Our Happy Places.

It was about 1969 when we moved to the family farm at Sheep-hills just outside of Warracknabeal. Christ Church was our parish church, as the Sheep-hills Church had become defunct and had subsequently moved to Halls Gap, where it continues a faithful, welcoming ministry to tourists and locals alike.

I was baptised and confirmed at Christ Church Warracknabeal. My father and his parents were all buried from this church. I learnt to serve at the altar there, and I believe the flickering of a vocation was sparked there. The sanctuary where I floundered and flounced felt like a warm, secure and safe place, and I wanted every moment of my life to feel like this.

So when I returned there for an ordination earlier this year, I found myself once again in that same sacred space, with the same windows, the same carpet and a doona experience of nostalgia and longing. Like fluttering autumn leaves, memories came to mind. It was almost as if I had just slipped into the dimension of my former life and there I was, as if I had never left.

I should not have been surprised about the potency and possibility of this ‘telescoping of time’. Whenever I am at the altar, I am also at that very first/last supper whilst simultaneously I am at the end of time at the heavenly banquet with angels and archangels. The party that knows no hangovers or ending.

I didn’t drive up to the ordination expecting such a humbling and delicious experience. The sense of otherness always finds me.

Where I have come from and who I was is the stuff of who I am. It is not something to be shirked or recoiled from but something to be rejoiced in. It was, is and will be, my happy place. And yours is…?

26/7/26

Love Has No Transaction Fees.

Today’s first lesson about Rachel and Leah is one of my favourites. It raises several questions, has lots to teach us and is just a jolly good romping story.

Here’s the go.

Laban has two daughters. The older one is Leah, and Leah has weak eyes. Rachel, on the other hand, has a lovely figure and is beautiful.

Young, handsome Jacob is a relative of Laban, recently returned home and back to his family. So Laban gives Jacob a job looking after the livestock. After a month, two things happen. Jacob has not only noticed Rachel; he has become besotted with her. The second thing that happens is that Laban offers Jacob a job.

“Because you are a relative of mine, you shouldn’t work for me for nothing. Tell me what your wages should be.”

Well,… Jacob knows exactly what he would like, and we hope Rachel had similar feelings. He asks for Rachel to be his wages.

“I’ll work for you for seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Laban is only too obliging. It’s better that you, a kinsman of mine, should marry her than some other man.

Jolly good. The deal is sealed. Jacob works faithfully for seven years for Rachel, and we have a rather exquisite line

‘But the seven years  seemed like only a few days to Jacob because of his love for Rachel’

At the end of seven years Jacob calls in the favour.

“Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to express my love for her.” My sanitised version.

So Laban brings together all the people of the place, gives a feast and then does something rather mischievous. In fact ‘mischievous’ is me dressing it up a bit.

Instead of sending the lovely, younger, comely Rachel into the honeymoon suite, he sends the older, squinty-eyed Leah.

It’s not until the next morning that Jacob realises what his devious father-in-law has done. He has woken up beside Leah… not his lovely Rachel. ‘Oh no!’  Or words to that effect.

Now there is a serious and obvious question.

How come Jacob didn’t realise who it was that was in the honeymoon suite with him? Was it that dark, were the sisters so alike, had he had a few too many wedding pan galactic gargle blasters or …

Whatever the answer, we will never know, and I’m pretty sure that in such a personal space and moment, it’s none of our jolly business much, and all as we are tempted to muse and speculate.

When Jacob confronts his father-in-law Laban about the trickery, we get a very glib, inadequate reply.

 Laban just trots out the standard traditional family line: ‘Oh well, it’s not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one, but  tell you what I’m going to do.  Finish this daughter’s bridal celebration week; then I will give you the younger Rachel also,…… in return for another seven years of work.”

And there’s another question here about the whole employer/employee, workplace agreement, minimum wage, enterprise bargaining, fair work commission thing.

Jacob is so entranced with Rachel that he jumps at Laban’s offer and works for another seven years.

Presumably this second lot of seven years was just like the first, and he could say again

‘the seven years seemed like only a few days because of his love for Rachel.

You see,…for Jacob it is not a transaction but a process. Authentic love at its finest has no transaction fees.

Wedding couples sign blank cheques to each other with their lives. Here, write whatever cost you like.

We also see this principle in the gospel parables.

Both gentlemen sell everything so that they might have the treasure or the precious pearl. The cost is irrelevant and matters not whether it is a pomegranate or a fig.

The only difference in the parables is that the first gentleman finds the treasure by accident whilst the second gentleman is on a specific quest, knows exactly what he is looking for and finally finds it.

