Readings, Acts 2:1-21 and Romans 8:14-17, 26-27
Image, Roman Barabakh (Ukrainian, 1990–), Descent of the Holy Spirit, 2017. 
​
Much is to be made of the external propulsion of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The scene is dramatically public. The domesticity in which the story begins is blown open by a force of eternity pouring out on flesh. The day begins with the disciples in a house, perhaps in prayer or enjoying a meal, and then suddenly – what a word – suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
 
Naturally, a crowd gathers. Perhaps one of the few universals is that if there’s a spectacle we’re going to idle on by (we slow to this day to glimpse a car crash or house being demolished). Here a crowd gathers, but not only because of a general curiosity in spectacle, but because they hear a bunch of Galileans speaking in myriad tongues. A crowd from across the region remark: how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 
 
As I said, dramatically public. The external reality and impact of the coming of the Holy Spirit then as now is central to the Day of Pentecost. It is with the Spirit that the disciples can now follow Jesus’ command to be his witnesses in all the earth. It is with the Spirit that the gospel is now able to be proclaimed in all tongues, to find soil in all cultures. It is with the Spirit that the church can be filled with divine power to continue Christ’s work in the world. It is with the Spirit that we can become the body of Christ through the giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts. It is with the Spirit that we can bear the good fruit of the kingdom. All of these dimensions of the Spirit’s life in the church point to the truth that the Church is a body that is sent. That the church’s concern is not simply its own life, but the world which Christ loved and for which he lay down his life. The Spirit makes us a public-facing people, called do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
 
All this is rightly marked and celebrated at Pentecost. But Paul reminds us today, that there is an inner dimension of the Spirit’s animating life, a pastoral dynamic of the Spirit’s mission.
The Spirit we have received, Paul remarks, is not one which provokes us to fear, but is a spirit of adoption. When we pray, our Father, as we do each week, it is the Spirit making this possible. In these words (offered not only in our weekly corporate prayer but any time you call on the name of God in hope) the Spirit bears witness with our spirit about the most important thing about us. The Spirit bears witness with our own to that most beautiful, most soul affirming truth: we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The Spirit weaves us into the family of God. Waltzing with our own spirit, joining voice in song, we and the Spirit cry, Abba! Father! and it is so. We become who we have been made to be: children of God, co-heirs with Christ. 
 
But such a truth can be difficult to swallow. It can be hard to see ourselves as part of such a family, to say of ourselves: I am a child of God. We might well be able to say it of almost anyone else, but of ourselves surely it can’t be true. There are all kinds of reasons we might harbour these misgivings. Perhaps our experience of crying out to an earthly father or mother was not met with the kind of care and attention for the analogy to hold much water. Perhaps the prejudices of society have communicated that we were not fearfully and wonderfully made but lesser, aberrant, ugly. Perhaps our struggles and affections were cast as beyond the interest or acceptance of God. Perhaps the circumstances and sorrows of our life have led you to feel far more alone than adopted. Perhaps other names you have been named, spoken in authoritative tones, have made a deeper imprint on your identity than the name child of God. None of these are easy to shake, they cannot simply be waved away or quickly overwritten. It is tragic. What’s the old line, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoelaces. The truth that we are children of God can be a slow truth to learn, and it can suffer setbacks. But for this reason we have the Spirit. Because when we do not know how to pray as we ought, when we do not feel able or ready to cry out Abba! Father! like children of God, it is the Spirit who helps us in our weakness. It is the Spirit who intercedes with sighs too deep for words, so that even if we cannot see ourselves as a child of God and co-heir with Christ, God does.      
 
Over the past month and a bit, various members of our community have shared songs or hymns that have shaped and sustained their faith. I have my own today to accompany this message. Julien Baker, a singer-songwriter from Tennessee wrote Rejoice in 2015, she was twenty at the time. The song, like much of her catalogue, wrestles with her experience of addiction, the death of friends, and the negative animosity toward her sexuality she experienced in her church. Despite the raw openness with which she gives voice to these wounds, woes, and wrongs, the song searches for and proclaims a ruddy hope. As she sings,
Give me everything good, I'll throw it away
I wish I could quit, but I can't stand the shakes
Choking smoke, singing your praise
But I think there's a God and He hears either way
I rejoice and complain
I never know what to say
 
Like the psalmist who sings, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Baker proclaims in the face of her mistreatment at the hands of the church, in the face of her own mistakes, in the face of her frailty: I think there’s a God and They hear either way.* This is the Spirit bearing witness, that even when we do not know how to pray, even when we do not know there is someone to pray to, the Spirit groans and God hears either way. 
 
And because of this spirit of adoption, Baker is able to sing my favourite line: Lift my voice that I was made. I was made. There is perhaps no more important foundation on which to build a life. You were made. Fearfully and lovingly made. Who you are is not a mistake. Against the forces of sin and death which would say that some people are not made, are not children of God, that some people must hide, apologise, or assimilate some fundamental part of themselves, Baker lifts her voice against these forces to bear witness with the Spirit that she is a child of God. 
 
