I have a good friend called Peter Millar who was recently diagnosed with bone cancer. Some of you may remember him, for he visited Toowoomba a few years ago and he is quite a tour de force! Some of you may also know him from his writings. For Peter Millar is a leading member of the Iona Community in Scotland and a former Warden of Iona Abbey and he has contributed prolifically to sharing contemporary faith and engaged spirituality through many books, articles, poems and prayers. Like many contemporary Celtic Christians, he has also woven together a deep life of prayer and faith with commitment to building community locally and across the world, especially with the poor and the marginalised, and the struggles of the wider environment. Most of all, I think, Peter is an amazing person and model of encouragement for so many people, So it is particularly sad to see such personal struggles afflict such a spiritual live-wire, aflame with the love of God. Yet perhaps this is where, as in the sufferings and cross of Jesus, the love of God really comes alive and shines forth its truth….
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How do we respond to death? I don’t ask that as a negative question but because it is at the heart of our Gospel – our Good News – today, and throughout this Holy Week. It is an unavoidable question, however much we try to avoid it: for, as the old proverb has it, two things are certain in life: death and taxes. Yet, more meaningfully, Christians believe, how we respond to death is at the heart of how we find life in this world, which is the ultimate meaning of our Gospel and the culmination of this Holy Week in the Resurrection. So, as we hear today’s Gospel reading (the story of Christ’s Passion according to Luke) - in three parts - let us reflect upon the challenge of death, so that we may find life again more fully, as Jesus offers it to us… ‘The difference’, said Anna, ‘between a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside.’ That is just one of the wonderful words of wisdom in the marvellous little book ‘Mister God, This is Anna’. Do you know it? It is a wonderful read. Published in 1970, we now know it to have been written by Syd Hopkins, a man who grew up in the poverty of the pre-second world war East End of London and who suffered physically and mentally for many years. Out of his experiences and reflections, he created a moving story which touches heart, mind and spirit. For, in brief, Mister God, This is Anna tells of the encounter of Fynn, the 19 year old author, with the five-year old Anna, a homeless waif. The book describes the bewitching thoughts, discoveries, analysis, and poetry of little Anna’s beautiful mind. Wise beyond her years, Anna has a special connection and relationship with her dear “Mister God” and God’s enchanting world, and she happily leads Fynn through a whirlwind of wonder and insight. ‘The difference’, said Anna, ‘between a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside.’ What is the child Anna saying to us, do you think? Questioned by Fynn, she explains. There is a wholeness to angels: they are full of all the stuff angels are supposed to be full of: light and love and peace. Human beings however tend to be full of all kinds of holes. Some of these holes have names. The holes might be something like: a new dress, game, or car; a new house, job, or holiday; another drink, or drug; whatever it is that we happen to long for. Such things are outside ourselves. Whilst we think about, and give ourselves to them, most of our being is therefore outside ourselves. We are not full like angels. We are walking about with huge parts of ourselves missing. For, of course, even if we were to have the things which leave holes in us, we would still have other holes. For things, in themselves, cannot fill us up, like angels, with the life and light and joy which truly makes us whole... "Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands…and put my hand in his side; I refuse to believe.” Thomas was after certainty wasn’t he?
Often we speak of ‘doubting’ Thomas. Yet the Thomas we encounter here is not so much doubting as demanding proof. There is an aggressiveness in his demand for sure proof that is disturbing, and is matched by the fervour of his response once proof is provided. ‘My Lord and my God’ he proclaims: the loftiest acclamation of Christ anywhere in the New Testament. In terms of personality it would be more accurate to characterise Thomas as a fundamentalist than a doubter. For him things are very clear with no grey areas. Such clarity produces great zeal and a capacity for courageous and devoted service. It is also potentially very dangerous. Today across our world we see an increase in fundamentalism. This is true alike of all the mainstream religions and also of liberal securalism. It is a human phenomenon of our times, arising at least in part in response to the uncertainties of the post modern era, with the rapid pace of change brought about by the technological revolution. Fearful of the attack on familiar elements of culture and the perceived rubbishing of important values many people are attracted by the simplicity and apparent clarity of a fundamentalist approach. We can recognise it in ourselves; and we can see it just as clearly in those who would outlaw all religion as having evil consequences as in those who see themselves engaged in ‘Holy War’... by Jon Inkpin for Easter Sunday, 2015 I would like to ask three leading questions this morning. The first question is: Does anyone here have a garden?... What does it look like? What do you do with it? Do you realise we have a special garden – called a Quiet Garden – at St Mark’s? You might like to check it out sometime… Gardens are so often a delight, aren’t they? – not least in this ‘Garden City’ of Toowoomba. My second leading question is: Have you ever done anything wrong, or had something done to you, which was wrong, and which maybe made you feel bad or ashamed?... All of us I suspect! Have you ever felt afraid, or suspicious too? Have you ever felt betrayed, or been betrayed? Again, all of us experience these things, don’t we? This part of what Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, is all about, isn’t it? - facing up to our sin and shame, our fear, suspicion and betrayals. So what then is Easter about? – and what has it to do with a garden? The answer is: a whole heap of beans, running over and flowing everywhere! When we see that our whole life is transformed, just like Mary Magdalene in our Gospel reading today: which leads to my third, and the most important, leading question of all in a moment… by Jon Inkpin, for Land Sunday, 14 September 2014 I wonder if you know Peter Sartsedt’s song ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely?’ Written and released in 1969, it is about a fictional girl called Marie-Claire who becomes a member of the ‘jet set’, the fashionable celebrities of the late 1960s. Her life is full of show and excitement. Underneath however there is another reality. For her story is told from the point of view of a childhood friend who, after recounting all the amazing places Marie-Claire goes to, asks: ‘but where do you go to my lovely, when you’re asleep in your bed? Tell me the thoughts that surround you.’ Then, in the last verse of the song, the secret is revealed. Marie-Claire comes from poverty, ‘from the backstreets of Naples’ and her current life is both a welcome release and a desperate escape from that reality, full of continued scars and regret. For what we are, as people, is shaped by the realities of the places in which we are formed and raised. Only when we come to terms with those realities, their promise and their pain, are we truly set free. This is at the heart of today’s readings as we reflect upon God in the Land. For where do you go to, where do I go to, where do we go to, when we are asleep in our beds? What has our experience of land, of particular places, done for, and to, us? How does land and place shape our lives today?... by Jon Inkpin, 11 May 2014 Yesterday was the annual general meeting of what is known as the Wellspring Community in Australia. This is a sister community to the Iona Community in the UK. Like the Iona Community, it seeks to draw on the ancient traditions of both Celtic and Benedictine Christianity and to marry these with contemporary concerns for justice, peace and spiritual well-being. I have been a member of the Wellspring Community for well over a decade now and it has been a strength, inspiration and encouragement to me. Like any other Christian community, it has also sometimes been a source of much frustration and failing. For that is the nature of any human community, whether it is gathered in a place or a number of close-by places, like a parish community, or whether it is more dispersed, like the Wellspring Community or the Third Order of Franciscans, of which other people are a part. For being part of a spiritual community is an integral part of what it is to be a Christian. Indeed, in this continuing Easter season, we can say that the Church, as a spiritual community, is actually the Resurrection Body of Christ among us… for St Mark’s Day, 27 April 2014 , by Jonathan Inkpin Of what are you afraid? All of us are afraid, of something, in some ways, at some points in our lives. It is all part of being human. Even Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, appears to have wrestled with his own fears, as he waited to be arrested, tried, and cruelly killed. Yet, as Jesus above all showed us, perfect love casts out fear (I John 4.18). The Resurrection is the greatest proclamation of this reality. For all fears are taken up in the cross of Jesus. All fears are transformed by the perfect love of God shown to us. And all fears are declared void by the power of the Resurrection offered to us. Will we grasp this however? Our Gospel reading today is the Resurrection story according to St. Mark (chapter 16, verses 1-8). It is an extraordinary ending to Mark’s Gospel, for it doesn’t really end at all, properly in literary terms. It just stops, literally, in mid-sentence, and invites us to respond. For we are told that the women at the tomb were both asked by Jesus to share the Gospel and they were grasped by fear. So what is our response? Are we grasped by a similar fear? How will we complete the Gospel which St. Mark gives to us?... for Easter Day, 20 April 2014 by Jonathan Inkpin How do you see the Resurrection? What we celebrate on Easter Sunday is a ‘mystery’, in the best sense of that word. It is deep truth and reality. So, like any deep truth and reality, it is therefore beyond our ordinary human understanding. Rather it is an invitation into a greater, divine, understanding. So will we be like good detectives and follow the clues to discover a little more of the meaning of this mystery? Will we, like our Gospel writers, own and share this mystery in our own words and actions? Will we, like great artists, allow God to enable us to picture the Resurrection for ourselves and others?... for Good Friday 2014, by Jonathan Inkpin Throughout the Christian centuries, artists have created many moving images of the Crucifixion. One of the most powerful recent examples is found in the work of the Scottish artist David Mach. I first came across this two years ago in the wonderful Galway Arts Festival in Ireland. It was part of an exhibition entitled Precious Light, which was created as part of the celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. This exhibition included a whole series of large and hugely dramatic collages based on many of the great stories of the Bible, each transposed to one of the great cities of our world. The centrepiece however was ‘Golgotha’: a massively arresting larger-than-life sculpture of the Crucifixion, made from steel girders and re-shaped coat hangers. By its sheer size, its searing suffering and sharp sensation, it challenges us and calls forth response: what do we make of Crucifixion? It is the challenge and call of Good Friday... |
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sermons and reflections from Penny Jones & Josephine Inkpin, a same gender married Anglican clergy couple serving with the Uniting Church in Sydney Archives
April 2024
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