And that is true of many of us here today. Sometimes we know the yearning, that craving, that aching God space in our lives and we go searching until we find him, usually in the most obvious places after all.

Others of us almost bump accidentally into God, or we realise that God has been gently nudging and bumping into us all along. Eventually we think. OH. It’s you! And we discover our new friend, our persistent annoying and loving God.

The same one who will give up everything, empty himself on the cross, not as a transaction fee, but to live out the process of love in betrayal through denial, upon the cross, into a sealed tomb and into magnificent resurrection. Similarly, we cannot buy grace, or His love, or friendship. They are freely given, as we must always give to him out of the finest love we can offer, with no transaction fees.

19/7/26

The sin of certainty … The holiness of doubt …

Today I would like to explore the possibility that Certainty is a sin and that doubt is actually a holy thing. This concept should be quite liberating for us, for we all struggle with doubts and we can all fall into the sin of certainty.

My inspiration for this homily is from our second lesson today, where St. Paul is writing to the congregation at Rome. In his letter, he is speaking about Present Suffering and Future Glory.

The present suffering is easy to see and understand. It is the here and now stuff. Visible and tangible. We all get that and can identify with it.

The future glory stuff is a little trickier. It belongs in the time to come, a place we cannot see and experience, but St. Paul assures us that the future glory will be infinitely and indescribably more thrilling and enjoyable than anything we can imagine. So he writes …

 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” 

Further, he points out that the sufferings of the present time lead naturally to the glory that is revealed to us. It's as if the two are dependent on the other.

So we get…

We share in his sufferings so that we may also share in his glory.

But this shift from suffering to glory does not happen instantaneously. It’s not a quick fix, a silver bullet. There is some waiting to be done in between times, and waiting, as we all know, can be downright excruciating.

But we ourselves groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies

And while we wait, we are in the dimension of hope and doubt. Every so often, an arrow with a message will pierce our conscious mind, and the message on this arrow is a simple two-word question.

What If?

And our minds and hearts are left to run amok with possibilities and conundrums.

What if this life is all there is? What if … I am not forgiven? What if my muttered feeble prayers and my countless tears amount to nothing, go unheeded and are just the gesticulations of a dotty old priest. What if … all this is folly?

So we wrestle, we doubt, we struggle, and we hope. Some of the finest folk who walk very closely in the presence of the living risen Christ are those for whom this arduous grappling is a part of their very being. They are all the more exquisite and admirable, for they get up day after day and consciously choose to walk this boulder-strewn track.

We are clothed then not just in sparkle and joy and feasting and laughter, but also in dowdy rags of doubt and hope. All of this, the desirable and the hard slog, are who we are. All are essential ingredients in the bread of life where you have to knead it … prove it and then just jolly well wait.

We hope and doubt because we cannot quite see what we are and what we shall be, but in this same cloudy hope St. Paul tells us we shall be saved.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Take out the hope and doubt ingredients, and you are left with the sin of certainty, and we must always consider the possibility that we will frequently get it wrong.

I conclude with something I wrote last year.

Once I went to see the film ’Conclave’. It was the fictitious story about the election of a Pope. Towards the beginning of the film, the Dean who helps to co-ordinate the trickiness delivers a stunning homily to the assembled cardinals, and I believe it is particularly pertinent for our diocese as she seeks a new bishop at this time.

“St Paul said, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians, who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church…is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you, there is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross.

Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty…and no doubt…there would be no mystery … and therefore no need … for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a leader who doubts.

And let him grant us a leader who sins,  asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.”

Allow Yourself to Learn

It was an incisive phrase I snatched from a sparkling conversation. The other person was of more mature years, but time had not dulled their mind or blunted their wit. The glitter of the conversation was nurturing and enjoyable.

‘Allow yourself to learn.’ In a rare moment of lucidity, I caught this phrase and clutched it tightly to myself. A lot is going on with this phrase, and here are just some of the bombs that go off once you light the fuse.

First, you have to own up to the fact that you get it wrong. To admit to the fallout and the bruises that are yours and those that you implanted (hopefully unwittingly) on others. Allow yourself the fact that you don’t know it all; you never will, but you are determined to go gently learning, always being patient with yourself.

Secondly, allow yourself to grasp the stinging nettle that it is OK to fail. It’s what happens after you plummet face down in the mud that matters. Do you lie there feeling sorry for yourself, or do you courageously pick yourself up, seek solace with a beverage and friend, and plot ways to avoid such a mishap?

All too often we don’t allow ourselves the space and massage of allowing ourselves to learn. There are lessons aplenty, and we should have learnt them the first time, but being mortal means that we have to repeatedly go back to some good old one-on-one tutoring.

