My Sermons

 Sunday 28 April 2024 1 John 4.7-21 John 15.1-8 Many years ago I had a bad experience with pruning.  What made it worse, was it wasn’t my tree, it was at a place I was working.  ‘We just need to lop a couple of those over-hanging branches’, I suggested – trouble is, when I lopped them off it was obvious I needed to take a bit off on the other side to match.  Then it looked ridiculous because the side branches were short but it went straight up in the middle, so I had to get a step-ladder – every attempt to make it look symmetrical meant I had to take a bit more off somewhere else - by the end of the morning the damage was done.  All that was left was a couple of bare branches, and a solitary leaf.   Pruning isn’t a job for the faint-hearted.  It’s a job for realists, for people who know that a living thing needs to be able to direct its energies into areas of new growth, that dead and dying wood needs to be amputated and growth needs to be encoura...

Sunday 7 April 2024     1 John 1.1-2.2 John 20.19-31  Somebody once commented to me – I forget who, and I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a criticism – that Christianity was an early experiment in Communism. Which failed. Along the same lines, I do remember it was Mahatma Ghandi who once remarked that he thought Christianity was a good idea – and that somebody should give it a try. You get, of course, that I’m working my way around to talking about the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts gives us a fascinating glimpse of the very early Christian community - a community in transition, still perhaps reeling from the discovery that has changed their lives and is set to change the world - that Jesus who was crucified is very much alive. A community expecting Jesus to come back again any moment and apparently waiting to be told what to do next - but most notably a community in which everything is shared, not just money and food, as they live and pray toget...

  JANUARY 5TH, 2024 So yesterday, the sixth of January, is the 12th and last day of Christmas. Along with giving your true love the dubious gift of twelve drummers drumming, it’s the correct day for taking down the Christmas tree and packing away the nativity set, and it’s also the date of the ancient festival of the Epiphany on which the early Church celebrated the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And the day for celebrating pagans getting it right, wealthy foreign stargazers who recognised the signs in the heavens that showed them the global importance of Jesus’ birth. Basically, the ancient world’s equivalent of scientists, in today’s terms astrologers, Matthew names them as magi or sorcerers from the East. Kings? Maybe not, but certainly rich and powerful and well-connected politically - and all of it set aside to traipse across the desert and pay homage to a baby born to a poor couple made homeless by a census. These days, the word ‘epiphany’ means a sudden happy realisation, the ...

17/12/2023 Last week, we started the season of Advent, with an ‘over the horizon’ look at the end of all things, coming in Mark’s gospel immediately after his darkly foreboding reference to the desecration of the temple and a time of terror. Something vague and portentous is coming! This week, on the second Sunday of Advent, things start to get more specific. We head back to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel for the beginning of the story and the announcement of the good news! Though what, you might wonder, could possibly be good news for the late first-century Jewish community Mark is writing for? It’s a time of war, somewhere near the brutal end of a seven-year uprising against the Roman occupying army, culminating in the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And the first 8 verses of Mark’s urgent war-time gospel makes a bold claim of good news for a people who have lived under occupation for a century or more and who now face the destruction – for the second time in their history – of the temp...

NOVEMBER 19TH, 2023 Sunday, 19 Nov 2023 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11 Matthew 25.14-30 Jesus is coming! Pass it on! No, really, it’s true! I saw it a while back on a bumper sticker. ‘Jesus is coming! Look busy!’ Did you know, next Sunday is the end of the Church year? Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas, begins the new liturgical year but the lectionary draws our attention both at the end of the old year and at the beginning of Advent - to the end of all things, judgement and the coming of Christ. It’s certainly a way to heighten the suspense, and it’s the theme for both our readings this morning. The first letter to the church in Thessalonika is undisputedly the earliest document in the New Testament, written by St Paul perhaps as early as 52 or 53 AD - way earlier than the Gospels, which means that it is the first word that comes to us of the risen Christ. It might be Paul’s first go at putting the good news into writing at the beginning of his missionary career, but he is already a m...