At the close of the song, Baker proclaims that the God who hears her, knows her name and all her hideous mistakes. But at this point she does not fall back into fear. For she has not been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into the bounds of earthly prejudice or limitation, but a spirit of adoption to say that she is heard, and if heard made, and if made, then a child of God. A child who, despite and amid the complaint, doubt, failure, and rage, might still sing, defiant and holy:
I rejoice, I rejoice
I rejoice, I rejoice 
 
((At this point in the sermon we listened to the song))
 
This Pentecost, may the Spirit lend voice to your rejoicing and complaining.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit comfort you with the truth that you are heard even when you have no words.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit remind you that you were made.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit bear witness with your own that you are a child of God.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit be a place of freedom.
 
This inner place of truth and freedom beats back worldly falsity and fraud. And it is out of this depth of love and understanding that the work of proclaiming the good news in all corners of your heart and your world begins. Out of this well-spring of trust may you find fresh words and deeds to tell out the good news of God’s grace. With tongues sparked to life by the warming of our hearts, may we find those bound by earthly lies and herald good news: where the Spirit is there is the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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* In more contemporary performances of the song, Baker changes the Divine pronoun as reflected here.

Readings, Acts 9:1-6 and John 21:1-19
Image, The Conversion of Saint Paul, Luca Giordano, 1690
 
We know there are many ways to be beckoned for a task, that our name can be called in myriad tones. And the sound of the name and the nature of the task sometimes run in paradox. The saccharine sweet, upward intoned ‘heeeey Liam’ is usually a precursor of some arduous, inconvenient demand. On the other hand, the recourse to a formal greeting in a familial setting, such as a parent calling out your full name (‘Liam Andrew Miller’) is a sure sign that the task you’re being beckoned to do is one you ought to have already done.
 
In today’s readings, two people have their name called by Jesus, beckoned into an important task. But let’s situate ourselves a little first. Last week we noted how the upturning of the resurrection signalled the shift from the story of Jesus, to that of his followers taking up his work in the power of the Spirit. We are being moved, in this season of Easter, toward the Day of Pentecost and the birth of the church. Last week, Jesus breathed his spirit and bestowed his peace upon his followers. Today (though these stories are some time apart chronologically) Jesus appears to and commissions two pivotal figures in the story of the early church: Peter and Paul. Though their beckoning could not be more dissimilar.
 
Peter gets breakfast on the beach, a stroll at sunrise, and his commission is graciously bestowed in a threefold way which symbolically erases his earlier threefold denial. In contrast Jesus blinds Paul, confronts him with the truth, and sends him off to be dealt with by someone else.
 
Now this contrast is understandable – we might even say earnt. Peter is despondent. There’s almost a reversion to childhood at play in Peter’s decision to go fishing. After everything he has been through these last years with Christ, he is seeking comfort in the familiar of his former life. Perhaps feeling unworthy after his threefold denial of Christ, perhaps feeling unready for the responsibility laid upon him as an apostle, perhaps unsure as to how any of this is going to work if Jesus isn’t there with him, he does the thing he knows how to do. It is in this posture, this place of emotional and spiritual turmoil that Jesus finds Peter. And so Jesus helps them with their catch, cooks some breakfast, and allows Peter to say again and again I love thee, while hearing again and again you are the one I have chosen.
 
Paul, on the other hand, is far from despondent, far from feeling unready for the task ahead. Triumphant and focused, he knows exactly who he is and what is required of him, and he is out on the road attending to business. Of course, this is the business of harassing, arresting, and even executing Christians. And so, Jesus does not appear at the soft light of dawn, but as the blinding light of judgment. Saul, the name booms from heaven, why are you persecuting me? And then, upon revealing his identity, Jesus simply tells Paul to get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. No pastoral walk, no restorative breakfast, just blinding light, get up, and I’m handing your case off to someone else.
 
Now, I won’t get too flippant. The rest of this story, when Ananais goes to meet the one who has been persecuting his friends, and calls him brother Saul, is one of the more moving in Scripture, further testament to shift of focus to Jesus’ followers taking up to work of Christ in calling the unlikely into the movement and breaking down dividing walls of hostility. But nonetheless the contrast between these two stories, between the treatment of Peter (who had denied) and Paul (who had persecuted) is stark.
 
But perhaps we recognise that sometimes this is what is required. That while of course we wish to be beckoned by Christ in a manner similar to Peter’s – filled with tenderness and patience – if we are honest, there are times we need to be beckoned like Paul. Times when we need an indelicate wake up call to change our ways before we go on causing harm. These are, in their own ways, loving responses, both aimed to lead someone off a destructive path and into meaning and truth.
 
