18/1/26

Today's homily is an excerpt from a homily by Alyce McKenzie.

Alyce M. McKenzie is Professor of Homiletics at the Southern Methodist University Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of a number of books including "Preaching Proverbs: Wisdom for the Pulpit" and "Parables for Today,"

Of Introductions

I have a friend, Susan, who says her husband always remembers a face but seldom a name. So when they go to a social event and approach someone whose name he should know but does not remember, they have devised a social strategy that works for them. He places his hand gently in the small of her back and guides her toward the person with these words, "This is my wife, Susan." Anyone with any manners at all is going to respond by giving their own name. Not many people are going to just stare at Susan until it becomes awkwardly clear that her husband has no recollection of their name. I'll bet that any of you reading this would respond by putting out your hand, shaking her hand, and saying, with a gracious smile, "It's nice to meet you, Susan. My name is ___________."

Our text for this morning has John introducing Jesus to some of his (John's) disciples, with the description: "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" This is called a "revelation formula”. John likes to use this technique when recounting people's interactions with Jesus in his gospel. For example In 1:49, Nathanael introduces Jesus to his view of him: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God!" Jesus dying on the cross introduces his mother to the disciple whom he loved and vice versa. "Woman, here is your son. . . . Here is your mother."

In today's gospel, Jesus prompts the disciples to figure out their own true identity, or, more precisely, to be guided toward it by Jesus. It's an odd scenario, really. Not like anything that would happen in ordinary social gatherings when people are introduced to other people. John introduces Jesus to two of his own disciples. It sounds like he may almost have been talking to himself, and they overheard. They followed Jesus. When he turns around and asks, "What are you looking for?" he is asking them to identify themselves. To say something like: "We are two people looking for meaning and purpose in our lives, and we think you may be it." I think the reason they don't say that is because they are not sure who they are or even that they are looking for something. So instead of answering, they counter Jesus' question with another question: "Where are you staying?"

And they stay with him all day. At some time during the day, Andrew, one of the two, goes and gets his brother Simon. He introduces Jesus to his brother from a distance with the description "This is our Messiah, Jesus." In the subsequent face-to-face encounter with Jesus, Jesus gives Simon a new identity: "You are Simon, son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (1:42).

In terms of my friend Susan's anecdote, John the Baptist is introducing us to Jesus, saying, "This is the Lamb of God, Jesus."

This introduction tells us three things about Jesus.

First, He is the lamb who destroys evil.

Second, He is the Suffering Servant willing to give his life for the redemption of his people.

Third, He is the paschal lamb who takes away our sins and leads us from bondage to liberation.

In bread and wine, in spoken word and silence, in stolen homilies, in chortles of laughter and unstoppable sobbing The Master introduces himself to us.

It is now up to us to put out our hand and say who we are and allow him to shape our identity in the year to come.

I suspect Susan's husband is not the only one who utilises the "this is my wife, Susan" social technique to get somebody to reveal his or her identity to them. I admit to having used the "this is my husband Murry" approach on many an occasion. It worked for John the Baptist, as he introduces Jesus: "This is the Lamb of God." It motivated two men wandering around looking for something, unaware they were looking for something, to follow Jesus and allow him to give them an identity as more than wanderers.

This is the one who will shape our identities if we choose to follow him. This is the one who is working against injustice and brutality in our world and in our lives. This is the one who was willing to sacrifice his life that we might have a new life and who calls us to sacrifice selfish aims and comfortable goals. This is the one who opens a path to that new life through choppy seas and roaring waves. Through the grave into eternity itself.

Hoping for an answer, today he looks at us lovingly and says

"Look! I am the Lamb of God." And you are . . . ?

God of our Messiness

We are sometimes seduced by the thinking that God is especially present and vigorously active when our life is all cruisy and sweet. Surely we see Him at work in next week's Tattslotto numbers, when a gorgeous person falls in love with us. When the stars align, it must mean that there is a God and He is actively looking after us.

It's a little harder to glimpse Him when things go awry. When there is that sudden and unexpected death, when there is a serious falling out with someone you care about and when you tragically, finally must go to the vet with a pet who cannot be made better.

The God I know is just as present, active and energetic when He is stirring the messy, bubbling cauldron of our lives. He is just as comfy with our weeping and whimpering as he is with our laughter and giggling.

The faith I profess and try to live up to must embrace every gamut and every atom of who we are. Nothing can be separate from or held aloof by God. Rather, he takes our messiness into himself, subsumes it and makes it holy.

We glimpsed this in the muck of the manger at Christmass. We will see it vividly on Good Friday. God is right there when we witness the very worst that a Human being can do to another. I see the God of our messiness frequently at funerals where people tenderly, but magnificently, rise to support and nurture one another in ways that surprise even themselves.

So next time I am up to and in over my neck, in an icky mess, probably of my own making, I will remember that I have a companion in the cesspit of alligators with me. The God of my messiness.

So Here’s the Thing I Don’t Understand.

I was counting up the many different ways we have of communicating. There are emails, letters, phone calls, Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Google meet and FaceTime. There are probably others that the next couple of generations beneath me use frequently and to great effect.

Our sense of connectedness and our understanding of each other should therefore, in this day and age, be at its zenith.

But here’s the thing. In the age where we communicate on the screen, we seem just as distant and isolated as ever. Why is that? The screen can be effective to signal and point to things, and in some cases where the distances are exorbitant, it’s all we’ve got, but ... it does not and cannot ever replace face-to-face conversation in the same room. Those who are clever at these things will tell me that in those cases where we actually really converse with someone under the same roof, we actually reveal more to each other by what we don’t say, as we do with the words that pass from our lips. The screen can seem ‘cold’ and impersonal. We should have woken up to this by now, but it seems that we are well and truly addicted to the convenience and speed of the screen. There does not seem to be any going back or desire to go back.

Part of the way forward, then, is to send pictures, images and those cute little emoji things. A picture really does send a very clear message, especially the photo of a loved one(s).

Or maybe… we could just put a line through the diary, make a time and a place, grab a cuppa and do it the old-fashioned way; face to face with silence, words and a smile.

Holy Family

28/12/25

We just don’t seem to be able to write good history.

Today’s gospel is not a pretty story.

Grumpy old King Herod hears that his political rival has been born in Bethlehem and, rather than face a leadership spill in the party room, decides to slaughter all the Jewish males under 2 years old.

The intensity of the widespread and long-lasting anguish can never be underestimated.

No matter who you are in the story, the henchmen, the fathers, the mothers, the children, the bystanders, those in authority, or those fleeing for their lives … This is not a fun piece of history. It’s not glamorous or sexy or shiny. We are left squirming that this should be part of our heritage and the Bible. The preacher may be tempted to preach instead of the master wanting to welcome, touch and bless little children rather than have babies run through with a sword. Today’s gospel is not merry and bright, but it is vital.  It reminds us that Christmas is not about escaping reality, but about finding God in the heart of all reality, in all its terrors as well as its comforts.

What do we say when we look into the face of such an atrocity, and does it have anything to say to us in our cushy world of Western Victoria in the 21st century?

A few random thoughts.

The innocent have always suffered. There is nothing new here. Go into any paediatric ward of any hospital, go into any ward of the Royal Children’s hospital, and there you will be deluged by a tsunami of grief and fear. Unanswerable questions are draped heavily upon the shoulders of every parent, every child, every doctor, every nurse and every visitor who is brave enough to wander in and take their place amongst the tears, the vomit, the blood and the needles.

And where is God in all of this, and where was he when Herod sent out his goons with their sharpened swords?

Right at the centre. At the very heart of the story is Our Lady, St. Joseph and the Christ-child. The Holy Family are not absent, resting comfortably from afar, tut tutting ‘How appalling,’. They are right there, inseparable from the muck itself.

