Readings, Hosea 11:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21
Image, Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child (1880)
 
You might be familiar with the phrase “Chekhov’s gun.” It comes from the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who remarked – more or less – that if there’s a gun on the wall in the first act, it better be fired in the fifth. You’ll have encountered this in storytelling before, just recall any broad comedy that spends a lot of time early in the show drawing attention to grandma’s antique vase, you know that is coming crashing down later in the story. What you set up, needs to be paid off. So, what has been getting set up in Hosea?
 
Across the preceding chapters of Hosea, the wrath of God has been building toward Israel. God and prophet lay the charges of injustice and idolatry:
You have ploughed wickedness,
   you have reaped injustice,
   you have eaten the fruit of lies.
 
Their heart is false;
   now they must bear their guilt.
The Lord will break down their altars,
   and destroy their pillars.
 
The days of punishment have come
 
The promised judgment shall be swift and the punishment severe:
 
Even if they bring up children,
   I will bereave them until no one is left.
Woe to them indeed
   when I depart from them!
 
As Hosea declares, the very basis of the identity of the people as God’s people, recipients of the covenant and its promises, all this shall be snatched away:
Because they have not listened to him,
   my God will reject them;
   they shall become wanderers among the nations.
 
The verdict has been pronounced, the sentence prepared… and then, at the eleventh hour, in the eleventh chapter, there is a shift in tone.
 
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
Out of Egypt I called my son.
 
In this sequence, God describes Their relationship with the people of Israel as that of a mother to her infant child. It was I, God declares, who taught you to walk, I who lifted you from the ground so you could nurse, I who led you with bands of love.
 
In the first instance this seems only to heighten the betrayal. Israel’s idolatry is akin to the rejection of one’s own mother, who has done nothing but protect, love, and provide. But the image also signifies a shift – not in what Israel is done, but in what God is going to do:
 
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
   How can I hand you over, O Israel?
My heart recoils within me;
   my compassion grows warm and tender.
 
Here, contradicting Hosea’s earlier warning that God shall reject them, God asks, How can I give you up? It is the kind of question we may have asked ourselves, when despite all the rational reasons one might have to let go, or part, or reject, we realise that the heart is not so easily convinced, its desires not so quickly quenched, its ties not so swiftly sundered. As we read in our book club novel just this last week, “human relationships are not social services, and love has nothing to do with deserving.” How can I give you up, How can I hand you over. God’s own heart recoils within, and God’s compassion grows warm and tender, and the prophesied wrath will not come to pass.
 
There is a long abiding tension in the Christian tradition over the impassibility of God. That is to say, that for some part and parcel of what it means to confess God’s perfection is to confess that God never changes. To change, the argument goes, implies a shift from perhaps less perfect to more perfect. The argument also goes that a changeable God is not as reliable an object of our trust and devotion, compared to an impassable and unchangeable God who cannot be swayed or moved. But at the same time, the Biblical account, particularly through the Old Testament, is filled with stories of God changing God’s mind, of God relenting from a plan of destruction, of God been swayed by the appeal of a prophet.
 
What’s interesting to observe in this reading, is God’s own reasoning for the shift, God’s own rationale for the decision not to execute God’s fierce anger:
For I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
 
It is human, it seems, to be able to forget the former love, human to resist the recoiling of the heart, human to be able to cool compassion and remain firm against its tender pull. It is human to be able to look upon a betrayer and reject, renounce, and depart… human, we might say, to be in a sense impassable in the face of deserved judgment and irrevocable breach. And we need to be able to be human, to sometimes be impassable to the appeals of those once dear to us who have hurt us, we need to be able to do this for our safety, health, and flourishing… but God is God and no mortal, and God doesn’t need to do anything. God is free to recoil, to respond to the tugs of compassion, to remember the days bending down to nurse those now bent on turning away. God is God and no mortal, and it is precisely as God, as the Holy One in [our] midst, that God does not come in wrath but is led by bands of love. It is not the promised judgment, nor the power to bring devastation and desolation, that the Divine Nature is revealed. Rather it is the compassion induced decision to not come in wrath that reveals what it means to be God in distinction to a mortal.
 
