‘A dwelling-place for God’
HOMILY: John’s Jesus is a teacher of Wisdom. John’s Jesus is also Wisdom personified, Sophia incarnate. The offence, the “stumbling block”, has to do with this.
‘By some other magic’
HOMILY: “To believe in God is to eat bread not by yourself but by some other magic …” (Joseph Pintauro, 1968).
‘Hunger and nourishment’
HOMILY: John’s gospel refers to the miracles of Jesus (and there are seven in all) as semeia or signs. John understands them differently from the other three evangelists, the authors of the synoptic gospels, who call them dunamis, meaning powers. John is telling us that a mere fascination with the miracles misses their deeper significance. A sign, by nature, points beyond itself to a deeper reality.
‘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 …
