faith. Despite standing in the very presence of transfiguration and hearing God’s voice of instruction, they have already forgotten.

And I’m grateful. Because, more often than not, we are the sleepy, forgetful and faithless disciples. We misunderstand or mock mystery. And we downplay the importance of becoming this shining, this radiance and this glory ourselves.

So often we have reduced faith to cognitive thinking, right ways of belief, and rationalization. We try to put Christ and, for that matter, Moses and Elijah in boxes that we can understand, grasp, contain or throw away. We eschew the mystery of this shining and keep it locked in the story of Christ. And this is true particularly in the life of the Uniting Church. We often forgo if not become completely fearful of these moments of wonder and awe, becoming skeptical and avoidant of embodying glory ourselves. We have overcorrected in response to some churches who manipulate moments of mystery for control by throwing it out altogether instead of letting our thinking and our feeling, our rationalizing and our transfiguring, what we can understand and what we can’t explain transform one another. And yet, as it was for Moses and Elijah in their mountain top experiences, these moments of glory, of seeking and sitting in the presence of God’s incomprehensible glory, is the very thing that feeds us, strengthens us and sends us forth on the path towards exodus to become Christ’s hands and feet, Christ’s glory to this weary world.

Because the transfiguration was not meant to be understood. It was meant to be undergone. It was meant to invite us to embody this glory of Christ, to let this light radiate within us and through us for the life of the world. This is, after all, what we were made for. To become bodies made for exodus, for liberation and for radiance. And yet, without crafting our lives to this reality so that we might soak up this God-given glory, this mysterious moment of glimmering and shining, we will not be changed ourselves. Because here’s the truth about the Gospel and about the transfiguration. Christ did not come to change the world, Christ came to change our hearts. This is the answer in the face of a democracy in demise across the sea and the rise of despair, depression and disillusionment: to eat and to drink of Christ’s radiance, Christ’s light and Christ’s glory day by day in our own lives for the life of the world. For though this glory may endure great suffering, rejection and death, it will always rise, rise again.

And we do not take up this cross alone. We stand on the shoulders of those who drank in glory, lived it and breathed it from Sarah and Abraham, Ruth and Esther, Moses and Elijah, to Mary and Paul, so that we might continue the way, the story and the truth of exodus and liberation ourselves.

This is, after all, the starting point for any and every person who wants to follow Christ. To let the way of the gospel where the poor are blessed, the hungry are fed, the rich are cursed, and enemies are loved, enliven our bodies, transfigure our faces and change our hearts. Not just once in a glorious moment on a mountain top but today, tomorrow and forever through prayer and praise, repentance and reconciliation, drinking the wine and eating the bread of this radiance day by day. This the way of exodus. This the way of liberation. This the way of glory.

Because next week, we’re going to be entering the season of Lent. A time of letting go and laying down the idols and empires that tempt and taunt us. We’re going to enter into the desert, in all of the ways it will challenge us and try us.

But we do not go depleted or deprived. We go in the wisdom that our hearts and even our physical appearances will be transfigured and transformed. We go willing to encounter the face and the voice of the living God on mountain tops and mundane moments. And we go on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, who have wandered the dry land, and the deserts of diaspora. We go with Moses and Elijah who knew what it was to be led up a mountain, to bask in the presence of God and to take this glory with them to light the path of exodus, of liberation into the world around them. We go as people of transfiguration. We go as people of exodus. We go as people of glory.

So bask in this memory, this mystery on a mountain. And listen to the voice of the one who is beckoning you towards exodus, the liberation of a God who saves us by changing us.

Something good is happening. We are remembering and reclaiming the wellspring of our faith.

The last few weeks has been shocking in literally unimaginable and uncountable ways as we look to the state of America and how Christianity has been co-opted, confused and corroded as nationalism. Not even a month into the presidency and many of the minorities within America are being exiled, from trans folk, refugees and immigrants to women and people of colour in jobs that, in their eyes, ‘should’ be reserved for white men. We have been witnessing the inverse of the gospel come to life where the prosperous and the powerful are blessed and where injustice is slowly and steadily eroding into the status quo, a status quo we in Australia are not immune from ourselves.

