Amazing Grace

As a priest you don't get to pick your parishioners
nor should you!
But you get gems
(almost everyone is a a gem)

I want to say about Grace that she was Amazing

Unfortunately Barack Obama
stole my theatrics by singing at a funeral
"Amazing Grace how sweet the sound"

He had better press coverage!
None of us who knew her
would doubt that she was amazing
I chose the classic passage from John

         God so loved the world, that he gave his only son

Because it totally characterises Grace's faith.
God is not out to get us.,
God seeks to bring us together.

In the last few weeks we have talked about a number of difficult issues
Issues where human relationships have torn us apart.
Always we have spoken
of God's desire that people should  be
brought together

We don't always get this
One day as I left (as I usually do )
with what ever little prayer I could offer
I prayed for 'reconciliation within the family'
at funeral times this is often to the fore.

I was moved that Grace
in some weakness and physical discomfort
was able to to say something like
"yes Lord"
It was her way
and her desire

Yes Lord
we believe
that you are the Christ
and can and will bring us together

I thank God
that I have known a faithful woman
who was Amazing
so trusting
and who, along with God's  Holy Spirit
invites us to trust
in the  amazing grace
reconciliation, love and forgiveness

Gracious feeding in a world of hunger

Readings for Sunday July 31 2011, 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13) include Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 15 ; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21  


Most Australians do not even know 
the possibility of starvation 
We feel confident that someone will come to our aid, 
even if we have no food, no money, 
or no means to address these sort of problems. 
There are, of course, people elsewhere in the world 
who do face this sort of awful issue, 
and who will die because of lack of food. 
So we (the non starving) need to try and hear 
the story of the feeding of the 5000 
with something of the urgency for our lives, 
that food is for the starving.

All people hunger, 
but not necessarily for food. 
Some need self-assurance, 
others need healing 
all need love 
If we take this story 
and listen to it in this way

then we can hear some simple principles. 


Sit down and take time to address the situation 
The first step is to actually open yourself to the possibility of God’s aid 


Where are the ‘five loaves and the fish” 
We think we have nothing. 
but we almost always have the beginnings 


Where does God show us we can begin 
Allow ourselves to trust God 
and receive what God can do with the small beginning 
Our consumerist world says 
we want everything 
and we want it NOW! 


Can we trust God to give us all that we want, and more 
from (what we perceive) is the little that we have? 
But which in reality is an abundance

This week 
Where is God inviting me to feed on his abundant spiritual food? 
Where do I feel spiritual hunger? 
What do I bring to the table? 
Pray for grace to give God the opportunity to feed me with what I already possess, 
and to open myself to the possibility of life.

Lord, feed me with everything I need 

Give me grace to trust your generous hand

And grace upon grace....

The Funeral of Molly Carvosso

All Hallows’ Blackwood, 31^st December 2010

1Peter 1:3-6; John 6:35-40

A lot of careless words are spoken at funerals

Often, and almost always, this is done with the best of intentions

We could be pardoned for thinking

that our beloved Molly

will soon rival Mary MacKillop as Australia’s chief saint!

I certainly have something in me that thinks of Molly like this today!

I suspect she would be the first to think this was hilarious

There is a serious side to this

It is not authentically Christian

to try and whitewash a person

at their funeral

so that we can believe

with confidence

that they are going to be with Jesus

in heaven

We must resist at all costs

the temptation to paint Molly in such a light

that God should consider himself lucky

that such a high quality candidate

is deigning to enter heaven.

Yet we often talk like this.

Molly, as I say, would find this hilarious!

With her wry smile and impish look

she would say to me when I would be pulling her leg

“Ahh go on with you, don’t be so silly”

Molly knew, as we should be glad to know.

If we have to be perfect to get into heaven

then none of us ever gets there.

We hear Peter tell us today that it’s not what we have done, but what we believe

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

It is as the hungry we come to Christ,

and find that he feeds us with the bread of life.

