Homilies
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Pentecost – 5 June 2022
As most weeks draw to their end, we can often feel somewhat fragmented. It’s been a difficult week at work; we haven’t achieved all that we would like to, there have been issues at home, at school. The world is full of dismay! In our own way each of us asks, “Where is the Spirit of God in all of this?” Where is the Spirit which Jesus has promised us? Where is the Gift of God’s life that we celebrate in this great festival of Pentecost? How is the Spirit of God given to us in the daily struggle of our lives, and in our effort to make sense of all that threatens to fragment our life?” If only the Spirit…
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4th Sunday of Easter – 8 May 2022
One of the lines that we often hear in political life is the claim that an action or a particular policy was pursued because, “it was the right thing to do.” The assertion seems to justify all manner of decisions and it is given out in such a way to counter all opposing arguments such that the alleged rightness being claimed is simply given as fact. The process by which the determination that something has been right’ is arrived at is, of course, never explained. “I did it because it simply was the right thing to do, and I require no further justification,” seems to be the implication. Hearing this assertion a number…
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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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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…