Author Archives: CraigT

Study Groups

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Our study groups return in 2025, with online read-and-discuss groups meeting each quarter for 4-8 weeks.

FIRST QUARTER

SECOND QUARTER

  • Our second quarter book will be Miroslav Volf’s A Public Faith, How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good; details will be finalised and registration become available around Easter

THIRD QUARTER – TBA

FOURTH QUARTER – TBA

You might also be interested in our Quarterly Conversations on the Quarterly Essay

PREVIOUS STUDY GROUPS:

The following is a mostly complete list of study group materials we’ve used over the last decade or so…

2014

Lent: Bruce Barber — four presentations on “Beginning at the beginning, or Why is it like this?

May-July: William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical imagination

November: William Cavanaugh, Being consumed

2015

Lent: Reformation Questions for the contemporary church

2nd Quarter: Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel [Not the easiest read]

2016

Lent: Called to Holiness in Australia

August: Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer

2017

Lent: Bruce Barber, The Lord’s Prayer

2018

Paula Gooder: on The Joy of the Gospel

August 2015: Northrop Frye, The Great Code

2019

Lent: Rowan Williams The Spirit in the desert – audio of lectures

2020

Lent: Rowan Williams The sign and the sacrifice

April-Dec Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (Christine Hayes, Yale)

2021

Lent: Three studies on Mark’s Gospel (at St Mary’s)

Oct-?Feb 2022: Introduction to the New Testament (Dale Martin, Yale)

2022

Lent: Called to Community (video resource)

May-June 2022: Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as resistance

July-Aug: Miroslav Volf, Free of charge: giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace.

Oct-Nov: Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life. 

2023

Lent: Rowan Williams, Meeting God in Paul

July-Aug: David Ford, The shape of living

Oct-Nov:  Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand, When church stops working: a future for your congregation beyond more money, programs and innovation.

2024

Lent: Samuel Wells, A cross in the heart of God

Aug-Sept:  Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

Oct-Nov: Angles on world Christianity

2025

Lent: Rowan Williams, Christ on trial

May-June: Miroslav Volf A public faith

Other occasional studies have included

 Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom: How the church is to behave if freedom, justice and a Christian nation are bad ideas.

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

MtE Update – May 10 2019

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  1. This Sunday our congregational AGM follows morning tea, including the reception of annual reports, financial statements and the election of elders. Please plan to stay for the meeting if you can!
  2. This Sunday May 12, we return a monthly treatment of the Ten Commandment from Bruce Barber; for more information, here. This week, ‘honour your father and mother’!
  3. The Hotham Mission web site has had a complete makeover. It’s still a work in progress, but have a look here…
  4. If you would like to do some background reading on the texts for this Sunday April 28 17, see the commentary links here. 

Old News

  1. Advance Dates
    1. May 12 — Congregational AGM 
    2. Speaker from Lentara on the Asylum Seekers Project POSTPONED to a date TBC
    3. June 22 (Saturday) Hotham Mission Bunnings BBQ – volunteers sought! 

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

May 14 – Matthias, Simon, Jude

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These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Matthias, Simon, Jude,  apostles

Matthias filled the place left vacant by Judas Iscariot after his betrayal of Jesus subsequent demise (Acts 1:23-26). Peter depicts his death as foreshadowed in scripture and then points to the need to replace him as apostle with someone who had been with them throughout Jesus’ ministry. “So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias” (Acts 1:23). Having prayed, they cast lots, and Matthias was chosen. The author, Luke, assumes that praying and doing the equivalent of tossing a coin would achieve the desired outcome. We hear nothing more of Matthias. Luke’s story of Matthias reflects his view that there were (and needed to be) twelve apostles, almost certainly as symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. Limiting who could be called an apostle to the twelve stands in some tension with Paul’s view, who claimed also to be an apostle (1 Cor 9:1). In his day some denied his right to be so, possibly because they understood “apostle” as Luke or Luke’s source had done, although Luke also knew stories which called Paul and Barnabas “apostles” (14:14). Otherwise we know nothing of Mattias except for sayings attributed to him as part of a Gospel or Tradition of Matthias believed to have been composed early in the second century.

