Homilies
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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 17 July 2022
Some twenty-five years ago I completed my Master’s thesis in Theology. When the title of the thesis was read out at the Graduation Ceremony everyone laughed. I don’t think that they were laughing at me in particular, but the title of the thesis was so incomprehensible to everyone that it certainly drew a chuckle from the audience. The title was “Manifestation of the Other: A Study of David Tracy’s Heterology.” Perhaps it is no wonder it drew a gasp of incomprehension. What was the thesis all about? Well, through the 1980s and 1990s David Tracy was a philosopher of religion writing out of Chicago. He was a writer who sought to address the question of how…
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13th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 26 June 2022
One of the most important things we can learn about the gospels is about the nature of the language that the writers use. It is the language of parables – a language, it seems, favoured by Jesus himself. Jesus was a great teacher as we know. He was a great storyteller and he constantly uses stories to communicate his message. But the parables are not simply stories. A parable is very particular kind of story: it is a story that is designed to confuse us, to unsettle us, even in some cases, to shock us. This tendency to confuse, to unsettle, to shock is at the heart of the parables. The point in the confusion is that a…
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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. …