That as we believe in him

so we may have eternal life.

Earlier in John’s Gospel

(which we recall at this Christmas time)

We hear God saves us not because we deserve it

but because God wants it

not because we are so good that we earn merit

but by God’s grace.

Grace is the word of Christmas

it means FREE GIFT

all these gifts that we get at Christmas

are not because it is jesus’s birthday

but to celebrate that our God is the god who gives.

And John says it’s not just “grace”

It’s “grace upon grace”

Today, Molly would laugh

at being good enough to get into heaven.

But she also knew

that God loves her

because God wants to love her.

She wants each one of us to know that today.

God wants to love you.

It’s grace…and not just grace…but grace upon grace upon grace.

Not just Molly, but each one of us. Today is a good day to turn and receive that free gift

And outward things are strong

First Sunday in Lent
February 20, 2010

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13

The readings this week are pretty challenging
this is because we begin the season called Lent
which is perhaps the most rigorous of the Church's year.
It is a time of fasting, prayer, self denial and giving.
We are invited to use these six weeks to take our Christian call
seriously, urgently, with some flair and some gusto.

----------------------------------------

Temptation is a fact of life.
What this story reminds us more than anything
is that temptation is part of the human condition.
We know this because Jesus is tempted
and Jesus show for us what the true human life is like.
Which is interesting because we are reminded that the life of Jesus
is about being tempted...but not sinning

So we might observe:
1. Temptation is not wrong
We sometimes make the mistake of confusing temptation with sin.
We think that because we feel tempted
that some how we have sinned.
This is not logical and is not true.

2. Sin might happen when we yield to temptation
It is not the feeling angry, or jealous or attracted to someone
that is sin
It is what we choose to do with it.
We punch someone in the face, or we steal someone's money
or we commit adultery

3. Temptation comes in different shapes and sizes
We see some of the more obvious temptations
in this story...appetites, power, lusting for attention
They are not the only temptations
but they are pretty pervasive.

The Prayer Book reminds us in one of the Collects
"O God who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves"
It seems a strange thing to say in the world of omni-competent human beings
The way out of temptation
is not will-power so much
as relying on God

We will all be tempted
We will all most certainly give in to temptation
We do all need to repent of sin (let's not excuse it by saying ...it's only human nature)
We need to rely on God to strengthen and uphold us.

Being tempted this week
pray for the Holy Spirit of God
to guard and protect you
to strengthen your will
and to enable you to be truly human
like Christ.

-----------------------

Jesus highlights for us where the sources of temptation might be
and how we might be tempted and
how we might repsond
First, we are tempted by our appetites
It is good to realise that we have appetites
and that these are sources of demand.
Appetites are insistent
often insatiable
and the mistake we make is in thinking that if we satisfy our appetites
then all will be well.
We can name many appetites :hunger, thirst, sex, craving affection
and so on on
THE TEMPTATION: If you satisfy the appetite then all will be well
THE LIE: We are essentially incapable of being satisfied and will always want more
THE TRUTH: There are deeper and more important things that we need to pay attention to.
The truth of this is evident to us, in the end we will not be satisfied by our appetites alone
One does not live by bread alone
Second, there are competing kingdoms
and we can give our lives completely to one or more of these.
But our ways are not God's ways, necessarily or at all,
We see this perhpas when we look at the sort of politicial worlds that we are intent on making
They are real enough but we can see much in our society that is not God's plan
THE TEMPTATION: Power and authority in this world is a seductive temptation
THE LIE: The more power we have the more like God we will be
THE TRUTH: We have no business doing anything other than God's will
Third, we can have a false view of God
we can even use the scriptures to back up our curious theories.
The fairy tale God who flies angels in and out to offer special protections
to those of us who think of ourselves as chosen
is a deeply false view of God
that often totally dominates our thinking.
It is not relationship with the God of love
it is rather the wishful thinking of the God of magic
THE TEMPTATION: To try and make God what we want God to be rather than to allow ourselves to be drawn into the difficult mystery of the crucified God
THE LIE: even allows us to quote scripture to support our inadequate case
but it is a testing line which we cross at our peril
THE TRUTH: We are called to dwell in God, not to test God's graciousness with our narrow and selfish version of what we would like the Gospel to be.

