‘Touch and other double sensations’
HOMILY: Philosopher Richard Kearney describes the sense of touch as double sensation – touching and being touched – a figure for much else, including tact, vibrant relation, interpretation …
‘Bearing noble witness’
HOMILY: Standing up for what’s right and compassionate is to risk/live your life. Paranoid powers – gluttons and abusers like Herod – deeply resent social and political criticism, and prophets like John the Baptiser are undermined, ridiculed, imprisoned.
‘Belonging’
REFLECTION: This is an exciting and challenging time for the SSUC congregation-community-garden.
‘Kin and clay … stories and spirit’
HOMILY: The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) says that a person is both spirit and matter, eternal and temporal, and that despair (Kierkegaard’s word for sin) consists in clinging to one or the other.
‘Lasting fidelity and mutual affection’
HOMILY: My heart is like a singing bird …
‘Death and Bleeding: Gaza and Israel in Mark’s gospel’
HOMILY: You will all be aware of the conflict that is happening in the middle west (middle east) at present. How could you not?
‘This much at least … much more’
HOMILY: A poetic utterance by Jesus (in the context of friends troubled, bewildered) evokes all manner of settings. Rooms, mansions …
‘The beautiful shore’
HOMILY: A voyage to the other side may evoke curiosity, connection, communication; reaching out for help, overcoming confusion, affirming differences; transition, translation.
‘Bread broken and given’
HOMILY: “[W]e must not seek Christ’s presence in the dense reality of unbroken bread”, writes theologian G.P. Ambrose (The Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, 2012).
‘In praise of the Holy Spirit’
HOMILY: What Jesus says today about the Holy Spirit and about inclusivity/family can help us with our table talk about church repairs and future directions.
