Sermon: Epiphany 2024

Posted on January 6, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Epiphany 2024

Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

We always read the Bible from our own individual and social contexts. This week, as I was reading commentaries on the Gospel according to Matthew, I came across one that compared the Matthean and Lukan nativities, saying that ‘the Lukan narrative has no negative element’.[1] I think that there are many negative elements in Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth: an unjust demand by an occupying power; a journey that means there is no place for Mary and Joseph ‘in the inn’; the birth of the Son of God on the margins of the town to a couple far from family and home. I realised, as I read this commentary, that I see negativity in Luke’s story because I believe the economic, social and cultural right to ‘adequate food, clothing and housing’ (Article 11, ICESCR) is just as important as the civil and political right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life (Article 6, ICCPR). Despite my years of ministry there is still a part of me that reads biblical stories through the somewhat bizarre interpretive lens of international humanitarian law. Continue reading →

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Sermon: No Christmas in Bethlehem

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Christmas Day 2023

Isaiah 52:7-10
Luke 2:8-20

‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”.’

Christmas has been cancelled in Bethlehem this year. Ordinarily, Christmas is a peak tourism time as the ‘little town’ of about 30,000 people receives more than three million visitors from all over the world. Not this year. Many of Bethlehem’s residents, both Muslim and Christian, have family in Gaza. Before the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7 the IDF had killed more than 230 Palestinians in the West Bank, where Bethlehem is located; since October 7 about 300 Palestinians have been killed and more than 3000 have been injured there by soldiers and illegal settlers, though there are no Hamas fighters in the West Bank. Given all the violence the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem have asked all Palestinian Christians to forego any ‘unnecessarily festive’ activities. Instead, Christians there are invited to pray ‘fervent prayers for a just and lasting peace for our beloved Holy Land’.

Manger Square, Bethlehem, decorated during a normal Christmas.

Continue reading →

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Sermon: Questioning Mary the Revolutionary

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
24th of December, 2023

Luke 1:26-38
Luke 1:46-55

It may have become apparent to those who regularly attend services here at North Balwyn Uniting Church that I have an inordinate number of picture books. These tell stories of everything from two boy penguins who adopt an egg and raise a chick to a pigeon who wants to drive a bus and, should you ask, I can explain the excellent theological points made by all my books. So it will not surprise you that I have many, many picture books telling the story of the birth of Jesus. This week I looked through that extensive collection for pictures of Mary visiting her pregnant cousin Elizabeth and was shocked to discover that not a single one of my Christmas books illustrates this important event. Elizabeth is hardly even mentioned, although her late-in-life pregnancy is the sign the Angel Gabriel gives Mary to prove that nothing is impossible with God. The greeting between Elizabeth and Mary, when John the Baptizer leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, is certainly never illustrated. The closest I could come to the two women encountering each other was on two separate pages of a book called Voices of Christmas, and even then their stories were separated by the story of Joseph. Apparently in the version of the Nativity that we tell children the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary is of little importance.

Elizabeth 1
Voices of Christmas
Mary

Continue reading →

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Sermon: Even when there is no peace

Posted on December 9, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Advent Two, 10th of December 2023

Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

Thousands of years ago the first of the three prophets we call Isaiah looked forward to the coming of a king from the line of David: ‘For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’. (Isaiah 9:6) We will hear those words at Christmas, because to the first Christians it was obvious who this Prince of Peace was. In the Gospel according to Luke we are told that the angels sang at Jesus’ birth: ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ (Luke 2:14). Today, the second Sunday of Advent, is known as Peace Sunday because peace was one of the gifts Jesus brought with him: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you’. (John 14:27) Yet this year as I prepared the liturgy for ‘Peace Sunday’ I found myself thinking of other words Jesus was recorded to have said: ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’. (Matthew 10:34) This week I asked colleagues in despair how I could possibly preach peace given what is happening in the Holy Land. One of them replied, “Preach it like fire!” Continue reading →

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Posted on December 2, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Advent One, 3rd of December 2023

