Readings Isaiah 11: 1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12
Image, Joseph Stella, Tree, Cactus, Moon, ca. 1928. 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea. The wilderness held important religious significance for John’s people. It was in the wilderness they wandered the forty years between the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the Promised Land. The wilderness where the people grumbled and disobeyed, where the first generation who crossed out of Egypt were buried. At the same time, the wilderness was where the people were fed from God’s hand, led by God’s visible presence and for this reason the wilderness takes on ongoing symbolic power both as the place of nation’s trial and woe, of exile and loss, of God’s judgment and wrath, and as an inner place of trial, fallowness, and encounter.
 
So, what does it mean then, for John to appear in the wilderness? What does it mean for the people of Jerusalem and Judea to go out to him? Because if anything the wilderness is the antipathy to Jerusalem and Judea – the antithesis of these holy places. 
​

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 8:1-12 and Psalm 52
Image, Vincent van Gogh, “Olive Grove,” July 1889​

There’s an old axiom that a preacher should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Hardly an iron, or even golden, rule, but there are times, even when one does not set out to do so, that the news and the assigned reading happen to touch. This week one particular story overlapped so much with our reading from Amos that the Venn diagram is practically a circle. We’ll get to the story soon, let’s begin with Amos.
 
Last week, Amos was told to pack up and leave by the powers that be, this week we see what he has to say in response: The Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel.’ Hardly likely to reverse the prevailing antagonism being directed toward him.
 
Readings like these are part of a slew of texts which stress the sinfulness of economic exploitation and injustice. The word of the Lord given to Amos rails against those who trample the poor and treat the Sabbath and holy festivals as inconveniences delaying their profiteering off their neighbour. When, they ask, can we go back to practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat. The exploitative nature of these practices is evident – placing a thumb on the scale to increase price and profit, trapping the poor and vulnerable in cycles of debt, issuing dangerous loans to those without basic necessities, selling that which God’s law stipulates is meant to be left for the vulnerable. The Lord promises that these deeds shall not be forgotten, and God’s wrath shall be swift and severe: I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.
 
Today’s psalm also looks forward to a great upturning where those who performed mischief against the godly, trusted in abundant riches, and sought refuge in wealth will be broken down for ever, snatched from their tent, and uprooted from the land of the living.
 
The vehemence of these condemnations is due to the fact that these violations of the poor, this exploitation of the needy, this rank profiteering is a gross abnegation of what it means to be the people of God. God’s people are set apart to serve as an example to the nations, a witness to the nature of God, a testament to the possibility and beauty of another way to be in the world. From the beginning, when Israel is shepherded safely across the Nile, they are called to be different to the empire which had enslaved and exploited them. As the fourth commandment declares in instituting the Sabbath, Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. The Sabbath is placed in contrast with exploitative earthly economics which work people, animals, and land without rest. It is the same with the laws of Jubilee, which decree that every seventh year the land must be allowed to rest, that land sold because of economic trouble, should be returned to those who sold it, and that those who had to sell themselves into slavery are set free. In this way the laws of Sabbath and Jubilee, like the broader laws around the care of orphans, widows, and foreigners, are aimed to stress that economic exploitation and injustice which cause perpetual inequality and indenture are anathema to the Lord. In contrast, the Lord requires justice, mercy, and kindness, desiring a people determined not to let struggle and bad luck entrench generational divides of haves and have nots, free and unfree, rich and poor. In short, a people who do not seek refuge in money, but trust in the steadfast love of God. It is the dire gap between the people as they should be and as they have been that provokes the judgment of God delivered by the prophet Amos.
 
Now to the promised stories. Which are also a situation where in the realm of economic justice the has comes up despairingly short of the should. SBS News reported on a recent study of nearly 3000 workers under the age of 30. The study found one-third recorded been underpaid by their employers (some are being paid $10 less than the minimum wage), 1/3rd were found to have not been paid their compulsory super and the same number had been banned from taking entitled breaks. As alarming as this sounds, the researchers are confident that these numbers underreport the issue, as many, many more simply do not know or understand that they are being exploited or underpaid.
 
