Of Coincidences and God’s Presence

6 May, 2012

Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
Sunday 6 May, 2012

Richard Holloway, the former Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh in his recent memoir, Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt observes that the opposite to faith, is not doubt, but certainty. Doubt on the other hand is wrapped up with our coming to faith.  Faith emerges through a tussle with our doubts and questions. Faith does not give rise to the easy road – there will always be the twist and turns and speed humps our path.

Faith however, is not just some intellectual exercise in which the evidence and argument is finely balanced and somehow faith emerges. You are not argued into the faith. Somewhere along the way there needs to be the experience of God’s presence and peace. In this I am not suggesting there is no intellectual rigour, or somehow it is all experience and there is no reflection and analysis. As the Hebrews themselves determined we are to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul and with all our strength and all our mind”. The mind is important – but unless we feel, experience – even enjoy something of God’s peace, or as we heard in our reading from I John, “God’s love” faith becomes just an arid exercise, and it is continued …

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Are good works enough?

29 April, 2012

Delieverd by Rev Dr John Evans
Sunday 29 April, 2012

If the proverbial Martian were to land on earth, they would be puzzled by the Christian faith. They would see Christianity being contradictory, or at best paradoxical. And our readings today illustrate well what I am getting at. On the one hand our faith is on about love and compassion . There is very much an ethical component to it.  So 1 John says:

“We know love by this, that he (Jesus) laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:16 ff)

The very image of the good shepherd also speaks of love and concern.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11)

An image of Jesus obviously has drawn from Psalm 23, which in this instance speaks of God being the good shepherd sustaining us – loving us – through obviously tough and difficult times. And in Acts we find the disciples – so soon after the events of Easter  - healing a crippled beggar. …

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The Problem with Right and Wrong

22 April, 2012

Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
Sunday 22 April

1 John 3: 1-7

John Wesley, no less, writing in his diary for Thursday 1 September, 1763 says of the first letter of John “How plain, how full, and how deep a compendium of genuine Christianity!” Perhaps John Wesley  wasn’t thinking of our passage that we have today!  One commentary I read says there are nettlesome problems in trying to understand what was being said; another suggested “take a vacation form this text”.  Others note that the devisers of the lectionary have endeavoured to shield us from the worst of it, by ending the reading at verse 7, in mid stream as it were. So this is what we missed:

“Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning, The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way; all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.”

If you want a short summary of …

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Easter and Money

16 April, 2012

Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
Sunday 15 April, 2012

I came across a new word during the week:  monetise. (Well it seemed to be a new word to me.) However, it was one of those words you could sort of guess its meaning. Simply as I understand it, it means making money from something that previously one didn’t make money; or really wasn’t an activity in the first place to make money. So, for example, how can you make money out of the information you put out there on the internet. More particularly, how do you make money if you are a newspaper and you now put your newspaper on the web? Well the answer is, as apparently the Herald Sun will be doing shortly, is one puts a paywall – another new word – on your website. To gain access to the news, well at least the interesting bits of the news, you have to pay and you will then be allowed to get beyond the wall. In other words you monetise your web site. However to monetize something, is not just about the web and such modern technology.

You may have noticed what has happened to sport over recent times. No longer is it about healthy exercise and certain tribal loyalties we have for our footy team. It is an …

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Easter and Life Beyond Death

10 April, 2012

Delivered by Rev. Dr John Evans
Easter Day
8 April 2012

Cross adorned with flowers on Easter Day at Church of All Nations 2012

Cross adorned with flowers on Easter Day at Church of All Nations 2012

Last Wednesday I found myself standing in a cemetery.  I was conducting the graveside service for my aunt: Lilla Dorothy Clewett by name.  It was a large gathering. She was one of 12 children so there were lots of her nephews and nieces. She in turn had 8 children. She was just a couple of weeks shy of being 100 years old – so her direct family went to the fourth generation. She was a wonderful person. It had been hard life – but in her selfless and determined way had inspired all of us who had gathered there last Wednesday.

As I stood in this cemetery I could not but help play out in my mind the events of Easter, that first day of the week following the crucifixion of Jesus. The scene of that day was also in a cemetery . There the tomb was empty. As Mark records the women that day were advised by a young man dressed in a white robe that “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for …

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Good Friday and Our Redemption

10 April, 2012

Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
Good Friday
6 April, 2012

I will confess. I have a new vice.

