Tag: love

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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Isaiah | To be like Birrarung or, To serve & thrive

In a world and media landscape which threatens to overwhelm, Isaiah offers a way of hope. (Listen here.)

‘Why have we fasted and you haven’t seen?’ the people ask God. ‘Why have we humbled ourselves and you haven’t paid attention?’ We’ve given up coffee, chocolate, alcohol and even social media: so why aren’t you answering our prayer?!

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Christmas | Filling earth with the culture of heaven

Scene: The minister sits in the wooden throne behind the pulpit, gazing fixedly at her phone, while the congregation waits anxiously for her to begin the sermon … One from the archives. (Listen here.)

Whoops, sorry, is it me? I was just praying with an app. It’s awesome, it helps me be more spiritual. And it’s been recommending other apps: there are so many! There are apps for prayer and meditation. There are apps for reading the Bible in a year, and for memorising scripture, and for reading a single passage very slowly. There are apps to log my spiritual habits; apps with the Ignatian examen; apps with daily liturgies from monasteries; apps to frame silence.

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Matthew | Love in the shadows

God demands Joseph wake up to a deeper reality, where love takes priority over obedience to God’s law and scandal forms the womb of grace. One from the archives. (Listen here.)

This Sunday, in the midst of Christmas chaos plus a funeral, I brought out an oldie but a goodie for Manningham Uniting Church. You might hear it as a simple reflection personal faith, and that’s well and good. But for those who have ears to hear, it also has much to say about current events, whether the shootings in Bondi, the ongoing deaths in Gaza, or so much more. For, in Matthew’s story, God demands that notions of righteousness and holiness are set aside in favour of love. In such a faith, violence is impossible, not only the violence of holy war but the violence which demands we destroy the violent. This loving insistence on nonretaliation is one incarnation of the scandal of grace. But for now, let’s turn our attention to a man caught up in another aspect of scandal incarnate: Joseph.

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Psalms | My grandparents’ breakfast table and other stories

Another week, another family story – this time, about lifelong faith. (Listen here.)

My grandparents’ breakfast room opened off the kitchen. It had a brown sideboard, brown scratchy chairs and a brown shag pile carpet. Whenever my sister and I stayed with them, we participated in their morning ritual. First, we held hands and said grace. Then my sister and I would gobble up our breakfasts while our grandparents were still fussing around assembling theirs. Cornflakes. Sultanas. Bran. A bit of sugar. Milk. Yawn. My sister and I would sit swinging our legs, discreetly itching where the chairs scratched and waiting impatiently for our grandparents to finish eating. But even then, we couldn’t get down from the table for, after breakfast was cleared away, it was time for morning devotions.

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