Sermons and Reflections
The apostle Paul prays for his churches a lot in his letters, particularly Ephesians, and quite often its followed by a burst of utter praise to the Lord (called a doxology), so powerful is the Holy Spirit upon his writing! No less so now than then.
This is the form of today’s reading from Ephesians 3.
The prayer may be familiar to you as I love it, I have used it to finish a number of sermons because it’s so very powerful, it’s pure Scripture, and perfect for church congregations like us.
A lot happens in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus is rejected in his hometown, he sends the twelve on mission, John the Baptist is beheaded, Jesus feeds the five thousand and he walks on water to comfort his companions.
These are all major events in Jesus’ earthly ministry, so much so that today’s gospel seems pale in comparison. But these less dramatic passages tell us very much indeed about the nature of God in Jesus, Son of Man.
I think that today’s reading though, serves in an important way to advance one of Mark’s central concerns; the establishment of the kingdom of God in this Jesus.
And, by extension, how it comes about in individuals and parishes.
When reading today’s NT passage, the introduction from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, I was struck by how full of hope it is. I started counting the promises contained in just these 14 verses, then realised they aren’t really promises.
Many are statements of fact about what has already been fulfilled in Christ, and the others are fulfilled already in the eternal Kingdom of God, but not yet on earth. Not so much promises, but a reality yet to be unfolded for us.
Unfortunately, even these 14 verses are too deep and dense to be able to be preached on in a single session. It would take many! So I am focussing on only one verse, v.3, which serves as a sort of summary for the teachings of the whole letter, I think.
There are many ways to look at today’s beautiful gospel reading of the healing of the woman suffering haemorrhages for twelve years and the raising from the dead of the girl around twelve years old. Healings the same time in the making and the same miraculous day.
Today we are looking at these two stories through what they say to us about the nature of our faith itself. Remembering that in the eyes of the Lord, our faith is more precious than anything else we think we can bring to him.
This morning we’re continuing to look at the beginnings of the Kingdom of Israel. So as we saw last week, David has been anointed by Samuel as King. He is now older, but still a boy and now working at the palace of King Saul.
In the chapter just before today’s reading, 1 Samuel 16, we read that Saul is becoming increasingly unstable with fits of rage and paranoia, and it is only the playing by David of his harp that soothes the unhappy King.
Though Saul is still on the throne, David knows that he is Israel’s next king. When summoned to soothe anxious King Saul (1 Samuel 16:14-23), David knows that however many they may be, Saul’s days as king are numbered.
After Jesus, no one is mentioned more in the bible than David. Scripture describes him as a man after God’s own heart (i.e. takes after). Today we are introduced to him in our reading from 1 Samuel.
So what is our active and all-wise Lord God doing here? Let’s look at the context to see what part of God’s great story we are coming in at.
Our gospel passage begins, “And the crowd came together again.” This time Jesus is coming home. We will be spending a fair amount of time on Mark’s gospel over the next six months, and even though we are only in chapter 3, much has already happened.
He has been baptised at the Jordan, the Spirit has alighted on him, his opening words announce the presence of God’s kingdom and call to repent; he has walked by the sea of Galilee and summoned fishermen to follow, who fairly leapt from their boats in response, and he teaches with astounding authority in a synagogue.
Welcome to the gospel of Mark!
It can be easy to read the Old Testament and think that there are somehow two Gods; the Old Testament God of judgement who suddenly changes his spots and becomes the God of Love in the New Testament.
This is not so, God is same yesterday, today, and forever, and today’s Psalm (from the Old Testament) is one of the great “love” passages of all the bible. Part of the nature of our Rock of Ages, who doesn’t change is to be all all-present (omnipresent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent).
The Holy Trinity. In some ways I’d rather begin by saying nothing, for a sermon about the Trinity is a sermon about God’s own self. But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Lent, and so this morning I will try to talk about the trinity in different way.
When we get over our compulsion to do a lot of talking and explaining about God we come to realise that our first and best response before God is simply to stand in wonder and awe of his love for us.
Or, as the Orthodox Church puts it, to stand with the mind in the heart before God.
Today my friends we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at the time of the Jewish harvest festival called Shavuot, or the festival of weeks, or Pentecost, as it was fifty days after the Passover.
Jesus opens today’s gospel with, “‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf’” (Jn 15:26).
That’s what this day, the Day of Pentecost, is about. It’s about the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ sending the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to the church, to help the church, who, as one, are the children of God.
In our bible discussion group here a couple of years ago, someone asked, ‘I wonder what Jesus prayed when he prayed?’ Well today, it’s all Jesus at prayer.
