Sermon: Ash ‘Wednesday’

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
18th of February 2024, ‘Ash Sunday’

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-6 16-21

On Ash Wednesday both Nell and I participated in parts of a pilgrimage to map Gaza onto Melbourne, one of at least 85 pilgrimages in 12 countries. Collectively, a group of Christians walked the 35 kms from Gaza City to Rafah, the distance that so many Gazans have fled in a desperate and ultimately futile search for safety. I did about half of that, starting at St Monica’s College in Epping at 6.30 in the morning, then walking through Lalor, Thomastown, Reservoir, Preston, Thornbury, before ending at North Fitzroy. After working at home in the afternoon I rejoined the pilgrimage in its final stage to St Paul’s Cathedral for the Ash Wednesday Service.

Avril entering St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne
Nell entering St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne

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Sermon: The light wherein our shadows disappear

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
11th of February, 2024

2 Corinthians 9:2-9
Mark 9:2-9

Does the light illuminate everything, or does it make the shadows darker? Does the wonder and beauty of the Transfiguration, celebrated today on the last Sunday before Lent, make Jesus’ death on a cross even more painful and ugly? Does the Transfiguration put a barrier between the glorious Beloved Son and those of us who do not shine on mountaintops? What does the Transfiguration mean for those of us who live our lives on the plain? Continue reading →

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Sermon: Proclaiming the good news

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
4th of February, 2024

Mark 1:29-39
1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Together the gospel readings from today and last Sunday describe a complete day in the life of Jesus. Last Sunday’s reading had Jesus going to the synagogue at Capernaum on the Sabbath and teaching with authority. Then he was confronted by a man possessed, and he rebuked the demon and healed the man. Today, we hear what happened next. On the surface, this is a story of astounding success and recognition of Jesus’ distinctiveness. It will probably not surprise you that I am going to argue there is a lot more happening underneath that surface. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Trauma and Liberation

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
28th of January, 2024

Mark 1:14-20

I hope that you are feeling a little breathless. As I have said before, everything in the Gospel according to Mark happens ‘immediately’, or ‘at once,’ as Jesus, the disciples, and we readers journey without pause from the Jordan to Jerusalem. We are still within Mark’s very first chapter, and already John has appeared in the wilderness baptising; Jesus has been baptised; then driven into the wilderness and tempted; has proclaimed the coming of the kingdom at Galilee; and has called his first disciples. Now, in today’s reading, we get the beginning of what seems to be a typical day of ministry for Jesus, a day of teaching and healing. Continue reading →

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Sermon: The time is short

Posted on January 20, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
21st of January, 2024

1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The time is fulfilled. The present form of this world is passing away. In the year 2024 it is hard not to hear the words of Jesus and Paul and respond, ‘Really?’ It was even hard for the author of the Gospel according to Matthew, which most biblical scholars agree was written slightly later than the Gospel according to Mark. In today’s Markan reading Jesus begins his ministry by saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;’ but by the time Matthew came to write the same scene Jesus simply says, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ (Matthew 4:17) Already in Matthew’s version questions of time have become difficult. Continue reading →

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Bit cut out of Sunday’s sermon

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sadly, there was no room for this paragraph in the sermon for Sunday the 21st.

Throughout history various groups, religious and otherwise, have predicted the end of the world and hitherto all have been wrong. Going down the rabbit hole of the various end time predictions this week led me to an Australian politician, Walter Moffitt Marks, who won the Sydney Federal seat of Wentworth for the National Party in 1919. In a parliamentary speech on the third of November 1921 he predicted that Armageddon would be fought in 1934 when the British navy would collect the Jewish people to form a great nation in Palestine. It was described by the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘a remarkable speech,’ in an article that ended: ‘The general opinion that the next war will be in the Pacific was declared by Mr Marks to be at variance with the prophecy of the Bible, which clearly defined that it would be in the Mediterranean. The Japanese would not invade Australia. They and the Chinese would go with Christ to Palestine.’ Despite spending way too much time looking, I could not find a reaction from Mr Marks to Armageddon not being fought in 1934.

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Sermon: Come and see God in the ordinary

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
14th of January, 2024

John 1:43-51
1 Corinthians 6:12-20

We think that we have chosen to follow Jesus, but it is Jesus who has chosen us as his followers. We think that we made the decision to come to church today to worship God, but we arrived here at God’s initiative. Last week, when we celebrated the Epiphany, I said that what was true for the magi is still true for us; we believe that we are the ones seeking God, but all our lives God has been seeking us. We see this confirmed in today’s story from the Gospel according to John, in which Jesus calls some of his first disciples.

The lectionary splits this story across multiple years. On the Second Sunday of Epiphany last year the Gospel reading had John the Baptizer sending two of his own disciples to follow Jesus. Those two addressed Jesus as Rabbi, teacher, and asked him where he lived, to which he replied, ‘Come and see’. After spending time with Jesus one of those disciples, Andrew, found his brother Simon and told him that they had found the Messiah. Jesus then named Simon ‘Cephas,’ Peter, the rock on whom Jesus would later build his Church. (John 1:35-42) Continue reading →

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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.

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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

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