and can now be found in expanded format at Ostendere Divinus .

All existing posts have been transferred to the new site, but future postings will only appear there (and not here),

One of the challenges I face as a person who is gluten intolerant – who can’t eat any food containing wheat, barley, oats or rye – is finding good bread.

As a person who is also chronically time poor – so much to do, so little time – my search for good bread usually ends in the bread aisle at Woolies, where there’s a very limited choice between two different brands and three different types of gluten free bread. And none of them could really be described as good bread.

Some years ago, before I discovered my gluten intolerance, I owned a bread making machine. Those of you who’ve enjoyed the bread maker experience will know that a bread making machine makes good bread easy. Just throw in all the dry and wet ingredients and after a couple of hours of whirring (while the bread is kneeded) and baking, you have an excellent loaf.

So a few months ago, when I learnt that bread making machines now have a gluten free setting, I thought that I just might have found the answer to my good bread problem.

After unpacking my shiny new brand making machine, I turned to the instruction book and discovered that it was not going to be quite so easy.

“Making gluten free bread is different from traditional baking”, the instructions began, before going on to say that instead of just adding all the ingredients and letting the machine do the work, the ingredients needed to be carefully weighed and pre-mixed before being placed in the machine for baking.

And what a list of ingredients: water, oil, eggs and cider vinegar to be mixed together before being added to the rice flour, potato flour, soy flour, tapioca flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, xantham gum and yes, yeast.

A number of those dry ingredients can’t be purchased in Woolies, and needed a special trip to a health food supermarket in the city.

My hopes that my bread making machine would provide an quick and easy solution to my search for good bread were beginning to crumble. Finding or making good bread was turning out to need quite a lot of effort.

I should add that the results did justify the effort to some extent, because the loaves that the bread making machine produces are quite good bread, with one significant drawback.

The formidable list of ingredients contains no preservatives, and so the bread does not keep well, and must be eaten within twenty-four hours of being made or frozen for later use.

I tell this story this morning – about my search for good bread, about the complex list of ingredients, about the work involved in making the bread, and about the short shelf life of the bread – by way of contrast to what we hear in the gospel reading today about a different kind of bread entirely.

Over the past few Sundays, we’ve been reading through Chapter 6 of John’s gospel, and we will continue to do so for the next few weeks, with a brief respite as we observe Walsingham Day next Sunday with its special celebration of Mary, the Mother of our Lord.

John begins Chapter 6 with the story of the feeding of five thousand, and then moves into an extended discussion between Jesus and the Jews that teases out who Jesus is and what his coming and his presence means for them and for the world. In this discussion, Jesus uses the metaphor of bread to speak of the love of God that Jesus makes real in the world as Word become flesh.

Jesus says:

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Unlike the bread that I made with my bread making machine, with its complex list of ingredients, the bread that Jesus speaks of has only one ingredient, and that is Jesus himself, God’s loving presence in the world for us.

Unlike the bread that I made, which required a lot of work on my part, the bread of which Jesus speaks – Jesus himself – is the freely given gift of God, God’s own self, given to the world and to us.

And unlike the bread that I made, with its short shelf life, the bread of which Jesus speaks – Jesus himself, God’s own self, the freely given gift of God – is the bread that came down from heaven.

This is bread that has to do with the eternal, with the ultimate questions of our lives, questions of faith and hope and endurance, and with the deep hungers of life with which we sometimes struggle.

Our Psalm this morning, Psalm 130, brings us face to face with these dimensions of our own need and God’s loving intention for us:

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord:
Lord, hear my voice;

If you, Lord, should note what we do wrong:
who then, O Lord, could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you:
so that you shall be feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him:
and in his word is my hope.

My soul looks for the Lord:
more than watchmen for the morning, more, I say, than watchmen
for the morning.

O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy:
and with him is ample redemption.

A cry from the depths.
A longing for forgiveness, for reconciliation, for wholeness.
A waiting.
A hoping.
A trusting.

Such are the patterns of our hungers and our journeys towards God.

Jesus also says:

No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.

Sometimes, we can hear these words as prescriptive, or setting up a barrier between God and ourselves, a hurdle we have to jump. But if we look more deeply, there is a different truth.

Jesus tells us that in those very moments of deepest hunger and searching, God is already present, sometimes seen, sometimes unseen, drawing us into the life of the One who is the bread of life.

Just beyond the point at which our gospel reading ended this morning, Jesus goes on to say:

My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

Now, what has been implicit since Chapter 6 began with the feeding of the five thousand, becomes explicit in this direct reference to the Eucharist, to the Feast of the Kingdom which we celebrate together today and every Sunday.

It is in the Eucharist that Jesus the bread of life feeds us with the eternal food that is the very presence and life of God’s own self made real for us here on the altar.

In the faith tradition in which I grew up, these words are sometimes used as an invitation to receive the Sacrament:

Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak,
Come, not because of any goodness of your own
but because you need mercy and help;
Come because you love the Lord a little
and would like to love him more;
Come, because he loves you and gave himself for you.

This is the invitation that Jesus extends to us today.

To be fed by him, to receive within ourselves the divine love that he himself is, to allow God’s own self to meet us in our deepest need and hunger, his very flesh and blood, food for us and for our lives in the world in all their complexity.

Jesus says: I am the bread of life.

This, indeed, is good bread.

© 2009 Robbie Bates

If you (like me) visit the social networking web site Facebook, you will know that alongside the opportunity to keep in touch with friends, there are a number of games and other diversions to keep you and your friends entertained.

One Facebook entertainment that provides enjoyment for many are pop quizes, in which participants can, by answering five or six questions, identify with various historical or literary characters. Some are more serious, such as “Which great philosopher are you?” or even “Which Anglican theologian are you?” And others are more lighthearted, such as “Which Muppets character are you?”

I took the Muppets character quiz a few weeks back, and the answer I received to the question “Which Muppets character are you?” was Kermit the Frog.

