Category: Sermons

Pentecost 25B
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
10 November 2024

[ video ]

Yesterday I was in Lismore for a refresher course as part of the Safe Church Ministry training offered by the Diocese of Grafton. As we began that program we looked at various biblical text about vulnerable people, since our duty of care for vulnerable persons is such an important responsibility.

The biblical passages offered the usual categories of people: widows, orphans, the poor and the foreigner (that is, aliens resident in the villages and towns of ancient Israel).

Did you notice how our readings today featured several widows?

The Old Testament reading came from the book of Ruth. It mentioned by name two of the three women (all of them widows) in that delightful little story: Naomi, the mother-in-law; Ruth, the daughter-in-law who came back to Bethlehem, with Naomi; and it referenced indirectly Orpah, the other daughter-in-law who followed Naomi’s advice and stayed with her own people in Moab when Naomi returned home.

It is unusual for the Bible to offer us stories in which women play a leading role, and even more unusual for those women to have names.

In case you have not read the book of Ruth recently, let me remind you of the story. 

When famine breaks out in Bethlehem, a local man (Elimelech) relocates across to the other side of the Jordan river with his wife (Naomi) and their two sons. They settle in the territory of Moab where they are made welcome and make a new home. The two sons marry local women, but then all three men died. This leaves Naomi, Orpah and Ruth as widows. Naomi hears that things are back to normal in Bethlehem, so she decides to head back home and she encourages Orpah and Ruth to stay in their own land and make a fresh start with new husbands. After some back and forth Orpah agrees to stay behind, but Ruth insists on going to Bethlehem with Naomi. Famously, Ruth says:

You may have heard those words read or sung at a wedding.

By the time we pick up the story in this morning’s reading, Ruth has come to the attention of a wealthy relative (Boaz) who agrees to take over the property of his deceased cousins, which includes accepting Ruth the widow to be his wife.

Clearly that is not how we do things these days; at least not in our society. But if you read the story for yourself, as I hope you will this week, Naomi and Ruth are not exactly passive agents. They scheme to get their man, and Boaz goes along with their plans.

There are some twists in this story. Jews were not supposed to have anything to do with the people from Moab. There were deep memories of ancient conflict between these people, but Ruth is the hero of the tale. That makes this a remarkable story already. But there is another twist to this story. 

Ruth and Boaz have a son together. They call the boy, Obed. As time goes by Obed will have a son, who was Jesse. Then Jesse will have several sons, including David, the future king of Jerusalem!

That makes Ruth, the foreigner (the ultimate outsider) the great grandmother of King David.

Whoever crafted this little narrative had a point to make, and it was all about making room for the vulnerable people; in this case someone with a double handicap since she was both a widow and a foreigner. 

This outsider would become the ancestor not only of David but also of Jesus.

But Ruth and Naomi (and Orpah) are not the only widows in our readings today. There is also the anonymous widow from the Gospel passage. Let’s call her “Penny” since she is famous for the two copper pennies that she dropped into the moneybox outside the temple.

Of course they were not pennies, as this a term for English money. When the Bible was translated into English more than 400 years ago, they described her coins using the English word for the smallest coin available at the time: a mite.

Not a halfpenny, or a farthing, but a mite.

That is one very low-value coin.

In the time of Jesus that coin was called a prutah, and I have several examples of those tiny coins from the time of Jesus here with me in case you want to have a look at them later.

A silver denarius was the basic payment for a day’s work in the field, and you would need almost 1,000 prutotto exchange for one denarius. Yes, these were very low-value coins indeed.

In our Gospel today, Jesus has been warning people about the spiritual games played by powerful people. Then he sits opposite the collection point for cash offerings outside the temple. 

In among all the rich people making large gifts, Jesus notices a poor widow who made a very small gift: two small copper coins.

He draws the attention of his disciples to her.

Her gift, while very small, is more substantial than the larger gifts contributed by people who were wealthy by comparison. Their bank accounts were large, but her heart was bigger than theirs.

Jesus was not encouraging the church to extract all the money we can from vulnerable widows. Sadly that has sometimes happened, and it needs to be recognised as a form of elder abuse as well as spiritual abuse.

Jesus was simply saying, “This woman has her priorities right.”

She is not worried about the future, but as Jesus himself encouraged people to do, she was confident that God would provide for her needs. Her generosity was a simple act of faith.

So today we have stories about 4 widowed women. They were highly vulnerable in their societies at the time, but they were each women who had agency and they chose to live into the promise of a God who provides what we need.

They were not nameless widows, but people of faith and courage.

When we encounter vulnerable people, do we see the labels placed on them by our society: homeless, hungry, poor, drug user, drifters, drop outs, dysfunctional, disturbed, mentally ill, refugees, asylum-seekers, lost souls, losers, single mothers?

Or do we see them as people? People with potential? People with dreams? People with names? People loved by God?

I hope you will take the time this week to read the whole story of Ruth, and to notice her amazing legacy in the little family tree at the end of the story.

