Each of the gospels gives us a different portrait of John the Baptist. In the Gospel of John (different John), John the Baptist declares Jesus to be the messiah, and cries out ‘Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. Interestingly, in John’s gospel, Jesus does not actually get baptised. John is (we think) the last gospel to be written. But what about the first?

In Mark, we meet John clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey. John the Baptist is portrayed as the forerunner of Christ, preparing the way for him.

In Matthew, John the Baptist gets snippy. ‘You brood of vipers!’ is how he famously describes the Pharisees and Sadducees. Today we might say ‘a mob of snakes’.

Hills Anglicans

January 2, 2022

Sermon for Epiphany 2022

Hills Anglicans

January 2, 2022

Most of the time, being an Anglican is a very ‘mixed bag’. We are, after all, the church of Empire, complicit in the colonial enterprise – derived from a state church with an hereditary monarch as Supreme Governor. We’re not quite Catholic and not quite protestant, and our favourite activity is shooting our wounded.

But we are also the church of Desmond Tutu. Tutu was one of those Anglican leaders who meant we could hold our heads high. His exuberant energy, his terrific sense of humour, his confrontation of systemic evil, and his unswerving commitment to reconciliation and peacemaking. He was the best of us. He wasn’t just a social justice warrior or a preacher – he was also a spiritual being. His life was shaped by prayer and by sharing, usually daily, in the Eucharist. In a sea of bland episcopal functionaries - Tutu was a bishop with passion and vision and a fire in his guts. His vision lives on in myriad ways, but his loss to the Anglican movement cuts me pretty deeply, I have to admit.

Hills Anglicans

December 25, 2021

Sermon for Christmas 2021

Hills Anglicans

December 25, 2021

Earlier in the year we had a parish fire drill. It was quite a jolly affair, with a nice little briefing beforehand, lots of laughter, and when it was over we were all allowed to have morning tea.

Yesterday, at the Park Hotel in Melbourne, there was an actual fire. The people in the hotel didn’t make their way calmly to the muster point and await further instructions. Instead, they were contained on the ground floor while smoke from the fire above billowed around them. The doors weren’t broken. The people in the Park hotel are people seeking asylum, and have been imprisoned one way or another for eight long years. Covid has ravaged their hotel prison, with shared rooms, shared facilities, and nowhere to hide. Clearly, even an actual fire isn’t serious enough to merit the most basic safety measures. It’s inhumane.