We long for words like love, truth, and justice to become flesh and dwell among us. But in our violent world, where hate speech generates rabid support for certain wannabe ‘leaders’, it can be risky to infuse our frail flesh with the language of heart and soul. — Parker Palmer, https://onbeing.org/blog/when-words-become-flesh-risking-vulnerability-in-a-violent-world
‘He is not the god of accomplishment, but the God of Incarnation. He does not eliminate injustice from above by a show of power, but from below, by a show of love,’ said Francis during a Dec. 24 Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. ‘He does not burst on the scene with limitless power, but descends to the narrow confines of our lives. He does not shun our frailties, but makes them his own.’ — Pope Francis, https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-francis-love-not-power-changed-world-christmas
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Today, we heard these beautiful words from Isaiah:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
The book we call Isaiah is a compilation which was gathered together over something like a 400-year period. So: more than one author was involved. We’ll just use ‘Isaiah’ for all of them.
Isaiah introduces us to a figure he calls the Servant. Today’s reading, which was written while Jews were in exile in Babylon, is the first of four appearances of the Servant in the Book of Isaiah.
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights …
Who is this chosen Servant who will bring justice to the nations?
From what Isaiah says (in 49.3), it seems the Servant is Israel itself. It is Israel who will not cry out or lift up its voice or make it heard in the street; Israel who will faithfully and gently bring forth justice in the earth.
That words ‘bring forth justice’ sound to me like Isaiah is describing a birth. Like Israel was being called to bring justice to birth.
Of course, justice is not ‘birthed’ in most of the films and books we have. Usually, a hero of some type uses violence to overcome the bad guys and rescue those in need of help. Rather than give birth to justice, the hero (usually a bloke) wins it through ‘redemptive violence’, the false redemption of the so-called good guys. It’s obvious why it’s named ‘violence’; but this violence is supposed to be redemptive. It’s supposed to bring about something like ‘peace, justice and the American way’.
Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel and an evangelical Christian, said the recent violent US action in Venezuela was ‘good news for the whole world’. Michael Youssef, an evangelical pastor in the US, wrote that Trump had ‘raised the hopes of millions of oppressed people everywhere in the world’.
… creatures are not so much saved from this world as we are saved in, with, and through it. For if God creates all things to flourish, and if Christ reveals the fulfilment of that intention, which continues to be realised through the Spirit’s work among us, then hope for heavenly salvation must be understood in concert with, and never apart from, fullness of life in this world. — Paul Schutz, in A Theology of Flourishing
Taken together, the creation texts of the Hebrew Bible — from Genesis through Exodus to the Psalms and Wisdom literature — present life, abundance, and flourishing as God’s principal intentions for creation. These are indeed texts of natality, proclaiming the magnificent story of a world being born. — Paul Schutz, in A Theology of Flourishing
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Sometimes, our ideas about God are just flat-out wrong. I want to tell you about a time when I got in God’s way because my ideas about God were out of kilter. It all happened when a friend asked me to tell her about God.
You’ve got to remember that I’d received some pretty ghastly Christian teaching in my teens and early 20s. It was the kind of teaching that says this is the default position of humankind: we are born with the burden of Original Sin, and we are on our way to hell. That is, unless we turn from our sins and believe in God — who’ll send us to hell for ever and ever if we don’t believe.
A bit bleak, do you think?
The story of my failure when a friend asked me to tell her about God:
I was a uni student in my early 20s. I used to carpool with another student, a lovely young woman. She had just got engaged and was filled with joy and happiness. She wanted to give thanks to God — she had great instincts! Her problem was this: she felt she knew nothing of God. She’d been brought up with no reference to God at all. She knew I was a Christian, so she came to me for help.
So, parked at Corinda railway station, before I got out of her car she asked me to tell her about God, so she could give thanks in a better way.
It was a wonderfully privileged position for me to be in. So I jumped up, and put my size 10 feet right in it.
I told her what I knew, and what I knew was the terrible story I’ve just mentioned. My story of God got in God’s way.
I got to the end of recounting that we were hell-bound unless we accept Jesus who died on the cross as our substitute. My friend just said, ‘That makes no sense!’ As I said, she had great instincts. She drove away, and I sloped off to the train towards home.
At first, I felt a huge disappointment that my friend didn’t receive my message. But after some time, I realised she was quite right. The ‘gospel’ I believed made no sense. In fact, the ‘god’ I had described was quite a monster — and not at all the God who Jesus bore witness to.