Every year on this seventh Sunday of Easter, which is the last Sunday of Easter before Pentecost, our gospel reading is taken from this very famous prayer in John 17.
It is part of a beautiful, inspiring prayer offered by Jesus for his disciples, and for all “those who will believe in [him] through their word” (John 17:20). Which, of course, is us.
Today’s gospel reading is the completion of the passage we started last week where Jesus describes himself as the True Vine, and if we abide in him he will abide in us to bear fruit to the glory of the Father.
There are many sermons in this passage! But today we are focussing on one particular verse which changes everything.
In today’s reading, Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last (v.16). That is, Jesus specifically chose you. You.
This week we continue to look at the deep fullness of life we can enter into as God’s children. Through Jesus’ own death and resurrection, we die to the world and ourselves and are born from above into a new and pure heart, and the pure in heart shall see God.
Last week we introduced thisme of abundance through one of the seven great I AM sayings of Jesus. I am the Good Shepherd, and we saw that through Jesus’ careful and consta tnt shepherding of us we ourselves become good shepherds.
Today Jesus uses a different name for himself as a way to describe how actively our Lord’s salvation works in us to make us holy and pure. Holy and pure enough, in the sufficiency of Christ, to bear fruit for the Lord.
The 4th Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday, so we always read the 23rd Psalm and John chap.10 with Jesus’ naming of himself as the Good Shepherd.
Often we look at this image of Jesus as the good shepherd through the timeless beauty of the 23rd Psalm, but today we are going to look at it from a different angle, I hope, which John reveals in the verse immediately before the start of our passage.
So with v.10, our gospel begins: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:10-11).
Today we bring to mind all we learnt over the Good Friday and Easter and as true resurrection people we consider what role the children of God have in creating this abundant life brought about through the good shepherd, Jesus.
This morning, the themes we have been speaking about since well before Easter come together in a unique sort of way in today’s second reading from John’s letter to the Church, that we started looking at last week.
That if we wish to ‘see’ Jesus, we need to look upon the cross of Christ as the flashpoint of the light of the world.
And God who is light and in whom there is no darkness, overcomes the darkness of our sin and we, like Jesus, are born into the light of eternal life with a new name; the Children of God.
On Easter day we celebrated the inauguration or birth of the Kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven. It is also called the Kingdom of Light.
We again are looking at John, but not the gospel this morning, but his first letter to the Church, and only three verses of it.
Now we’ve often spoken of how John uses great ‘opposites’ to show the utter holiness of God. Good and evil, belief and non-belief, but his most common is, I think, light and dark, night and day.
This is because this light that John writes about, is not just a metaphor, but a spiritual reality. Jesus really is the light of the world.
Two days ago, on Good Friday, we asked ourselves the central question: What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us on the cross? We talked about how Jesus took God’s justice fully onto himself because he was the only one who could, and through his blood shed for us, we can be one with the Father in the same way Jesus is one with the Father, through faith in the same Jesus Christ. Today let’s move on to part two of this same central question.
When Jesus died the world became a different place. The first sign of this totally different world is what we are celebrating today. In this new world, Jesus was raised from the dead. Nothing short of a revolution had begun. It wasn’t just a surprising and happy ending to what we thought was a tragedy. It was the beginning of a new sort of life, a new way of living. This beginning meant that what we thought was the darkest, most inevitable power in the world, death, had been defeated.
What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us, for me, on the cross?
John's Passion account is its own sermon, extending from betrayal at a place across the valley, Gethsemane, to devotion at the foot of the cross; from Peter's three-fold denial to Pilate's three-fold acquittal.
From the many who call for Jesus' crucifixion to the two who remove him from the cross; from those who bind him by force at his arrest, to those who bind him in love at his burial; from the beginning of the end in one garden to the end of the beginning in another.
Our journey this Lent started with Jesus’ temptation and the very beginning of his ministry. Today we arrive at the beginning of the end of his earthly ministry, with his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
This Lent we have been looking at our new name, our new identity as Children of God, and what it means to believe in this Jesus whom God gave because of his great love for us.
Now the gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke of today’s reading from Mark essentially tell the same story, but differ slightly in their emphases. The context is that Jesus, who has been making his way to Jerusalem for around half the gospel, has now arrived.
This morning we focus on this volatile character called “the crowd,” and what they were singing.
We acknowledge the First Nations People of the land on which we meet, pray and celebrate God’s love. We honour them for their continued spiritual connection to and caring for the land, skies, waterways and culture across Australia. We pay respect to their Elders past and we ask for blessings on those who share the land now, that we will all walk together into a future in Christ.