Temptation is at once easy to understand.
Yet it is also slippery and profound.
We are seduced into something far deeper than we imagine.

THIS WEEK
As we are tempted (for we surely will be)
Pray and look for grace to better understand what is being asked of us.
How does feeling the demand of appetite,
or the urge to be in control,
or the need to make God into something unreal
...when I feel this how might I respond more faithfully.
Can I seek God real will for me,
and respond to that?

Singing the gospel overture

We often don't have a 2nd Sunday after Christmas but this year on January 3rd 2009 we do, readings are from Sirach 24:1-12, Ephesians 1. and John 1.
In structured writing what happens in the opening chapters
is an important statement of intent.
Just as in a musical the composer
makes an opening statement in the overture
which draws the audience in.
So John gives us an overture to his gospel
"In the beginning was the Word" he strikes up
he reminds us in what is really
a great trumpet blast
that the presence of Christ in the world
has changed the very way
that the universe operates.
From the very beginning of time
God has been working his will in the world
and the fullness of this has been revealed
in human form.

John says in the climactic verse:

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us

this is not a very common expression

The Word made flesh!

What John is saying is not entirely expressible in language.

It is that the idea of God, the meaning of God,

the intention of God, the theory of God

the wisdom of God

...however we might want to express it

is shown to us in human form

in the person of Christ.

A number of powerful things

This says a number of powerful things

It says that there is no Christianity without Christ

We are not a theory

we are about God being involved with the world.

There are ideas of God that are rather like the fact

that though there might be a God

God is not involved with us.

Sort of like the watchmaker who has wound it up

and left it to run on its own.

The first things the incarnation says to us

is that the focus is on Jesus

and that Jesus is about God being vitally involved with the human race.

What we might then observe is that this is not exclusive

it is for all who believe.

It may be that you feel you don't believe or understand this very well at all.

That is not really the point

none of us will ever fully understand

what is, after all, the mystery of God.

We are not so much called to fathom it

as to trust God.

Maybe our prayer should be not

"Help me to understand the theology of God"

but " Lord I believe, or want to believe

help me to believe in the midst of my unbelief"

What then John tells us is that,

committed to this promise of God,

focussed on Jesus

then God can open up our lives and fill us with abundant grace.

The everlasting, and abundant life that is promised

is not exclusive

nor is it dependent on how well we believe.

It is rather about the fact that we trust in God.

Our prayer, perhaps our new year's prayer

can be

Lord in the midst of so much doubt and cynicism

May I believe

In Jesus Christ

who tells me everything I want and need to know.

And may I be open to the mystery of God's grace.

Through the magnifying glass

Christmas invites us to look closely at God. Perhaps through a magnifying glass, taking care to note what we often don't see and need to actually deliberately look at.

In this final week of Advent we hear the words of Magnificat...Luke 1:39-55...which Mary is recorded as saying when she came to understand what God was asking of her. This is a particular reflection on those words

Some commentators suggest that

coming as it does at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel

The Magnificat (this name comes about because of the first line..My soul magnifies the glory of the Lord)

it is presented as something of a manifesto

of what Luke believes God is doing

through the saving act of Jesus

My soul magnifies the Lord

We are being invited to look closely

at what God is doing

So often the real problem

is not that people reject God

but that we don’t even care.

It is not so much antipathy/hatred, as APATHY

Or maybe like the wise men we look in the wrong place.

We want God to be in spectacle and power

but he is in the wonder of a child.