Listen to that little voice that is too easily silenced ... It’s OK, in fact it is necessary, to allow yourself to learn. The stomping bullies of self-congratulation and self-righteous priggishness are our worst enemies and do us a lot of harm. They can, however, be easily vanquished by allowing ourselves the space to learn.

12/7/26

Hairy and Grabber

Usually in the homily we go straight to the gospel reading and have a bit of think and play there.

Today’s first reading, however, is a cracking story about a family with all its sparkle, joy, failings and contentions. As such, it is a good story for us, for we all belong to this parish family, to say nothing of our own families. So let us begin.

Rebekah, the matron of the story, is barren, but after a prayer from Isaac, she conceives a child. But instead of one child, she discovers that without the aid of an ultrasound, she is to give birth to twins. How clever! She finds this out because, literally, “The boys were crushing one another within her” Rebekah’s response to this crushing agony inside her is to confront God, who reveals to her that “two nations are in your womb” (Gen.25:23). Well, no wonder she feels crushed! Two nations!

Finally, the big day arrives, and “the first one comes out red covered with hair like a cloak, so they named him Esau,” a name which sounds like the word for “hair.” In families we often give each other nicknames, so I’m going to call him “Hairy.” Then out came his brother, with “his hand grabbing Hairy’s heel, so they named him Jacob,” a name based directly on the word for “heel.” I’ll call him Grabber since that is what Jacob will do subsequently in his life; he will grab for everything he can get, as today’s first lesson demonstrates!

Hairy and Grabber quickly grow up; Hairy is “a hunter, an outdoorsy guy,” think of the Leyland brothers. Grabber, on the other hand, is “a simple man, a tent dweller”.

Interesting, isn’t it, that two siblings from the same gene pool, with the same upbringing, with the same parents, born on the same day could turn out to be so different. Perhaps you know of siblings like that.

Sadly, it seems that the parents Issac and Rebekah have favourites. Another family quirk you might have noticed in families. Daddy Isaac favours ‘Hairy ’, the outdoorsy hunter, whilst Mother Rebekah favours ‘Grabber ’, who stays at home and helps with the washing up, the cooking and the laundry.

The author is keen to contrast the two boys wildly: one is a vigorous outdoor hunter while the other is a mummy’s boy, living inside much of the time. Grabber will also reveal his true nature as a master of deception and trickery. One day, Grabber is putting the finishing touches on a stew. It smells fantastic, and Hairy rushes into the tent famished. It has apparently been a poor hunting day, and he simply must eat. “Quick, let me have some of that stew,” he shouts, “for I am starving”.

Adroit and astute, quick-thinking Grabber sees an opportunity and says “Sure; but first, sell me your birth-rite”. The birth-rite is, of course, Hairy’s rights as the firstborn, the right to property, goods, and all the future promise of leadership of the tribe. It is, in short, his complete future existence.

His reply to this outrageous request is about as stupid and absurd as it can be! “Oh well, look! I suppose one day I’m going to die anyway, so what the heck. What in the world is a birthright to me? Besides that, I’m really hungry, and the stew smells delicious.

“But, not so fast!” Grabber says, “Swear to me now”, demanding from his gullible brother the ancient equivalent of a stat dec.

With no hesitation, the doltish Hairy swears to him and thus gives him the birthright. The text then markedly speeds up. “Grabber gave Hairy bread and lentil stew; he ate, drank, got up, and left” One can imagine a burp of satisfaction as he rushes from the tent. Thus Hairy “poured contempt on his birthright.” This sad tale is marked by both deception and naivety; Grabber gets what he wants, the right of the firstborn, and Hairy is deceived and left alone in the field.

No one comes out of this story smelling of daphne and perfume.

The parents both have their own favourite son.

Hairy is ruled by his tummy and doesn’t understand what he is giving away. Grabber is deceptive and self-serving. Yet it is out of this family and its descendants that the Almighty makes a great nation from which our Lord was descended, and therefore you and I as well.

We get another reference to this in the first line in Matthew’s gospel. In his genealogy, Matthew has…

“Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob.”

And if you are very brave and open up that genealogy wardrobe a little more, you’ll discover a few more shadowy goings on and skeletons.

‘David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife’. Mmm

It’s almost as if our loving Father makes a conscious choice to use the most appalling families to bring about his greatest triumphs.  But then, human beings are all he has to work with. People like you and I, who, if we are honest, can see a little bit of ourselves in Isaac, Rebekah, Hairy and Grabber. Human nature has not changed that much over the years, but then neither has God’s love and willingness to transform the wreckage of family relationships into angels and archangels, seraphim and saints. And that, my friends, is very good news indeed.

