Sermon: I go down the rabbit hole of ‘predestination’

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
14th of July, 2024

Ephesians 1:3-14

I am sorry. I must confess that this week I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. In the ‘Ordination Charge’ that the Presbytery gives to Uniting Church ministers before we are ordained one instruction is: ‘Learning from the Confessional Documents of the Uniting Church in Australia, you will diligently teach Christ’s people, reminding them of the centrality of the person and work of Jesus Christ and the grace which justifies them through faith.’ The Basis of Union lists the ‘Confessional Documents of the Uniting Church’ as the Scots Confession of Faith (1560), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration (1658), and John Wesley’s Forty-Four Sermons (1793). I may do my job by diligently reminding you of ‘the centrality of the person and work of Jesus Christ,’ but I very seldom do so after reading any of the Confessional Documents. This week, given today’s passage from the Letter to the Ephesians, I decided that I should spend some time with them. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sermon: Strength in weakness

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
7th of July 2024

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

If only the Apostle Paul had known that his letters to the various new communities of Jesus’ followers were still going to be read two thousand years later. He might then have given us a few more details to explain exactly what he was saying. ‘I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven … And I know that such a person … was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.’ Really, Paul? The third heaven? Things no mortal is permitted to repeat? What on earth are you talking about? Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sermon: Enough for all

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
30th of June 2024

2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

Today’s gospel story tells the well-known tales of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, and the healing of the woman with uncontrolled bleeding. The way the stories are told is an example of a ‘Markan sandwich’: we begin with Jairus; his story is interrupted by the healing of an unknown woman; and we then return to Jairus and see his plea being answered. The two sandwiched stories share key words: the twelve years of the woman’s bleeding and of the girl’s life; the daughter of Jairus and the woman addressed as ‘Daughter’ by Jesus; the faith of the woman that makes her well and Jesus’ demand of Jairus that he have faith; both healings occurring ‘instantly’. The shared language indicates that it is no mere accident of timing that the healing of the haemorrhaging woman interrupts the healing of Jairus’ daughter. Mark has placed the two stories together so that they can illuminate each other. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sermon: Deeper Water

Posted on June 22, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
23rd of June 2024

Mark 4:35-41

One of the last poems that the nineteenth-century British author Emily Bronte wrote begins:

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.

Sadly, none of Jesus’ disciples was an Emily Bronte. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sermon: Simply planting seeds

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
16th of June 2024

Mark 4:26-34

What a relief is today’s reading from the Gospel according to Mark. Last week we had demons, and the difficult interactions between Jesus and his biological family; this week we have seeds. I much prefer preaching about seeds growing mysteriously in the ground to preaching about Satan rising up against Satan. But the reason Jesus is talking about the mysteries of botanical growth is because of that recent opposition he had experienced from his family, who worried that he was out of his mind, and from the scribes, who accused him of being in league with Beelzebul. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sermon: Holy Spirit and evil spirits

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
9th of June 2024

Mark 3:20-35

Every liturgical ‘Year of Mark’ I remind the congregation that of all the canonical gospels of Jesus Christ, Mark’s version is the shortest, the earliest, and the most terrifying. Today we see that scariness up close, as Jesus is accused of being in league with demons and his family tries to restrain him because they believe he is out of his mind. It is a story that includes Jesus being attacked by the representatives of the Powers That Be in Jerusalem, while he attacks his biological family in favour of the outsiders gathered around him. Perhaps most difficult is Jesus’ saying: ‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’. Today’s reading is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who are relaxed and comfortable with the status quo. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Review: David Cronin, Balfour’s Shadow (2017)

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel by David Cronin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Extremely well-researched and bloody depressing, this book explains exactly how culpable the UK is in the human rights horror show that is the State of Israel. From the Balfour Declaration, which was opposed by the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet, to the joint manufacture of weapons tested on Palestinians with Israeli companies and the stifling of peaceful actions of Palestinian solidarity, successive UK governments have enabled Israel’s Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Chaim Weizmann repeatedly told the British that a Jewish Palestine would be a British Palestine and, apparently, the British believed it, possibly because they saw Jewish immigrants to what became Israel as the equivalent of Protestant immigrants to Ireland. The connection between the colonisation and mistreatment of Ireland, and the colonisation and mistreatment of Palestine, was so strong that members of the notorious Black and Tans went from ‘policing’ Ireland to ‘policing’ Palestine, with violence, collective punishment, and concentration camps.

