Matthew | Who profits? Who pays?

Once upon a time, there was a billionaire who was rather fond of cage fighting. But what with the collapse of an overseas stock market, and a royal commission, and a great deal of lobbying to protect his interests, he’d had a hard year. He needed to take some me-time, and chillax. But before he went away, he called in his chief investors ... a story and a hermeneutic. Read here or listen here.

Isaiah | The city of joy

A city of joy, its people a delight: this is what God promises through the prophet Isaiah. Sounds wonderful! So, what are the elements of this joyful city? First, says Isaiah, health and wellbeing ...

Read here or listen here.

Luke | The level playing field

“Blessed are you who are on JobSeeker or NDIS: for yours is the culture of God.” What?! As anyone who’s on one of these schemes knows, this means being constantly humiliated. It means being treated with suspicion and turning up to pointless interviews and jumping through arbitrary hoops and filing endless paperwork—and periodically having your benefits cut anyway. How could this be God’s culture? How could this be blessed? 

Read here or listen here.

The real #FirstWorldProblems

Many of us assume that wealth is a blessing and a privilege, but Jesus says otherwise. A reflection on one of his most ignored teachings (which, if taken seriously, would pretty much resolve the climate crisis and heal the world). Read here, or listen to an earlier version here.

In a climate emergency, Jeremiah shows us how to lament

According to Jeremiah 12, injustice leads to land degradation and species loss. In an era of anthropogenic climate change, these words have new resonance and show us how to lament. Read here or listen here.

Better a dinner of greens ...

I hate lockdown with a passion. And yet, there have been gifts. A reflection on 'steak and trouble' vs gardening, prayer and slow living, digging deep into the book of Proverbs. Read here, or listen here.

The courage to be worthless

The parable of the talents challenges us to speak truth to power, whatever the consequences. 

Read here, or listen here.

Ten words, three strategies, and a never-ending flow of life

 

Just imagine: You have been set free. Free from unreasonable expectations, casual contracts, and ever-increasing KPI’s. Free from the busywork of middle management and trivializing performance reviews. Free from the gnawing feeling that, no matter how many hours you put in, you will never know enough or do enough or be enough or have enough. Free from seeking other people’s approval; free from the need to be seen as helpful, powerful, successful, special, right, reliable, calm, happy or wise ...

Read here, or listen here.

Plagues, and other signs and wonders: A story for our times

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a nation whose gods shaped it into a pyramid of power. At the top was one man: Pharaoh: the semi-divine son of the sun god Ra. And as happens to everyone, Pharaoh was made in his god’s image. Dominating. Enslaving. Murderous. Turning the things of life—midwives, the Nile—into instruments of death ...

Read here, or listen here.

The loneliness of the Australian colonial capitalist

The deep loneliness of colonial capitalism: and some pointers to an alternative economy. (Read here, or listen here.)

Satisfying the Hunger Within

What are you hungry for? What are you craving? Food? Friendship? The dulling of the pain? An end to loneliness? The lighting up of the darkness? The warm embrace of love? To be hungry is to be human. To feed ourselves is to be human. And we live in a ravenous age. We are all barraged daily with advertising for things which promise to sate our hunger, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our desires, to heal the pain, to end the craving, to fill the emptiness within.

Read here, or listen here.

Prepare the Way: But how?

Advent is a prophetic call to go to the margins, and serve. Tonight's reflection from Sanctuary is available online here.

The Billionaire, the Stockbroker, and the Story Teller

Parables are like puzzle boxes. There are no easy answers, no straight readings. You can take a parable in several directions: how you interpret it depends on your faith community, your social location, your Biblical knowledge, your image of God, a good dose of the Holy Spirit, and—let’s be honest!—your mood. Now, most of you will have heard spiritual interpretations of the parable of the talents. In such a reading, those Christians who don’t use their money, time, gifts, and abilities to advance the kingdom of heaven will face God’s anger and judgement. But it’s interesting that nothing in the story says that the angry boss is God. So let’s swap the lens from spiritual to economic, and assume that Jesus meant the talents literally. A talent was a colossal unit of money, over a million dollars today: how might knowing this affect the reading? Listen as I riff on the story, and re-tell it in a modern context. Perhaps it will lead to a different place. And if it does, then, like all good parables, where you go from that place is up to you. So make yourself comfortable: it’s time for a story ... Read more here, or listen here.

A riff on Matthew 25:14-30 by Alison Sampson, Sanctuary, 19 November 2017 (AP28). Picture courtesy Winkelman, Roy. European Banknote Montage. 2 December 2011. ClipPix ETC. Retrieved November 19, 2017, from http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/european-banknote-montage.html (detail).

Walk like an Egyptian ... Into the Promised Land

As privileged people, we can’t simply claim the story of the Exodus without reflection, repentance, and concrete response. But if we are willing to hear God’s grief and anger at the suffering of the poor; if we are willing to acknowledge the horrors of our past; if we are willing to engage with the violence of our present, then we can move towards a different future.

A reflection on the plagues of Egypt is now online. Listen here, or read here.

Imperial Economics and the Economy of God

Jacob and his sons struggled to understand God’s economy. Jacob’s love for Joseph should have deepened his love for everyone, but it didn’t; instead, it led to a corrosive favouritism. Joseph’s brothers could have delighted in Joseph’s blessings and trusted it would lead to blessings for them, but instead they let envy consume them, and conspired to destroy their brother. And Joseph himself gave up on God’s economy, as he moved from saving the people to consolidating and extending Pharaoh’s imperial power. Like Jacob, Joseph, and the rest, we too struggle against God’s economy, living as we do in the economy of limitless growth. And every day we make choices about which economy we live in ...

Tonight's reflection on Genesis 37:1-28 and beyond is now online. Listen here, or read here.