Speeches from the Blessing of Restoration and Site Works

On Sunday 21 March we welcomed Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy to lead us in prayer and worship as we blessed more than a decade’s worth of restoration and site works.

Two longstanding parishioners offered their reflections over brunch. Here they are for you to enjoy!

Sheen speech.jpg

Sheena Wheeler

The Foundation Stone of St Cuthbert’s was laid by the then Archbishop of Perth Charles Riley on Sunday 13 September 1924.

The silver trowel (on display at the entrance to the Parish centre) was donated by the Riley family. The Church building was completed and consecrated on the 1st March 1925; The Church was dedicated to St Cuthbert.

In 1963 Geoff and I moved from Queensland to Darlington with two young sons.

 The Rev. Quinlan was the Rector 1939-1964.

The Rev. Leonard Quinlan was a much loved character in Darlington from 1939 to 1964.He taught Divinity at the Darlington State School. In 1942 Geoff recalls, after school he would occasionally take some of his class to Midland and buy them an ice-cream. His car was a 1936 two door Chevrolet with a Dicky seat. On his way back to Darlington he said the motor was hot, he stopped his car outside the Darling Range Hotel. Whilst the motor cooled down he went in to the bar and had a glass or two of beer. He then returned to his car and with the children he returned to Darlington.

The Rev J. Bowyer was appointed 1964-1970

The Rev. Andrew Donald was appointed 1970-1979

He was an inspiration to the Church community as he gradually restored the interior of the Church. The lead lined stained glass windows were installed during his time. They were gifted by many church families in memory of past parishioners.

On the Gospel (left) side of the Church are four windows depicting the life of St Cuthbert on the Baptism (right side) of the Church are scenes from the life of Mary Mother of Jesus.

The windows in the Sanctuary are the only windows in St Cuthbert’s of modern mode. Installed

On the North wall near the Sanctuary where a Pulpit once stood is the Aumbrey for the Reserved Sacrament. Installed

Father Andrew Donald was a very reserved man, who bonded extremely well with the more mature members of the Church, he had a congenial relationship with many of the congregation which was heightened with a glass or two of the finest sherry from time to time. At this time of his tenure there was an influx of many young families with young children which at times he found was quite an irritation during the Church services. I am aware there are still four or five of these 1966 Mothers are present here today.

Trish speech.jpg

Trish

Maughan

Keith and I builrt our first home in Darlington in 1968. A four bedroom brick and tile home was $11,500, the block cost $2,300 and interest rates were up to 17% - and the real eastate agent told us that housing prices in Perth would never go higher!

We began attending St Cuthbert’s while Father Donald was the parish priest. He baptised both of our children.

The change to the ministry of David Russell was quite something for the parish from his visits on a motorbike, to making a point by kicking a football down the aisle. There was a family in the new rectory and under David’s ministry there was a much greater youth inclusion when the CEBS group led by David and many local dads was the largest in the state.

David was followed by Ron and Patricia Pearce. At this point a dedicated groups arranged for the ceiling to be fitted. This was a great relief to the cleaners as drifts of white gum blossom would cover the freshly cleaned deep red kneelers. Unfortunately, ill health caused Ron’s early retirement.

We were then blessed with the wonderful dual ministry of Tess and Bob Milne. Tess is an amazing speaker and her sermons were current and entertaining to the old as to the young. At the time our young granddaughter attended regularly with us. She once asked me ‘Where’s God?’. As I prepared a proper Granny answer she said ‘…oh there he is’ as Bob emerged from the church. In their ministry, Bob and Tess faced some of the greatest challenges for St Cuthbert’s from the pain, anger and grief at the closure of Good Shepherd Church to the drama of the building of the Meeting Room. Meetings were packed with ‘concerned citizens of our iconic church’ who had never darkened its door. Evidently Beaty Chape’s address of this was something to hear. On the Monday the bulldozers started, Bob was expecting another flurry of phone calls but all was silent. They had moved on to a new cause.

From there we moved to the ministry of the energetic and charming Marie-Lousie Collins. Her sermons were entertaining and insightful and her group studies provided much food for thought.