Simon, named as one of the twelve disciples, is sometimes called the “Cananean”, an Aramaic word (Matt 10:4; Mark 3:18), which Luke translates as “Zealot” (Luke 6:13; Acts 1:13). A group called “Zealots” were part of the uprising against Rome in Jerusalem which Rome crushed in 70 CE, but the term could also be used for zealous devout Jews, although readers of the gospels which appeared after 70 CE may well have understood him to have been a sympathiser with those who resisted Rome. He is not to be confused with Simon Peter, Simon the brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3), Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21), Simon the magician (Acts 8:9), or Simon the tanner (Acts 9:43).

Jude (also called Judas) was one of Jesus’ brothers along with James (Jacob), Joses (Joseph), and Simon (Simeon, not “the Zealot”). He is not to be confused with the two disciples with that name among the twelve: Judas Iscariot and “Judas, son of James” (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13; John 14:22), nor with Judas of Damascus (Acts 9:11), nor with “Judas called Barsabbas” (Acts 15:22). Mark tells us that he and his family once wanted to take Jesus home because they thought he was beside himself (3:20-21) and that his family did not accept him (6:4). The image of Jesus’ family in Matthew and Luke is more positive. Eventually we find his brother James running the church in Jerusalem, but also Jude being attributed with leadership and penning the Letter of Jude. He may have done so, although many conclude that it was more likely written in his name much later like the Letter attributed to James.

William Loader

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - People to Commemorate

MtE Update – May 3 2019

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  1. On Sunday May 5 there will be a conversation following morning tea on the theme of ‘Music and the Liturgy’ — beginning to explore the place and role of music in our worship.

  2. Some works have commenced in the church, including upgrading of the fluorescent lighting and repair of exit signs, installing some hanging points to the walls for seasonally coloured ‘drops’, cleaning, and adjustment of speaker locations. The moveable scaffolding stand for this work will still be in place on Sunday, occupying the children’s table and play-pen area. please take care around it.

  3. On Sunday May 12, we’ll return a monthly treatment of the Ten Commandment from Bruce Barber; for more information, here.
  4. News from the Social Justice Unit of the Synod.
  5. If you would like to do some background reading on the texts for this Sunday April 28 17, see the commentary links here. 

Old News

  1. Advance Dates
    1. May 12 — Congregational AGM 
    2. Speaker from Lentara on the Asylum Seekers Project POSTPONED to a date TBC

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

MtE Update – April 23 2019

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  1. Mark the Evangelist Day Lunch: THIS Sunday 28 April 2019 – After Worship : On Sunday morning, 28 April, we will be celebrating Mark the Evangelist Day with a lunch after worship.  All are welcome – the more the merrier.  The lunch is always a great occasion for sharing our life together over good food. As usual, we will cater for this event ourselves, with people contributing food. SO, if you have not already please give your names to Rod or Ann if you can come. AND equally important – please talk with Ann, Peggy, or Barbara and let them know what you can contribute for the lunch.
  2. Keep in mind that we’ve elections of elders coming up, with nominations due this Sunday
  3. The latest Presbytery eNews (April 23) is here.
  4. On Sunday May 5 there will be a conversation following morning tea on the theme of ‘Music and the Liturgy’ — beginning to explore the place and role of music in our worship.
  5. If you would like to do some background reading on the texts for this Sunday April 28 17, see the commentary links here. 

Other things potentially of interest 

  1. Queen’s College ANZAC Commemoration Chapel

The Master, Dr Stewart Gill OAM, warmly invites you to attend the Queen’s College Anzac Commemoration Chapel Service, with Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC, Fellow of Queen’s College
“Anzac: The Guns Are Not Yet Silent”

DATE: Sunday 28 April 2019
TIME: 6:30pm
VENUE: Queen’s College Chapel

Old News

  1. Advance Dates
    1. April 28 — MtE Day Luncheon after worship
    2. May: Worship and Music – an after-worship conversation
    3. May 12 — Congregational AGM 
    4. Speaker from Lentara on the Asylum Seekers Project POSTPONED to a date TBC

