Season of Growth
Stumbling discipleship
31 August 2014
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year A
You have seduced me O Lord, and I have allowed myself to be seduced. Perhaps Simon, the hero of the Gospel last Sunday, took these words of Jeremiah to heart when after one of his rare triumphs, he so quickly falls from grace. It must have really been something – after being praised so highly…
Rocky Simon’s declaration of faith
26 August 2014
The Gospel today has Jesus taking the disciples on a very unusual road trip. They walk to the very north of Israel, on the border of Lebanon and Syria to the foothills of Mount Hermon. There in the region of Caesarea Philippi – a town that was being built by King Herod to honour a…
Foreign faith
17 August 2014
The Gospel that we are presented with today is hard to deal with (Matthew 15:21-28). We expect that when Jesus is presented with a situation of desperate need that he answer with compassion and mercy. Instead today, when he flees to the pagan northern region of Tyre and Sidon and meets a local woman in…
Storms and Silence – Elijah and Peter
10 August 2014
The audio at the start of the homily today is from the video “Elijah” by Dan Stevers. Elijah in I Kings 17-18 is presented as the dude – the great hero of the people of Israel. He is able to break a 40 month drought, beat a chariot in a 30km race, raise the dead, call down…
Grief and Grace
3 August 2014
During the week as I was bombarded by both traditional media and social media with increasingly violent and horrific articles and images of the death and destruction in the conflicts in Gaza, Syria and Iraq, it was difficult not to feel completely overwhelmed by grief and sadness in the face of such hatred and cruelty. All…
Pursuing Wisdom
27 July 2014
King Solomon whose reign is normally dated from around 970/960 BCE to 930/920 BCE is best known for being extremely wise, extraordinarily wealthy and as a supremely powerful monarch. He is also described as a great lover, with the legendary harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was probably also very busy 😉 He…
Violent darnel
20 July 2014
Most Australians awoke on Friday morning to the devastating news of the destruction of Malaysian Flight MH17 after being shot down by rebel forces in the Ukraine with the loss of 298 lives, including 37 Australian residents and citizens and some medical professionals who were heading to Australia to attend an AIDS conference in Melbourne. In the…
The Abundant Word
13 July 2014
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching
Isaiah chapter 55 begins in a very awesome and utopian way – “Come all who are thirsty, come to the water; and you that have no money – come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This is certainly a beautiful vision and description of the abundance of God’s…
A strange kind of king
6 July 2014
Even though across its long history Israel had very little to make it stand out – one thing that is notable is the honesty with which it tells its story. So although it could never claim to be the largest, wealthiest, most powerful or most influential nation, perhaps it can lay claim to being the one…
Peter’s Confession of Faith
29 June 2014
Radio Program, Season of Growth, Solemnity, Teaching, Year A
Today we honour the apostle Peter, who represents that part of the Church which gives it stability: its traditions and the structures which help to give consistency and unity to the Church, spread as it is through so many races, cultures, experiences and geographical diversity. In the Gospel today from Matthew chapter 16, Peter’s confession…
Trinity as Community and Relationship
15 June 2014
Easter, Season of Growth, Seasons, Year A
When it comes time to celebrate Trinity Sunday it can be tempting to settle in for another discussion on this abstract and irrelevant theological idea. Yet the readings that are offered for this Year A cycle give the clear basis for why the divine dance of love that describes the relationship between the Father, Son and…
Worry
2 March 2014
This Sunday, Bishop Peter Ingham’s Lenten Pastoral message – “This is Christian Hope: That the Future is in God’s Hands” – replaced the homily in all churches across the Diocese. You can watch the video here. Consequently, I did not preach nor record a homily this week. However, the homily from three years, recorded at St…
The law completed
16 February 2014
Bible, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year A
The Jewish law, especially the 613 mitzvah or commandments found in the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures / Old Testament) – with 365 prohibitions (You shall not…) and 248 prescriptions (Honour your father and mother; Keep holy the Sabbath day…), was a colossal achievement. The whole of the Jewish nation -…
A salted earth
9 February 2014
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year A
The writings of the prophet Isaiah continue to echo across the centuries to provide a challenge for us; they were certainly well-known at the time of Jesus and seem to provide the background for the teaching that Jesus gives us in the second part of the sermon on the mount. The call for Israel was…
Behold the Lamb of God
20 January 2014
Bible, Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year A
When John the Baptist, sees his cousin Jesus coming towards him, it seems a little odd to declare “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Presuming that John has not simply forgotten the name of his cousin, there must be something much deeper going on. As we have often seen…
Christ the King on a Cross
23 November 2013
