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The great inspiration of Mary

Christmas is nearly here and this week we light the fourth Advent candle, the candle representing love. Not the mushy sentimental love that features in Christmas movies and most nativity scenes but the practical and costly love that is at the heart of the biblical Christmas story.

Mary is both a recipient and a giver of this love. Gabriel greets her as someone who has found favour with God and who is given a unique role as the mother of God’s Son. Nothing in her life to this point would have indicated her readiness or worthiness for such a role. Hence Mary is perplexed but thankful that she has been chosen. Like many others in the gospel story she is a relative nobody just trying to live a faithful life and by God’s grace she becomes a conduit for God’s love to be revealed to the world.

She will of course give birth to Jesus and nurture him in faith as he grows up. She will watch as he begins his ministry of healing and teaching, and she will watch in anguish as he is later crucified. She will be part of the emerging Christian community of faith that gathers after the resurrection. She will love Jesus as only a mother can and will bear the cost of watching her son die.

Like others in the gospel narrative, she is not the central character but one of many characters that point to Jesus and the love of God revealed through him. I wonder how your life and your choices shine the love of God to those around you as you in turn point others towards Jesus.

This week we again have a combined collaborative service prepared by Heathmont, Ringwood, Ringwood North and our two Croydon congregations. You will see and hear from several familiar faces from Croydon and Croydon North. Join together at 10 am in your respective worship spaces or login at the following website https://nruc.online.church/ from 9.45 am.

Click here for worship@home resources.

Church@home, From the Minister

Blessing – and justice

After the year of 2020 that we’ve all experienced, who would like some good news, divine favour, comfort and joy? These are some of the blessings promised in the reading from Isaiah 61. However bleak the situation is facing God’s people on their return from exile in Babylon, God promises great blessing and hope for the future.

Similar claims are made in Mary’s song the Magnificat (so-called because this is the opening word of the song in its Latin translation) … God has done great things for those who fear him (like Mary), the lowly have been lifted up, the hungry fed. Blessings abound!

There’s just one small problem. Nobody seems to have told the leaders and rulers of the nations about these new arrangements. They still rule through military might and oppression, they still hoard most of the wealth, and they’re not about to give up these privileges, whether we’re speaking of the Romans in the time of Mary, the Persians in the time of Isaiah, or the wealthy elite in many countries of the world today. The vision we are offered in Isaiah and in Mary’s song doesn’t seem to match our world’s lived reality. So are these just idle promises? Or is our call to seek justice to turn the world right side up? When Jesus preached on the Isaiah passage (as recounted in Luke 4), his audience were quite happy to accept God’s blessings but far less keen to share them with others. They were also angry that Jesus didn’t stress God’s judgment on their enemies. It seems that our sense of and commitment to justice may not match that of Jesus. Will we accept both God’s blessing and God’s call to seek justice?

This week we again have face-to-face worship at Croydon North this Sunday. For Croydon North people who want to attend, the service will start at 10 am in the worship space as per the old pattern. For Croydon people, the service will be broadcast via Zoom at 10 am in the worship space.  For everyone else, this worship service will be streamed via Zoom in the usual way (fingers crossed that the technology all works as planned). So please come along to either venue or login to Zoom from 9.45 am.

We will be basing our worship on the attached worship@home resource for this week, so it would be handy for those on Zoom to have a copy present.

Click here for worship@home resources.



Church@home, From the Minister,

A new beginning

This week still feels like a new beginning – as we will be gathering together for the first face-to-face worship at Croydon in many months. The whole season of Advent is about beginnings – the beginning of the church year, the beginning of the hope and promise of the Messiah, the beginning of the good news of Jesus.

In the reading from Isaiah, God’s people are invited to imagine a new beginning in their relationship with God and in a promised return to their home in Jerusalem. Their past sins will be wiped away and God will prepare the way through the desert for their journey. It will be like a new Exodus for the people.

The opening verse in Mark’s gospel reads ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ’. It’s not immediately clear whether the beginning stands for the whole Gospel to follow or for the ministry of John who is preparing people for the coming of Jesus. Mark identifies John as the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah 40:3, indicating that the good news is beginning in the wilderness, at the margins.

I wonder what new beginnings you have experienced this year? Perhaps learning new ways to keep in touch with others? New ways to shop? New ways to worship God at home? Has it felt like a wilderness experience that caused you to trust more in God’s provision?

More exciting news this week as we begin face-to-face worship at Croydon  this Sunday for the first time in over 8 months. For Croydon people who want to attend, the service will start at 10 am in the worship space as per the old pattern. For Croydon North people, the service will be broadcast via Zoom at 10 am in the worship space.  For everyone else, this worship service will be streamed via Zoom in the usual way (fingers crossed that the technology all works as planned). So please come along to either venue or login to Zoom from 9.45 am.

We will be basing our worship on the attached worship@home resource for this week, so it would be handy for those on Zoom to have a copy present.

Click here for worship@home resources.

Church@home, From the Minister,

Practical faith

There has been a long theological debate – lasting millennia – about the relative importance of faith and works. As Protestants, we may recall that this was one of the key turning points of the Reformation with Luther and others arguing that we are saved by faith alone.

I think it would have been fun – and informative – to host a debate between the apostle Paul and the writers of the Gospel of Matthew and the letters of James and John. Paul and John insist that we are saved by faith alone yet encourage their communities to act with compassion towards the poor and needy. Matthew and James insist that it is our works of mercy and compassion that demonstrate our faith and that without them our faith is useless. Yet each of these writers assumes we have faith in God.

In this week’s parable about the sheep and the goats it is interesting that faith is never mentioned as a criterion for obtaining eternal life – whether faith in God or faith in Jesus. Instead it is whether people have shown practical love to the hungry, the homeless and the stranger. This is consistent with the teaching and ministry of Jesus presented throughout Matthew’s Gospel. What is at stake is how our faith is lived out in practice.

Our challenge is finding the right balance between our beliefs and how we live, which are like two sides of a coin. One way forward is by taking to heart verses like Micah 6:8:

God has shown you, O human, what is good:
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice
and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God.

We will be holding a Zoom worship meeting this Sunday morning from 9.45 am. I will host the meeting from my home but it will be an opportunity to hold a larger (virtual) gathering and to see each others’ faces. We will be basing our worship on the attached worship@home resource for this week, so it would be handy to have a copy present. We can send you a link to the meeting or a phone number and meeting details if you sign up by emailing the Croydon UC church office on office@croydon.unitingchurch.org.au or using the form in the sidebar.

Click here for worship@home resources

Church@home, From the Minister,

Living in community

Building strong relationships is hard work. Of the many aspects involved, we might choose the following as important requirements: availability, mutual respect, communication, shared interests and time.

Leaders in the early church had a challenging role to bring communities together and help them come to a common sense of identity and purpose, given the diverse religious and social background of the members. The writer to the Colossians lists some key ingredients that they saw as necessary. One was obviously a shared faith in Jesus as Lord and recognition of the God of Israel as the one true God. Beyond these core faith commitments are listed compassion, kindness, humility, willingness to forgive, love and thankfulness.

This week as we come together with our friends from Croydon Parish Players to celebrate their 63 years of performing theatre together and to bless them for the next chapter in their journey, it is worth noting that what makes this group tick – beyond a shared passion for theatre and performance – is their emphasis on building Christian community. It is this aspect that attracts and grows their members. The question for all of us is how are we making the investments needed to build strong, deep and resilient communities?

From the Minister,