Colourful Dreamer

As we continue our Season of Creation, reflecting on how our trickles of concern, prayer, and action combine with those others from churches all around the world to become God’s mighty river of justice and peace, we are invited to reflect on what the Reign or Kingdom of Heaven on this world might look like? In the shadow of life-threatening climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution what is it we pray for every time we pray that “God’s will be done on earth as in heaven.” Paul in his letter to the churches in Rome reminds us that all of creation groans and writhes under the crushing weight of human sin, neglect and indifference. God’s Spirit is within the groaning, yearning for us and within us, yearning for true community for all creation, yearning for all that is held in the covenant to be fulfilled. We are to work with God in giving birth to God’s community, trusting and hoping that even when not a lot seems to be happening that God is at work, the yearning of the Spirit of G...

I am finding it an interesting exercise to read Paul and his letter to the divided church in Rome in this Season of Creation. It causes me to wonder if one of the ways we “live according to the flesh” is to sever our relationship with creation. Genesis reminds us that we are created from the soil in the image of the creating God to tend and care for all creation. Our wellbeing is intimately connected with that of creation. And yet so many of our prayers only talk about our need to love God, with no reference to Jesus’ repeating of the commandments to love God by loving our neighbour. And in this Season of Creation, I would include all creation and all creatures on this small common home as our neighbour. We might describe sin as being unable to find other ways of living even when we can see that our dependence on a fossil fuel economy is now altering the climate, reducing biodiversity, and choking us with pollution.   Paul invites us to know that the Spirit of God is with us in all...

You can listen to a sermon around this here This week we take time to celebrate Matariki. (You can find our more about this here)  Traditionally this followed the festivities around the harvesting of crops. With the re-emergence of the star cluster in the morning sky, Matariki was the time to remember the previous year and to begin making preparations for sowing the seeds for the new crop. Today Matariki is an opportunity to reflect on our shared history in Aotearoa and to look to the future. It is also a time of revitalisation and resurgence of te reo Māori and mātauranga (knowledge) Māori. This year we are joining, early, many others around the world, who during the month of September, celebrate the Season of Creation, adding our little trickle to this worldwide river praying and working for God’s justice and peace for all people and all creation. Central to this is the invitation to pay attention to the voice of indigenous people around the world who offer us different ways o...

A big theme in Paul’s letter to the Romans is law. We normally understand this to mean Torah. It is also the theme in Matthew 11, where Jesus is offering an understanding of Torah or yoke. Torah was given to allow the people of God to be righteous – to be faithful to the ever present and eternally faithful (righteous) God, who was working to redeem humanity and restore creation. Too easily it became a measure to assess our worthiness and to exclude people we felt unworthy. God got lost. God’s covenant work was forgotten. And our relationships with God, each other, and all creation were broken. Some suggest that law for Paul also meant any human system that shaped identity and worthiness, and defined who and what was acceptable and who and what is not.   And Paul is saying that all these lead to death. I wonder how being n the Season of Creation helps us read this. Maybe sin includes all that breaks our relationship with God, each other, and all creation, and is seen in the cata...