The apostle Paul shares an image of community as a body made up of a variety of parts. Each part plays a vital and complimentary role in the whole. We explore how this relates to our own community – despite being too young or too old, despite chronic illness, despite being active but having little direction – despite all of these things each of us remains important and has a part to play in being the body of Christ.
Sermon Sunday September 27th, 2009 (pdf)
St. David’s Uniting Church, Oakleigh
Rev. Arnie Wierenga
The Uniting Church has as its slogan ‘Unity in Diversity’. Community is a difficult thing to embrace and maintain because of its diversity. We explore some of the apostle Paul’s reflections on community and consider how we are the ‘body of Christ’ together.
Sermon Sunday September 20th, 2009 (pdf)
St. David’s Uniting Church, Oakleigh
Rev. Arnie Wierenga
Jesus asks the disciples a pointed and difficult question about his identity:
Who do you say that I am?
Peter jumps straight in and gets the answer right – except that his expectations of Jesus as Messiah were very different to Jesus own sense of call. So Peter gets in the way and the challenge Jesus gives him provokes us to think also about what we expect from the Messiah.
We reflect on the difficult path that others have taken in answer to this question but also discover that we are not called to be bleeding martyrs but rather energetic and willing co-creators alongside Jesus towards God’s way.
Sermon – Sunday 13th September, 2009 (pdf)
St. David’s Uniting Church, Oakleigh
Rev. Arnie Wierenga
This week we find an astounding encounter in Mark’s gospel between Jesus and a foreign woman. There are many nuances in the story but on the surface Jesus calls and treats the woman like a dog. The encounter is not what we expect of Jesus but if we look deep both Jesus and the woman are concerned about issues of justice. While they begin at loggerheads they find the feisty encounter produces a new and unforeseen reality – healing is found, the gospel is shared, good news is no longer the sole domain of Jewish people but God’s abundance is for all.
Sermon – 6th September, 2009 (pdf)