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

MtE Update – April 18 2019

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  1. Holy Week and Easter Services
    • Maundy Thursday: Thursday April 18, 7.30pm
    • Good Friday: Friday April 19, 10.00am
    • Easter Vigil: Saturday April 20, 8.00pm
    • Easter Day: Sunday April 21, 10.00am
  2. Biber’s Rosary Sonatas in Holy Week As part of the orders of service for Holy Week, Tim, Stuart and Donald have put together three sonatas from the wonderful collection known as the Mystery Sonatas, by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704). Based on the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary, these works are notable examples of the mid-seventeenth-century German style of sonatas for violin solo and basso continuo (harpsichord/organ and cello). They are perhaps best known for their imaginative use of scordatura, a technique in which the violin is tuned in ways other than the conventional method. This changes the sound of the violin completely, giving it new sonorities and expressive means. As far as the listening experience is concerned, the approach to these pieces has been guided by the seventeenth-century concepts of personal contemplation. These sonatas are written according to ideas expressed in such works as St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In other words, they are performed to assist in reflection and meditation. This eschews the idea of a programmatic narrative which serves only a singular goal, namely, to tell the listener what to hear and what to feel about it. As a way of illustrating this: the first four violin notes of the “Crucifixion” constitute a musical emblem of the cross. This is musical device which suggests what the subject of contemplation is to be, but it does not represent an ongoing description of the moment as it is described in the Gospels. For the music to draw attention to itself in this way, would destroy the very concept of personal reflection.
  3. Mark the Evangelist Day Lunch: Sunday 28 April 2019 – After Worship : On Sunday morning, 28 April, we will be celebrating Mark the Evangelist Day with a lunch after worship.  All are welcome – the more the merrier.  The lunch is always a great occasion for sharing our life together over good food. As usual, we will cater for this event ourselves, with people contributing food. SO, please give your names to Rod or Ann if you can come.  AND equally important – please talk with Ann, Peggy, or Barbara and let them know what you can contribute for the lunch. 
  4. Justice and International Mission (JIM) Unit April Update
  5. JIM Unit (above!) on the forthcoming election…
  6. VicTas Synod eNews for April
  7. Our final Ecclesiastes readings for the present series of reflections are
    • Ecclesiastes 3.1-14 for Good Friday: ‘Catching the wind – the vanity of the crucifixion’
    • Ecclesiastes 8.6-8 for Easter Day: ‘The wind blows where it wills : the vanity of the Christ’

Other things potentially of interest 

  1. Queen’s College ANZAC Commemoration Chapel

Old News

The Master, Dr Stewart Gill OAM, warmly invites you to attend the Queen’s College Anzac Commemoration Chapel Service, with Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC, Fellow of Queen’s College
“Anzac: The Guns Are Not Yet Silent”
DATE: Sunday 28 April 2019
TIME: 6:30pm
VENUE: Queen’s College Chapel

  1. Advance Dates
    1. April 28 — MtE Day Luncheon after worship
    2. May 12 — Congregational AGM 
    3. May 19 — Speaker from Lentara on the Asylum Seekers Project
  2.  A Good Friday performance of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion
  3. Details of our Lenten and Easter services are here.
Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events

April 28 – Dorothy Soelle

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These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Dorothy Soelle, Christian thinker

“God, your Spirit renews the face of the earth.
Renew our hearts also
And give us your spirit of lucidity and courage.
For the law of the Spirit
Who makes us alive in Christ
Has set us free from the law of resignation.
Teach us how to live
With the power of the wind and of the sun
And to let other creatures live.”
~ Dorothee Soelle

Dorothee Soelle was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1929.  As a child she played no personal role in the rise and fall of the Third Reich; she was fifteen when the war ended.  But as revelations unfolded about the full extent of the Nazi crimes she was filled with an “ineradicable shame”: the shame of “belonging to this people, speaking the language of the concentration camp guards, singing the songs that were also sung in the Hitler Youth.”  Her young adulthood was spent reflecting on the great question of her generation: How could this have happened?  The hollow answer of the older generation, that “we didn’t know what was happening,” impressed on her the duty to question authority, to rebel, and to remember “the lessons of the dead.”

