Reflection: Very, very initial and tentative thoughts on Palestine and Israel

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I spent two weeks in Palestine and Israel. They were an amazing, wonderful, challenging, life-changing two weeks, but they were still only two weeks. I’m nervous about saying anything about the situation given how little time I spent in the two countries, or one country and one territory, but I also spoke with many, many Palestinian Christians who asked me to share their situation with my congregation and other Australians and I promised that I would. So here I am sitting in a Spa in Pertisau, Austria, trying to put some thoughts together. Continue reading →

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A Wedding Sermon for Susan and Daniel

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Song of Solomon 2:10-13, 8:6-7
1 John 4:7-10
Matthew 5:1-10

Friends, we have gathered here today to witness and celebrate the marriage of Susan and Daniel, and I am absolutely ecstatic. I was almost tempted to limit this part of the service to me repeating a few times that today is awesome and we’re all very happy, and leaving it at that. But Susan and Daniel have chosen three cracking Bible readings to be read at this service, and I do want to say something, very briefly!, about each of them. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Learning from Jesus

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

  Williamstown Uniting Church
17 of August, 2014

Matthew 15:21-28

A few years’ ago I took my nephew and niece to see a film called To the Arctic at IMAX. The stars of the film were a polar bear mother and her twin seven-month-old cubs who travelled across the huge icebergs together in order to find food and stay alive. At one point, the little family was menaced by a male polar bear. The mother, like many mothers, human and animal, was willing to sacrifice her life for her children. She acted as a decoy to lead the male polar bear away from her cubs. Fortunately, she and the cubs all survived. I suspect that if they hadn’t the movie would have been given a much higher classification.

My nephew was absolutely stunned by this self-sacrifice. That was all he could talk about for the rest of the day, and the first thing he told his parents about when I dropped him home. “The polar bear mother loved her cubs so much that she was willing to die for them!” he said over and over again. His own mother was a little bothered by how impressed my nephew was. After all, as she pointed out to him, as his mother she herself was quite prepared to die to save him, her son, if the situation arose. Come to that, it was extremely likely that his granny and his auntie Avril would also throw themselves between him and an angry male polar bear if necessary. It’s not just polar bear mothers who are willing to die for their young. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Avril talks about “boat people” – again

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

August 10, 2014; Ordinary 19

From Christmas Island

Matthew 14:22-33

Listening to today’s gospel reading is one of those times when our twenty-first century Australian mindset can create a problem. Most Australians are happy coastal dwellers, much more apprehensive about Australia’s vast inland than about its oceans. In contrast, the people of Ancient Israel did not like the sea. The Book of Revelation actually offers a vision of paradise where the sea will be no more, (Rev 21:1) which isn’t a vision of paradise that works for me. For the people of Israel the sea was traditionally the source of deep and threatening power, a place of danger and terror. So when the disciples, in today’s reading, are in a boat, battered by the waves and far from land, they feel not only the immediate fear caused by their situation, but the primeval fear of chaos and the abyss inherited from their ancestors. Continue reading →

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Sermon: God is not safe

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

3rd of August, 2014

Genesis 32:22-31

Today’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures is one of my favourites, and Jacob is one of the biblical characters with whom I most empathise. That may seem strange; I hope it seems strange, given the story of Jacob’s life. We’ve heard some of it in the readings in preceding weeks, but we haven’t heard all of it, and it’s a story worth retelling. In fact, in order to understand today’s reading we need to know this story. So, here are some edited highlights from the life of Jacob, son of Isaac.

Isaac’s wife Rebekah was barren, until Isaac prayed for her and God granted his prayer. Rebekah conceived not one baby, but two, and the twins struggled in her womb until she asked: “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” The Lord answered her: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” When the two children were born, the younger came out gripping his brother’s heel, so they called him Jacob, which means “He takes by the heel” or “He supplants”. Jacob was a trickster and a troublemaker from his conception. Continue reading →

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Speech: #BustTheBudget

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

On the 7th of July I was one of the tens of thousands of Australians who took part in the #BustTheBudget, #OurCommunityCounts March for a Fairer Australia. I was honoured to be invited to speak to the rally as an “ordinary minister” of the Uniting Church, concerned about what the 2014 Budget will do to already vulnerable people. This is what I said. (More or less – I spoke without my notes.)    Bust The Budget Every week members of the Williamstown Uniting Church bring offerings of non-perishable food. Every week we bless the food, and pray for those who will receive it. Then it goes to an emergency relief program housed in another Uniting Church, managed by Anglicare, and staffed by volunteers from many different churches and from the community. And every week I’m torn. Christians love feeding the hungry; it’s one of the things that Jesus told us specifically to do. I’m proud of my people when they bring food and give it to those who need it. But I wonder why, in a rich country like Australia, there are people who would go hungry without charity. Why isn’t Australia’s wealth shared more equally? Continue reading →

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Sermon: A test Abraham failed?

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown

Sunday the 29th of June, 2014

Genesis 22:1-14

What on earth can we do with today’s reading from the book of Genesis, the Akedah or binding of Isaac? The Revised Common Lectionary, which leaves out other stories in Genesis like the rape of Dinah and the revenge taken by her brothers;[1] the attempt by the men of Sodom to rape two of God’s messengers;[2] and the incest between a drunken Lot and his two daughters that was the origin of the people of Moab and Ammon;[3] includes this passage of attempted child sacrifice for our instruction. Genesis has many stories that are distinctly unedifying, it’s definitely not a safe book for children to read, but the lectionary passes over most of them in silence, and we never hear them read out in church. So why is this story part of the lectionary? Surely, child murder, even when prevented at the last minute, is at least as abhorrent as rape and incest. On this topic I could almost agree with Richard Dawkins, who uses the binding of Isaac as an example of the cruelty of religion. In The God Delusion he writes: “this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: ‘I was only obeying orders’. Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions.”[4] But I differ from Dawkins in one important point. He implies that Jews, Christians and Muslims blithely read this story and accept it, thus accepting child abuse, bullying and blind obedience as part of our faith. The absolute opposite is true. Continue reading →

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Sermon; When life is utterly unfair …

Posted on June 15, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

15th of June, 2014

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Psalm 8

One of the things that I love most about being a minister is that as part of that role people include me in the most important moments of their lives. We live in a society that is rapidly becoming more secular, but many people do still come to the Church for what are facetiously referred to as ‘hatching, matching and despatching’. So this past week I have spent time with the small boy, Eamonn, whom we will be baptising here next Sunday; and time with a young couple who are going to be married in this church in November. I have a role in people’s lives at their times of greatest joy. And I love it. Continue reading →

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Sermon: We’re all on a journey

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I have lots and lots of books with maps inside the front cover. Maps of Middle-Earth, Pern, Britain in the time of King Arthur; maps of the kingdoms of the Alorns and Angaraks, of Narnia, of Discworld, of Earthsea and Westeros and Fionavar and the Peninsula of the Palm.

The late Diana Wynne Jones didn’t think much of these maps. In her Tough Guide to Fantasy Land, the ultimate guide for anyone planning a sojourn in Middle-Earth or the kingdoms of the Alorns, she said of such maps:

you will look in vain for inns, rest-stops or villages, or even roads. No-wait another minute – on closer examination, you will find the empty interior crossed by a few bird tracks. If you peer at these you will see they are (somewhere) labelled ‘Old Trade Road – Disused’ and ‘Imperial Way – Mostly Long Gone’. Some of these routes appear to lead (or have led) to small edifices enticingly titled ‘Ruin’, ‘Tower of Sorcery’ or ‘Dark Citadel’, but there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places. In short, the Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get. And, be warned.  If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule. Continue reading →

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Sermon: God and gardens

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Garden Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church

11th of May, 2014

Genesis 2:4b-15
Jeremiah 29:4-7
Amos 9:13-15

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

The Book of Genesis gives us two versions of creation. The first story, which many scholars suspect is the later version, is a very balanced account of a creation by an extremely powerful god who creates through speech: “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” In this story humanity, male and female, is created at the very end of the process, on the sixth day, the same day on which God created the animals. God creates everything and sees that it is very good, but it’s a somewhat ‘hands-off’ creation.

The second story, the one we heard today, possibly the older story, is a much more ‘hands-on’ creation. Here God creates a man from the dust of the ground, and gives the man life by breathing into his nostrils. At that time, according to the story-teller, there were no plants because “the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground”. It is only after humanity is created that God plants a garden. The man whom God created is then put in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. In this second, earlier, creation story, the connection between humanity and gardens is an interdependent and beneficial one.

Throughout history numerous writers have reminded us of this connection between God, humanity and gardens. For instance, the sixteenth-century philosopher and essayist, Francis Bacon wrote in his essay ‘On Gardens’: “God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.” Some four hundred years’ later the author Rudyard Kipling wrote: “Adam was a gardener, and God, who made him, sees that half of all good gardening is done upon the knees.” Continue reading →

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