The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
1 Peter 3:13-21; see also the By the Well podcast on this text
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.
Prior to Christ’s ministry we meet John, called the Baptist. John, whose name means “God has shown favour”, is found in all four Gospels. He is described as being from God, sent to bear witness to the light, the Messiah, who is on his way. He is not the light but rather is to prepare the way for the light. Matthew and Luke start their Gospels with an introduction before introducing John and starting their account of the ministry of the Messiah who was to come. Mark starts his Gospel with the Baptist and John’s gospel weaves the Baptist into the coming of the light into the world.
It was customary to begin historical narratives by dating them according to the years of rulers and officials. Luke, the historian, therefore shows that John began preaching somewhere during ad 27 or ad 28. This therefore is when Jesus started his ministry also. \
In the Christian Calendar he is remembered during Advent. He exemplifies the Advent message when we look back to what has gone before and look forward to what is to come.
John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest at the Temple, but John did not continue the family calling. He grew up in the desert and was said to have lived on locusts and wild honey. He dressed in a camelhair coat with a leather belt. This was the clothes of a prophet in the OT. The word of God came to John – the words used throughout the OT to denote a prophet.
As prophesied in the Old Testament, John is the one who is crying in the wilderness.
John had a new message to tell and a new rite to introduce. He preached a baptism of radical repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Repentance in the Judaism of the time meant a total change in direction. A person was not saved by outward reformation, changing only what other people could see.
What was needed was an inner transformation. His baptism was new in that he was asking the Jews themselves to be baptized as a sign of repentance.
The message that John gives is ‘By God’s grace, remove every obstacle that is stopping the Lord’s entrance into your hearts and lives’. He taught that God could turn stones into children of Abraham, what was required was repentance. It was not being one of the elect or being born an ethnic Jew that mattered.
For baptism, John needed water, so he remained in the region around the Jordan River.
John’s message was not about looking back but forward to the new age. God’s doing a new thing here. Part of his message is that the end has started. Someone was coming – John was getting the people ready. It is not clear if John understood who was coming but what John did with water, the coming one would do with the Holy Spirit.
We are told that Herod Antipas had John arrested and put to death due to John preaching about Herod’s sexual immorality.
Rev Peter Welsh
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.
Ignatius Loyola was born in 1491 in the Basque region of northern Spain. He lived in a time that was characterised by both the violent and bewildered imagery of the medieval age and the bright and enthusiastic expectations of the Renaissance. He grew up in a society that was structured around the principles of knightly chivalry, and served as a courtier to the Duke of Najera. In this service he was seriously wounded during the defense of Pamplona in 1521. Until his early years, he was a practicing Catholic though with little intensity in his spirituality. While he was convalescing, however, he yearned to read books of chivalric romance, but the only books available were a Life of Christ and a book of the Lives of the Saints. The more he read of these books, the more there developed in him a desire to reflect on that reading. This reflection led to him making a commitment to serve Christ as his only Captain.
For a time, Ignatius supposed that he would live out this service though pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he could live in the footsteps of Christ and serve the poor. When this course was closed to him, and because of a sanction from the Inquisition, Ignatius became a student at a number of educational institutions, including the University of Paris. It was during this time that Ignatius began to formalise his own experiences into a program he called The Spiritual Exercises. At the same time, there gathered around Ignatius a group of people who recognised his spiritual leadership, and together they formed the Society of Jesus. The Spiritual Exercises continue to be a source of blessing for many people, being offered as a means by which the will of God may be discerned, and Christ’s presence better experienced.
Divided into 4 “weeks” of reflection, the Exercises provide opportunity for reflection on our relationship with God, on our experience of the presence and power of Jesus, with an invitation to use imagination to enter into the experiences of the Gospels, and on different ways of prayer through which we can wait more patiently, listen more effectively, and respond more fully to the Word God speaks to us.
Ignatius rightly holds a place in the Calendar of Commemorations as a person of prayer, both from the example of his own life and from the legacy by which he continues to provide guidance to people as we seek to discern the Spirit of Christ in our own living.
A prayer of Ignatius is given us in the “Treasury of Prayers” in Uniting in Worship 2:
Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve:
to give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to toil, and not to seek for rest;
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
except that of knowing that we do your holy will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Contributed by Graham Vawser
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.
