Sermon for Epiphany: Let your light shine

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

Epiphany 2016

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Matthew 2:1-12

 I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a bit of history, because I love tracing the intersection between the Bible and popular culture. As I have told you all many, many times, the magi, whose visit to Jesus we celebrate today, were not kings. Nor do we know how many of them there were. Nor do we know where they came from, beyond the rather vague designation of ‘the East’. And despite their presence in the nativity scene that you all walked past to enter the church today, they did not visit Jesus while he was lying in a manger.

Yet I can guarantee that if we walked out of here today and asked any random passer-by who had some vague idea about the Nativity story: ‘Who visited Jesus in the stable?’ they would include in their answer ‘the three kings’. So how did the magi of unspecified number become ‘we three kings of Orient are’? Continue reading →

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Reflection for Christmas Day

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for Williamstown Uniting Church

Christmas Day, 2015

Today we celebrate the birth of a baby. That’s wonderful enough in itself. You may have noticed that I’m quite fond of babies. I’ve been lucky enough to hold quite a few of them in their first few hours of life, and each time I’ve been overwhelmed by wonder and awe, by a sense of the miraculous, and the great gift that God gives us in every newborn child. Today, we celebrate all that wonder.

But there aren’t many babies whose births we continue to celebrate some two thousand years later. We continue to celebrate the birth of this particular baby because the story we listen to today, the beautiful Christmas story of angels and shepherds and a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and placed in a manger, is only the beginning. The story of Jesus’ birth is a wonderful one, and we read it and sing about it and remember it, but it really has meaning because of what comes afterwards. Continue reading →

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Sermon for Advent 4: Love

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

20th of December 2015

Luke 1:39-55

This time last year, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I explained to you why it is my favourite Sunday, not only in Advent, but in the whole Christmas season. For those of you who may have forgotten, and for those of you who weren’t here, I’m going to tell you again. It’s because of the Magnificat; Mary’s song of praise. At this time of year there are many places in the community where we can hear the story of Jesus’ birth in the stable; see the baby in the manger with the shepherds and magi come to honour him. Jesus may not be as popular as Santa Claus, but he’s still there. But it’s only in churches that we hear Mary singing her song of liberation. It’s only in churches that we see the old world of injustice overthrown and the new world of peace born. And it’s only in churches that we are reminded that being citizens of this new world means loving everyone – including our enemies. Continue reading →

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Sermon for Advent 3: Joy

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

13th of December 2015

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is ‘Gaudete’ (gow-day-tay) Sunday – Joy Sunday, the only Sunday in the entire liturgical year whose colour is pink. The name comes from part of today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians; in Latin, ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ is Gaudete in Domino semper. In the midst of Advent, which can be rather a sombre time as we prepare for the Second Coming and are reminded to be ready for the return of the Son of Man, this third Sunday is a time of joy.

Or is it? After all, our gospel reading has John the Baptist proclaiming: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance’ and warning the crowds that: ‘Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’ Today’s gospel reading does not come across as particularly joyful. Continue reading →

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Sermon for Advent 2: Peace

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

6th of December 2015

Baruch 5:1-9
Luke 1:68-79
Luke 3:1-6

In the first year of the prime ministership of Malcolm Turnbull; when Daniel Andrews was premier of Victoria; and Tim Watts the member for Gellibrand and Wade Noonan the member for Williamstown; when Francis was Pope and Stuart the President of the Uniting Church, the word of God came to the members of the Williamstown Uniting Church in Electra St.

Today’s gospel reading is very short and almost 40% of it simply sets the historical scene. That’s a lot of time to take just to tell us when the word of God came to John. If all Luke had wanted to tell us was the date, all he really needed to write was the very first phrase: ‘in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius’. Everything after that is gratuitous. So what is it that Luke is telling us? Continue reading →

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Sermon: For the first Sunday of Advent and Zoey’s Baptism

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown
The First Sunday of Advent, 29th of November, 2015

Jeremiah 33:14-16
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

Happy New Year!

Today is a day of beginnings. It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and today the church begins a new liturgical year. If you look at my stole you’ll see we’ve changed liturgical colours. Today and for two of the following three Sundays, the Sundays of Advent, our liturgical colour is purple, the colour of preparation, the colour that the church also uses in Lent, and as we light the purple candles in the Advent wreath we’re reminded that we’re on a journey that will take us to the joy of Christmas.

Today, we also baptise Zoey Craig. Four weeks before Christmas we’ve gathered today to celebrate another joyful event centred on the great love of God shown in the life of a small child. Today the Christian year begins, and today Zoey’s Christian life begins as she becomes a member of the Church. Continue reading →

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Sermon: What “Christ the King” means for us

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown
22nd of November, 2015

Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

On Thursday evening I attended a wonderful ordination. The person being ordained was Berlin Guerrero, who began his theological training with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, the UCCP, and completed it at the Uniting Church Theological College here in Melbourne. I first heard of Berlin when I was a very new minister in the Macedon Ranges, and he was imprisoned in the Philippines on trumped up charges because of the work the UCCP did among the farmers, fisherfolks, and the urban poor. The Justice and International Mission Unit of our Synod circulated petitions and asked us to write to the Philippines Government asking for Berlin’s release, and the then General Secretary of the World Council of Churches visited the Philippines, calling attention to the imprisonment, torture and murder of social activists, including pastors like Berlin. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Lighten our darkness

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
15th of November 2015

1 Samuel 1:4-20
1 Samuel 2:1-10

Blue Candle (2)

Today is the second last Sunday of the Christian year and the last Sunday of the season we call ‘Ordinary Time’ or ‘Pentecost’. Next week we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and in a fortnight we’ll begin the liturgical year again with the first Sunday of Advent, as we look forward to Christmas. So it might seem a bit strange that the lectionary, which has spent the Sundays after Pentecost telling us stories of King David, now takes us back to beginning of David’s story, with the birth of Samuel who will anoint David as king, after Samuel and God both agree that their first choice of king, Saul, was a mistake. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Woman to Woman, Ruth and Naomi

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

November 8, 2015

Ruth 1:1-18, 3:1-5, 4:13-17

Today I cheated a little in the Bible readings. In the entire three-year lectionary we only have two readings from Ruth, and rather than have one last week and one this week, I put them together so you could hear as much of the story as possible. What I would really like to do, except that we don’t have the time to do it, would be to read you the entire book. It’s a very, very great pity that the lectionary skips over most of it.

The readings we give us begin by telling us how the Jewish Naomi and the Moabite Ruth end up together in Bethlehem, two widows trying to survive. This is the part with Ruth’s amazingly powerful words to Naomi, so beautiful that they are often used at weddings:

‘Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’  Continue reading →

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Sermon for Police Remembrance Sunday 2015: Watch your tongues!

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Police Remembrance Sunday 2015
Williamstown Uniting Church

James 3:1-4:3, 7-8a

One of the ‘extra’ things I do as a minister, one of the ways in which this congregation shares me with the wider community, is being a chaplain with the Victorian Council of Churches Emergencies Ministry. Chaplains get called out by the Department of Human Services in cases of natural or manmade disasters to provide psychological first aid to people affected. One of the reasons I have such respect for police officers, and fire-fighters and paramedics and SES volunteers, is that chaplains turn up as soon as possible during or after a disaster, but only when we’re going to be safe. In fact, that’s one of our best lines with traumatised people – they can be sure that they’re safe now because if the situation wasn’t safe chaplains wouldn’t be there. So I have the greatest respect for people who respond to disasters before it’s safe.

Female police officer at the 1972 Moomba Parade

Continue reading →

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