Monthly Archives: June 2024
Sermon: Enough for all
Each ‘daughter’ receives from Jesus what it is they need. While the delay caused by healing the haemorrhaging woman makes it appear that Jairus’ request has been denied: ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ both daughters are healed. The time and power Jesus gives to one is not taken from the other. Continue reading
Sermon: Deeper Water
Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church 23rd of June 2024 Mark 4:35-41 One of the last poems that the nineteenth-century British author Emily Bronte wrote begins: No coward soul is mine No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere I see … Continue reading
Sermon: Simply planting seeds
I occasionally get discouraged about my own absolute and utter failure as an evangelist. I am many atheists’ favourite Christian, which is not a title I take lightly. Often I have been told by people that if they believed in any God, they would believe in mine. Which is nice, but sometimes I wish they would consider a belief in God to be more than hypothetical. Continue reading
Sermon: Holy Spirit and evil spirits
It is hard to rightly judge enthusiasm manufactured by living men before our own eyes, whether that enthusiasm is the Jesus Movement within first-century Judaism, the excesses of Francis of Assisi, Protestantism, Methodism, the movement for the ordination of women, the struggle for churches to welcome LGBTIQ+ people, Pentecostalism, and so on, and so forth. If we are not going to join the scribes in their eternal sin, we need to be constantly open to the new things the Holy Spirit is doing, and this will demand much discernment. Continue reading
Review: David Cronin, Balfour’s Shadow (2017)
The horror is that this is a book published in 2017 and no matter how awful the actions of the British and the Israelis it documents, no one could have imagined the extent of the genocidal campaign Israel is currently carrying out, in 2024. Continue reading
Sermon: Ending in Darkness
Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church2nd of June, 2024 Psalm 88 Bruce and I, with the help of our cantor, Tom, are being a bit cheeky today. The psalm that Tom led us in this morning, Psalm 88, is not in … Continue reading
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