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Tag Archives: Year of Matthew
Sermon: Knowing and being known
Our hope may be that we will see our Pilot face to face when we have crossed the bar. But in the meantime, while we cannot fully know God, we are already, as Paul reminds the Corinthians, fully known. And we are known by a God who names himself, ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,’ even when most angry and disappointed with people who decided to worship a false god made of gold. The Lord ends the story of the golden calf by renewing the covenant that the Israelites broke, giving them a fresh start and repeating for them the Ten Commandments that they will need to live as God’s people in God’s land. (Exodus 34) Continue reading
Sermon: Not quite the God we know
Their relationship with this God was so intimate and immediate that they could imagine God sending them quails to eat in the evening and bread in the morning (Exodus 16:13-16); they could imagine the Lord being so hurt by their rejection that God needed to be talked out of killing them. As I have said so many times this year, the religion created by the Jewish followers of Jesus is an inclusive Israel gathered from all the nations of the world. The character of the Lord in today’s story is not identical with the God we worship, but this sense of intimacy between God and God’s people is ours too. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged Aaron, Book of Exodus, commandments, Exodus, Exodus 32:1-14,, God the character, inclusive Israel, Israelites, Moses, Ten Commandments, the Law, Torah, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: Preserving the Vineyard
The problem I always have with the Hebrew Prophets is that the God they describe is indiscriminate in punishing the people. The Song of the Vineyard is directed at wealthy landowners, but when Babylon conquers Judah, everyone suffers, not just the wealthy. If the vineyard that is going to be destroyed is the whole house of Israel and the entire people of Judah, rich and poor alike will suffer when the Lord of Hosts turns it into a wasteland. It may be my twenty-first-century perspective, but I do not believe that an entire nation should suffer for the crimes of its leaders or the accumulation of the rich. Continue reading
Sermon: Two dis/obedient children
Commentator Wendell E. Langley suggests that by telling of two partly obedient, partly disobedient sons, Jesus is concealing a third alternative that describes what the chief priests and elders are doing. Whether they say that the first son, even though he was subsequently obedient, failed to do his father’s will, because he was initially disobedient or they say that the second son, even though he was initially obedient, failed to do his father’s will, because he was subsequently disobedient, then they are left with the question: how much more disobedient must be a son who is both initially and subsequently disobedient? Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged controversies, disobedience, Matthew 21:23-32, obedience, Parable of the Two Sons, parables, Philippians 2:1-13, prostitutes in the Bible, tax-collectors, Temple, The Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) against Its Semitic and Rabbinic Backdrop, Wendell E. Langley SJ, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: Being forgiving is good for you!
I have been fascinated by the Global Flourishing Study, launched in 2021, that looks at different aspects of well-being over time in twenty-two countries. In a recent analysis using data from the Global Flourishing Study, psychologists examined whether people who reported being more forgiving reported better well-being a year later than those who said they rarely or never forgave. They found that those who reported that they were forgiving people had somewhat higher well-being when asked a year later about things like their mental health, purpose in life, relationship satisfaction, and hope. This confirms what decades of previous research had found. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, forgiveness, Global Flourishing Study, love, mental health, Miroslav Volf, well-being, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: The sinned against and sinning
The church is the Body of Christ. How we treat each other within the church is as important to God as how we as Christians love the world. In fact, how we behave as a community determines how we love the world. Saint Benedict described the church as a ‘school for souls.’ The church is where we learn how to live as God’s people. This means being willing to be honest and open with each other, rather than merely nice. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged church, community, dispute resolution, forgiveness, love, Matthew 18:15-20, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: Being compassionately cheerful, or cheerfully compassionate
compassion is a gift. To care so deeply for the pain of the world that we suffer with those who suffer is a privilege. It means that we are fully human. It means that our heart and soul are congruent with our mind and body. It means that we have not been conformed to this age or to a world that tells us we should only care about ourselves and those closest to us. It means that we are imitating Jesus, who was also moved with compassion for suffering humanity. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged Apostle Paul, Bob Hawke, charity, compassion, Isaiah, Justice, love, Martin Luther King, Romans 12:1-8, sacrifice, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: Jesus the first-century Jewish man
Rather than believing that he had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the risen Christ knew that he had been sent to all nations. I would argue that today’s encounter with the Canaanite woman was an important stage on the path that led to Christian inclusion and universalism. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons
Tagged BBC, Canaanite, exclusion, inclusion, Israel, Matthew 15:1-21, Matthew 15:10-28, Matthew 15:21-28, Palestine, racism, West Bank, women, Year of Matthew
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Sermon: We tried to kill him; he survived; let’s eat!
A phrase often used to describe Jewish festivals is ‘they tried to kill us; we survived; let’s eat!’ and certainly Passover, which celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery after ‘a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph’ (Exodus 1:8), would fit that pattern. But here at the beginning of the Israelites’ time in Egypt, it is the Egyptians and Joseph, who now has an Egyptian name, an Egyptian wife, and who dresses like an Egyptian (Genesis 41:41-45), who save them from dying in a famine, after Israel’s ten sons have acted as villains. If there were to be a festival to celebrate this occasion, its theme would be: ‘we tried to kill Joseph; he survived and is now feeding us; let’s eat!’ That has a slightly different ring. Continue reading
