At the Law Institute in Melbourne there is a restaurant called, “The Bottle and the Snail.”  It is named after a famous law case in the early 1930s, the case of Donoghue and Stevenson.[1]  A young lady had drunk a bottle of ginger beer and as she was finishing it discovered a snail at the bottom of the bottle.  Within a few days she had fallen sick, but at the time there was no legal apparatus by which which could gain any kind of compensation.  Eventually the case was taken all the way to the English House of Lords which accepted the principle in common law which is now the…

On New Year’s Eve last year, I was introduced to ChatGPT – the powerful, interactive search engine that is built with Artificial Intelligence. Its capacity is overwhelming, creating instant responses to questions that are as personal as they are detailed. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence to become an active partner in conversation brings us to a new threshold of the Communications Revolution. It suggests a new frontier of cyberspace. Clearly, the future belongs now to the engagement with Artificial Intelligence on a whole range of levels. It’s a brave new world. The remarkable thing, of course, about ChatGPT is just not its power to galvanise the scope of the internet,…

We might be inclined to consider the key to the Gospel we have heard lies with the radical inclusivity demonstrated by the king.  Not put off by the disinterest of some, – a disinterest which could have easily resulted in a reclusive despondency – he opens wide the doors of the palace, with even more enthusiastic invitation and hospitality.  And certainly, the parable speaks of a wonderful largesse to demonstrate the hospitality of God which welcomes all.  However, I want to suggest that the real key to the parable lies in the very simple phrase hidden in the midst of the story:  “When the king came in to look at the guests”  Given…

I am sure that some of us have heard of the clergyman who lived in a town that was hit by a major flood. The water was a foot deep in his living room.  Some parishioners in a boat rowed up to his door, asking him to join them. “No, go ahead,” he said.  “I’ll be just fine.  God is taking care of me.”  So, they left. Then, the water rose to the second floor.  Back came the anxious parishioners in the boat. And they asked him to join them.  Again, he refused.  By the time the boat came back once more, the house had been completely engulfed and the clergyman was standing on his chimney.  “Father,” his parishioners…

On one of my very first visits to Sydney, I was taken by a friend who worked with homeless youth to some of the places in which such young people live and hang out.  I recall the time I was with them around a campfire near St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst.  They had got the campfire going from some curbside formwork and were preparing to shelter against a winter Sydney night.  Most of them were on drugs of some kind, many of them prostituting – all of them with background stories of enormous tragedy. And yet, as I left them that night I could not but be struck by the…

We often say religion and politics don’t mix. And it is true we must be careful to avoid the politicization of religious faith in such a way that religion becomes a vehicle to achieve political ends. However, at the same time, paradoxically we can never separate faith and politics as if we could behave one way in an internal world of spirituality, and another way in the external world of civic affairs. Politics is about choices, and the choices we make cannot but be informed by our discipleship of the Lord. To act otherwise is to develop a schizophrenia in our identity. Jesus calls us to live with an integrity…