Sermon: In a boat battered by the wind and waves

Posted on August 12, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
6th of August 2023

Matthew 14:22-33

‘But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”’

Thirty-one years ago I was studying first year law and second year history. Both those degrees were teaching me how to analyse documents, which led to me having lots of discussions with my then-flatmate, the daughter of a Uniting Church minister, about how I could possibly continue to read the Bible as ‘unique prophetic and apostolic testimony’ (Paragraph Five of the Basis of Union) rather than simply as a collection of historical documents to be scrutinised in exactly the same way that I was learning to investigate the Babylonian Enūma Eliš or Donoghue v Stevenson, the 1932 case that created the law of negligence. In one of these discussions, I said that the Bible remained important to me, but I did not think I could just pick a verse, “like Matthew 14:27,” I said, making up a verse at random, and have it mean something for my life. A little later in the conversation my flatmate and I decided just to have a look and see what Matthew 14:27 said, and we found that Matthew 14:27 is the verse I just quoted. It could not have been more relevant to a discussion in which I had confessed that I was finding the one holy catholic and apostolic church deeply problematic as I learned more of its history, but that I could not bear to leave Christianity because if I did “I would miss Jesus”.

I have held on to Matthew 14:27, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,’ over the past thirty-one years, along with the awareness that I would miss Jesus if I ever gave up my faith. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Wrestling with God

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
6th of August 2023

Genesis 32:22-31

Today’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures is one of my favourites, it was read at the service at which the Presbytery ordained me, and Jacob is one of the biblical characters with whom I most empathise. That may seem strange, I hope it seems strange, given what we know of Jacob’s life and general bad behaviour. In these weeks of Ordinary Time the lectionary leads us through this story, but I have been focusing on Paul’s Letter to the Romans instead, so here is what we have missed: edited highlights from the life of Jacob, son of Isaac.

Rebekah, the wife of Isaac son of Abraham, was barren until Isaac prayed for her and God granted his prayer. Rebekah conceived not one baby, but two, and the twins struggled in her womb until she asked: ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’ The Lord answered her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.’ When the two children were born, the younger came out gripping his brother’s heel, so they called him Jacob, which means ‘He takes by the heel’ or ‘He supplants’. Jacob was a trickster and a troublemaker from his conception. (Genesis 25:19-26)

Continue reading →
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Sermon: I really do love the Apostle Paul!

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
30th of July 2023

Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

‘Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

I do love the writings of the Apostle Paul. Not all of them, of course; as I said last week I am not a fan of him telling women to be silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34) but for those of us living in the ‘in-between time’, the time between the resurrection of Christ and his return, Paul offers constant encouragement. As I said last week, in Christ we have seen what God’s new world will look like when it comes, a world of love, freedom, and life over death, and so we groan inwardly when love is absent, freedom is taken away, and life is shortened. In response to our groaning, Paul reassures us that the Spirit is groaning with us and that if God is for us, it does not matter who may be against us. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Why I’m a fan of the Apostle Paul

Posted on July 22, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
23rd of July 2023

Romans 8:12-25

“All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God”.

A fortnight ago I said of the Apostle Paul that sometimes he seems to just get it, and all that I can say when I read him is ‘Yes!’ That was about his confession of his human sinfulness: ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’. I still want to say ‘Yes!’ to Paul, today, but I may need to take some time to explain why. Continue reading →

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Sermon: “Hello, my name is Paul and I’m a sinner”

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, 9th of July 2023

Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Sometimes I read the writings of the Apostle Paul and all I can say in response to them is: ‘Yes!’ Sometimes Paul just gets it – and today is one of those days. When Paul writes: ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,’ and ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do,’ all I can do is nod my head in sad agreement. Paul is right. And he was not alone in saying this. In this part of his letter to the Romans Paul is echoing something that was a commonplace in the ancient world. The Roman poet Ovid wrote the most famous version of it: ‘I see the better way and I approve it; but I follow the worse.’ It is just part of what it means to be human. We know what we should do; but we do not do it. We want to be good and obey God’s law, but we find that we fail. It is a universal problem. Continue reading →

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Sermon: In which Avril temporarily agrees with Richard Dawkins