NOVEMBER 19TH, 2023 First Reading 1 Thessalonians 4.9-18 Gospel Matthew 25.1-13 So apparently the average person - over an average life span - spends about five years waiting in queues of one sort or another, including about six months waiting at traffic lights. In our individualistic, "me first" society, paradoxically enough, we meekly queue up and wait for almost a sixteenth of our entire life expectancy! And this, Jesus send to be telling us, is what the kingdom of heaven is like. Waiting around to get into a slap-up party. By way of background, wedding feasts in rural Galilee in the 1st century were chaotic, multi-day, whole-of-village events, at some stage of which the bridegroom would be escorted to the bride’s home where - well, you can use your imagination but in any case the young girls of the village would bring him in to his bride amidst general merriment and that would give them good luck in finding a bridegroom of their own. But the point is that what with the ea...

OCTOBER 29TH, 2023 Matthew 22.15-22 So, today Jesus is talking about money. He has a fair bit to say about money, actually. He teaches us to use our money to help those in need, for example in the story of the Good Samaritan. He challenges a rich young man to give away all that he has, to make himself literally poor as a precondition for discipleship. We can’t serve two masters - it’s hard to love God if we love money. Jesus draws attention to a widow putting two small copper coins into the temple treasury, praising her as an example of generosity. On the other hand, he criticises the Pharisees for tithing in relation to external things but neglecting to give God what really matters. He challenges us with the story of the workers in the vineyard - all get a day's pay, even the ones who get there late. And he warns us all, 'where your treasure is, there your heart will follow.' So, be careful what you invest in! In our gospel reading today, we see the Pharisees and the Herod...

  January 28, 2024 Romans ch. 13, Matthew ch. 18 What duty do we as Christians owe to the secular State? You - I’m assuming - pay your taxes and keep to the speed limit and do all of the things that a good citizen should - and of course there’s a price to pay for those who choose not to! But - beyond the obvious necessity of keeping out of trouble - how does your Christian faith direct you in your relationship with the secular State? It’s a real question because not all churches reach the same conclusion. Some Christian denominations - the Christadelphians, the Amish, the Exclusive Brethren go so far as refusing to vote, on the basis that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Others like the Quakers refuse to fight wars even if conscripted, on the authority of the Ten Commandments. On the other end of the spectrum might be the Church of England which as the Established Church in the UK has a constitutional role within secular government - some cynic even describing the C of E as t...

 AUGUST 28TH, 2023 It’s an obvious metaphor, isn’t it? When somebody is stressing out, panicking over a situation that, actually, we are all facing together? We’re all in the same boat, mate. Working together is essential here - if we all jump overboard and strike out in different directions it won’t end well. At the end of the day we do better when we work together - we’re all in the same boat. And that’s why the Gospel writer's image of the disciples in the boat at sea is used for a passage that contains an important lesson about the Church on its stormy missionary journey throughout human history. From the very earliest years of Christian history, the image of a boat was carved on Catacomb walls as a symbol of the Church, and it's why the body of a church building is referred to in most Christian traditions as a nave (which comes from the Latin for ‘ship’). You come to church on a Sunday morning, you’re in the navy! The symbol of the Uniting Church, even today, is a boat. We...

 AUGUST 28TH, 2023 Romans ch. 7 How many times have you heard the tearful public apology - whether it’s a politician or a sports star or even a televangelist - "I let myself down. I didn’t live up to the standards I set myself. It’s just not who I really am!" Well, St Paul ‘fesses up in our passage from the Letter to the Romans this morning, "there’s naughtiness in everyone, but twice as much in me!" To be fair, Paul isn’t just talking about himself, Saul of Tarshish, I think he is talking in the first person singular about Israel. He has no argument with the goodness of the commandments of the Law of Torah - in fact at this point he is not even talking about the Law, just about the basic challenge of doing good and not evil. His main point seems to be that whenever our religion works like a fence set up between a whole bunch of shoulds and a whole other – way more exciting – bunch of should nots – then we are setting ourselves up to fail. Paul even ends up in this ...

JUNE 20TH, 2023   Have you ever noticed how most of the letters of St Paul are letters to communities, not individuals? We often, and rightly, read Paul’s letters as the first and greatest example of Christian theology, a great mind struggling to understand and to express the meaning of his encounter with the risen Christ - but it’s important to remember that these are first and foremost letters of encouragement to Christian communities living in real-world situations, struggling to live purposefully and faithfully in difficult circumstances. Though the great persecutions of the Church hadn’t yet begun, these early Christian communities struggled to reconcile faithful discipleship with day to day life in the pagan Roman Empire. And Romans - the last of the undisputed letters of Paul - is written as a message of encouragement to a Christian Church struggling to live with integrity and hope in the chaotic and cosmopolitan world of Rome.   So, how do you live as a fait...