Posts

Showing posts from September, 2021

Imagining, Praying for and Creating

Image
  Gate Pa – Year B – 26 th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Season of Creation 4 26 h September 2021 Readings: Hebrew Scripture:      Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9: 20-22 Psalm:                          124 Epistle:                         James 5: 13-20 Gospel:                        Mark 9: 38-50 What I want to say: In this Season of Creation to explore the need to imagination our relationship with and place in creation – our common home; and courage to live that out. Esther offers an example of what reimagining your place looks like, the risks and the rewards – a story still celebrated by Jews today at Purim. Esther also offer...

Some Thoughts on Praying and Acting for our Common Home in this Season of Creation

Image
In the resources for this week is a quote from Abundant Africa. “We face multiple crises of poverty, inequality, biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. We have a short window – a kairos moment – in which to turn from well worn, broken paths and choose a better story for ourselves and for the world. But what story will we tell?” How do we understand and talk about what is happening to our world? How does that shape our response? In this fourth week of the Season of Creation we are invited to pray and act for our common home. We are invited to pray and act for God’s Oikos- a home for all, proclaiming that ALL life belongs to God. It is time to work with God protecting and healing God’s gift of our common home. As we contemplate the central image for this year, Abraham and Sarah’s tent, we are invited to consider this world as God’s tent where all are offered welcome, shelter, refuge, and safety. Prayer and action are at the heart of our readings this week. In Esther we read the st...

The Big Picture - Reading Scripture as God's Radical Book

I worte this 6 years ago. I still stand by what I said. We need to stop reading scripture from a conservative standpoint and allow it's radical voice to change us. Last week we heard a passage from Proverbs 31:10-31   that many of us read as extolling very traditional roles for women. And it is not unknown for women in particular to not want to read it.   There is in fact no getting away from fact that those traditional roles are an important part of that reading. But I also suggested that it is more than that. The women described in this reading were not mousey submissive chattels. They were strong women who ran their households with imagination, and flair, and generosity. It is I think an invitation for men to choose their wives carefully, and to not just look for what their society deemed to be important, and for women to be more than they were traditionally described. And so some read it as championing traditional roles, and others as championing woman taking more sig...

Being Ecumenical - Season of Creation 3

Image
  You can listen to this sermon here Gate Pa – Year B – 25 th Sunday of Ordinary Time + Season of Creation 3 19 th September 2021 Readings: Psalm                                            Psalm 1                       First Reading :                       Prov 31:10-31                          Second Reading :                   James 3: 13 – 4:...

Some Thoughts on Oikoumene in this Season of Creation

Image
This week is the third week of our celebration of the Season of Creation, using the title of “Oikos- a home for all” where we join Christians from across the world in proclaiming that ALL life belongs to God, and our need to work with God protecting and healing God’s gift of our common home. As we contemplate the central image for this year, Abraham and Sarah’s tent, we are invited to consider this world as God’s tent where all are offered welcome, shelter, refuge, and safety. The Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. and others have called the oikos of God “the Beloved Community”, a community in which all of life are equally members, equally precious to God. Over recent years the world seems to have become smaller, and we talk of globalisation more. Vast multinational corporations who work to maximise profit for their shareholders, seeking countries with the lowest labour costs and environmental protections, have played a significant part in creating climate change, pollution, and biodive...

Season of Creation Two - Ecology

Image
  Gate Pa – Year B   Season of Creation 2;   24 th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Readings: Psalm                          Psalm 19                                                          First Reading :               Prov 1:20-33                Second Reading :         James 3:1-12                Gospel :    ...