This is what [the Lord God] showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” [The Prophet Amos 7.7-9]

I have noted previously there are biblical stories about which people have already made up their minds. These are usually well-known, like Easter and Christmas, or tales of prodigal sons. Preaching on these is like cracking concrete, as opinions – often well-considered ones – have been formed. New reflections do not penetrate easily.

Thus, this week’s gospel reading, about a Jew who is assaulted and left for dead in a dangerous neighbourhood. Two Jewish leaders, who we would expect to offer help, move swiftly aside. A little later, a man from the Palestinian West Bank, stops; he dresses the victim’s wounds, and carries him to the nearest accommodation, paying the bill.

This story has a context; Jesus has been asked what must be done to inherit eternal life. Jesus takes a plumb line and measures our lives against the commands of the Law. “Love God with everything we have, and our neighbour as ourselves”.

Tell me, who is my neighbour?

Jesus, a faithful Jew, is debating one who serves the Law faithfully and, it appears, has come equally faithfully seeking an answer. Thus, like many good lawyers and rabbis, Jesus turns the question around; who behaved as a neighbour for the victimised man?

The measure of the answer is mercy. A plumb line indeed.

There is a crisis in the Middle East, which could be a headline from any time in the last six decades, and longer. Stepping out this history can lead to despair. As with so many social and historical crises with which we live, the simple answers, some of which emerge from the school playground as much as the United Nations, are commonplace.

We cannot speak about the horrors of the Hamas attack on 7^th October 2023, or the appalling reprisals engineered by the Israeli Government as if there is no larger history of fear and violence, pogrom and persecution, threat and retaliation.

Youth workers have, for generations, tried to find a contextual parable to match that of the Jewish victim, the negligent clergy and the merciful outsider. There is no need to look too far distant; Jesus’ parable is crying out for enactment on his front lawn.

At the root of the Gaza horror story lies Jesus’ parable, and Amos’ prophecy almost eight hundred years before Jesus spoke. Amos offers a polemic against those who trample the needy and bring ruin upon the poor, who bargain deceitfully and shackle in debt those who will never find a way out.

There is a reason that this is the most famous of Jesus’ parables. It is a radical departure from how we commonly act – retaliation and reprisal. Blame. Excuses.

A South American theologian argues that the reason the Samaritan stops is because he knows the danger on this road; he has been assaulted here before. And no one stopped to help.

Jesus’ words are, as always, a radical departure from our standard response. God expects more of us. The God of Amos, of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, expects more. And I risk myself by assuming that an equal demand is made by the God of those who are descendants by faith of Ishmael.

I am neither sufficiently naïve, nor foolish, to assume that my words will affect any action in Gaza. I will be audacious enough, however, to hope that they may affect how we pray, how we debate and how we act in mercy toward our neighbours, our family, in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Who acted as a neighbour? The one who showed mercy.
Jesus said, Go and do likewise.

“Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.”  [Luke’s Gospel 10.3-6]

You must always bring something with you, when you visit someone’s home. It’s common courtesy, or so we were told when we were children. Cake, or biscuits, even from the shop; a bottle of wine if it’s evening. You don’t go empty-handed, it’s just rude.

That’s one of the first memories that springs to my mind when I read this passage, the idea that you appear at someone’s front door, hoping to go in, and your hands are empty.

This passage takes us even deeper; this is not about afternoon tea, it’s about staying with people, imposing on their hospitality until the job is done. Whenever that is. We are hoping for a welcome, and one that lasts beyond the kettle cooling.

Even if we take into account the Middle Eastern culture of hospitality, and the inherent obligations to the neighbour and the stranger, this is a significant challenge. We are carrying nothing.  

We have no money, no footwear, no protection, no bags for the clothes we are not carrying.  Nothing.

Consider the planning meeting for the new church plant, for the new faith community   we hope to grow in our neighbourhood. First step of the Action Plan: we arrive at someone’s door, expecting food, drink, perhaps a change of clothes and some money for an Uber.

