Weekly for 7 May 2023 (Easter 5)

Fr George Mainprize
May 6, 2023
9 min read

Dear People of God

Grace and Peace to you all

I noticed an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday by the Herald’s Europe correspondent that “the Archbishop of Westminster, Rev Justin Welby” would crown King Charles. The last time I looked, The Most Rev’d Justin Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Westminster is the Roman Catholic Cardinal Nichols. Perhaps there has been a Post-Reformation rapprochement?

Down to a rather more mundane level!

Next week Bishop Sonia will be making for periodic episcopal visit to the parish and will meet briefly with the Council following the Beresfield service (she will be the celebrant and preacher at both services in the parish). This is quite separate from other occasions when she comes here less formally as a guest. Guest or Episcopal Visitor, she is always welcome.

The May edition of the Parish News gives you more detail about events and dates.

That’s all for this week, folks!

The Lord be with you

Fr George

PROPERS for Easter 5

Sentence

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” says the Lord. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6)

Collect

Everliving God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life: give us grace to love one another, to follow the way of this commandments, and to share his risen life; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Readings

Acts 7:55-60 The stoning of Stephen

Psalm 31:1-5, 17-18 All my hope on God is founded

1 Peter 2:11-26 Exhortation to Godly living

John 14:1-14 The Way to the Father

Sermon (Fr George)

In the Name of God. Amen

The first few chapters of Acts contain some very condensed theological history as Peter, addressing crowd at Pentecost and now Stephen, appearing before the Sanhedrin, deliver speeches recounting the history and apostasy of the Hebrews and positing that God continues to call the people through Jesus the Incarnate Word. The Council has ignored the advice of Gamaliel, who was, ironically, one of the mentors of Paul, that the Apostolic band should be left alone because if their teaching was simply of human origin it would fade away but that if it was of God then the Sanhedrin would find themselves fighting against God. (I have the feeling that Gamaliel was actually one of the sympathisers of the Jesus movement). Of course they don’t listen and proceed to stone Stephen. There’s a very deliberate comment in this story, that the young man Saul approved of the killing. Why make a point of that? To emphasise that God overcomes and redirects intentions as God wills. There are those amongst you who will recall the Stephen is the Patron Saint of the Tarro church and his image appears in a picture on the wall of the Parish Church along with images of St Paul and St Michael.

I made the point last week that much of Jesus teaching is couched in the social circumstances of the time, 2000 years ago. I am NOT going to put my neck into the noose (again) my endorsing the injunctions of the writer of the letters of Peter about rules of submission and slavery. Suffice it to say that our understanding of human relationships and just authority has rather moved on since then! The exhortation godly living stands, but its application might be rather different in 21st century western society!

When we turn to the gospel reading we encounter perhaps one of the most difficult parts of the whole work, although for some people it is simplicity itself. Jesus says two fundamentally important things: “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” (14:2a) and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9b) and it immediately raises two question which have divided Christianity, if not all of humanity, ever since. One: is heaven for Christians only? And Two: how can Jesus say that the he and the Father are one: what are we to make of the doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity?

As an Industrial Chaplain I spent many years working in some very diverse, multicultural workplaces, and let me assure you that few places are more culturally and religiously diverse than western Sydney. One place I went into, on my first visit the manager said “We have 15 different ethnicities here: whoops. 16. You’re the Anglo!” One Moslem man said to me “You Christians worship three gods” and would not be convinced otherwise. There were Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Jews and Sikhs as well as 57 different varieties of Christian plus the usual assortment of atheists, agnostics plus the “don’t know, don’t cares”. If we believe in a God who is purposeful and loving, how then are we to believe that God rejects most of that humanity which is created in God’s image? When you listen to people across all these different groups you start to realise that we have far more in common than you might realise. Then you start to wonder “how is God made manifest in these communities? Is it possible that the Incarnate Word has been expressed in something other than our perception of the Jewish Jesus?” Can we seriously believe that God was not present in Australia prior to the arrival of the Europeans? Is the “I AM” revealed to Moses at the burning bush the sole property of the Hebrew people? I have suggested in other places that our definition of the Trinity as distinct persons has lead to confusion about “person” as in the mask worn by actors in 1st century theatre to denote the role they play, and the same word in our understanding of autonomous individuals. It might be more accurate to speak of the various activities of God as Creator, Reconciler and Sanctifier, and in that usage Jesus, as the Incarnate Word, can clearly say “The Father and I are one”. It’s the activity we experience as an aspect of the fulness of God, as we “look at God through different windows”.

When Pope Gregory sent Augustine to England to commence the re-evangelisation of southern England, after the departure of the Romans, his instruction was to “seek what is good in the local religion and bring it into your proclamation of the Gospel” (and remember that the Celts were already active in Britain and had brought their own traditions and insights into British Christianity). The first Christian missionaries into China were given the same instruction many years later. Have we looked for God in the religions of the First Peoples of this land? The Māori of New Zealand will tell you how their traditional religion slotted straight into Christianity.

One of our problems is that the Scriptures were written by a series of approximations. Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is a dialect of Hebrew. The New Testament was written in koine Greek, the commercial language of the region at that time. All translation strives to get the closest possible equivalent meaning between languages, but sometimes a concept does not translate between cultures and their languages. Our New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible is considered to be the best English translation available, but consider the multiple alternatives: Authorised (King James) Version, New English Bible, Jerusalem Bible, Good News Bible, New International Version….. All will take slightly different translations depending on their ecclesiastical tradition and perspective. In some languages there is no definite or indefinite article (“the” or “a”) so how would you translate what we have just heard as “I am the way, the truth, and the life”? Was Jesus being so prescriptive and was the writer of John’s gospel putting his own gloss on what Jesus is recorded as saying?

When you have taken as many funerals as I have you never query the faith of the recently departed: we don’t have a window into their souls. I think that I have to take it is read that when Jesus is reported as saying “there are many rooms in my Father’s house” he means just that, just as when he says “I have other sheep which are not of this fold” he means just that, too.

Don’t try to limit God by our boundaries, or you may find yourself struggling against the Almighty. We are firm in our belief in God made manifest in the Incarnate Word whom we know as Jesus and that, for us, should be sufficient but not limiting.

And to that same God be glory and praise now and for all eternity.

Amen

Intercessions

Let us pray for the preservation of the earth

For grace seriously to lay to heart the perils we face due to our inaction on climate change; for the right use of natural resources of earth, air and sea; for a deepening sense of your lordship of all Creation and our role as stewards of your bounty

We give thanks for the beauty and abundance of the earth. Give us and all peoples grace to live in harmony with your creation, wisdom and generosity in our use of its bounty.