Sermon: Friendship, refugees, asylum seekers, and a birthday

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for 21 June 2015

Williamstown Uniting Church

1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16

Today the lectionary offers us two options for the Old Testament reading, the story of David and Goliath, and the story of David and Jonathan. I promised the children last week that I would tell them the story of David’s encounter with a giant, but for the rest of you I’ve rather unsurprisingly decided to preach on the love story rather than the war story. I’ve preached on friendship several times already during my time here, and the story of David and Jonathan is the story of an amazing friendship.

Jonathan is ‘the friend few of us deserve but most of us would dearly love to have’.[1] The friendship between Jonathan and David can be compared with the love between David’s great-grandmother, Ruth, and her mother-in-law Naomi, in which Ruth makes the wonderful declaration that: ‘Where you will 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’; a commitment so profound that this promise from one woman to another is often read at weddings. It’s tempting to think that David inherited his capacity for inspirational friendship from her. Continue reading →

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Reflection: Two and a half days in to the Ration Challenge

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

This Refugee Week I am taking part in Act for Peace’s Ration Challenge. For seven days I am committed to eating the same rations that a refugee receives in Burma. The rations are: 3,500 g of rice; 280 g of split peas; 250 g of fortified flour; 155 g of fish; 40 g of salt and 125 ml of vegetable oil.

Ration Challenge 4

The rations, plus my cultivated condiment

Because refugees can add to their rations by cultivating a garden we are also able to add supplies that we have ‘cultivated’ by getting sponsorship: $200 raised adds a condiment; $300 adds a serve of vegetables; $400 adds a portion of fruit; $500 adds a serve of protein; and $1000 adds a bonus item to the value of $5.

Two and a half days in I am not hungry, or feeling very deprived. But I am feeling a little bored at my lack of menu choice. 3.5 kg of rice over the course of a week is a lot of rice! I had bowls of plain rice for breakfast on Sunday and Monday, and rice fried with chilli for Sunday lunch and dinner, and I am already very, very over rice. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Be afraid, be very afraid. Jesus and family values

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

Pentecost 2, 7th of June 2015

Mark 3:20-35

Be afraid, be very afraid. After the joy of the Easter season, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday, the church is now in ‘Ordinary Time’ and this year that means that we’re spending serious time immersed in the Gospel according to Mark. As I’ve said several times already this liturgical year, Mark is the shortest, the earliest, and the ‘scariest’ of the canonical gospels.[1]

In today’s reading from the gospel, we see that strangeness and scariness up close, as Jesus is accused of being in league with demons and his family tries to restrain him because they believe he’s out of his mind. It’s a story that includes Jesus describing an unforgivable sin, and turning from his biological family in favour of the people gathered around him. This week’s reading is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who are relaxed and comfortable with the status quo. Continue reading →

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Sermon: The Trinity is a celebration; not a maths problem

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

May 31st, 2015

Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17

One of the things that Trinity Sunday does is remind us, in case we’ve forgotten, just how unique, or possibly weird, the Christian understanding of God is. My most recent reminder of this was in Nazareth, in Israel. On the road to the Church of the Annunciation a billboard has been erected that quotes from the Koran:

“O People of the Scripture (Christians)! Do not exceed the limits in your religion. Say nothing but the truth about Allah (The one true God). The Christ Jesus, Son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God and His word conveyed to Mary and a spirit created by Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not say “Three gods” (Trinity). Cease! it will be better for you. Indeed, Allah is the One and the Only God. His holiness is far above having a son.”

Trinity1

Having read this sign, Christians then go to the church built over the house identified as the one in which Mary was living when the archangel Gabriel told her that she was going to bear a son. That’s what makes us different from the other two Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam. All three Abrahamic faiths worship the one God, but we Christians insist on saying that the one is simultaneously three; that God was not above having a Son, and that that Son was himself God.

Continue reading →

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The Act for Peace Ration Challenge

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I am frequently overwhelmed by a sense of how lucky I am.