And in the Royal Children's Hospital? He is there in the dedication, resilience, courage, unswerving dedication and love of everyone who walks through those big shiny glass doors day after night after morning after evening. Where else could He be? Where else would He be? Being the God of infinite love, he is most potent where love and reason seem most appallingly absent.

The very reason that Our Lady and St. Joseph are fleeing so emphatically and urgently is simply because they love their child so very much.

Sometimes we glimpse refugees and distraught families on the screens in our lounge rooms. We have been seeing these images for a long time now, almost to the point where we can be desensitised.

In a bizarre irony, it is often the Holy Land, yet again, where the fabric of humanity unravels, and the littlest of people, who are the strands and wisps of vulnerability, are caught by the gusty winds of greed and fear and tossed on the winds of neglect and futility.

The message of every christmass tide is that the master is not distant from our muck, but right in the middle of it. And each day we have a choice to roll up our sleeves and to share in his redeeming work of love to those who must leave everything they have ever known, loved and cherished, and flee to a place and a people who they hope will make them welcome and cherished.

The work of love is a skanky, mucky, manky, risky work. It goes unnoticed and unheralded for it seeks no recognition or fanfare. It seeks no payment or glamour or wage, save that we know that we are trying to do our best for those who are least.

And there will be times when we fail, times when we become disheartened, times when we will hear a question in our heart. Is it worth it?

Yes… faintly,.. tentatively… yes. For responding to these little ones, we are, of course, responding to Him.

In a few days' time, we will turn over the calendar, open a fresh new diary, and we will have an unblemished opportunity to start afresh in 2026.  Along the way, you and I will have opportunities to welcome the fearful and distraught. To love the ugly and those who seem odd and peculiar to us. We may not ‘get’ their story because we can’t. We might not capture their nuances and culture, but we can receive and welcome them. And we may not know who they are, but boy, we can really show them who we are.

I suspect that you and I are unable to write picturesque history on an international scale, and we certainly can’t change what is past. But locally, in our own community, and in our own lives, we can write some marvellous history in 2026.

Christmass

Who’s in the pub? = We are!

This  Advent, we’ve been thinking about some of the hypothetical characters who were at the pub when pregnant Mary and St. Joseph arrived and were unable to find a room. The overarching theme for this Advent has been a question.

‘Who’s in the pub?’

It’s been a bit of a romp, actually, as we have theorised and speculated wildly about some of the folk who may have been there.

We opened up this trough of crocodiles with the character Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus, who was short of stature, but not short of a bob or two, thanks to his own greed and flouting of the tax system. If there is lucrative and easy cash to be made, then the inn at Bethlehem on the night of the census is exactly where such a shady character would have been. Tax on the wine, tax on the chicken parma and the land tax for the pub.

And yet somehow he knows that this is not all there is. Having accumulated his wealth, much of it illicitly, he never really knows who genuinely, authentically likes him. Is there anyone? No one will ever tell him. He understands that not only is he morally bankrupt, but he has a dearth of friends, and his credit rating of authentic love is negative 26. Fear and business are his diet, not laughter and affection.

He hungers for a way out of this hollow cave of existence.

Then there was Jehu, son of Nimshi. The Census consultant. A whizz with pie charts, graphs and spreadsheets. A census consultant is a wonderful career opportunity that he must excel in, even if it costs him time, energy and burnout. While the profits might be going through the roof, his relationships have dwindled, and his marriage is not only on the rocks but is now mangled in unfixable pieces of driftwood on the beach.

Then there was Rahab, the barmaid and prostitute. A single Mum just trying to find enough money to feed her child and stay alive herself. There are some nights when she feeds her daughter and not herself because, well, there just isn’t enough housekeeping for both of them.

She is muttered about, called names, and the physicality of her relationships sometimes results in bruises and blood.