The hope in this book is that despite the rampant Zionism of politicians, the general population of the UK is anti-Zionist, to the point that Israel sees the UK as the centre of the BDS campaign.

The horror is that this is a book published in 2017 and no matter how awful the actions of the British and the Israelis it documents, no one could have imagined the extent of the genocidal campaign Israel is currently carrying out, in 2024. God forgive us.



View all my reviews

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sermon: Ending in Darkness

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
2nd of June, 2024

Psalm 88

Bruce and I, with the help of our cantor, Tom, are being a bit cheeky today. The psalm that Tom led us in this morning, Psalm 88, is not in the lectionary. There is no Sunday in the three-year cycle when we are advised to use Psalm 88 in worship. This is probably because, of all the psalms in the Psalter, Psalm 88 is the only lament that does not include praise of God. The last words Tom sang were ‘You have caused my friend and neighbour to shun me; my companions are in darkness’. There was no, ‘But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy’ (Psalm 5:11) or ‘From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him’ (Psalm 22:25) or ‘The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me’ (Psalm 142:7). Psalms of lament make up forty per cent of the psalms in the Psalter, but all the other laments end with praise at what God has done in the past, or with confidence that God has heard and will save the psalmist in the future. What do we do with a psalm which begins and ends in lament? Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sermon: Sadly without unicorns

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Trinity Sunday, 26th of May, 2024

Psalm 29

Psalm 29 initially seems like a strange choice of Scripture for Trinity Sunday. There does not seem to be much that is trinitarian in a hymn about the God of glory who thunders over mighty waters, breaking the cedars and making Lebanon skip like a calf. The explanation may be that Psalm 29 is also allocated for the Sunday on which the Baptism of Jesus is celebrated in all three years of the lectionary. On that Sunday this psalm of mighty waters and flood connects with the waters of baptism. Since Jesus’ baptism is a very trinitarian event, as Jesus is baptised the Father identifies him as beloved Son and the Spirit descends on him like a dove, it is possible that the psalm gains trinitarian resonance simply from proximity. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sermon: “with warm breast and with ah! bright wings”

Posted on May 18, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Pentecost, 19th of May, 2024

Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 15:26-27 16:4b-15

I have been reading a lot of poetry this year, and apparently the historian in me is not satisfied to simply enjoy poetry. I seem to need to analyse and contextualise poems in the same way I do Bible readings. So, since I am currently reading a collection of poems by the nineteenth-century English poet Christina Rossetti, I have also just finished a biography of her. (You all know at least one of Christina’s poems, because ‘Love came down at Christmas’ is hymn 317 in Together in Song.) Christina was a deeply committed high church Anglican and in her poetry she often looks forward to death, as a time when she would be reunited with those she loved, would receive in fullness the love she had been unable to experience while alive, and would be united with Jesus. So I was sad to discover that apparently her actual death was unpeaceful; she was depressed, ‘hysterical,’ heard by neighbours to scream, and on her last night needed to be tied to her bed. Her brother William blamed Christina’s confessor, the Reverend Charles Gutch, who visited her as she was dying. William wrote that Gutch ‘took it upon himself to be austere where all the conditions of the case called him to be solacing and soothing’. In the last month of her life William thought that her mind was ‘always now possessed by gloomy thoughts as to the world of spirits,’ and he recorded that she once said, ‘How dreadful to be eternally wicked! For in Hell you must be so eternally!’ Watching his faith-filled sister’s death confirmed William’s own agnosticism.[1] Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment