Central Church Port Kembla

There are different things in life that are invitations to us to slow down in this fast paced world. Some are natural, like winter; some are unexpected, like illness or loss; and others are practices we adopt to intentionally slow us down, like boundaries or spiritual practices. 6 people from our community share briefly how one of these things has been an invitation for them to live a slower paced life. At the end Caro reads two poems. These are ‘Sometimes’ by David Whyte, and ‘In Search of Quiet’ by Will Small.

Caro looks at our passage this month through a Christological lens that centres Jesus to see what might be happening. In this light we can read this passage as the anointing of Jesus as King, but a different kind of king to all other leaders in history and our world.

Luke shares a bit about his own journey towards feminism, as well as a brief overview of feminist theology. We then read the passage and listen to the voices of women in our church as they wrestle with the text.

After anointing Jesus with perfume, the disciples/pharisees grumble saying that perfume could have been sold to feed the poor. However, Jesus rebukes them saying "you will always have the poor but you will not always have me". As onlookers, or as people in a position of power, this response from Jesus does not make sense. We can only begin to understand when we look at this story from a powerless perspective. In this message, Oran examines these words from Jesus and considers why a powerless perspective on our own lives might be the only path to true spiritual growth.

Caro reads this passage verse by verse with a curiosity and an appreciation of the masterpiece of the Gospel of John.

We read the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and consider how it was an act of political street theatre. A subversive way that Jesus models a different kind of power. Caro then invites us to keep imagining ways we can live the alternate way of Jesus, and we look at the lives of three different followers of Jesus to see how they lived out the upside down kingdom of God.

In this episode, Oran looks at Moral Influence Atonement theory, one of the 7 prime theories acknowledged by the church over the course of Christianity. Within this message, Oran briefly looks at the history and purpose of Moral Influence Theory, and discusses the resurgence in its relevance in today's day and age.

Becca shares out of James Cone’s book how through the horrific period of lynchings in America’s history, Black Christians saw in their own suffering Christ crucified with them. Becca connects this perspective with all those who have been oppressed and brutalised through history, especially here in our own context, the past and present injustices done to Indigenous Australians. Music: 'He was Numbered Among the Lawless' Steve Schallert

Caro looks at a quote from Plato written 300 years before Christ which said that if ever a truly righteous man was to walk the earth, he would be deemed unrighteous then tortured and killed. Caro uses this to reflect on humanity’s tendency to always stuff things up, and the cross as God’s response: forgiveness, grace, love and mercy.

Oran chats about how hospitality and community are expressions of God’s kingdom and how we attempt to live them out at Central. We then wrestle together with how introversion, church trauma, burn out and Covid have affected how we practice these.

Carol talks some more of our values at Central, more specifically around how we hold our theology and how we work for justice.

Through February, we’re going to be looking at some values we hold dear at Central and Caro begins by looking at our value of developing a deep and robust spiritual life. At Central we believe that each of us is responsible for our own spiritual life and that involves sending our roots down deep into the rich depths of our faith tradition and opening wide to become places of refuge and life for others.

We look at the gospel text for this Sunday, the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3 and Caro shares some reflections on what the baptism of Jesus might reveal to us about the nature of God, and she invites us to remember our own baptism and the way God first wooed our hearts.

Caro looks at the life of Mary and the ways in which we can see wisdom for the spiritual life and how Jesus regularly does unexpected things that invite Mary to change and grow.

Oran and Luke look at the life of Joseph, what we know from Scripture and what we can imagine reading between the lines and both share their thoughts around how Jesus interrupts Joseph’s life with both challenges and goodness.

Caro looks at the parable of the persistent widow alongside the other passages of the scripture that sit alongside this gospel reading in the church lectionary. Through the readings we listen to how the Bible is in conversation with itself and what common threads we can see through the passages.

Brooke Prentis helps us read this parable through Aboriginal eyes and highlights for us some of the many persistent Indigenous voices crying out for justice in these lands now called Australia.

Too often our faith life/spirituality is reduced to obedience-disobedience, saying yes or no to God. But our lives and our hearts are more complex than that. Caro offers a way for us to pay attention to the resistance we might feel in areas of spirituality, and invites us to ask a deeper question of what we might be protecting, and what Jesus might be inviting us to.

The only way we have ever been able to describe the Kingdom of God is through metaphor. In this episode, Oran looks at ways different people, and people groups, have reimagined the Kingdom of God. He discusses the need for an ever maturing understanding, so the church can better reflect the Kingdom and identify it in the world.

Caro shares some of her own experience with healing and out of that talks about the tensions of an over simplistic theology of healing. She shares how holding onto faith, hope and love might be a path between certainty and cynicism as we wrestle with our hopes for healing and the suffering we see in our world.