I failed my friend; I didn’t see the joy she was bringing to God, and I gave her a fundo cookie-cutter version of Jesus.
I did begin to learn though that we can learn huge amounts from failure. This event was a milestone on my faith journey, which twisted and turned and went here and there until it finally led me to the Uniting Church.
To think of the past as a better and maybe more glorious time than the present seems to be a common human tendency. — Nelson Rivera, in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 4
‘Christianity is not a religion — it is life. And the church is not an institution, it is the community where we grow in life.’ ‘There’s a difference between saying come to church so you might live and come to church so we don’t die.’ — Rowan Williams, https://youtu.be/vJ_QKo-kHCE?si=6JtHZ2VJGJN3nGAj
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I took my first service here at West End Uniting Church in late August 2018. Since it was my first Sunday, I thought I’d try for some rapport with whoever were the current denizens of this place. So I spoke about living in a very pre-gentrified West End in the 70s and 80s, first as a single man and then with Karen too. I spoke of being part of the then House of Freedom Christian Community, which is where Karen and I met; of our being members of this congregation while I was a ministry student in the mid-80s; of our daughter being baptised here.
Afterwards over coffee, I was asked how West End Uniting Church in 2018 compared with the 1980s. My questioner was taken aback when I said I thought the 2018 version of West End Uniting was an improvement on the 80s.
My conversation partner was shocked. He expected me to tell him things were better in the good old days, way back in the 20th century.
He recovered from his gobsmacked daze to ask what I thought was better. As I recall, I mentioned:
There was a wider range of ages and cultures present in the 2018 congregation;
There were more people here, though there often is for the minister’s first sermon. (Some people tend to fade away after the first week!)
And — crucially — there was a real energy here, more than I’d ever felt back in the 80s.
All of these things and more are very much in evidence today in 2025.
It’s natural though, to look back and recall the good ol’ days. I mean, back in the 80s there were people here who remembered the golden days of the 50s and 60s very well. In those days, churches were full, and on Sunday mornings this church would have people seated up in the gallery too.
At every turn, we approach the biblical text as if it were an annotated code instead of what it actually is: a portable library of poems, prophecies, histories, fables, parables, letters, sagely sayings, quarrels, and so on. — Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity
So, whatever the Bible is, it simply is not a constitution. I would like to propose that it is something far more interesting and important: it’s the library of a culture and community — the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. — Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity
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Sometimes, you hear people speaking about ‘the Abrahamic Religions’. They’re primarily referring to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, three faiths that all look back to Abraham as a primordial figure.
The followers of these faiths are also called ‘People of the Book’, whether that book is the Hebrew Scriptures for the Jews, the Qur’an for Muslims, or the Christian Bible.
I want to suggest today that Judaism and Islam are indeed religions of the Book; but Christianity is a religion of the Way. The Way of Jesus the Christ. In fact, perhaps the earliest name for what we call ‘Christianity’ was ‘the Way’.
So we are People of the Way, and not People of the Book.
If you listen to many conservative Christians, they would be offended by my saying this. The Bible is the Word of God! they’d cry. We are People of the Book! But our relationship with the Bible is not the same as the one that Jews and Muslims have with their holy books.
Now of course, many Christians see the Bible similarly to how at least Orthodox Jews see their scriptures, and how Muslims understand the Qur’an. Islam says the Qur’an is the very word of God. God actually dictated the Arabic words of the Qur’an to Mohammed. Some vocal Christians say this too: God dictated the Bible, and people wrote it down word for word. Yet really, no careful reading of the Bible could conclude that.
These Christians go on to conclude that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. What does that mean?
Jesus ‘asked those timeless and deeply personal questions: What does it mean to die before you die? How do you go about losing your little life to find the bigger one? Is it possible to live on this planet with a generosity, abundance, fearlessness, and beauty that mirror Divine Being itself?’ — Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus
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The prophet Jeremiah took us to the potter’s house today, so we could see a potter working clay.
My dad hated clay.
I remember him trying to dig up our back yard in northern England in February or March, when spring was around the corner. The soil in our yard was clay, but more than that, just below the surface it was still frozen solid from winter. Dad drove the spade into the ground time and again, and very little happened. He’d come back inside, totally frustrated.