Benedict of Nursia was born around the year 480CE in Umbria, Italy. Four years before his birth the Roman Empire had fallen, and the world into which Benedict was born was one of violence, turmoil, uncertainty and insecurity. Around the age of 19-20 he travelled to Rome to study the liberal arts. However, he found life in the city dissolute and immoral, not to his liking at all. So around the year 500CE he abandoned his studies and went to live in an isolated place near Effide (modern Affile). After living here for about two years he sought deeper solitude. He took up residence in a cave at Subiaco. Romanus, a monk who lived nearby, encouraged him to live the hermit life, supplied him with a habit and on occasions brought him food. Over time he gradually became known for his piety.
When the abbot of a nearby monastery died the monks asked Benedict, even though he was only about 25 years old, to come and be their abbot. Knowing of their way of life, and being unimpressed by it, Benedict was reluctant to go. Eventually he went and unfortunately found his misgivings were confirmed. Their way of life was very different from Benedict’s and they were in no mood to be reformed by him. After two attempts to poison him failed, Benedict returned to his solitude. But he was by now well known and people would come to him for spiritual guidance. It was at this point he began the monastic life that would later flourish. In the valley of Subiaco he established 12 small monasteries each with 12 monks and a superior. This success was not received well by the nearby priest who tried to undermine Benedict’s efforts. Eventually this opposition got the better of him and he moved the monks to the famous Monte Cassino, which became and has remained the central home of the Benedictine family. It was here he wrote his famous rule and it was where he died on March 21st 543. Benedict’s feast day is July 11th.
Benedict is known mostly for the rule of monastic life that he wrote and which has been the most influential document on Western monasticism. It is very short, about 9000 words, but renowned for its moderation, balance and gentleness, containing as Benedict said, ‘nothing harsh, nothing burdensome’. His aim in writing the Rule was that it should be a guide to living the Gospels. Thus it is saturated with Biblical references and images. The best known parts of the Rule are Chapter 7 on humility and Chapter 53 on welcoming guests to the monastery as Christ.
In our world, which perhaps reflects something of Benedict’s with the violence and uncertainty, the voice of this monk is speaking in a fresh way in our time. He calls us to a balance of prayer and work, of seeking to be aware of God’s presence everywhere and seeing in all others the presence of Christ. In a world where we can feel life is out of balance, where our environment is in a perilous state and where human divisions abound, perhaps it’s a good time to learn the wisdom of Benedict again.
Contributed by Gary Stuckey
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.
Benedict of Nursia was born around the year 480CE in Umbria, Italy. Four years before his birth the Roman Empire had fallen, and the world into which Benedict was born was one of violence, turmoil, uncertainty and insecurity. Around the age of 19-20 he travelled to Rome to study the liberal arts. However, he found life in the city dissolute and immoral, not to his liking at all. So around the year 500CE he abandoned his studies and went to live in an isolated place near Effide (modern Affile). After living here for about two years he sought deeper solitude. He took up residence in a cave at Subiaco. Romanus, a monk who lived nearby, encouraged him to live the hermit life, supplied him with a habit and on occasions brought him food. Over time he gradually became known for his piety.
When the abbot of a nearby monastery died the monks asked Benedict, even though he was only about 25 years old, to come and be their abbot. Knowing of their way of life, and being unimpressed by it, Benedict was reluctant to go. Eventually he went and unfortunately found his misgivings were confirmed. Their way of life was very different from Benedict’s and they were in no mood to be reformed by him. After two attempts to poison him failed, Benedict returned to his solitude. But he was by now well known and people would come to him for spiritual guidance. It was at this point he began the monastic life that would later flourish. In the valley of Subiaco he established 12 small monasteries each with 12 monks and a superior. This success was not received well by the nearby priest who tried to undermine Benedict’s efforts. Eventually this opposition got the better of him and he moved the monks to the famous Monte Cassino, which became and has remained the central home of the Benedictine family. It was here he wrote his famous rule and it was where he died on March 21st 543. Benedict’s feast day is July 11th.