And just as these are both, in their ways, loving responses, it is also important to grasp, that despite the variance in tone and approach, Paul sees no distinction in these appearances. When he writes to churches defending his apostleship, he lists all the people Jesus appeared to (Peter among them) and then, in the same list, he names himself. The appearance of Christ might have been different; indeed we might question whether “appearance” is even the right word, but Paul sees no distinction. Jesus appeared to him and called him to be an apostle. He is not of another category, or a second-class, he simply is among those Jesus beckoned and commissioned. Which is not just a claim Paul invents for his own ends, it is consistent with Jesus’ own words spoken to Thomas: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
 
And this is where it comes to us, where the contrasting stories of Peter and Paul converge with our own. Some of us heard the beckoning call of Jesus in the dulcet tones of our parents and grandparents, or in Sunday school songs and household hymns. Some of us heard the urgent call of Jesus at our lowest points, a radical interruption of our self-destruction and self-loathing. Some can pinpoint the moment and recall the sound of his voice, for others it is more life a wave in the ocean – we can’t pick where it started we just know that at some point we were being carried by its momentum. There are no distinctions or hierarchies in the ways we were beckoned, and thus no ground for boasting or shrinking based on how and when Jesus called our name and led us into life. All that matters is that having been called we are now, all of us, disciples. Christ has made us his own and entrusted us with the work of the kingdom and the heralding of the gospel. We have one Lord, we have received one baptism and have become one priesthood. As we heard last week, when Jesus appeared to John on Patmos, he who loves us and freed us from our sins… made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father. And as a body of priests beckoned and commissioned by Christ, we are invited to the one table, to the one bread and one cup. For you and me, and all other Christians however we come to the table of grace come because of grace, come because of the invitation of Christ, which might meet us in radically different ways, but comes only ever from one source, Jesus Christ the living one.

Readings, Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 4:21-30
Image, Margaret Adams Parker, Cherry Trees - In the Snow (Woodcut, 2007)
 
Jesus, having proclaimed that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, sits down amidst his hometown congregation, who are amazed at his gracious words.
 
What a happy story, unless your Bible has subtitles, in which case you know this scene began with “The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth” – and you’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, drop it does. Jesus begins to speculate that those among him will ask him for the wonders he performed in Capernaum. Which, one thinks, is fair enough. If he is claiming the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, then one is within their rights to presume he might do such works here, amongst those who raised him. But instead of performing signs and wonders, Jesus speaks on, and at the end of his little history lesson his hometown congregation, his neighbours and kin, attempt to murder him.
 
What is it in Jesus’ words that moves them from genial amazement to mob violence? Jesus recalls two stories from the scriptures. The first is that of Elijah who in the time of famine was driven by God not to one of the widows of Israel but to one in Sidon; and it was she (rather than one of their own) who experienced the miracle of God and kept the great prophet alive. The second is that of Elisha, who is not noted for cleansing any leper of Israel, but Naaman the Syrian.
 
Jesus invents nothing in either story. He merely notes details in their history which demonstrates that the care and activity of God’s prophets do not always conform to national lines, and that God’s own people have not always shown their prophets proper welcome. The widow of Sidon received and Naaman of Syria sought the prophet of God, while the homes of Israel’s own widows and the skin of Israel’s own flesh remained untouched.
 
Overtaken with rage the people drive Jesus out of the town in order to hurl him off a cliff. Why? Considering the two speeches Jesus offers in the synagogue the one claiming the words of Isaiah are fulfilled in their hearing seems far more incendiary than in his little sermon on Elijah and Elisha. And yet people can be sensitive about their histories. And while these stories are well known, Jesus upturns their easy retellings.
 
In our book club on Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, we discussed a section where the narrator recounts the story of Saint and martyr Maria Goretti. In school she learnt the story of Maria as a young girl who refused to commit a mortal sin when her cousin sexually assaulted her. Maria was praised for the purity in her refusal and capacity to forgive her killer. As she gets older the narrator revisits the story and considers the untold aspects of the history. Before the fatal attack the cousin had tried to assault Maria twice, but she had been unable to tell anyone out of fear of getting into trouble or being presumed guilty. Told one way the story emphasises the virtue and grace of Maria, told another it reveals a systemic, cultural, and familial failure, which, if addressed, would have made Maria’s saintly virtue and grace unnecessary. As I grew older, the narrator reflects, I grew confused as to why martyrdom was never just called ‘murder.’  
 
History is never simply reportage of events as they happened. There is always interpretation, always choice and emphasis, always the bias and experience of historian and reader. And yet, we can cling to a particular telling of history as the thing itself no matter how many other tellings come across our path. This can be for histories big and small – family histories, histories of communities and institutions, the nation and world. The challenge laid to familiar tellings by different emphasises and interpretations can all to quickly be heard as threat and lead to dramatic efforts to silence their speaker.
 
This is the very issue many of God’s prophets faced. Exodus begins with a new Pharoah rising in Egypt who did not know Joseph and what he had done for the nation. Thus he resists and detests the words of Moses, who declared that the Hebrews were God’s people, and not Pharoah’s. Elijah was called a “troubler of Israel” when he opposed King Ahab’s worship of Baal, which forgot the history of God’s covenant and promises. Jeremiah feared reprisal and scorn for his prophetic duty to pluck up and pull down, knowing that those in power preferred a false peace over true charge. John the Baptist lost his head for reminding Herod that his family history rendered illegitimate his new marriage. Paul reproaches the Galatians for allowing false teachers to renege on the history of the early church’s inclusion of the Gentiles; remarking, have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? And Jesus, here as elsewhere, faced persecution and rejection for his reminder that his people’s ancestry would not preserve them from the judgment of God, or that Rome’s history of glory and splendour would not preserve it from being overturned by the coming kingdom of God.
 
