2007

On the occasion of the baptisms of William Andrew Barry and Cody Jordan Frank Morris             It seems to have become my custom to have a more»

This sermon was pretty much unscripted, although it had been thought about at quite some length beforehand and then committed to memory and to chance.   I owe thanks for a suggestion in the more»

I’m not easily shocked.   But I was some weeks ago when some of the more senior – in terms of age and of service to the church – members of St Lukes, some of the more well-read more»

 A church group from the United States visiting the Holy Land went to the zoo in Tel Aviv.   When they came to the lion enclosure they saw a lion and a lamb lying down together.   The more»

 Welcome to the silly season. I don’t mean the crazy time of shopping and Christmas parties, barbeques, children’s parties and end-of-year functions for this organization, that more»

You get a pretty good representation of Christ as King in the stained glass window near the entry into the church.   Full of rich reds and golds, the window’s central panel depicts, in its more»

You may or may not have noticed, but for the past three months or so, the Old Testament readings each Sunday have been primarily from the prophet Jeremiah or one of his contemporaries, and then last more»

It happens to all of us.   Something turns out not to be how you anticipated it would be.   The quiet and romantic dinner that was planned was spoiled by the rowdy party at the next table, more»

When Robert Kennedy was running for president in 1968, in April of that year Martin Luther King was brutally gunned down.   On that day, 4th April, Kennedy had been scheduled to make a speech to more»

On the occasion of the baptism of Sophia, Marcella, and Paolo Cousens.             Nearly thirty years ago, in a previous parish, there was a more»

The police raids and arrests at Ruatoki and in other parts of New Zealand are put by David Clark in the context of ancient wisdom from a parable told by Jesus. “Luke,” says a more»

In his St Lukes Day 2007 sermon, David Clark finds in the prayer for the day a challenge and manifesto for the Community of Saint Luke. more»

           “’It’ happens!”   Normally when that is said, there is a “sh” in front of the “it”. more»

            If a friend came and told you he or she had had a dream where a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch moved unaided along an avenue more»

Temptation. We all know about temptation. It's always there - trying to resist that box of chocolates or the tasty dessert, driving that little bit faster than the law permits or not going back to the shop to say they gave too much change. In the popular mind, temptation is one of those inevitable realities of life, most commonly to do with a whole host of little things. Temptation is about individual choice at particular moments in time. more»

The American actor Martin Sheen tells the story of visiting Mother Teresa in San Diego in the early 1990s, along with a popular motivational speaker. This speaker was in great demand, appearing frequently on television, addressing conventions and business conferences, telling people how they could become successful. He is a tall, outgoing man, and he towered over the diminutive Mother Teresa when they met. more»

On the occasion of the baptism and confirmation of Sophie Parnham,

and the confirmation of Andrew Colgan, in St Lukes Church.

The Taiz?ɬ© Community in France, an ecumenical and international monastic community founded soon after World War Two, has a practice which must have historians calling for the smelling salts. Or, at least, it had this practice when I read about it thirty or so years ago.
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A spiritual or religious experience - such experiences are given a variety of names - can arise out of any kind of circumstance. Frequently it may arise out of that kind of very human experience many of us have, the kind of situation where you have been wrestling in your mind with some kind of issue and nothing seems to come together. It is the experience some people call ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwriter's block?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, for instance, and eventually they give up thinking about - and then it comes to them. Most people know the essence of the story of Archimedes, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, who had been wrestling with a mathematical problem, couldn't solve it, decided to have a bath, then suddenly realised through the displacement of water when he got into the bath the means to solve the problem he had been set, and apparently ran naked through streets to his office shouting ?¢‚Ǩ?ìEureka!?¢‚Ǩ¬ù (?¢‚Ǩ?ìI have found it!?¢‚Ǩ¬ù). more»

First Corinthians 13 stands as one of the great passages on love in any language. It is not necessarily explicitly Christian and so has universal appeal and application - from marriage and family life to all forms of human relationships whether on the personal or on the more corporate plane. It has a beauty all of its own both in contemporary versions or in the King James version which many of us originally knew and grew up with, with its memorable phrases like ?¢‚Ǩ?ìthrough a glass darkly.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù more»

Many years ago when I was still a student, I read somewhere an anecdote that went something like this: One evening in 1915 two meetings were held in different buildings in the same street in Moscow. At one meeting, leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church met to discuss appropriate colours for priestly vestments in the Orthodox Church. At the other meeting, members of the Bolshevik party met to plan the Russian Revolution which - I am sure the passage said - ?¢‚Ǩ¬ùwas to change the world forever". more»