And I hope we all take some time this week to think of those we might too easily lump into categories, like “poor widows” and other kinds of vulnerable people.

Boaz noticed Ruth …

Jesus noticed Penny with her two small copper coins … 

Do we have eyes to see those people God wants us to notice this week

All Saints & All Souls
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
3 November 2024

[ video ]

Today we pause to acknowledge all of those who have gone before us in the faith.

Some of them are people from long ago.

Many of them are people from far away.

Others are people we have known; who we remember with love and appreciation.

It is because of them that we are who we are.

It is because of them that the faith has been passed across 2,000 years.

It is because of them that the faith is expressed in every human language, within every culture and across all parts of this world.

Had they been unfaithful, the faith would not have survived.

Had they forgotten the story of Jesus, it would no longer be told among us.

Had they not travelled far and wide, the faith would not be found in every part of the world.

Had they not been people of courage, the flame of faith may well have been extinguished.

Had they lost hope, how would we ever had heard the good news?

We walk in their footsteps, but also need to find our own path.

We carry the candle of faith in a very different world.

Our challenge is not so much to imitate them as to replicate them.

It is not that we do exactly what they did, but that we seek to achieve the same goal.

The mission remains the same, but the operation may be rather different.

A new legacy for those who come after us

In our own time we are also creating a legacy for those who will come after us. In time they will look back at these times in the life of the church, and they may wonder why we were so concerned about this issue or that, and yet remained oblivious to something else which they find central to their concerns.

Just as we need not imitate those who went before us, so we cannot presume to imagine that those who come after us will keep doing things the way we do them now. And that is OK.

Our task is to be faithful here and now; encouraged by the past and open to the future.

St Paul’s Anglican Church has been here in the heart of Ipswich since 1859, seeking to serve God and this community.

Once upon a time this church was packed most Sundays and we had several services a day. Those days have long passed and we are still trying to find the best way to be Jesus people in this community at time when being “at church” does not matter to most of our family and friends.

In a way, this little brick church with its beautiful arches itself is a parable, hinting at the challenge before us. We have much from the past for which we are grateful, but the way forward is not so easy to discern.

The heart of the matter

We cannot imagine what the church will be like in the years to come, but the heart of our faith and our mission remains the same even when expressed in different ways at different times:

Intentional – We are people who seek to follow Jesus with our eyes wide open. We are not drifting along with church life because it is the accepted thing that “everyone around here” does. No, we make a conscious choice to pay attention to faith, to seek God and to take the spiritual quest seriously.

Centred on Jesus – There are many ways to respond to God’s call on our lives. We accept and affirm the faithfulness of people in other spiritual traditions who are also intentional about their desire to say YES to God, however they understand that sacred reality. We especially acknowledge the faithfulness of Jews and Muslims, with whom we share so much yet differ so profoundly over just a few points. Yet for us, it is all about Jesus. For us, Jesus is the way that leads to God, and for us Jesus is God among us in human form. Emmanuel 

Compassion – As we seek to follow Jesus, the hallmark will be compassion. It matters little whether we are right or wrong, if we fail to be compassionate. One classic text which captures this truth so well is found in 1 Corinthians, the great hymn to love. 

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. [1 Cor 13:2]

That will be as true in the future as it is now, and ever has been in the past. If we fail to be people of compassion then we have nothing to offer the world.

Justice – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. (Matt 5:6). Or as the great Covenant Code we call the book of Deuteronomy expresses it: Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you. [Deut 16:20] The church has a prophetic role in society, whether it is welcomed or rejected. It is the work of God to defend the weak and speak for those without power. Those with power hate us doing that; mostly because in their heart of hearts they know we are right and they are on the wrong side of history.

Hope – we are not selling fire insurance for the next life, but we are affirming that in the end—as at the beginning— it is all about love. The love that brought our universe into existence will ensure that—in the end—what is right does prevail, life defeats death, the mighty are cast down from their seats, the hungry are fed, and the rich are indeed sent away empty. God turns everything upside down, and that is why we are people of hope even when it seems everything is so dark.

This is what we have learned from those who went before us.

This is the truth we seek to live in our everyday lives.

And this is the legacy we leave for those who will come after us.

Pentecost 22B
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
20 October 2024

[ video ]

Changes along the way

For several weeks now our Sunday Gospel readings have offered us glimpses of the journey taken by Jesus, his disciples and a mixed crowd of people as they headed south from Galilee to Jerusalem.

This was to be a one-way journey, although it seems that only Jesus understood that.

For everyone on that trip, life would never be the same once they arrived in Jerusalem. Again, it seems that no-one but Jesus understood any of this.

In today’s episode along the way, as we draw close to the end of the journey, we see two people from the inner circle of Jesus—James and John, the sons of Zebedee—asking for special favours when Jesus establishes God’s kingdom.

They had totally missed everything that Jesus had been seeking to teach them, and they certainly had learned nothing about servant leadership.