The rigidity of our hold on history, our unbending commitment to a particular telling, can become a barrier to receiving the news that God is doing a new thing. Because a new thing is not only about opening the future, but receiving the past renewed. The New Testament is filled with the apostles wrestling with how the history of their people needed to be reinterpreted and reframed in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. The welcome of the Gentiles rests on a creative rereading of the scriptures which emphasised trajectories of openness of God’s history with the world. The Reformation was fought along many lines, key of which was the re-examining of history of the church in light of the conviction and experience of the Reformers. One might say similar things about so many of the church’s shifts along the lines of membership, ordination, and inclusion, which orbit consistently the question: is our history able to be read with a different set of emphasise, different interpretations, an openness that recognises God’s capacity to do a new thing?
 
The rigidity of the synagogue in Nazareth is all the more understandable as the new thing they were asked to receive was proclaimed by the son of Joseph the Carpenter. Jesus is right, it is much more difficult to honour and receive the prophetic challenge of those closer to home about histories closer to home. And yet when we shut down, and seek to shut up the messenger, we risk shutting down and shutting up the signs and wonders of the new thing God is doing. We risk viewing as wanton destruction and disregard what is actually the plucking up and pulling down that precedes the building and planting. This is not easy work, and we often feel unready, but the promise and hope to which we hold dear is that amidst the challenge of change we are not left alone nor flung out into a void of meaninglessness. God is with us, and God shall strive forward with us into a future both prepared and becoming. For the one who wrought such anger with his teaching, is also the one who has (for generation on generation) sustained and fed the church through the changes in history with his own word and body on the way toward the promised end.

Readings, 1 Sam 2: 18-20, 26, Col 3:12-17 and Luke 2:41-52
Image, Nativity. Sawai Chinnawong, Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 37 (2004)
 
There have been many a hero, legend, or leader whose upbringing was entrusted (either willingly or by necessity) to the care of others. Romulus the founder of Rome, was raised (along with his brother) by a She-Wolf. Quasimodo was raised (not well mind you) by Frollo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Batman raised by his butler Alfred, Sleeping Beauty entrusted to the fairies, Charles Foster Kane handed over by his impoverished parents (sans beloved sled) to the rich Walter Parks Thatcher. In Star Wars children identified as possessing the power of the force were entrusted to the Jedi Order for their raising and training.  
 
Sometimes these children are entrusted because they are recognised as special, set apart as vital to the future of a community or the plans of God, their upbringing too important to be left to their family. They are shielded, sheltered, moulded and made ready for the day to come when they will be needed. Samuel clearly fits this mould. Miraculously born in a time of great need, he is set aside so as to hear the word of God, overturn the exploitation and hypocrisy of the community’s religious leaders, and lead the people to a fruitful future.
 
In narrating the story of Jesus, the gospel writers deliberately evoke the heroes of their scriptures. And it is clear that Jesus’ miraculous birth resembles that of Samuel (especially in Luke who has Mary sing a song in the manner of Hannah). And soon after his birth, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple to make their offerings… and soon after that Jesus absconds from his family to remain at the temple to learn from the priests and the learned of the day. If you’re an initiated, active listener, hearing this gospel proclaimed in the shadow of the stories of Samuel, you might be thinking, ah, yes, Jesus is going to stay at the Temple. This is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, his upbringing must naturally be entrusted to the priests, he must grow in wisdom, stature, and favour in the household of God, the Temple, nearer my Lord to Thee.
 
But that doesn’t happen. Jesus is not like Samuel. He is not entrusted to the care of the Priests; he does not grow with God at the Temple. Despite these early stories evoking this possibility, Jesus returns to Nazareth with his family, it is there and with them that he increases in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour. What do we make of this?
 
At Christmas we stress Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. We celebrate that in Jesus, God took on flesh and walked among us. That in Jesus we have a saviour familiar with our struggles. It is the immediacy of Jesus’ presence, the humility and mundanity of his earthly life, the identifiability of his tent beside our own, that makes the foundation of our faith and discipleship. And while there are those among us who have been raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, adoptive parents, or any combination of such, I’ll hazard none among us were raised by priests, none grew tall in temples. Had Jesus, it would certainly have qualified the claim God with us, would have diminished the truth that he had really walked among us. Think of that early hymn preserved by Paul in the letter to the church in Philippi,
Christ Jesus
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.   
Would this not read slightly differently if, while emptying himself, Christ carved out a privileged upbringing amongst the community’s religious leaders within his Father’s house?
 
Jesus, like the bulk of his fellow humanity before and since, was not cloistered as a child, but raised in community among family. It was here he learnt of God and God’s way, here he practiced his faith, here he learnt to navigate challenges big and small, particular and universal while seeking to remain integrous to one’s values and responsible to one’s neighbours. And as those who follow after Jesus, we do the same. Christians are made in the power of the Holy Spirit and then formed in community. We increase in wisdom, stature, and years together as the church.
 
And it is for this reason that Paul’s words in Colossians are so important. As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another… forgive each other; [and] Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts... Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
 
Christ (whose upbringing was not entrusted to the Temple, but to his family and community) in turn entrusts the upbringing and formation of his followers to the church (the new family/community made in his name). We are all set apart, chosen and commissioned, and so help raise each other. Through the fruit of the Spirit, the teaching of the Word, the wisdom of tradition, the delight of worship, the practicing of virtue, and the outpouring of love we create an ecosystem where we increase together in wisdom and in years, in divine and human favour. An ecosystem where we (like Christ before us), learn to listen to the word of God, rejoice in God’s wisdom, follow the Spirit’s promptings, and cloth ourselves in love.
 