Benedict is known mostly for the rule of monastic life that he wrote and which has been the most influential document on Western monasticism. It is very short, about 9000 words, but renowned for its moderation, balance and gentleness, containing as Benedict said, ‘nothing harsh, nothing burdensome’. His aim in writing the Rule was that it should be a guide to living the Gospels. Thus it is saturated with Biblical references and images. The best known parts of the Rule are Chapter 7 on humility and Chapter 53 on welcoming guests to the monastery as Christ.
In our world, which perhaps reflects something of Benedict’s with the violence and uncertainty, the voice of this monk is speaking in a fresh way in our time. He calls us to a balance of prayer and work, of seeking to be aware of God’s presence everywhere and seeing in all others the presence of Christ. In a world where we can feel life is out of balance, where our environment is in a perilous state and where human divisions abound, perhaps it’s a good time to learn the wisdom of Benedict again.
Contributed by Gary Stuckey
The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.
1 Peter 2:2-10; see also the By the Well podcast on this text
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.
Visser ’t Hooft — “Wim” to friends and colleagues — was the founding general secretary of the World Council of Churches. More than any other individual, he gave enduring shape to the modern ecumenical movement.
After studying theology, including a doctorate at Leiden, he became secretary for international youth work of the World YMCA (1924–32), then general secretary of the World Student Christian Federation. With the decision (1938) to form a world council of churches, the promising young Dutchman was seen as the obvious person to lead it. War intervened. He found himself at a lonely desk in Geneva, just a few kilometres from occupied France, responsible for an embryonic “WCC in process of formation” and struggling to maintain communications with church leaders divided and isolated by the conflict.
With the end of hostilities, Visser ’t Hooft set about planning the WCC’s inaugural assembly (Amsterdam, 1948). The years that followed involved more than finding staff and setting up an organization. He had to get to know a rapidly growing constituency, come to grips with the dilemmas of churches living under communism, find a path through Cold War tensions, address issues from the emerging so-called Third World and deal with the ecumenical impact of the Second Vatican Council. Above all he had to establish a style of work for the new World Council — an entity for which, as he said, there were no precedents.
After retiring in 1966 he was elected the WCC’s honorary president, which meant continuing involvement in the Council’s decision-making. With a permanent office in the Ecumenical Centre, he kept in contact with staff and visitors until shortly before his death, from emphysema, at the age of 85.
He was a brilliant man, a deft policy-maker and an effective communicator. A workaholic, he exuded energy. He had clear vision, a sharp mind, imagination, statesmanship, outstanding diplomatic skills and fluency in four languages. It is hard to imagine how the WCC, without that rare combination of gifts, would ever have seen daylight.
Wim was loved and admired. But he was not easy to work with. Some found him brusque and authoritarian – “more general than secretary”, went one comment. He did not suffer fools gladly, and into that category most of his colleagues found that, sooner or later, they fell. Mellowing in his later years, though, he always showed a special interest in younger staff — with a special tolerance for their gaffes!
Theologically, Visser ’t Hooft owed much to his friend the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Yet he was no doctrinaire Barthian. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism informed his approach to social ethics and international affairs. He drew insights from a range of theologians, church leaders and, he always stressed, lay people too. For himself, Wim resisted the label theologian, preferring to describe his many writings and addresses as “interpretations across confessional and linguistic frontiers of thoughts which I have picked up from the theological pathfinders”.
He was a first-class example of that rare creature, a truly prophetic church policy-maker and administrator. Robert Bilheimer, a WCC associate general secretary for many years, identified what drove his old boss like some 20th century Amos to challenge the ecclesiastical status quo:
The prophetic quality lay in his capacity to discern and his fearlessness in laying out what he discerned . . . . Even his insistence on tying the ecumenical movement to the churches, frequently questioned, was prophetic. He understood clearly that the churches were the carriers of the Body of Christ; and an ecumenical movement that was not tied to the churches had no relevance to anything. Given that, Visser ’t Hooft could then turn the whole around, bringing “church” to bear on churches in withering analyses. Because he loved the church, he loved the churches.
And because he loved Christ, he loved the church. The gospel was the heart of it all, Christian unity mattered because reconciliation was a gospel imperative, Christ was summoning his scattered people to a renewed obedience, and the pressure of that common calling meant the churches just had to change.
