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Tag: Grafton Cathedral

  • Building strong families

    Building strong families

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Pentecost 12 (B)
    12 August 2018

     

     

    [video]

    The great lectionary diversion

    As basic pattern, each year over a three-year cycle, we focus on the witness of one Gospel to Jesus:

    Matthew in Year A
    Mark in Year B
    Luke in Year C

    Mark is much shorter than Matthew and Luke, so round about this time we have a lectionary diversion as we spend a month in John 6. Right now we are at the mid-point of a 5 week series of readings from John 6.

    For preachers, 5 weeks in John 6 can feel a bit like the 40 years in the wilderness. It just seems to go on forever.

    There are many points of interest in these continuous excerpts from John 6, but not much that I feel drawn to preach about.

    I might have preached from the Old Testament, but there we are in another series of readings as the lectionary walks us through the destructive dynamics of the Davidic dynasty. We have abuse of power, sexual abuse, assassination, rebellion, and murder. So much for the Bible teaching good family values!

    There is always the NT reading, and sometimes I would choose that option. These five weeks could have been a good time for a sermon series on Ephesians!

    However, today I want to reflect on some aspects of our life together as a faith community.

    Bread from heaven?

    Let me start, oddly enough, with the Gospel for today.

    You will have noticed there was a tone of conflict in the passage we heard.

    Jesus is portrayed by John as claiming to have come down from heaven, and also to have been around in the times of Abraham and Moses. Naturally, the religious leaders of the day find this to be some kind of weird mix: part nonsense, and part scandal.

    For sure Jesus did not walk around telling people he was 2,000 years old, and then some. He does not do that in Mathew, Mark or Luke. It is a feature of John’s Gospel, and not a memory of how Jesus himself actually spoke.

    Let’s leave aside for now the question of why John will have created this scene. Maybe we can look at this in a Dean’s Forum at some stage. For now, let me pick up the core idea at the heart of the passage: in Jesus we find a wisdom that transforms our life.

    So the first question is whether we really believe that? Is this something we take seriously?

    I am not asking if we take this bread of heaven language literally, but whether we take it seriously?

    If we do take it seriously, then that means we actually believe that we have something of immense value for people’s lives. In Jesus, and in our faith more generally, we find the spiritual wisdom that we need to live as people of hope and compassion.

    Is this wisdom some kind of secret knowledge we hope to keep for ourselves, or are we wanting to share it with anyone who might be interesting in knowing about it?

    If we are wanting to share our faith and see more people joining us in the life of the church, then we are going to have to change how we do church.

    Focus on families and children

    One of the major changes we will need to make is to get the faith out, rather than trying to get the people in.

    This is true for people of all ages, but it is especially so for families with children.

    We are making ministry with families and children a major focus for our work in the next couple of years, and hopefully much longer.

    As I say in this week’s bulletin, this can be done with a mix of gathered events and dispersed experiences, with the objective of increasing people’s involvement in personal religious practices and home-based spirituality.

    In other words, if we can take the faith to them (using our digital technologies) then—in time—some of them will gather for occasional events to celebrate the things they have been learning and doing at home, and some of them will become more active in the life of the parish.

    This will also require us to be genuinely inclusive and to modify our Sunday morning church services to be more accessible to people with very little background in the ways of the church. We have already made a start on this with the 9.00am service time, but will need to keep looking for ways to make our Sunday worship more

    Providing resources for lifelong faith practices in the home and in people’s lives outside of church is a key element of this strategy. If we can develop religious practice in the home and help people to develop their own personal spiritual practices, then we become partners in their lives rather than an institution seeking their time, their energy, and their money.

    The Cathedral website now provides links to selected resources to support parents in shaping the faith dimension of their families as well assisting them in the critical role of effective parenting.

     

    Conclusion

    Making our “bread from heaven” available and relevant to people in their everyday busy lives is going to take time, wisdom and patience.

    It will be the major focus of the Associate Priest (Children, Families and Youth) that we hope to appoint from January. But it starts now, because right now there are families and children and youth and adults and older people who need this “bread that comes down from heaven”.

    We are starting right now with small baby steps, but with high hopes for the future.

    Come with us on the journey, support us with your gifts and your prayers, and by making this Cathedral the friendliest and most welcoming place it can be.

  • Abundance

    Pentecost 10B
    Christ Church Cathedral Grafton
    29 July 2018

    [video]

    This week’s Gospel offers us one of the all-time favourite biblical stories about Jesus.

