Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

Lost and Found

1/2/2019

Jesus grows fast doesn’t he – born on Tuesday, 12 by Sunday! We are still within the Christmas season, but today Luke’s gospel brings us the only story of Jesus’s childhood recorded in the official canon. There are many legends of course – from Jesus fashioning little clay birds and bringing them to life to darker tales of injury and even death brought upon playmates who crossed him. But rightly none of these Harry Potter-esque tales is in our Bible because they do not relate to his later ministry and character.

So, what about this single story of Jesus as a 12 year old – the year in which Jewish children assume adult responsibility? It is almost certainly a constructed story – a story designed by Luke to teach us something about Jesus and something about discipleship. Within it both Jesus himself and to a lesser extent Mary are examples for us to follow. This story tells us a great deal about being lost and found; and we too need to lose things in order to find others that may be more important...

bread and roses - the song of Mary

12/12/2017

As you may be aware, there is a tradition in more Catholic Christian circles of using rose pink as a colour for this Sunday. For the third Sunday of Advent has often been known as “Gaudete’ – or ‘Rejoice’ – Sunday, and rose pink, became linked to it, as rose pink is also associated with Mary the Mother of Jesus. So, being a bit into colours at the moment, especially pink ones, I thought I’d do a little investigation into the subject. The first thing I came across was the Readers Digest guide to rose colour meanings It begins very interestingly. The red rose is said to symbolise love, and, I quote, is ‘Perfect for: freaking out your first date; covering beer stains; wooing a hunky bishop.’ So, something to bear in mind there? In contrast, according to Readers Digest, the pink rose is said to express grace and elegance, as well as sweetness and sympathy: and thus: ‘Perfect for: sick secretaries, (and) the platinum blonde in your life.’ Again, is there something useful for us to remember there? Well, maybe just a teens-weensy bit of gender stereotyping in that, don’t you think?! It is a little like many approaches to Mary, the Mother of Jesus …

4 x W

12/3/2017

Four words to sum up the heart of the Advent season we enter today. Wait, wake, want and work. Wait, wake, want and work. I hope you’re listening because there will be a quick quiz later! Chocolates to those who can still remember those four over morning tea...

a time to wait

11/25/2017

‘No room, no time, no way’

As the calendar flips over and we come to Advent, life can often seem this way. It can seem as though we simply have no room in our over crowded world for the ideas so central to Advent - silence, stillness, waiting. It can seem as though the time to attend to the things of God, is eroded by demands of hospitality, celebration and preparation. It can seem as though there is no way to change this, or to change the relentless patterns of our lives and world.

Yet this is to misunderstand the nature of waiting. I don’t know about you, but waiting is not something that comes easily. It can seem easier to rush onwards, seeking the next activity or the next opportunity. The slow natural processes of change and transformation can be a challenge to those of us raised to the high tempo of modern life. Our consumer culture reflects this, taking as its subtext ‘why wait’? Why indeed?...

whoever is not busy being born is busy dying

12/23/2016

The first Christmas sermon I preached here in Toowoomba empolyed words of a great poet songwriter singer: Leonard Cohen who, sadly for us, died recently. Let me then preach my final Christmas sermon here with reference to the words of another great poetic songwriter singer: Bob Dylan, who was recently awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. For like Leonard Cohen, Dylan’s lyrics have typically been grounded in a relationship to existence which we can call religious, in the very best sense of that word: namely a relationship which is not always conventional, and certainly not ‘churchy’, but which is always seeking to connect with the deepest ground of our being. It is from this place that we find our truest meaning, both for our individual lives and for our families, communities and wider world. For, in Dylan’s words which take us to the heart of the feast of Christ’s nativity, whoever ‘is not busy being born is busy dying.’ In the nativity we see the ultimate meaning, source and purpose of life. We are invited to share that light and love, by allowing it to be born more fully in us and the world around us…

