People often stop identifying as Christian ‘because of Christians’ - because of what is missing in their lives. Young people especially and people who are marginalised can sniff out hypocrisy when others are not serious about what  Jesus took seriously, e.g., embracing the gospel of inclusion and nonviolence, of compassionate love and acceptance; of not stepping up to the mark when a genocide is occurring before our eyes; when religious freedom is demanded along with the right to discriminate; when fear drives us rather than loving responses; when we still proclaim a God in our own image who is not about spacious mercy and kindness but vengeance.

Peace Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console.
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

What is God up to? According to Jeremiah, religion is getting a complete makeover from something formal, external and calcified to something alive that can touch peoples’ lives. Jeremiah speaks of God’s desire for a new and more intimate covenant that is gut-located, heart-centered, and mind-penetrated. This motherly wants nothing to do with punishment and over and over again ‘gambles on love’. This covenant, written or tattooed on our hearts, is a law of love and care, not hate and punishment. As we see immense suffering, death and destruction through war and violence, great polarisations, nationalism, genocide and xenophobia, we ask how people who say they know God can continue by their actions or silence to allow dehumanisation, dispossession, oppression and exploitation of Palestinians, indigenous peoples, refugees and migrants to continue.

Third Sunday of Lent

In John’s gospel the cleansing of the temple occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The Temple was central to Judaism. It was the focal point of the nation and its way of life – its worship and music, its politics and society, its national celebration and mourning. This was the place God had promised to live amongst the people.

Second Sunday of Lent

In today’s transfiguration stories we are taken to high places - places of dreams and visions. In revelations there is testing where our sight is restrained, and horizons limited.  In Genesis, Abraham was adhering to the ancient Mesopotamian cultural requirement where firstborn sons and flock were sacrificed, but there was a moment of revelation in discovering that God rejects child/human sacrifice. Abraham listened to the God of life, peace and nonviolence, who not wanting death but life, said ‘stop.’ We see here the declaration that the God of life never requires human sacrifice.