Samuel Pepys: July 20, 1665
… walked to Redriffe, where I hear the sickness is, and endeed is scattered almost everywhere – there dying 1089 of the plague this week … But Lord, to see how the plague spreads; it being now all over Kings street, at the Axe and the next door to it, and in other places.
July 21, 2020
Walking through Queenscliff yesterday.
Reflection for Western Heights Uniting Church
19th of July 2020
Romans 8:12-25
This week we are again hearing from the Apostle Paul as he shares the gospel with the Christians in Rome. There are two reasons that I have us spending so much time listening to Paul. The first is that the language of this letter can be quite difficult and it’s easy for us to misinterpret it. I talked about that last week, when I said that it was important for us not to confuse ‘flesh,’ which Paul describes as negative, with our bodies. When Paul says that ‘those who are in the flesh cannot please God’ he is definitely not saying that God wants us to ignore, punish, or reject the bodies that God created, for instance. So understanding Paul demands a bit of interpretation. But the other reason that I am spending so many weeks talking about Paul’s Letter to the Romans is that I think Paul is brilliant. Despite his moments of cultural blindness to the full ministry of women, Paul’s explanations of the good news of Jesus are quite often completely wonderful. There are three such awesome elements in today’s reading. Continue reading
Samuel Pepys: July 13, 1665
… Above 700 dead of the plague this week.
July 13, 2020
Last time I wrote about covid19 I said that we seemed to be emerging from it in Australia. That was a silly thing to say, because down here in Victoria the number of infections have risen again and greater Melbourne is back in Stage 3 lockdown. It’s all gone a bit haywire, so much so that I looked up the origin of the word ‘haywire’. (Apparently it comes from logging camps in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century, when ‘haywire outfits‘ repaired their tools by tying them up with wire.) Continue reading
Romans 8:1-11
I hope you remember last week’s Reflection, in which we heard the Apostle Paul telling us sadly: ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’. Drawing on Brene Brown’s work, last week I said that I believed Paul was experiencing guilt, not shame; that he was talking about the bad things he did and not the bad person that he was. Today we discover how Paul was able to distinguish between what he did and who he was. We hear from a hopeful Apostle, as Paul rejoices that he has been set free from the law of sin and of death. Last week we heard Paul say: ‘with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin’. But this week he says: ‘there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’. Left to ourselves we might have remained trapped in our wrongdoing – but we have not been left to ourselves. God has not left us alone. In Jesus Christ God entered into creation and joined us in our humanity, and in the Spirit God is still with us, around us and between us and within us.
Sermon for Western Heights Uniting Church
5th of July 2020
Romans 7:15-25a
One of the benefits of the three-year lectionary cycle is that I am repeatedly reminded of what I thought about a particular Bible passage three/six/nine years ago. Three years’ ago, when this passage from Romans came up, I preached about sin. I like to preach about ‘sin’ every-so-often because in our culture it has become a swear word, no longer to be mentioned in polite society. Today it is profoundly rude for a minister to suggest to congregation members that they might be sinners. There are good reasons for that; many churches misused, and some still misuse, the concept of sin to shame and control their members. In reaction to that much of the Uniting Church has swung to the opposite extreme and ministers refuse to discuss sin at all. I think that’s unhealthy, and there can be times and places when it is important for us to acknowledge that sin is still an unavoidable part of human experience. Three years’ ago in Williamstown I obviously thought it was the right time and place.
Things are different now. There is no way I’m going to preach that we are all sinners while we are separated, while I can’t make eye contact with you and check that I’m not hurting you by saying that. And, as I said last week, we are living through a natural disaster. The last thing people need in a natural disaster is someone telling them that they are sinners. When people are tired and shocked and scared and vulnerable, they don’t need to be told that they’re also sinful. So, instead, this time through the lectionary, I want to talk about shame and guilt. Continue reading
Reflection for Western Heights Uniting Church
28th of June, 2020
Matthew 10:40-42
I don’t know about you, but I am tired. We have now been in some sort of lockdown since the fifth week in Lent, through Holy Week and the entire season of Easter, and now we are several weeks into the season after Pentecost. And just as we thought we might be coming out of physical distancing, we have had to retreat again. It is exhausting. Continue reading
Reflection for Western Heights
21st of June, 2020
Matthew 10:24-39 and Refugee Week
I have to confess that the Gospel according to Matthew is my least favourite. (For those interested, my ranking of the canonical gospels is Luke, John, Mark, Matthew.) The gospel that the Matthean Jesus preaches often seems to me to be the opposite of ‘good news’. Today’s reading is full of examples of his severity: ‘Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’; ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’; ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’. On first reading these do not seem to be the loving words of the One who told his disciples to ‘love one another as I have loved you’. The sayings only start to make sense when we stop reading them from within our own context, and try to hear them as Matthew’s first audience did. Continue reading
Reflection for Western Heights Uniting Church
14th of June, 2020
Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
‘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 story 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.
‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ In nations in which much of the population identifies as ‘Christian,’ including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, tens of thousands of people marched last weekend against racism and the State-sanctioned killing of Black people. The protests started with the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, but the thousands who marched in Australia were remembering the more than 400 Indigenous Australians who have died in custody since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC). Australia is still a land built on genocide, a land without a Treaty, a land in which First Nations men are 15 times more likely to be imprisoned than other Australians, and First Nations women are 21 times more likely to be in custody. Australia is a country that has not yet come to terms with its racist past, or indeed its racist present. Will it ever be able to? ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ Continue reading
Samuel Pepys: June 10, 1665
In the evening home to supper, and there to my great trouble hear that the plague is come into the City (though it hath these three or four weeks since its beginning been wholly out of the City); but where should it begin but in my good friend and neighbour’s, Dr Burnett in Fenchurch street – which in both points troubles me mightily.
June 10, 2020
We seem to be emerging from COVID19, at least in Australia (and in New Zealand they are COVID-free, so well done to them!). The schools are back, to the huge relief of the parents I know. And people here on the Bellarine seem to have almost completely ended physical distancing. There are still signs at some shops about how many people can enter, and lines on the ground to mark out 1.5 or 2 metres. But people are sitting down in cafes; cafes are using disposable cups again; masks seem to have almost disappeared. Yesterday, when I went shopping, I saw only one person wearing a mask, a man in his 80s or 90s. Continue reading
Reflection for Western Heights Uniting Church
Trinity Sunday, the 7th of June 2020
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
Today is Trinity Sunday. I want to begin this reflection be saying that there is no way of describing the Trinity that is not a heresy. Our human minds cannot understand, cannot encompass, and definitely cannot explain God. And the Trinity is one of those things about 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 don’t know our own minds, or as though we’re trying to do some weird quantum mathematics.
It would be easy to just ignore the Trinity. We could instead focus on God the Creator, worship and appreciate the One who made the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars. We could simply follow Jesus as an example of an outstanding human being, someone who lived out in full the potential we all have to be whole, without worrying about any claims of his divinity. As for the Holy Spirit; if you go to the video of images of the Trinity you will see a lot of birds. Continue reading
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