Now, some 50 years later, to the ministry of Father Chris. From the beginning, a charismatic and truly Christian leader whose sermons made us laugh and think and ponder into the next week. Chris’s advocacy and work for all those in any need – spiritual, judicial, practical – takes us to the roots of our faith - though, like a beloved child, he has occasionally given us cause for anxiety.

As cherished and beautiful as the buildings and gardens of St Cuthbert’s are, it is the decades of ministers, parishioners, children, occasions, happy and sad, our faith and witness in the wider community that is the heart of our church.

From Charles Dickens: ‘God Bless us, every one’

Sermon 2 May 2021

1 John 4:7-21

On a few occasions in my life, I’ve been on camps and courses which have used the Warm Fuzzies activity to build group cohesion. Do you know about it? Each person creates a little bag with their name on it which hangs on the wall. Then the other participants write something warm and fuzzy on a bit of paper, and slip it into the bag. The idea is that everyone is consistently affirmed and affirming.

In reality, of course, it can be a tense activity. Who has decorated their bag in their best way? Who has the most warm fuzzies? Who has the least? I have vivid recollections of sneaking in after lights out with other staff to check that everyone has at least one, and covertly writing extra ones for those running short. After a while, people forget about it and have to be reminded, and there’s often one person who turns it into a joke. The activity is not as warm and fuzzy as you might think! 

When we read today’s appointed text from the first letter of John, we might want to come away feeling warm and fuzzy. It is, after all, all about love. Love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God. Love one another. God is love. Those who abide in love abide in God…. It’s like a Beatles song.

And yes, God is love. And yes, we need to love one another. And yes, in loving one another we know God’s presence. And yes, we are called to love God. All of that is true and important.
But to get a handle on the text, it might also help us to understand a little bit more about the Greek and Roman gods who populated the faith and worldview in the communities to which The Elder is writing.

The Greek and Roman Gods, as you might remember from school, are wilful and capricious. They are naughty and proud. They fool around with humanity. They have petty rivalries with one another and get into spats. They occasionally invade the human world and bestow kindnesses and curses. They are petulant, easily offended, and in constant need of placation.

One of the ways of placating the gods is through a hilasmos – a sacrificial offering. This might be something in the home – some fruit or grain placed before a shrine. It might be a more complex ceremony at a temple. It might require an animal sacrifice or some particular prayers or rituals to be enacted. The purpose of the hilasmos is to ward off the wrath of the gods, to buy you some favour and hopefully rebalance any potential badness that might be coming your way.

This is a major, massive contrast to the kind of love that The Elder is describing. Instead of an unpredictable and capricious god who might punish or reward you at any moment without warning or explanation, God is pure love. God is uniformly and consistently loving towards humanity, and this love is then reflected in our relationships with others.

It is hard to describe how different is this picture of God from the image of the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon. It is dramatically, radically, overwhelmingly different. It is almost the opposite of what the gods were perceived to be. And faith in this God, the one true God, doesn’t just have an intellectual effect on the faithful, it alters the way they relate to each other and to every other human being on the planet.

The Elder uses an analogy to describe how, through Jesus, we can know God. Jesus was sent by God not to toy with humanity, but to be a hilasmon, a sacrificial offering. Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection, abolishes once and for all the need for constant appeasement of the divine wrath. Instead, Jesus embodies the loving attributes of the divine and invites us to emulate them.

No one would want to emulate the Greek and Roman gods. They are to be feared. You cower before them. You try to keep them and their ill will as far away as possible. You don’t copy them!

But the God revealed in Jesus Christ, The Elder seems to be saying, is not only a God you want to be like – but a God we have already seen in human form, living a life based on pure, self-emptying love.

God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the source of love. This sounds familiar and reassuring to us, but to those early believers, this was a massive shift in relating to the divine. It’s no wonder they were struggling with how to believe, behave and belong – these were remarkable new concepts to integrate.

For these believers in their small communities, everything had changed. Faith in Jesus set them apart and set them at odds with the surrounding society and its expectations. It was no longer necessary to appease the gods through hilasmos. Jesus has brought hilasmos to an end. In this new way of being, the offering one made to God was love of neighbour, which was inspired by and flowed directly from God’s love for us.

 

Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!  