Churchly change, however, comes slowly. In 1974, commenting on the impatience of many, young people especially, Visser ’t Hooft wrote:
Those of us who have worked for a long time for the World Council are painfully aware of how frequently opportunities are missed because of visible or concealed brakes. We need the impatient people who call for boldness, imagination and forward-looking hope in action. But there is an impatience which gives up and an impatience which builds up.
Willem Visser ’t Hooft had impatience aplenty. But his was the kind that produced a master builder for the ecumenical movement.
Contributed by David Gill
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.
Albrecht Ritschl (1822 – 1889) German Lutheran theologian.
Trained at Bonn and Halle; lectured at Bonn, Göttingen and Tübingen.
Major work: The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (in 3 volumes; 1870-1874)
Ritschl was one of the founders of what came to be called Liberal theology. He also anticipated John Robinson, Bishop Spong and other radical theologians of the 20th century. Ritschl became important in the middle to the late nineteenth century as he turned away from the influences of Schleiermacher and Hegel. Underlying his work is the European Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant and his three volumes of Critical Philosophy. Ritschl thought that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason proved conclusively that we cannot know things in themselves but only how they are to us. This makes impossible the promise of any mystical experience of God and any account of knowledge based upon that, especially Schleiermacher’s idea of “the feeling of absolute dependence”. In the same way Ritschl saw that Kant’s account of experience undercut most of the common accounts of Christianity based upon religious experience where “experience” was understood objectively.
Ritschl’s fame does not lie only in his courage in facing the challenges raised by the Enlightenment or in his acceptance of the unknowability of things in themselves. He turned away from the Critique of Pure Reason to Kant’s writings on Practical Reason or morality, and to his later works on religion, the imagination and political philosophy. From these works Ritschl came to the view that morality was the proper domain for understanding Christianity and for Christian life. We must understand, however, that Ritschl did not understand morality as essentially private. Ethical life, he understood, was realised and accomplished in community. He also came to understand that Luther’s translation of the Greek dike as righteousness was misleading and that the underlying theme of justice required a more social and political understanding of “justification”, and that, in turn, led to reconciliation with God and in our social life. However, Ritschl understood that religion requires a rational account of transcendence. He believed that Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “Act only on the maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”, provided a sufficient account of transcendence.
From his exploration of Kant, Ritschl also opened the way to an understanding of the importance of history, though an account of history that did not assume either decline or progress, and an account of history free from Hegel’s metaphysics. For Ritschl the discipline of history should lead Christians to understand the contexts in which Christian doctrine and theology had always taken place and would continue always to take place. Ritschl also understood that history should be the appropriate method for understanding the Bible. Every part of the Bible, its ideas and languages, was the product of specific historical circumstances which must control interpretation.
In these three dimensions Ritschl began Liberal Christian theology. This was a theology in which the Sermon on the Mount came to have a new importance; a theology in which ethics and community opened the way for Christians to share in and respond to a diversity of Christian views; and set the scene for Weimar liberalism and the American Social Gospel movement of Walter Rauschenenbusch which lasted until the start of World War II and beyond.
Ian Weeks
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.
Monica (c.331-87) was probably born in Tagaste, in the northern part of Africa that is now Algeria, administered from Carthage as part of the Roman Empire. Most of what we know about her comes from the spiritual autobiography of her eldest son, Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430). As Peter Brown comments, ‘Few mothers can survive being presented to us exclusively in terms of what they have come to mean to their sons, much less to a son as complicated as Augustine’; but Monica emerges as resolute and absolutely steadfast in prayer. She was perceptive and not above some dignified sarcasm, but despised gossip. Augustine presents her as a peacemaker in the community, and a woman with deep inner resources.
Monica was brought up in a Christian household and through her life kept up devotional traditions of the African Church sometimes dismissed as primitive by more educated contemporaries, such as fasting in preparation for the Sabbath, graveside meals, and the confident interpretation of dreams.
She was married to Patricius, a pagan, apparently hot-tempered and violent, who became a Christian catechumen about 369, a few years before his death when Monica was 40. They had two other children, whose names we know, younger than Augustine: a second son, Navigius, and a daughter Perpetua.