    This story was so popular in the early church that we find it in all 4 gospels, while Mark and Matthew each tell the story twice!

    This story is told six times across the four Gospels.

    This miracle story resonates with something deep within the Christian heart.

    It is especially remembered at the lakeside site of Tabgha, an ancient green spot on the western side of the Sea of Galilee where seven freshwater springs flow into the lake. Because this place stays green most of the year, in the Christian imagination it has become attached to the story of the feeding miracle.

    You may recall that our Gospel today says there was a lot of grass in the place. In the earliest account of this miracle from Mark 6 there is a reference to the green grass of the location.

    In 1932 a beautiful mosaic of the loaves and fishes was found in the ruins of a Byzantine Church whose existence had long been forgotten by the local people. That mosaic has become famous, and it features in altar ware as well as all kinds of religious souvenirs.

    Of course, those of us who work on the archaeological site at Bethsaida will want to claim the honours for our own lakeside patch.

    The reality is that competing for the location misses the point of the story.

     

    Magic meals and the open table

    Let’s back up a little and think more deeply about this much-loved story.

    Jesus is remembered as someone who had an ‘open table’ at the very heart of his Jewish renewal movement. That renewal movement was centred on the immediacy of God’s active presence among us, an idea that was expressed in the distinctive phrase, kingdom of God.

    As understood and practised by Jesus, the reign of God was expressed in various signs of renewed community among people, and especially among people who were overlooked by the powers that be; then and now.

    Perhaps the most visible sign of the kingdom present among the people gathered around Jesus was the way that people shared meals, crossing social boundaries and discovering a new community of equals.

    Yet when Jesus was gathering people for these remarkable and distinctive meals he worked no miracles and used no magic.

    We know that, of course. But perhaps we have never thought about it.

    As child, Jesus did not take over the kitchen and provide an endless supply of miraculous food for his mother.

    When he accepted hospitality at the table of tax collectors and other social outcasts, Jesus did not provide supernatural nibbles.

    When the disciples shared food with Jesus day after day as they travelled around Galilee they had to find their own supplies.

    When Jesus was chatting with the Samaritan woman at the well, his disciples were in the village of Nablus fetching some food which they later urged Jesus to eat.

    When he was arranging for his final meal with the disciples, Jesus had to book a room and send a couple of people ahead to organise the catering.

    As a general rule, Jesus organised his food the same way as we do. He did not snap his fingers and invoke supernatural powers to organise the catering for his functions.

    So what are we to make of this remarkable tale of Jesus feeding thousands of people with just a handful of food?

     

    Messianic abundance

    Like the water turned into wine at Cana, the feeding of the multitude is a symbolic story, rather than a report of something that actually happened.

    Like many of the parables, it is an exaggerated account. As is the miracle of the wine at Cana.

    There is not just enough for everyone, but there are numerous baskets of scraps left over. In fact, there are more leftovers than Jesus started with.

    Likewise at Cana: not only is there a huge quantity of wine (almost 700 litres), but it is the best wine they had ever tasted. The best had been kept to last.

    Both these symbolic stories evoke the Jewish expectation of superabundance in the messianic kingdom at the end of time.

    Jesus proclaims that God is generous, and calls us to be people of hope and generosity in response to that love.

    As with the parable of the sower whose lazy farming techniques still resulted in an awesome harvest beyond all reasonable expectations, so the picnic lunch of a small boy can feed thousands of people and leave bucket loads of leftovers after everyone has had their fill.

    The challenge for our Cathedral community is to choose hope rather than fear.

    Sure the task ahead of us is immense. But we do not look around and ask “but what is that among so many?”

    Rather, we take what we have. We offer it to God with thanksgiving and anticipation. We share what we have and give no thought to keeping back for ourselves in case there is not enough to go around.

    When we act like that, we are eucharistic people. We are people of hope, people who know how to respond to God with thanksgiving.

    We offer this city … hope.

    We offer the families who bring their children for Baptism … hope.

    Every time we gather for at the Table of Jesus we celebrate … hope.

     

    So let us come to Table of Jesus with hope in our hearts and a determination to share the message of Jesus: God is amongst us and all will be well.

    Come, take the bread and wine, as a sign of a sacred abundance that never runs short.

    Thanks be to God!

     

     

     

  • Capturing our characters

    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    Pentecost 8(B)
    15 July 2018

     

    Sometimes it feels like we are drowning in words.