This was around the time that the internet identified Kermit as the first celebrity with swine flu, with the blame attributed to …. poor Miss Piggy!

When you get your pop quiz answer, there’s usually a bit of commentary thrown in. This quiz told me, that like Kermit:

You are a leader, and the calm in the center of a storm. Thoughtful by nature, you enjoy talking (or maybe singing) about the simple things in life. A fierce and loyal friend, you have no problems making friends everywhere that you go. You would like to touch millions of people in life and make them happy, you see the beauty in everything. You can be frazzled, but it is usually very short lived, a quick blow up, then you are back to your usual calm self.

Well maybe, although I’m not sure about touching millions of people in life, or even perhaps about the singing.

Kermit, however, does sing, and is famous for doing so. One of his best known songs is “It’s Not Easy Being Green”.

It’s not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that.

On this second Sunday after Pentecost, as we look forward across sweep of the liturgical year to Christ the King and the beginning of the season of Advent in November, we may have some sympathy with Kermit’s words.

We have ahead of us no less than twenty three Sundays, in which the liturgical colour is green. And this endless sea of green is interrupted only by the Feast of Mary Mother of our Lord in August, our Feast of Title in November and a couple of Saints Days

It’s not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

Our Roman Catholic friends and some other parts of the Church refer to these Sundays as Ordinary Sundays, Sundays in which the focus shifts from the great celebrations of the Church to God’s activity in the world and our life as part of that activity. And it’s very easy for us to let this become just an ordinary part of our lives.

Over this period of “green” Sundays, we’ll be reading through Mark’s gospel in sequence, interrupted by a few weeks spent in chapter six of the Gospel according to John.

And so we begin this green journey today in Mark chapter 4, very near the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry. At this stage in Mark’s version of the good news, Jesus is not yet speaking openly about the Kingdom he has come to inaugurate, but is only speaking of the Kingdom of God in parables.

In the two parables we’ve just heard – one about seed scattered on the ground that becomes a great harvest, and the other about a tiny mustard seed that becomes the greatest of all shrubs – Jesus presents us with a picture of the Kingdom that is a dynamic growing reality in the world.

The question for us over the coming long sequence of green Sundays is how will we grow, both as individuals and as a faith community, as part of that Kingdom? How will we be different in November from how we are now?

Kermit tells us that it’s not easy being green.

Over this last semester, my class on Fridays at the Theological School has been in Spirituality and Prayer. With our teacher, Rob Whalley, we’ve looked at the writings of some of the great spiritual writers of the last century and our own time: Kathleen Norris, Rowan Williams, Thomas Merton, Monica Furlong, and Evelyn Underhill (whose anniversary of death the Church remembers tomorrow).

Whilst part of that material has led us to think about our interior lives – those points at which the deep longings and desires of God for us touch us and form us, we’ve also been thinking about what it means to live as God’s people in the world.

One of our most robust class discussions was about whether we have to work hard at this – about making God’s Kingdom real in the world – or whether the Kingdom is already present with us as sheer gift from God.

When we strive to live a good life in the world, we can easily make our lives unnecessarily complex and burdensome by the efforts we make, and wander into the dangerous territory of thinking that it all depends primarily on how we decide to live our lives.

Instead, something quite simple – quite easy – is asked of us: that we allow God to continue to touch and transform our lives, not only within us but also as we live in the world.

When God moves within us and within our lives, we begin to see the world in a new way. We see the world as God sees the world. We see the world as God’s own creation, in which the Kingdom of God is both imminent and present, ever and always growing into that fullness of God.

We begin to see life with new eyes. We become more aware of beauty, colours, tastes and smells.

Our lives take on a new richness, and our lives and our relationships become more joyous, because we know that we are deeply loved.

We begin to discover that the world in not an arena in which battles are to be fought and enemies defeated, but rather a great parade celebrating the presence of God, in which we are graciously invited to participate.

We begin to experience a deep oneness with all of creation, because it is God’s life – the life of the Kingdom – that flows within it and through it. We begin to live more fully and more joyously in each moment, because we are living in God’s time and God’s Kingdom.

As God moves within us, our lives begin to become immeasurably simpler and we begin to become content with less in material terms. Possessions, wealth and status no longer have the same power over us and, freed from their power, we are more able to make choices about the extent to which we will allow them to shape our lives.

We begin to discover – each one of us – our vocation or ministry, which is both God’s call and God’s gift to us all – our own special place in God’s Kingdom, God’s plan for the world.

We are invited by God to be part of this creative life-giving activity in the world – the life of the Kingdom – and, having sensed this imperative, we will not feel complete or whole until we allow what God has stirred up with us to flower in our lives.

So, come November, how will we be different? How will God have moved us and changed us, as we grow into God’s growing Kingdom over the coming weeks?

To be caught up in the movement of God’s Kingdom to be freed for a more outgoing and more loving form of life in the world. What will this mean for you, for me?

These are not questions that we have to answer for ourselves, but rather questions that God will answer for us, if we allow God to work within us, if we allow God’s kingdom to be a dynamic and growing reality for us.

Kermit the Frog goes on to sing:

But green’s the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree
When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why,
but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful!
And I think it’s what I want to be

For the Church, green is the colour of growth and new life, the new life of the Kingdom, God at work in the world.

Friendly like, big like an ocean, important like a mountain, tall like a tree. Fine and beautiful.

May this growth and new life, this new life of the Kingdom, God at work in the world and within us also be what we want to be.

© Robbie Bates 2009

Portions of this homily also appear in a slightly different from in the Reflection: Three Stations On the Road.

It’s Not easy being Green by  Jo Rapposo © Jonico Music Inc 1970

I The Joy of Prayer

We sit in silence, hands resting in our laps, our backs straight. We become aware of the muscles in our bodies: sensing, tightening and relaxing each muscle group, coming to stillness and a deep sense of relaxation. We become aware of our breath: the speed of our breathing, its rhythm and flow, and we slow our breath, coming to a deeper stillness. We open ourselves to God.

