Tag Archives: Julian of Norwich

Sermon: Birds of the air and lilies of the field

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I believe that God sends us angels, messengers of love, if our eyes are open to them. I have heard from members of this congregation of the times when they have needed to be reminded of the power of love that is at the core of the universe, reminded that the world is full of well-meaning people who are willing to help others, and the love and care they have needed have materialised. One of my greatest joys as a minister is when someone tells me that I have been that angel for them, when God has used me in all my frailty and faultiness to reveal love. I am sure that if you think about it, there have been times when you received the word or the sign or the care that you desperately needed at that moment. I am also sure that there have been times when God has used you to give that word or that sign or that care to someone else. We are not alone in this universe. Our lives are entwined with one another, and it is God who weaves us together. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Advice from Julian of Norwich

Posted on May 11, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

I have been struggling so much with the evil of the world over the past six months. It is always possible to find things in the world that seem to challenge any faith we might have in a good God, but there have been times over the past few months when I have had to turn off the television news because what is happening around the world and in Australia has so enraged me that I have felt physically sick. Continue reading →

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Sermon: Being whole and seeing wholeness

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

We are not saints, and the world’s light and dark call forth in us now our light, now our dark. We struggle to see the wholeness of God’s love behind the fragments of the world that confront us. Sometimes the world shatters us into fragments. But the prophets, and the apostles, and the saints, and the mystics, and Jesus himself, speak with one voice and tell us that God created the universe out of love, and so the world is holy, even if we struggle to see it that way. And God created us out of that same love, and so we are holy, too, even if we struggle to see ourselves that way. Continue reading →

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Sermon: The Ten Words

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Avril Hannah-Jones

And if we struggle to believe that in God’s sight we are ‘precious and lovely’, then be assured: the day will come when ‘we shall really understand what [God] means in these sweet words where he says, “All shall be well, and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.”’ Continue reading →

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Reflection for Mothers Day

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Avril Hannah-Jones

On this day when some of us are mourning the loving mothers we once had who have died, others are regretting the mothers who were unable to love us as they should, and yet others are grieving their own inability to become parents, it may comfort us to remember that in Jesus we have a Mother who is always with us and who will always love us. So on this Mothers’ Day let us celebrate and give thanks for the God who is our Mother as well as our Father. Amen. Continue reading →

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Sermon: “All shall be well”

Posted on March 12, 2022 by Avril Hannah-Jones

As we lament over the pain of the world, and pray for its healing, as well as doing our own small part towards caring for the vulnerable, we can hold on to the reassurance offered to us by a fourteenth-century mystic. Because we know that at the core of the universe is love, we believe that ‘all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well’. Continue reading →

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Sermon: In which Avril rabbits on about love yet again, because it IS all about love

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Avril Hannah-Jones

And if God is love, as our faith tells us God is, then even our smallest loving actions will contribute to filling the universe with love and so with God. Continue reading →

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Sermon: God’s motherly love

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Avril Hannah-Jones

In times of difficulty, post-Royal Commission, during congregational change, grieving the Christchurch massacre, as we walk with Jesus on the road to his death during Lent, we can rely on the God who loves us as a mother and protects us as a hen protects her chicks Continue reading →

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