Deep down, she knows that she is of infinite worth and sees past her client's actions into their heart. She sees the loneliness, the need, the longing for something more than the superficial encounter, for that is her need too.

And of course, no hotel is complete without its local drunk. The person who comes in on a very regular basis, sits at the same spot, and drinks all night, every night.

The one who has taken his medicine to try to un-see the things that he has had to see. The one who, deep inside, longs to have his past stripped from him and to start again with a blank canvas. A white bit of paper on which to write a new story with no mistakes, blotches, smudges, corrections or cross-outs.

Yes, it was a wild old Advent as we allowed our imagination to introduce us to characters that may or may not, probably weren’t at the inn.

But if we look a little more closely at each of these people, and if we look deep into ourselves… There is a bit in all of us that has done some silly things. There are times when we have had to weigh the moral dilemmas carefully because there was no straightforward answer. We’ve all been tempted to the murky side, and we share the same mortal ache and longing that this is not all there is. Little wisps of ‘the other’ allure us and tease us. We long to break free of the tedium and treadmill that we have been on for far too long. And if of our own volition, we can’t break out… then maybe He can break in.

And break in he does, not with next week’s tattslotto numbers, not with a press release or Facebook posting. Not with lightning, earthquakes and rainbows. Not with sophisticated, eloquent, polished people who have all the glib, trite answers that caress our ears and make us feel all gooey inside.

He comes into the mucky straw. He comes in the bewildered, teenage peasant lass, terrified because she is in the first stages of labour and a gnarly-handed old carpenter who is even more frightened and in tears.

He is a God who comes in the unexpected, who surprises us, makes us feel embarrassed and flusters us. We are boggled because he comes and wants to live with us, and he wants us to live with him.

“Jesus, Master Carpenter, when you knock upon the woodenness of our indifference and sloth, give us the will to open the door and greet your arrival with joy. Grant us the strength to open our souls, our lives and our hearts to you. Step across the threshold of our complacency and lodge within us. Weep, dance and laugh with us.  Make us uncomfortable, surprise us, disturb us, disquiet us and challenge us. Replenish us when our cup has run dry and when we are famished, nourish us with the bread of life. And finally, when our earthly temple collapses in death,  bring us to the home you have prepared for us, where your eternal banquet goes on forever and ever, Amen.”

Advent 4 

Who’s in the Pub? 

Elah the Drunk (cf 1 Kings 16:8-10)

I sit quietly in my usual spot at the darkened corner of the inn. I’m comfortable here, and the locals know me simply as Elah, although they also call me the village idiot and the town drunk. I would be the first to own up and say that I am all three. You’d have to be an idiot to be a drunk.

But I have seen too much, and the wine seems to be the only thing that numbs the pain… until the next morning.

But it wasn’t always this way. I vividly remember the verve with which I went to war against the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,  the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,  the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” My job was to loot all the corpses. That was it. How hard can it be, and what could possibly go wrong? It’s not as though they can jump up and cut your head off.

Most of them were mutilated and decapitated with their eyes still open, gazing accusingly up at you and their mouths twisted in the agony of their death. Take the swords, the purses and the shields. It’s easy… or is it? For you just can’t forget those sorts of things. I still see every one of them when I close my eyes at night.

Eventually, my tour of duty ended, and when I returned from the battlefield, sleep became elusive, my dreams became more vivid, the fuse on my temper became shorter, and my anger became more intense. After all the thrashing nightmares, Elkanah, my wife, left me to become a temple prostitute.

So, for medication and company, I find myself here at the inn. There was, after all, no one left at home, and it became easier to eat bar meals than to go to the market, buy the produce and try to toss something together by myself, for myself.

My indifference and sloth spiralled downward into a maudlin self-pity. I am complacent about the injustices I hear at the bar. My heart is hardened to my fellow compatriots, who, like me, have traded one kind of savagery for another. The death they inflict is no longer towards the enemy army, but rather a slo,w torturous death upon themselves and those who are closest to them. The wives, the friends, the children, the brothers and sisters. There are no winners except, of course, the Romans who tax the wine I drink and the publican who makes a killing from my misery.