PS: I’ve Got Warts.

Apparently there are things called dating apps.

You can post a picture of yourself and a few notes.

Eg. “I’m bright, witty, intelligent and fun to be with. When I’m not winning marathons, I’m completing my PHD in metaphysics. I’m impossibly good-looking and part owner of that famous winery/restaurant that people flock to. I enjoy listening to and playing heavy metal music in my garage and at that seedy pub with the sticky carpet.”

Such a profile would create a lot of interest, and this lucky fellow/lady would soon be awash with prospective suitors.

Now all of those things might be true, but they don’t tell the whole story. We all have a murky side. The bits of us that are damaged and defective. There are always some things that we are not proud of and wish that we could expunge. In short…we all have some ugly, stinky, fetid warts.

This becomes obvious when true love meets real life and the chemistry of passion gurgles in the mundane laboratory of daily life.

We discover that we are not quite the dashing shiny saint we would like to be. The socks, the laundry and the way the dishwasher is stacked are issues of vital national importance. The church of God and the state of the nation rely heavily on these precarious fundamentals, and they are not negotiable. Ever!

So a more honest profile might read.

“I’m grumpy first thing in the morning. I once inexcusably broke someone’s heart for absolutely no reason at all. I am painfully anal about time, and on Friday night, after a bad week, I’ve been known to drink more than I should. I have a dysfunctional relationship with the people who love me most. Are you the person who can love me?

Yes, says the Master. I have already been loving you.

P.S. I have warts.”

An Attitude of Gratitude

I went to school a long time ago, like several decades ago, but some of the teachers are still memorable for very good reasons.

I guess we all had a Mr Grumpy who would come in, stomp around the classroom and toss the occasional well-aimed duster (remember those) at a student or the classroom fish bowl.

There was little Miss Timid, who was quite the opposite, and you had to strain to hear her. She blushed frequently, but she was interesting and taught us well.

Then there was bouncy Mr Kafoops. This guy was in a league of his own. He was bright, chirpy, and engaging. He was also patient and helpful. He willingly answered all of my dumb questions without making me feel like I was completely incompetent. One day, someone asked him where he got all his enthusiasm from.

“Simple" was his reply. “I come with an attitude of gratitude. Every morning when I come onto the premises, I am just very grateful to be here.”

To our immature minds, it seemed such a harebrained thing to say. Of course, we never thought of it quite like that. Whenever I went to school, the aim was to survive and not get detention.

Years later, in 2026, I understand what he meant and why his classes were always fruitful and anticipated.  Going into any encounter with an attitude of gratitude makes an enormous amount of difference. It doesn’t matter whether your encounter is with The Divine, your significant other, a stranger or a tedious meeting. If we meet others and ourselves with a healthy attitude of gratitude for just being there and being open to what might happen, everyone learns, and everyone enjoys.  Mr Kafoop’s attitude of gratitude was one of his finest lessons.

28/6/26 St. Peter 

The deal of a lifetime.

The usual path for the preacher on St. Peter’s Day is to point out that Peter wasn’t quite the steadfast and reliable rock that we would expect in a gold-class apostle. The apostle. The rock on which the Church is built. Sometimes St. Peter wasn’t rock-like at all. He was a bit rubbishy, a bit rubbly, a bit flaky. We think of his threefold denial on the night before Jesus died, his unthinking ear surgery on Malchus, the Roman guard in the operating suite of the garden of Gethsemane. And just where the heck was he at the crucifixion? It’s left to a handful of women, Mother Mary, a couple of vagabond crims and St. John to be at the cross when things are at their grimmest.

Then the preacher would go on to point out that this dubious humble fisherman became the rock of the Church, and if there is hope for St. Peter … then hip, hip hooray, there is hope for Fr. David, there is hope for all those who are gathered here today, and there is hope for those who are not with us.  And all this is 'right, proper and true'. God seems to enjoy calling the dodgy, the questionable, the unreliable, the shady, the shaky and the shonky.

But today’s gospel has none of those things. Today  we have a personal and poignant encounter with the Master and St. Peter. It’s just the two of them. In the conversation, there’s a bit of a Q&A, except there’s only one question and one answer repeated three times. Once would have been enough … wouldn’t it?

The question Our Lord asks St. Peter is

‘Do you love me?

Peter’s response is ‘Yes, you know that I love you’. Jesus says, ‘Feed my sheep’

Again

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes, ’ says St. Peter, ‘You know that I love you’

Jesus says, ‘Feed my sheep’

Again!

