Whose faces did you see in this election? How did you choose – and why?
A rich but miserable man once visited a rabbi, seeking understanding of his life and how he might find peace. The rabbi led the man to a window looking out into the street, and said: “What do you see?” “I see men, women and children,” the rich man replied. The rabbi then took the man and stood him in front of a mirror. “Now what do you see?” he asked. “I see myself,” the rich man replied. Continue reading God or Caesar?
Exodus 32: 1-14 
Maurice Andrew puts the impatience of the Hebrew people into our context by saying:
This is like New Zealanders as they often act in both politics and in ethnic and social relationships, wanting to get on with things, making quick decisions. We think that not mucking about is realistic, when all along we have not admitted what the true foundations and goals are. Quick decisions favouring immediate goals cause time-consuming problems.
The story of the golden calf is grounded in our previous episodes where difficulty causes the people to see security in past slavery and fear the freedom they are journeying towards. Continue reading The Calf of Gold
Proper 22A 2020 St Ninians
Probably many of us carry in our heads those old images of Charlton Heston as Moses coming down from the mountain as a suddenly-old man with the stone tablets under his arms. And we often conflate that with Michaelangelo’s fearsome Moses complete with horns! What do we make of these verses in our context? Continue reading Cornerstones
Most of us spent time in our childhood
s playing in the creeks and rivers around our home towns. For me, in Cristchurch, there was the Waimairi Stream that ran through our school playground, and our local park. At school, in the pre-health and safety days, once we got past our years in the Infants, we could play down by the creek. Continue reading River Sunday 2020