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3rd Sunday of Easter – 1 May 2022
Often, it’s out of children, the youngest, that we hear the most wisdom. Children have the most disarming way of speaking the truth. And they have an uncanny capacity for observation – especially for when it comes to understanding the nature of love. At weddings I often like to share these delightful observations about love Q – When is it ok to kiss someone? A -You should never kiss a girl unless you have enough bucks to buy her a big ring and her own DVD, because she’ll want to have videos of the wedding. (Jim, age 10) Q – What is the right age to get married?A – Twenty-three…
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Anzac Day – 25 April 2022
The conclusion to the Ode we recite on this day each year has become etched in our minds: “Lest we forget.” The problem is, of course, that we do forget, and that we forget all too easily. The horror of war, its senseless brutality, and its needless destruction are never too far from eruption. The criminal tragedy of Ukraine is played out daily before us. However, let us not forget those other theatres of violence – Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria – to name just several. And in each situation, we are left with the hauntingly relentless question of “Why?” Why does it have to be this way? Why are otherwise…
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2nd Sunday of Easter – 24 April 2022
Last Sunday morning we came together in our church in glorious April sunshine to celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord. So, too, did our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. Like us, they came to their churches with a feast day promising hope and possibility. We left our church streaming into the beautiful day with every sense of the opportunity that Easter brings us. Our brothers and sisters in Ukraine did not. They came to celebrate life; yet they found death. They came to share peace; instead they met violence. They came to be sprinkled with water; instead they left covered in blood. The juxtaposition between the hopes of our brothers…
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Easter – 17 April 2022
On the darkness of this night, the darkness of the world itself is only too apparent. Each celebration of Easter is prefaced, as it were, with the world’s suffering, especially the suffering of those who are innocent. This year we are conscious of the suffering of Ukraine, the brutality and senselessness of war. The horror of it all arrests us, and we stand bewildered by our violence towards one another. To gather in the night, on this night, is to stand in the face of our confusion and in the midst of our questions which resist their answer. In our hearts, we hear the echo of the question, “Who will roll away the stone…
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Good Friday – 15 April 2022
The Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig has both amused us and challenged us now for many years. Sometimes we find his art quirky; at other times we find his representations questioning our premises about the world and about ourselves. Indeed, some of them occasionally confront the premises we have about God himself. On this day I think of one particular such illustration. Leunig has a man meeting God in the person of someone wounded on the side of the road. God begs the man, “Help me I am God, and I am wounded.” “You’re not God,” says the man. “God is all powerful.” “I am all vulnerable,” says God. “I am in pain. I am at your mercy.” It…
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Holy Thursday – 14 April 2022
Throughout the 20th century worked the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead. She was born in Philadelphia in 1901 and lived through until 1978. It is hard to imagine another anthropologist who has taught us as much about the nature of human community. Mead was once asked what sign we had about when civilisation began. The expectation was that her reply would concern the discovery of some ancient artefact such as a tool, or a weapon, or a segment of art. Instead, she simply replied, “a healed femur.” A healed femur bone is the sign we have of the beginnings of civilisation. Why did this famous anthropologist claim this? She claimed this because for the first time we had…
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Palm Sunday – 10 April 2022
We have just listened to the Passion Story of the Lord. It is a week in which the Passion of the Lord will be at the forefront of our liturgical celebrations. Passion is word with many different meanings. Pierre Wolff remarks about the word, ‘passion’: In the context of the Christian liturgy, the word signifies sufferings, dereliction, and death. It implies everything that Jesus experienced during those days: betrayal and denial, rejection and abandonment, and other ordeals. The word “passion” in this context suggests little that is pleasant for a human being. [However}, we often forget that we use it is an adjective when we speak of a passionate love. …
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5th Sunday of Lent – 3 April 2022
Lent, as we know, is a time of examination, a time of review and evaluation. It’s the time in the year, in preparation for the celebration of Easter, where we re-focus and regain our single-mindedness. Many centuries ago, St. Benedict taught that such self-examination and review should be a characteristic not simply of a single liturgical season but indeed of our whole life. As we examine our life with renewed depth, and walk forward, our gaze is on the Christ ahead of us who invites us, who beckons us, who waits with arms open to receive us. Our gaze must be firmly on him, full of invitation and full of possibility. This is critical…
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4th Sunday of Lent – 27 March 2022
Jesus was a great story-teller. He delighted in telling stories. The stories he told painted wonderful pictures in the minds of his hearers. And as he painted these extraordinary pictures in the minds of his hearers Jesus taught us about both ourselves and God. He told stories because he knew people would remember them, and therefore they would remember what he wanted to teach them about God and our relationship with God. So, he was constantly alert to all the ordinary experiences of people’s lives and he would use these experiences, weave them together in a story. Thus the parable is the primary means by which Jesus teaches. He does…
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3rd Sunday of Lent – 20 March 2022
Some of us may have heard of Harold Krushner’s 1989 book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. (It was followed in 2000 by a book, by another author, entitled, When Bad Things Happen to Other People!) Krushner’s book was an attempt to come to terms, in a philosophical way, with the experience of evil around us. Why do bad things happen to people who otherwise seem to lead good lives? It’s a question that often presents itself to us, and it’s a question that resists answer. There can often seem to be an inherent unfairness to life. Life is unpredictable; it appears random in so many instances, and we…
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