Tag Archives: Advent 4
Sermon: Light amid darkness; God amid disgrace.
Terrorists wish to create terror. We defeat them by refusing to be afraid. On Monday night, I attended a Chanukah event at Federation Square with other Uniting Church ministers, and I was so glad that Victoria Police had offered the Jewish community support to continue holding it, rather than advising them to cancel it. Terrorists also wish to divide us. We defeat them by staying united. The weirdest of all the responses to this terrorism was the attempt by Islamophobes to claim that Ahmed al Ahmed was not a Muslim immigrant, but an Australian IT worker called ‘Edward Crabtree’. The response to antisemitic hate needs to be more commitment to the wonderful multicultural and multifaith diversity of Australia, not less. Continue reading
The Magnificat and Micah: Love Through Justice
It is interesting that we hear her song on the Sunday of Advent when we celebrate love, because just as it can be hard to see love in all Micah’s condemnations and warnings, it can sometimes be hard to see love in the scattering of the proud, the bringing down of the powerful, and the rich being sent away empty – especially when we are the rich. But as African American theologian Cornel West says, ‘justice is what love looks like in public’. When Micah and Mary prophecy justice, they are speaking of love. Continue reading
Sermon: Questioning Mary the Revolutionary
Both Israel’s Likud government and the Hamas leadership seem to want a situation in which the people who have been oppressed can become the oppressors. We know that this is not justice, but the Magnificat comes uncomfortably close to such a vision. Continue reading
Sermon: Love Sunday
In Jesus’ birth, as in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God is defeating death and hopelessness. Continue reading
Sermon: Mary the Magnificent
There’s no doubt that Mary and Jesus are mother and son; both of them are radical re-makers of the world. Neither of them is particularly meek and mild. Continue reading
Sermon: The greater righteousness (2)
Matthew’s story is a story of social conventions being overturned and of mercy outweighing merely-legal righteousness. Continue reading
Sermon for Advent 4: Love
George Brandis famously said that people have the right to be bigots, and I’m going to go further and say that we are commanded to love bigots. Continue reading
Sermon: Scandalous mercy
Sermon for Williamstown Uniting Church 4th Sunday of Advent, 22nd of December, 2013 Matthew 1:18-25 Way back in the eighties and early nineties there was an Australian television program called A Country Practice. I wasn’t allowed to watch the first … Continue reading
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