Another story reported the expansion of the AfterPay app and the intention to make it as widely available as card payments. Debt support groups have expressed alarm and concern, that such ease (especially when used to purchase every day, basic necessities) dramatically increases the risk of already vulnerable people getting trapped in debt spirals.
 
Another story recorded on once more that not only is the current gap between rich and poor the widest in history, but the gap between rich and “comfortable” is so ludicrously large we cannot even fathom the maths required to comprehend it. For instance, let’s say tomorrow when you awoke, I gave you $150million. Pretty sweet deal and likely enough to get everything you ever wanted or needed. And then the next day you wake up and I give you $150m again, okay, still sweet, now you can likely get everything all your loved ones ever wanted or needed. Ok, the next day, 150m again, look now you can buy a sports car and a house for everyone working at your favourite ten cafes. Another day, another 150m, now you can give handsomely to all the charities that mean a lot to you and become an esteemed patron of the arts. Another day… now don’t tire on me yet, we’re not even out of the first week! Imagine this goes on and on, every morning for a year. Do you know what you have at the end of this year, after receiving 150m a day for 365 days, what your refuge of wealth will have amounted to? ¼ of the net worth of the world’s richest man.
 
So perhaps it’s better to focus back on that SBS article: the little infringements, the small thefts of wages, which are hardly insignificant in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. But one of the troubles we face when we consider our response is that, in contrast to Amos, we are not speaking to or about the people of God. That is to say, we cannot presume to say, hey this is wrong because our God loves justice. We cannot presume to say, if we do not fix our ways, the songs of the temple shall become wailing. Because that might have meant something to Amos’ audience (though perhaps not enough) but it means little to less now.
 
It is interesting then, to consider exactly what God says shall befall Israel for its wanton disregard of the commands for economic fairness and integrity: The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. This is the cataclysm that is coming, this will be the result of all that false piety. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
 
Could this have befallen our own day? Could such inequality, injustice, and rank ignoring of systemic jubilee, be the result of a famine of hearing the word of God? Could it be that so few who see the state of the world are moved to act is because the words of prophet and psalmist have fallen on closed ears? That these stories can be frowned upon without the fear of God, could this be in part the result of a famine of hearing the words of the Lord?
 
If this could be the case then what is needed is what the psalmist describes: people rooted like a green olive tree in the house of God; ready to laugh at the evildoer and trust in the steadfast love of God. That is to say, what is needed are those who live not on bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of our Lord. Those able to see the mockery of God in the tipping of scales, the stealing of wages, and the building up of storehouses so monumental they make the tower of Babel seem a miniature made for model train set. Perhaps one way through is for people rooted in God’s word and love to speak, like Amos, the word of righteous judgment against the sins of exploitation and inequity.
 
But importantly, this people, being rooted in God’s word and God’s love, fed on scripture and song, must offer more than just critique. The point of a people of God is to be an alternative, to embody possibility. The people of God are set apart to witness, to be a testament to what is possible when rooted in God’s house, God’s word, God’s love. To show what can happen when we commit to living the way of justice, mercy, and kindness, where our way of relating to people, creation, and wealth is not one of competition, acquisition, and surplus, but is grounded on rest, peace, wholeness, community, and abundance of life.
 
The call placed upon us as the church, as a people set apart, is to glorify God and serve the world by being a living example of what can be possible when rest, mutuality, jubilee, justice, and neighbourliness, shape the ordering of our days together. What we owe to the world is a commitment to this vision, possibility, and calling. And we sustain this commitment by being rooted in the house of God so we shall never hunger or thirst for God’s word. It won’t solve everything, and we can’t do it alone, but the wider results of such witness are almost secondary. Because first and foremost such a commitment is one which keeps us from being uprooted by the winds of worldly allure, by grounding us in the house of God where in the presence of the faithful we proclaim the Holy Name, for it is good.  