Consider the Mission Consultant (deserving of capitalisation) who outlays no cash for the proposal, not a smidgen of financial planning, and tells us all we need to carry with us is the Blessing of Peace, and the proclamation, “The reign of God has come near to you”. In your hands are healing, for those communities in which you receive a welcome.

(Might we have some training, please? When we last tried to heal a child, we under-performed…)

What does it mean to arrive in a community, disarmed entirely? When we have no resources – material, financial – behind which to shelter, we can feel exposed. And we are.

In the astonishing Old Testament story about Naaman’s healing (II Kings 5), Elisha’s messenger tells the military commander that he needs to dip himself in the Jordan seven times and everything will be fine. What? No bells and whistles? No drama and theatrics? Nothing?

Just barefoot, no sandals, no staff, no cash required?

With all the resources at our fingertips, we find it difficult to imagine that the only resources required are the mercy of God, our story and our selves.

This is not a romantic allusion to poverty, to the honour of having nothing. It is an assertion of how God is at work in the world, through us and, frequently, despite us.

We take with us a blessing and a story, the story of our experience with Christ, and what that means for us. The story we need to bring is unadorned, unromantic and as tangible as our handshake. We share hospitality, because conversations happen more easily over a percolator and a pikelet.

We never impose the gospel, but offer it, as a cup of tea is offered. It can be received, or refused, but the gift endures – and may well be offered again.

Material resources for our participation for God’s mission are – at best – the next step, when people have offered blessing, and hold each other’s tale reverently in their hands.

Our world is consumed with those who would impose their will, their violence upon others, with any number of excuses and rationales. Jesus has always chosen a different course, and calls us to the same. 

When we consider how we might offer a blessing to our friend, our neighbour, even our enemy, remember that we bring with us an encounter with the reign of God in the world. This is God’s astounding mercy – for us, and for those to whom  we offer ourselves,  woven into the story of God, at work in the world for which Christ died.

On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.                          [Luke’s Gospel 9.52-56]

A few brief moments ago, Jesus has held a small child in the midst of those who gathered around him. He has spoken of the least being the greatest, and how welcoming those on the edge is the same as welcoming Jesus himself.

A child? Really? This is nonsense. Let us talk of many (more important) things, of transfiguration, and healing, and radical reform.

In our impatience for what we know the reign of God should look like – it’s included in our mission plan, after all – we ride roughshod over those who reside at the heart of the gospel.

In their own impatience and self-importance, James and John, “sons of thunder”, imagine themselves able to blast swathes of destruction through a rural community which is unable to comprehend Jesus’ vocation, and determined path.

This tension between Samaritans and Jews reverberates through the community and the gospels, surfacing shortly in the most famous parable of all, astonishing all who hear – then and now.

Leaving aside the capacity of the two brothers to command the lightning, why is this their first response? Why pronounce this astounding violence upon a community which, Luke tells us, cannot comprehend Jesus’ calling? Even if there is a malign intent in the Samaritans’ refusal to offer hospitality, why do these disciples of Jesus think a holocaust is the best response?

What aspect of Jesus’ ministry leads them in this path?

We look askance at James and John, and then notice ourselves, and the images of those around us, and the consequences for the world in which we live.

We read these words as nation after nation have cyclonic violence at their fingertips. The ability to inflict catastrophe assumes the character of a video game. Leaders gloat about the destruction they have wrought on those they deem “enemy”. Social media posts have the appearance of football scores as drones fly and bombs fall.

I imagine there is a carcinogenic industry betting on outcomes, with vast amounts of money changing hands. As if the stock market isn’t amoral enough.

Perhaps this is possible (permissible?) because we avoid seeing the faces of the children, and the families and the communities. We can call down hellfire because we anonymise those who receive our judgment, so that they become someone other than who “we” are – Samaritans, or Palestinians, or Israelis, or Ukrainians. Or atheists. Or simply them.

Jesus offers two extraordinary responses, one of which is immediate. Jesus turns and rebukes the brothers’ desire for self-righteous violence. The uncompromising call to discipleship which Jesus makes is flavoured by this very encounter; discipleship always comes on Jesus’ terms, never our own.

