Tag Archives: Year of Mark
Sermon: Deeper Water
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 … Continue reading
Sermon: Simply planting seeds
I occasionally get discouraged about my own absolute and utter failure as an evangelist. I am many atheists’ favourite Christian, which is not a title I take lightly. Often I have been told by people that if they believed in any God, they would believe in mine. Which is nice, but sometimes I wish they would consider a belief in God to be more than hypothetical. Continue reading
Sermon: Holy Spirit and evil spirits
It is hard to rightly judge enthusiasm manufactured by living men before our own eyes, whether that enthusiasm is the Jesus Movement within first-century Judaism, the excesses of Francis of Assisi, Protestantism, Methodism, the movement for the ordination of women, the struggle for churches to welcome LGBTIQ+ people, Pentecostalism, and so on, and so forth. If we are not going to join the scribes in their eternal sin, we need to be constantly open to the new things the Holy Spirit is doing, and this will demand much discernment. Continue reading
Sermon: The Ethiopian Eunuch
Today’s story, and the entire theme of the Book of Acts, is that as the gospel spreads through the world it gathers in more and more of those who have been pushed away or forgotten. We are the descendants of the community we see being created in the Book of Acts, and so we always need to look beyond our doors to see who has been excluded, so we can welcome them in. Continue reading
Sermon: To be Christian is to be in community
Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church The Third Sunday of Easter, 14th of April 2024 Luke 24:36b-48 This may be sad news for those of you who are, like me, massive introverts, but following Jesus is always a communal activity. … Continue reading
Sermon: Easter Sunday
Jesus Christ is Lord of all, not only of those like Peter, and the peace he preaches includes peace between those of different faiths and nations. From this moment on, if the church is to truly be the body of Christ, then its doors must be flung open, and everyone must be allowed to stream in. Continue reading
Sermon: Street marches
Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church Palm Sunday, 24th of March 2023 Psalm 118:1-2 19-29 Mark 11:1-11 After hearing today’s gospel story, of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem the week before his death, I am a little surprised that the Roman powers … Continue reading
Sermon: Being whole and seeing wholeness
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
Sermon: The Ten Words
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
Sermon: Ash ‘Wednesday’
One of the reasons I went on the pilgrimage was in the hope that it would purge me of the incandescent rage I feel at the people who have murdered, or allowed the murder of, thousands of children. I was not purged of my anger, but I was reminded that the murderers are my fellow, sinful, human beings and that all of us need God’s grace. Continue reading
Rev Doc Geek 