John 11:21-27; 14:12 Teaching, training apprentices, rebuking religious leaders. Healings, exorcisms, turning water into wine, calming a storm, feeding a crowd with five loaves and two fish. And then the biggest of all: raising a widow’s son from death to life, and then raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus was one of the most unusual, noteworthy …
Sermon for World Day of Prayer
St Stephen’s Uniting Church, Sydney, Friday 7 March 2025 Sermon by Rev Tinirau Soatini, read by Rev Dr Rod Benson Greetings in the Name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ‘Kia Ora-na’, as we say it in the Cook Islands: which means, ‘To live on’ or ‘Continue being alive.’ To a Cook Islander, ‘to …
A grain of wheat
John 12:23-24; Luke 9:23 Sprouted shoots of barley and wheat. Walk into almost any church, and you will see one of two realities – either the predictable machinations of moralistic therapeutic deism and passive consumer religion, or the beauty, mystery and enthusiasm of a gathered community of Jesus followers, experimentally living out their faith. One reality …
Come and see
John 1:35-39 If you were a young Christian in the 1990s, you may have seen, or you may even have worn, a wrist band with the letters “WWJD.” It’s an acronym for the question, “What would Jesus do?” For the nerds among us, the phrase is drawn from the subtitle of a novel by Charles …
Mountains of Scripture (9): unnamed mountains of the Hebrew Bible
Sunset over mountains in Lebanon, to the north of Israel. Advent is upon us, the end of the academic year approaches, and for our final reflection on mountains in the Hebrew Bible I want to take you to a special unnamed place. There are many references to unnamed mountains in Scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy …
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