What’s on this week
NEWS: See what’s happening at SSUC this week …
The Contemporary Word: Easter
I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t explain the resurrection fully – probably not even partially. For me it’s mystery, and all attempts at rational explanations fail.
The Contemporary Word: Extravagant love
In each version of this story, which is told in every gospel, Mary says not a word.
Yet, in her silence, her actions could be said to sing: to sing of compassion and of extravagant love.
‘A letter to my home’
HOMILY: “I was young when I left home / But I been out a-ramblin’ ’round / I never wrote a letter to my home / To my home, Lord, to my home / And I never wrote a letter to my home …”
‘Lest disaster speak the last word’
HOMILY: Into a context of urgent and exasperated teaching on Jesus’ part (teaching about the need for love, the decision for love and life in the kindom) come two stories.
‘To carry and love what God loves’
HOMILY: I love the gospel image of Jesus as a devoted hen gathering her chicks; protection by way of courage and commitment.
‘Self-deprecating dignity’
HOMILY: Environmental activist Julia Butterfly-Hill argues that virtuous political action is meaningless unless those who love the world and its creatures live in truly sustainable and peaceable ways – cooperating rather than competing, sharing resources and ideas, and caring for one another in community.
‘New identities, relations’
HOMILY: The ashes, carbon crosses, symbolise our repentance and reorientation.
‘Not just any dream will do’
HOMILY: Two dreams: the dream of reconciliation; the dream of peace (non-violence, love). Desmond Tutu refers to the reign of God as “God’s dream”.
‘Lifting up and bringing down – love on the level’
HOMILY: “It is the vulnerable who make the world safe for humanity,” says biblical scholar Brendan Byrne in conclusion to a three-page commentary on today’s gospel. Byrne’s refrain repeats with a difference the words of Jesus: “You who are poor are blessed, for the reign of God is yours.”
