-- Sunday Mornings mass will be live streamed from Christ Church Hamilton on the 26th of April at 10:30am

It used to be a doorbell, a handshake,  a cuppa, a chocolate biscuit and a conversation. Reading the nuances, asking the right question at the right time and knowing when to bask in the silence. This was how I connected.

But I do things differently in April 2020. My time is spent pushing buttons on the phone, clicking a mouse, typing on a keyboard, squinting at screen. My vocabulary has changed with a bunch of new words. Facetime, Skype, Duo, Zoom and Facebook to name but a few. This is how I try to connect with others, stay connected with others.

But scratch a little deeper friends. “Connected” is certainly our buzz word, but what exactly does it mean to be ‘connected’ in April in 2020? At best there is a visual image with a voice on a screen. But this is not conversation. The Duo /Face time/ Zoom thingy is clinical and clunky. The telephone diminishes a person to a disembodied voice. This is all I have and I am grateful that these things are at my disposal but… there is a part of me that wants to yell, quite loudly. “It’s not the same!”

So I turn once more to the Master for consolation, wisdom and advice. I look fervently for solace and a way forward. I recall and give thanks that the Master has connected himself to our humanity in not just its joy and sparkly bits, but also its blithering disappointment and bewilderment. Thats what Christmass was all about. I also recall a guy who willingly connected himself to our suffering and even our death, so that we might always be connected in a life and place where we can never be disconnected again.

Easter 3  26th of April. Matthew 28:8

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him.

The clutching of the feet is interesting.

For one thing it tells us the posture of the disciples.They must have been pretty much prostate on the ground which explains why Jesus says “Do not be afraid”.

But feet this is not the only place where feet are given a lot of attention.

It wasn’t that long ago, in fact it was only a matter of weeks when Jesus washed his disciples feet. I guess he could have chosen to shampoo the disciples hair, or wash their hands, but no it’s the feet that got all the attention. Largely because it was the custom that host would wash the guests feet anyway, but the point was that washing another feet is not a nice job. The message was that you do the yuckiest stuff for the people who you know will let you down or will disappoint you.. So feet are the place where service and humility are demonstrated.

Feet are also the place of intimacy and anointing.

Remember the unfashionable woman who came to the fashionable dinner party? Jesus feet got a lot of attention.

Jesus feet are also the place of piercing. The part of the body that had nails smashed through them. These puncture wounds are Jesus exhibit A to prove his love for us. When Thomas is shown the hands and feet it is living proof of what and who it is that stands before him. Who it is that invites him still to come closer and engage with the mystery and wonder of the resurrection of the Master.

10 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

Question… Where did Jesus go between this encounter with the disciples and ….catching up with everyone in Galilee.

Let me offer a couple of wild, out there theories.

1. Caught up with mum. There are several different people Jesus catches up with after his resurrection. The disciples on the road to Emmaus. The fishing party which provides breakfast for the disciples. Appearing to  Thomas and the 10 locked in fear in the upper room.  But one person is missing. One very significant person is not listed anywhere. And that person is Jesus mother Mary. I strongly suspect that she did encounter the her risen Son. If our loving relationships continue beyond the grave, then I believe it is certain that Mother and Son met again. But the event is not recorded for us. There are some things that are very personal and are not for publication to a wider audience and the nature of the encounter between mother and son is one of those meetings. What passes between them is not for us to know or speculate. It belongs purely between the two of them.

2. What if the Risen Christ went off had had a quiet word of reassurance and with Judas? There are things that I am sure that Jesus would like to say to Judas and there are probably things that Judas needed to say to Jesus. Even if Judas was ashamed and didn’t want to, he would still need to. It would have been a difficult conversation and I reckon there would have been tears. Tears of sorrow and shame on Judas part and tears of love on Jesus cheeks.  Eventually there might even have been tears of joy and reconciliation. Yes there would have been much to sort out between Jesus and Judas. Quite a bit of homework I suspect, but not insurmountable. Just a lot of hard slog which is also true of you and I.

