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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Sermon: The Creator of the Cosmos is our Next of Kin

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

13th of September, 2015

Psalm 19

I’m going to do something a bit unusual this morning; I’m going to preach a sermon on the Psalm of the day. This is unusual, because the psalms themselves are unusual parts of the Scriptures. Most of the Bible is made up of writings that we consider to be words from God, if not the Word of God. The Book of Psalms is somewhat different. The psalms are prayers, offerings of humans to God. And that’s how we usually use them. We sing them or pray them in worship or alone, offering them as our words to God. We don’t principally listen to them as God’s words to us. That’s what I want us to do today; treat today’s psalm like any other part of Scripture, as a poem through which we hear God talking to us. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Do we really ‘believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ’? Welcoming refugees and asylum seekers.

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

  Williamstown Uniting Church
6th of September, 2015

James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

I’m a bit of a news junkie. I subscribe to two newspapers and three online news sources; I watch the ABC news on television every night; and if I’m working at my desk or driving I usually have Radio National on in the background. Personally I blame my parents and grandparents for this need to know what’s going on in the world at all times – but at least I’m not as bad as my brother who, when he’s at home, constantly has either ABC News 24 or Fox News on the television.

So this week I have been feeling completely overwhelmed by the news of refugees around the world. I read, hear or see desperate people in danger, and I want to turn away; switch off; ignore what’s happening. But I know I can’t, because these are fellow human beings. (And even if I wanted to, the front page of this month’s Crosslight wouldn’t let me!) There are already nearly two million refugees from the Syrian civil war in Turkey and over 1.1 million in Lebanon, and over the past few weeks we have watched as millions more Syrians have sought refuge in Europe. On Thursday media organisations showed images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi from a Kurdish town on the Turkey-Syria border, who together with his five-year-old brother and thirty-five-year-old mother drowned trying to reach Greece. It is in order to prevent such children drowning on their way to Australia that Australia’s Government and Opposition both support off-shore processing for asylum seekers. The trouble is that, as we’ve seen with the boatloads of Rohinga asylum seekers escaping Myanmar, no matter how hard we make conditions in detention centres persecuted people still get on boats if there’s no other way to escape. And when other countries follow Australia’s lead and turn the boats away, asylum seekers like the Rohinga are simply left adrift on the sea.

Crosslight September 2015

Continue reading →

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Coming soon – the fifth annual service of the Church of Latter Day Geeks!

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sci Fi Service

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Sermon: And, again, the Uniting Church is not a Bible-believing church

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

At the recent national Assembly of the Uniting Church I was shocked to hear people argue, in the course of discussion about same-sex marriage, that members of the Uniting Church read the Bible literally. Whatever one thinks of marriage equality, the Uniting Church has never been a ‘Bible-believing’ church in that sense. The Basis of Union makes that extremely clear. So, although my congregation has heard it all before, I’ve taken the opportunity of Jesus authoritatively interpreting the Scriptures to explain how members of the Uniting Church read the Bible: seriously, reverently, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit – but NOT literally.

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

30 August, 2015

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the Uniting Church is not a Bible-believing church. We are a church that believes that the Bible is important, but not a church that believes that the Bible is the Word of God.

So, how do those of us who belong to the Uniting Church read the Bible? According to the Basis of Union, the document that defines who we are as a church, we Uniting Church types understand the Bible to be ‘unique prophetic and apostolic testimony’ and we are given ‘the serious duty of reading the Scriptures’.[1] When I was ordained one of the questions I was asked was: ‘Relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, will you be diligent in the study of the Bible; will you seek to live a holy and disciplined life; will you be faithful in prayer?’ and I answered ‘With God’s help I will’. All Uniting Church members are expected to read the Bible; ministers are meant to study it. The Bible is vital to our faith. But we are not expected to read it literally.

The Book of Kells Continue reading →

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A letter to the Prime Minister on Marriage Equality

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I was one of the 110 Christian signatories to this letter asking the Prime Minister to allow a conscience vote on marriage equality. Sadly, the day before this letter was delivered, at a Prayer Breakfast at Parliament House, a six-hour joint LNP party room meeting decided not to allow members of the LNP a conscience vote. But the letter is still important because the issue will not go away, and because it shows that Christians are not all of one mind on the question.

(c) Alex Lee / BuzzFeed

(c) Alex Lee / BuzzFeed

The Hon Tony Abbott MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Cc: Liberal National Party Caucus

Dear Prime Minister

Christian Support for Same-Sex Marriage

We write as people of faith and as a voice for many others of religious faith. We are leaders and prominent members of Christian communities across diverse fields of endeavour. We respect that ours is a democratic, multicultural and secular nation. We equally affirm that Parliament should be open to hear religious voices among the many Australian voices that advocate on important social issues. Continue reading →

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