But something I didn’t expect is happening at the same time: a reclamation of the Gospel where the pronouncement of today’s beatitudes are being doubled-down on.

Many of us I would imagine watched or read the snippet of the sermon that Rev Mariann Edgar Budde preached to the new president the day after his inauguration. A sermon, at the heart of the whole Gospel, in both Luke’s account and littered throughout the Book of Jeremiah, where the concern was about those who were exiled and on the edges of society. Accounts that condemned and cursed the rich and the powerful. And this week, you may have read the letter Pope Francis wrote to American bishops as he criticised the president’s policy of mass deportations, or rather, a mass exile, urging Catholics to reject anti-immigrant narratives. The Pope also managed to slight the vice-president by criticising his narrow and conditional view of love with the unconditional and expansive view that Jesus actually lived, died and rose again for, without exception and for everyone. But it’s not just Christians in high-ranking positions who are reclaiming the Gospel in the public sphere, its everyday folk. Perhaps it’s unique to my own social media algorithms – no doubt it is – but even non-Christians in my own life are beginning to preach the Gospel where those who are oppressed are the ones who receive God’s blessing. A Gospel that pronounces how salvation is bound up with the liberation of the whole creation. And, like a stream, it is slowly and surely trickling back into the public sphere in spite and perhaps because of this co-opted, confused and corrupt Christianity.

And this is wild.

In the developed world where secularization has been on the rise and people have been shy and subtle about their faith, wondering what the point of it is and what difference it makes (something I’ve been prone to wonder), we are reminded about the radical message of the Gospel. A Gospel where the poor, the hungry and the grieving are blessed.

In other words, we are remembering and reclaiming the wellspring of our faith.

For this is what our Jeremiah reading was on about in not a dissimilar context from our own.

Our reading today comes to us when God’s people had turned their backs on God’s covenant, a law of love written on their hearts. They were worshipping idols and mere mortals, putting their faith on the political and power structures of their day. If this were bad enough, they were now exiled from their homeland living in Egypt on the edges of society. And Jeremiah was not immune. Along with the rest of the Israelites, he lost his home when the holy city was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians. He was forced to flee for his life. And, perhaps the worst part of it all, was that he saw it coming.

Despite his words of truth and reality, nothing changed the result of what happened to his homeland or his people. And it was from this state of despair where he preaches a hard truth: that this time of drought and desert, of hunger and homelessness, exile and emptiness was the new normal. Welcome. The wicked had won. They were not going to see the kind of salvation and sustenance they wanted to in the world around them within their lifetimes. And so, rather than offering false hope or softening the truth, he proclaims not only the way of survival but of life abundant – that is, a reality that could not be touched by mere mortals, politics or corrupt power. He doubles down on his prophecy, he stands like a tree planted in foreign and dry land and invites the people to dig deep with him, to look beneath the surface, to stretch out their roots and remember the law of love written on their hearts despite and even because of the despair that surrounded them. Not in defiance of reality, but because of it. Not to escape suffering, but to find the only source that can sustain them in suffering. And he preaches a message of repentance, remembrance and reclamation: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. But blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Two plants. Two choices. Two paths of the heart. Same desert. Same drought. One thrives. One withers. The difference? Those who trust the Lord or, a better translation, those who devote their whole selves, their eating, their breathing, their thirsting and their yearning in God and God alone will bear fruit and flourish – the tree planted by water.

For Jeremiah, he perceived and prophesied the path to wholeness particularly in such tumultuous and barren times was not only to speak against the structures and systems upholding idolatry and faithlessness – other prophets were already doing this work thank you very much – but key to Jeremiah’s call was to, at the same time, preach and prophesy a repentance, a remembrance and reclamation of God’s law of love written on their hearts, just below the surface – the stream of abundance. To drink from this wellspring.

In our modern world where we are littered with choice, Jeremiah only offers two: a blessed life or a cursed one. And so the question put to us is whether we will wither in the desert, or be like trees planted by water?

