Sermon: Forgiveness and Mercy

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

The Third Sunday of Easter, 10th of April 2016

John 21:1-19
Acts 9:1-20

Last week the Gospel according to John seemed to come to an end. Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection; breathed on them to give them the Holy Spirit; commissioned them; and then came back a week later because poor Thomas hadn’t been present the first time. As you may remember, chapter 20 of the gospel ended: ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’ The words ‘The End’ would not be out of place here. So why are we here a week later with a further Johannine appearance story?

In today’s reading we find that a small group of Jesus’ disciples has apparently gone back to where their life with Jesus started, in Galilee. We’re told that this gathering takes place ‘after these things’; after all the disciples have seen the Risen Lord. Yet they’ve left Jerusalem, where that took place, and have returned home. More than that, they’ve now gone back to the job from which, according to the other gospels, Jesus called them. Simon Peter says, ‘I am going fishing,’ and the other disciples reply, ‘We will go with you.’ Where’s the joy with which they greeted the risen Jesus, and why are they not out evangelising, having received the Holy Spirit? Continue reading →

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Sermon: Being at peace with God and one another

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

3rd of April 2016

John 20:19-31

Caravaggio

The picture on the screen is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, painted in 1602. I’m not sure whether you can see it clearly enough, but in the painting Jesus is guiding Thomas’ hand into the wound in his side. In illustrating this Caravaggio is going beyond what the Gospel according to John describes. We’re never told that Thomas takes up Jesus’ invitation to touch him. It sounds, from what John writes, that the appearance of Jesus is enough. Jesus tells Thomas, ‘Do not doubt but believe,’ and Thomas instantly responds with the most complete declaration of faith in the gospels: ‘My Lord and my God!’ I’ve said before that poor Thomas is misnamed ‘Doubting’ and should be remembered as ‘Faithful Thomas’. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Not just an idle tale!

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

Easter Sunday, 27th of March, 2016

Luke 24:1-12

‘[T]hese words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.’

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the ultimate unexpected twist in the tale. We remember the ultimate act of civil disobedience, in which someone executed by the powerful Roman Empire just refused to stay dead! In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, we rejoice that: ‘good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us.’

Or is this all just an ‘idle tale’? Continue reading →

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Sermon: International Women’s Day and Mary of Bethany

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

5th Sunday of Lent, 13th of March 2016

John 12:1-8

Today’s reading from the Gospel according to John contains one of those lines that I wish Jesus had never said: ‘You always have the poor with you’. This is a verse that has been frequently misused, including by Tony Abbott at a meeting of Catholic Social Services in 2010 (my favourite Jesuit, Father Andy Hamilton, then pointed out that Abbott was misreading this story). But I talked about that verse three years’ ago. This liturgical year the lectionary gives us Jesus’ anointing in the same week as International Women’s Day, and so I want to focus instead on what this passage says about women.

Jesus is in Bethany, the home of Lazarus. In the chapter before this, we’re told about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead; which led many Jews to believe in him, and had the Council worrying: ‘If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place* and our nation.’ They decided that it would be better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed, and from that day on they plotted to kill Jesus. As Jesus and his disciples enjoy dinner in the house of Lazarus, death is approaching. But only Mary of Bethany responds to its approach. Continue reading →

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Sermon: It’s all new!

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

Lent 4, 6th of March, 2016

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Today’s reading from Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, or at least the second letter of his to them that we have, is full of quotable quotes. We frequently use the two verses about our reconciliation with God through Christ as Declarations of Forgiveness. The verse about all those in Christ being a new creation is also a suggested Bible verse for the service at a cemetery or crematorium; while the Uniting in Worship ‘Service of Healing for Those Whose Marriage is Ending or has Ended’ (did you know we had one?) also suggests using it as part of the letting go of the marriage relationship. So the words of this reading are undoubtedly familiar.

What does it actually mean? It’s a wonderful piece of theology, which is why parts of it are used so often, but to understand it we really need to understand its context. And as with the beautiful passage about love in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which Paul wrote to reveal just how far the Corinthians were failing to love each other, this passage is written because Paul is having problems with the church at Corinth. As I’ve said before, we’re lucky that the Corinthians were so badly-behaved, or Paul wouldn’t have been so inspired. Continue reading →

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Sermon for the World Day of Prayer: Not much about Cuba but a lot about Child Abuse

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for the World Day of Prayer – Cuba

Williamstown Uniting Church, 4th of March 2016

Mark 10:13-16

The choice of the women of Cuba of the theme of today’s service, ‘Jesus said to them “Receive children. Receive me.” is both extremely timely and extremely challenging for the churches here in Australia.