Following contemporary practice, Monica enrolled the child Augustine as a catechumen without having him baptised. She was convinced that a good classical education would eventually bring Augustine to Christian faith, but was anxious enough about his lifestyle to follow him to Italy in 383, first to Rome and then Milan. Like Augustine she was influenced by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and Augustine presents her views in two dialogues written in 386 De Ordine and De Beata Vita. Garry Wills suggests that Augustine came to appreciate his mother later in life, realising not only her piety but now also her theological insight.
Monica saw Augustine baptised in 387, and set out with him to return to Africa later that year. They had travelled as far as Ostia on the Italian mainland when she caught a fever and died.
Recording her final days in Confessions Augustine stressed Monica’s faith and quiet contentment. He also recounted a conversation between them ‘reclining by ourselves at a window which looked out on the inner garden of the house’ that prompted a shared mystical experience of God as ‘the ageless wisdom that outlasts all things else’ (Confessions 9: 25). From conversation, ‘recalling past events, musing about the truth which you [God] are, and wondering what the eternal life of the saints might be like’ they were caught up so that their ‘hearts were thirsting for the streams that flow from that fountain of life which is in you’ (Confessions 9: 25). The remarkable experience was almost beyond words for Augustine, and of course not recorded at all by Monica, but it has become a touchstone for showing how community and companionship can lift individuals towards God.
Contributed by Katharine Massam
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.
(Evangelist, martyr, and first ‘Bishop of Alexandria’; Greek: Markos = polite, shining)
Almost all the early traditions assume that St Mark, author of the Gospel that bears his name, is also John Mark of Jerusalem and Mark the cousin of Barnabas — the occasional missionary companion of Barnabas and Paul (and perhaps also of Peter, according to Papias and Eusebius). Hippolytus of Rome’s list of the 70 disciples sent out by Jesus (Lk 10:1) includes these three Marks separately, but other early writers have them as the same person, who was perhaps born in Cyrene (in today’s Libya) before moving to Jerusalem (Acts 12:12).
The Gospel of Mark, thought by most scholars to be the earliest written account of Jesus still surviving, is a vivid, fast-moving account, often told in the present tense — although this is not reflected in our English translations. Mark is said to have compiled it out of the sermons and teaching of Peter, though he may also have been a participant in the Jerusalem events. Some have claimed that he wrote himself into the Gospel story as the young man who fled naked at Jesus’ arrest (Mk 14:51-2). If that is so, he may have performed another disappearing act when he left Barnabas and Paul in the lurch and headed back to Jerusalem instead (Acts 12:25; 13:5, 13), leading to a ‘sharp disagreement’ between the two Apostles when he wanted to join them again on a later journey (Acts 15:36–41).
The mysterious disappearances of ‘Mark’ don’t end there, but continue through history. The Gospel of Mark seems to have been used by both Matthew and Luke as a template for their longer and more popular accounts of Jesus, but then faded from view. The first known commentary on Mark dates from the 6th Century (very late compared with the other Gospels), and early manuscripts of the Gospel are rare — only three papyrus fragments survive. The earliest full copies of Mark end at chapter 16 verse 8, with excited women fleeing the empty tomb “for they were afraid” — and various longer endings were then added in later manuscripts to ‘correct’ what seemed to some to be the ‘disappearance’ of a proper conclusion to Mark’s account.
The body of Mark — and not just the text — also disappears! Strong early traditions suggest that Mark founded the church in Alexandria, Egypt, and was martyred there around 68CE, when he was dragged by the neck around the streets until he died. In 828 CE, Venetian merchants ‘body-snatched’ the remains of St Mark from Alexandria (some say they took Alexander the Great’s remains by mistake!), so they could be installed (eventually) in San Marco Cathedral in Venice. In the 11th Century they disappeared yet again when the Cathedral was rebuilt, and then mysteriously they were rediscovered some years later.
Traditionally, St Mark is Patron Saint of Alexandria, Venice, and barristers, and is seen as the founder of Christianity in Africa (and particularly, the Coptic Church of Egypt).
We might also suggest — given his remarkable history — that St Mark be seen as Patron Saint of ‘the second chance’, the young and impetuous, story-tellers and authors writing their first book, streakers (Mk 14:51-2), and the ANZACs (the Feast Day of St Mark is April 25).
By Dr Keith Dyer