If God is impassable, perhaps it is that our human proclivity to sin and idolatry is not powerful enough to pass by, to overcome, or render null and void God’s earlier decision to be for us and for our freedom. If we go back to Chekhov, the gun of God’s judgment might have been on the wall in act one, but there is something deeper, and older of God’s nature which is the foundation of the whole set. God’s prior decision to be for us, holds up the entire edifice, and it is this, which is paid off in Chapter 11. For God is the one who called Israel out of Egypt, determined to be their God and have them be God’s people. Just as God is the one who in Jesus Christ chose us before the foundation of the world. This eternal decision of election, of covenantal love, of redemptive presence, is impassable. It cannot be altered by our misdeeds, forgetfulness, sin or tomfoolery. For God’s own heart recoils in the face of wrath, God’s compassion wells on the threshold of departure. Gods divine nature determines God’s divine activity and so God does not come in wrath but roars like a lion to call God’s children back to their proper home. God has chosen to be for us, often despite us doing anything to warrant such tenderness and compassion, but this is why it’s grace.
 
And this is also why we can do wild and crazy things like resist the urge to build up our storehouses and stockpile our wealth. This is why we can attempt to live into the topsy-turvy economics of the kingdom of God, which resists taking refuge in wealth and hoarding what we do not need so that there might be none with need in our midst. Someone in the crowd asks Jesus to arbitrate over their inheritance squabble, but Jesus is God, not a mortal, and has come in our midst for something far better than that. Jesus has come to share the riches of God so that we might be able to be rich toward God. Jesus has been sent into the world, not to condemn the world, but to show once more the world shall be saved through him. It is in being reminded of the nature of our God, compassionate and tender, steadfast in love and faithfulness, that we are strengthened and sustained to live a life which does not consist in the abundance of possessions, but learns to walk with God, led by bands of love and nursed at the table of grace.       

Readings, Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37
Image, Emma Amos, Untitled (1962)
 
Let’s ask one of those classic questions we ask when reading the Bible: where, or who, do you think you are in the story? There are seven people: the teacher of the law, Jesus, the injured man, his attackers, priest, Levite, and Samaritan (and perhaps a donkey if you're so inclined). To whom do you relate?
 
In many ways we have been taught to place ourselves in the role of the Samaritan – or at least to see our role as aspiring to be like the Samaritan. An understandable tendency since, Jesus ends the parable with the command: go and do likewise. At the heart of discipleship is the love of neighbour, as so, we as disciples, are called to be like the Samaritan: hearts welling with compassion, devoting our time and material goods to alleviate the suffering of others even if they are very different to ourselves and have no way of repaying our kindness.
 
This is a good goal to fix before us. However, we can run into trouble if we fix ourself in that role, if we, like the classic Actor-Director of the local theatre company, continue to cast ourselves as the heroic lead and never the one in need of help (let alone as a villain).
 
Because who we relate to in the story is not fixed. At different points in our life, we might relate to most, if not all, of these players. Like the man attacked, we have probably all been someone who needed a neighbour, needed care and support in a difficult time and perhaps found it performed by an unexpected person. Likely, we have all had a moment like the teacher of the law where we have wondered how far our responsibility for care extends, who exactly we need to prioritise as an object of our love. Perhaps you have found yourself in the position of Jesus, helping to teach someone the importance of treating others as we’d like to be treated, challenging parochial approaches to charity and justice. If we are honest, I’m sure we can all name times where, like the Levite or the Priest, we have averted our eyes, quickened our step, or rationalised our decision to not stop and help. And if we are really honest, we may look back at moments in our lives where we have knowingly caused harm, where we have taken unjustly, where we have been cruel.
 
And if it can be true for us that we move between the various stars in the constellation of this story, then it can be true for everyone. That is to say, the story is a moving map of the world, as who among us does not, at some time, need a neighbour, be a neighbour, ignore a neighbour, create a problem for a neighbour, or discuss the ethics of neighbourliness. And the reason I am emphasising that it is not only us who move across the spectrum of roles in this story, is because it is the very act of fixing people in a role, in associating a person or community with a single role, while keeping ourselves centred as the Samaritan, that makes the very command of the story, go and do likewise, impossible.
 
A couple of weeks ago, Sureka Gorringe was here from UnitingWorld. She made the observation that mission and Christian aid has often been imagined in this kind of fixed relation. We are the Samaritan who show up to help our overseas neighbour who is in need. We don’t hear from them; we just decide on the path of care and move on. And while much of this was performed with compassion, and much of this addressed urgent needs, it does not, Sureka taught us, reflect the proper nature of the church. It ignores that the image of the body is one of interdependence – where there are no lesser members who can be ignored or cut off. Indeed, the church is made the body of Christ in the mutual giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts – no one is only given gifts to give, we are also to receive from one another. Too rarely, Sureka noted, has the Western church seen itself as the one requiring compassion and care from those typically cast as disadvantaged or needy.
 