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
2nd of July, 2023

Genesis 22:1-14

What on earth can we do with today’s reading from the Book of Genesis, the binding of Isaac? The Revised Common Lectionary, which leaves out other stories in Genesis like the rape of Dinah and the revenge taken by her brothers (Genesis 34:1-31), the attempt by the men of Sodom to rape two of God’s messengers (Genesis 19:1-11), and the incest between a drunken Lot and his two daughters that was the origin of the people of Moab and Ammon (Genesis 19:30-38), includes this passage of attempted child sacrifice for our instruction. The Bible has many stories that are distinctly unedifying, I am completely unsurprised that a parent tried to get it banned from a school in Utah as unsuitable for children, but the lectionary passes over most of them in silence, and we never hear them read out in church. Why is this story part of the lectionary? I would argue that child murder, even when prevented at the last minute, is at least as abhorrent as rape and incest. There is little on which I agree with celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins, but I do mostly agree with his comment in The God Delusion that: ‘this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: “I was only obeying orders”. Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions.’ Where I differ from Dawkins is on the latter point. He suggests that Jews, Christians, and Muslims blithely read this story as foundational, thus accepting child abuse, bullying, and blind obedience as part of our faith. The absolute opposite is true. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Behaving so the world will believe

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
25th of June, 2023

Hebrews 13:1-8
John 17:20-26

‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’

Today we celebrate the 46th anniversary of the Union of the Congregational Union of Australia, the Methodist Church of Australasia, and the Presbyterian Church of Australia, the birthday of the Uniting Church. Appropriately, the gospel reading suggested for today’s celebration is the ‘ecumenical prayer’ from Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in the Gospel according to John, which speaks of unity in the service of mission. The twentieth-century ecumenical movement, of which the Uniting Church is a product, developed from the missionary movement of the nineteenth century. Missionaries sent by European churches to various mission fields discovered that divisions between different churches were experienced by those to whom they preached as a scandal. How could people hearing about Jesus Christ for the first time believe the gospel when those proclaiming the good news were in competition with each other? How could Jesus Christ be ‘the same yesterday and today and for ever’ if there was a Catholic Christ, a Presbyterian Christ, an Anglican Christ, a Methodist Christ, a Congregationalist Christ? The 1910 Edinburgh Conference brought representatives of the missioning churches together to determine how far the churches could become one so that the world might believe. From that meeting came the modern ecumenical movement, the World Council of Churches, and, in 1977, the Uniting Church in Australia. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Even if we can’t raise the dead

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
18th of June, 2023

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
Matthew 9:35-10:8

‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ It is the question that the three visitors ask Abraham after his wife Sarah laughs at the promise that she and Abraham will have a son in their extreme old age. Today’s Scripture readings tells us that nothing is too wonderful for the Lord, not even the birth of a son to a woman and her husband who have grown old. Nothing is too wonderful for the Lord, but that does not mean that God’s actions and the coming of the kingdom of heaven will happen as we want them.

Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim to be the descendants of Abraham, the outstanding man of faith. Both he and his wife Sarah, at the command of God, leave their country and their family and their people and set out for an unknown land, because God has promised that they will become the parents of a great nation. Paul argues that Abraham is the ancestor of all those who believe in the promises of God, that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. (Romans 4:3) As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents … By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’ (Hebrews 11:8-12)

Yet among the important stories we are told about these exemplary faithful ancestors is the one we hear today, a story of doubt and disbelief. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Social and Physical Health

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
11th of June, 2023

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

I was ten the first time I read Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, and it traumatised me for life. It was not the madwoman in the attic who horrified me, but Jane’s life at the Lowood Institution, based on Bronte’s own experience at a Clergy Daughters’ School. I hated the Reverend Brocklehurst who oversaw the school and I have never forgotten the outrage I felt at his addresses to the teachers and his labelling of Jane as a liar. Upon discovering that ‘a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese’ has twice been served to the inmates of the Institution by a teacher because the breakfast was inedible, Brocklehurst intones:

You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicial instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of the martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord himself, calling upon his disciples to take up their cross and follow him; to his warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to his divine consolations, ‘if ye suffer hunger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye’. Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls![1]

Luckily my utter abhorrence of both Brocklehurst and his version of Christianity, though I did encounter them at an impressionable age, did not influence my later life choices. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Trinity Sunday

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Trinity Sunday, 4th of June 2023

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Matthew 28:16-20

Once again the church year has reached Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday that is named not after an event, Easter, Pentecost, the Baptism of Jesus, but after a doctrine. It is important to begin this Reflection by saying that anything I say today about the Trinity will be a heresy. Our human minds cannot understand, cannot encompass, and most definitely cannot explain, God. The Trinity is one of those aspects of God that we are never going to comprehend. We believe in One God who is also Three, which is why over the centuries people have mocked Christians as worshipping multiple gods. It sounds as though we do not know our own minds, or as though we are trying to do some weird mathematics. I tend to think of the doctrine of the Trinity as something like the square root of a negative number. The doctrine of the Trinity is impossible, and yet Christians believe it. Continue reading →

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