Sermon 25 April 2021

As a religion nerd, I was excited to discover that Brides of Christ is now available to watch on the streaming service Stan. When my Grandma died, my family inherited a set of DVDs of the ABC miniseries and I remember watching it during long school holidays. I rewatched the whole series again last week, and delighted in the impish naughtiness of Sister Paul, the demure wisdom of Mother Ambrose, the intellectual combativeness of Sister Katherine and the rigid severity of Sister Agnes. Plus, it has both a young Philip Quast and a young Russell Crowe in supporting roles. It’s iconic.

There’s a scene that stood out to me, and normally I would describe it to you – but today the magic of the internet and the blessing of the lockdown mean I can share a short clip. So here’s Sister Agnes being asked about the grave sin of divorce. 

Sister Agnes gave an account of the Western Christian view of sin, as it had evolved by the mid-twentieth century. The Roman mission has evolved particular nuances about mortal and venial sins, that we in the English dispensation don’t share – but the basic thrust is there. We are born inherently sinful, we then engage in sinful behaviour, and the antidote to all of that is baptism, faith and repentance. If you can hit that trifecta, then you go to the good place when you die. If you don’t, you don’t. 

The trouble with the formula is, who defines what is sin and what isn’t? Some cases are open and shut – if you go out and wilfully murder someone for no reason, then we don’t have much to debate. But what if you neglect a child’s welfare because you yourself are carrying trauma from your own childhood that incapacitates you? Is that sin? What if you exploit your employees because you’ve been taught that profit is the primary aim of life, or because you want the best possible future for your kids? What if you lash out at someone not just because you hate them, but because you’ve absorbed so much unkindness for yourself it just has to go there? And what if, to use the example raised by those bright schoolgirls to Sister Agnes, you get divorced not because you are traitor to vows or out of selfishness, or to defy God, but because your marriage is no longer a safe place? 

As a priest, people often ask me to arbitrate the severity of particular sins. I did such and such, is that a sin? How bad of a sin? Does it help that there were extenuating circumstances? I’m not particularly sorry – does that matter? Of course, I try not to get involved in the practice of categorising and ranking sins – but it doesn’t stop people asking!

Through the great fifty days of Easter, we are exploring the first letter of John. Two weeks ago, the first sermon in this series dealt with a bit of the context. 1 John is a letter from an unnamed person that we call The Elder, who is writing to a group of churches in a network. There has been some disharmony, so The Elder is writing to restate their purpose. In particular, there is a group labelled antichristus, against Christ, who have been dividing the communities.

In last week’s reading, we heard the following phrases ‘Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness… You know that Christ was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.’

The thing is, we use the word ‘sin’ all the time, as though its meaning is self-evident. But the word The Elder uses is hamartia which derives from the verb ‘to miss’ as in ‘to miss the mark’. The word was used in the ancient Greek-speaking world to refer to the fatal flaw in a hero that leads to their downfall. In the Christian scriptures, the term takes on some extra nuance – it’s not just particular acts or behaviours, but the inherent state of humanity. But The Elder doesn’t just use hamartia in a general sense to say ‘we are all sinners’, but to emphasise that there are particular acts that arise out of hamartia. So in English we say ‘committing a sin’ as opposed to simply being sinful.  

In today’s reading, which follows straight on, The Elder contrasts sin with love. It’s not completely explicit, but structurally it is clear that, having outlined the dangers of hamartia, The Elder wants to show the correct way. ‘We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death… we know love by this, that Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”

There’s a couple of key points here.
Firstly, this message is directed at those who have ‘passed from death to life’. Instead of inhabiting a body which is going to decay in the ground, they inhabit a body which will be resurrected into the new creation. Part of the evidence, or one of the indicators for this new life they inhabit, is that the old rivalries and selfishness can be extinguished, and replaced by mutual affection and kindness. In fact, The Elder makes clear, if you are baptised and you say that you believe, but don’t love others, you are still living in the old world of death. The love that he is talking about, he clarifies, is not romantic love or familial love or even particularly liking other people and wanting to spend time with them – the love The Elder is talking about is laying down one’s life for others. And then he clarifies even further, just so no one is in any doubt, that God’s love is evident when we have something, see someone in need, and help them.

