Colourful Dreamer

Our reading from Deuteronomy about Moses’s death on Mount Nebo offers us a delightful image of the intimate relationship between God and Moses, and through Moses to the people of God. God takes Moses’s body and buries him—a level of care usually reserved for closest loved ones. While that intimacy was once held by Moses on behalf of the nation, today we are invited into that same closeness as God’s community, knowing we are deeply loved and held in the hardest times. Our gospel reading from Matthew is so familiar might even miss the point. Jesus is still in the temple. Jewish leaders and the Judaean wealthy elite are still trying to undermine his standing. They have one more play. Jesus was not the first rabbi to offer this “new” way of understanding Torah. But it was innovative and is central to his teaching. By bringing together Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, he makes them equally important and the basis for reading the whole of Torah (Law). Many people, then and now, under...

There are some big theological themes at play into today’s readings. They should give us cause to pause and wonder at their implications as we approach election time. The gospel reading is a well-known story that has led Christians over the centuries to declare that religion and politics do not mix. So let’s put it back and take a look. We are still in the temple, but now the long, tense, conversation between Jesus and the privileged Jerusalem Temple elite is on pause. It began when they asked by what authority Jesus did ALL these things: teaching in the temple, healing, forgiving sins, eating with sinners etc…, overturning money changers tables – and more. Now the Pharisees and Herodians, very strange bed fellows, are working together to trap him. Their question, veiled in flattery, is a good question. Jesus will be in serious trouble however he answers, either with the crowd who hate the Romans and their taxes, or with the Romans themselves. Jesus’ response seems simple and clever,...

In our Gospel reading, Jesus keeps poking the bear and ramping up the tension with the privileged, landowning Jerusalem Temple elite. This tense conversation started when they demanded to know who gave him the authority to do all these things—teaching, healing, forgiving sins, and flipping over the money changers' tables. Jesus links his authority back to John the Baptist and then launches into a few stories about sons and vineyard tenants who don’t pay rent – they know what to do with them. And now an utterly absurd parable about a king and a wedding feast. Seriously, who turns down a weeklong party with the best food and wine? To get what's going on here, we have to keep the Sermon on the Mount in mind, along with the parables of the lost sheep and the vineyard workers. The Kingdom of Heaven is for the poor and vulnerable. Jesus is genuinely angry at leaders who use their religious authority to line their own pockets while completely neglecting their duties as stewards of ...

This Sunday marks the final day of this year’s Season of Creation, and we read this well-known and deeply troubling gospel story (Matthew 21:33-46). Bad tenants doing bad things to the landowner’s slaves who came for the rent. And then they kill the son. All a great metaphor for what was about to happen to Jesus and the Jews. All the bad people get what they deserve in the end. Stories like this have left us   “Gentile Christians” feeling smug and have been used to justify horrendous violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters. Maybe we need to put the story back and ask where we are in the story. Jesus came to Jerusalem and caused a stir in the Temple. The next day he returns, cursing a non-fruit bearing fig tree on the way. The Chief Priests and leading Pharisees ask, “Show us your credentials. Who authorized you to teach here?” These are the Judean elite who are profiting from their alliance with Rome. This is the third part of Jesus’ response. Talking to these absentee l...

  “Show us your credentials. Who authorized you to teach here? Who gave you permission to cause this ruckus” Big questions that keep coming up. Moses faced it in the wilderness. Paul faced it repeatedly due to his radical ideas. He claimed his authority came from the risen Christ. Jesus pointed to his faithfulness to God, whose own authority rests on the covenants to restore humanity and renew creation. True authority is found in actions. Matthews’s gospel as a whole and this week’s reading in particular is all about these questions. In telling this story Matthew wanted to show both where Jesus’ authority came from and the nature of that authority. To put this week’s reading back, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem and has already tipped over tables. Next day he is back in the temple, having grumpily dried up a non-fruit bearing fig tree. He is at once confronted by the wealthy, entitled elite religious leaders who used religion to justify their wealth while abandoning their responsi...

