Weep not for me. Weep for yourselves and your children.

On Good Friday 2018, Neville Watson conducted worship in the Wembley Downs Uniting Church and preached his last sermon. In his ... read more

Not long ago I went to a show called `White Spirit` as part of the Festival of Perth. Led by the haunting voice of Noureddine Khourchid, the son of a Syrian Sufi sh ... read more

Lent. We started this journey a few weeks ago when we shared in an Ash Wednesday service at the Church of Christ. It was a beautiful service led by Dennis Ryle, and perhaps not as dire as many of you might think. ... read more

You have to have some sympathy for Moses. He was in charge of a vast horde of refugees. They were escaping from Egypt - let`s face it they were kicked out! T ... read more

We live in a violent world, that much we already know. We see it on our screens, in our books and in the papers we read. People resort to violence, physical or verbal to get what they want, to seek revenge, to assert p ... read more

As the human race migrated to the four corners of the earth, they diverged into many different religious and ethnic groups. The human race, now 8 billion in number, is rapidly converging into a globalized society faced ... read more

Miracles. While I don`t want this sermon to be about miracles, or the lack of them, because I think the reading from Mark today says so much more to us about Jesus than a mere miracle worker, I feel that I might start ... read more

It is fairly clear that our understanding of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus are usually formed by our continued exposure to the traditional Christmas Story embellished as it is with beliefs that simply do no ... read more

The story of `Jonah and the Whale` ranks alongside `Noah`s Ark` as one of the classic bible stories, and amongst the few that children continue to know today. It was indeed comp ... read more

`Fake news` - `alternative truth` have been riding the airwaves as buzz phrases for the last little while (shades of 1984)! The notion of a perceived `War on ... read more

I feel privileged to be giving the sermon on New Year`s Eve. Christmas is over, both the secular festival, with its pretty lights and presents and the celebration of Jesus` birth, for us the dawning of a new day, a new ... read more

That excerpt from Miriam Therese Winter`s song takes us back to the 1960`s when we too were young and full of energy and naivety. For many of us the music which this particular song typified was revolutionary. Here w ... read more

Well I wonder what you made of those readings?! In terms of my own theological framework they are way past their use-by date. The one from Isaiah would seem to bear echoes of a vol ... read more

A couple of weeks after hearing a sermon on Psalms 51:2-4 (knowing my own hidden secrets) and Psalm 52:3-4 (lies and deceit), a man wrote the following letter to the Taxation Department ... read more

We live in a world that expects perfection. We are to have the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect children, and we are to be the perfect parents. Ouch, I think I might have failed there. I wanted the boys ... read more

First let`s hear about the Old Testament context for our Exodus reading for today. Some of you may have seen an SBS documentary not long ago linking the biblical plagues recorded i ... read more

From our first reading today we hear about Paul being in Athens. He notices all the idols the people are worshipping. I wonder what idols Paul would recognise walking through our shopping centres and su ... read more

In Isaiah, God we hear of a God who does not discriminate. All people are welcome in God`s house. God`s house is a place of welcome and prayer for all of God`s children, in ... read more

The way we usually think about God is that he will always say `yes` to us. He will welcome us, we say. He`ll accept us as we are: `Just as I am, without one plea`. He`ll love us, even though we might not love ourse ... read more

As ourIn Touch magazine and the front page of Revive remind us, this coming week marks the 40th year since the Uniting Church was formed out of the Methodist, ... read more

Two verses of scripture caused me some measure of sadness.

One is in John`s Prologue to his Gospel where it says, `He came to His own p ... read more

Introduction to the Reading from Acts

This passage of Scripture was a speech by Paul to the Areopagus. The Areopagus was a Council which operated in Athens from about the 5th century BC. It had ... read more

`Dear Theophilus, Many people have done their best to write a report of the things that have taken place among us. They wrote what we have been told by those who saw these things from the beginning and ... read more

Last Monday Karen asked me what my theme for today was going to be.

My response was Emmaus - the Luke reading.

This apparently was too ambiguous.

So several days later Karen asked me again `What`s your th ... read more

What is the worst thing you have ever done? Have you done something to hurt someone physically, or to hurt someone emotionally? Have you done something that has affected someone`s l ... read more

And so we engage with the Easter narrative once again - I guess the key question is what meaning and purpose does this nearly two thousand year old ... read more

ABC News Music

(Karen) This is channel JEW coming to you from Jerusalem on the first day of the Passover Festival of year 32, the Festival of Freedom which draws tens of thousands of the Jewish people to Jerusalem to com ... read more

`The Bible is an act of faithful imagination. It is not a package of certitudes. It is an act of imagination that invites our faithful imagination that makes ... read more

I feel quite close to this reading after our trip to Israel in 2013. Nev, Marg, Cathie Lambert and I spent two weeks driving around, visiting both the cities and the country side. As I think I said at the time, Jesus c ... read more

Having listened to the Old Testament lesson set for today, I am tempted to put my preparation aside and preach on the words, `Do not treat the deaf with contempt`. It`s right up there with the other commandments, ... read more