Love
The command to love
24 October 2020
Anger is a difficult emotion that perhaps gets a bad reputation from our experience as children and being told that it is wrong to feel angry. Yet in our first reading from Exodus 22:20-26 we hear about the kinds of things that make God angry – when the widows, the orphans, the strangers, the foreigners,…
Hope of New Creation 3 – Heaven and Paradise
8 May 2016
Easter, New Creation, Seasons, Series, Teaching
On this feast of the Ascension, we ponder the event of Jesus ascending into heaven as told in the Lukan literature – the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The other synoptic Gospels do not record the event at all, and John only hints at it by telling Mary of Magdala that…
The Holy Dysfunctional Family
27 December 2015
Flowing directly out of the celebration of Christmas this year we have the opportunity to reflect upon not only the holy family of Nazareth, but also our own conceptions and ideas of family. In my case, I know that many of my most basic understandings of family came from comparing the idealised image of family…
Submission to the Messiah
23 August 2015
Radio Program, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year B
The Gospel this Sunday concludes our readings from John 6 where Jesus now addresses himself only to his disciples, rather than to the whole crowd. We hear that many of his disciples draw back and grumble and complain about the teaching of Jesus. Not because they could not understand what he is saying, but because…
Discovering the breadth and depth of God’s love for the saints
12 June 2015
The scriptures given to us today for the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus take us to the very centre of our faith and our relationship with God revealed in and through Jesus. The gospel ends with the declaration in the Gospel of John that we will look on the one whom they have…
Called and chosen to love
10 May 2015
We often struggle with some very basic questions – like who are we? When we meet people for the first time, conversations invariably begin with a process of classification – so, what do you do? Where do you live? The Gospel today takes us to a much deeper place in our relationship with God. It…
A God who is rich in mercy
15 March 2015
Beginnings and endings are always significant. How you start a story – and how you end a story create so much of the impact of the whole story. We know well how the Bible begins – “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” (Gen 1:1) We might even know how the…
Heaven, hell and God’s love
6 October 2012
This workshop was presented during the Ignite Conference 2012 – Awaken. It is in part a response to the book written by Rob Bell, called ‘Love Wins’ which was published in 2011. This is the description of the workshop: Rob Bell challenged the Church to rethink heaven and hell in his book Love Wins. This seminar…
Love beyond walls
13 May 2012
Discipleship, Easter, Season of Growth, Seasons, Teaching, Year B
In the first century, the standard expression of the Jewish faiths was strongly influenced by the Pharisees, the most populous of the many forms of Jewish sects that were active at the time. Unlike other groups which were often on the fringes of Jewish society or groups such as the Sadducees which were deeply embedded…
Children of the Shepherd God
29 April 2012
Easter, Season of Growth, Seasons, Year B
I am sure that if many parishioners ever bother to listen to the first line of the second reading today, they either choose to ignore it or doubt that it can actually be true. It is a rather extraordinary claim: ‘think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be…
Stations of the Cross Reflection
6 April 2012
A brief reflection offered at the end of the Stations of the Cross, celebrated at St Paul’s, Camden on Good Friday morning. Play MP3 Length: 2’15” A full recording of the service (slightly edited to reduce some of the silences and not including the final multimedia) Play Full Service mp3 Length: 40’05”
Let them go up to worship in love
18 March 2012
Lent, Season of Growth, Seasons, Year B
A Jew would recognise our first reading today as the very last passage in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. English bibles have tended to reorganise the order of the books in the Old Testament, so that we no longer follow the three-part division of the Tanakh into Torah (the Law), Nevi’im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim…
Learning to love
22 October 2011
There is nothing unusual in the question that Jesus is asked in our Gospel today (Matthew 22:34-40) – students would regularly ask visiting Rabbis this question – which is the greatest commandment. When there are 613 mitzva (commandments) to choose from in the books of Moses (the Torah or Pentateuch) it is no wonder that…
Hair and tears
12 June 2010
Season of Growth, Solemnity, Year C
11th Sunday in the Season of the Year. Also Immaculate Heart of Mary (Diocesan Feast) and Mission Sunday Appeal. Also the Sunday when my move to Fairy Meadow Parish was announced… Announcement of Co-Cathedral Like a great artistic masterpiece, Luke tells the story of the day that a Pharisee invited Jesus to a festive meal,…
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