Every so often, I sense that this is not all there is. Other people are leading happier lives, different lives, and just for once I would like not be labelled as old Elah, the town drunk and the village idiot, or is it the town idiot and village drunk? I am more than that … surely… aren’t I? It is not who I am.

What would it take to break free from the wine and the solitude? How do you do that? Who could help me, and what would they be like?

I need to be surprised, disquieted, shocked and shaken. While my wine goblet is never dry, I have never been emptier. Whilst my belly is stuffed full and gorged with lamb, olives and bread, I am famished for a fresh new beginning.

And not just me, but everyone who drinks with me, whinges with me, ignores me and belittles me. Our world is tired, and it is time for something quite radical, quite different, something quite surprising. I know this is what is needed, but I cannot do it by myself. I am allowing this to ruminate in my sozzled mind when all of sa udden there is a loud, urgent knock on the door and there stands a rough-hewn, grubby carpenter with a teenage girl in labour.

“Jesus Master carpenter, when you knock upon the woodenness of our indifference and sloth, give us the will to open the door and greet your arrival with joy. Grant us the strength to open our souls, our lives and our hearts to you. Step across the threshold of our complacency and lodge within us. Weep, dance and laugh with us.  Make us uncomfortable, surprise us, disturb us, disquiet us and challenge us. Replenish us when our cup has run dry and when we are famished, nourish us with the bread of life. And finally, when our earthly temple collapses in death,  bring us to the home you have prepared for us, where your eternal banquet goes on forever and ever, Amen.”

The Beauty of Bread.

Bread comes in all shapes, sizes and styles. Sometimes there are healthy bits in it, sometimes it is just cotton wool to wrap up a sausage and some onion. But apart from the outward texture and flavour, there is something deeper, more profound and more lovely about bread.

There is a simple, uncomplicated humility about bread. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. There’s no fanfare with it, and it is seldom the ‘main game’ on the table.

It’s happy just being a slice of toast, or the chunks that hold the ingredients of a sandwich together. Hec! It’s happy just to help you mop up a delicious soup or the spicy sauce from a beef rangoon. Because bread is content not to be the main attraction, probably doesn’t want top billing, that’s what makes it so luscious. The self-effacement is what makes bread so absolutely essential. I mean, imagine a sandwich without a minimum of two slices of bread. Or garlic bread without the bread.

Perhaps that’s one of the loveliest things about bread. It knows that it is important, nay even essential, but it never boasts about this.

As I reflect on the last 40 years, I find that I am trying to become more and more like bread. Offering what is important and essential, but in a quiet, background, supportive way. Mopping up the muck, holding together that which needs support, allowing the other to be the flavoursome and the colourful. Always nurturing and sustaining. Sometimes with healthy bits and often being a bit crummy and broken myself.

When the self is selflessly offered, everyone is given the strength to journey on. Everyone is nourished and is given the strength to get where they need to be. May we become, and always be, bread for each other.

Where to Buy 2 Kilos of Anger.

It was one of many conversations that I enjoyed in this interconnected community.

The person ahead of me in the aisle spotted my collar and proceeded to tell me with great vigour about an article they had read in a newspaper. Based on the two sentences they quoted from the article, I understood why they felt so strongly.

Given the effect that it had had on this person’s blood pressure and with the wise voice of my doctor and the word hypertension echoing faintly in my mind, I chose not to follow up on the article.

Understandably, my friend was looking for an agreeable advocate in their line of questioning, but as I had not seen the article, I had to politely decline. It would be churlish of me to comment on something I had not read and did not understand. I would be casting doubtful aspersions in ignorance.

Part of the dilemma is the brevity of time and space that our friends in the media have to dispense complex concepts in bite-sized, easily digestible morsels for our consumption. It can’t be easy. At least the scores in the footy are accurate and indisputable, even if the process of getting the score on the board was fraught with danger, knocks and bruises.

