Easter 4C, 2019, John 10:22-30 Psalm 23, a shepherding psalm, is the best known of the psalms. It is a shepherding psalm containing powerful images of God’s unseen, companioning presence with us in life’s most wintry moments. When Jesus uses this pastoral image in John 10, his commitment to shepherding gains force when we realise […]

      Awake to the crisp dawn’s rising in your life 1. Peter avoids the impossible, returns to his former occupation As this crisp new day dawned in John 21: 1-17, Peter and his six friends return to their former life in the fishing profession; out with the fishing licence, tools of trade, boat and nets.  […]

The Easter truth about ourselves is discovered at the tomb  by Joan Chittister It’s at the tomb that we discover things about ourselves. t’s at the tomb that we come to make sense of the questions that have dogged us down the weeks of Lent.  At the tomb they all come together in one great, […]

Oscar A. Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, in El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a small chapel in a cancer hospital where he lived. James Brockman, his biographer, reveals his spiritual development: his faith and practice only developed by learning about himself, through psychoanalysis and living, and by listening […]

1.  The fragrance of violence   We meet Jesus, the poor, homeless Jewish teacher and healer, in Bethany, welcomed in the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, which he regularly visited. It is six days before the Jewish Passover, as bustling, expectant crowds prepare to journey to Jerusalem, 3 kilometres south, to repeat ancient rituals originally […]

1.  The problem with a really good, beloved parable, writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “is that it can become limp from too much handling.  Like the velveteen rabbit, it can lose its eyes, its whiskers, and a lot of its stuffing, until it conforms to the arms of whoever picks it up.”  A troubling conclusion. But  […]

1. The construction of a dividing wall As we grieve the innocent deaths of our Muslim sister and brothers in Christchurch and condemn this atrocity, we also need to critically reflect on the notions of power that shaped the gunman’s actions, and how we can contribute to new notions of power. In a confronting opinion […]

Lent 2 C 19 Luke 13:31-35 Reflection The power of the sly fox and the vulnerable hen. 1. In our reading today, Luke’s Jesus is approaching the congested intersection of competing, capricious and autocratic power. The Pharisees surprisingly warn Jesus of Herod’s murderous intent. Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem, the place where the religious and political […]