God is in our breath, and we breathe deeply of God’s presence, drawing the very life and presence of God into our own bodies and into our own lives.

We let go of intrusive thoughts and concerns, returning to stillness and sensing once again the presence of God around us and within us.

We yearn for God and open ourselves to God more deeply, entering into the very mystery of God, which is God’s own true self. We are enveloped and enfolded in the warmth and richness of divine love.

All sense of time and place, and the world itself, fade from our consciousness until only we and God remain, a unity of peace and love, a holy completeness of ecstatic joy and freedom.

We do not enter into this experience of the divine through our own efforts or for our own pleasure or our own perfection, although sometimes we may not be aware that we are so doing.

This would be to give a higher place to our own needs and our own agendas than to the presence of God, and to make ourselves equal to or greater than God. A moment’s reflection will allow us to see the absurdity of this.

We are rescued from this danger by a deep sense that the longings and yearnings of our own hearts for union with God are themselves the presence of the divine at work within us, seeking always to draw us more fully into God.

In this great unity of peace and love, this holy completeness of ecstatic joy and freedom, that which is greater than we can know or comprehend puts us in our place as objects of the divine intention and the free outpouring of divine love.

In this encounter, a holy passivity is stirred within us that allows God to be God for us and to us, and opens us to a deeper and richer experience of the divine. We are moved to respond with profound gratitude that we are thus so completely loved and embraced by God. We glorify God who is both the source of that love and that love itself, and discover within ourselves a holy joy which may be quite other than our own emotional states or beyond our own emotional capacity.

Thus we may speak of the life of prayer as a life of humility, submission, adoration and great joy which flows from the heart of God.

II The Habit of Prayer

We are by nature creatures of habit and rhythm. Our lives are defined by our own regular practices and habits, and by the contexts in which we live: the passing of day and night, our sleeping and waking hours, our working week, and the seasons of the year and their associated weather patterns.

As God calls us into the life of prayer that is humility, submission, adoration and joy, we may be stirred by the divine presence to establish a regular pattern of prayerful practice in our daily lives. We are reminded that prayer is not separate from but an integral part of our daily lives, in which all the various dimensions of our daily lives find a place.

One such pattern of prayerful practice is the Daily Office, which we know in our own Anglican tradition as Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. When we are moved to pray using this pattern of prayer, there is immediately a certain humility and submission in the discipline that we accept. We consciously set aside periods of time each day, and by so doing, take time to mark all time as belonging to God and therefore fundamentally sacred.

Beginning with a canticle of adoration and prayers marking the passage of day and night, the heart of the Office lies in a regular reading or praying through the psalms and reading through the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, followed by a further canticle and prayers of petition.

When we pray in this way, we allow God to engage us, to speak to us out of a rich tapestry that is not of our own making, and to mould and shape us as participants in the divine and objects of divine love. We enter God’s workshop with humility and the expectation that we will be schooled in the sacred, and we are called into a radical transparency before God, in which life cannot be lived with any form of deceit.

When we pray through the psalms, we sometimes experience great joy and adoration. At other times we are brought face to face with of our own helplessness, pain and vulnerabilities. Some psalms take us further, inviting us to encounter the darkest dimensions of our own selves and our own most difficult conflicts. These are those times when we call aloud for God to crush our enemies, seeking to make God something other than the source of divine love and peace.

In contrast, the daily readings from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament speak to us of the true nature of divine love in the great stories of salvation, particularly in the life, death and resurrection of Christ and the life of the early Church.

We find space in the prayers of petition – beginning with our cry of “Lord have mercy” and the Lord’s Prayer – to locate again our own helplessness and need, and the needs of the world, within the sphere of divine love and action.

To pray the Office and to do so with regularity is to accept a discipline that transcends our own moods or busyness or fatigue and the desert times in our own prayer life. At such times, the discipline itself is important, as is a quiet waiting on God, if we are able to do so.

But we should not underestimate ability of the divine to transform us through our regular use of this pattern of prayer.

In our humility and submission, we open ourselves to the One who speaks to us, and shapes and moulds us, out of this rich tapestry, and who may surprise us from within its richness.

This is the One who may, when we least expect it, transform our own worst efforts at prayer into adoration and joy that transcends our own fatigue or dryness.

III The Life of Prayer

When we strive to live a good life in the world, we make our lives unnecessarily complex and burdensome.

Instead, something quite simple is asked of us: that we allow the divine to transform our lives in the world into lives that are characterised by the humility, submission, adoration and joy which flow from the heart of God.

The life of prayer is not a disengagement from the world, but a radical re-engagement with the world.

When our lives are transformed by the divine, we begin to see the world in a new way. We see the world as God sees the world. We see the world as God’s own creation, in which the divine is both imminent and present, seeking to draw the world into the fullness of God.

We begin to see life with new eyes. We become more aware of beauty, colours, tastes and smells. Our lives take on a new richness, and our lives and our relationships become more joyous.

We begin to discover that the world in not an arena in which battles are to be fought and enemies defeated, but rather a parade celebrating the presence of God, in which we are graciously invited to participate.

We begin to experience a deep oneness with all of creation, because it is the same divine life that flows within it and through it. We begin to live more fully and more joyously in each moment, because we are living in God’s time and God’s economy. Life itself becomes a single act of adoration.

To the extent that this happens, we, in our own selves, begin to become less important, because of the fundamental importance accorded us in the divine life. We have no need to insist on or make claims for our own identities and spaces, because our identities are given and our lives are shaped and moulded by God and we exist more and more in relationship to the divine presence.

Our lives become immeasurably simpler and we become content with less in material terms. Possessions, wealth and status no longer have the same power over us and, freed from their power, we are more able to make choices about the extent to which we will allow them participate in our lives.