And 3, what if the Risen christ caught up with Pilate. Not to reprimand or berate, but to say “Well done. I know you tried really hard and you did really well. Do you understand that it was just part of the big picture? Lets sit down here and I will fill you in why it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die. Do you see now?”

I began with some mutterings about feet and how they recur frequently in the good book and I finished with where the feet of the risen Christ might have taken him after his resurrection.

My question is where does our Lord want your feet to go this week. Who does he want you to contact? It might be someone you care deeply about. It might be a tricky conversation of reconciliation, or it might be a sharing of information, like Pilate. And perhaps somewhere in the quiet of “Stay at home’ we might also come to realise that the Risen Master has also come to visit us.

Someone of ‘mature of years’ kindly phoned the other day. They reflected that the millennial generation will speak of ‘pre’ and ‘post Covid19’. They will be able to recollect what life was like before the pandemic, what it was like during and what life is like after.At the moment we haven’t emerged out the other side. We can’t look back with any clarity because we are still stuck in the middle of it all.But one question keeps on bubbling up.

What am I learning? I know that I am learning lots about the new rules and I am learning a lot about myself. At 60 I had naively thought that I had it all sewn up, stitched up and sorted. But no! I have had to learn geeky things and I have had to learn to be very patient with myself as I slide up and down this relentless learning curve. This has been an infuriating process, full of mistakes and disappointments. In the long run it will not have done me any harm. Easy to say of course, not so easy to live out.

One day we will emerge from this. Just how and when is a moot point, but emerge we will and we can never be the same again. I imagine that our planet will be a different place, and our society can ever be the same again. Then the trick will be to perceive what is actually left. What are the new rules? What will we have learned about each other and ourselves? What will we keep, what will we try to recapture and claim back for ourselves? What do we throw away?

I’ll call her Kerry. Kerry lived a while back and in a parish many kilometres from here. Kerry had terminal cancer and she was a terrifyingly close in age to me. Kerry didn’t come to church much, but she was always receptive to a visit. The hospitality was generous and the conversation was gregarious.

There was a lot to like about her.

What was most admirable was her struggle with faith. She wanted to believe and she wanted to believe very much; particularly as things got grimmer and the cancer progressed.

She spoke frankly about this struggle with her faith and her mortality. Mixed in with the darkness of her doubts there was a deluge of questions and hope. There was a genuine and difficult struggle with the concept of a loving God as her body disappointed her more and more and more.

I was honoured to speak at her funeral and I think I said something like this.

There are many today who would say why would you have a priest and a Church funeral, for someone who seldom went to church. Well for one thing the Church will always honour anyone with the rite of Christian burial. The door is continuously open in these circumstances.

But more than that, Kerry was a person whose struggle with faith and her God was authentic. It was real, it was out there, it was a passionate wrestle with the hard questions. She wasn’t shy about asking the toughies.

And that is what made her special. She is one of the few that expressed outwardly what we all tussle with inwardly. There are many times when I have come into Church to say evening prayer and quietly closed the door behind me. Then I lock it. I calmly sit down and shake my fist at him and ask the same questions that Kerry asked. Most of them beginning with “Why?”

And if we are honest, somewhere deep in ourselves we have often asked these same questions and perhaps we are even asking them today.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the one coin. If there was no doubt, then you would not require faith. You’d have the game all sown up and it would all be ticketyboo and tidy. None of us have arrived at that point yet, but we hope to one day.

To have a faith, no matter how feeble and to have doubts that are monsters, is part of the normal humdrum way of walking close to a pierced and risen saviour. The Risen Master appears frustratingly briefly, never when we want, in ways that we’re not expecting, or hoping for.

Thomas in today's gospel is very much like my friend Kerry. He articulates clearly, honestly and audibly what we all have wanted to say but because of social niceties and misplaced politeness, have never had the courage to speak out loud.