Naomi Wolfe, a trawloolway woman, historian and theologian has made a similar point when considering her experience with this story in churches. She’s written* about the perpetual casting of Indigenous people as the voiceless victim in need of a good white neighbour. But this ignores the wisdom, testimony, and witness of Indigenous siblings in Christ – just as it ignores that in matters of justice in this land, the mainline church has played, at varied points, the role of bandit, Levite, Priest, and teacher of the law wondering who really counts as neighbour.
 
Assuming the fixity of our role as Samaritan, as the benevolent extender of compassion and justice, of the neighbour with rather than without, also risks closing ourselves off to the word of truth which brings repentance and freedom. Amos goes to the heart of his nation with the word of God’s judgment. But the Priest of Bethel says to the King of Israel:
Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.
 
The word of God, given to the prophet, is unseemly to the priest and the king. It is not a prophetic warning but conspiratorial threat, it is not righteous judgment but words which taint the land and tarnish the nation. The prophet’s words are deemed to spit on the image of the people as the people of God, on the status of the city as sanctuary of the king, the temple as temple of the kingdom. So fixed is the view of the priest, king, and nation that they are the centre of God’s story, the agents of God’s agenda, that the words of the prophet, the words of truth, the words of warning, can only be received as a threat and their teller must be expunged: O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there.
 
We might hear echoes of these words in many times and places, where those who raise a word of critique against their society or nation are met with the rebuff, well if you don’t like it, leave. We might hear echoes of these words across the eons of the church where the call to reform has led to excommunication and persecution. We might hear echoes in these words in families and communities who claim calls to redress the past as conspiracies against the foundations of the house. We might hear echoes in the defensiveness of friends and loved ones who were unable to bear warnings about the perils of their chosen path.
 
And time and again these rejections, rebuffs, silencing, and accusations are the result of a fixed conception of the self (or the institution, community, nation) as the good guy. As one whose only role is Samaritan (or aspiring Samaritan). But the only one who is ever only in that role, the only one without need, the only one without error, the only one possessing only gifts to bestow is God. The church is foremost the church in repentance, in a posture of humility and confession, understanding that we have not always got it right, that we do need correction, that we do need, perpetually, to turn once more to follow Christ.
 
Because to follow Jesus’ command to go and do likewise, to inherit eternal life, to love our neighbour as ourself requires us to be more than just the Samaritan, it asks more of us than solely compassion and charity. To love our neighbour, to be part of the kingdom we need to allow ourselves to be loved, allow ourselves to receive help, allow ourselves to be shaped through relationship.
 
To repent and seek the kingdom means we have to be open to the truth, open to the word of the prophets, open to the judgment of God, and to do this we have to be able to consider the various roles we embody, and the various roles our church has played. We need to recognise the times we have been a neighbour, but also when we have needed, ignored, or mistreated a neighbour. We must resist the lure to justify ourselves, to consider our obligation to the law fulfilled and recognise that we – like everyone else – are never one thing to each other, even though we are always, and perpetually one thing before God: one who has been rescued by God from the power of sin and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
 
When we know ourselves first as the one rescued and in perpetual need of rescuing, we are freed to see the fluidity of our movement across the spectrum of this story, to receive the prophetic words of repent and repair, and to know that even if we have not always been a neighbour, the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit make it possible for us to change our role in the story.  

--
* Naomi Wolfe, "Reading the Bible in Australia: A Place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples," in Reading the Bible in Australia, Edited by Deborah R. Storie, Barbara Deutschmann and Michelle Eastwood (Wipf & Stock, 2024), pp. 30-31.

Readings, Psalm 36:5-10 and 1 Cor 12:4-13
 
Today’s psalm gives us an image of God’s faithful, abundant, and delightful provision. God’s love is declared to provide shelter, light, food, and water. The very building blocks of our survival and flourishing, the very foundation of life itself:
How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
   All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
   and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
   in your light we see light.
 
The scriptures emphasise that creation is the good gift of God. Creation, lovingly formed, overflows with what we need to live abundantly and harmoniously together. Creation, as generous and thoughtful gift, brings forth what we need and in doing so, provides for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, worship and testimony to its Creator. When we feast on the abundance of fruits and vegetables brought forth from the earth, we are led to give thanks for the feast of abundance in the house of God. When we quench our thirst and are revived by cool waters, we are led to praise the one leads us to drink from the rivers of God’s delights. When we experience the comfort and safety of homes built from the stuff of the earth, we remember that all people may take refuge in the shadows of God’s wings.
 