    Words are everywhere, and especially so in church.

    Big words. Rare words. Fancy words. Lots of words.

    As it happens I like words. I am someone who finds it fairly easy to write essays, reports and sermons. I enjoy playing with words and even learning new languages.

    But even for me there are sometimes too many words.

    This past week I was required to craft a really tight statement to describe the kind of church community we seeking to fashion here at the Cathedral. We need this for the mobile app we are developing for the Cathedral, and it must be brief.

    At first it did not seem too hard: 140 words. Too easy.

    But then I realised the specification said: 140 characters. Maximum!

    Ouch! 140 characters? That is not even a paragraph and barely a sentence.

    It took a while to choose the right words to describe this place without going over that limit. I think we got there in the end and it was good to have a few friends on Facebook help me with suggestions.

    While all that was happening, in the back of my mind I was aware of the service here this morning.

    Apart from the obvious challenge of choosing my words carefully and having as few of them as possible, it strikes me there are some other parallels between me crafting that extremely brief community descriptor and the role of parents and godparents.

    Having a strong sense of what we are about is a good starting point. But we need more.

    The arrival of a baby makes us a deeply aware of the mystery of life. We do not get all the answers to the meaning of life in the baby care package, and there is no injection to add the missing wisdom, but as we hold a newborn in our arms we do sense that there is more to life than routine tasks.

    A new life opens our eyes to the mystery we sometimes fail to notice when we are so busy.

    This Cathedral is a bit like that at times as well.

    Just by being here in the heart of Grafton it invites us to remember that there is more to life than work, mortgages, shopping, stuff, and things.

    It reminds us about love, about life, about the depth dimension to life, and about the meaning of it all.

    Again, no glib easy answers. But a reminder to pause and be mindful of … Life.

    In among all the busy-ness of being family and raising kids, we need to pause and be mindful.

    That is one good reason to be here in this Cathedral this morning. We are pausing our normal routine and reminding ourselves of the deep meaning of life.

    We need to teach Ruby and Alexander how to pause, how to catch their breath and how to sense the deeper dimensions of life.

    We do that best when we are families that make time for each other, time for God, and time for other people.

    And it does not need lots of words.

    In fact, learning just to sit quietly and think about what is happening in our lives is often all we need.

    And the Cathedral—your Cathedral—is designed to be a good place for pausing, thinking, remembering and being mindful.

    Aware of what is happening within us,
    aware of other people in our lives,
    and aware of God’s love that is always there;
    like the air we breathe.

    So back to that challenge I faced this week.

    How can I describe this Cathedral community in 140 characters?

    When you download the Cathedral app in a few weeks time you can judge whether I got it right (or see below), but as parents, godparents and grandparents we have a similar challenge every day.

    How are we going to communicate with Ruby and with Alexander just how wonderful it is to be alive?

    How are we going to help them become people who pause, appreciate, reflect and connect?

    And how can we do it without lots of words?

    We do it by our own example!

    And for that we need each other as well as the wisdom that comes from God.

    For those wishing to read the final version of the 140 character statement:

    a generous faith community
    centred on Jesus
    seeking wisdom for life
    acting with compassion
    in the heart of Grafton
    since 1842

     

  • Not without honour

    Pentecost 7B
    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    8 July 2018
    [video]

    In this week’s gospel passage Jesus goes home to Nazareth.

    This is another episode in Mark’s series as he sketches a Jesus who confronts, annoys, excites and irritates both his opponents and his supporters.

    This time it is the hometown crowd, and there is no tougher gig.

    Luke will develop this simple story from Mark 6 into a classic scene of confrontation, culminating with an attempt to murder Jesus by throwing him off a cliff. Like the non-existent cliff above which Luke imagines Nazareth to sit like an oriental Athens, that scene is a figment of Luke’s imagination, but he was working with the seed of a memory preserved in the opening paragraph of Mark 6.

    As a historian this is one of my favourite passages. It offers a glimpse behind the public success of Jesus, and it hints at a private tragedy. The people who knew him best did not find him all that awesome.

    Think about that for a moment.

    Jesus failed at home.

    His own village people were not supportive of his mission. Not even his family as we saw a few weeks ago in Mark 3.

    In this fascinating episode we find Jesus reflecting on the dynamics of the hometown crowd:

    Prophets are not without honor:
    except in their hometown,
    and among their own kin,
    and in their own house …

    Ouch!