Over the last few weeks, we have heard Jesus teach his disciples, Matthew’s community, and us, how to hold good community together. When asked by his disciples “who the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven”   Jesus responds by placing a child in their midst. It was not about their status. Instead Jesus reminded them that good community places the most vulnerable—like children, the marginalized, and those named in the Beatitudes —at its very centre. Good community has a common story that holds it together and gives it purpose. It is built on God’s deep love seen in the Exodus story and lived out in Jesus. Good community is not about us, but us living God’s deep love for creation and all who share this home with us. Last week in the gospel reading Jesus taught that true community is about mirroring heaven on earth through common purpose, deep commitment to each other, as Paul’s letter to the Romans, and the honesty required to face conflict. . Matthew 18:18 is often read to mean that wh...

Last Tuesday was ‘The Feast of Creation in Christ’, an Eastern Orthodox gift . This has long marked the beginning of their new liturgical year, commemorating the great mystery that everything was created through Christ . In 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I offered this day to the wider church as a Day of Prayer for Creation. The World Council of Churches has since extended this celebration to October 4th, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi in what is now known as The Season of Creation. This ecumenical season calls us as followers of Christ worldwide to reflect on our common role as caretakers of God’s creation, to see that our wellbeing is interwoven with its wellbeing, and to unite in prayer and action to care for our common home. The theme for 2026 is "Living Water"  and is inspired by Ezekiel’s vision of a life-giving river flowing from God , urging us to focus on ecological healing, hope, and the deep interdependence of humanity and nature.   Thi...

I often use three questions to help shape our response to God: Whose are we? Who are we? What is ours to do? Our readings this week help us with these questions. In Exodus and the story of Moses placed in an ark, we meet God working through subversive and disobedient women taking significant risks for this Hebrew boy. While the Pharaoh is un-named, which reduces his legacy to tyrant, the two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, are immortalized as those who protect life. God acts through all these women, including Pharaoh's own daughter, to completely outsmart Pharaoh and collapse his system from the inside out. What image of God might this offer us? Matthew 16 marks a major turning point in this gospel. Caesarea Philippi is on a major trade route to Damascus. Near a headwater of the Jordan River, Greeks had built a temple to Pan three hundred years earlier and it became a centre for Roman and Greek worship, idolizing Herodian and Roman wealth and power. Herod rebuilt it to honour Caesar...

I wrote this nine years ago. I thought I would repost it taking note of some of the names remembered in our calendar as we read out readings this Sunday. This has been a busy few days in our Church Calendar. On August 9 th  women around the world, and a few men, remembered the founder of Mothers Union, Mary Sumner. Her great vision concerning the Christian responsibilities of motherhood led her to gather together women, many young and inexperienced and from different social backgrounds, for weekly classes. Within her life time her vision had spread around the world.             On Tuesday (11 th ) we remembered Clare of Assisi , who stands with Francis as founder of the Franciscan family. Her passion for following the crucified and resurrected one through living the gospel life of poverty, and her compassion for all, including the poorest, inspired many to join her community in Assisi, or others like it around the world. For ...

Last week, I compared our current uncertain church climate to the disciples battling a storm at sea. Our readings this week invite us to trust in God's abundance in all this uncertainty. Matthew 15:10-28 looks back to Jesus living God's abundant generosity in feeding the 5000+. It begins with Jesus teaching that keeping rules for their own sake or to receive a reward is not what those rules are about. but what they reveal about our hearts. This is put to the test when an outsider Gentile woman approaches Jesus. Despite not being a Jew her persistent love for her daughter drives her to confront Jesus with her unwavering trust that he could heal her. And many would say she taught him that there is more than enough grace for both the House of Israel and those seen as dogs, and he was more than he realised. Meanwhile, Paul explores how the split Gentile and Jewish churches in Rome can work together by trusting God’s faithfulness. He confronts two competing groups who each belie...