On Being "Un-Australian" and "Un-Judaean", or How to Stop Worrying and Love...
[From a sermon at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, February 9th 2014 (Epiphany5); Isa 58.1-9a, Ps 112, 1 Cor 2.1-13, Mt 5.13-20] The issue of being "un-Australian" has recently been a matter of public...
View ArticleCamels for Abraham, or Truth and Fact in the Bible
[From a sermon for Commencement 2014, preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, March 2 2014; Genesis 15:1-11, 17-18, Psalm 99 and Romans 4:4-13] The Bible begins, in the Book Genesis, with a set of...
View ArticleThoughts on Theological Education (I): Theology and "Divinity"
[This is one of two posts arising from an invitation from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Divinity to contribute to a discussion in the University of what "divinity" means.] Persons learned...
View ArticleThoughts on Theological Education (II): Divinity and the Disciplines
If (as I argued in an earlier post) “divinity” is centred on (but not necessarily limited to) the preparation of students for Christian ministry and mission, this has important implications for its...
View Article"Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary"
[From a sermon preached at Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral Melbourne on Sunday May 18 2014, in a series on the Apostles' Creed] In this brief pair of phrases from the Apostle’s Creed we find expressed...
View ArticleEucharist and Anglican Catholicism: Sermon from St Peter's, Eastern Hill
E. S. Hughes and others at St Peter's, Melbourne, c. 1900 In this place you are the inheritors of a great tradition of liturgical worship, spirituality, and mission that goes back not only to the...
View ArticleThe Nagging Question of God: Farewell Sermon at Trinity College
From one point of view, this College is named Trinity for the sentimental attachments that certain of our founders had with similarly-named institutions in Cambridge and Dublin. From another...
View ArticleA Top Ten List for Theological Students (Sermon for Friday after Ascension...
The Matthaean Ascension story depicts Jesus instructing the eleven to make disciples and baptise, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”. This “everything” did not seem to all ancient...
View ArticleGutenberg in Melbourne: Inventing the Bible
From the Manchester Gutenberg Bible: the beginning of Paul's Letter to the Romans The rare and valuable character of the Gutenberg Bible, an example of which is about to be exhibited at the University...
View ArticleThe Importance of Being Wrong
[Proper 15, Year A: Is 56: 1, 6-8, Ps 67, Rom 11:1-2a, 29-32, Matt 15: 21-28] Don’t you just hate it when Jesus is wrong? Lastman, Christ and the Canaanite Woman (Web Gallery of Art) In the Gospel for...
View ArticleBread and Roses: Elizabeth of Hungary, Poverty, and Justice
[Given in St John's Chapel at the Episcopal Divinity School in November 1999. Posted for Labor Day 2014] A woman, a widow with three children, no stranger to poverty, dies of exhaustion at the age of...
View ArticleDressing for Dinner: The Great Feast, and the Wedding Robe
_uacct = "UA-1918113-1"; urchinTracker(); Jan Luyken, The Man Without a Wedding Garment [from a sermon given at All Saints', Margaret Street, London, October 12th 2014] A remarkable amount of material...
View ArticleGoing Beyond: God's Big Idea
The Berkeley Divinity School motto is drawn from 2 Corinthians 10:16, Paul’s reference to a mission “into the regions beyond”; this expansive vision is echoed in the Acts reading tonight (1:1-8) for...
View ArticleCrumbs (Mark 6:30-46)
From very early times Christians have read these stories of Jesus miraculously feeding crowds as eucharistic. It’s not hard to see why - the sequence of taking, blessing, breaking and giving the...
View Article"If your eye causes you to stumble..." (Mark 9:42-50)
Today's Gospel is of course proof that no-one really takes the whole of Scripture literally. "If your St Lucy - Domenico di Beccafumi (1521) hand causes you to stumble, cut if off...if your eye causes...
View Article"Long ago..." (Hebrews 1; John 1)
Were the openings of either the Letter to the Hebrews or the Gospel of John to be depicted using the forms available in modern cinematography, the means to do so are obvious, I think. Imagine a wide...
View Article"Everybody Loves a Parade..."
There is a sense of anticipation in the crowds lining the streets of the great city. Word has spread among the crowd that the one they have come to see is nearly there. To some he is a figure of myth;...
View ArticleWashing Feet: Maundy Thursday 2015
Two years ago Pope Francis raised eyebrows when he performed the Holy Thursday ceremony of footwashing, not at St Peter’s Basilica but at the Chapel of the Casal del Marmo juvenile prison outside...
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