And perhaps strangely, we become less concerned with the pursuit of pleasure within ourselves, because we experience the great joy that comes both from the divine which is beyond us and within us.

As we are moved by the divine in humility and submission to gradually release our control of our own lives, we begin to discover that the divine purpose also intends more for us than a life of adoration and joy in passive communion with God.

We begin to discover our vocation or ministry, which is both the divine call and gift to participate in the divine life in the world. This is both God’s call and God’s gift to all who are caught up in the divine life.

We are invited to be part of that creative life-giving activity in the world and, having sensed this imperative, we will not feel complete or whole until we allow what the divine has stirred up with us to flower in our lives.

For each of this may mean participating in the world in different ways. Some of us may find ourselves called to new or different acts of hospitality or charity or commitment to particular activities, whilst for others, life’s current activities may continue, but with a new focus and a new purpose.

Let us not underestimate what it is to be caught up in the divine life in this way, for to be so captured is at the same time to be freed for a more outgoing and more loving form of life in the world.

Participation in the divine life has the potential to touch and transform all of our relating and all of our living, so that in us and through us the divine life that is God’s gift is shared with all those with whom we come in contact, and all those whom we meet are drawn into that divine life.

The marks of that life, which is the life of prayer, are humility, submission, adoration and great joy, are themselves movements of the divine deep within us that flow from the heart of God’s self.

In humility, we find our place as objects of the divine intention and the free outpouring of divine love.

In submission, the holy passivity that allows God to be God for us opens us to the divine and draws us into a deeper and richer experience of the God that is always larger than we can know or imagine.

We adore the One who is the source of that life and love, who freely seeks us out and draws us in.

And we discover a great and holy joy that transcends and renews our lives and frees us to participate in the action of divine love in the world.

May the movement of the divine within our hearts and lives draw us always more deeply into God and into God’s activity in the world.

© Robbie Bates 2009

The Feast of St Mark, Evangelist and Martyr
The Gospel according to Mark, Chapter 16
Verses 1 – 15

Last Friday, two days ago, students at the Theological School, myself included, returned from our mid-semester break. You might have expected the tone to be one of relaxation and refreshment following the break, expectation at returning to classes, and some joy in this continuing Easter season.

But in fact the mood was a little different. Although a few “Happy Easters” were exchanged, and we all responded to the words “Christ is risen” with “He is risen indeed”, a quick run around of one group of students during the day found more than half rating themselves eight out of ten for tiredness.

Recent and current illnesses, pressure to complete assignments, and the hard work of the run of Easter services a few weeks back had all taken their toll, and there was, perhaps strangely for a group of would-be theological and spiritual professionals, not a lot of Easter joy about.

The Church’s liturgical year takes us around a regular cycle of celebration focused primarily on Christmas and Easter, with seasons of preparation – Advent and Lent – before each of these great feasts. Then come some weeks – the seasons of Epiphany and Easter – in which we live into the truth of each celebration. We are two weeks into the seven week season of Easter.

But what happens if we find ourselves out of step with the cycle? If whilst the Church is caught up in great joy and celebration, our hearts and our faith vision are elsewhere, and we see and live at best only partially into the great truths that the Church is celebrating?

What do we make of today’s gospel reading, Mark’s account of the empty tomb and the events that follow? Were you surprised by it? We don’t hear Mark’s account very often. We hear it today only because it is the set gospel passage for the Feast of St Mark.

Although we’re reading through Mark’s Gospel this year in our Sunday readings, and this passage is an optional reading for Easter Day, tradition and practice find us listening on Easter Day to the account that John gives.

In John’s version, the sadness with which Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter and the other disciple approach the tomb is quickly replaced by joy and a sharing of the good news of the resurrection. Mary goes to the disciples to tell them “I have seen the Lord!”.

Not so in Mark’s version: there is no resurrection appearance by Jesus at or near the tomb. When Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, they are met by a young man dressed in white, who reassures them and tells them to tell the disciples and Peter.

But instead of doing so, they flee in terror, and say nothing to anyone. And as the story unfolds, the disciples refuse to believe in the resurrection.

In the hymn set in the New English Hymnal for St Mark’s Day, English author Laurence Houseman writes:

The Saint who first found grace to pen
The Life which was the Life of men
And shed abroad the Gospel’s ray
His fame we celebrate today.

Lo, drawn by Pentecostal fire
His heart conceived its great desire
When pure of mind, inspired, he heard
And with his hand set forth the Word.

Some clues to the questions that I’ve been raising lie in Mark’s remarkable achievement as the first Gospel writer.

Mark is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Letter to the Colossians as John Mark, cousin of Barnabas. He was a Jew. He accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. Later he went to Cyprus with Barnabas and Rome with first Paul and then Peter.

He composed his Gospel in Rome, somewhere around the year 60AD, writing in Greek for Gentile converts to Christianity.

Whilst Houseman’s verses may suggest a kind of mechanical process at the hands of the Holy Spirit, Mark was, rather, a collector of traditions and stories about Jesus that had come to him.

Mark is not writing a biography of Jesus. He tells us nothing about the physical appearance of Jesus, or what we would call his personality. He tells us nothing about the birth of Jesus or his early life. That’s left for Matthew and Luke to fill in, writing some years later.

Instead, Mark tells us only what is essential, about the coming of God into the world in the totality of the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

In doing so, he creates a new form of writing, the Gospel, literally, good news. He does so by bringing a number of strands together.

For Mark, God does not come in the individual sayings of Jesus, so that he could remain a simple teacher. Nor in individual miracles, so that we could honour Jesus as a kind of divine magician. Nor in exemplary suffering, so that Jesus could simply influence us to follow his example.

It is the whole of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and only this, that is important for Mark. Mark is preaching – proclaiming the good news – as he sets this out.

It is how Mark has put together the traditions and stories about Jesus that is important. There are several layers to this, and one could spend a whole semester at the theological school teasing them out.