This all brings me back to this question of assessing and categorising sinfulness. The institutional church, in her inestimable wisdom, has over time sought to provide lists and guidelines to help the faithful to discern right conduct. The trouble is, that the lists are usually made by men with a warped view of sex, and the guidelines are usually written by boffins whose relationship to the real world is a little skewed.

So I would suggest that we can learn a little from The Elder and their first letter. Rather than rigidly defining and tightly listing all the possible sins, The Elder takes it as a given that we all know when we mess up. Because, for the most part, we do. He gives us a picture of what doing good looks like, to help us work out what doing bad looks like. 

Perhaps it’s helpful to think of like ice dancing.

The Risen Christ has created a beautiful routine, a stunning set of steps with cool spinny bits and razzle dazzle hands and big sweeping loops and all that. When we are baptised and come to new faith, we start out kind of hanging on the edges of the ice rink, staggering along, falling over, taking our first tentative steps. We might look at Christ and think, I can never do that. I can never be so free and strong and full of energy. But the Christ is persistent, helping us, little by little, to soar. It’s a life’s work, and actually most of die before we get the triple whatsie turny thingo right – but the thing is, we know how it goes, and even if it is imperfect, we know the bliss that comes when we are in sync with the dancer and the dance, and we long for the day when everyone is invited to do the same choreography. 

Once we grasp that true love is to be in sync with Jesus, and sin is to be out of step, it makes the path of discernment a little easier. Of course, it makes the work of actually being a Christian a heck of a lot harder. But the Risen Christ hasn’t called us to a happy, contented, warmly successful life – Christ has called us to a life of sacrificial love. 

Christ is Risen, Alleluia Alleluia 

Sermon 11 April 2021

Sermon 11 April 2021

It was 40 degrees celsius and the bell had just rung for lunch on a Friday at a school where I was once Chaplain. One of my colleagues strode from teaching Year 9 English into the staff room and threw her books down on the table. ‘I don’t want to be melodramatic’ she said ‘but I’ve given it a lot of thought. And I’m pretty sure Liam Fitzgerald in Year Nine is the Antichrist’

Sermon - Easter

Sermon - Easter

There are activities that I mentally label as ‘compulsory fun’. Like, when you’re at a conference and there’s an hour set aside for drinks and nibbles, with the expectation that you will be convivial with a bunch of strangers? That’s compulsory fun. Or, when you were at school, and there was the swimming carnival and there was an expectation that everyone in your house or faction would be giddy with enthusiasm and want to scream chants about it? Compulsory fun. Or when, at Christmas or Easter, everyone must, simply must, go around to Auntie Maud’s house for a roast lunch because the whole family must, simply must, be together on special occasions, even if this results in a screaming match with Uncle Neville. Compulsory fun.

Sermon Sunday 14 March 2021

Sermon Sunday 14 March 2021

Another week, and another bonkers bible reading. I’m not gonna lie to you, I love this stuff.

Let’s set the scene. Firstly, we should date the text of Numbers. Numbers comes from the period after the exile in Babylon, but it is based on earlier texts. So the text comes from about five hundred years before Jesus, but the story is set about fifteen hundred years before Jesus. We call this sort of story ‘mythologised history’. It is based, perhaps, on some factual events, but transformed into literature as a foundational story for the Israelite people. A comparison would be Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte D’Arthur about a thousand years after the King Arthur events are purported to have happened.

Sermon Sunday 7 March 2021

Sermon Sunday 7 March 2021

So, the ten commandments. Where to begin?

The Hebrew scriptures use the phrase aseret hadibrot twice. It translates as ‘ten statements’ or ‘ten utterances’. When translated from Hebrew into Greek, it becomes dekalogos which means ‘ten words’. Early English translations of the scriptures varied, with some writing ‘ten verses’ but it was the King James Version that won out, with its use of the term ‘ten commandments’. I’m going to use the phrase, because it’s one we all understand, but it’s good to remember that when we say ‘the ten commandments’ it is an inaccurate translation of the Hebrew.

Sermon Sunday 28 February

Sermon Sunday 28 February

My friend Janelle Koenig, who is a comedian and radio host here in Perth recently recounted a story of a childhood visit to her Grandma.

‘One school holidays when I was 9, I had read all my books and was pestering Grandma to give me one of hers to read. She grabbed the biggest, thickest book she had on hand at the time, never thinking I’d even attempt to read it.’