The other thing that perturbs me is that the front page with its BOLD  headline is often crafted to incite anger and or fear. I know where to go to purchase a kilo of grumpiness. It might be good for sales and the pharmaceutical company that dispenses my blood pressure tablets, but it doesn’t always make for congeniality and laughter, which are gifts that we all crave.

Ultimately, I look forward to many happy conversations in this splendid connected community of ours.

Who’s in the Pub? The Barmaid.

Harlot … Prostitute. This is what they call me. Not to my face, mind, but I hear them muttering on the other side of the bar…. as I leave the table after pouring their wine. And while they might scowl about me in derision and call me names, this does not stop them from gawking at me and reaching out inappropriately.    On a good day, they call me by name, Rahab and here at the inn, I am often just called the barmaid.

In the 21st century, when they are being polite, they will refer to me as a ‘sex worker’ and when they are not being polite, well,… There is a colourful array of names that are not particularly helpful. None of these words really describes me properly, for no one really knows me for who I am… not really.

My parents and my siblings have had nothing to do with me ever since I came to work here. I call them the name of “hypocrite” as all of them have had their indiscretions. It’s just that since my soldier husband died,  I had nowhere to go and no trade to support myself. I was left penniless, and I needed the money to live.

I see no way out of this, but I know that one day, my looks will fade and someone younger and prettier will take my place, and I will be in a worse position than I am now.

I’m not a monster, and I am always honest in my business transactions. What you see is what you get. I reckon that everyone, the businessmen, the soldiers and tax collectors, appreciate integrity. They certainly seem to keep on coming back.

Occasionally, there is small talk, gentle pillow talk, but usually there are the slaps and bruises after they have got what they wanted. After all, what am I going to do? Tell on them? But I know them. After all my dealings with men, I can see past their actions into their hearts. I see the loneliness, the need, the longing for something more than the superficial encounter.

But this is true for me too. I am more than just the figure they see and a body they take pleasure in. I know that I am unique. I have hopes and dreams, needs and wants, and apart from good ol' commandment no. 7, I do try to keep the law and commandments.  I do go to synagogue, I do say my prayers, I do go to Passover and Yom Kippur, and if there is someone in need, I keep some of the leftovers from the bar meals for them.

But some of my clients are often dishonest, uncaring and brutish. They are always a ‘someone’ to me, whereas I am always a ‘no one’ to them. I find that I hang out with tax collectors because they, too, are despised and belittled, but we both have an extensive list of clientele, and because of our principles, I actually think we align more closely with the Torah than the scribes and Pharisees. Perhaps the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into heaven ahead of the clergy and the teachers.

I long for the coming of the messiah. To straighten out this squalid, upside-down mess of ours. To see everyone as they truly are and to shout it from the rooftops. And it would take nothing less than the Messiah to do this. We’ve got ourselves into quite a mess.

I long to be seen and loved for who I am, not what I do, and I think that is true of everyone who comes through the front door or the back door of the inn. To be seen, known and loved for who we truly are, not what we do.  I am turning this over in my mind and heart when all of a sudden there is a loud, urgent knock on the door and there stands a rough-hewn, grubby carpenter with a teenage girl in labour.

“Jesus, Master carpenter, when you knock upon the woodenness of our indifference and sloth, give us the will to open the door and greet your arrival with joy. Grant us the strength to open our souls, our lives and our hearts to you. Step across the threshold of our complacency and lodge within us. Love us for who we are, not what we do. Weep, dance and laugh with us.  Make us uncomfortable, surprise us, disturb us, disquiet us and challenge us. Replenish us when our cup has run dry, and when we are famished, nourish us with the bread of life. And finally, when our earthly temple collapses in death,  bring us to the home you have prepared for us where your eternal banquet goes on forever and ever, Amen.”