birthed through darkness

12/25/2015

'We gather in the darkness of this Christmas night to celebrate - to celebrate that into the midst of darkness comes light and life born in the frailty of a human child. For darkness is where incarnation begins. The glorious prologue to John’s Gospel brings this into shimmering perspective - what has come to being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:5). But, as the wonderful poet and artist Jan Richardson expresses it:
'the deepest darkness is the place where God comes to us. In the womb, in the night, in the dreaming; when we are lost, when our world has come undone, when we cannot see the next step on the path; in all the darkness that attends our life, whether hopeful darkness or horrendous, God meets us. God’s first priority is not to do away with the dark but to be present to us in it. I will give you the treasures of darkness, God says in Isaiah 45:3, and riches hidden in secret places. For the Christ who was born two millennia ago, for the Christ who seeks to be born in us this day, the darkness is where incarnation begins'...

seeing hope among us

11/28/2015

The traditional patterns of the Christian season of Advent are difficult to maintain in our contemporary Australian culture. Yet its themes of hope, peace, joy and love are as essential as they have ever been. They bring us back to the heart of biblical faith and its meaning for us all. In a real sense they are the true gifts of what we receive at Christmas. This is certainly true of today’s gift – that of hope – so vital for our times. For when we look at our world it can be easy to feel despair. There are also plenty of people ready to play on our fears and anxieties: cynics and doomsayers who suggest that the conflicts we see are only going to get worse and that there is little cause for hope. Yet there is nothing new in this. Our gospel reading today was written in just such a time of fear and anxiety and it invites us above all to wake up and to pay attention to the things of God, when we find ourselves in times that promote fear…

holy innocents

12/25/2014

Jon Inkpin for Holy Innocents, Sunday 28 December 2014

Today’s feast of Holy Innocents is an alternative in our church’s lectionary. For we could use other readings today. Perhaps some of us would feel more comfortable with them. After all, today’s Gospel is a tale of terror. It speaks about Jesus as a refugee. It tells of immense political violence. It recounts the massacre of children. What kind of a ‘good news’ and Christmas is this?...

Well, actually, it is very much a ‘good news’ story: both for our own day and for eternity.

Let me briefly share three things which are important about today’s Gospel reading: three things which make the otherwise terrifying feast of Holy Innocents a vital element of Christmas good news….

out of the womb of darkness

12/25/2014

Jon Inkpin for Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve 2014

Who among us, I wonder, is afraid of the dark?…
All of us I suspect. For if we are not afraid of actual physical darkness, then we are prone to fear the darkness of so much in our world, and in ourselves: the darkness of the unknown, the darkness of loss and separation, the darkness of pain, the darkness of death. So as we gather here today, we bring such darkness with us and we also share the darkness of our wider world.

Christmas, of course, like Easter, begins in darkness, which is why we perhaps spend so much time trying to avoid that darkness: putting up lights etc, which, wonderful though they are, can be but veils over our sadness, our separations and our sufferings…

give thanks - give life - magnificat

11/30/2014

by Jon Inkpin for Advent Sunday 2014

Keep awake – keep alert – again and again we hear this message repeated in the Gospels, especially around this Advent season. Keep awake: like an alarm clock, this message challenges us to rise from our slumbers and get living. It calls on us to open our eyes, open our ears, and open our hearts, to the love of God coming afresh in, and among and beyond us. What a vital message this is for a Christian new year, as well as a preparation for Christmas. Are we awake? Are we alert? Are we expecting God to live and grow and come to birth in and among us?

In many ways, the best response to the Advent challenge is that which we see in Mary, the mother of Jesus. That is why we have taken Mary’s song, the Magnificat, as our Advent theme this year. ‘Give Thanks – Give Life’: that is the refrain. For giving thanks and giving life are two major elements of Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which we also can share in. Just as Mary gives thanks for the Holy Spirit whom she sees and hears God in and around her, so we too can open our eyes and ears to that same Spirit among us. Just as Mary opened her heart, and her very being, to the love and power of God, so we too can open our hearts, and our very selves, to the love of God in Christ Jesus. Giving thanks and giving life: these things can be symbolised or embodied in ordinary Christmas presents. Yet they are most fully embodied in the giving of of our whole human lives…