Thomas really wants to believe, needs to believe, would love to believe what his mates have told him  “but unless I can put my finger into his pierced hand. Haven’t we all wanted to say that. To do that.

Faith and doubt go together. You cannot have one without the other. Just as love and pain go together. You know that you are really in love when you hurt for, or pain over someone else. If it didn’t hurt, if there was no pain, or cost, it wouldn’t be love.

Which is why John in this mornings gospel so beautifully captures in this one incident with Thomas, both doubt and faith, love and pain. It is the pierced hand and side that Jesus offers to Thomas out of love. The prints and proof of what he did for Thomas, for you and I and for all those who walk closely and struggle and wrestle and question and bargain and shake our fist at Him. He in turn offers a pierced hand. He says to us “Put your hand here”.

In the end Kerry died a swift death. I count myself deeply privileged because she allowed me to walk a little way with her. The treasures she offered were not glib, pious, swift off the tongue platitudes. What she offered was an integrity and authenticity with her God. I am quite sure that her questions and her grappling continued onto the other side of the grave. Some of the answers would have been revealed when she got to the other side. A bit like asking what is England really like? Well you have to go and live there in order to get the real answer. But what I reckon will calm the the bubbling troubling ferment in her soul, is that moment when The master looks into her eyes and she will know that He is the answer. He is the home and the peace that lasts forever and ever Amen.

Sunday's Mass on the 19th of April, will be streamed at 10:30am from St. Mary's Dunkeld.

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Princess Matilda is articulate, swift of mind, exquisitely manicured and media savvy. But Matilda has a problem. A vicious pestilence has broken out in her tiny kingdom of 17,000 souls. At the moment the afflicted are small in number, but she is shoulder to cheek with neighbours on every side and this pestilence will not stop at the borders.

Princess Matilda is not convinced that her neighbours are trustworthy. Six generations ago there was the great Lego debacle which made trading tricky and communication tense. To this day red lego bricks are a precious commodity and sold on the dark market.
So our monarch has a choice. She can let this pestilence take its course and try to contain it with her limited resources and expertise. Or she quarantines, goes into lockdown and shares the insights and information with her neighbours, thereby saving many lives across the whole region. If she takes this second option she will become economically vulnerable. Will her prickly neighbours be co-operative and supportive? You see her dilemma.

To remain in a cauldron of febrile distrust, where nations and nationalities do not to take action, where they distrust each other, must inevitably result in the highest of losses for everyone.

If Princess Matilda could trust other nations to come to her aid and work with her … then the short and long term benefits are mutually beneficial and the great Lego debacle might be forgotten in a new regime called ‘co-operation’.

Each of our must make a daily choice. From the recently retrenched and redundant, to our fearless leaders, to those whose hard slog is invisible. Mistrust or trust. We can choose to bicker and play with matches while the fire rages, or we can say to each other. “In this new world where we might have to stand a little apart, we must never choose to stand alone”.

Advance notice of AGM.  To be held after a combined parish service at Christ Church Hamilton at 10.30am followed by a bring and share lunch. Electoral enrolment forms will be available in June.  Every member of the parish who wishes to vote must complete an electoral enrolment form.  Nomination forms for the positions to be elected will be available in July.  Please begin to consider the people you would like to serve on Parish Council for the next 12 months.

On Sunday 28th April 2019 the Right Reverend +Garry Weatherill, Bishop of Ballarat, visited our Parish for Confirmation. Five young people were confirmed. We congratulate

Charlotte Tonissen
Michaela Tonissen
Warrick Tonissen
Ava Murrihy and
Harriet McMullen

on their confirmation of their Christian Faith. A large congregation (over 100) attend this celebration and enjoyed the lunch that followed. Thanks to all who helped on the day, especially those who contributed food for the lunch. We pray that these five young members of our Parish continue to grow in faith and devotion.