Colourful Dreamer

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...

You can listen to this sermon here   Gate Pa –  29 th Sunday in Ordinary Time- Year C – 2022 Readings Psalm -                   Psalm: 119:97-104                                               First Reading -       Jeremiah 31:27-34 Second Reading -   2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5                      Gospel -                   Luke 18:1-8                                                          What I want to say: This...

  Today’s gospel reading (Luke 18:1-8) seems so straight forward. Luke tells us what the story Jesus is telling is about. God is not like the unjust judge. God will act. So be like the widow and pray incessantly. But the story is less straightforward and a little bit subversive. In Jesus’s world most widows had very little agency and were at the mercy of those around them, particularly men. But not this widow. Rather than meekly and helplessly accepting her lot she demands justice until she receives it. I wonder where those listening to Jesus, and to the story Luke tells, see themselves in the story. Where do we see ourselves? And while we hope God might act, often my experience is that God seems more like the unjust judge. Justice seems to take a long time. Maybe that is why Luke includes this story in his gospel. To remind the people of his community that God is not unjust and is acting to brin...

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...

This week churches around the world are marking the end of another liturgical year and celebrating Christ the King or the Reign of Christ Sunday. For us it is also Aotearoa Sunday, which really reminds us of how slow we were in this land to live out the reign of Christ with ngā iwi ō Aotearoa and the first Anglican Church in this land. And it is Stir-up Sunday – all of this stirs us up, I hope. What is the deal with Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday? One of the people I read says it is a day to affirm God’s reign over empires that do not hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. It is a day to remind ourselves that the reign of Christ as described in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount is what we are invited to work toward. And no political entity can ever bring that about.   As we end our church year this Sunday is an opportunity for us as God’s people to look back and ask how did we the church live out God’s reign, what have we done to further the kingdom of G...

The gospel reading this week is again well known, and it seems pretty straight forward. Some of the Jerusalem leadership – Pharisees and Herodian’s, are trying to trick Jesus with a question about Roman taxes. They are either hoping he will say yes, and lose the support of the masses who are impoverished by the Roman taxes; or no, which would be treasonous and lead to Rome dealing with him. Either way he will be silenced, and the Jesus problem resolved. Instead Jesus seems to play the Anglican card and takes the middle way – pay to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God’s. It all seems straight forward. Except it isn’t.   For Romans’ Caesar was god (the coins carried an image of Caesar’s head with the title “son of God” making them idolatrous to Jews) and all things were deemed to belong to that god Caesar. For Jews the opposite was true – all things belong to God, nothing to Caesar. What was Jesus saying – well not the separation of church and state that we keep hearing....

For most of this year, we have finished our prayer for the day by praying “ Through Jesus Christ our Liberator, who is alive and reigns with you ….” And I wonder what we understand by that. What is it we are being liberated from, especially during these unusual times of pandemic? And what are we being liberated into? Our readings for the 22 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, and       Matthew 16:21-28 are about liberation. They sit in conversation with each other, and all that lies behind Peter’s exchange with Jesus. When Peter names Jesus as the Anointed one, or liberator, the kind of liberation he was looking for was not what Jesus was offering. He’d missed this conversation. I suspect the same is true for me at times. I wonder if the late Maya Angelou was closer to what Jesus was trying to teach through his life and ministry [1] : “I am grateful to have been loved and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. I...