The second response is Jesus’ parable of the Samaritan, whose response to an enemy’s suffering is not disregard, or to seek his own advantage, but to serve at cost and risk to himself, at every level.

What if this was our primary response; that the mark of our adherence to Jesus was to serve at cost to ourselves? Jesus challenges us not just to love those who love us, but to love each neighbour and our enemy. We are called to understand the depth of what it means to follow him; it is costly and rigorous, and life-giving.

In a world which reflexively seeks to punish, we are called to bless, and heal. In our world, where those in power inflict suffering, most often upon the least and last, we offer embrace and not punishment.

We act to offer life, because we have been offered this same hope in the death, and life of Jesus.

Birthdays and anniversaries are a matter of perspective.

When I was twenty-one, part of celebrating my birthday was to consider the adult I was (hopefully) becoming, and the journey unfolding before me; there were promising comments about aspects of my developing character, and where my path might take me.

When, more recently, I turned sixty, people affirmed the journey we had walked together, in various stanzas. There was a strong sense of established character – for good and otherwise – and the resources I had with me for the journey yet to come. Part of the celebration was acknowledging where I had been, as well as the future.

They give praise for God’s gifts of grace to each of them in years past;
they acknowledge that none of them has responded to God’s love with a full obedience;
they look for a continuing renewal in which God will use
their common worship, witness and service to set forth the word of salvation for all people.

Looking over our shoulders at what has been is a labyrinth into which many of us wander, and we can be lost there. The lure of what we remember, the scent of nostalgia, can be deceptive, inviting us to live when “things were better”.

Then, rather than looking over our shoulders, we turn and face the past, deciding that is where we want to live. Nostalgia becomes narcotic; things are only right when they look and feel like they did then.

There are disciples in every faith tradition, every congregation, who wish things hadn’t changed, or that everything could return to how they remember things feeling at that best moment. That is not our vocation.

Our Uniting Church, being a younger faith community than many others, has an affection for our anniversary, as we wind our way to the half-century. We have the mixed blessing that many of us remember our beginning, whereas our celebration of the Council of Nicaea – 1700 years this year – encounters different, and more diverse, reflections.

My grandfather was one of those keepers of the gate as the Uniting Church was formed in the fifties, sixties and seventies. However, his model of gatekeeping, like so many of our grandmothers and grandfathers, was to open and unlock as many of the gates as possible so that the uniting churches would be formed for the current times and the future, and not only be shaped by the past.

To this end they declare their readiness to go forward together
in sole loyalty to Christ the living Head of the Church;
they remain open to constant reform under his Word;
and they seek a wider unity in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Across the Church, we have become easily enticed by orderliness and structure, by measurable mission outcomes and risk registers, by loyalty to our benefactors, and thus reinterpreting, or even eschewing, our discipleship to Christ.

We endlessly plan and reflect, when we know where our birthright and our future truly reside. On occasion we even look for excuses, or escape clauses when we mis-speak of mission, or theology, rather than the rigour and wonder from which those terms arise, and into which they lead us. 

To whom does our Church belong, in its multiple sizes and shapes? Is it to all those faithful people who have worshipped and witnessed and served over the life, and previous lives, of our Uniting Church?

Not for a moment. We belong to Christ.

The Basis of Union reminds us that we do not belong to history, we do not belong to our past, we do not belong to Scripture; we are Christ’s, entirely. It is in Christ we know ourselves, and the future into which Christ calls us.

In entering into this union the Churches concerned are mindful that the Church of God
is committed to serve the world for which Christ died,
and that it awaits with hope the day of the Lord Jesus Christ
on which it will be clear that the kingdom of this world
has become the kingdom of our Lord and of the Christ, who shall reign for ever and ever.

Blessings for our years ahead, under Christ.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. [John’s Gospel 14.15-17]

There is a conversation in one of my favourite books of fantasy, first read in late childhood, and many times since. At the crux of the story, at the frontiers of death, the hero meets the anti-hero; they engage in a battle, at several levels, but first simply in identity.

What is life? Power.

What is love? Power.

What is light? Darkness.

What is your name? Where is the truth of you? … You have forgotten much, you have forgotten light, and love, and your own name.

