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See My Zeal (2 Kings 10:16)

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  Wednesday, 29 October, 2025 Psalm 145 2 Kings 10:1-17 Matthew 19:1-15 See My Zeal (2 Kings 10:16) And Jehu said, “Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord .” So he had Jehonadab ride in his chariot. If we look at today’s reading from one angle, we see a real “boys” type of reading. We have beheadings, and chariots, and a victorious king – lots of blood and guts and goodies and baddies. From another angle, we see something horrific: slaughter and bloodshed, all, apparently, in the name of the Lord. I have heard one way of approaching this sort of thing that seems to have worked in the past. That is, we take these Old Testament narratives and read them with the eyes of Christ. Yes, it was another age; but I think it would be chronological snobbery to say we are more spiritually enlightened than they. Rather, I think it was a different age in the sense that there were things going on that we have no idea about. When Christ died on the cross,...
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For Your Name’s Sake (Psalm 143:11)

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  Tuesday, 28 October, 2025 Psalms 143; 146 2 Kings 9:17-37 Matthew 18:15-35 Observance: Simon and Jude, apostles and martyrs For Your Name’s Sake (Psalm 143:11) For your name's sake, O Lord , preserve my life!     In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble! Something I really love about God and being a Christian is that we are able to hold two wildly different things together at the same time: first, that we worship the terrifying, holy, glorious, all-powerful living God, and pay him the honour due to his name. At the same time, he has revealed himself to us in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ, our brother and our friend, flesh of our flesh, intimately close to the nth degree. I wonder sometimes, however, how are we to hold these two things together well, without going too far in either extreme, while still respecting the extremes of both? Today’s sentence, from Psalm 143, seems to hint at this dynamic. T...
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Life With One Eye (Matthew 18:9)

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  Monday, 27 October, 2025 Psalm 140 2 Kings 9:1-16 Matthew 18:1-14 Life With One Eye (Matthew 18:9) And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. I had to delete social media off my devices again recently. It’s a personal thing I have, and I don’t want to bind anyone’s conscience about social media. But it’s just too much; every second I spend on it I regret, because of all the other things I could be doing with my life. A benefit I find from avoiding it, however, is that I am (almost) blissfully unaware of church politics, or human politics, or international gossip, or any other number of things that have almost zero effect on my life. And I thought about this when I read today’s words from Jesus cutting out an eye and therefore entering life. I couldn’t help but think of my lack of vision from less time spent on the interne...
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The Sons Are Free (Matthew 17:26)

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  Saturday, 25 October, 2025 Psalm 135 2 Kings 8:16-29 Matthew 17:14-27 The Sons Are Free (Matthew 17:26) [Jesus said] “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free.” Who is your king? Imagine my surprise when I discovered that our prayer-book collects for the King of England are not universally admired by Australian Anglicans! It would seem that we descendants of convicts still have a bit of a republican streak in us. But one of those prayers for the monarch teach us a lot about how to think about human authority. There is one where the priest prays that the king, remembering whose minister he is, would govern according to the teachings of Jesus. It is a helpful reminder that “there is always a bigger fish”. Even the king rules only at the pleasure of the living God. And so when Jesus asks St Pet...
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Listen To Him (Matthew 7:5)

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  Friday, 24 October, 2025 Psalms 130; 131; 133 2 Kings 8:1-15 Matthew 17:1-13 Observance: United Nations, inaugurated 1945 Listen To Him (Matthew 7:5) [Jesus] was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” One of the great aspects of faith is trust. A faithful Christian is one who trusts God. And one of the biggest things God wants us to get through our heads is that we are to escape fear through our trust in him. Consider this story we have read today in our second lesson. The Transfiguration of our Lord is one of those big events in the Bible the Church keeps coming back to. You have probably read it (and had it read to you) many times over the years. But look at the order of things: there is a voice from the cloud that tells the disciples to listen to Jesus. Then look at the first words out of Jesus’ mouth after ...
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Losing And Finding (Matthew 16:25)

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  Thursday, 23 October, 2025 Psalms 124; 125; 126 2 Kings 7:3-20 Matthew 16:13-28 Observance: James of Jerusalem, brother of our Lord, martyr (d. c. 62) Losing And Finding (Matthew 16:25) [Jesus said] “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” What a whirlwind poor old St Peter goes through in these few short verses! He is on top of the world, the rock against which the gates of hell will nor prevail; then he is a stumbling block, no less than Satan. In various parts of the wider church, these words of Jesus about binding and loosing have come to mean many different things. You may have come across teachings about them yourself. But whatever it means, it relies on the final of today’s three sections of the second lesson. One must never get a big head. One must be willing to lose their head. In fact, one must consider their head (and the rest of them) as nothing – we must deny ourselves i...
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The Sign Of Jonah (Matthew 16:4)

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  Wednesday, 22 October, 2025 Psalm 118:1-18 2 Kings 6:24-7:2 Matthew 16:1-12 The Sign Of Jonah (Matthew 16:4) [Jesus said] “ An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. I wonder if we make hearing God just a bit too complicated. If, because we do not have a clear instruction manual like one you would find in a Lego kit, we think God’s communication to us is somehow mysterious, requiring some special religiosity to be able to understand. Jesus replies to those asking him for a sign by pointing out just how obvious God is being to us. He refers to that saying “red sky at night, sailor’s (or shepherd’s) delight; red sky in the morning, sailors (or shepherds) take warning.” If we all know this one, how can we find it so difficult to understand what God is saying? So what is God saying? Well, he has given us a sign: the sign of Jonah. That was a pretty obvious...
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