Christmas, I remarked on the Day, is a beginning. What it launches continues to this day, but it does so not in isolation or insulation, but in communities, with families, friends, and strangers, seeking together what it means to respond to the presence of God, with us still.  

Readings, John 2:1-12 and John 19:25b-30
Image, Benny Andrews, Portrait of Black Madonna (1987)

These are first and last great signs of Jesus’ glory in the Gospel of John, and his mother Mary is interwoven in both. Indeed, we might say not only interwoven, but – as is the case with the first – integral to its beginning, and – in the case of the latter – foundational to what will follow. But let’s go back further to find a starting point.
 
Mary is Jesus’ first teacher. Like many a parent, she teaches the child those basic things of life, the elemental building blocks of being a person. And like parents who live religious lives, she would have also taught Jesus things basic to the life of faith, wrapping the rhythms of their daily life around God’s stories, festivals, and rituals. She would have imparted and impressed those basic building blocks of being part of the people of God.
 
And yet, she was also a parent with a specific commission. She was called by God to bear the saviour of her people, to carry Emmanuel in her body and lead him into life. And she was entrusted to instruct Jesus in this commission, teach him what she had been taught, make his what she proclaimed in song while he grew in her womb. It is she who would have imparted those words of the shepherds she treasured in her heart, those words of Simeon that brought blessing and dread, those words of Gabriel which reoriented her life.
 
Who better than she, then, to prompt Jesus to act – to bring about the hour at which his ministry began, the hour at which his glory shall begin to be revealed. Who better than she, to issue the imperative by which followers of Jesus shall live: Do whatever he tells you.
 
Mary is thus not only a paradigmatic disciple – one who receives with vigour the command of God and allows it to reshape the direction of her life. But she exemplifies the task of Christian teaching and instruction; especially of the young. She takes up eagerly the task laid before her to instruct her child in the wisdom of God, and the task and commission laid before him. And she takes this on with such enthusiasm and authority that she can take the prerogative to come before the world’s redeemer and say, it is time to begin.
 
From this beginning, until the bitter end, she remains by Jesus’ side. We read in that upon the cross he looks down and uses a few of his remaining words to say to his mother, Woman, here is your son, and to the disciple he loved, here is your mother. And while we can be moved by this as an act of filial devotion, to remain there lessens the lesson on offer.
 
Jesus, in both these stories refers to his mother as woman, signalling not the unimportance of her relation to him and specific role in God’s plan, but pointing through to the most important role one can play: that of a disciple. Who are my mother and brothers, Jesus famously asks of the crowds, Those who hear the word of God and do it… and while this is sometimes read as a rebuke to those who would pay particular attention to Mary, we are better led to recognise that who among the gospels characters more perfectly performs the word of God than Mary the mother of Jesus?
 
Such a lesson is repeated elsewhere, where a woman shouts to Jesus, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you, to which Jesus responds, Blessed rather are those who hear the word and obey it. Again, the lesson is not to find here a dismissal of Mary in the shaping of our faith, but to direct the eye at where that significance is found.* It is not, as if, Mary’s womb is blessed in abstraction, that the breasts which nursed Jesus are holy simply for that act. No, Mary is to be celebrated and emulated, chiefly because of those traits which we might replicate. It is not her womb that we aspire, but the example she sets as one who heard the word and obeyed. Who said to the angel, I am a servant of the Lord, and took the risk of bearing the world’s scorn, in order to bear God. Blessed is she who heard the word and obeyed, who taught the saviour of the world, and accompanied him as sign by sign he revealed his glory.
 
Which leads us back to the foot of the cross, and those last words of Jesus. Here Mary, while remaining Jesus’ first family is also first in his new family, created by the Word to be his body, the church, a further sign of his glory. She receives a Spirit of adoption from the one she birthed. A mother given to a friend, the beloved to a mother and in this they become family to each other – not by blood but by the Word, bound only by commission and obedience. It is in this same way that we are given to one another as family in baptism – siblings of Christ, and kin to one another.
 
Mary, unlike so many of the disciples, does not depart from Jesus, even when there is so much risk and grief. It is this discipleship which is recognised, the same discipleship she displayed when the angel came, practiced when she taught Jesus, and exercised when she told him to make new wine. It is this discipleship that makes her favoured, blessed, and worthy of calling into the new family of Christ. For it is this kind of discipleship by which the church shall extend into all the world preaching the spirit of adoption.
 
Her discipleship, which we call blessed, is at least part (if not the significant part) of what we take from the life and witness of the first Mary in this series. And if we are to attempt to emulate her example, we must draw on the same strength on which she drew. She, like we, become disciples in the knowledge of God’s presence and promise to look on us as favoured, lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things. The strength to stay by Christ’s side through the glory and the bloodshed is built on the trust in the great things God has done. The humility and grace to become a family established at the foot of a cross is fed by finding in the simple things a holiness most profound. In Christ we have received a spirit of adoption, made children of God, and when we consider what it means to live in light of this great joy and responsibility, we take as an example Jesus’ mother; who heard the word of God, bore him in her womb, led him by the hand, and followed him all the days of her life.