They have clay in Palestine, too. It pops up from time to time in the scriptures. God seems to like clay much more than my dad did. God makes the first human out of clay. The first human is an androgynous (or maybe intersex?) creation who becomes male when the woman is taken out of his side. I’m speaking of course of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2.
Over in the Book of Daniel chapter 2, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a giant statue. It’s impressive: it has a gold head, silver chest and arms, bronze belly and thighs, and iron legs. But its feet are made of iron mixed with clay. It’s from Daniel 2 we get the expression that some hero figure has ‘feet of clay’.
In today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah, the potter makes a rubbishy pot and has to start all over again. For Jeremiah, God is the potter. If the clay is a mess, God starts all over again.
You and I are unfinished works, made of clay like Adam. We are not yet complete, but we shall be completed through being made, unmade, and remade.
That’s the bit my dad missed about clay, not being a potter and all. It’s much more than semi-frozen, poorly-draining soil that makes planting a few veges to feed your family a backbreaking chore on the back end of winter. No, clay can become a useful thing. Even a thing of beauty.Continue reading →
… the one true God personally reveals an active presence and call not in the great ones of the earth, not in the ‘sacred power’ of human hierarchies, not in an elitist culture and the prestige of the ‘governing classes’, but in our neighbour in need, recognised and served as our brother or sister, and in the multitude of poor and outcast, with their privations, their misery, and their hope. — Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuría, Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology
… the reign of God should be understood not just as beneficent action, but as liberating and as partisan, since oppressed people are — by right — at the centre of God’s regard and God’s action. — Jon Sobrino, No Salvation outside the Poor
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Nine years ago, Pope Francis met with a group of two hundred poor, sick and disabled pilgrims from France, and called them the ‘treasures of the church’.
The treasures of the church. What a strange thing to say! Pope Francis wasn’t being original; he was quoting St Lawrence, who was martyred in the year 258. Today, 10 August, is the 1767th anniversary of Lawrence’s martyrdom. He was 32 years old when he was executed.
We who have inherited so much from the Protestant Reformation don’t often hear a lot about the saints. When our ancestors in faith reacted against what they saw as the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church, they sometimes threw the baby out with the bathwater. We can learn a great deal by reflecting on saints like Lawrence.
Lawrence was a deacon in the church in Rome. In those days, there were seven deacons in the city of Rome, all appointed by the pope, the bishop of Rome. And further, the pope was usually chosen from among these seven deacons. Lawrence was the head deacon, the archdeacon. Maybe he was in line to be the next pope?
As a deacon, Lawrence’s role was to look after the valuables of the church and to distribute food and money to the poor.
In early August that year, 258, persecution came. The emperor decreed that all Christian clergy were to be immediately put to death. The Pope was assassinated while leading a service on 6 August, so the anniversary was last Wednesday.
The authorities then demanded that Lawrence hand over the church’s valuables; if he did, his life would be spared. Lawrence asked for three days to collect everything together.
He used that three days’ grace to distribute as much of the church’s wealth as he could to the poor — like an ancient Robin Hood — and then he presented himself before the man in authority, the prefect of Rome. Lawrence brought with him a small group of poor, sick and disabled people. Indicating these people, Lawrence declared to the prefect: ‘Here are the treasures of the church. You see, the church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor!’
The prefect was furious. He had Lawrence executed. The story that follows is highly likely not true, but it’s an old story. You will read about it if you google Lawrence. We are told that the prefect had a griddle prepared, on which Lawrence was slow roasted. We’re even told that Lawrence joked with his executioners, telling them to turn him over since one side was already done! (It may not surprise you that St Lawrence is the patron saint of barbecues and chefs, among other things.)
It’s much more likely that Lawrence was beheaded. Still grisly, but quicker.
Lawrence lost his life for love of the poor. I imagine that he looked at life through their eyes. What he saw was quite different to what the emperor saw. Lawrence saw injustice and oppression; he also saw love and sharing and humanity among those who had very little. He saw people who had dignity in their poverty. Lawrence chose what we now call a ‘preferential option for the poor’.
It was in South America in the 1960s that liberation theologians coined the phrase ‘the preferential option for the poor’. They traced a thread through scripture which showed that God gives priority to the wellbeing of the poor and powerless of the earth, just as Lawrence did almost 1800 years ago.
Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand — that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.… The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. — Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
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‘Theology’ is talking about God, reflecting on God. Talking theology can be exhilarating. But please, never forget: talking theology is dynamite. Maybe we should wear crash helmets and put our seatbelts on when we talk theology. If you doubt that, take a look at this:
An expert in the law wants to talk about theology with Jesus. He wants to ‘test’ Jesus. Is he testing Jesus in a hostile way, trying to catch him out? I don’t think so. I don’t think he wants to trip Jesus up. Rather, he wants to see if Jesus will give him a good answer. He wants to test if this Jesus is worth listening to.
‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
As he so often does, Jesus answers a question with another question:
‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’
You’re the expert in the law: surely you have an answer!
And the expert does have an answer, a very good one as it turns out. The expert got the answer from the law, and quite creatively. The expert referenced two verses from different books of the law — Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18 — and combined them to get this:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind / and your neighbour as yourself.
But remember the expert’s question? ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ What must I do?
It’s not good enough to just quote scripture well, you’ve got to do it. So Jesus says, ‘Do this, and you will live.’
The expert in the law wasn’t expecting this, so he tries to get the conversation back on track. He says, hang on Jesus — ‘Who is my neighbour?’
(Let’s define our terms, that’s always a plan when you’re losing control of a discussion.)
As the expert in the law had read Leviticus, he already knew how to define the word ‘neighbour’: a neighbour, according to Leviticus, was a fellow Israelite. Love your neighbour as yourself; aka love your fellow Jew as yourself. Love the people in your tribe.
And he wanted Jesus to agree with this very limited definition of ‘neighbour’.
People search for limited definitions all the time. For example, some divide the poor into two groups, the deserving and the undeserving poor. But can we truly know which is which? And does it really matter, if a neighbour is in need?
And recently, the Vice President of the USA tried another way to define who should be helped, and who should not.
JD Vance quoted Thomas Aquinas in support of his idea. Aquinas was a major Christian thinker who lived in the 1200s. He spoke about the ‘ordo amoris’, the order of love. Aquinas saw that people naturally care most for those who are close to them, for family and friends. Vance took this a step further: he said that Aquinas’s ‘order of love’ means we don’t owe neighbour love to people outside the circle of our friends and family. Specifically: that the USA’s ‘charitable obligation to immigrants is negligible, at best, and when times are tough, non-existent’.
Of course, people do help their family first. Then they help others in need. Parents have a responsibility to care for their children; we’d be appalled if a parent starved their child in order to give to charity. Yet we’re not off the hook; people distant to us are our neighbours too, and have a call on our help.
As JD Vance was speaking as a practising Catholic, a bloke called Robert Prevost rebuked him, saying simply on X: ‘JD Vance is wrong’.
Why should we care about what Robert Prevost thinks? Since that tweet, Robert Prevost has become better known as Pope Leo XIV. I’d trust the Pope’s understanding of Thomas Aquinas much more than a politician who is trying to score political points.
There are yet other attempts to justify limiting our circle of love. One is to say ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, usually applied to LGBTQIA+ people. I won’t say anything about this, except that it’s bull dust. Oh, and show you this great cartoon from Naked Pastor:
Let’s get back to Jesus and the expert in the law. You know what happens: Jesus shows he disagrees with the expert by telling him a story, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were a despised people, but it’s the Samaritan who is a neighbour to the enemy neighbour in need.
Not only does Jesus answer the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’, he shows that a neighbour is anyone — anyone at all! — in need. JD Vance was wrong. The ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ folk are deluded. Those who divide the poor into the deserving and the undeserving are missing the point.
Furthermore: the Book of Leviticus itself calls God’s people to extend their love beyond their tribe:
When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. [Leviticus 19.33–34]
Love your neighbour as yourself; love the alien as yourself. There’s no escaping the debt of love that we owe to one another, and to everyone in need. Like this sign that says: ‘That “Love your Neighbour” thing: I meant that.’
See why it’s hazardous to talk about theology? Theology changes us. Parables like the Good Samaritan change us. Words from God take root in our hearts, and grow within us. We come to sense God’s unconditional love for us, and God’s unconditional love for everybody else — love that is God’s justice, God’s fairness to everyone equally. It’s not about me and my tribe; it’s about everyone, and everything.