    Not just the village, but the wider family and the folks at home. Nobody gets it!

    This saying is attested across all the early gospels, and it reflects a truth known to Jesus, to his first followers and to us as well.

    What was true of Jesus is true of us as a faith community, indeed a Cathedral, here in this city.

    The biggest challenge for us may be to get local people here in our community to take us seriously.

    They think they know us so well and they expect we have nothing special to say to them.

    They know our failures and our scandals.

    Some of them are people we have hurt, or ignored, or turned away when they reached out to us. Maybe we sold their family church to pay a compensation claim, or to raise funds to pay our bills?

    The surprising thing may be that so many of them still feel so positively about us, even if they see little need to join us for worship on Sunday morning.

    So how do we sing the Lord’s song in the ‘strange land’ of our own village?

    Let me offer three suggestions, very briefly, that we can explore and unpack in the weeks and months ahead:

    Plain talking
    Open doors
    Stay connected

    In one sense this is my mission strategy for the next few years that I am privileged to be here as your priest. Let me take just the first of those three suggestions and unpack it a little now. I can come back to the others at a later time.

    Plain talking

    As Anglicans and as a Cathedral we have a tendency to wrap our ideas up in fancy talk.

    Over the past 2,000 years we have developed a special language for talking about faith and the things that matter most to us. In some cases those terms were fashioned in moments of great controversy and we have persecuted, exiled, imprisoned, and murdered each other over their proper meaning.

    Our God-talk and our church-talk do not make much sense to people outside the inner circles of the church, and we see this very clearly when we have visitors here for a baptism or some other special event.

    What we do and how we talk about it simply makes less and less sense to more and more people.

    As much as we can, the words we use in church need to state clearly, directly and simply what we are doing and why we are doing it.

    Please have a look at the front page of this week’s bulletin. There you will see one example of me trying to find fresh and direct words to describe why we are in here this morning:

    In worship we acknowledge the divine love which brought our universe into being and came among us in the historical person of Jesus. We seek spiritual wisdom to be a generous faith community centred around the person and teachings of Jesus, open to new insights from the natural and social sciences, and engaged with the wider community in compassionate action for the common good.

    Those are the reasons I got out of bed and came here this morning. Those are the reasons I choose not to take my pension cheque last year and retire to play with my coin research.

    What about you?

    How do you explain being here to your partner, or your children?

    What does what we do here mean to you, and how do we express that to the people we care about most?

    How do we share our faith with the people who know us best?

    We do not have to get it right, and we mostly won’t.

    But Jesus could not find the words to explain himself to his own people either.

    All the same, notice that Jesus mostly ignored traditional religious talk and religious practices. As we have seen repeatedly in these past few weeks as we read through Mark’s Gospel, Jesus broke the rules, upset the religious people, and spoke to people in fresh ways that started in everyday life rather than in the Bible or with some ritual.

    Most importantly, he had a vision of God actively engaged in everyday life (he called it the kingdom of God) and he was especially concerned for the people at the edges of his community: the homeless, the broken ones, the sick, the hungry, and the poor.

    We cannot and will not bring everyone with us, but we can resolve to talk about God in plain language, to affirm that in Jesus we find the wisdom God wants us to have for authentic lives, and a focus on sharing that spiritual wisdom with the people who already see their need for ‘something more’ in their lives.

    May God help us to do exactly that.

  • The book that disrupts

    Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (B)
    Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton
    1 July 2018

    [video]

    We are now about halfway through our series of Marking Jesus, as we pay attention to the way that the Gospel of Mark presents Jesus as a figure of controversy.

    Like Jesus, the Bible itself often confronts us with a fresh perspective on our long-held assumptions, as it invites us—perhaps even demands—that we move beyond our comfort zones into the new space to which God is calling us.

    My preparation for this sermon started well over a week ago as I needed to draft the text for the front page of the bulletin before Roger went on sick leave. Even then this simple Sunday School story of Jesus being kind to two people—an older woman and a young girl— was drawing me into a different space, as I heard those stories in the context of violence against women.

    Then a friend asked my advice about the nature of the love between David and Jonathan that we read about in the first reading today.

    Bit by bit I was being drawn into deeper theological reflections about issues that really matter to everyday people in our city. I was being pushed beyond the Sunday School stories to reflect on the deeper significance of these stories for us here and now.

    As my thoughts took shape I published them so others could reflect on these issues, if they wished to do that.

