Monthly Archives: June 2022

Sermon: The Uniting Church ‘radicals in politics’

We are involved in these apparently political issues because we believe that this is what the Gospel demands of us. Today we ordain women, we marry gay people, we are in covenant with the First Nations of this land, we celebrate our cultural and linguistic diversity, and we do all this because we are seeking to abide in Jesus and bear fruit. Continue reading

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Sermon: Trouble-making and scape-goating

But if the outsider was no longer an outsider, the insiders might need to examine their own lives. Without a contrasting ‘baddie’, the insiders might not seem to be as good as they had imagined. If there was no longer an external enemy to draw people together, the differences between them would become more obvious. They would no longer have simply been able to rely on being part of a community created by what it was not: a community made up of people who wear clothes and live in houses and do not need to be chained up. Continue reading

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Sermon: Relying on Holy Wisdom

I know that this is true, that God can give us wisdom as a gift, because I became a minister in my early thirties, and even now, fifteen years later, I am still much younger than most of this congregation. Yet every week I stand up and preach to people who in some cases have exactly twice as much life experience as I have. Continue reading

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Sermon: A quieter Pentecost

There is no wrong way to feel when people we love have died. But my prayer whenever I sit by the side of the dying is that they may go gently and peacefully into the loving hands of God, and I believe with every fibre of my being that as we say good-bye to someone we love we are giving them into the arms of the God who has loved them all the days of their lives and who continues to love them after death. Continue reading

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