Because we find ourselves at a crossroads much like Jeremiah’s people. We see the same injustice, the same temptation to trust in power, in prosperity, in those who hoard control at the expense of the vulnerable. This has always been true across our human history – not much has changed. We may not be as callous and overt as the American presidency I hope, but we still trust mere mortals and the fleeting and parched ways of the world in our own ways, when we place our trust at the whims of the market, when we worship our church buildings and bank funds or when we rely on our own strength and self-sufficiency. But Jeremiah’s call remains: Will we be a shrub in the desert, or a tree planted by water?

Because the truth is, something good is happening.

Last week I went to the ‘Protect Trans Youth’ rally in the city with another minister. It was the first time I ever wore clerical attire and it was one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had. It was powerful to stand on the edges of this rally to be a sign of Christ’s love and acceptance, to walk alongside trans people in solidarity and support.

But it was when we had a conversation with a young trans person that I nearly broke down, overwhelmed by the connection. Clearly, they were shocked there were Christians in the world that didn’t condemn them but, more than this, showed up for them and showed love towards them. They asked about our church, where they could find us and, at the end of the conversation, with tears welling up in both of our eyes, said “Thank you… just thank you for being here.”

I share this with you not to stroke my own ego but to reveal the power of love that our Gospel holds when we drink from it and become vessels for it to be poured into the world, no matter how imperfectly. We may not see the potency of it, we may not have strangers come up to us and thank us, but slowly and surely like a trickling stream, it’s beginning to be reclaimed in the public again — not as a tool of exclusion, but as the radical, boundless love of God for the oppressed, the exiled, and the weary.

And in these moments of turbulence and change, we are invited to root ourselves not in fear, but in the deep wellspring of faith. To stretch out our roots, to drink deeply from the love of God, to stand firm against the wills and the whims of the world and to challenge the idols and the mere mortals of power and privilege masquerading as faith. Because this is not just a survival strategy; it is a salvation that is wrapped up in the liberation of all creation.

The tree planted by water does not wait for perfect conditions to bear fruit — it bears fruit, perhaps especially, in the drought, in despair, and in exile. And this is our calling. To reclaim a faith that is not about power, but about radical, world-upending love. Not about fear, but about justice. Not about scarcity, but about the abundant, life-giving waters of God’s kingdom not in a world far away and up above, but a wellspring that is here, that is already flowing just beneath what our eyes can see.

So will you drink deeply and be part of God’s renewal in this time and place? Because this is how we could live this one, wild and precious life: Rooted, nourished, and bearing fruit for a world that is parched and longing for a Gospel that saves.

Get caught up
with something
a sunset, a soliloquy, the most sumptuous sandwich you ever saw and slipped
into your belly,
or get caught up in someone.
Enter the moment of stumbling and stuttering, of unbecoming and bowing down
with all your body and all your brain can believe.
Drop everything to follow it
Traverse the seas, change communities, live into its ecstasy.
Become entranced and transfixed by the only thing worth living for, fighting for,
dying for.
This sensing something more
Let loose your nets, this mesh, this catch
and walk through its door.

Today we stumble across yet another story of abundance in this season of Epiphany. Clearly signs of Christ’s divinity are wrapped up in ‘too muchness’: too much beauty, too much awe, overwhelming love and other worldly miracles. And the response is a moment that turns into a lifelong quest of being entranced and transfixed.

Enter Simon – Simon Peter – or just Peter. Too many names, too much abundance already.

In the Gospel of Luke, this is our first encounter with Peter and we haven’t caught him at his best (pun intended). He’s been up all night, slaving away on the seas, longing for the shore with something to share. But after grueling away the evening into the wee hours of the morning he has come up empty handed. And if this were all it was, that would be enough to cast many of us into exhaustion, frustration and a hollowness of hunger. But, like all stories, there is more than meets the eye.

Peter, we are told, is a fisherman. And this title alone tells us a world about his world. Let us remember that over 95% of people living in the Roman Empire would have been living paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of starvation, with no ability to change their circumstances. Even though fisher people were a necessity in such a time of rampant hunger, they were also among the lowliest on Rome’s hierarchy of occupations. Not only would Peter’s income be meagre at best, he would have been forced to pay not only for the privilege to fish on the emperor’s lake but also for the privilege to sell his fish. And in the case that he didn’t catch any fish, well, the only thing filling his net would be a debt to the empire.