Jesus has arrived at the crux of his life, washing the feet of his disciples and sharing a meal with them, knowing that one he serves will betray him in a few heartbeats’ time, another will deny him, and the rest abscond in fear.

Here is the truth at the heart of Jesus, that despite betrayal and denial and cowardice, he loves and serves, remaining faithful.

Right now, as always throughout history, despots from right and left are seeking to reconfigure truth to serve themselves. War is peace. Love is power. Darkness is light. Control is service. Lies are truth.

How easily we forget what these words mean. How tired we become with unrest, or protest, and move to silence and even resignation, then compliance. And our memories lapse.

Like scripture, anyone can quote Orwell to their own ends, but that is not this conversation. There is enough written and spoken about the tyrants of this generation, if we wish to find it.

I would like us to look elsewhere, at some of what Jesus has said, these few words in the moments before he steps towards the cross.

The measure of our obedience to Jesus is neither subservience nor fear. It is love. Our discernment of truth, engendered by this Spirit, this breath of God, is determined at the gauge of love.

These words of Jesus, as I mentioned above, are in the context of his friends’ betrayal and denial, not the security of a monarch, unassailable. They are not found in a theology which defines itself in convenience and safety, whispering comfort in the ears of the one who holds power, however ephemeral. They are spoken to remind us of what we have forgotten; where life and truth and love are truly found, where forgiveness is the gift we embody.

The glory of God in Jesus Christ is discerned on the cross, first and forever. There is the truth of God, to which the Spirit bears witness, and into which we are led. The truth of God, where sacrifice for our broken world, and solidarity with our woundedness are how God in Christ entirely comes, and addresses, each of us and all creation.

In a world, in a community, in a Church, which too easily forget, how shall we bear this witness? How shall we speak when the songs have been laid aside and the words misremembered?

There is cacophony in which we live and move, in which we must find our way and encourage people – each other – to remember. However, it is not in our hands.

We rely on the breath of this Spirit, who urges and guides, who advocates, who enables us to remember both our calling and the One who calls us.

Dare we inhale?

I am like a flag in the centre of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.
I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their head,
The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? … in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” [Acts of the Apostles 2.5-13]

This moment of ignition for Christ’s disciples, often proclaimed in a more genteel manner as the Church’s birthday, will be celebrated around the world in the coming week.

There will be conversations with children in worship about wind and fire, with some risky experiments from lay scientists and engineers, attempting to create a moment which will (hopefully!) “command attention and awaken faith”. Candles, cakes and red material will abound as congregations acknowledge the story which sparked our Church’s purpose.

In the story, gathered disciples, wrapped in wind and baptised by flame, begin to speak in a plethora of languages, into a marketplace filled with people from across the known world. The story of God is proclaimed and the crowd astonished. They hear Peter preach the gospel and they come to faith in great numbers.

I ask your indulgence to consider a further wonder. Is it possible that in our obsession with utterance – preaching and podcasts and pundits and pronouncements – that we miss the anointing of the Spirit upon those who hear, those who listen to what is said? Does the wind simply anoint the speakers, or are the listeners similarly blessed?

I ask, because I remain unconvinced about our (my) capacity to pay attention to those whose voices need to be heard. We are quick to speak, to offer an opinion, to establish ourselves; how willing are we to shut up and listen?

What does it mean for disciples of Christ to attend to those whose voices are traditionally silenced, or ignored, those whose voices are simply not loud enough above the surrounding cacophony? What about those voices with which we simply cannot be bothered?

He is sitting at the pool, waiting for an opportunity for healing; she is tarnished with the name unclean, desperate enough for life that she finds her way through the crowd. He sits at the gate each day, as the rich man steps over him, unwilling even to offer a crust. She visits the well in the midday heat, condemned to isolation by a label too easily assigned.

Jesus finds them, and they discover him, and life.

He dies in a supermarket, with no explanation as to how being subdued by police extinguished his life. No explanation necessary, apparently, no voice at all. Nothing to see or hear, here. No attention paid to a life less valuable, and too easily silenced.