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, Nehemiah 8:1-12 and 1 Cor 12:12-26
Image, William H. Johnson, Harlem Street with Church, ca. 1939-1940, 

If you think of your car, there’s probably three essential things you want it to do: steer, accelerate, and brake. Sure, it’s nice if it does other things, but if you have those three you’re a long way toward ‘car.’ Same with a fridge, you want it to open, close, and stay cold. Other fancy add-ons might be appreciated, but if it does those three, you have what can fairly be described as a fridge. Phones are trickier, because you want it to make calls and send messages, but the most important third thing is open to debate… from ads it would seem the camera, from my experience, maps.
​
When we come to the church, the body of Christ, I’m sure there’s a lot of ways you might parse the essential three things. The reformers often trimmed the definition of the church to the place where the word was rightly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered… so that’s two, maybe you add something about works of mercy. But thinking to yourself, if there were only three essential things the church could do, what would you want them to be? Of course, like air conditioning in your car, we all want the extras… but as an exercise (because I promise I’m not going to hold you to anything or use this as some mandate to rip down walls or rearrange furniture) what three things do you think are essential?
I’m going to offer three things drawn from our readings today. I’m not claiming they are set in stone, but you can make a fair argument for them. The three are: to rejoice with those who rejoice (and weep with those who weep), to honour the “inferior” members of the body, and to gather to hear the good news of God’s promises proclaimed and interpreted. 

The passage in Nehemiah recounts the experience of those who have returned from the Babylonian exile. Having begun to rebuild the city, they gather to hear proclaimed the story of God’s creation, covenant, and care and to have it interpreted in their midst. So overwhelmed are they by the beauty of what they hear, how this message of their worth and God’s love defies the experience of ruinous exile and occupation, that the people weep. But weep not, they are told, for this is a holy and joyful day – instead they are charged to rejoice: eat, drink and send portions for those who have nothing prepared. 

Like Kookaburra song waking the day, the proclamation and interpretation of God’s word is felt deeply and viscerally by those whose souls have waited for morning. Like the sound of running waters to a weary traveller, the sound of the torah poured out upon those who have suffered and yearned, leads to great rejoicing. But vitally, if the rejoicing is to mean anything it cannot be confined only to those with means to rejoice. Portions must be sent, tables extended, because if the people of God suffered exile together then they shall celebrate their return together. If the church is to be the body of Christ, a people who feel and respond to God’s word, we cannot go about like emotional islands. The body is one: the foot ought not tap a happy tune while the hand writhes in a vice. As Paul writes, If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. This trait can set the church in contradiction to so much else, the willingness to change pace, to change tact, and move together. To be attentive and flexible enough to share burdens and joys together – to allow ourselves to be presumed upon by each other. We share in lows and highs together to make the former more bearable, and the latter more wondrous. 

But there is an additional emphasis. Both the Nehemiah reading and Paul’s letter stress the responsibility the body has to the weaker members, to those who do not have portions prepared, to those who in another kind of group or the wider society might be discarded or ignored as having little to offer. Paul writes, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect. God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member. We are not solely a people who share burdens and joys, but take efforts to ensure that the seemingly weaker members are honoured, respected, and entrusted with wisdom and responsibility. Those who in other places might be presumed too old, disabled, uneducated, or accented to meaningfully contribute to and shape the body are not only not to be disregarded, but we let the pendulum swing the other way and give them greater honour and respect. For in this we recognise the words of Christ who called the poor blessed, who entrusted the witness of the resurrection to the women, who identified himself with the imprisoned, the naked, the hungry, and the stranger.

The church can and ought to be known by a lot of things. But if there be only three could it not be a people who in yearning and hope gather together to hear the word proclaimed, who share one another’s burdens and joys, and who give honour and respect to those the world might treat as weak and dispensable. If we can do this, we will not only bring glory to God (by whose word we are made), but witness to Christ (whose body we are).