That sense can come when I’m walking by the sea, when I’m reminded of how lucky I am to live in Williamstown. It can come when I’m leading worship, when I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be able to follow my vocation. It can come when I’m playing with my nephew, nieces, or any of the many other children in my life, when I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be have children to love even though I don’t have any of my own. It can come when I’m browsing in a bookshop, when I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be able to buy a book without worrying about my budget. It can come when I watch the news at night, when I’m reminded of how lucky I am that I was born in Australia. I wasn’t merely born in Australia; I was born to a stable, Anglo-Celtic, middle-class family. In so many ways, through absolutely no effort on my part, I won the birth lottery. Continue reading →

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Sermon: We are never left alone

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

Pentecost, 24th of May, 2015

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Acts 2:1-21
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

Today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ disciples at Pentecost, the event that we remember as the birth-day of the church. Today is a day of loud and joyful celebration, coloured red for the Spirit in the liturgical calendar, as we envisage a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and divided tongues, as of fire. We have balloons, streamers and candles here in the nave; the children, I believe, are currently decorating cupcakes for after the service; and we will have deeply unhealthy fizzy raspberry soft drink to accompany them. Today is a happy day. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Friendship

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I’m cheating! Most of this was written and preached in the Macedon Ranges, last time this reading came up in the lectionary. But looking back at it I find that I still agree with everything I said then, and I quite like the sermon, so I’m going to preach it again. 

Sermon for Williamstown

May 10th, 2015

John 15:9-17

I’ve been thinking about marriage this week. On Tuesday I received the first mailing of papers for the national Assembly that will be held in Perth in July. Among the few proposals that came with them the papers were two about marriage, one from the Standing Committee and one from the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress. (Neither suggested any change in our current understanding of marriage, but both suggest that we have a lot more discussion about it.) On Wednesday, at a meeting with members of the Burmese congregation, Natalie, Bev and I heard that Pastor True has been recognised by the government as a marriage celebrant, and we rejoiced with him that he’ll be able to celebrate the marriages of members of his congregation. Most people in Australia see marriage as something churches are particularly concerned with, which is why ministers are able to be authorised by the Attorney-General to act as marriage agents for the state. Churches agree, marriage is important to us, which is why the coming Assembly will spend a fair bit of time discussing marriage. In comparison, friendship isn’t a topic that gets mentioned a lot in the church. And yet if any form of relationship can be described as particularly Christian, as the specific way that Christians live out our lives, it’s not marriage. It’s friendship. Continue reading →

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Sermon: The sons and daughters of the eunuch

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

3rd of May 2015

Acts 8:26-40

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”. (Romans 8:28) God is able to take things that may not in themselves be good and create good out of them. Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch, comes from a time when the early church was being persecuted in Jerusalem and the Christian community (not yet called by that name) was scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Interestingly, among those most zealous in persecuting the church was Saul, the man who would later become the Apostle Paul. All things work together for good, and the author of Acts tells us that “those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word”. Phillip was one of the scattered, and while exiled from Jerusalem he preached the good news in Samaria extremely successfully. Then, as we heard today, an angel of the Lord told him to leave Samaria and head south to the wilderness road that ran from Jerusalem to Gaza. There Phillip encountered an Ethiopian eunuch. Continue reading →

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Reflection: Killing people is wrong

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Killing people is wrong. That seems to me to be a simple truth. We can have long and detailed ethical discussions about circumstances in which killing someone may be the lesser of two evils, if someone kills in self-defence or defence of others, but it remains an evil. Killing people is never a good thing to do.  Continue reading →

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Sermon: Love in truth and action, not word or speech

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown
26th of April 2015

John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24

Earlier this week, on the ABC program Q&A, Australia’s Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, argued that Muslim clerics weren’t doing enough to prevent the radicalisation of Muslim youth. He said: “The leadership of the Muslim community, the imams in particular, I think should be doing a lot more to look after their community in Australia … You’ve got to show the leadership and we’ve got to do whatever we can to help you in that regard.” Since then there’s been discussion in the media about how much authority Muslim clerics actually have, and whether they’re making enough use of that authority to prevent Muslims turning to violence.

As a ‘Christian cleric’ I’ve been pondering this idea of religious responsibility. How responsible are people like me for the actions of Christians? If Christians turn to violence, as some have, is that at least partly the responsibility of their ministers and priests? Last week, at the ANZAC service, I quoted some of the sermons and articles delivered by clergy during the First World War, and in that case I think church leaders absolutely had some responsibility for the vast number of soldiers who went to war, to kill and to die. But what about today? Continue reading →

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