I don’t know whether any of you listen to the Religion and Ethics Report on Radio National? It’s on every Wednesday and I never miss it. This week the presenter, Andrew West, talked with Professor John Haldane of St Andrew’s University in Scotland who is in Australia to give several public lectures. Andrew and Professor Haldane talked about a story that the actor Alec Guinness told in one of his volumes of autobiography. Guinness was walking down a street in France in the 1950s dressed as a Catholic priest, because he was playing the part of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. A child who thought that Guinness was a priest came up to him, took his hand, and walked with Guinness back to where he was staying. Professor Haldane said that Guinness had been brought up with a generally hostile opinion of Catholicism and this experience made him think that an institution that could inspire that much trust and loyalty and affection must have something going for it. It was the beginning of his conversion. Professor Haldane then pointed out that the current circumstances in which an institution is immediately suspect when someone sees a priest taking a child’s hand or a child taking a priest’s hand also say something very significant and very challenging for the church. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Contra prosperity gospel

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

28th of February

Luke 13:1-9

‘In all they do, [the righteous] prosper’ while ‘the way of the wicked will perish’. (Psalm 1:3, 6) So says the very first psalm in the Psalter, the introduction to all the psalms that follow.

‘I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.’ Thus writes the psalmist in psalm 37. (Psalm 37:25)

‘The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you. The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. The Lord will make you the head, and not the tail; you shall be only at the top, and not at the bottom—if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God.’ So the Book of Deuteronomy tells the people. (Deuteronomy 28:11-14)

It is such an attractive theology! God gives people what they deserve. The righteous prosper; the wicked don’t. The rich are wealthy because they have obeyed God; the poor are poor because they have squandered what God has given them. Continue reading →

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Sermon: A hen in a world of foxes

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

The second Sunday of Lent, 21st of February 2016

Luke 13:31-35

In today’s gospel reading we have two different ‘animals’. Herod Antipas, ruling as Tetrarch at the pleasure of Rome, is described by Jesus as a fox, while Jesus compares himself to a mother hen. This is worrying. Short of a miracle, or intervention by a farmer, in any encounter between a fox and a hen the fox is going to come out better off. And this seems to be true in today’s reading – the fox is in the position of power, the hen is walking towards his death. But, as always, God’s ways are not our ways. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Righteous without being self-righteous

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for ‘Ash Sunday’

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

There is a genre of sermons in which the preacher reminds the congregation that we are all wretched sinners, miserable worms who, if we got our just deserts, would burn forever in the fires of Hell. It’s known as a ‘dangling them over the pit’ sermon, and it’s not as popular nowadays as it used to be. The closest I’ve ever come to experiencing it was at a National Christian Youth Convention some twenty-one years ago when an enthusiastic evangelist taught us all a rap: ‘God has a plan; Man has a problem; the choice is up to you!’ I have to confess that part of my issue with these rap lyrics was that he couldn’t even bother to make them gender-inclusive. Honestly, how hard would it be to say ‘People have a problem’ or ‘Humanity has a problem’? But the other reason I disliked it was his emphasis on the fact that we were all miserable failures unless and until we chose to follow God’s plan. I was twenty-one years’ old, very judgemental, and definitely leaning towards the concept of ‘original blessing’ rather than ‘original sin’. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Jesus was serious about all that ‘love’ stuff

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church
31st of January, 2016

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

 

If you have recently attended a wedding, particularly a wedding in a church, there is more than half a chance that you heard the famous passage about love from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. This description of love is so popular that it can be read at the most secular of wedding services. Among my congregation at Mount Macedon were two civil marriage celebrants who told me of couples who were absolutely determined to have wedding ceremonies completely free from religion, with no mention of God whatsoever, but who, when presented with First Corinthians 13 as a possible reading, agreed that it said exactly what they wanted to say about love. First Corinthians 13 has escaped from its original context and become part of our general cultural heritage. Continue reading →

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