So when his worst case scenario comes true, we need to sit in the existential dread of this situation. How was he going to feed his family? How was he going to feed himself? And how was he meant to repay his debt to the emperor?

And then Jesus enters the scene. The same Jesus that was just rejected by his own people at Nazareth where he was nearly pushed off a cliff. He has since found himself in the foreign place of Galilee healing and cleansing people so much so that word gets out. Crowds begin to look for him, following this Messiah, his miracles and something not quite describable that entrances and transfixes them. And when they do find him and plead for him to stay, he says that he must go on to proclaim the kingdom of God in other cities of Judea. But before he does, he gives the crowds what they’re looking for: time.

At this point there are so many people around him that he gets into the boat belonging to Simon and asks him to take him from the shore where he begins to teach the crowds. We don’t know what is taught but after Jesus is done, he turns to Peter and asks them to go further out, into the deep water and to let down his nets for a catch. Peter responds by saying, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet, if you say so, I will let down the nets.” Despite his exhaustion and despair over his debt, there is something he sees in Jesus he cannot quite deny. He saw the crowds, he listened to the whole of Jesus’ teaching beside him in the bow of his own boat, and there is something in him that sees him as a master worth trusting and, so, lets down his nets.

We know what happens next: an abundance. Not only are his nets so full of fish that they are beginning to break, when his partners sail over to help, both boats are filled so much to the brim that they both begin to sink. And it’s in the accumulation of these moments of being mesmerized by something that feels like, hears like and smells like the Messiah, that Peter’s exhausted, despair-filled and fragile human body crumbles to the floor, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” A phrase less about Peter being an inadequate human and more about what the experience is of being caught up in the divine.

The invitation for Peter is to do likewise: to commit his life to catching people instead of fish. A powerful statement less about converting people, and more about becoming nets and mesh of Christ so that the world might get caught up in this abundance too. A statement that was also a slight to the empire, cuffing him to a life of poverty, keeping him from experiencing life in all its richness. And then Peter and his partners come back to shore with a massive twist: the fish they were working so hard to catch the night before and the fish they now caught now pales in comparison with the abundance that is radiating and exuding from this Master, this Messiah. And so they leave everything: their boats, their nets, their fish and their livelihood. It doesn’t even seem like a conscious choice – something deep within them and beyond them is beckoning them. And without prompting, without Jesus inviting them along, without even thinking it through, they follow him.

When I was reading this story this week I was taken by how hypnotizing it was. A hypnosis not of trickery, slight of hand or manipulation, but something that is longing to be caught inside each and every one of us. It is something like beauty, like love, like abundance – this longing for the spectacular, for salvation, to be spoken to and seen completely.

It reminds me of when I first moved to Melbourne and felt the power of being mesmerized myself. I spent 2 whole days at the NGV, taking luscious and extravagant time letting the paintings, sculptures and my own visceral response completely take over me. Perhaps it was the newness of beginning my life in Melbourne, the curiosity of the creative energy of this city, or perhaps it was the quality and the texture of the art… Whatever it was, I felt transformed, caught up in something bigger than myself. A mesmerization that didn’t stay in that building but poured out from the gallery into the streets of a city I was beginning to call home.

And I imagine it’s a similar kind of hypnoses we see in our story today. Even though the crowds are pressing in on Jesus, if they could be any closer to him, if they could just hear one more word from his mouth, they would. And this same kind of hypnoses begins to take over Peter as he lets down his nets, watches 2 boats begin to sink at such a catch so that the only thing he can do in the face of such magnificence is to fall on his knees, leave everything and follow him. And everything changes for Peter: the hold the Roman Empire had on him is now broken, he no longer needs the fish, and he no longer needs to be a fisherman. He is called into the life of something grander, more transformative and more salvific than he could ever imagine.