But one of the most important is the continuing theme – which runs right through Mark’s gospel – of the misunderstanding of the disciples, and their failure to grasp God at work in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is here that that one of the key messages of Mark’s gospel is to be found.

That message is simple, and at the same time profound: that despite their misunderstandings and their failures, Jesus does not give up on the disciples.

Time and time again he seeks to encourage and deepen their vision of the unprecedented and incomprehensible love of God which takes flesh in him.

In the encounter at the tomb in the first part of today’s gospel reading, the young man tells Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee, and that it is there that they will see him. The implication is clear: follow him.

For Mark, Galilee represents the wider world, the place of mission, the place where the gospel is to be proclaimed.

And when he appears to the eleven as they are sitting at table, Jesus sends the disciples into all the world to proclaim the good news to all of creation.

For Mark, this persistent call into the unprecedented and incomprehensible love of God is also a call to discipleship.

In the face of disbelief and a faith that sees only dimly, meaning and purpose are to be found in celebrating the work of God in the world, which begins with an awareness of the work of God in our own lives and hearts.

Mark tells us that Jesus upbraids the disciples for their lack of faith and stubbornness. Another translation has Jesus scolding the disciples. How do we picture that rebuke? A flash of divine temper? Or a gentle and lovingly persistent call to life? The persistent love of God that calls the disciples to life and sends them to mission in the world.

That gentle and lovingly persistent call comes to us when our hearts and our faith vision are not in step with the Church’s celebration of Easter joy.

It comes when we are affected by illness or other personal circumstances; when we are caught up in the sadness and deep gratitude of remembering fallen family members, friends and comrades who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country; when we are wrestling with the challenges of the present and future life of the parish, and the way forward does not always seem clear.

Mark reminds us that Jesus calls us forward yet again into life and mission. And if we are not quite able to hear or see, Mark reminds us of the gentle persistence of God that does not give up on us.

And so on this Feast of St Mark, we give thanks for Mark’s achievement as the first gospel writer.

We give thanks for his carefully collecting the stories and traditions about Jesus that were circulating in his time and for his shaping them to be good news.

We give thanks for his theme of the disciples who, at best, never get it quite right – in whose story we sometimes find our own lives and stories reflected.

We give thanks for his witness to the gentle persistence of God which calls us into the unprecedented and incomprehensible love of God, and into his mission in the world.

We give thanks for his call to proclaim the gospel, to be evangelists as he was himself.

And we give thanks, perhaps most of all, for his message of the God in Jesus Christ who does not give up on us, but calls us again and again into the resurrection life.

© Robbie Bates 2009

The fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B
The Gospel according to John, Chapter 3
Verses 14 – 21.

Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, written in 1930, is a savage and wickedly funny satire of the English upper class, taking us into the lives of a young novelist, his would-be fiancé, and a host of beautiful young people who lived in London at that time. It was filmed as Bright Young Things in 2003.

Waugh introduces us to Mrs Melrose Ape, a travelling American evangelist and her troupe of young ladies, dressed as white robed and winged angels: Chastity, Humility, Prudence, Divine Discontent, Mercy, Justice and Creative Endeavour.

Mrs Ape is the guest at a champagne-fuelled party given by Lady Metroland, and is given the opportunity to speak. She begins, with one of her favourite openings, in a hoarse, stirring voice: Brothers and Sisters, Just you look at yourselves.

Waugh describes the self doubt that spreads in the audience, until suddenly the silence which is vibrant with self accusation is broken by Lady Circumference’s resounding snort of disapproval: What a damned impudent women!

The season of Lent and today’s gospel reading both invite us to look at ourselves, but instead of self doubt and self accusation, they invite us to see ourselves as God sees us – as surrounded by divine love – and to find ourselves at that place where we are caught up in the deepest desires and longings which flow from the very heart of God.

Jesus says to Nicodemus: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have everlasting life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

These words may be very familiar to us, and amongst the best-known verses of the Bible. But we need to be careful that in our familiarity, we do not focus on belief as something we must do to earn favour with God. For if we do, we will miss what Jesus is saying about the deepest desires and longings of God for the world, for creation and for ourselves, which are described in the words salvation and eternal life.

Jesus goes on to speak about life apart from God. His words are directed at the religious leaders of the time, those who fail to see the light of divine love and do not come into that light, and who thus continue to live in darkness. Was Lady Circumference’s snort of disapproval just English reserve, or something more?

What is it that happens when the spark of divine love breaks through, and the deepest desires and longings of God, which flow from God’s heart, touch the deepest desires and longings of our own hearts for wholeness and oneness with God? That moment itself, Jesus is saying, is sheer gift.

Jesus points us to the very source of that moment, that place where the Son of Man is lifted up. The lifting up of the Son of Man is a theme that runs through John’s gospel, and we will hear it again in next week’s gospel reading. It take us to the Cross; that place where the deepest desires and longings of God ‘s heart meet not only the deepest desires and longings of our own hearts, but also meet the brokenness of our lives, our self doubt and self accusation, and our failure to open ourselves to that spark of divine love as fully as we might.

What is it that happens in this holy moment? Healing, wholeness, transformation, conversion of our hearts as we are drawn once again more fully into the heart of God.

In this gathering place, my attention is regularly claimed – and I hope that this does not change through familiarity – by the great East Window, which shows us the Son of Man lifted on the Cross. The window is rich in symbolism, and you may wish as this Lenten season moves into its final weeks, to take some time to sit and ponder this richness. It’s OK to get up close.

At the bottom the window are two sets of words: He reigneth from the Tree, and in the wording of the time of the window’s creation, And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.

Between these two sets of words are seven panels, which depict the Instruments of the Passion – the crown of thorns, the nails, and the hammer amongst them. These small panels take us through the whole passion narrative that we will hear in a few weeks time.

