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
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
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
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
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:
Joy, on the other hand, is:
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
Yesterday I accidentally got to see the Australian Senate pass Dean Smith’s private member’s bill on marriage equality. I was in Canberra for about six hours with three other members of Australian Christians for Marriage Equality. We could almost have been the start of a joke: an Anglican priest, a Baptist pastor, and two Uniting Church ministers walk into Parliament House …
Continue reading
Sermon for Williamstown
26th of November, 2017
Matthew 25:31-46
Recently I had a short street debate with a couple of Muslim men. It was a Saturday, and I was in the city on my way to a protest march. As I walked up Swanston Street I found two competing groups of evangelists on two different corners of the Swanston-Bourke Streets intersection; a group of Christians and a group of Muslims. As I walked past the Islamic group something they were saying about the Bible caught my attention and I stopped to talk to them.
The two men I talked to were comparing the Bible to the Koran. I don’t know anything about the Koran, but I know enough about the Bible to be able to agree with them. Yes, I agreed, some parts of the Bible contradict other parts. Yes, I agreed, the gospels were most likely written by people who had never seen Jesus themselves, people who were writing stories that had been passed down to them through oral traditions. Yes, I agreed, in the gospel according to Matthew Jesus is reported as saying that: ‘just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth’ (Matthew 12:40) and yet Jesus would only have been in the tomb for at most two nights. Basically, I agreed with all their arguments for the fallibility of the Christian scriptures. Why, then, they asked me, was I Christian? I explained that it was because I experience God’s love for me in Jesus. So, they said, it was blind faith. I said that I wouldn’t call my faith ‘blind’ but I agreed that it was faith. Continue reading
Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
12th of November, 2017
Joshua 24:1-3a 14-25
Joshua, the successor of Moses, is old and well advanced in years, and giving his last words of advice to the people of Israel, now living in the land of Canaan. Joshua wants the people to choose to follow the God who rescued them from Egypt, but he isn’t at all sure that they can. He tells them: ‘Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’
The people, of course, say that they want to worship the God who brought them up from the land of Egypt and freed them from slavery. But Joshua says to the people, ‘You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.’ And the people said to Joshua, ‘No, we will serve the Lord! Continue reading
Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
5th of November, 2017
Matthew 5:1-12
1 John 3:1-3
Tuesday was the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther possibly nailing his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, a day we celebrate for Luther’s insight that we are all sinners who are only justified, made right with God, through God’s grace. Wednesday was All Saints’ Day, a day that we Protestants now use to remember all those we love who have died and are now part of the great cloud of witnesses that surround us. We are also reminded that we are called to be saints, too; to purify ourselves as God is pure. We are all sinners. We are all saints. For the Uniting Church, these two identities might be called our Reformed (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) identity, and our Pietist (Methodist) Identity. How do we reconcile them? Continue reading
Have you heard of ‘virtue signalling? The British journalist and author James Bartholomew claims to have coined it in The Spectator in 2015 after realising that Victorians gave much more to charity than contemporary British people do. He says that it describes:
… the way in which many people say or write things to indicate that they are virtuous. Sometimes it is quite subtle. By saying that they hate the Daily Mail or UKIP, they are really telling you that they are admirably non-racist, left-wing or open-minded. One of the crucial aspects of virtue signalling is that it does not require actually doing anything virtuous. It does not involve delivering lunches to elderly neighbours or staying together with a spouse for the sake of the children. It takes no effort or sacrifice at all.
‘I invented “virtue signalling”. Now it’s taking over the world’ The Spectator, 10 October 2015 Continue reading
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