Sermon: Absolutely Appropriate Anger

Posted on March 3, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Williamstown Uniting Church
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent
4th of March, 2018

John 2:13-22

Anger does not have a good reputation in Christianity. Wrath was considered by the early and medieval church to be one of the ‘seven deadly sins’. In the Scriptures God is sometimes described as angry with stubborn, foolish and greedy people, but is also praised as ‘slow to anger’ (Exodus 34.6; Numbers 14.18, Psalm 86:15) even when we deserve it. The Book of Proverbs proclaims that ‘one who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city’ (Proverbs 16:32) and as someone with a fiery temper myself I definitely believe that. In the Letter to the Ephesians we’re told that if we are angry we’re not to let the sun go down on our wrath (Ephesians 4:26) and to put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander (Ephesians 4:31). The Apostle James writes to his readers, ‘You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.’ Basically, the message of the Scriptures is that God may be wrathful, although luckily for us not as much as we deserve, but we humans shouldn’t be.

Today, we hear a story of Jesus being profoundly angry, and acting on that anger. The story of the cleansing of the Temple is told in all four gospels, and the version that we hear today comes from John’s. It’s a much more vivid story than that in the three synoptic gospels: only in John do we have cattle and sheep in the Temple, as well as doves; and only in John does Jesus make a whip of cords and drive the sheep, the cattle and their vendors out. Jesus is much more vigorous and violent in John’s telling than he is in the tales told by Mark, Matthew and Luke, so it’s no wonder that it’s only in John’s gospel that the disciples are prompted by Jesus’ actions to remember the words of Psalm 69: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Clericalism is wrong

Posted on February 25, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

25th of February, 2018

Mark 8:31-38

At this time three years ago, the last time this reading came up in the Lectionary, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was examining the case of Knox Grammar, a prestigious Uniting Church school in New South Wales. I know this, because as I prepare a sermon each week I look back at what I have said about the passage before, and three years’ ago today’s gospel reading seemed to me to speak about the failures of all churches, included the Uniting Church, revealed by the Royal Commission. Three years’ ago I said that: ‘as members of the Uniting Church in Australia we must accept responsibility for what happens in Uniting Church institutions, including schools like Knox Grammar School’. I also said that we would have to wait for the findings of the Royal Commission to get a better idea of exactly what had happened in religious institutions. Well, three years later the Royal Commission has delivered its final report, we have some idea of how badly churches failed children in our care, and today’s gospel passage still speaks to me of the cross of repentance that we need as a Church to take up. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Love and Solidarity

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Yes, sorry, I’m preaching about love again. It’s almost as though love was at the heart of the Christian faith or something.

Sermon for Williamstown
The First Sunday of Lent, 18th of February 2018

Genesis 9:8-17
Mark 1:9-15

I’ve mentioned before that the Gospel according to Mark is short, intense, and everything happens immediately. That’s lucky for us, because today in a mere six verses Mark gives us Jesus’ baptism; his temptation in the wilderness; and the beginning of his ministry; one after the other; bam, bam, bam. And this is wonderful, because the three, baptism, testing, ministry, go together – for us as well as for Jesus. We should thank the author of the Gospel of Mark for never taking a breath. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Love in the face of Death

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
The Feast of the Transfiguration, 11th of February, 2018

2 Kings 2:1-12
Mark 9:2-9

Today, on the last Sunday before Lent, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. The transfiguration is a theophany, a revelation of God. In the transfiguration the separation of earth from heaven is overcome by the presence of Jesus. Mark’s first readers would have recognised the heavenly nature of this event from the way Mark uses elements from the Hebrew Scriptures. The transfiguration takes place on a mountain, the traditional site of revelations of God; the place on earth closest to heaven. Mark tells us that the transfiguration takes place ‘after six days’, referring back to the six days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai in the presence of the Lord before the Lord called to him. (Exodus 24:15-16) Jesus’ clothes are described as ‘dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them’. They’re the colour of light itself; revealing that the person wearing them is an angelic figure, a messenger from heaven. The cloud that overshadows the mountain symbolises the divine presence, and God speaks from the cloud to the disciples on this mountain as God spoke from the cloud to Moses on Mount Sinai. Mark’s first readers would have had no doubt that what he is describing here is an encounter with God. Continue reading →

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Sermon: #MeToo

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
The second Sunday of Epiphany, 14th of January 2018

1 Samuel 3:1-20

In 2006 an American civil rights activist, Tarana Burke, started the ‘Me Too’ movement. In 1997 she had met a young girl named Heaven in Alabama. Heaven told Tarana that she had been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend, and Tarana didn’t know what to say. She never saw the girl again. Eventually Tarana realised that what she wished she had said to Heaven was, ‘Me Too,’ and so almost ten years after meeting Heaven Tarana started encouraging women to say just that. Last year, when accusations of sexual harassment and assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein were made public, actor Alyssa Milano took up Tarana Burke’s words, ‘Me Too,’ using them as a hashtag on social media. The #MeToo campaign exploded, as women all around the world who had been sexually harassed or abused or assaulted by men, said #MeToo on platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

I said it. I tweeted #MeToo and put it on my Facebook page. Continue reading →

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Submission: Religious Freedom

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

This is my submission to the Review into Religious Freedom being conducted by Phillip Ruddock. If you’d like to make a submission, you can do so here.

