Justice and Slavery
Isaiah 58:1-9a | Luke 4:16-19 Lying at the very heart of the story of the people of God; the defining origin story for the people of Israel; an event that echoes through the whole of the Old Testament and into the New; is a story of slavery and freedom.
Two or Three
Matthew 18:15-20 Now here’s a phrase that we certainly hear and use in the community of Christian faith: Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. We claim this as a promise, we value it for Jesus’ commitment to us, to being with us, to standing alongside us as […]
How the body works
Romans 12:9-21 So in Christ, we talked about last week, in Christ we are one body. Our unity as the people of God is not something that we earn, not something that we create by our actions, but is our very nature, the gift of God. Our unity does not depend upon our uniformity; quite […]
Unity, Diversity, Mutuality
Romans 12:1-8 Today is the first in a short series in which we’re returning to the book of Romans as it comes to its conclusion, and exploring the idea that Paul develops there – and in several of his other letters – that we, the Church, the people of God, are the body of Christ. […]
Children and Dogs
Matthew 15:10-28 I guess if you were to make a list of adjectives that you would apply to Jesus, “racist” probably wouldn’t be amongst them. And yet here he is, meeting with a gentile, a Cananite woman, in desperate need of help for her afflicted daughter, and basically calling her a dog – by contrast […]
Walking on water
Matthew 14:22-33 And so, after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus finally gets the time alone that he was looking for.
All were fed
Matthew 14:13-21 So, the feeding of the five thousand. Surely a Sunday School favourite – all those people, a small boy with a packed lunch (although he doesn’t get a mention in Matthew’s gospel), Jesus says grace and five thousand people have enough to eat with twelve baskets left over.
Nothing can separate us
Romans 8:26-39 And so today we come to the last of our series on the promises of God from these few chapters of the book of Romans.
Children of God
Romans 8:12-25 So after all his talk of grace taking the place of law in control of our lives and our destinies, after all the talk of freedom from addiction to sin, and from the condemnation that is the logical consequence of the harm that we do one another and the world – after all […]
Creation and Beyond
I’ve just published my second collection of sermons (all of which are freely available here on the website) – “Creation and Beyond”. If you are in Australia and would like a copy, please let me know as I’ve done a bulk order and can ship it to you more cheaply 🙂
Freedom from slavery
Listen! Romans 7:15-25a | Matthew 11:25-30 Last week we talked about how Paul describes the fundamental difference between the status, the reality, of the believer, the one who is, and knows that he or she is, no longer under law; no longer bound by the rules of transaction, of “if I do this then God […]
The free gift of eternal life
Listen! Romans 6:12-23 So today we begin a new series of services in which we’re going to be focussing on these three amazing chapters in the book of Romans, and in particular on the promises of God found in this, often convoluted, certainly very compact, piece of writing.
40 years
Listen! So just over 40 years ago, in 1977 – the year of Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Uniting Church in Australia came into existence; merging the Methodist Church, most of the Presbyterian Church, and most of the Congregational Churches in Australia […]
Be Spirit-Filled
Acts 2:1-21 Listen! In the very opening words of the Bible, the Spirit of God was there, active, creating: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth—the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and the Spirit of God swept over the waters” When the earth was […]