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Showing posts from March, 2015

And So It Begins

Available here on Buzzsprout Gate Pa – Palm Sunday 2015 Readings: Psalm                                    Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29                                                 First Reading:                  Isaiah 50:4- Second Reading:            P hilippians 2:5-11   Gospel:                             ...

And so it begins.

And so it begins. We have waited six weeks for this Sunday. Made our penitential way through Lent. And here it is. Palm Sunday. A mix of celebration and bravado, thumbing our noses at the Roman overlords, their temple priestly puppets, and their successors today. A small parade of entry and hopes fulfilled. Now is the time! But now is not the time. A shadow is cast across this party. We now know where all this leads, unlike those first paraders. Just ahead are days filled with angst, fear, trembling despair and numbing grief. Both stories belong to today, and are often repeated today. Like the gospel writers, we sit on the other side of all this. We have space to try and make sense of it all in light of our own experience and our reading of scripture. And yet these events are still asking us questions. On the cross those first palm wavers and cloak layers lost all they hoped for and had faith in. All they understood of God and the future died as Jesus the Christ hung dying...

Aiming for “He Iti Kahurangi”

This sermon can be listened to here:   Gate Pa – Lent 5 2015 Readings: Hebrew Scripture:     Jeremiah 31: 31-34 Psalm:                          51:1-12 Epistle:                         Hebrews 5: 5-10 Gospel:                        John 12:2-=35 What I want to say: ·          I want to use John to explore how big it all is. I want to suggest that the cross exposes our smallness of thought – thought about God, and the world, and who we are in all that. The cross explores our preoccupation with ourselves and our own desires, dreams, hopes and aspirations. In the cross they ...