The fourth panel, which sits quietly and almost unnoticed in the middle is the chalice and cross: a chalice with a small cross rising from it. But once we see it, the effect is profound because it sits beneath the main Cross and above the altar. The deepest desires and longings of God’s heart flow from Cross to altar, and it is at the altar that we also see Jesus, the Son of Man, lifted up in his body and his blood as we gather around the altar each week each week and are fed with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

Today is Mothering Sunday. In times past, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, it was the custom for people to return to their home or mother church which was often the main church or cathedral in the area, to return to the place of their baptism.

This once a year pilgrimage was also a chance for family reunions, and the tradition tells us, perhaps a little too romantically, of children, released from work for the day, as they walked along the country lanes, picking wild flowers or violets, to take to the church or give to their mothers as a small gift.

In our own time, the idea of mother church may not be helpful but we may reach into this tradition to speak of our mothering by God.

A few verses earlier than today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about being born of water and Spirit. In our baptism, it is God who births us into divine love, and who in that act seals for us God’s intention for us, and the deepest longings and desires of God’s heart for us.

In the Book of Common Prayer, the Epistle reading for the fourth Sunday in Lent comes from the letter to the Galatians, and speaks of Jerusalem, which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

As we gather at the altar, we celebrate the feast of the Kingdom. We anticipate the new Jerusalem, that place where God’s desires and longings for us reach their fullness and completion, and all of creation is at one with the divine.

Here we see the Son of Man lifted up. Here God makes real for us already all that God draws us to in the Cross. Here God invites us to see ourselves as God sees us, and, as we are fed, to allow ourselves to be touched in our hearts by the spark of divine love which flows from the very heart of God.

(C) 2009 Robbie Bates

This definition captures the de-clericalisation of liturgical activity that flowed from Vatican II and the twentieth century liturgical movement, and hence the nature of liturgy as the activity of a gathered community. But it is not a useful starting point for a theology of liturgy, as it focuses on what it is that the gathered community do to make liturgy together, rather than on the action of God.

A more useful starting point is that liturgy is “opening space in which God can be found”.

God is active in the liturgy in a three-fold movement of invitation, encounter and response: in the gracious and welcoming invitation of God the Father; in encounter with the saving acts of Jesus Christ the Son in his incarnation, death and resurrection; and in the response of the heart which is not humanly possible but occurs as the heart is moved to prayer by the Holy Spirit.

It is therefore fitting that the Eucharistic liturgy (A Prayer Book for Australia, Second Order) begins with an invocation of the Holy Trinity, such as Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a Trinitarian greeting, and the Prayer of Preparation in which the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is sought in order that the gathered community may perfectly love God.

The Eucharistic liturgy is often described as a linear progression: Gathering in God’s Name, the Ministry of the Word, the Ministry of the Sacrament, and the Sending Out of God’s People.

It is possible to see the three-fold activity of God present in this progression – invitation in Gathering, encounter in Word and Sacrament, and the Spirit-moved response of the heart in the Sending Out. But a closer examination reveals the Eucharistic liturgy to be a complex and multi-layered episodic tapestry of the three-fold activity of God.

For example, the Gathering contains its own invitation in the Rite of Confession, its own encounter in the Absolution, and its own response in the hymn Glory to God in the highest and Collect of the Day.

Similarly, Ministry of the Sacrament contains two such episodes. The first has its invitation in the opening dialogue of the Eucharistic Prayer, its encounter in the Great Thanksgiving itself, and its multi-point response in the Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation and final acclamation Blessing and honour and glory and power. The second has its invitation in the Breaking of the Bread, and the Invitation to Communion, its encounter in the words of administration and the reception of the Sacrament, and its response in individual and corporate Prayer after Communion.

The Ministry of the Word exhibits a similar complexity. There is a broad episode in which the invitation is heard in the announcement of the first and second readings and the Gospel. The encounter takes place in the reading and hearing of those passages and in the sermon, and the response in the Creed. But both the first and second readings draw forth their own response Thanks be to God, and the Gospel the response Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.

The proclamation of the gospel is itself a smaller self-contained episode, in which invitation and response are found not only in the announcement of the Gospel and the verbal response to its reading, but also in the Gospel procession, the standing and turning of the people to face the place from which the Gospel is read, and in the processional return of the Gospel Book to the Altar.

These actions are a useful reminder that the Eucharistic liturgy is not just about words, and that the Spirit-moved response of the heart embraces not just mind and heart but also body (or flesh).

As it finds its centre in the encounter with the incarnate Christ, in whom God and humanity are united and the world is redeemed, the action of God in the Eucharistic liturgy itself is profoundly incarnational. God invites the whole human person (and thus the whole of creation, represented by the gathered community) to encounter and response through hearing, speaking, sight, smell, touch, taste and posture.

The Eucharistic liturgy exists within a much larger episodic cycle which is the movement of the Christian Year. Within the Christian Year, there is a broad emphasis on God’s gracious and welcoming invitation in the preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent, on the encounter with the saving acts of Jesus Christ the Son in the seasons of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter, and on the Spirit-moved response of the heart at Pentecost and the long season of Sundays which follow.

Liturgical preaching understands the three-fold dynamic and multi-episodic nature of the movement of God within the Eucharistic liturgy, and reflects this in its own articulation of God’s invitation, the encounter with Christ and the Spirit-moved response.

As an element of the encounter within the Ministry of the Word, liturgical preaching exists as a servant of the Eucharistic liturgy as a whole. Liturgical preaching knows that the encounter with Christ occurs both in Word and Sacrament and is able to maintain both space and balance for this to occur across changing liturgical contexts.

Although it sits alongside the Gospel as an encounter within the Ministry of the Word, it is also gives form to a Spirit-moved response to it.

Liturgical preaching begins in the Gospel of the day, and with the good news to be found in the encounter with Christ within the Gospel portion. It prefaces this with an invitation to hear, through which God draws in the gathered community.