As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount,
[God] makes [their] sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. [Matthew 5.45]
We must decide. Not only ‘Who is my neighbour?’, but also this ever more pressing question: ‘Am I like the Good Samaritan, a neighbour to whoever is in need?’
… the Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small. — Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix
God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus.
There’s never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
We haven’t always known this, but now we do. — Brian Zahn, The Unvarnished Jesus
God, if Jesus is right, has chosen to descend — in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. — Richard Rohr, ‘Moving Downward’, https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-sdrddjt-tlkrkydtjr-e/
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I once spent a week in Timor Leste, which back thenwe usually called East Timor. A week is not a very long time; I don’t claim any expertise in the culture or politics of Timor Leste. But I was there at a very interesting time.
It was February 1998, just over a year before the people of Timor Leste won their independence from Indonesia. While I was there for this short time, Timor Leste was occupied by very visibly-present Indonesian armed forces.
I was there to talk with people of the Protestant Church there about my then congregation’s support for young people in tertiary education there. I was with a man who had made the trip several times before and who spoke Indonesian fluently.
Because the Timorese people knew him, and because I am a minister, I found myself in a trusted position.
I learnt a few things about living under occupation forces that week. Things that Jesus and his contemporaries may have experienced too.
I soon realised that while the Timorese people appeared to be relaxed and happy, this was very much a veneer. Their smiles didn’t always meet their eyes. Under the surface, there was a pervasive anxiety that infected everyone and everything.
I stayed at the Hotel Turismo in the capital, Dili. At that time, the staff all belonged to the Indonesian occupying forces. They weren’t in uniform, but everyone knew who they were. One day, we were due to speak with some of the locals at the hotel; I started to head for a table in the dining room. My friend suggested we go out into the garden to talk. Why did we go out into the open air? There were bugging devices in the dining room. We didn’t want the occupying forces to overhear our conversation.
We went to a congregation in a village called Dare [pron. Dah-ray]. Dare is high in the hills behind Dili, the capital of Timor Leste. We gathered in the little Protestant church in Dare; the secretary of the church council gave a speech to welcome us.
I was seated next to the Secretary of Synod of the Timorese church. He leaned my way and gestured toward the secretary of the church council as he was welcoming us. He whispered to me, ‘See that man? Informer.’ In other words, Watch what you say around him. The occupying forces will hear of it.
We were in a group sitting in the elders’ chairs behind the Holy Table in a church that was little more than a shack. Everyone there shared in the produce of the village: cobs of corn, and coffee. It wasn’t Communion, there was no reference to Communion. But it felt so very much like we were sharing a holy meal.
The people of Dare used to put food out in the bush for the guerrilla forces, who were called the Falintil. They put it out every Wednesday. The informer had no idea it was happening! The whole of this small village kept the secret from him.
I was standing in a group a little later that day. They were talking with my friend (in Indonesian) about how the struggle against the Indonesian forces was going. Not understanding a word, I was feeling about as useful as a hip pocket in a singlet.
The informer wandered over, and the conversation seamlessly morphed into how well the translation of the Bible was going into the local language, Tetum. I only found this out later; I hadn’t understand a word. I didn’t even realise they’d changed the subject!
You know, the Palm Sunday story has something of this kind of clandestine feeling about it.
There was a secret, prearranged password in order to borrow a donkey: ‘The Master needs it.’
Later, there would be an informer: Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus and hand him over to death.
There were those who engaged in armed struggle against the invader. In Timor Leste it was the Falintil; in the Judea of two thousand years ago, the Zealots would try to expel the Romans by force.
Some find empathy too hard, too taxing. But empathy is integral to grace, and something I believe to be integral to a life well lived. ‘Turn your face to the sun’, goes the old saying, ‘and the shadows fall behind you.’ — Julia Baird, Bright Shining: How Grace changes Everything
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The Forgiving Father, by the Indian artist Frank Wesley
I’ve often heard people talk about what the title of the parable we’ve just heard should be. We usually call it The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Is that the best name, though? Could it be The Parable of the Lost Son, or The Two Lost Sons? What about The Parable of the Forgiving Father? These names and more have their supporters and detractors.
For today only, I’ve decided to call it The Parable of the Transactional Sons.
The Parable of the Transactional Sons. Being transactional isn’t bad in itself. Some connections are transactional by nature. I go to the cafe, I ask for a coffee and so I owe them money. I may not even know the name of the person who serves me. But with the exchange of coffee and money — with the transaction — it’s all good. If I were to leave the coffee shop without paying, I’d fail my part of the transaction, and I’d be chased down the road. And I don’t run too fast these days.