What is transfixing you? Even though it can seem like this season of Epiphany is unnecessary, prompting the question of what difference it makes to be looking for signs of Christ’s divinity – this story reveals the power of being caught up in it. I don’t understand the mechanisms behind it and what part of our bodies yearn for it, but these hypnotizing elements of Christ’s signs have the power to transform and the power to save.

Because in a world where everything is vying for our attention, from social media notifications, advertisements, and news stories day in and day out, it can be easy to forget what we are letting ourselves be transfixed by… To slip into worshipping the gods of capitalism, consumerism, or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ instead. But, more often than not, we become transfixed on what sparks our fear and outrage.

I know for myself, it has been really hard not to be consumed completely with the slow-motion train wreck that is America and how elements of Australia are getting caught up in it too. This doesn’t mean we avoid looking at, talking about, or acting against the injustices of our world – but the invitation to looking for Christ’s divinity during this season of Epiphany is that we view everything, the whole world in all its beauty and ugliness, all its justice and horror, war and peace through the lens of divine abundance in Christ. This is our starting point if we take the Christ event and this season of Epiphany seriously.

So what do you long to be transfixed by? When was the last time your body fell to the floor, bowing down in the presence of love so overwhelming? And what are you being called to let go of so you can follow this flame into an abundance you can barely begin to fathom or imagine? Because here’s the good news: when we let our gaze become entranced and transfixed on Christ and all of Christ’s divinity, it has the power to transform everything.

What’s the fire burning within you?

Our reading from Jeremiah today is an intimate one. So intimate, in fact, that it almost feels like we’re eavesdropping. God comes close, so close to Jeremiah to tell him that God has formed him and that God has known him before he was in his mother’s womb. And then God sanctifies him, touches his mouth, gives him words to speak as a call upon his life like a fire within his belly.

But it’s not a call Jeremiah has signed up for. It’s not something he has spent years working toward or training for. And it is not a distant, desired or disillusioned dream either. It is deeply personal, woven into Jeremiah’s very being. Before he was born, before he was conceived and before any inkling of his existence, God had already imagined him, shaped his purpose, and planted
a call deep within him. And, yet, when the call comes, Jeremiah resists. “Ah, Lord God! I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” He is too young, too small, too unqualified, too *not enough* to take on the grandeur of this call.

But Jeremiah is not the first to feel this way. He joins a long list of reluctant matriarchs, patriarchs and prophets – Moses, who stammered; Sarah, who laughed; Mary, who was perplexed; and Paul who persecuted.… Time and time again, God calls the least likely, the least prepared, the least impressive to bring about God’s kingdom. This is God’s way. Because calling is not about our aptitude, ability, or age —it is about who God has formed us to be not for our own sake but for the sake of the world. For this is what a prophet is after all:
not to foretell the future – but to call the world back into the reality of the
present moment and the truth of who they are: children of God.

And so, when God speaks, though Jeremiah may not fully understand it yet, something like fire begins to burn within him. A fire he will describe 20 chapters later that has “shut up in his bones” – a fire so strong that if he tries to hold it in, it will consume him completely. And this fire becomes known to him not at the height of his prophetic ministry, but rather, at its lowest. Because here’s the thing about calling: it’s rarely easy. Jeremiah’s task is no simple one. God’s words within him will “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant.”
His calling is to disrupt, to turn the world on its head, to tell the truth when people would rather not hear it. And that makes him wildly unpopular.

His own people reject him.
His community turns against him.
He is scorned, mocked, cast aside.
And yet, he cannot turn away from God’s words burning within him. Because this call is not for him. It is for the life of God’s world.

What is the fire burning within you?

Because, just like Jeremiah, God comes close, very close to us too. God knows us before we were in our mother’s womb. God imagined us before conception. And each one of us has a calling woven into us before our very existence. We may not have had an experience like Jeremiah’s. We may not have heard God’s voice in a burning bush, been blinded by light, or received a divine message in a dream.
But we have been called.