Such preaching, like the Eucharistic liturgy itself, is profoundly incarnational, because it speaks a word of new life and hope to the gathered community, bringing the community to encounter the presence of Christ within its midst, and articulating how the Spirit is moving the community to respond. It is therefore specifically grounded in time, place and the local gathered community.

Incarnational preaching is to be distinguished from what might be called propositional preaching, which seeks to convince the hearer of eternal truths and elicit an intellectual response, rather than to articulate here and now good news and the movement of the Spirit in response. Although faithfulness to the intention of the Gospel writer is important in liturgical preaching, extended exegesis of the Gospel passage sits behind rather than forms the content of the liturgical sermon.

Liturgical preaching enables the gathered community to move within and through the invitations, encounters and Spirit-moved responses of the liturgy and to hear good news, by identifying those points in the liturgy in which invitation, encounter and response are most resonant with the Gospel of the day and the Christian year.

Thus, liturgical preaching may anticipate the encounter with God in the Ministry of the Sacrament, or, if there is a Baptism, lead to the font, reminding the gathered community of their own Baptism and Baptismal calling and their own renewal of Baptismal promises at the great Easter Vigil.

In the preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent, where the Rite of Confession follows the Ministry of the Word as preparation for the Ministry of the Sacrament, liturgical preaching may emphasise more fully the gracious invitation and mercy of God which is the context in which that confession can be made.

Recognition that the Eucharistic liturgy is, in itself, a complex tapestry rather than a linear progression, opens the possibility of non-linear or multi-threaded preaching, in which invitation, encounter and response do not provide a single progressing structure but rather weave together a number of smaller elements to create a larger whole. Thus liturgical preaching may enable an encounter with Christ and proclaim good news through narrative, story, poetry and picture or icon.

There is a further sense in which liturgical preaching is incarnational, and that is the manner in which it exists as an act of communication. This touches on the environment in which the sermon is heard, the appropriateness of its language and the complexity or simplicity of its thought forms for the gathered community, and the posture, gesture and voice of its delivery.

All of these bear the possibility (or otherwise) of successfully embodying and communicating God’s gracious invitation, the good news of the Gospel, and the praise, prayer, penitence, peace, confidence or hope that is an appropriate Spirit-made response.

Liturgical preaching is also grounded in the preacher’s own spirituality and articulates the preacher’s own continual hearing of God’s invitation and encounter with Christ, and the preacher’s own awareness of the Spirit’s stirrings within the heart, both individually and as the preacher journeys with the gathered community.

Liturgical preaching, then, will be at its best as the preacher regularly joins in the liturgy of the gathered community and that community’s Trinitarian experience of God; hearing again God’s gracious invitation, encountering there the incarnate, crucified and risen Son, and being moved with the community by the Spirit who stirs the heart in response.

(C) 2008 Robbie Bates

The words of a song from my childhood, written and recorded by Frankie Laine:

Tell me a story, tell me a story
Tell me a story, remember what you said
You promised me you said you would
You got to give in so I’ll be good
Tell me a story, then I’ll go to bed.

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, of which the first book was filmed as The Golden Compass, has said:

Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.

Recently, Michael Gawenda, former editor of The Age newspaper, wrote:

Only newspapers can build a community of readers, one with a shared sense of what the newspaper is about, what it considers important and interesting and entertaining and thought-provoking. A shared sense of the city and the country and even the world. And that’s about telling stories.

What story shall we tell tonight?

Increasingly, we express who we are through the telling of our personal stories.

Biography and autobiography were once reserved for those who had made a significant contribution to human society and culture. Information about the life of Thomas Tallis – quite limited information in today’s terms – is preserved and available to us because of the music he wrote.

But today, many of us are caught up in being our own biographers, on a daily basis.

The internet allows us to publish anything anywhere anytime to be available to almost anyone. Our personal story telling has been driven, at least in part, by the evolution of the world wide web.

It began with personal or family web pages – about our interests, our employment, our families, together with some photographs – that did not change very often.

But as the speed of the web demanded something faster, our personal web sites evolved into weblogs or blogs, designed for easy and frequent additions of short reflections on our daily activities.

And while many blogs still exist, the speed of the web pushed a further evolution – the social networking site. The best known of these are Myspace and Facebook. They attract millions of participants across the world.

Christ Church South Yarra has its own unofficial page on Facebook, and tonight’s Choral Evensong was advertised as an event on Facebook.

A recent study of the use of Facebook at work found that only four percent of workers aged over thirty-five accessed Facebook at work. This rose to twenty-five percent amongst those twenty-five to thirty-five, and to almost thirty-five percent for those under twenty-five.

Facebook and other social networking sites can be compelling and addictive. A few weeks ago, a newsreader with Southern Cross Radio, missed reading the 4.00pm Sunday bulletin for stations 3AW, Magic 693 and the network’s regional affiliates. An investigation by the IT team found the newsreader was using Facebook at the time. The network sent a memo to all staff instructing them to stay off Facebook unless they were there for research.

Scientific American, in the introduction to its August issue Privacy in An Age of Terabytes and Terror, noted an increasing trend, primarily amongst those aged under twenty-five to discard all concerns for personal privacy to embrace total public disclosure about every aspect of life.

Facebook provides space for participants to include information about their interests, employment and relationships, to share photographs, to join online interest groups, and to make online friends – who may or may not also be friends in real life.

Participants can also provide instant updates. They are asked What are you doing right now? and can answer by adding a short sentence beginning with their own name, often followed by the word “is”. These can be seen by online friends.

Over the twenty four hours to Saturday morning, one Facebook friend was content that the new air-conditioner was installed yesterday. Another was returning home to confront the pile of work on their desk. Another was looking forward to Saturday, having just completed all their banking. Another was cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Another was eating crumpets. Another was inspired by amazing music. Another was enjoying a drink, and another was tired after a big day at uni.

What story shall we tell tonight?

Has online social networking grown out of the individualism of the late twentieth century and the decline in real social participation and withdrawal from community life to home, DVD and computer?

