‘Return to the world’
HOMILY: Our gospel traces a movement of faith from loving kindness to emptiness, encounter with strangers/angels, then memory, testimony, disbelief, action, wonder/amazement …
‘Dying is living more’
HOMILY: Dying is living more. How might we interpret this theme? How might we perform it? Play or pray it?
‘Loving as friends love’
HOMILY: Foot or hand washing, like breaking bread, means loving as friends love.
‘A counter-procession’
HOMILY: Jesus’ triumphal entry into the crowded streets of Jerusalem was a kind of performance art, an enacted parable that dramatised his subversive mission.
‘Mary the teacher’
HOMILY: Today I’m going to be talking about teaching, learning and wisdom – how Jesus taught, how the people closest to him responded to his teaching, and how we teach and learn now. I have lived my professional life as an English teacher, working mostly in girls’ secondary schools. Some years ago, when I worked at a Catholic school, we began all our faculty meetings by praying together.
‘Lost in translation’
HOMILY: “I once was lost, but now am found …” sings a former slave trader (John Newton, 1725-1807). Another hymn writer concludes a poetic account of salvation/new creation with the beautiful line: “Lost in wonder, love and praise” (Charles Wesley, 1707-1788). It’s at least as complex as this.
‘A measure of love, a matter of depth’
HOMILY: The call to change our thinking with regard to tragedies and blessings is at heart a call to eschew simplistic worldviews (prosperity gospels as well as theodicies) which serve primarily to bolster a sense of control over others, a sense of order wherein the interests of the powerful (the prosperous-blessed) remain central.
‘O people of religious zeal!’
HOMILY: I love the gospel image of Jesus as a devoted hen gathering her chicks; protection by way of courage and commitment.
‘Consider the lilies’
HOMILY: The season of Lent, which mirrors Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and temptation in the desert/wilderness, is a time of preparation and discipline when we reflect on the life and ministry of Jesus and renew our commitment to follow in Christ’s way.
‘By this light we are dazzled’
HOMILY: We are sometimes dazzled by power and money, by celebrity or aristocracy … by any number of smooth, shiny baubles – alluring, beguiling.