    More on each of those stories shortly, but first a brief reflection on the ways that we use Scripture in the life of the church.

     

    Using the Bible faithfully

    All Christians use the Bible, although some think that calling themselves a ‘Bible-based’ church or describing their beliefs as ‘biblically based’ somehow makes them different to and better from other groups of Christians. I am sure God is tired of these games that some Christians like to play. I certainly am!

    Every Christian takes the Bible seriously, even if it is good to remember that there are several different definitions of what constitutes the Bible. An Anglican Bible is not the same as a Baptist Bible, for example. We might look at that issue in a Dean’s Forum later this year.

    Despite some differences about what books to include in the Bible, all Christian communities take the Bible very seriously. It shapes our lives and provides us with the language we need to explore and express our faith.

    It may be helpful if I outline briefly my personal way of making faithful use of the Bible, and especially in the context of our worship.

    First of all, I try always to follow the lectionary. This means that I am choosing to follow the mind of the great church rather than choose texts that reflect and reinforce my personal preferences. The lectionary is an ecumenical project, so that means the texts we are dealing with are also being read in other local church communities at the same time: Catholic, Lutheran, Uniting, etc.

    Secondly, I try to focus on the forest and not count the trees. Good Bible teaching is not about amassing huge amounts of Bible trivia, but about learning to read Scripture soundly in the search for spiritual insight. We are seeking wisdom for holy living.

    Thirdly, I pay attention to our own context as readers. As a historian, I could keep you entertained for hours with (hopefully) fascinating information about the biblical world, but my calling is to connect the sacred texts with our everyday lives here and now. I need constantly to be asking myself: What counts as good news for my community—and for me—in these ancient words?

    Finally, I expect the Bible to disturb our usual way of thinking. This is a prophetic text, after all, and the prophets—like Jesus hismelf—confronted, challenged and disturbed their listeners. The Bible does not simply reinforce our settled opinions, not even those found in the creeds and confessions of the churches. Rather, the Bible is a sacrament of continual reformation as the Church listens afresh to hear what the Spirit has to teach us. When we domesticate the Bible and limit its meaning to what we already believe and know, then we fail to use the Bible faithfully.

     

    Disturbing readings

    As already hinted, the readings this week seem such nice tales and yet they invite us to think afresh about important aspects of everyday life.

    These readings invite us to notice how gender shapes our lives, and at times becomes the basis for violence and discrimination.

    Due to time constraints, let me focus on the Gospel passage.

    As I said in my notes on the front page of the bulletin, most of us are not surprised that Jesus would respond to a request that he visit a sick girl, or that he would heal an older woman on his way to see the girl. We are not even surprised that he kept going to see the little girl even after he got word that she had already died.

    We respond to these stories from our cultural context where women are (mostly) assumed to be equal with men, and from our post-Easter faith perspective.

    For the contemporaries of Jesus and for the readers of Mark’s Gospel, things were very different. As they still are for Orthodox Jews today, who refuse to sit next to a woman: whether that be on a park bench or in an aeroplane.

    Jewish gender boundaries were clear and rigid in the time of Jesus.

    Jesus broke the rules.

    Jesus included women and girls in the community that gathered around him, and he was accompanied by at least a few women as he travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem. How the tongues must have wagged.

    For a woman whose periods lasted 12 years and not just a few days each month, to be welcomed into the circle around Jesus was an act of amazing grace indeed. Think of all the places and groups from which she would have been excluded during those twelve years. No wonder she just crept up and ‘touched the hem’ of Jesus’ robe! Even to be there in the street was breaking the rules.

    How does the good news of Jesus transgress gender boundaries in our own day?

    When a young woman is raped and murdered on her way home from work in Melbourne, and another is raped and assaulted while being driven between here and Armidale, while a young girl is kidnapped at knife point and sexually assaulted in Newcastle … when a 16 year old girl near Brisbane  is killed and her body placed in a drum … what does the Gospel mean to these women and their families?

    We have come a long way in tearing down the boundaries that people have erected on the basis of gender, but there remains significant work to be completed.

    As church we need to be a safe and nurturing place for women and girls.

    As church we need to be active in our community so that Grafton is a safe place for women.

    God’s love knows no bounds, and neither can our commitment to justice and equality.

    There is much more to say about our texts today, but maybe this is the heart of what the Spirit is saying to the church—to our church—in these familiar stories?

