This sermon was preached on the 18th of April 2025, Good Friday, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: John 18.1–19.42 “It’s nothing personal.” If you watch one of the Passion movies, you can almost hear those words going through the heads of the Roman centurions, as they brusquely drive nails through each of the limbs of Jesus. Crash goes the hammer, driving a nail, crude and blunt, through tender flesh and into wood. ...
This sermon was preached on the 17th of April 2025, Maundy Thursday, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: John 13.1-17; 13.31b-35 Would you have let Jesus wash your feet that night? Imagine yourself in the room we have just heard of. You and the other disciples are sat around the dinner table. There’s a sense of foreboding, of tension… there’s a tingle of fear in the air… a silence, strange and thick, falls upon the room. ...
This sermon was preached on the 13th of April 2025, the Palm Sunday, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: Luke 22.14-23:56 On Tuesday I spent lunchtime doing a bit of housework. I had some cups in the office that need to be washed by hand, so I ran the sink. Then I went outside to put the bins out, and got talking to someone in the courtyard. Maybe ten minutes later, I walked back into the house, and remembered the tap… because I spent the next hour or so mopping up the water that was everywhere in the kitchen. Don’t worry, churchwardens, there was no major damage! ...
This sermon was preached on the 23rd of February 2025, The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany. Texts: Luke 6.:27-38 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Sometimes in Christianity you hear slogans, slogans which are carried around, maybe even bandied about. And one that I have a particular difficulty with is this: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” You’ve probably heard that phrase – you may have said those words, and you may yourself have been hurt by them as well. ...
This sermon was preached on the 26th of January 2025, The Third Sunday after Epiphany, in the civil calendar known as Australia Day (or as Survival Day.) Texts: 1 Corinthians 12.12-31 Luke 4.14-21 I don’t know about everyone else here, but lately I find myself sick and tired of division. It seems to me that year by year, even day by day, the world gets meaner and angrier. People seem to be drifting apart from each another, and our civic society is getting smaller and smaller. ...
This sermon was preached on the 5th of January 2025, The Feast of the Epiphany. Texts: Matthew 2.1-12 There’s something compelling about the magi, isn’t there? Something fun: they’re exotic, exciting, encouraging… and so the tradition of the church has given them backstories and names, Caspar, Melichior, Balthassar. And it is those magi, the magi of the tradition, the kings of the tradition, who we see steadily processing towards the nativity every Christmas, finally reaching their destination today, on the Feast of the Epiphany. ...
This sermon was preached on the 25th of December 2024, The Feast of the Birth of Our Lord, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie. A recording is available here. Texts: Luke 2.1-20 Sermon text Where do you find your hope? What gives you hope? I ask this because hope is an essential human need – one that we too often fail to scrutinise. I have my own hopes and ambitions and I’m sure you do too. And we have hopes for those whom we love, for children, for family, for friends. ...
This sermon was preached on the 24th of November 2024, the Feast of Christ the King, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: John 18.33-37 “If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” Jesus uttered these words as he stood before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. His hands were bound. His face was beaten and bloodied. He had not slept that night. ...
This sermon was preached on the 6th of October 2024, the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: Job 42.1-6, 10-17 We have just heard the conclusion of the Book of Job. It all sounded pretty clear cut, didn’t it? Job, addressing God, repents. Job has lost his property, his family, his social standing… he has even lost his health. And for Job and his three friends, dire consequences only ever follow after dire actions. ...
This sermon was preached on the 6th of October 2024, the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie Texts: Job 1.1,2-10 The Book of Job takes a person blameless and upright, and puts them through the loss of almost everything. It’s a huge book, forty-two chapters, one of the largest texts within the Bible, so I need to do a little bit of retelling. We didn’t hear in our reading today of the first losses that Job suffers. And at first, the losses happen at a distance: he hears of them one by one, through a series of messengers. ...