This sermon was originally preached in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie, on The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, 2024. Texts: Mark 1.4-11; Acts 19.1-7 Why was Jesus baptised? In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear Saint Paul tell us that John baptized with the baptism of repentance. What did Jesus have to repent of? We all know that Jesus was fully human, but without sin: that’s the doctrine of our Church. ...
Here is the sermon I preached for Epiphany 2024 (we anticipated the feast by a few days and celebrated it on Sunday, 31 December, as the sometimes rather odd APBA Calendar suggested.) I don’t normally post my sermons, but a few people asked for a copy of this one. I drew upon Warren Carter’s Matthew and the Margins and upon James Crossley and Robert J. Myles' Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict in preparing this. ...
Australia is in the midst of a profundly important debate. We are considering whether or not we will support The Voice to Parliament. The Uniting Church, through the Creative Ministries Network congregation, have coordinated a collection of sermons reflecting upon this issue. To quote John Bottomley, the editor of the collection: ‘Preaching from the Heart’ is a project of the Creative Ministries Network congregation in response to the invitation from the Statement from the Heart to join Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on a movement of the Australian people to a better future. You will hear God’s unequivocal ‘yes’ to the Statement from the Heart in the twenty sermons from Indigenous and settler preachers as they reflect on what this journey means for churches and the nation.” ...
This evening I went along to “Bridges to Peace”, a multi faith gathering hosted by the Anglican Parish of Darlington-Bellevue. It was a fabulous evening, with a generous, warm-hearted discussion. Perspectives on faith and reason were given from the traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha’i Faith. I was invited to offer a Christian reflection, which I’m posting below. It was a gathering of people who were willing to listen, and willing to share. I’m looking forward to the next event, which is planned for May 2024. ...
(Jump to recipe) Today we launched a series of spirituality events in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie. The first was led by the Reverend Bec Bydder, in celebration of the six hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Revelations of Divine Love. For a bit of fun, I decided to bake a hazelnut pie, as a reference to this quotation from Julian: “Then he showed me a small thing, the size of a hazelnut, nestled in the palm of my hand,” Julian writes. “It was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eyes of my understanding and thought, What can this be? And the answer came to me: It is all that is created. I was amazed that it could continue to exist. It seemed to me to be so little that it was on the verge of dissolving into nothingness. And then these words entered my understanding: It lasts, and will last forever, because God loves it. Everything that is has its being through the love of God.” ...
“Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” So goes the old ditty, gleefully recited by a fellow audience member standing near the bar during intermission. Ladies Who Wait is currently being performed at the Subiaco Arts Centre. On the surface it’s a bawdy, dark comedy: the Tudor Queens brought to life through a series of improbable encounters with two common servants, Alice (Colleen Bradford) and Agnes (Fiona Forster). Yet, there’s far more to this play. Yvette Wall, its playwright, has well and truly subverted that old rhyme. These Tudor Queens are, truly, queens, brought to life, embodied, granted agency, no longer merely the objects of that horrible chain of verbs. ...
Exploring how the film Barbie is in dialogue with the Biblical tradition, and the last fifty-odd years of feminist theology, and reflecting upon personhood as a central concern of the film.
This sermon was preached on the 30th of July 2023, the ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Text: Matthew 13.44-58 Like most kids, I spent a lot of time sitting in the back of my parents’ car, listening to the radio as we rattled around the suburbs on the weekend, shopping and running errands. I remember, when I was very young, the people on the radio going on and on about a woman. She’d behaved scandalously. She’d shaved her head. And she was saying bad things about the Church. ...
As I write this post, I’m an Anglican1 ordinand living the gap between completing a Formation for Ordained Ministry program at Wollaston Theological College, and (God-willing) ordination to the diaconate. The last few years have been very busy… and now I find myself, somewhat jarringly, with an abundance of free time. I’ve been gently exploring some new things; learning the ukulele (these efforts watched surprisingly appreciatively by my cat), reading a lot, baking and cooking, and gardening. ...
This year I’ve been studying Biblical Hebrew at Murdoch University. We’ve been using a fantastic textbook, Biblical Hebrew, Second Ed. (Text and Workbook) by Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Victoria Hoffer, and Rebecca Abts Wright; Fully revised by Victoria Hoffer. Despite the great teaching and the fun workbook style approach to learning the language, I’ve found learning and retaining the vocabulary to be quite difficult. To help myself, and anyone else learning biblical Hebrew, I’ve developed Baraq, a small web app which uses the wordlist from our textbook. ...