Or, I go to work and I put my hours in. My boss pays my wages. A transactional connection. Hopefully, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
The USA has an unquestionably transactional president in Donald Trump, one who reduces international diplomacy to making a ‘deal’. He offers support to Ukraine but he also wants to exploit their rare earth mineral deposits. They owe him. Quid pro quo, as far as he’s concerned.
Israel has flattened Gaza, courtesy of American bombs. Trump sees this as a real estate opportunity; he would love to remove the Palestinian people and make it a new riviera. More quid pro quo, Trump style.
It’s all purely transactional; there is no room for prioritising compassion or justice in handling these situations. The people on the ground, the people of Ukraine and Gaza, are simply pawns in an unholy, unfair, compassionless deal.
Some Christians on the American right are even calling empathy a sin. As if! The Jesus of the Gospels is the very embodiment of empathy. How else could he show the compassion we read about again and again in the Gospels? Empathy is the Spirit of Jesus working within us.
So: a transaction in a coffee shop is fine. But a transaction — a ‘deal’ — is totally repugnant where the guiding lights should be restorative justice and humane compassion.
Let’s go to back the parable. The two sons, each of them, had a transactional approach to their father.
Younger Brother is eyeing off dad’s money, but he doesn’t want to hang around till the old man dies. So he says
Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.
Give it to me now, I can’t wait for you to die!
Transactional.
The father would be within his rights to say, No, you wait till I’m dead. (That’s what I’d say to my kids!)
But what does the father do? He ‘divided his assets between them’. The two sons get the lot. The father has given everything away!
This may involve money and assets, but it is the opposite of a transaction. The opposite of a transaction is a personal relationship. A tie of blood, or a simple friendship, perhaps. Or a covenant, like our Baptism and like the Holy Meal we share each week.
The father shows he loves both his sons, with literally everything he has. My understanding is that the shares wouldn’t be equal though; Older Brother, the firstborn son, would get two thirds, while Younger Brother would have one third.
Still, Younger Brother’s third is more than enough for him to take off and spend, spend, spend. Continue reading →
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the venerable fast of Lent. Those ashes evoke the ancient words, ‘For you are dust, and to dust you shall return’. It also offers a humbling medicine when our personal mythology has grown too inflated: Remember where you came from. Remember where you are headed. These two signposts offer guidance for anyone seeking a healthy way of being human. — Marc Alan Schelske, Walking Otherward
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In February 1998, while I was ministering at Indooroopilly Uniting Church, I spent a short time visiting East Timor, now known as Timor Leste. Back then, Timor Leste was under Indonesian occupation. Most Timorese people were keeping a low profile, trying to avoid being noticed by the ever-present Indonesian troops.
It was Ash Wednesday while I was there, and our hotel was just a few blocks from the bishop’s residence. Its rather large grounds were the setting for a service on Ash Wednesday. I went along.
I said most people tried not to be noticed there, but I was noticed that day. There were hundreds of people there, maybe over a thousand, and I only saw one other westerner there, over in the distance. And I was about a head and a half taller than the tallest Timorese person there.
When it came for me to receive the ashes on my forehead, I approached a nun who was short even by Timorese standards. I had to bow low to receive the ashes.
It seemed to be an appropriate way for me to begin Lent. One form of words at the imposition of ashes is: ‘Turn away from darkness; turn to the light of Christ’. Turning to the light of Christ, following the way of Jesus, is to bend low so that we can serve others, seeing the last and the lost and taking notice of them. So that we can seek the justice of God.
This time of year, we prepare to celebrate Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday and continues through to Easter Day. Jesus bent low — he began to bend low during those forty days in the wilderness the Holy Spirit had led him to! — and Jesus calls his followers to bend low too, in the power of that same Spirit.
To conclude this brief reflection:
‘When Jesus said “Follow me,” he was walking toward the margins, not the mansions.’ (Rev Dr Mark Sandlin)
Let us walk with Jesus. Let us turn away from darkness, and turn to the light of Christ.
How might you, how might we, do that in Lent 2025?
My name is Paul Walton. I am a minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia. While I am retired, I am enjoying working in supply ministry whenever I can.
Getting There... 2 steps forward, 1 back 