The moral and existential challenge of her times led Soelle to study philosophy and, later, theology.  She was one of the principal authors of the so-called “political theology” – an effort to counter the privatized and spiritualized character of “bourgeois” religion through the subversive memory of Jesus and his social message.  In light of the Holocaust she was particularly critical of a “superficial understanding of sin” largely confined to personal morality.  “Sin,” she wrote, “has to do not just with what we do, but with what we allow to happen.”  Her initial challenge was to develop a “post-Auschwitz theology,” an understanding of God who does not float above history and its trauma but who shares intimately in the suffering of the victims.  Such an understanding of God defined, in turn, a new meaning of Christian discipleship.

A true prophet, Soelle did not simply denounce the way things were, but looked forward to a “new heaven and a new earth.”  Her theology was inflected with poetry and drew on her wide reading of literature and her love of music and art.  She bore four children from a first marriage.  The experience of motherhood strengthened her hope for the future, while reminding her that pain and joy are inextricably combined in the struggle for new life.  She met her second husband, at the time a Benedictine monk, when they collaborated as organizers of a “Political Evensong” in Cologne.  Beginning in 1968, this ecumenical gathering of Christians joined to worship and reflect on scripture in light of the political challenges of the day – whether the Vietnam War, human rights, or the campaign for social justice.

It became a hugely popular event, regularly drawing up to a thousand participants.  The gatherings were controversial, however.  Their notoriety was among the factors that prevented Soelle – despite her thirty books – from ever receiving a full professorship in a German university.

Nevertheless, from 1975 to 1987 she spent six months each year as a professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  It was a particularly fruitful time for her, as she broadened her theological perspective in dialogue with feminism, ecological consciousness, and third-world liberation theologies.  She also continued to translate her theology into political activism – in solidarity with embattled Christians in Central and South America, in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and in particular in resisting the nuclear arms race.

The decision of NATO in 1979 to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe made her decide “to spend the rest of my life in the service of peace.”  She was arrested several times for civil disobedience and was tireless in challenging the churches to take action against what she saw as preparations for a new global holocaust.  In an address to the Geneva Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1983 she began, “Dear sisters and brothers, I speak to you as a woman from one of the richest countries of the earth.  A country with a bloody history that reeks of gas, a history some of us Germans have not been able to forget.”  It was this experience that impelled her to raise a cry of alarm.  Never again should a generation of Christians employ the excuse that “we didn’t know” about plans and preparations for mass murder.

In her later writings she increasingly spoke of the need to join mysticism and political commitment.  She defined mysticism not as a new vision of God, “but a different relationship with the world – one that has borrowed the eyes of God.”  Soelle died on April 17, 2003, at the age of seventy-three

Robert Ellsberg

Posted in LitBits, LitBits - People to Commemorate

MtE Update – April 11 2019

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  1. Worship this Sunday will incorporate an extended reading of the passion narrative of St Luke, with hymns, prayers and psalms. You might like to read this before hearing it in church — Luke 22.1-23.47.
  2. Mark the Evangelist Day Lunch: Sunday 28 April 2019 – After Worship : On Sunday morning, 28 April, we will be celebrating Mark the Evangelist Day with a lunch after worship.  All are welcome – the more the merrier.  The lunch is always a great occasion for sharing our life together over good food. As usual, we will cater for this event ourselves, with people contributing food. SO, please give your names to Rod or Ann if you can come.  AND equally important – please talk with Ann, Peggy, or Barbara and let them know what you can contribute for the lunch. 
  3. Details of our Lenten and Easter services are here.
  4. News from the Justice and International mission

Other things potentially of interest 

Queen’s College ANZAC Commemoration Chapel

The Master, Dr Stewart Gill OAM, warmly invites you to attend the Queen’s College Anzac Commemoration Chapel Service,
with Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC, Fellow of Queen’s College
“Anzac: The Guns Are Not Yet Silent”

Old News

  1. Advance Dates
    1. April 28 — MtE Day Luncheon after worship
    2. May 12 — Congregational AGM 
    3. May 19 — Speaker from Lentara on the Asylum Seekers Project
  2.  A Good Friday performance of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion

Posted in MtE News, UCA News and Other Upcoming Events
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