When we get this, we realise that maybe we have been looking in the wrong places

If we take care we see that there are many places where we can give thanks

that he has looked with favour on us

If you are like me, my problem is that often the woes of this world

so weigh me down that I lose sight of the fact

that God sustains and upholds me

powerfully and abundantly.

That the problems don’t really disappear

but we see amidst all the mess

that there is grace...the gift of God

Usually in the gift of people,

in unwarranted kindness

in generosity of spirit

In fact John tells us that there is not just grace but grace upon grace

This grace is not about making the successful more successful

or the strong stronger

but the new creation is about

lifting up the lowly

aiding the weak

We are easily seduced by power and fame

but there is something new here

This is God’s promise to us.

St James reminds us that we often don’t

avail ourselves of God’s promise

THIS WEEK

• Can we hear a call to give thanks to God for what is happening day to day?

• Can we find a way to be an agent of caring for those for whom God cares?Not the rich and famous but the weak and downcast

This is not difficult to understand
It is sometimes difficult to implement because we have our own agenda
and we do not hear God’s radical manifesto
and call on our lives
WE are not required to turn the world upside down
But God is acting differently and we choose to be God’s people.

On being full of grace

The funeral service says (quoting the spirit of the psalm) "In the midst of life we are in death", if not 'death' then we have a fair bit of trouble and mess.
In all this comes a message that God deals graciously with us.

Some Readings for this fourth and last week of Advent...some readings are: Micah 5:2-5; Luke 2; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55
For me this season, whilst not being easy. has been one that is rich in experience
and encounters.
We often have to dialogue with death and dying,
we all have to engage with the complexity of our human relationships
and there is a richness of imagery that abounds
and of course all the wonderful words, spoken and sung.

This is necessary, but not always positive;
some people (research tells us) find Christmas very stressful.

One of the recurring themes of Advent is GRACE
This is a "buzz word", of course,
and easily glossed over.
Grace is about the free gift of God
of life itself.
God gives himself, his life to us
in these and many other ways
all the time
powerfully, intimately, gently, abundantly.

The readings point us to a number of different aspects of this.
God gives his grace to the world
We live in a gift of a world.
As our eyes turn to Bethlehem
we are also reminded how human beings
sometimes are hell-bent [advised use of words!] on destroying the giftedness
we have received from God.
Pray for peace in Bethlehem
that they may know the peace that Jesus bring.

Not easy work
The writer of Hebrews reminds us
that the era of grace in which we now live
is a new era
In theological terms, we are in a new era
because the death and resurrection of Jesus
have put us in a new place.
What this might remind us of is that
grace does not just happen accidently
it is as a response of God's deliberate action
While God's grace is abundant and plentiful

It will not just overwhelm us in in our lives
we need to open ourselves to it
and also be responsive to it.
That is; Grace is given, freely given
do we accept this free gift of God's love.

As you reflect on these last 3 or 4 weeks and the richness of experience
what is God calling you to respond to.
Have you responded? Will you respond?

It is likely that we see the gracious gift of people.
Have we taken time to think on this?
How is God calling us to respond to those who he gives us.
Not always easy, but part of the way that we are called to grow into the personhood that God has in store for us.

The theme character for this week is Mary
It is interesting to hear the classical words
that often refer to her.
They are contained in the angel's greeting to her in that house in Nazareth
as she goes about her daily business.
"Hail Mary full of grace"
Don't let anti-Catholic prejudice blind us to the fact that these words come straight from the Bible themselves.
What the angel says to Mary, Gid says to all of us.
Hail full of grace!!
Each one of us has a life full of grace.
It is not the easy cheap grace that titillates us, or makes us feel tipsy
Sometimes it is deeply sad and confronting,
ALWAYS it is drawing us closer to God
and making us more fully human.

What has God been saying to you this season?
Where are you called to respond more freely to God's giftedness
is God saying, perhaps, ....there is someone you need to forgive, or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek
Does God set before you a lonely person to whom you can be a grace?
Is there a situation that you need to resolve?
Is there a freedom that is summoning you?