And here’s what we often misunderstand about calling —it’s not about what we do, it’s about who we are becoming. And when we step into the person God has formed us to be, we come alive in ways we never quite imagined. We feel the fire in our bones not for our sake but for the sake of the world. But just like Jeremiah, that fire often leads us into difficult places. Because calling isn’t just about building—it’s also about tearing down. It means speaking up when silence is easier. It means confronting injustice when it would be more comfortable to look away. It means choosing love when bitterness and division tempts us. But, the most frightening thing about calling is that, it will cost us our whole lives.

This week marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. An anniversary that could not have come at a better time in light of the increasing anti Semitic attacks and threats in Sydney. And it is an anniversary that reminds us of those who refused to turn away from the fire burning within them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was such a person. A German pastor and theologian, he watched as Hitler rose to power, as his country became consumed by fear, nationalism, and hatred. He watched as the church—the very people meant to proclaim the truth—fell silent or joined ranks with the Nazis. And something within him burned.
He could have stayed safe. He had the chance to remain in the United States and avoid what was coming. But he couldn’t turn away. So he went back. He joined a movement that rejected Nazi ideology and sought to reclaim what it meant to follow Christ. He preached against Hitler. He helped organize secret networks to rescue Jewish people. And eventually, he joined a plot to overthrow Hitler himself. It cost him everything. He was arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately executed just weeks before the war ended. But even in prison, the fire did not go out. His letters reveal a man who had come alive in his calling, even and particularly in the lowest points of his fight against Nazism. At such a point he wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

What is the Fire Burning within You?

Jeremiah didn’t become a prophet because he was particularly wise, or brave, or good at public speaking. In fact he was arguably the least impressive and the least skilled prophet in the Bible. But he became a prophet because it was woven into him before he even existed, and it was a fire within him that he couldn’t shut up.

The same is true for us. We’re not called to create our own mission. We’re not called to manufacture some grand purpose for our lives. Rather, we are called to listen to the voice of the One who knew us and formed us before we were in our mother’s womb.  

So what is the fire burning within you?

Maybe you feel it when you witness injustice. Maybe you sense it as a deep longing to create, to heal, to teach, to serve. Or maybe it’s a pull toward something that scares you, something that feels too big, too uncertain, too impossible. Because if we deny listening to God’s call on our lives, we deny ourselves from the very reason of why Christ came: so that we might have life and to have it abundantly. Because here’s the paradox of calling: those who try to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life will find it. Jeremiah, at his lowest, felt like he had lost everything. And yet, it was in that very place that he felt the fire of God’s presence, the fire of his own calling, breathing new life into his soul. Because God’s call, no matter how tumultuous or terrifying, is an invitation into true life that will pour forth into the life of the world.

So, what is the fire burning within you?

What is waiting to be breathed, born and blessed through you?

May you have the courage to listen and become who God has formed you to be—for the life of the world.

In The Idiot, the 19th-century novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky creates a story around the quote, “Beauty will save the world,” exploring the transformative power of beauty in a world marked by corruption and suffering. The protagonist, Prince Myshkin, is described as “the idiot” because of his innocence, honesty, and compassion. His capacity to see beauty in others contrasts sharply with the cynicism, materialism, and moral decay of those around him. While the novel neither confirms nor denies whether beauty is enough to save the world, it leaves us to wonder about its redemptive potential and its role in confronting darkness.

It’s a powerful thing to consider—to believe, even just for an instant, that beauty has the power to save the world. It sounds outrageous, tone-deaf, and even idiotic in the face of what we can only imagine life is like in war-torn and climate-devastated places. Beauty, it would seem, is the last thing that could save the world.

And yet, we get a hint, a whiff, and a taste of the power of beauty in our Gospel reading today: the only account of the Wedding in Cana found in any of the Gospels. Perhaps because of its uniqueness, this story has captured minds from Christians and non-Christians alike across time and space.

In the first of his miracles in John, Jesus chooses to turn water into wine—a miracle that has no utilitarian purpose other than keeping the party going and saving the married couple from shame. It also reveals his glory to his disciples—not by healing someone blind, restoring movement to someone who cannot walk, or raising a loved one from the dead—but by transforming water into wine. And it’s a miracle that almost didn’t happen.