Isaiah 64:1-9
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Happy New Year! Today, the first Sunday of Advent, the church is beginning both a new church year and a time of preparation as we look back to Christ’s First Coming and forward to his Second. Because Advent is primarily meant to prepare us for the latter, we start the liturgical year where last week we ended it, with a prophecy of the end times, the eschaton. We start this Year of the Gospel according to Mark with the Markan apocalypse. This is a bit of a problem because, as Brendan Byrne writes, it is ‘the most difficult part of the gospel for interpretation’.[1] As another interpreter I read this week puts it, the thirteenth chapter of Mark ‘is largely ignored by pragmatists, activists, believers in progress, and all who dismiss preoccupation with the end of the world as a juvenile state of human development or an aberration of unbalanced minds’.[2] Since I am at least three of those four things, you can appreciate that today’s gospel passage is not the one I would have chosen to preach on at the beginning of Advent. As a dutiful daughter of the church I will, however, do my best.
Continue reading →

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Sermon: Being Sheep, not Goats

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Reign of Christ, 26th of November 2023

Matthew 25:31-46

To make a massive generalisation, I believe that Christians can be divided into ‘John 3:16’ or ‘Matthew 25’ believers. John 3:16, as you know, says, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ It suggests that eternal life is a result of faith, of believing in the Son of God. Matthew 25, however, ends with today’s prophecy of the coming of the Son of Man in glory, and it says that the righteous will go into eternal life because of how they treat ‘the least of these’. As you can imagine, ‘John 3:16 Christians’ emphasise orthodoxy, right belief, and think that the church should prioritise evangelism. ‘Matthew 25 Christians’ emphasise orthopraxis, right conduct, and think that the church should prioritise acts of charity. Continue reading →

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Sermon: It’s not the Rapture

Posted on November 11, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
12th of November 2023

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

Oh, thank God! Last week I talked about the difficulty of the Revised Common Lectionary presenting us with Bible passages that have been used to promote hate. This week the Lectionary has given us a gift. Not the gospel reading, of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, which three years’ ago I described as ‘challenging’, but the extract from Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessalonica in what is now Greece. The reading we hear today is one that has comforted me whenever I have been bereaved, and I hope that it comforts this congregation after the deaths of seven of our members in less than two months. Continue reading →

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Sermon: We will not use the Bible to justify genocide

Posted on November 4, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
5th of November 2023

Joshua 3:7-17
Matthew 23:1-12

Members of this congregation have occasionally asked me why I always preach on a Bible reading from the Revised Common Lectionary. One answer is that by following the ecumenical lectionary we hear the same readings each Sunday as many Anglican, Baptist, Church of Christ, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches around the world, and I appreciate that connection with our Christian siblings. It is also a discipline for me to preach on passages with which I struggle or disagree. If I chose the Bible passages on which I preached all you would ever hear would be those that say, ‘God is love, so love one another,’ and while I do think that that is the core of Christianity, it is not all the Bible says. This week, though, is the closest I have ever come to turning my back on the lectionary and choosing some ‘God is love’ readings instead. I do not just disagree with today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. I think that readings like this one from the Book of Joshua are currently contributing to the murder of innocents. Continue reading →

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Sermon: There is always enough

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
24th of September 2023

Exodus 16:2-15
Matthew 20:1-16

Poor Moses. Last week’s reading from the Book of Exodus ended, ‘Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.’ (Exodus 14:31) This week’s reading begins, ‘The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness’. It is the ‘fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt’ (Exodus 16:1), very soon after the Israelites saw the waters of the sea retreat and return as Moses gestured, and yet already the Israelites are complaining that there is not enough food in the desert and they want to go home. Moses would have had every right to say, ‘Okay then,’ and turn the metaphorical car around. Instead, he continued to lead the Israelites for decades. Continue reading →

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Sermon: No peace without forgiveness

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
17th of September 2023

Exodus 14:19-31
Matthew 18: 21-35

Today we are anticipating the twenty-first of September, the International Day of Prayer for Peace, inaugurated by the World Council of Churches in 2004. This week is also the World Council of Churches’ Week of Peace in Palestine and Israel, in which Christians are asked to promote a just peace in Palestine and Israel. We are joining with millions of others in Australia and across the world in praying for peace throughout the world. The lectionary, rather than offering any of the many descriptions of peace the Scriptures contain, has instead given us the death of the Egyptian army as they chase the escaping Israelites across the sea. While today’s story begins with the Lord keeping the armies of Egypt and Israel separate with a pillar of fire and cloud, it quickly moves on to the Lord using Moses to divide the sea so that the people of Israel can walk across it dry-shod; clogging the wheels of the Egyptian chariots; and again using Moses to return the sea to its normal depth: ‘As the Egyptians fled before it, the LORD tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.’ Continue reading →

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