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*My thanks to Dr Ali Robinson for this insight.

Readings, 2 Sam 11:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21
Image, Girl Sitting Alone in the ‘Sea Grill,’ a Bar and Restaurant (1943/1989) Esther Bubley

In this story, King David rivals Shakespeare’s Richard III for unbridled villainy. And like so many stories of depraved abuses of power, it strikes an ominous note from the beginning. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle… David remained at Jerusalem. This is not unintended irony, something is amiss. Remember, when a youth, David volunteered to face Goliath alone. Now when kings go out to battle, David stays home. Not only is he avoiding responsibility, it hints, narratively, at the potential for trouble. For if all of Israel have been sent out to war, who remains in the city to oppose the whims of the King? The picture the narrator paints is one of King David, a man alone, in a city of women.
 
And David spies one such woman, Bathsheba, benignly attending to the banality of bathing. It is notable that the reason David is able to play the voyeur is because he lingers in the king’s house – raised above the rest – and from this perch he is able to look down. Spying something he likes, and sensing no possible opposition, refusal, or discovery, David sends for Bathsheba and (as the text euphemistically states) lies with her. I stress euphemistically here, because like the heading assigned to this reading in many Bibles (“David commits adultery with Bathsheba”), this language elides the abuse, obfuscates the unequal power dynamic, and seeks to make neat the ugliness of this scene familiar to far too many who have been called into the office or home of a superior and realised that there is no way to say no without risking their safety, security, or livelihood.
 
Tragically for Bathsheba, the violence does not end on this day. For Bathsheba falls pregnant, and suddenly David discovers that his act is perhaps somewhat more discoverable than he believed. Should Uriah return after a season of war, he will discover Bathsheba pregnant and all eyes will fall upon the one man in town with power and opportunity.
 
David devises a plan. He calls Uriah home from the front, urging him, go down to your house and wash your feet. Which, speaking of euphemisms, is a common one for sexual intimacy. However, to David’s shame, Uriah refuses. While David has no problem sleeping in a palace, Uriah will not rest under his roof while his comrades spend their nights in tents. David tries again, this time plying Uriah with wine in the hope that alcohol might shake his commitment to abstinence. Yet even drunk, Uriah has more integrity than the king. With no other cards to play, David betrays Uriah to his death, ordering him to be abandoned on the frontlines, to die far from the bed he refused, the wife he loved, and the city he served. Condemned by his king to die in a moment of confusion wondering why everyone drew back while he walked on. When news of his death reaches Bathsheba she makes lamentations, after which, David brings her once more to his house – making her his wife, and the unborn child his own.
 
Our domestic violence work has exposed us to too many heart wrenching stories not to find here parallels of male entitlement, coercion, and abuse. The Me Too movement has exposed too many stories to not find parallels in a man weaponizing power to gain gratification without paying heed of the consent or discomfort of the object of his desire. It is far too late in the day to try and soften the edges of this story, to euphemistically distract from its monstrosity, to rush to excuse, forgive, or forget. For to follow such a path does little to honour the past, and less to protect the future.
 
It is no accident that David’s actions recollect the warning issued to Israel when they demanded a king. A king, God forewarned, will take your sons to be his soldiers, your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king. The people were not put off, demanding a king so that we may be like other nations, and because (ironically enough) a king shall go out before us and fight our battles.  
 
I bring up this warning not to imply anyone in the story deserved their treatment, or that David should receive a pass since this is just what kings do. Israel’s desire to be like other nations represents a failure in their calling to be a people set apart to be a witness to the other nations. Far from longing to be a simulacrum of worldly nations, Israel’s call was to witness to what is possible when a people order their lives as subjects to the God of freedom. In just the same way, when the church longs for kings, we too fail to live up to our calling to be a community created and sustained by grace. When we seek to secure our identity and survival in individuals and systems of human power, we invariably lose our way as a people who follow a crucified messiah. When we long for a power that conforms to the way power is distributed and demonstrated in the world, then the vulnerable and marginalised in our community will invariable bear the harm that such power tends to yield. For the impulse to bestow sovereign authority and protect the reputation of leaders, clergy, or past pillars of the community lies beneath so much of the reprehensible abuse scandals that have caused irreparable harm to individuals, communities, and the church itself.
 
And so we ask, how do we avoid such an impulse? Avoid creating environments where all-too-worldly power might be given divine blessing to act without fear of opposition, refusal, or discovery? It is not as simple as willing. Israel asked for a king because they suffered under corruption from within and threats from without, they asked that they might secure their survival and flourishing in the land God promised. So too the church has longed for, empowered, and excused abuses of power because it has looked and quivered at its precarious place in the world as a pilgrim people, whose very life depends on the arrival of Christ and his sustaining grace. All this to say, if we’re going to resist the appeal of worldly power, it will not happen by accident, we must act to be rooted and grounded in love.
 
For it is only with deep roots in love, firmly grounded in the Spirit’s power, that we become secure enough in our calling as the church to resist the lure of worldly power. Too much harm has been hushed away because we feared the church was not strong enough to survive the scandal. But if we devote ourselves to the collective work of tending to roots and grounding ourselves in love, we might be able to trust that telling the truth about David, let alone the truth about those who have come after, will not bring us down but set us free.
 