Pentecost always follows closely on National Reconciliation Week, which is, for me, both a blessing and a reminder of my calling. I was deeply saddened when we voted to silence The Voice last year, as an indication from so many that we have little desire to listen to the voices of our First Peoples, to pay attention to what they need to say – to us.

Many of us felt willing to offer an opinion on the lives of our sisters and brothers, to comment on their circumstances, or their future, but neglected to attend to any story they might tell. There is always the sneering, cynical voice from one corner of the room, suggesting there is nothing worth hearing, that “they are filled with new wine”.  

However, if we listen, what might we hear? What deep wisdom, or challenge, or forgiveness? What might we need to change, to heal, or what injustice to address, or relationship to build, or grief to share at what we have failed together to achieve?

What if the breath of the Spirit is calling us to attend to those who are first in our nation’s story, yet to whom we have so frequently allocated the last place? What if we hear young women and men prophesy, and elders dream dreams of life?

Dare we ask the Spirit of the risen, crucified One to move in our Church?

Say your life had crumbled
with its wonder.
Say
that you had opened
to the spring wind, all of you
resounding with its power.
Say the days
had changed you
into this.

Listen, now. Unbroken choirs
are silent.

Lie down
like these old stones in the darkness.

I promise you
your life is not in ruins.

And if it is,
if all of you is ruined,
listen
to the cold wind in the open.

The truest
and most beautiful part of you
is the ruins through which mystery can sing.

The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.  Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.  About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.                               [Acts of the Apostles 16.22-25]

A young Warlpiri man, arrested in an Alice Springs supermarket for shoplifting, dies in police custody a few hours later. The authorities “pass on their condolences”.

A Palestinian doctor learns that eight of her nine children were murdered by an Israeli airstrike hitting their home. The Israeli Defence Force is “investigating the incident”.

Two Jewish men, Paul and Silas, in Philippi, a Greek city under Roman rule, set a woman free from spiritual – and perhaps physical – slavery. They are arrested, stripped, beaten, shackled and imprisoned.

So, they pray, and sing praises to God.

What faith is this, which sings God’s praise in the darkest cell? What hope is this, which holds when the wounds from our beating are still fresh and our feet are chained?

This has not been an easy week for our Congregation. People we love have died; even as we are thankful for their gifts to us, we grieve their deaths, and our sense of loss. We will care for their families, and for ourselves. Our faith in Jesus, embroidered in our prayers, in our singing and our action, will help us find our way.

I am not sure what capacity for faith the young man’s mother, and grandmother must have in Yuendumu, when the police release his broken body to them. What song might they sing, apart from mourning?

What primal sounds will an Arab mother make at the death of her children? What song, guttural, or ululation, will she raise, if she is able to make any sound at all? I cannot imagine such loss, and the anaesthetising grief with which it is accompanied.

Songs of mourning I begin to comprehend. The communities of Gaza and Yuendumu – amongst many others, now and throughout history – have become accustomed to unjust, sudden death. The “sorry business” journeys of our First Nations communities can sometimes seem almost interminable, as is the generational trauma in which the Palestinians find themselves.

Disciples of Jesus know what it is to sing hope, and praise. When we gather for worship, we remind ourselves of who we are and the One to whom we offer our worship, witness and service.

Do we know what it is to sing defiance and prophecy, to proclaim protest in our song? When Paul and Silas “sang up” the earthquake, foundations were shaken, all chains were broken and prison cells opened wide. Do we imagine they were singing a lullaby to help them sleep? Or were they proclaiming a God who has created the earth, defeated death and saved creation? Is the object of their worship the One who will not be prevented from loving us, who commands us to live justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly, each and every step?

Perhaps we might, instead, sing our songs in parliaments and councils and the streets, and in places where all light and justice appear to have been extinguished. We might sing to politicians and ambassadors that civilians and children are never targets, whatever the infected discourse we bend to our excuses. We might sing of the flawed beauty of each person, their inherent value in the heart of God and, therefore, ours.  

We can sing of One who has died, unjustly, and been raised for everyone, even those who cause the brokenness – on every side.

If I sing Christ’s song of hope, perhaps I will find my name within its lyrics – and my life.