As we reflect on that episode this week, I invite you to set that story in the context of the journey that we are now beginning with our friends from St Thomas’ Church in North Ipswich.

I begin with a prayer that I crafted shortly after the two Special Meetings held in each parish when the decision was made to embrace a new future together. The prayer goes like this:

Imagine us—if you will—as two groups of disciples who have left Galilee behind us and are now walking together into an uncertain but shared future.

The success of that journey depends more on what lies ahead than on what lies behind us.

And there will be no privileged seats at the table of power and influence.

We are in this together.

There will certainly be changes. I do not know what they will be, but I am sure that some of them will be hard to embrace.

The key to success will be our ability to practise the way of Jesus, to embrace servant leadership.

Jesus himself came to serve and not to be served.

That is both our calling and the formula for our success as we weave two faith communities into a single ministry unit.

We need to move beyond us and them, and embrace the new reality of us together.

If—when—we achieve that, we shall have transformed our local congregations, and perhaps also reinvented the Anglican mission in the heart of Ipswich.

Imagine a church that seeks to serve rather than scold.

Imagine a church where vulnerable people are safe.

Imagine a church where seekers are welcome.

Imagine a church with confidence in the good news and a humility about its task.

Imagine a church with deep roots in the past and bold dreams for the future.

That can be us, if we embrace servant leadership … 

Let me close by reading that prayer again:

St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
Saint Michael & All Angels
29 September 2024

[ video ]

At every Eucharist we affirm our place alongside the angels and archangels as the priest says:

Therefore, with angels and archangels,
and with all the company of heaven,
we proclaim your great and glorious name.
for ever praising you and saying:

Today—on the feast of St Michael and All Angels—we pause to think about what we are saying and what we mean by those words.

Do we really believe in angels?

And if so, what do we believe about them?

IN THE BIBLE we see diverse traditions about angels.

The Hebrew word malʾaḵ occurs about 200 times, usually in the singular for and quite often (58x) in the phrase “the angel of the LORD” where it seems to be euphemism for “God.”

In the Greek New Testament, despite being a much shorter set of documents, the word angelos occurs 178 times. Again, these are mostly singular, and the phrase “angel of the Lord” occurs frequently.

Alongside angels we also find cherubim and seraphim, as well as a whole cast of non-human spirits and demons. Even Satan is understood to be one of the angels gone feral, so to speak, as we shall see in the readings from Job starting next week.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from caves in 1948 and immediately afterwards, we find a whole host of good and bad powers. In some of these texts, the leader of the forces of light is Melchizedek (king of righteousness) while the leader of the forces of darkness is Melchiresha(king of evil).

In our readings today we hear of the war between the forces of evil led by Satan (here called the great dragon) and the forces of good led by Michael.

BTW, none of these spiritual entities have feathered wings or dragon-like body parts in the Bible. Those are much later artistic concepts, although the representation of Satan as a serpent or dragon reflects ancient legends where a dragon (an exaggerated crocodile) is an existential threat.

Indeed, the famous scene of St George slaying the dragon is a variant of the scene from today’s reading in Revelation 12, although both go back to ancient myths of the conflict with the dragon/crocodile.

IN OUR WORLD we can now explain so much of the cosmos as well as the inner system of the human person, whether physical or psychological. Have we deprived the universe of its angels?

Maybe not.

On the door of our fridge, we have a small magnet with the words:

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”

This saying is attributed to the Talmud, a major source of Jewish thought dating to around 500 CE but with some later additions.

This version is very popular online, but when we look for the source in the Talmud, the nearest reference seems to be:

Ben Sira said: God caused herbs to spring forth from the earth: with them the physician heals the wound and the apothecary compounds his preparations. R. Shimon said: There is not a single herb but has a mazal [constellation] in the heavens which strikes it and says, “Grow!” Bereshit Rabbah 10.6

That is a rather more complex piece of teaching, although it preserves the idea that growth here may be helped or hindered by extra-terrestrial powers.

On the other hand, “striking” is a rather more severe form of nurture than “whisper”!

RE-ENCHANTMENT of the vast universe is a spiritual project for our times. It may be the mission of St Paul’s Church to help the people of Ipswich reimagine our world as “enchanted,” rather than a mechanistic system driven by chemicals that shape our moods.

We are slowly learning to move beyond mechanistic explanations of reality to embrace the dance of creation as both an expression of cosmic energy (what people of faith describe as divine love) and as a dynamic process that responds to our attention (or lack of attention).

On this final Sunday in the Season of Creation, we are invited to widen our concept of creation to include everything we know and understand, as well as all the rest of reality that we are yet to discover and explore.

Angels and archangels, along with the cherubim and seraphim, are symbols that speak to us of the depth dimension in life and the constant loving presence of God in and through it all.

There is no place—and no circumstance—where the angel of the Lord cannot bend over us and whisper, “You are blessed. You are loved. Grow. Flourish. Become who we intend you to be.”

Call them what you will, these expressions of cosmic love are profound and powerful.