Sermon Sunday 21 February

Sermon Sunday 21 February

We are observing the first Sunday of Lent today, having observed Shrove Tuesday on Tuesday and Ash Wednesday on Wednesday. Like every Lent, our language and customs point us towards our sinfulness, brokenness and weakness – both individually and corporately. This also happens to be the Sunday when Sandy from Koolkuna is joining us to remind us of the important work they do for women experiencing violence. By coincidence, perhaps, this is the end of a week in which Brittany Higgins, who worked in Parliament House, exposed her experience of violence and abuse at the hands of a male colleague. We have seen the political and systemic response, and it has been clearly lacking.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Back in the distant days of my youth, there was a kid in my church youth group called Joel. We called him Rolly Polly Joely. Children are cruel. Anyway, Joel went on to become a bodybuilder and here I am, rotund as ever. He really showed us.

The prophet Joel, or JOH-EL is one of the minor prophets, which is hardly a nice way to describe someone. There’s almost nothing we can know about him, and we have just three chapters of text attributed to him at the tail end of the Hebrew scriptures. He gets two moments in the sun, really. Firstly, Joel includes the text:

Sermon, 14 February 2021

Sermon, 14 February 2021

In the last two weeks, like most of you I have work a face mask when I left the house. I wore a face mask to walk the dog. I wore a face mask to Spotlight. I wore a face mask to Bunnings. Twice. I wore a face mask at the podiatrist and I wore a face mask to pick up six cinnamon donuts at Donut King. I took my mask off to eat them.

Scientifically, I fully support face masks to stop the spread of aerosol viruses. As a practical matter, I suspect that like many Western Australians, I experienced the mask as a shock to the system. It was constrictive. You had to learn to breathe differently. The facial recognition on my phone didn’t work and I discovered how much I rely on lip-reading to understand what people say. Today is our first day without face masks, and I feel like John Keats on first looking into Chapman’s Homer.

Sermon for Sunday 31 January 2021

Sermon for Sunday 31 January 2021

The author Fran Lebowitz features in a new Netflix special called Pretend It’s a City. She’s acerbic and sardonic, and throughout the short series she is interviewed by Martin Scorsese to whom she spits observations about New York and feminism and whatever else she can think of. In one of the interviews she recounts a story from her childhood. Nine year-old Lebowitz was around at her friend’s house, just hanging around and playing as children do. While she was there, her friend’s Father came home and announced that he had received a raise! He was going to be bringing home an extra $50 a week. This was the late fifties, so it was a lot of extra money. The family was excited – there was much rejoicing as they celebrated their good fortune. Little Fran went home and, as children do, she recounted this story to her Mother. ‘Janie’s Dad got a raise. He’ll be earning an extra fifty dollars a week. They’re so excited!’.

Sermon for Christmas 2020

Sermon for Christmas 2020

It was 1843, and in the French village of Roquemaure the church organ had just been renovated. The parish priest was looking for a way to celebrate, and he landed on the idea of approaching a B-grade celebrity who had been born in the town. Placide Cappeau sold grog for a living, but he also wrote poetry. He wrote it with his left hand, because his right hand had been blown off by his best friend when they were eight years old and playing with a gun. Cappeau was an intellectual. He studied at the Royal College in Avignon. He was a secularist – he had little time for the authority and prestige of the church and clergy. And he was a socialist – committed to equality and the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.

Sermon Sunday 20 December 2020

Sermon Sunday 20 December 2020

Giving someone a reward can be a good motivator. We see it most obviously in children, but it works on nearly anyone. ‘If you get a good school report, Mummy will take you to Adventure World’. ‘If we get through the whole grocery shop without you whining, Daddy will buy you a Bertie Beetle’. We do it because it works. When there’s a reward involved, humans become more driven. The whole concept of being paid for work is basically a system of rewards. ‘If you meet your sales targets, you’ll get paid. But if you exceed your sales targets there’s a bonus coming’. ‘If you work hard, then you might get promoted to Deputy Sub Vice Manager which brings an extra 11c an hour’ – the rewards don’t even have to be significant! They don’t even have to be real. We get a little buzz from buying raffle tickets and lottery tickets which bring only the chance of reward. That’s how much we crave rewards.