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...

Because I am away during this year’s Season of Creation, I have decided to move our engagement with this time to July. And maybe that will encourage us to take part in the actual Season is some more active ways. This year’s theme, chosen by young people working with the International Steering Committee, is Let Justice and Peace Flow. The Prophet Amos cries out “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5: 24). This year we are invited to join the river of justice and peace, to take up climate and ecological justice, and to speak out with and for communities most impacted by climate injustice and the loss of biodiversity.  We are invited in this week’s readings to reflect on what stops us joining this mighty river. In his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks of how Christ breaks the power of sin that enslaves us. While there are many ways to understand sin, I wonder if in the context of climate change, biodiversity loss and life-threatening...

In our church calendar today is Refugee Sunday, and Anglican version of World Refugee Day. This was first celebrated on 20 June, 2001 by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to recognise the contributions of forcibly displaced people throughout the world. The issue of Refugees seems to have lessened for us in New Zealand. We are currently unable to take any refugees as our borders remain shut. But the need around the world continues to grow. Ahead of World Refugee Day on 20 June, the United Nations announced a staggering 79.5 million or one in 97 people displaced, up from 70.8 million the year before. The UN recorded 29.6 million refugees in its 2019 figures.  Five countries account for two-thirds of people who have crossed borders to escape violence and persecution: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar.   “With no resolution in sight, these conflict zones are likely to push more people from their homes, increasing levels of trauma and suffering...

Last week I went to a theological hui run at our Theological College, to ehlp us use Romans to explore our life and unity as a church. Kathy Glieb did two main presentations which were really really helpful. To start as she did with an exploration of why Paul wrote this letter and what it purpose was helped put the whole thing in context, and made it much more useful for us today as a church. Paul wrote this book to the divided churches in Rome. Yes churches, not church. They were seriously split. And if you read the book you will see the theological reasons for those splits. Paul needed the support of those churches to help in his proposed mission to Spain. He needed to overcome some of the negative things that had been said about him, particularly that he was not friend to the Jewish Christian church, And he needed the churches to focus on what united them, the gospel and their common mission, rather than on what divided them, so that they could support this mission. Hence the letter...