Enter Mary. The same Mary who said “yes” to the angel Gabriel, who carried Jesus for nine months, who sang a song of joy and revelation, and who knew the stigma of shame as an unmarried Jewish teenager in a hyper-patriarchal society. She defied that world by birthing a vulnerable, beautiful baby—the Messiah—into the world anyway. Her faith had deepened, her soul magnified, and she became Jesus’ mother.

Now Mary, like most mothers, has a way with words. From the text, it’s clear Jesus has no intention of putting his “Messiah” hat on. He’s at a wedding to let loose after traveling around gathering disciples. But just as mothers do, Mary spoils the fun by tactfully saying, “They have no wine”—in other words, “Jesus, do something.”

Even the Son of God hesitates. He says, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” He thinks he knows better, but mother knows best. Mary turns to the servants, ignoring Jesus’ remarks, and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Classic mom move.

What Mary seems to know before Jesus does is that what seems innocuous, unproductive, and unnecessary is often the means by which God brings glory into the world. God used her—an understated, unmarried girl—to birth God’s glory. Jesus, finally catching on, instructs the servants to fill six empty jars with water. When they draw it out and present it to the master of the banquet, a miracle happens: 180 gallons of water are transformed into the best wine. In this act of unnecessary abundance and beauty, the disciples see Jesus’ glory and their hearts are changed forever.

During the beginning of COVID, I read an article about the power of beauty during difficult times. The author, Ari Honarvar, shared her experience living through the Iran-Iraq war. One night, as missiles flew and sirens blared, her family watched the anti-aircraft fire from their rooftop. To her seven-year-old eyes, the brilliant red patterns in the pitch-black sky were the most magnificent fireworks she had ever seen. From another rooftop, someone shouted a verse of Rumi’s poetry:

“Even if, from the sky, poison befalls all, I’m still sweetness wrapped in sweetness wrapped in sweetness…”

This poetic challenge to the bombers became a gauntlet of beauty, defying fear and despair. In an instant, her world became infinite and glorious—and no bomb could touch that.

In a world where war runs rampant, where convicted felons can become world leaders, and where misinformation thrives, it seems idiotic to think that beauty could make a difference. And yet, this is exactly the medium through which God chooses to reveal God’s self: using Mary’s soft, vulnerable body and belief to birth the Messiah, and the Messiah’s choice to reveal his glory through acts of beauty.

This story reminds me why I came to Christ. It wasn’t because of doctrine, theology, memorizing scripture, or Sunday school. I came because of witnessing God’s glory overflowing in my community through music and art. This is what changed my heart—and continues to do so.

The miracle of turning water into wine as the first sign revealing Christ’s glory is no coincidence. Mary’s hand in it, reminding her son of the power of beauty and awe, is purposeful. This sign not only changed water into wine but also changed the hearts of his disciples. It ushers in a heavenly banquet where all will gather around an extravagant, unnecessary, beautiful feast—a sign that is all around us even now.

This is the power of looking for, participating in, and beholding beauty in our lives despite the evidence: so that our hearts might be changed and so that we might become disciples of the one who is bringing more than enough justice, more than enough love, and more than enough beauty.

So, where are the places of beauty in your life? And how is Christ inviting you to participate in it? Because beauty will save the world—for it already has.

Turn around. 

Our scripture today is, in many ways, an appropriate image for the beginning of this New Year. An invitation into being born again, to step into the wonder of the unknown, to shed and let go of the old, to dream and to hope. 

It can feel like a liminal space, a threshold place – like an airport – where you’re not really in one time zone or another but juxtaposed and suspended – where the past is slowly but surely giving way to the future of what could be and is possible. 

Turn around. 

In other words, this time feels like a search for hope and in many ways that’s what we’re invited into during this season of Epiphany – a time to watch for God’s divinity enfleshed in the one who became incarnate, equipped with eyeballs and armpit hair and yet wholly divine.

Signs the magi once followed long ago. 

It’s a strange season, perhaps stranger and more unfamiliar to us than other seasons of the Christian calendar because it makes us ask… what’s the point of watching for Christ’s divinity? What difference does it make? And what constitutes divinity?

