Matthew | The life of faith & doubt

It seems that doubt is part and parcel with faith, and this should be deeply encouraging. (Listen here.)

It might shock you to hear this, but there are days when I find it hard to identify as Christian. There are days when I struggle to hold onto faith. And there are days when I wonder what on earth I am doing with my life, preaching these few and futile words. For I scroll through my newfeed and see nothing but chaos and a world going up in flames.

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Funeral | You’ve got to go through it

Death is all around, so let’s put some language around it. A brief homily given at a recent funeral, for one who suffered too long and died too young.

Interesting fact: the Jesus stuff, what we call the gospel, isn’t highfalutin’ literature. Instead, it’s working class language. Like life, it’s rough, it’s raw, and it’s real. But translations tend to tidy things up. Take the word ‘splanchna.’

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John | Her mother’s voice

A promise to all who have been judged and found wanting. (Listen here.)

Last week I caught  up with a friend who told me a sad story. She’d been cleaning up her mother’s place when she found some old letters her mother had written. I would like to tell you how much her mother had praised her in these letters, but I can’t. Instead, the letters were venomous. ‘My daughter is so difficult. She’s so brittle, so defensive, so selfish. She’s hard as nails, she won’t let me in. I can’t understand why I had to have a daughter like that.’ On and on it went, with not a thought as to what might create such a daughter.

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1,2 Peter | A holy nation?

Can a nation be holy? Or is Peter pointing to a different reality? (Listen here.)

‘You are a chosen race,’ writes Peter, ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.’ ‘Ura!’ shouts Vlad as he orders yet another series of bombings and sends yet another bunch of Russian boys to their deaths in his drive to extend the Holy Russian Empire. ‘Yes!’ screams the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda as it abducts yet more children to be soldiers and sex slaves, victims of a horrific campaign to establish a Christian nation governed by the Ten Commandments. ‘Yessiree!’ crows Pete as he wages an illegal and despicable war against Iran in the name of the God of the Crusades.

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John | Knowing his voice

The hallmarks of the voice which is good. (Listen here.)

Many years ago, my husband and I stayed at a little bed and breakfast on the shores of Lake Te Anau. As we chatted with the other guests over breakfast, we quickly realised they were all sheep farmers. The couple from New South Wales ran 20,000 sheep, and checked on their flocks by helicopter. The couple from New Zealand ran 2,000 sheep, and ran among their flocks in an old ute. The couple from the UK raised just 20 sheep of a rare and precious breed. Each day, they fed and combed each sheep by hand, and yes, they knew every sheep by name and their sheep knew their voice.

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Luke | But we had hoped …

In the shadow of empire and its death-dealing gods, the Risen One comes quiet and unobtrusive. (Listen here.)

‘But we had hoped…’ say the disciples. The words are so deeply familiar. We had hoped that our marriage would endure. We had hoped the cancer was benign. We had it wasn’t dementia. We had hoped our daughter would live. We had hoped our son would come home. We had hoped for clarity, for success, for blessing. Oh, we had hoped.

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Palm Sunday | The two parades

(From the archives) The medium is the message, and our guy is the clown. (Listen here.)

In many churches around the world, today’s story will be called ‘The Triumphal Entry’, and it will be told with great pomp and dignity. Perhaps you’ve been at one of these services. The choir slowly processes down the aisle, solemnly singing, then priests wearing exquisite garments follow behind as acolytes waft incense everywhere. The church is aflutter with beautiful banners; and a pipe organ contributes sparkling notes. The congregation stands in their Sunday best and joins in the hymn: Glory! Praise! Honour! and Hosanna! – which means, Lord, save us!

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Ezekiel | Preach to the bones

In places of death, speak words of life. (Listen here.)

How do you imagine the bones? Do you think of the news reports? The broken bones of young children at an elementary school in Iran, torn apart by an American Tomahawk missile. The bullet-riddled bones in Mexico’s streets left by paramilitary forces and drug cartels. The blood-stained bones in El Fasher; the bomb-shattered splinters in Ukraine; the charred fragments in Gaza. The bones of Rwanda, Cambodia, the Holocaust. Or perhaps you think of the bones which are dotted throughout this country, left to rot in lake, valley and hollow, abandoned in paddocks to dry out in the sun. Do you imagine the bones created by violent policing, by war, by genocide?

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John | Trans/formation

To encounter Jesus is to invite change. (Listen here.)

The crowd was in uproar. ‘It’s him,’ some said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said others. ‘It’s just someone like him.’ ‘I’m still me,’ she said, ‘and this is what happened.’ But nobody was listening. Instead, the religiously righteous weighed in. ‘He changed at church, but it’s totally against God’s law,’ said some. But others wondered; and so they were divided.

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