Nineteenth Sunday of the Year

Like most people, Elijah, does not experience God’s presence in the expected places such as in power or violence of earthquakes, fires or winds. God is found in the quiet, gentle breeze by responding to everyday issues that involve service and solidarity with others. Today’s readings suggest that it is in precisely these places and situations that we experience and touch God. God cannot be encountered in withdrawal from life’s realities but by ‘walking across the water’ and trusting in the one who says ‘Courage! It is I!’  

18^th Sunday of the Year

It is difficult to avoid the reality of injustice and poverty today when we see the following Jesus whilst he is trying to find some space to deal with the murder of John the Baptism.  This murder gave Jesus a double warning. First, it made clear that anyone who criticised powerful people courted danger. We see also the tragedy of trivialising John’s life and mission because his death was due to petty vengeance and a drunken promise. Whatever Jesus wanted to do, looking upon the distressed people called something from him as well as clarifying his mission.

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Christianity is a religion of attention. Whom does one notice? What do we notice? Is it a person on the street or a person with a lot of social status?  This is connected with the image, a few weeks ago, where Jesus self-described as meek. I wondered how our worship spaces might reflect that and what material parish bulletins might highlight.

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year 2020

The gospel continually calls us to build a culture of active response in the face of injustice to transform our world and doing relationships differently. According to the gospel Jesus reminds us that God knows we are almost never wholly one thing. We are capable of good and not so good. In reality, our lives and our world consist of good and evil, justice and injustice, life and death, joy and sorrow which live side by side. This is what God’s reign is like and it continues to be present despite the so-called ‘weeds’ and ‘wheat’.  

Fifteenth Sunday of the Year 2020

When Jesus is with people something always important is happening. He uses their language to communicate something about God and about ourselves. Jesus refers to the openness of heart to the message of God’s reign with various descriptions of soil. We often ask Who is the sower? God? Yes. Jesus? There probably is no right or wrong answer except that God is always sowing life in ours. St. Paul today says, ‘The Spirit of God dwells in you’ (Romans 8:9, 11). Without minimising God and Jesus here, we might need to expand and enlarge the possibilities so that the words of scripture might be given great chance to take root in our lives, to bloom in new ways, and to grow into something we never before imagined or thought possible.