And if we can do this, we will also offer our neighbours something dazzling. A community in which you are valued, a movement in which you find meaning, a story in which you find hope. Value, meaning, and hope might be found in various places, but too often they are in short supply. We’ve seen, time and again, the vulnerable of our society, its so-called weaker or less honourable members, dismissed, denigrated, hidden from view, and asked to keep quiet. The elderly, the young, the migrant, the unemployed, the renter, the disabled, the Indigenous, the unhoused, the mentally ill, the victimised are regularly mistreated, suspected, exploited, disrespected, patronised, and minimised by our world which seems determined to pour out its honour on those already thought honourable, respect on those already deemed respectable, bestow responsibility on those appearing responsible. Hands and feet told there is no need for them, asked to simply be grateful for not being cut off entirely. Pushed further into the quiet of society’s hidden corners. Denied the opportunity to define and pursue lives of value, meaning, and hope.  

When we take seriously our calling as the body of Christ we offer a vibrant alternative to those who have experienced this kind of dismissal, an alternative for those of dashed hopes, muffled voices, and lone journeys. When we grab hold of these three markers of our churchly life together, allowing the Spirit’s gifts to flow freely amongst us, tending to one another in times of lamentation and jubilation, ensuring that those easily missed are highly prized, and opening our hearts to the good news of God’s love and our worth, then we shall see, find, and share value, meaning, and hope – three essentials to an abundant life.

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, 2 Samuel 11:26–12:13a and Ephesians 4:1-16
Image, Nathan's parable of the ewe lamb (1965-1968), Oskar Kokoschka

We pick up, in Samuel, where we left off last week. There attended to David’s abuse of Bathsheba and assassination of Uriah; actions predicated on the assumption that David was able to act not only with impunity, but without discovery. And yet, as the Johnny Cash song tells, You can run on for a long time, But sooner or later God will cut you down
 
The thing David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. Nathan, perhaps considering the most effective tactic of confrontation, weaves a fable and David walks into its moral trap. You are the man! Nathan declares when David’s outrage reaches its boiling point over a stolen lamb. It is satisfying to see David condemn himself for the evil he has performed, and yet, it is not enough that David’s conscious should be pricked, or that he buckle under the weight of guilt. For the harms done cannot be undone; and surely blood calls out for blood.
 
Thus sayeth the Lord: the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife… I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
 
Last week I drew the comparison between the unbridled villainy of the actions of King David and those of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Here, keeping with literary allusions, the punishment allotted by God rivals the poetic, ironic twists of a Greek Tragedy. For the very crimes David thought he hid, shall be reversed upon him in the light of day – and all shall see the displeasure of the Lord poured forth upon the king.
 
David, struck by fear and guilt, exclaims in confession: I have sinned against the Lord! This is where the lectionary ends the reading. Punctuating the story with David’s admission of guilt, and desperate plea that the judgment of the Lord might be lifted off his house. If we end the reading here, accompanied as it is with the psalm of confession attributed to David, a certain selection of avenues for proclamation and the lessons open before us. Consolation in the nature of God who does not excuse the sins of kings, commendation of the prophet speaking truth to power, remembering the importance of confession and hope of restoration.
 
But while this is where the lectionary cuts off, this is hardly where the story ends. For if we read on beyond David’s cry of confession, Nathan responds: Now the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.” David’s own life is spared, his humiliation and downfall averted, and yet, the Lord was scorned, and so the child born of David’s transgression will perish. The child becomes ill by the hand of the Lord. David fasts and weeps, pleads and prays, but the Lord hath spoken, and the child dies.
 
Then David rose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. He went into the house of the Lord, and worshiped; he then went to his own house; and when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the child died, you rose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” Then David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, and he named him Solomon. The Lord loved him.
 
Here, is where the story ends. And how, we might wonder, does this change the way the word is proclaimed, and the lessons we learn?
 