How well do social networking sites build real community through the telling of individual stories? What deep human longings do these sites reflect?

If the purpose of our lives is to love and to be loved, then the stories that we tell to express who we are will be both relational and communal.

To love and to be loved: two sides of a single coin.

We are most consciously familiar with the face of the coin that is stamped “to love”. It’s the side of the coin that we are most comfortable with.

But as the coin turns, and we see the face that is stamped “to be loved” two things happen.

Firstly, we can no longer love those around us from a position of superiority, but from a shared openness and vulnerability, responding in our neighbour to the same “to be loved” which is also our purpose.

The apostle Paul shows us a glimpse of this in the Second Lesson tonight, when he ends his exhortations to the Christian community at Philippi by rejoicing in their concerns for him, for their sharing in his distress and for the gifts they have sent.

Here we see the “to be loved” of Paul, which is a living part of the sense of community he shares with the Philippians in humility in Christ. This is not Paul the apostle of the faith, but the other face, a more human Paul much like us in our needs,

And secondly, we also are met by God as is Paul in the same openness and vulnerability. And in this meeting comes the realisation that God has not made us to love God – for this would be a rather egotistical god.

God has made us so that God, who is perfect love in the communion of the Trinity, can love us and bring us to the fulness which God intends for us through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In First Lesson we hear of God making a second set of stone tablets to replace the tablets of the law which God had given to Moses.

Moses had broken these in his anger at the people of Israel who had grown impatient at his late return to them and had made a golden calf to worship instead of God.

Here God affirms God’s nature as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation”, and goes on immediately after the Lesson ends, to renew God’s covenant with the people of Israel.

What story shall we tell tonight?

In the larger story which is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, there are many small stories, and here is short one.

In the third book, The Amber Spyglass, Lyra and Will and their companions are beset by harpies while travelling through the land of the dead. They make a bargain with the harpies.

The harpies will have the right to ask every ghost to tell the story of their lives, and the ghosts will have to tell the truth about what they’ve seen and touched and loved and known in the world. And in return, so ,long as the truth is told, the harpies will guide the ghosts through the land of the dead to the new opening into the world.

Although this is not a Christian understanding of death, there is a sense in which, as we tell our stories of loving and being loved and as our stories intertwine with God’s great story in the retelling, we do move from death to new life.

Our stories then are transformed and are no longer individual, or communal or relational, but have about them something of the divine, and the lives which we express in their telling become lives of prayer.

This is the great story which we tell tonight: our story and God’s story, a story of loving and being loved. May it also be the story we tell each day and throughout our lives.

(C) 2008 Robbie Bates

The Book of Exodus, Chapter 12
Verses 1 to 14
The Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 18
Verses 15 to 20.

At first hearing, today’s gospel portion sounds a bit like Christian Dispute Resolution 101.

We might summarise it like this: try and sort out the problem one to one; if that doesn’t work take along two or three other people to help; and if that doesn’t work, then involve the whole Church.

It’s not unlike the graduated approach to dispute resolution that operates these days in many workplaces to resolve conflicts involving unfair treatment, discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment. 

But if we think that the good news of the gospel is about ironing out our differences and living together happily ever after, and having said that, we can all get home a little early for a nice Father’s Day lunch, then we will miss something much more profound that invites our attention today.

These words of Jesus occur only in Matthew’s gospel, and Matthew has slipped them in after a passage that we know as the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

It’s about a shepherd who has a hundred sheep and leaves ninety-nine of them who are safe to go and search for the one that has gone astray. Finding that lost one, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine. Jesus ends the parable with these words: So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

Here is a picture of God who actively seeks out those who God calls God’s own, and places an infinite value and worth on their lives, from beginning to end and beyond.

If we were people of the Jewish faith, we would be hearing today’s first reading much earlier in the year, some time in March or April, on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew calendar and the first first full moon after the spring equinox.

This is the story of the first Passover, the exodus of the people of Israel from years of slavery in Egypt. 

It is one of the great formative stories of the Jewish religious tradition, celebrated each year with a special meal or Seder at which particular foods are eaten – lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs – and others avoided, and the great story is retold.

In this great story, God sends a series of plagues to convince Pharoah to release Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The tenth and worst of these will be to kill all the first born in Egypt. 

But before God sends this final plague, God tells the people of Israel to slaughter a lamb for each household and to mark the doorposts of their houses with some of the lamb’s blood, so that God will see where God’s people live, and pass over those houses.

As Christian people, we find the fulfillment of the Jewish Passover story in Jesus Christ, and in his saving death and resurrection.

At the Easter Vigil, on Easter Saturday night, at the lighting of the Paschal Candle, the Deacon sings in the Exultet:

This is our Passover feast
When Christ the true Lamb is slain
Whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night when first you saved our fathers;
You freed the people of Israel from their slavery
And led them dry shod through the sea.

This is the night when Christians everywhere,
Washed clean of sin and freed from defilement
Are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
And rose triumphant from the grave.

Outside of the Easter season, the Paschal candle stands by the font, for it is in baptism that we celebrate God’s marking of us as God’s own, marking us with God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Passover.

Today, we celebrate this loving mark of God in the Sacrament of Baptism, when we will sign those we baptise with the sign of the Cross, to show that they are marked as Christ’s for ever.

But today and at every baptism, we are also reminded of our own baptisms, and of the mark of Christ which God has placed on each one of us.

This is the mark of a God who will never let us go, who actively seeks us out, who invites us more fully into relationship with God, and places an infinite value and worth on our lives.

How then shall we live?

By seeing the mark which God has placed on those around us, and by seeing in that mark the infinite value and worth of each person around us. And by thus growing together in holiness.

This is not a simple formula for dispute resolution, but something which takes us to the very heart of the good news which makes us who we are.

How then shall we live?

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast.

(C) 2008 Robbie Bates