But if creation is good and lovingly gifted, made to bring forth what is needed, then we are struck with the problem that large swaths of plant, animal, and human life are struggling to survive. But again, for those with eyes and ears willing to perceive, this struggle provides its own testimony. For the piles of food thrown away, the gallons of water wasted, the thousands of homes left empty, the increasingly rapid depletion of biodiversity lament and testify to human greed, apathy, and pride. Testify to fractured relations between us and the earth, one another, and God. Testify to the way our society insulates the privileged from the rhythms of place and the wisdom of others. Testify to our need to repent and reform in order to better love our neighbour and steward God’s creation.
 
Sundays like this in the life of our church serve multiple purposes. In part they are a response to the brave and faithful witness of Indigenous siblings in the church who ask us to stand with them in the journey of truth-telling, justice, and repair. In part they give us the opportunity to hear the truth, and seek in the truth not shame, but freedom and repaired relations. And in part they help us turn back to Christ, learn anew from members of Christ’s body, and recognise the interdependence of our oneness.
 
How might we learn with each other so that we might respond to the testimony of the earth? Sundays like this encourage us to remember that those from the cultures, traditions, and peoples formed by untold generations of relation and reliance on these lands, might teach us how to live better on country, how to better steward God’s creation in this place, how to better ensure that what God has provided is not squandered, hoarded, or forgotten, but delighted in, shared, and engaged with in God-honouring and neighbour-loving ways.   
 
Because God does not only provide the gift of abundant creation. God also provides the gifts of the Spirit shared through the body of Christ. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Whether Jew or Greek, slave or free we drink of the same Spirit who activates in the church gifts, services, and activities for the benefit of the body. Gifts are varied, fluid, mysterious, and poured out on all for all, without hierarchy or distinction.
 
The problem is that too often the church has done the very thing Paul warns against: telling certain members it has no need of them, nothing to learn or receive from them. It has developed and inherited worldly systems that determine who has wisdom, knowledge, and responsibility and who does not. And too often the have and have nots run along racial lines (just as they so often have run along (and been amplified by) lines of gender, class, or clericalism). And these worldly, sinful designations of have and have nots not only deny the biblical witness, not only blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, but rob us all of wisdom, practices, and knowledge poured out by God and developed through culture. And when we consider the specific question of how we walk on, relate to, and delight in the lands and waters, we see that such robbery is leading to ruin. Ruin to creation, to neighbours, and to ourselves. 
 
But thankfully, and this is one of those great Christian proclamations not only on Sundays such as these: it is never too late to make a change. Never too late to fling oneself onto Christ in hope. Never too late for the church to become more like the body. Never too late for the Spirit to work wonders through its members. For God’s steadfast love extends to the heavens, God’s faithfulness to the clouds. And the one who created all things in their goodness has promised, that despite human folly, we shall be saved. The earth and all that is in it will be restored, redeemed, rectified and made new. The day will come when waters, lands, and skies will sing once more undiminished and unrestricted of the glory of God and the right relations of all things in God’s light.
 
And being part of Christ’s body the church, being part of a people able to hear truth, mourn, repent, and believe the good news, means we do not need to wait until that final day for this restoration work to begin. Indeed, we must not wait. Instead, because we have received the gifts of the Spirit – poured out upon us for the common good – we get to make changes today. Every week there are increasingly disturbing news reports, increasingly disheartening findings… the odds feel stacked against the kind of dramatic upturning we require. But dramatic upturnings are what our faith is based on. And the good news, the really good news is that if we want to step out in search of just such an upturning, we do not step out alone. For we have the Spirit, we have its gifts, poured out on all to be shared and received with and by and from all. So, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we might yet learn from the old and new wisdom of others how to live together well in this place; relating to and delighting in building blocks of our survival and flourishing in a manner that gives testimony to the fountain of life.

From Rev Liam Miller. Readings: Gen 9: 8-17, Mark 1:9-15, 1 Peter 3: 18-22. 
 
In the film Force Majeure there is a scene where a family is eating brunch on a patio at a ski lodge. In the background, a controlled avalanche is taking place. At first no one is worried and in fact are enjoying taking photos/videos of the event while they enjoy their food. Though, as the fog of the avalanche (which looks deceptively like snow) people get increasingly worried, to the point at which many – as this snowy fog engulfs the patio – begin to flee. One of these people stumbling over tables and chairs to escape is the father of the main family mentioned above, who abandons his family on that patio. Turns out to just be the fog of the avalanche, and no one is hurt. Slowly everyone stands up or returns to their tables, including the husband – who returns to an awkward and cool greeting from the family he abandoned to save his own skin… the rest of the movie deals with the aftermath of his choice.
 
