Luke 10:25-37The issue [in this text] is fundamental: how do we inherit eternal life? ‘Inherit’ assumes inheritance, promise. … ‘Eternal life’: focus is quality rather than quantity. It is sharing in God’s life. … Jesus affirms that to love God and to love one’s neighbour is indeed the correct answer. ‘Do this,’ he declares, ‘and you […]

Luke 10:1-10 In our Gospel text Jesus sends out his disciples into every town and place he was to visit. As William Loader reminds us, “it is important to imagine our way back into their setting”. Jesus’ pattern of engaging with his world was based on the wandering, itinerant teachers and healers. He relied on […]

Pentecost 3C 2019 : Luke 9:51-62 Our passage deals with the beginning of the journey, especially the call to discipleship and what it means.  But first Jesus must make his way through Samaria.  Given the mutual hostility, it is credible that in some Samaritan villages Jews would not be welcome.  Racism, whatever inspired it, catches […]

In 1977, three Australian churches came together as one. The Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational churches have been the Uniting Church in Australia ever since. We are the people of God on the Way, a diverse group of many cultures and understandings of faith that will bring us into deeper unity with others. Former UCA President, […]

The movie Leap of Faith starring Steve Martin as a roving con artist evangelist who doesn’t even believe in God.  One of his trucks breaks down in a little town in Kansas, so they set up a revival there.  There is a drought and the people are poor.  Yet they put on a good show […]

Pentecost, 2019, John 20:19-23 But most people are only very little alive T S Eliot, After Strange Gods Issues from the hand of time the simple soulIrresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,Unable to fare forward or retreat,Fearing the warm reality, the offered good T S Eliot, Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul A […]

Easter 7, John 17:20-26 “From love comes glory, not vice versa”, wrote Kosuke Koyama, the former Japanese missionary and Professor of Ecumenics and World Christianity at Union Seminary in New York.  This is the core teaching of John’s Jesus in his last prayer in John 17:24: My parent God, I want those you have given […]

Reconciliation Sunday 2019, Easter 6C            ‘Grounded in Truth, Walk Together with Courage’ During colonial history, race thinking lodged non-Western peoples globally “between animal and human” and concluded that “their lives are best administered under flexible governance produced by special emergency rules and exceptional … laws”.   … Racism is something that structures our life. […]

In an interview of actor and entertainer John Travolta in the Parade Magazine (22 Oct 1995), John talks about the importance of love.  ’I love people and I have compassion and empathy for them, and I am alive to a degree that I do that.  But loosing people is tough because I don’t want to […]

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 […]