The gospel tells us that it is our duty to preach what we are doing, if we are to be Christ - like. We are living the resurrected life. This preaching what we practice will make us maligned, as we claim we can do it only because Christ works within us. The world would rather believe the lie that we can do it on our own.

As today we baptise Simon and Daniel. Roger, Victoria, Veronica, Wendy , Ian and Daniel's sponsors hear us say to them, "Confess Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, look for his coming in glory." How are we to be able to take up this challenge to proclaim what we are doing: living the resurrected life Jesus made possible for the world?

The Hebrew Scriptures tells us in story form, both how not to take up this challenge, and how to live the resurrected life. In Genesis 21: 7, last week we heard Sarah praising God as she breast-fed Isaac, the long-awaited offspring in her old age, her salvation. Then this week, we hear the rest of the story: as Isaac is taken from her arms and weaned, Sarah turns on the other woman in Abraham's life and casts her and her offspring out to die. This is no way to live the resurrected life!

Sarah excludes Hagar from the sphere of God's salvation, in her struggle to preserve rights of inheritance for what is hers. Sarah has failed to internalise the GIFT of salvation that God gave her in last weeks story. In failing to have this gift inside herself, keeping the gift external, in the form of her son, Sarah becomes opposed to God's all-inclusive will. She fails to support community. She functions as an oppressor, incensed to see Hagar's son playing / laughing (word-play) with her son.

We too can fail to internalise the gift of God's salvation. In this way we too fail to live the resurrected life. To internalise a gift, we need to be immersed in it, as we do in baptism; to eat it, drink it in, as we do in communion; we need to hear it and speak and sing it in worship; we need to study it and mull it around, and re-frame it for ourselves, in study, or contemplation or meditation; we need to engage with its giver in prayer.

To live the resurrected life, we need to do this internalising of the gift of salvation often, in the way that we take daily bread, as our own resources are soon depleted. Any less, and we fail to internalise God's gift, and we oppress others as we function by rules. (the Law) rather than by faith in God's provision for all creation.

Let us test our internalisation process. What happens when we see someone else enjoying our rights? Say, coming to church and sitting there but not tithing their or offering to join a working group? How do we feel? Would we like to say with Sarah, "cast them out! They won't inherit this gift." What if people joined us who were not Anglican, not baptised Christians, not white? Would we allow them too to laugh at the joy of this gift from God? Or would we cast them out, or cold-shoulder / freeze them out, even create a rule to exclude them?

Sarah did the latter, because, although she had lifted up and held God's gift in her arms, breast fed Isaac, laughed with him, she had not taken into herself the gift that God had given her. Without Isaac, she had no internal sense of the gift, and life became a scramble for preservation of her 'rights'; a scramble that involved the oppression of Hagar. We can be like that too.

This story is startling in that God tells Abraham to do what Sarah tells him to do. God allows Sarah, the bearer of the gift, to act in opposition to God's inclusive will. God allows free will. God allows Sarah to function to exclude Hagar, a woman who also carries God's promise.

This scenario happens today. In the Church. In Synod, we make rules to exclude women from full participation in the life to the community. (ordination). We make rules to exclude people on the basis of their sexual function, or their age. (Communion, confirmation, voting). We make unwritten rules to freeze out people who don't 'belong' or don't 'join in' according to our rules. This is oppression, in that it excludes people by the rule, "We are saved by our good works!" This is a lie. We are saved all alike, by the grace of God in us.

All these rules lose sight of the fact that none of us would be here but for the wonderful gift of God coming to us, accepting us as we are, and living within us, as Christ, enabling us to live the resurrected life of God's intention. When we can internalise the wonder of this gift, who are we to oppress, to exclude or rule out anyone on humanly determined arbitration?

Matthew's gospel is written to Christians who are experiencing such exclusion by God's people of their day. In it, we hear Jesus say, "It will all be exposed to God's judgment." The gospel tells us that the critical issue for those who experience exclusion, oppression, who are maligned for their faith, is to commit our lives to the Lordship of Jesus. In baptism, we make this commitment, when we say, "I turn to Christ; I repent of my sins; I reject selfish living and all that is false and unjust; I renounce all that is evil."

Jesus tells the persecuted, "Acknowledge me before others." The gospel warns us that the realistic attitude for us to have about living the resurrected life is to expect division, opposition, challenges to our commitment, maligning by those whose power is threatened when we commit our lives to the one who created life itself.

When we internalise our faith, it makes a real difference to our lives. We move from being like Sarah, functioning to oppress others, to being like Hagar was after God's intervention. Even Hagar initially acted as Sarah did in the story. Sarah had Hagar 'cast out'. Then, when her resources run out, Hagar "casts" her own child under a bush to die. The gift of God, while it remains in our arms, remains outside us, not part of us. In our excluded years in the wilderness, we too can cast off our salvation as these two women did.

But the Genesis story has a new twist to it. In it, we hear that God is faithful to the oppressed and excluded (i.e., Hagar and her child, Ishmael. God had instructed Hagar to call him "God hears" in Genesis 16, when Hagar was running away from Sarah's oppression the first time.) God hears the voice of Ishmael, Hagar's doubly cast off son. God hears and God instructs Hagar in the way to resurrect God's gift to her. "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him."

For the oppressed to receive God's gift of salvation, we too are called upon to lift up, not to cast off God's gift to us. When oppressed by the Church we are called to hold fast with our hand, not to distance ourselves from Gods gift of salvation. God does the rest. We hear the story continue: "Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave Ishmael a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.1 He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt'.

We know stories of people who have taken Hagar's path to live the resurrected life. Francis of Assisi cast out by his family; Martin Luther, cast out by the Church; a Perth woman cast out by the women she had fought so hard to have ordained as priests. All have had to lift up and hold fast to the gospel that God hears, God resurrects, to enable their reformations of the Church to grow up and take on a life of their own.

Proclaim what we do, proclaim the resurrected life God gifts to us. We were dead to sin, but now we are alive to God in Christ Jesus, says Paul. He says it all. Remember , it is our God's nature is to liberate the oppressed: it is God's desire is to liberate in spite of God's people.

Let us baptise Simon and Daniel into this faith.

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