These, however, were not questions that were asked in our scripture today. For them divinity was directly related to their hope, their dream and their desire for a Messiah. They were sniffing, listening, watching, tasting and feeling for signs of justice, signs of peace, signs of liberation. For they knew no one else could do this work, no one else could accomplish the liberation they were seeking in the midst of unfathomable hardship and oppression. Only God could. And so, searching for these particular signs of a deliverer’s divinity was pivotal not just to confirm their ideologies, but to save their very existence. 

And we get a glimpse of their seeking, searching and yearning for the messiah in the first verses of our scripture in Luke: they were a people filled with great expectation, searching for who could be the Messiah. And then they saw someone doing the work, baptizing the people and, naturally, begun to question whether it was John. Intuiting their thinking, John corrects them by pointing them to one morepowerful who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And then John shares an image of the kind of baptism this Messiah will give. His winnowing fork will clear the threshing floor, he will gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. 

A baptism you or I might hesitate to participate in but a baptism that does not deter the crowds. For this is the kind of Messiah they have been waiting for to bring about the kind of salvation and liberation they were desperate for. And, if we’re honest with ourselves this is the kind of Messiah we are waiting for too. 

It may not look like we need a saviour as much as these crowds did – our lives are not in imminent danger, we are not on the brink of starvation, and we save ourselves quite easily, thank you very much. 

But we do. We need a Messiah and we need the kind of baptism Jesus is offering too. One that will burn the chaff of our lives – the parts of our lives that do not bring life so that we might truly experience what it means when Christ says we will have new life and have it abundantly. This, after all, is what baptism is for. A turning from our egos, our stubbornness, our obstinance and our grasping so that we might freely fall into our true identities and our true relationship in Christ: a Christ whose divinity is wrapped up in bringing a justice, a peace and a liberation we cannot accomplish on our own. 

And there is something about how dying to our death-mechanisms necessitates this new life.This is, after all, the story of all the people in the Bible, from Eve and Adam to Paul the Apostle.People who were continually invited to turn around and to turn towards the God of new life. And this is at the heart of our first reading today, in the book of Isaiah. A book filled with prophetic rebuke of God’s people – people who had turned their backs on God and turned towards arrogance and injustice instead. Isaiah doesn’t beat around the bush: he calls them out on their obstinance, on their self-righteousness and the ways that were leading them towards hardened hearts, closed minds and division. And it is here in our scripture where Isaiah reminds them who created them, who redeemed them, who led them from treacherous waters and unquenchable fires and who they belong to. 

Turn around. 

A phrase so simple and yet strikingly hard to do. We get set in our ways, we are influenced by the way in which our society, social media personas and world leaders resist this very notion of turning from our false selves. Only two weeks into the New Year and it was not hard to find signs of this obstinance… from the continual effects of climate change leading to the devastating fires during what should be L.A.s winter to the UN findings into the violation of the human rights treaty in Nauru, it is clear we are still grasping onto our death mechanisms, wreaking havoc not only on the environment, not only on our neighbours, not only ourselves but the God whose incarnation is wrapped up in all of it. This is why we need baptism but, more importantly, this is why we need to remember and embody our baptisms if and once we have been baptized. So that we might continue to turn from death towards new life, not once but again and again and again through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the way of fire. For there is much chaff that is holding us from believing and becoming our true selves in right relationship with God and right relationship with the whole of creation – something we might hope and dream about whenever January 1^st comes around, whenever we wade into the waters of Port Phillip Bay, whenever we huddle around a campfire, whenever we remember the Red Sea, or whenever we recount the burning bush. 

For our scriptures are not passive stories but urgent calls to action.

And here’s the thing: this is why we are watching for signs of Christ’s divinity during the next few weeks. Because in looking for signs of Christ’s divinity, we remember what St Athanasius once said: that God became human so humans could become God. This does not mean that we think of ourselves of Gods, but rather, through our baptisms we turn towards and participate in both the body and divinity of Christ – a body with eyeballs and armpit hair yet all wrapped up in the divine work of justice, peace and liberation of the whole of creation. 

So turn around, watch for and wade into Christ’s divine work not just this New Year but now and always.