The truth sets us free to place our trust and identity not in the corrupting power of mortals, but the generous life-giving power of God. This is why we gather and go. To tend to the roots and clear the ground we pray, we approach to the table of grace, we build up each other in love and good deeds, we visit each other and place our calls, we serve food and talk over morning tea, we set flowers and sing praises, we listen to scripture and hear the word proclaimed, and we go forth in grace to love and serve the world, to learn from others and form coalitions for the common good. And we do this (and much more) again and again and again because this is how roots grow deep. To ground ourselves in Christ’s love as the sole power which secures our identity and shapes our life cannot simply be decided (for the lure of worldly power is just too strong). It must instead be determinatively pursued together through spiritual practices, fellowship, and the work of justice, listening, and truth-telling. It is by this that our inner being will be strengthened with power through the Spirit, by this that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, by this we are filled with the fullness of God, and by this that we are rooted and grounded in love. 

Readings, Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27 and John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Image, Teresita Fernández, Fire, 2005. Silk yarn, steel armature, and epoxy.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.

Pentecost is regularly and rightly approached with vigour. Like Easter Sunday and Christmas, it is an exuberant high point of the Church year celebrating the coming of the Spirit and the birth of the Church. A time to give thanks for the plurality of cultures and tongues which proclaim the good news, take joy in the gifts given and fruit borne, and remember the in-breaking of the Spirit, which positively disrupts assumptions and boundaries, expanding the body of Christ into the world. We put on our red, play some upbeat songs, and listen to that familiar account of the rushing wind and tongues of fire.
 
But some years feel less exuberant, less suited to unreserved elevation. There are days where the wind feels less like a force billowing at our back, than something we are walking against. There are some years where we get to this day dismayed and disheartened by the evil in our world, the violence on the news, the loss in our communities, the fracturing in our families, and the heaviness of our heart. And on those days, we are compelled to ask, what does Pentecost mean in this kind of season, to this kind of moment?
 
And when we approach the day with those feelings at the forefront of our mind, little details begin to stand out where perhaps they didn’t before.
 
When you’re in a play and you study the script, not every emotional beat is laid out for each character. You have to look to the dialogue for the clues. If the character talking to you says something like, “no post today, my dear… oh don’t cry darling” it is a pretty clear sign that you need to have begun crying. In the same way, listening to our gospel reading, we get a sense of the feelings of the disciples gathered around Jesus for his farewell discourse. For as Jesus speaks of the coming of the Spirit and the impending hour of his death, he says, because I have said these things to you sorrow has filled your hearts. Then still, even having assured them that it is to your advantage that I go away, because it is this that allows the sending of the Spirit, he says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. The emotional setting in which the Spirit is promised, is one of sorrow, worry, and loss. The Spirit is promised as consolation, relief, and comfort for those who are facing the shattering of meaning, the loss of their dear teacher, and the coming hatred of the world.
 
Likewise in Romans, Paul situates the gift of the Spirit within the groaning of creation writhing in labour pains. By extension, the Spirit is sent to help us in our own groaning, waiting, and weakness. The Spirit is sent to those hanging on in hope, longing for the redemption of our bodies, placing our trust in the things unseen. Back when we had our little Lenten discussion group, we spoke about how the doctrine of sin is the only Christian doctrine that is empirically demonstrable. That is, sin is the only doctrine where you can just point at the world and say, look there it is. Sin and evil, wickedness and wretchedness, these are things that are seen (seen all too easily and too often). It is grace, hope, redemption, and the promise of restoration that are all too often the unseen. These are the things we doggedly hope for in faith. And because the ugly brutality of the world insists itself upon our vision, while the future glory can feel so elusive, we can so often come up short when searching for the words to pray. We fall silent when looking for the words of hope, thanks, and promise. But it is in these moments, Paul reminds us, that the Spirit draws nearest, nearer even than the distance between feeling to speech, interceding with sighs too deep for words opening our heart to God and the reminder of our purpose and glory.
 
With this we reach that famous reading in Acts and consider the feeling that comes over the disciples when the house fills with wind and fire. Or, perhaps more specifically we think of their breath. The Spirit is associated with breath and we might think immediately of the enlivening breath of the Spirit that carries the disciples out of the room generating this new and surprising speech in tongues previously unknown. But I wonder if the first breath that slips through the disciple’s lips when the Spirit stirs the house on the day of Pentecost was a sigh. That the first breath was a sigh of relief. For the arrival of the Spirit is the final vindicating stamp of all that Christ has promised. The arrival of the Spirit is the moment where so much that was unseen is seen and felt. When what was promised becomes present, where the pain of Jesus’ departure is not erased but met. Jesus was all that he said and showed himself to be, and he has remembered us in our need, and sent the one who will prove the world wrong about sin and judgment, who will teach us that even if all we see is the violence, injustice, bloodshed, and betrayal, that is not all there is. That which is seen does not define the world. For the world is held together by the unseen love of God, which permeates and sustains all things, and is the end of all things.
 