We often think the measure of a healthy relationship is the actions people take when the chips are down, when danger or threat looms, when stress takes hold and it appears as though we may be consumed. Many relationships break down and fall beyond repair when trust is broken because someone chooses not to stick around when the going gets tough. And so, with that, we come to our readings.
 
God has made a covenant with all flesh – after the flood God makes a promise to Noah, and to all things that we should never be consumed by water again. That God will not allow all things to be destroyed, or swept away. This is the everlasting covenant that we should not be consumed.
 
And while there have been no more world wide floods – forty days and forty nights – which only those few on an ark survive, do we not all feel, at different times in our lives – consumed (perhaps consumed by debt, stress, illness, family strife, work - unemployment)…. Beyond this, thinking broader, thinking globally, thinking of all flesh – does not the increasing impact of our climate emergency (that is making the lands and homes of our Oceania family impossible to live) feel like perhaps the whole ‘not consumed by water’ promise is about to expire?
 
There seem to be – at levels both internal and external, personal and collective – innumerable forces which seem to be seeking to (and sometimes successfully) consuming us and our neighbours… does God’s promise really only cover such a narrow threat (is God really like the insurance company for whom ‘flood damage’ doesn’t actually cover the house if it is flooded by an actual flood, as opposed to a leaky dishwasher?) 
 
Our readings from Mark and Peter today testify that God’s care, protection, and promise does indeed extend beyond a limited, literal reading and is directed at anything that would consume us, that would threaten to destroy all flesh.
 
Christ, the beloved Son, comes, becomes incarnate, lives and walks among us – in order to overcome Evil, Sin, and Death (our great enemies, all of which seek to consume us in this age and the way to come). Christ begins this confrontation with Sin immediately following his baptism where he is driven to the wilderness and faces temptation. The first victory – and sign of Christ’s authority over these nefarious powers – is struck by Christ’s ability to resist and overcome temptation and remain obedient to God’s call on his life (a resisting and overcoming that will remain consistent across his life). His second assault on these consuming forces comes immediately following his return to Galilee; where Jesus comes to proclaim good news of the kingdom of God come near. Jesus’ life and ministry strike true against all forces of falsehood which threaten the flesh.
 
But there’s more, because Jesus keeps going, he is unrelenting in his vanquishing of that which threatens our destruction and unquenchable in his thirst that all would come to life and life in abundance. Because there have been many consumed by Death and held by Sin. And so Peter reminds those reading his letter that Christ came not only to proclaim the good news of God’s freedom to us, no, not only to us amongst the living but he also went the spirits in prison; those who in the days of Noah were overcome, to proclaim that the kingdom of God had come near! Christ proclaims freedom to those captives and extends a hand to pull them from the clutches of death, to drag them from the mouth of Sheol so that they too may await the glorious day of the Lord and the resurrection of the flesh, so that they too may enjoy the wonder of God’s covenant with all flesh.
 
We, dear friends, live as those who have heard this good news, who have felt the nearing of kingdom, who seek to order our lives as those who live under God’s generous promise that creation and creature should not be consumed, but live!
 
So how should this shape our life and lives together as the body of Christ? Well I think at a basic level we should not abandon those who are being consumed. We should not be like the dad in Force Majeure, separating himself from the dying, the destroyed, the damaged. As Christ refused to change his life and message in order to avoid the cross, so we too need to remain faithful to the God has called us by living in such a way that we remain with those who feel like the waters are rising all around us. What this means in practice is something we discern personally, as families, and as the church here in Forestville – but it should impact how we organise ourselves to respond to and welcome those being consumed by debt, by stress, by unhealthy work environments and unrealistic expectations of an exacting society. It should draw us into solidarity with communities whose joy and freedom is being consumed by the forces of marginalisation – racism, poverty, climate catastrophe. It should open our hearts to be attentive to those being consumed by loneliness, isolation, those who can no longer leave their homes to join us each Sunday.
 
And this word should also, hopefully, be heard as good news for those of us here today who feel like we are being consumed or destroyed by any of those factors and forces, or others not named. That God’s promise that we would not be abandoned, consumed, or annihilated applies to you and the waters building up around us. It should hopefully be comforting that you are here today, as a part of a body which does not cut off an arm once it is seen to be un-useful, or tiring. You are part of Christ’s body, a body which took the nastiest blows Sin and Evil and all those Death-Dealing forces could muster, took them throughout his life, on that cross, and in his descent to bring liberty to the captives – and despite their worst, despite the anguish they wrought, they could not overcome him! Death could not overcome the who came one proclaiming the good news of God, saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’  Thank God for good news, amen.