Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
1st of November 2026
1 Thessalonians 2:1-13
Matthew 23:1-12
Jesus said, ‘You are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.’
Once a year I put on a long black robe with red facings, a red academic ‘hood,’ and a floppy black velvet hat with a red tassel. Together with my colleagues, I process slowly into one of Melbourne’s cathedrals or large churches, and if my name were listed anywhere, it would be as ‘Reverend Doctor.’ All this even though I am a member of the Council of the University of Divinity, which was created to teach theology and ministry. Then there are the times when I wear a special shirt with a white clerical collar, and today, as I lead our worship, I am wearing a robe called an ‘alb’ (white) to show that I am baptised and a stole to show that I am ordained. No wonder that Emeritus Professor Brendan Byrne, who taught me New Testament, writes that, ‘scarcely any injunction of the Lord has been so ignored as this ruling out of titles and, by extension, accoutrements of dress and ceremonial.’[1]
In today’s reading from the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is in the Temple that he claimed on Palm Sunday. Then he drove out those buying and selling, overturning their tables, before the chief priests and elders of the people, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, challenged him. Today’s reading begins a chapter directed entirely against the scribes and Pharisees. As I have reminded us almost too many times, the reason Matthew is focusing on the scribes and Pharisees as Jesus’ main opponents, rather than the chief priests and elders or the Sadducees, is because he is writing after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, at a time when the movement that became Christianity and the movement that became Rabbinic Judaism were competing over which of them was the true descendant of Second Temple Judaism. We must always remember that Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and the Pharisees is part of an internal religious conflict within Judaism.
But while the context in which Matthew presents today’s sayings comes from his own time, I do not think we can doubt that these are authentic warnings of Jesus. They reflect the teachings Jesus had given in what we call the Sermon on the Mount: ‘whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others … whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others … whenever you fast, do not look sombre, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting.’ (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16) Whether or not the scribes and Pharisees were such hypocrites does not matter; the point is that we who follow Jesus are not to be like them.
We are not to claim special honour and respect, titles and ceremonial dress, because we are all the children of the one Father; the students of the one Teacher; the disciples of the one Instructor. There is meant to be a radical equality among those who follow Jesus and yet, as Brendan Byrne writes, ‘The instruction to live as brothers and sisters under the one Father in heaven, each striving to emulate the “servant” rank and role modelled by Christ, has fought a losing battle against the tendency to institutionalise and socially elevate leadership figures.’ But the fact that the battle is a losing one does not mean we should stop fighting it.
We can see Paul following Jesus’ instructions in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. Scholars think this letter is the earliest writing we have in the New Testament, written no later than 50 CE. This first Christian document reveals how much and how gently Paul loves the community at Thessalonica. He spent some months with them in the late 40s CE, but then he and his companions were forced to leave the city. Ever since, he has worried about those he evangelised. Have they kept the faith despite the persecution they have experienced from their families and community? Because Paul has been unable to visit them again, he has sent Timothy to see how they are, and Timothy’s report of their continuing faith and love has filled him with thanksgiving. (1 Thessalonians 3:6-9)
Paul is not just worried about whether the Thessalonians still believe the word of God; he is worried about how they are living it out, whether they are leading lives worthy of God and the good news Paul shared with them. Before Paul gives further instructions on what a life worthy of God looks like, he reminds them who he is and how he taught them. He did not come among them insisting on his rights or seeking praise or reward. As an apostle, he could have demanded that they support him as he taught them; wandering philosophers did. Indeed, by not demanding hospitality, some could have argued that Paul was shaming them, dishonouring them in a society in which refusing to accept hospitality was as bad as refusing to offer it. But Paul reminds them that he did not want to burden them; for this reason he worked night and day, in labour and toil.
Nor did Paul berate them into belief. The Puritan John Edwards preached a notorious sermon in Massachusetts in 1741 during a revival in what became the United States called the First Great Awakening. The sermon is titled ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’ and it includes the statement: ‘The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire.’ The response to this was that ‘before the sermon was done there was a great moaning and crying out through the whole house — “What shall I do to be saved?” “Oh, I am going to hell!” “Oh, what shall I do for a Christ?” and so forth — so that the minister was obliged to desist. [The] shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing.’ This is not the way the Apostle Paul converted the Thessalonians. Instead, he writes, ‘we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children … we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you.’ (Some gender essentialism there; Paul seems to believe that mothers and fathers have separate roles in child-rearing, but he himself managed to play both roles.) For Paul, love and compassion are at the heart of God’s gospel, and he evangelises with love and compassion.
‘Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.’ In this letter Paul describes himself as acting like a father and a mother, but he does not call himself the Thessalonians’ father or mother. Notably, nineteen times in this short letter Paul addresses or describes the Thessalonians as brothers (and sisters). Paul has brought the Thessalonians to faith, but because the gospel he has shared with them is not a human word but God’s word, he does not claim a higher status in God’s family for sharing it. He, too, is a child of the one Father, a student of the one Teacher, a disciple of the one Instructor. He demonstrates the radical equality Jesus commands in today’s gospel passage.
Christianity is a faith of radical equality and a family. Christians are all the children of the one Parent. The concept of ‘chosen family’ is vitally important to members of the queer community, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people (LGBTIQ+). When I was interviewed on Joy FM and allowed to choose two songs to be played, my first was ‘Chosen Family’ by Rina Sawayama and Elton John, with its lines, ‘We don’t need to be related to relate, we don’t need to share genes or a surname, you are, you are, my chosen family.’ Many members of the queer community have been rejected by their biological families of origin, which is why chosen family is so important. In the same way, the Thessalonians had been rejected by their families of origin and their community, and so Paul reassures them that they have gained a new family: ‘the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ (1 Thessalonians 1:1) For those who have lost their biological family, the faith provides another.
Two thousand years later, Christians in countries like Australia do not lose our families when we become part of the faith. It is often our families of origin that bring us to be baptised and raise us in the faith. But like the Thessalonians, we too find in the church another, larger family. Christianity is even more radical than the queer community; rather than a chosen family, we have an unchosen family. We have siblings we will never know, whose lives are unimaginably different from ours. We share a Father with people who follow Jesus in ways that we cannot even understand. Rather than choosing them as members of our family, God has chosen us to join them in a family that extends throughout time and space. This even though we can find it hard enough to treat the person in the next pew as a family member.
Fortunately, as Paul reassures the Thessalonians, the word of God is at work within us as we seek to follow Jesus. We can lead lives worthy of the God who has called us into glory through grace. In a world that is determined to tear people apart because of nationality and race and gender and wealth or poverty, imagine what it could mean for Christians to believe that all 2.4 billion of us are the members of the one family. Imagine if we saw all Christians, no matter where or how they lived, as our kin. It may seem impossible, but Paul and the Thessalonians would have believed it even more impossible that Christianity could become a world religion, with billions of people seeking to follow the way of Jesus. After all, as the archangel Gabriel told Mary, nothing is impossible with God. Let us obey Jesus, follow the example of the apostle Paul, and live as the children of the one Father, caring for every other Christian in the entire world as our beloved sibling in Christ. Amen.
[1] Brendan Byrne, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today (2004), p. 172.
