Teaching with authority

Any male who had completed his bar mitzvah was eligible to read from the Torah in a Synagogue service and to offer commentary upon the reading. What the commentary contained would always be a reflection upon what the student had learned from his rabbi - who in turn would offer the insights that he had learnt from his rabbi - and so forth all the way back to Moses, the lawgiver. No one would ever attempt to set aside the Torah or to teach something that was contrary to it; no one would ever claim divine guidance or insights that could not be traced back to the teaching that they had received. The old ways and the received wisdom was always preferable to anything that even had the hint of something 'new' or 'radical' about it.

So when Jesus of Nazareth stood up in the Synagogue in Mark 1, and begins to teach something that no one had heard before, it is no wonder that his listeners were 'astonished.' And then he backed up this new teaching authority with the deliverance of a man who had many demons ...

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Recorded at St Paul's, Camden 6pm (12'07")
Sunday 04, Year B; Deut 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28

Trusting in God's goodness

The Gospel (Matthew 6:25-34) chosen for the feast of St Mary of the Cross provides an amazing antidote to the modern (and ancient) tendency to worry about just about everything - what we are to eat, drink, wear. Is the vision that Jesus expresses simply Utopian or does this teaching of Jesus and the lived experience of St Mary provide a most brilliant model for how to live in the present moment?

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Recorded at St John Vianney (08'08")

Namaste - Holy Thursday

Jesus was an endlessly fascinating character and a simply amazing human being. Across his whole life he never failed to love and bring life to the people that he mixed and shared with, as he taught and healed and forgave sins.

In more recent years we were inspired by the example of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata, still better known as Mother Teresa (of Calcutta), who taught “We can do no great things but only small things with great love.”

“I am on my way to heaven”- a sign on the wall of the dying and destitute in Calcutta – on the morgue. On the other wall it said ‘thanks for helping me to get there.’ Everyday we would hold the sick and dying; we are allowing someone to die with someone loving them. Everyday people would die – in the arms of someone who loved them.

Into the ears of each person who was dying the sisters and helpers would continually whisper: Namaste – ‘I bow to you.’ Mother Teresa knew that the true reason to bow to another was because of the presence of Christ within them, so Namaste developed an even richer meaning: “I honour the holy one who lives in you.”

In the example of Christ serving his disciples and washing their feet we see the very presence of God in our midst come to life. We are invited to reverence the holy one who indeed lives among us - in the Eucharist, but also in the least who live in our community and neighbourhoods.

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Recorded at St Michael's Hall, Holy Thursday (4'49")