Will you take this gift, this offer of freedom and embrace it?

As Mary is confronted by the Angel...Hail full of grace!
and as she responds...saying be it done to me according to your word
so the angel says to her this new promise, The Lord be with you
The gift, the grace, the promise of Christmas
as we open ourselves to the sometimes, often, maybe even usually difficult of grace
we encounter Immanuel- God with us
The gift is here, accept it...full of grace
And May the Lord be with you.

This week we follow our Christianity Explained course theme of Repentance: Ezekiel 36:25–27;Psalm 130; Acts 17:24–31; Mark 8:34–38 (Common Lectionary themes for Sunday 32 can be found here )

Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us there is no such thing as Cheap Grace
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, (it is) baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."
What do we make of the promises that we have been thinking about that come to us as free gift from God?
God is not just toying with us.
He is not suggesting that there is no such thing as a free lunch,
or that there is always a catch
but rather that now, having heard the promises of God:
For example the new heart promised by Ezekiel's God, or the washing away of sin,
the gift of abundant and eternal life
promise by Jesus to those who are born again
If we are to live out of these promises
then we are to live rather differently.
We cannot have a different quality of life
and just go on living as though nothing has changed.
This is Bonhoeffer's point... no cheap grace...
there are consequences
not because God is tricky
but because God wants us to live our lives well
If we want forgiveness, then we must act as if forgiven
We must live differently, we must forgive,
we need to confront our own darkness: sin, selfishness and evil
If we want God to be close
then we must live close to God
..prayer, worship service
will be the watchwords...
let's not play games.
Quality relationships?
Then let's love unconditionally.

This repentance, is about making a choice to live rather differently.
Not just about dealing with the bad stuff
(though it is that)
but also about living the faithful, humble, life of Christian integrity.
Stop playing games.

We remind ourselves again

God who is rich in mercy
out of the great love with which he loved us
even when we were dead through our trespasses
made us alive together with Christ.

May we choose to live out of that promise

The grace of God

As we continue to think about the Christianity Explained series our theme this week is the grace of God and some readings are: Hosea 14:4–7;Psalm 85; Ephesians 2:4–10; Luke 18:9–14 (if you are looking for the Commnon lectionary Readings they are here for all All Saints Day; or here for The 31st Sunday of the Year)

What the grace of God assures us is that God's love for us is so great
that he will do everything he can to bring us into the fold of the loving relationship
We are so perverse that we often seem to think
that God will only love us
if we are good enough
or if we are worthy.
The truth is that God loves us
not just when we behave,
or when we have totted up enough brownie points
to merit being loved.
God just loves us!
That love is not bought or sold
it is freely given.
We are often told that the Greek word for 'grace'
is closely related to the word for gift.
God's gift of love is a "grace"
and is truly and freely given.

So we see exposed in the Gospel we have chosen today (Luke 18:9-14)
the story of two men
who stand before God.
One, a religious man, an upstanding man
stands before God
and tells him what a good person he is.
And, I suppose he is, not humble but 'good'
We also see he seems arrogant
and we would probably say
there is a a lot of 'self-justification'
The question , it seems to me, about this man
is what need does he have of God,
he seems to think he is doing OK by himself.
We can all be a bit like this.
BUT if we are honest we should also recognise
that this sort of self-righteousness
is rather shallow, and not entirely truthful.
None of us can entirely justify ourselves because we cannot undo the wrong we have done.
The murderer, however repentant, cannot undo the murder;
nor the one who has hurt another with unkind words and actions
cannot make up for the hurt

So there is a contrast with the other man
who is actually crushed (it would seem) by the mess he has made of his life
His response is not to try and point out that he is not really all that bad
but rather to throw himself on God's mercy.
There is no other choice.