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’

Jesus says ‘Feed my sheep’

So what is going on?

Here are a few guesses. To my mind, it’s almost as if the Master is asking … Are you really sure about this, Peter? Really,… Really sure. And sometimes when we are a bit undependable, then perhaps we might need to be asked, or maybe we should frequently ask ourselves… Do I love him?

And having secured the positive response. Then… very well, Peter, this is what it will involve. If you love Him, then that love for Him must find outward expression in your care and love for other people. You can’t say ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you’ and then ignore the needs of those around you. The master's lambs and sheep. The lost, the stray, the wounded and the weak. Show me you love me by tending and feeding those who are hungry and in the muck of life. Put on your gumboots, walk into the dirty, watery dam of humanity, and extract the grimy, filthy. Hug the muddy wet ones, put them on your shoulder, take them home, feed them and rejoice with them, for they, like you, were lost and now are found, and there is the party of heaven to enjoy.

This is what I think Our Lord was alluding to in the second part of the job interview with St. Peter.

“When you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go,”  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

Because of your love for me, Peter, you must relinquish the leadership of yourself. You will be dressed in new clothing and led in ways that you did not expect, and that will be uncomfortable for you. You are no longer your own boss. I write up your diary, set your timetable, govern your activities and tell you what you should be doing, where, when and how. It won’t always be easy, pretty and pleasant, and it will cost you… Well, it will cost you everything.

This is the deal. The deal of a lifetime and it is offered to us not because of our flakiness and shoddiness and our past, but because the Master sees our potential and our future.

And there are times when we feel inadequate, that it’s not working and that only if I were smarter, quicker, more loving, more ‘rock-like’ then the church of God could be sorted out in no time. But it is in those honest moments of self-reflection when we see our inadequacies that we become fully reliant on Him who offers us the deal of our lifetime. The one who turns, looks us in the eye and simply says ‘Follow me’. Do we dare?

Nobody Wants This

‘Nobody Wants This’ is a Netflix series.

The plot revolves around young aspiring Rabbi Noah, who is set for promotion to his first big synagogue. However, he falls passionately in love with Joanne, a vivacious and attractive young woman who is of no faith.

The rub, of course, is that if Noah is to aspire successfully to the position of Chief Rabbi, he must break off his relationship with Joanne or she must convert. Something she just doesn’t seem to be able to do.

Give Joanne her due; she does go along to many of the Jewish celebrations, and she peppers her boyfriend with lots of curly questions, what-ifs, and how-comes. Whilst on the surface they seem to disagree about many of the tenets of the Jewish faith, another deeper chemistry is working its magic. In the debate and wrestling of theology, they are actually growing in their love for each other. They see, appreciate and admire the integrity that the other holds without hurting each other or getting petulant. Would that all our interfaith dialogue be flavoured with this understanding.

Something else is happening to Joanne, and it is through her struggle, questioning and discussion that she discovers that the Jewish folk enjoy tossing around the finer points of the law and teasing open what is important to them. Revealing to each other, a fresh and richer understanding of what has gone before and what it might mean for the future.

Joanne, in her struggle and grapple, eventually realises that she is actually a little more Jewish than she was before she met Noah. Perhaps there is a way forward for this couple after all. The good news is I know that this dynamic also happens in my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith and of no faith as well.

Go slow - think more, talk more, see more.

Just lately I’ve had to change gears as I go round the lake. I used to tear around as fast as I possibly could, and that helped with the bathroom scales and ego.

Now, I have to go around in first gear. Whilst this is a source of great frustration and angst, there are some pluses to this.

First up and perhaps most importantly, it’s easier to have a conversation with someone whilst you are walking along. Trying to chatter about chooks, the footy and the weather whilst you’re jogging and out of breath is well nigh on impossible, and the quality of the dialogue is pretty sketchy.

You have a much better encounter if you are just walking and have the time, breath and presence of mind to have a sparkling and in-depth discussion. The opportunity for a friendship to be found or formed is much greater.

Secondly, you see more. When you are focusing on your technique, stride and breathing to obtain the maximum speed, you don’t get an opportunity to gaze upon the outstanding beauty of our Lake. I never knew that there are real live pelicans who come to visit and paddle. There is also a vast array of bird life that flit, dive, fly and float. And was that a frog I heard in the marshy bit this morning? A whole new dimension has always been on display for me to enjoy. I just must have missed it in my breathless attempts to be athletic.

Finally, I have more time to think, reflect, plot and enjoy. My top gun/gear time was around the 40-minute mark. My low-grade first-gear approach entitles me to a whole hour of refreshment therapy.

Go slow - think more, talk more, see more.