(Matthew 15.21-28) – 16 August 2020Neil Millar If you’re like me, you’re both delighted and perplexed by this story. Delighted by this Canaanite woman’s faithful insistence and what it achieves for her daughter. And perplexed by the way Jesus speaks to her, at least initially; by his apparent disrespect and rudeness, which seems so out … [Read more…]
(Matthew 14.22-33) – 9 August 2020Neil Millar During my childhood and teenage years, I spent a lot of time ‘messing around in boats’, to quote Ratty’s words to his friend Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s wonderful book The Wind in the Willows. I loved sailing and spent most summer weekends racing dinghys somewhere around Sydney – … [Read more…]
(Genesis 32.22-32) – 2 AugustNeil Millar Last week, we left Jacob serving out a second seven years in Laban’s household in exchange for Rachel, as a wife. This morning, it picked up a further six years later. After twenty years in Haran, Jacob is finally leaving. There have been trials, but these have not broken … [Read more…]
(Genesis 29.1-28) – 26 July 2020Neil Millar Our reading this morning, took up where we left off last week – following on from Jacob’s dream. In that dream, God promised to be with Jacob, as with Isaac and Abraham, and through his offspring to bless all the families of the earth. Jacob made a vow … [Read more…]
Genesis 28.10-22 (19 July 2020)Neil Millar In the unfolding Jacob narrative, much has taken place since a youthful Jacob duped his twin-brother Esau into selling his birthright for ‘a mess of pottage’ (as the saying goes). Sometime after that incident, Jacob made a clean sweep of the inheritance process by tricking his father Isaac into … [Read more…]
Genesis 25.19-34 (12 July 2020)© Neil Millar In recent weeks, we’ve been reflecting on the book of Genesis – stories of the patriarchs (or ancestors as they’re sometimes called). Two weeks ago, we pondered Abraham and the Akedah, the perplexing tale of the ‘binding’ of Isaac. Last week it was Isaac and Rebekah in ordinary … [Read more…]
(Genesis 22.1-19) 28 June 2020Neil Millar This reading is surely one of the most confronting in all of Scripture. Its Jewish title is ‘the Akedah’ (the binding of Isaac), and I spent a year studying this text at St Mark’s. It fascinates and baffles me, and over the years, philosophers, poets, preachers, painters, singers and … [Read more…]
Pentecost 3 – (Matthew 10.24-39)June 21 2020Neil Millar Matthew chapter 10 is full of words that are familiar to most of us in the Christian church. One wonders if they were all originally spoken together as they appear here? More likely they were disconnected sayings which have been woven together here as a kind of … [Read more…]
Pentecost 2 (Matthew 9.35-10.4)14 June 2020Neil Millar ‘The church today is not as enthusiastic about mission as she was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, FD Bruner writes in his commentary on Matthew (2004.445). There are reasons for this, including our growing awareness of how earlier missionary endeavours were often tainted by imperialistic thinking … [Read more…]
(1 John 4.16-21) June 7 2020Sarah Bachelard How familiar are these words – ‘God is love’. Plastered on Sunday school walls and bumper stickers, it’s Christianity’s best-known slogan. But how hard it is to take in. Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests how not to hear it: he writes, ‘we must exclude any definitions [of this love in … [Read more…]