The truth is that the first situation
the self-righteous justification is actually a deception
and the second, that all have sinned and fallen short
is the reality.
The story tells us that it is the sinner who opens himself to God's mercy
who goes away put right.
Because God gives him what he cannot earn.

We find this pretty hard.
We don't like the realisation
that we cannot force God to like us by being good.
We have all really been mis-taught that if we are good enough
then we will 'get into heaven'
The truth is that god gives eternal life to us freely
we do not have to earn it.
In fact it is this trying to earn it that often seems to stand in the way!!
Our self righteousness and self justification
(often aimed at saying how bad others are
as much as how good we are)

This week
Instead of trying to bribe God be being God
can we think about what God might be trying
to give us that we don't think we are worth of?
Can we also try to model this in our relationships with others?
Instead of trying to give people the impression that if they
behave as we want them to then we will love and like them
can we rather give the impression that we are trying to love
unconditionally. This is hard and radical stuff.

Gratia plena-full of grace

Only one day in this last week of Advent...some readings are: Micah 5:2-5; Luke 2; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

For me this season, whilst not being easy. has been one that is rich in experience
and encounters.
I have had to dialogue with death and dying,
we all have to engage with the complexity of our human relationships
and there is a richness of imagery that abounds
and of course all the wonderful words, spoken and sung.

This is necessary, but not always positive;
some people (research tells us) find Christmas very stressful.

One of the recurring themes of Advent is GRACE
This is a "buzz word", of course,
and easily glossed over.
Grace is about the free gift of God
of life itself.
God gives himself, his life to us
in these and many other ways
all the time
powerfully, intimately, gently, abundantly.

The readings point us to a number of different aspects of this.
God gives his grace to the world
We live in a gift of a world.
As our eyes turn to Bethlehem
we are also reminded how human beings
sometimes are hell-bent [advised use of words!] on destroying the giftedness
we have received from God.
Pray for peace in Bethlehem
that they may know the peace that Jesus bring.
Not easy work
The writer of Hebrews reminds us
that the era of grace in which we now live
is a new era
In theological terms, we are in a new era
because the death and resurrection of Jesus
have put us in a new place.
What this might remind us is that
grace does not just happen accidently
it is as a response of God's deliberate action
It will not just happen in our lives
we need to open ourselves to it
and also be responsive to it.
That is; Grace is given, freely given
do we accept this free gift of God's love.

As you reflect on these last 3 or 4 weeks and the richness of experience
what is God calling you to respond to.
Have you responded? Will you respond?
It is likely that we see the gracious gift of people.
Have we taken time to think on this?
How is God calling us to respond to those who he gives us.
Not always easy, but p[art of the way that we are called to grow into the personhood that God has in store for us.

The theme character for this week is Mary
It is interesting to hear the classical words
that often refer to her.
They are contained in the angel's greeting to her in that house in Nazareth
as she goes about her daily business.
"Hail Mary full of grace"
Don't let anti-Catholic prejudice blind us to the fact that these words come straight from the Bible themselves.
What the angel says to Mary, Goid says to all of us.
Hail full of grace!!
Each one of us has a life full of grace.
It is not the easy of cheap grace that titillates us, or makes us feel tipsy
Sometimes it is deeplky sad and confronting,
ALWAYS it is drawing us closer to God
and making us more fully human.
What has God been saying to you this season.
Where are you called to respond more freely to God's giftedness
is God saying....there is someone you need to forgive, or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek
Does God set before you a lonely person to who you can be a grace?
Is there a situation that you need to resolve?
Is there a freedom that is summoning you?

Will you take this gift, this offer of freedom and embrace it?

As Mary is confronted by the Angel...Hail full of grace!
and as she responds...saying be it done to me according to your word
so the angel says to her this new promise, The Lord be with you
The gift, the grace, the promise of Christmas
as we open ourselves to the sometimes, often, maybe even usually difficult of grace
we encounter Immanuel- God with us
The gift is here, accept it...full of grace
And May the Lord be with you.