In this telling, the story centres something of a council, where, God’s prophet meets with God’s king to deliver God’s judgment. The punishment is adjusted upon David’s contrition, and is accepted by David as lamentable, but justified. And yet, who is not in this council? For the child might be born of David’s sin but he came from Bathsheba’s womb. The reading pays no attention to her feeling. Is she even aware the sudden illness which strikes life from her child has come from God to punish the crime committed against her and her husband? Nor is there any consideration of the child himself, as one knitted together by God in his mother’s innermost parts. Indeed, the narrator seems to present the death of the child and the subsequent birth of Solomon as a resolution; a fresh, clean, new beginning. The child born of sin is dispensed (and with it any residue of David’s transgression), which paves the way for a child who the Lord might love. In this story all things orbit David and God; their actions and feelings the only ones considered both in the crime and its punishment. As David himself makes clear, he has sinned against God alone.
 
We are left, again, with a pretty dire image of King David (but that’s not too troubling, since we reached the same last week). More troubling is this image of God who took the child because God had been scorned by David’s deed. If last week, the story of David provided a chance to lament and learn from the ways the church has longed for kings and excused and legitimatised the abuses of its all-too-worldly leaders, then this week we might also learn from and lament the times our church and society has modelled its image of crime and punishment in such retributive binaries. When we have believed blood cries out for blood, prioritising punishment of the individual over the health of the community. The story as we read it, affords us a chance to learn from and lament the times in which violence against women has been “addressed” by men coming together to punish the defilement of their honour, rather than considering what justice would mean for the victim-survivor.
 
These are not insignificant lessons, for they reflect the stress of the Ephesians reading where unity of the body of Christ is known through a democratic appreciation of the whole. For the church is not marked and defined by the privileged few, but there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Each have been given a gift, which, while differing in detail does not differ in value. All gifts belong to Christ and each is given to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. We cannot function and flourish as the body of Christ while those whose voice (so often written out of our scriptures and traditions) remains silenced in the church.
 
This is part of why the Uniting Church holds that all people, regardless of gender, sexuality, culture, or language are fit to be ordained, preside over the table, proclaim the word, and sit on its councils. For baptism is the all-inclusive sacrament by which we are initiated into the church in the name of Christ. The church is the whole people of God, who are brought through the waters of new life in Christ, sustained on the way by Christ’s body and blood. The body is formed by no less than this whole people, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped. And when each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. It is for this reason we practice consensus decision making as the church, and for this reason we seek to be governed by non-hierarchical councils. These steps represent the yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
 
And, finally, as the people of God considering the full story from Samuel and the reading we heard from Ephesians, we are reminded again that the Uniting Church lays upon all its members (not just those who preach) the serious duty of reading Scripture. Readings like ours today ask for such seriousness. Part of what it means to read scripture seriously is the requirement to consider images of God set one against another. To reflect on the differing (sometimes divergent) imagery, language, and teaching in the Bible. To locate them amidst their cultural worldview and, considering our own, search out and prize those images which herald good news. Now this is not simply an Old Testament vs New Testament dichotomy. All parts of scripture can proclaim the truth in love, and all are capable of reflecting cultural captivity and human limitation. Here, today, the serious duty of reading scripture asks us to consider which image of God best reflects what we love when we love our God. Is it the one who takes the innocent child of a father’s sin, or the one who takes captive captivity itself? It is not that there aren’t truths of God and the world found in both, as we have seen already. But we might confess that one proves a firmer foundation for the church’s doctrine, one more richly teaches the truth in love, one better helps us grow up in every way into Christ. It is through this serious reading that we are drawn, not only nearer our God to thee, but to those in our communities whose place in the story, whose value in the body, has been diminished, denigrated, forgotten, or forsaken. For it is here that our efforts to maintain the unity of the Spirit and bond of peace most reflect the one who descended even into the low parts of the earth so that all shall know the freedom and gifts of God.