Colourful Dreamer

No theme and sermon notes this week. I am away at a TSSF chapter meeting in Auckland. Have a grand All Saints/All Souls

A few weeks ago I went to a clergy training day, a gathering of the clergy in the Bay of Plenty, stipendiary, non- stipendiary, and retired. We talked about the statistics presented at our Diocesan Synod a couple of weeks before that by the vicar general, statistics that make grim reading. Numbers of stipendiary priests a fraction of what they were 40 years ago, numbers attending church falling dramatically, age structure aging by the second, finances looking very wobbly. The ensuing conversation seemed to be all about how to get people to come to church. I find this so frustrating. The point of church is not to get people to join us. The point of church is to be a people who engage with God in mission. Others felt this was irresponsible and that as clergy our role is to ensure that the church carries on. Why would we want that I wonder? One idea was to close a pretty significant 8am service because they will eventually die (true they mostly are older, but so what) and use th...

This sermon can be heard here Gate Pa (Pentecost 20, 30 th Sunday in Ordinary time) Readings: Psalm: :                       Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17                                                                First Reading :                           Deuteronomy 34:1-12                    Second Reading :        1 Thess 2:1-8...

Our gospel today, Matthew 22:34-46, is another one of these really familiar readings, so familiar we often miss the point. Here we see Jesus at work offering his new yoke, his “new way” of understanding the Torah. Jesus, the master interpreter of Scripture brings together two texts: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, and not only makes them equally important, but the basis and grounding for the whole of Torah (Law). What he does is really interesting. Priests and Pharisees would have understood that loving the Lord their God was done through obedience to the Law and through performance of the temple rites. Loving our neighbour was then a second requirement – with the added questions around who my neighbour might be. But by pulling together these two passages from the Torah, Jesus not only makes them equally important, but makes loving our neighbour the means by which God is loved. The requirements of the law are then understood as the way people become people of compassion a...

Gate Pa – October 19 th , 2014 (Pentecost 19, 29 th Sunday of Ordinary Time) Readings: Psalm                                    99                                                                                  First Reading:                    Exodus 33:12-23            ...