Thank you for allowing the public to make submissions on the question of religious freedoms. Since there is no proposed legislation to be addressed, I can only make a few general remarks, but I am glad of the opportunity to do that. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Birth; Death; Stars

Posted on January 7, 2018 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
Epiphany 2018

Over the past week, leading up to today’s celebration of the Epiphany, I have been thinking a lot about the stars. I have been thinking about celestial navigation, about the ways in which sailors and shepherds used to find their way by the stars. I’ve been thinking about the familiarity and sense of home I feel whenever I see the Southern Cross, no matter where in the world I actually am; and how lost and alone I sometimes feel in the United Kingdom and Europe, when I look up and the Cross isn’t there. I’ve been thinking about the astonishing scientific fact that we humans are literally made of star-dust; and the sense that can give all of us of being at one with the entire cosmos, whether or not we believe that the same Creator made the lights in the dome of the sky and humanity. I’ve been thinking about the first time I saw the Milky Way from outback Australia and the absolute, overwhelming awe that seeing those many, many stars brought me, especially when I realised that I was looking into the past, light-years back in time. Continue reading →

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Sermon: God as one of us

Posted on December 25, 2017 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
Christmas Day 2017

The only time I have spent Christmas Day out of Australia was eleven years’ ago, when I was living in Switzerland. I went to Paris for Christmas, to stay with some Australian friends living and working there, and for the first time in my life I didn’t go to church on Christmas Day. There were two reasons for that: my French is almost non-existent and I wouldn’t have caught more than one in twenty words of a French service; and the English-speaking church that my friends attended, the Church of Scotland in Paris, didn’t have a Christmas Day service.

That shouldn’t have surprised me. The Scots have always had a slightly awkward relationship with the celebration of Christmas. After the Reformation, Protestants realised that a lot of Christmas celebrations weren’t biblically based. If Christians were to go back to the Scriptures as the Reformation demanded of them, and only celebrate those feasts and people who were mentioned in the Bible, then a lot of holy days or holidays, would have to go. Edward the Sixth of England was very canny about this. Saints’ Days couldn’t be celebrated anymore, but the apostles could be remembered, and so could biblically-attested events. So the newly Reformed Church could still celebrate Christmas Day, St Stephen’s Day (Stephen being the first Christian martyr whose story is told in the Book of Acts), Holy Innocents’ Day (remembering the little boys killed by King Herod), the Circumcision of Jesus, and Epiphany, when the magi arrived with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And, lo and behold, when you added all that up, you got something not very far from the traditional twelve days of Christmas celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church between Christmas Day and Epiphany. Hooray! The party was back on! Continue reading →

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Sermon: Mary the Magnificent

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
24th of December 2017

Luke 1:39-55

Recently I read an article by Irish writer Colm Toibin about his writing of the book and one-woman play, The Testament of Mary. He starts by saying how ‘shadowy’ Mary’s presence is: ‘She herself, as she is presented in the Gospels, is mostly silent, and, once Jesus leaves her home, she is mostly absent in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke she recites the Magnificat, but even there she takes account of her own “lowliness” before declaring, “From this day all generations will declare me blessed”. Matthew and Luke mention her in their Gospels, but mostly in her role as the mother of the infant Jesus. Mark hardly mentions her at all. It is John alone who registers her presence at the wedding feast of Cana and later at the foot of the Cross.’[1]

I feel awkward disagreeing with Toibin, but I don’t think Mary is particularly shadowy. We see a lot more of her than we do of Joseph. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Can we speak of Joy after the Royal Commission?

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
17th of December, 2017

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

For my twenty-first birthday a friend gave me the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. (Yes, I have always been a nerd.) When thinking about today’s service I decided that I would make use of it and I looked up ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’.

Happiness, according to the Shorter Oxford is:

  1. Good fortune, success.
  2. Pleasant appropriateness, felicity.
  3. Deep pleasure in, or contentment with, one’s circumstances.

Joy, on the other hand, is:

  1. Vivid pleasure arising from a sense of well-being or satisfaction; exultation; gladness, delight, an instance of this …
  2. A pleasurable, happy or felicitous state or condition, especially the bliss or blessedness of heaven …
  3. A source, object, or cause of happiness; a delight.

And so, it makes sense that the theme of the third Sunday of Advent is joy, not happiness. We’re not talking about good fortune or success. People can be fortunate and successful at the expense of others. They can be happy doing things that harm themselves, other people, animals and the environment. We sadly see this every day. In fact, it can sometimes seem as though happiness comes from harming other people and the planet, or at the very least ignoring the harm that lavish lifestyles do to them.

But, joy, on the other hand, joy, I want to argue, is the feeling that comes from what the Shorter Oxford describes as ‘the bliss or blessedness of heaven’. When we experience ‘joy’ we’re exulting and delighting in God. Two days after the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was released this may seem unforgivably naïve, but I believe that this joy cannot be felt by those who do harm, but only by those who are obeying God’s commandments and loving both God and their neighbour. Continue reading →

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