Category: Sermons

“You see, it’s a liturgical world out there, and we’re all wired up as liturgical creatures who run on repetition and habit. And when you think about it, how could there be anything new if there was nothing old, or anything spontaneous if there was nothing planned?” (John Leach) May we discover a deep, practical, generous, and compassionate trust in...

Readings: Psalm 146 and Mark 12:38-44 With a close read, we notice how these beloved Biblical figures were failed by systems that should have sustained them. But for those who are failed by humans, God intervenes, offering them back the pleasure of life theyalways deserved. The Divine is made manifest in full stomachs, security, and broken chains! May we discover...

Psalm 144 is a Passover psalm and no doubt that is why the lectionary uses it at Easter. It celebrates the physical events from the Exodus out of Egypt and the desert wanderings in a poetic way – the Red Sea looked and ran away, the river Jordan stopped in its tracks, the mountains skipped like goats and the hills...

What river runs through your life? Maybe you lived by it.  Maybe you holidayed beside it. What did your river teach you? This is the Tawa Union Church logo.  I am told it is a depiction of a braided river.  What does the logo represent for us?  What does it say about who we are and what we value? I...

You know the story of the Emperor’s new clothes. The Emperor was a very vain man.  He loved fine clothes.  A parade was coming up on his Imperial calendar; it was time to get a new outfit.  So tailors were invited to come up with something that was fit for an Emperor. Two confidence tricksters, who knew of the Emperor’s...

We have heard the story of Esther- the courageous wife and queen. We have heard the story of Ruth, the loyal and loving daughter in law. Today we come to the story of Mary, a woman who is famous for being a mother – the mother of Jesus. Amid Catholic and orthodox circles Mary receives a lot more attention than...

It had been a bad day… a really bad day.  When Ella thought about it, it was hard to think of anything that had gone right.  She had woken up late, and by the time she got down to breakfast her little brother had eaten the last of the Coco Pops, and that had meant that Ella had had to...

I worked with university students for a while. I can remember reading over an essay for an overseas student once to check his grammar. It was an economics essay from memory. It was full of unnecessarily big words! Even more than a subject like economics would normally use. It was as though he had gone to the thesaurus and picked...