     

     

  • The Song of the Bow

    In many Christian communities around the world this coming weekend, the first reading will include this ancient Hebrew lament, The Song of the Bow (2 Sam 1:17–27 NRSV.)

    David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:

    Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
    How the mighty have fallen!
    Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
    or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
    the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.   

    You mountains of Gilboa,
    let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor bounteous fields!
    For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
    the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.   

    From the blood of the slain,
    from the fat of the mighty,
    the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
    nor the sword of Saul return empty.   

    Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
    In life and in death they were not divided;
    they were swifter than eagles,
    they were stronger than lions.   

    O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
    who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
    who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.   

    How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! 

    Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.

    I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
    greatly beloved were you to me;
    your love to me was wonderful,
    passing the love of women.   

    How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

    David’s deep sense of loss after the death of Jonathan celebrates the love they shared as exceeding the love of women, meaning—one presumes—heterosexual love between men and women.

    It has long been noted that David’s words seem to be an affirmation of homoerotic sexual attraction since the explicit contrast is with heterosexual love between men and women. The words seem to put the love of David and Jonathan in a similar category to the love which we commonly observe between different genders.

    The related traditions of genuine affection between Jonathan and David, despite their social location as rivals for the royal succession, need to be kept in mind as we seek to make sense of this text.

    When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.

    Saul spoke with his son Jonathan and with all his servants about killing David. But Saul’s son Jonathan took great delight in David. Jonathan told David, “My father Saul is trying to kill you; therefore be on guard tomorrow morning; stay in a secret place and hide yourself.

    Thus Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD seek out the enemies of David.”Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.

    David rose … and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever.’” He got up and left; and Jonathan went into the city. (1Sam 18:1–4; 19:1–2; 20:16–17,41–42 NRSV)

    Earlier today, a friend asked me whether we would be safe in assuming their ‘love’ was more than just friendship? Was it probably also intimate and sexual?

    As I reflect on this question, I think the most we can say with any certainty is that the passage celebrates male/male affection as something deep, passionate and enduring.

    Of course, as a ‘progressive’ Christian I would like to read this text as an affirmation of homoerotic attraction, but I just do not think we can defend such a reading of the text.

    It is fascinating that the David character affirms that the love he and Jonathan enjoyed was better than the love of women, but the narrative is describing two elite military males here. Those two contexts (elite, military) are critical elements of the enduring relationship between David and Jonathan.

    In paying attention to my own dynamics as a reader, I recognise that I am also a privileged member of a cultural elite in our own day. I am also someone who happens to be heterosexual, with no significant same-sex attraction. Consequently, the words of David do not resonate with me in the way they might resonate for friends who identify as LGBTI.

    At the very least, this text invites us to look beyond rigid gender stereotypes based on physical sexual characteristics. We are slowly realising that our reality as humans is somewhat more complicated than these traditional stereotypes suggest.

    As a preacher next Sunday, I find myself asking what is the good news for various people, queer and straight, in these texts?

    I also note that Jesus crosses gender boundaries in the Gospel this Sunday, as he heals a woman with a persistent vaginal haemorrhage and then raises a dead girl to life.

    Most of us are not surprised that Jesus would respond to a request that he visit a sick girl, or that he would heal an older woman on his way to see the girl. We are not even surprised that he kept going to see the little girl even after he got word that she had already died.

    We respond to these stories from our cultural context where women are (mostly) assumed to be equal with men, and from our post-Easter faith perspective.

    For the contemporaries of Jesus and for the readers of Mark’s Gospel, things were very different. As they still are for Orthodox Jews today, who refuse to sit next to a woman: whether that be on a park bench or in an aeroplane.

    Jewish gender boundaries were clear and rigid in the time of Jesus.

    Jesus broke the rules.

    Jesus included women and girls in the community that gathered around him, and he was accompanied by at least a few women as he travelled from Galilee to Jerusalem. How the tongues must have wagged.

    How does the good news of Jesus transgress gender boundaries in our own day?

    When a young woman is raped and murdered on her way home from work in Melbourne, and another is raped and assaulted while being driven between here and Armidale, while a young girl is kidnapped at knife point and sexually assaulted in Newcastle … what does the Gospel mean to these women and their families?

    We have come a long way in tearing down the boundaries that people have erected on the basis of gender.

    As church we need to be a safe and nurturing place for women and girls.

    As church we need to be active in our community so that Grafton is a safe place for women.

    God’s love knows no bounds, and neither can our commitment to justice and equality.

     

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