Such is the message of Pentecost for times such as these. Such is the hope of Pentecost for those of us wracked with worry and woe, the hope of all that groans out while waiting for redemption. The arrival of the Spirit might not feel like the rush of mighty wind or the blaze of tongues of fire. But it is no less real, necessary, or beautiful when it arrives as the sigh of relief that is uttered when we are reminded that we are not alone. Reminded that the world – though wracked with woe is not wrong. It is within the troubled turbulence of our times that the Spirit works to bear good fruit and draw us to glory. Pentecost can mean many things. One of those is the day where Christ - who has seen the sorrow of his friends - sends to them the one who will comfort and console through the trials to come, the one who intercedes in our weakness, drawing nearer than breath to help us see that which is unseen: the presence of God, the hope of redemption, the coming of peace, the love of Christ.

Readings, Acts 8:26-40 and 1 John 4:7-21
 Image, Phil Simon, Acrobats
 
Many will know well the contours of the narrative from Acts – the Spirit’s prompting, the uninterpreted scroll, the impromptu baptism – and each well serve the content of a sermon. However, I want to eschew those details and focus instead on what precedes this story, for this, I suggest, makes Philip’s boldness and care all the more moving.
 
When I last preached from Acts, three Sundays ago, everything was roses. The disciples met each day in Jerusalem to proclaim the good news, redistributing their wealth to ensure no one had any need. Since then, the disciples initiated the office of deacon to ensure that no one would slip through the cracks. Rosy days still. However, as quickly as this community is established a day of severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.
 
Philip is one of those scattered. Cut off from the geographical and ecclesial centre of the church; the encouragement and support of the other apostles and disciples. Undeterred, Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. One of the men who hear this proclamation was Simon (the former magician) who believed the good news and stayed constantly with Philip.
 
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. This must be a moment of some excitement and encouragement for Philip. Peter and John, who (along with James) have formed the inner circle of the new movement’s authority begin to lay hands on people, who receive the Holy Spirit. On seeing this, Simon (the former magician) approaches Peter and John offering to pay them for the power to bestow this remarkable spirit.
 
If you’ve ever had to vouch for someone’s good character or reliability before, or sponsored someone for membership in an organisation, you can imagine the embarrassment of this moment. Even if you’ve just brought a friend to a party only to overhear them saying something uncouth you can begin to feel what Philip might have felt in his skin. We imagine Philip would have introduced Simon with glowing praise – after all he had stayed constantly by Philip’s side – only to have Simon offensively miss the point right in front of the head honchos. It’s a real confidence blow to Philip’s career as disciple-maker. Could he be so inadequate at proclaiming the good news and interpreting the scriptures that one who was constantly at his side would think it appropriate to ask to buy the power of the Holy Spirit? Perhaps he is not ready to be out on his own, perhaps he should leave this to the “special ones” – the Johns and Peters of the movement…
 
Though if he has any doubts about his capacity or purpose, he does not let them triumph. For when an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up”… he got up and went. Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch, approaches his chariot, interprets the scriptures, and proclaims the good news. Then the Ethiopian says to Philip, Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised? What indeed! Well, Philip might have concerns: what if this man turns out to be like Simon? Should Philip wait for the authorities of Jerusalem to vet this candidate? Yet Philip agrees, nothing ought prevent the baptism and the two go down to the waters.
 
Despite any doubts Philip might be harbouring about his capacity as a disciple-maker, his clarity as one who proclaims good news, his insight as one who interprets the scriptures, or his shortcomings compared to Peter and John, none of this prevents the baptism. For Philip is a disciple of the risen Lord, he has received the great commission along with all the others. Philip abides in Christ and Christ abides in him, a branch of the true vine, called to love others so that God’s love might be perfected in him to the bearing of much good fruit.
 
Philip’s zeal for the Lord, his passion for proclaiming the good news, even his love for his fellow, none of this can control the future or snuff out the chances of being misinterpreted, misunderstood, or mystified at the choices of others. He knows not what will come from this newly baptised Christian (a point emphasised by his immediate snatching away by the Spirit of God). But he trusts that those who abide in Christ will bear much fruit. He trusts that perfect love casts out fear. He trusts that even if we haven’t seen God (and thus cannot know all of God’s will and plans) if we love one another God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us. And so Philip proclaims good news, loves his neighbour, and then turns the future over to God, who prunes the fruit-bearing branch so that it might bear more fruit.
 
I proposed at the beginning that what precedes this story makes Philip’s boldness and care more moving. Exactly how, depends on our own story. Perhaps we are moved to thanks for those who shaped our faith – those who told us the good news, helped us interpret the scriptures, and led us to the waters of baptism. Who did so amidst their own doubts and insecurities about being ready to answer every question and exegete every detail. Perhaps it emboldens us in our own calling to disciple-making, commission to love, and responsiveness to the prompting of the Spirit. An encouragement not to let our concerns triumph, nor our limitations curtail but rather to trust that the abiding presence of Christ bears fruit on even the humblest of branches. Or, finally, perhaps we are once again moved by the God who is love, who tells us to have no fear of judgment or punishment, but to live bold lives of love in the sure and certain hope that however far we are scattered from the centres of security and familiarity, nothing can separate us from the abiding love of Christ, who goes with and before us as we make disciples on the way.