How would we describe the most precious, the most valuable thing in our possession?  What would be the thing that we would not exchange for any amount of money or satisfaction?  In other words, what is of the greatest value for us?  Years ago, there was a wealthy man who, with his devoted young son, shared a passion for art collecting.  Together they travelled around the world, adding only the finest art treasures to their collection. The widowed man looked on with satisfaction as his only child became an experienced art collector.  One winter though war broke out and the young man left to fight in battle.  Only after a few short weeks, his father…

If we were to ask ourselves what personal characteristics we would most value about ourselves, I doubt that many of us would answer ‘dependency’.  We live in a culture which prizes anything but dependency.  Independence, autonomy, self-reliance are the things that we aspire to for ourselves and that we like to see in other people.  Further, in recent times we have coined a whole lot of phrases and words that make us even more suspicious of the experience of dependency:  we speak of ‘dependent relationships,’ of people just acting out of their dependencies, and we speak of the phenomenon of ‘co-dependency’ and all it variations. In short dependency does not have much sale value…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…