Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

considering Nicodemus, light and darkness

3/5/2023

Orthodox icon of St Nicodemus

Today’s Gospel reading is a very rich passage, full of extraordinary metaphors, story and meaning. It includes, for example, that powerful central affirmation of Christian Faith that God so loved the world that they sent their Beloved One that all who believe may have eternal life. Note well the heart of this good news: that God loves the world so much that all who believe – not just the doctrinally righteous, or the ethically conservative, but all may have eternal life. For the God we celebrate today is the God of unlimited, inexhaustible, love. As our Gospel text says, Christ comes among us not for condemnation, but for love and salvation. Let us therefore affirm again that you, we, all of us, are loved. The Gospel, our Good News, invites us to claim this, and live it. All of which brings us, in this passage, to the person of Nicodemus, and to light, and darkness…

hearts are torn apart

4/15/2022

Exploring ways into the tearing of hearts and suffering of our lives and world...

how do we relate to the Earth?

9/4/2021

When you step out of your door in the morning, do you feel that you are stepping into a world of wonder in which you are intimately connected? Or, are you simply stepping into mere location? Is it just dead space which you are crossing so that you can get to where you need to go? Or, do you believe you are walking into a living universe? Those are questions which the great spiritual writer John O’Donohue used to ask and they lie right at the heart of the Season of Creation we have just begun this month. For it matters vitally how we view the world and where we locate God in relation to it. So much of our politics, our business and trade activities, and our lifestyles, are affected. If we believe that matter, material existence, doesn’t really matter to God, then we will end up acting in problematic ways. Or, as John O’Donohue used to say, if we do believe that when we step out we are walking into a living universe, then our walk ‘becomes a different thing’. So let us explore some of the theological paths which can underpin more loving and sustainable ways of living together on the Earth…

how do we share in healing, hospitality, and handing on hope?

10/17/2020

A few weeks ago I invited us all to address the question of Jesus: ‘who do you say that I am?’ This is central to the Christian spiritual pathway. As I affirmed, the answers to that question will differ, as they have differed, subtly or significantly, down the centuries. Today, on St Luke’s Day, Penny and I want to ask three more questions, which also feed into our community visioning day. They seek to open up three important areas of life: firstly, healing; secondly, hospitality; and thirdly, how do we hand on hope, as we experience it in our spiritual lives. Penny and I will do this together as a conversation. For, after all, isn’t one of the most beautiful stories in Luke’s Gospel that of the conversation between the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as they rediscover the living Christ in new ways?

Before all that however, I want to ask Penny about our relationship to St Luke. For we’ve had a bit of history with St Luke, haven’t we?...

becoming the Passion narrative

3/29/2018

Are homilies necessary in Holy Week? I wonder. Even more than at other times, our liturgical patterns are shaped so much by the Passion narrative as a whole that interrupting it with other words can seem somewhat intrusive. For the main thing is to enter into the narrative and drama of the Holy Week and Easter mysteries. We do not have to understand everything, or even say or do anything. We are simply invited into the narrative to become part of it and to allow the drama to form the core of our lives. For our task in the whole of our Christian lives is to become more like Christ, in Christ’s life, death and resurrection: to be Christ-formed, cross-formed, resurrection-formed. So it is not a doctrine of the cross we seek to know today. It is its claim and shape in our own lives. Maybe however, just a few words can help us on that journey?...

renewing God's inclusion

5/16/2017

One of the most memorable, transforming, and ultimately deeply poignant sermons I ever heard was at theological college, over thirty years ago, when I was what we now call a formation student. The address was given by an American student who was with us for a short while. It was on the subject of Peter’s dream in the Acts of the Apostles and the remarkable turnaround in the early Church which we hear about in Acts chapter 15 today. Far from being remote events, my fellow student brought them alive in an intensely powerful way. This, you may understand, was during the last tumultuous days of controversy before the ordination of women in the Church of England and in the first real stirrings of pain and freedom among LGBTIQ+ people across the world. Yet, challenging though those things were, and still are some even today, they are nothing, my fellow student pointed out, to the radical transformation we find in these texts from Acts. For centuries, almost forever really, we, the Gentiles, with our characteristics and our lifestyles, lay outside full inclusion in the body of God’s community. Yet Paul, Peter, and even James, the bulwark of Jewish Christian foundations, came to welcome us as equals in the life of salvation. In contrast, how much lesser such a conversion is asked of us, said my fellow student. So can we, as Peter, as Church, embrace today those who also who, like the Gentiles long ago, not only come to us, but even flourish among us, against the odds, against our human-fashioned, provisional rules?...

Paul's sermon in Antioch in Pisidia - not about the Jews, or even Paul as such

5/11/2017

A few weeks ago I asked a local rabbi what was the Jewish ‘take’ on Saul of Tarsus, otherwise known to Christian as St Paul. The rabbi said that there really wasn’t a view. Now he may not have quite understood what I was asking, or perhaps he was simply trying to be diplomatic and avoid controversy. For surely, over the centuries, Jews have had something to say about Paul, particularly when he has been regarded, in some Christian quarters, as an archetypal model of Jewish conversion. The rabbi’s response however was also suitably chastening. Christians may rightly hold Paul in high regard, even some awe. Why though would Jews have much consideration for him? He left the faith and, in doing so, no longer belonged to Jewish history. Judaism essentially simply moved on. Christians must therefore be careful not to read into our understanding of Jewish-Christian relationships particular aspects of St Paul which are precious to us. This is certainly something to be borne in mind when we hear biblical passages like this one from Acts chapter 13 today. Jewish-Christian relationships have always been much more complex than many people have often wanted them to be, and this is clear from the history of the first Christian centuries…

life is not a board game

10/13/2015

I have a little confession to make. When I was growing up, I was a bit of a board game geek. Indeed I still have a shelf or two at home full of some of my favourite games. For a number of years, it was also an easy way for family members to buy me presents for Christmas and my birthday. One particular game I grew to love however was actually one of the few given to my sister. It was called Careers. Perhaps some of you have heard about it, and even played it? As the name suggests, it is a game about life, options and seeking success. As such it can be great fun and even educational in some respects. Taken too seriously however, it can represent much that is wrong with the way we approach life, especially in our success orientated modern Western world. For it is the kind of game that the rich young man in our Gospel story today was playing in actual life. Jesus however, as we see in our Gospel story, calls us to another way…

challenged to solidarity - refugees and the letter of James

8/29/2015

This being our national churches’ day of prayer for refugees, let me begin with a brief video clip to help focus our hearts and minds. It shares the voices of some of our Australian children, expressing well the human issues of deep pain and the need for greatly enlarged compassion in our country and world today, as well as a touch of the confusion and helplessness many of us can feel…

Now, I know that there is much disagreement about certain aspects of refugee policy in this country, including among some Christians. It is a striking feature for example, that key political figures who have shaped recent Australian refugee policy are well-known Christians, including the Prime Minister and the former Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Mr Scott Morrison. Their views and actions, whilst supported by many, have hardly been popular with others. For the overwhelming consensus of our Church leadership and informed research is that we, as a nation, have not got it right with refugee and asylum seeker policy. Indeed, our Church leadership tells us, again and again, that we are currently often out of step with both international human rights and Christian compassion. So, whether or not we, as individuals, agree with our national political leadership, this makes prayer and support for refugees an important concern for us all. As Christians, we can hardly sidestep the issue. As Australians, we have a fine record of receiving and caring for refugees. In Toowoomba indeed, we have so much to celebrate in that regard, not least in work which this parish helped pioneer. So what do we now do to build upon it?...