Come and join us for a beautifully simple experience as we create a space to walk a Labyrinth, reflect, pray, listen. Wander and wonder.

There will be a short introduction to help everyone understand the Labyrinth and how to walk it, and then an open space for you to walk at your own pace, and/or just sit on the side and pray.

If you haven’t walked a Labyrinth before, we encourage you to come and experience it.

21 March 2010

7pm-8.30pm

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers and half-truths

May God bless us with discomfort at superficial relationships

So that we may live deep within our hearts

May God bless us with anger at injustice and oppression

May God bless us with anger at exploitation of all people

So that we may work for justice and freedom

So that we may work for freedom and peace

So that we may work for justice

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, starvation and war

So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them,

and turn their pain, their pain, into joy

And may God bless us with enough foolishness

to believe that we can make a difference in this world

So that God can do what others claim cannot be done

Amen

The extraordinary thing about Jesus is this capacity to recognize the frailty of others, because he is acutely aware of his own human frailty.

He has looked upon, existed within it, and knows it, as we saw last week in the desert. Today we see that he has the capacity to look on the folly of Jerusalem, for he realizes just what is being lost. Sure, he is angry at the injustice meted out on the poor and marginalized… but the reality is that he knows the authorities are cooking their own goose. He knows that ultimately, injustice and oppression lead to self-destruction. He knows that power breeds greed breeds division breeds destruction. And that has been the story of Jerusalem from that day to this. It is the story of the politics of church.

But there must be something more than politics and power that can unite, heal, restore. And that has to do with this picture of a man who discovers a clarity about who he is in God that can name reality as it is, aware that it will have a dramatic outcome for himself, but who also knows that he is part of a larger picture of the love of God that needs to find expression in the world. There is a perspective that acknowledgment that God’s expression transcends the bounds of establishment and reaches to the margins… right out, indeed, to where we are at. The Lenten story must be taken into our own story, where we can recognize Jesus in our world, walking the walk of integrity, walking along those who have been marginalized and wounded.

If we don’t do that, it is at our peril. If we don’t listen to the dissonant voices of the prophets, then we are deaf to what is going on around us. If we don’t look beyond to the plight of others, if we don’t become advocates for the marginalized, if we get too busy to cook a meal for the hungry, or close our door on an artist who is too much trouble, or refuse to take the risk to let someone in, if we forget that the bush is struggling with the worst drought in history and that farmers are being pushed off the land, if we close our eyes to the needs of our global village, then we will shoot ourselves in the foot. Our empty words will become the bullets. It’s a big challenge. But it is a challenge that will keep us honest.

Anne

When the adverts offer us everything,

If only we have the money;

And you offer everything

If only we do without,

Lord, help us to say ‘no’;

When the easier way to succeed

Means we lose our integrity,

But the harder way,

Means we lose our pride,

Lord, help us to say ‘no’;

Today, we wonder what it is to see and then be transformed in our ways of being. Indeed, what is the connection between eyesight and insight, and what does it mean to allow our seeing to be shaped by our believing… or is it our believing to be shaped by our seeing?

Nathan Nettleton takes the reading from 2 Corinthians, and plays with the imagery around sight and blindness… and what it means for us to take the wool from our eyes. Let’s read his word in the belief that when we have eyes to see, we will see indeed. “The hope we have in the new life-giving ways of the Spirit fills us with confidence to live our faith openly — more openly even than Moses. His face was aglow with the glory of God after he received the written law, but he put a scarf over his face so that the people wouldn’t see how quickly it faded.  The Lord and the Spirit are one and the same, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the freedom to see clearly. The wool is pulled away from our eyes and we come face to face with the glory of God. This experience is truly transfiguring! We are set ablaze by the Spirit — lit up like the Lord — so that more and more we become like mirrors reflecting the glory of God.

We have nothing to hide then, and no reason to lose our nerve, for God has been incredibly generous in trusting us with a share of this work. We have sworn off any methods that we’d be ashamed to have brought to light. We don’t hide behind masks; we don’t do anything shifty or manipulative; and we don’t twist God’s word to promote our own agendas.

Instead, we simply lay all our cards on the table and let our integrity speak for itself. By stating it plainly and living it openly in the sight of God, we give everyone the opportunity to make up their own minds about the truth.

2 Corinthians 3:12 – 4:2

The year is almost a month old, and we greet you from the first ‘record’ of the year. It won’t be long before we are back in a rhythm of our days, and the months will swing by. The question I wonder about as we engage this year, is how we can honour our experience of life, with all its highs and lows, and discover God within it… and how we can do that authentically, without compromising our connection to the Christian Story. This question presupposes that we experience God, rather than talk about God. Our experience is our primary way of connecting with God and the language we use to describe that is a secondary thing, rather than the focus. And I suspect that this is a risky business, perhaps even dangerous in terms of our preservation of the tradition. That is, ensuring we are authentic to our Gospel story and our experience of God is important.

Risk elicits lots of possible responses – fear and retreat, anger and attack, abandonment, excitement… but primarily I’d like to think that risk invites a response of trust. Trust in a Spirit of God who will always enliven, always draw toward truth. In the cry of the Psalmist, the present experience is being enlivened by the dynamic of the Spirit of God. And in the cry we have to God, we open ourselves to the larger experience of our being in God. And, yes, if there is no reference to Scripture or tradition, then there may be even greater risk. But experience itself is not contained by doctrine but enriching of it. We must take the risks if we are to live. And risk acknowledges our vulnerability and our frailty and people, and calls us to life anyway.

I wonder how the year will unfold, what creative adventure will be before us! I look forward to sharing the journey with you, and as a community exploring the way forward. I hope you can put February 21 in your diary, for our first community conversation of 2010, where we can explore the creative journey before us.

This third Sunday of Advent we are greeted in our gallery with a simple nativity scene. Above the stable you’ll notice an installation of stars, each is a Bible carefully folded, to represent the meeting
place between heaven and earth. This story of the birth of Jesus is located in both time and place and transcends our experience of God toward the heavens. The story as told in our biblical narrative and embodied in the birth of this child, the Word of Life, prompts us to wonder at the experience of living lives that bear fruit in keeping with our call. The call of John the Baptizer to repent and follow a Godly way illustrated in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ. We are now called to be the living expressions of that hope, peace and love expressed in the Christmas story. Let us join together with our children in celebration and praise of Jesus our King.

Art Exhibition: Rhythms and Forms of Existence: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Until 9 December.

Evening of Music and Reflection- TONIGHT (Friday 4 December) 7.30pm

Come and experience the beautiful music of Variegations.

$10/ $8 Concession,   Supper included.

God’s steadfast love invites us to enter Advent by trusting and living out the realm Jesus proclaims. Prophets declare earth and heaven are astir with signs of a new day to come. The signs of God’s nearness and here-ness summon us to balance our longing for God’s coming day with faithful action in this day and to trust that God provides the way forward. The power of God breaks open the present to a future gifted with hope.

This amazing sculpture weaving of Mariette’s offers us another image – of threads woven together to form a beautiful bird soaring high, or perhaps a harp offering a melody. Each thread is part of the whole. Take one away and the weaving is diminished. Together they are beautiful, a creative flow that offers an picture of beauty and harmony.

That is what we look like when we work together. We have a common call to work together as the body of Christ. That means, sharing a gospel, a good news of serving, speaking, shouting a message of justice and love to the ends of the earth. And it means us doing that as loudly, creatively, excitingly, authentically as we can here in Box Hill for as long as we are called to do so!