I have come to enjoy a round of golf at the Royal Park Golf Course. And I even play with some of the congregation. I am not very good – but I do well enough to at least maintain interest. Now the layout of the Royal Park Golf Course is quite interesting – there is a road, a tram line and also a railway line that runs through the middle. The zoo runs along its border.  Now with all of these barriers and features, it happens that the last hole of the course is somewhat remote from the preceding holes. You have to traipse a fair distance to reach it. Very early on in my golfing career, I got to naming this last far off hole – the redemption hole!

The redemption hole. Here was the chance to redeem all that had gone before; all those woeful shots, all those missed opportunities, all of that failure of technique, failures of patience  – even absences of skill and ability. There was this one last chance to redeem oneself.  And at the redemption hole, if I did well, I would at least feel I had  had a worthwhile morning, even if all the rest was pretty lamentable.

Most rounds …

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And After A Triumphal Entry, What?

1 April, 2012

Delievered by Rev Dr John Evans
Palm Sunday
1 April, 2012

There are often passages of scripture, familiar passages of scripture, in which you miss particular, significant, detail and all of a sudden a new meaning  jumps out at you. You then see the whole incident in a new light. So you may have read the passage many times, or even acted it out – as we have done today, and still you miss the detail.  For me, it took many years before I saw that in Mark’s account of the resurrection the women were actually terror struck and afraid (16:8) and not as you would expect full of joy and hope;   or in Matthew’s account of the what we know as the Great Commission, right at the end of his gospel, that although the disciples worshipped him, some among them doubted that day. (Mt 28:17)

Today the verse that jumps out is the last verse of our reading. It probably could have just been a linking verse, providing some transitional information. However, I know that in Mark’s gospel, every word counts. His recounting of Jesus’ life is the most terse of the gospel writers, indeed his is the shortest of all the gospels. So when there is a little detail, and not in the other gospel accounts of what we call Palm Sunday, …

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Did Jesus Actually Have a Choice?

25 March, 2012

Delievered by Rev Dr John Evans
Sunday 25 March, 2012

There are two perspectives we can take on Easter.

Do we take Easter as a job lot, a package deal, on what we regard as the essence of the Christian faith: saying something about our salvation, relationship with God, through  the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is a theological understanding  of the meaning of Easter.  So for example, in the book of Hebrews, our reading for today there is a bit of a theological summary about Easter:

“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrew 5: 8-10)

The writer of Hebrews is interested in what it might all mean – and so he places the story of Easter within a particular frame of reference. Here Jesus is viewed as  some sort of new high priest who would act for us, the One who pleads our case before God and is bound to have God’s ear. This person is not our elected representative, nor are they self designated, but they are God’s own choice. This is what Easter means for the writer of Hebrews.

Now the other perspective is …

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A reflection on God’s Goodness

18 March, 2012

Delievered by Rev Dr John Evans

Sunday 18 March, 2012

Among other things, Lent is the season in which the church comes to terms with suffering, especially that suffering which is the result of human sin. It is in the context of their suffering that women and

men often encounter most seriously their need for God. And it is in a narrative of great suffering, that of Christ’s passion, Christ’s suffering that God’s response to human need becomes clear. Yet the matter of suffering is never, within the Lenten perspective, an issue for its own sake. Suffering— both Christ’s and ours—is always recognized as an occasion for God’s mercy. The Friday before Easter is always Good. The suffering there – we have come to believe – is for our sake. God’s mercy and love is shown.

The appeal to our own suffering is more problematic. The problem is that suffering may not go away,  or may innocently arise in the first place.  Now the psalm for today, Psalm 107, does not focus on the cause of hardship, but on the restoration of those who are victims of suffering. Regardless of the source,  God cares deeply. So although the psalm goes to great pains to portray human distress, its beginning and ending are rooted in professions of praise: they give thanks to the Lord, for …

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Jesus and the Market

11 March, 2012

Delivered by Dr John Evans
Sunday 11 March, 2012

Today,  in continuing to prepare for the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus through this time of Lent, we consider Jesus cleansing the temple.

The incident is well known. We typically recall it because it seems to be out of character with what we understand to be Jesus’ usual manner and mood. Here is a passionate, angry man – and to a certain extent acting violently with his “whip of chords”, overturning tables, and generally causing a great disturbance. All of this happens in the temple forecourt – in other words very prominently in the city of Jerusalem and at the heart of religious life. For the gospel writers Mathew, Mark and Luke they place this incident at the beginning of Holy Week, at the end of Jesus’ ministry, and it indeed becomes an incident which the religious authorities take as a reason for his death. Here was evidence that it was better that one man die than have for the Jewish and Roman authorities problems with an uprising and revolt. John in his gospel however, places it right at the start of his ministry, and makes particular theological use of it. He sets the scene for his gospel that follows.  Right from the outset we see that the way of Jesus will come …

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