Bible, Season of Growth, Solemnity, Teaching, Year C
Today we come to the end of the year – the final day in what is called the liturgical year – as we celebrate the great feast of Christ the King. But the Gospel today helps us to keep our eyes focused very sharply on what Jesus as King is really going to mean and…
An Apocalyptic Age
17 November 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
One of the styles of biblical literature that causes great misunderstanding is apocalyptic. This is not helped by the many, perhaps more fundamentalist interpreters who attempt to find literal meaning in the events of the present world, when the only direct literal meaning concerns events at the time the texts were written. In this case,…
Resurrected temple
11 November 2013
Bible, New Creation, Radio Program, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
The long journey that we have been on with Jesus which began in chapter 9 of the Gospel of Luke – the journey from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem has finished and Jesus has made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem – which the church celebrates each year on Palm Sunday. So all the…
Salvation has come to this house
3 November 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
To fully appreciate the story of Zacchaeus you do need to understand how despised he would have been within the society of Jericho – itself already on the outside of acceptable Jewish society, given its reputation as a city of sin and its history of standing opposed to the kingdom of God. There were three…
Have mercy on me, a sinner
27 October 2013
Radio Program, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
The parable that lies at the heart of our Gospel this week, from Luke chapter 18, seems at first glance to be describing a religious event. In reality, like the parable that begins chapter 18 which we heard last Sunday – the one about the widow and the corrupt judge – this parable also is…
Dealing with dysfunction
20 October 2013
Although St Paul tells his young disciple Timothy that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, refuting error, guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be holy” (2 Tim 3:16) it is hard to see how that can be applied to our first reading today, taken from Exodus 17:8-13. Like so…
Cured and healed
12 October 2013
Discipleship, New Creation, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
When was the last time that you were so truly grateful for something that happened in your life that you had to shout out aloud in thanksgiving. Perhaps if you were a Roosters fan, it was last Sunday night? I remember as a kid growing up on the farm, we would often help dad when…
Faith enkindled
6 October 2013
Season of Growth, Teaching, Technology, Year C
Societies have always been constructed around complicated systems of honour and appearance. Some people are part of the ‘in crowd’; others are not. This week I caught up with two families that each have fourteen-year-old daughters who were born only a few days apart – so they have grown up like sisters. Before they go…
The parable of the dishonest manager
22 September 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
In the forty or so parables that Jesus tells in the first three Gospels there are lots of twists and surprises along the way – but perhaps none is quite as perplexing as the one that we find in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the unjust steward. It is…
The rubbish of the older brother
15 September 2013
When I was in USA a few months ago, I visited the Great Smoky Mountains national park in Eastern Tennessee. It is a beautiful place, and the most visited of the national parks in America, attracting millions of visitors each year. And most of those visitors first go to the main entrance and visitors station…
Jesus Others You = Joy
9 September 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew The gospel that we just heard is one of those that makes you really wonder who Jesus is? What kind of person says something as outrageous as ‘If any man comes to me without hating (miseo) his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, he cannot…
A place at the table
1 September 2013
New Creation, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
The vision that the letter to the Hebrews paints today is certainly expansive. It is an image of the new creation where everyone is welcome and treated as a first-born son and citizen. After attending a forum at the University of Wollongong this week on Refugees, it became even more apparent how far removed this…
Being more like Jesus
25 August 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
When I was a student at Sydney University, there was one question that I was regularly asked – are you saved? Sometimes it was in the form of the “if you died tonight, where would you end up – in heaven or hell?” Perhaps this was because as an Economics student I had more time…
Casting fire on a gloomy earth
18 August 2013
One of the things that never fails to amaze me – and this is a little embarrassing to admit! – is when you have been literally under the weather for a while: the sky is grey and overcast, perhaps it has rained a bit, with fog and mist thrown in and the weather is really…
The kingdom received already
11 August 2013
Discipleship, Season of Growth, Teaching, Year C
The opening line of our Gospel today provides an essential description of the Christian message for us – if only we could receive it and live it. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased the Father to give you the Kingdom.” So often we live caught up in a false notion that…