You may find the audio link here if you wish to make your way through it. Also note that there is an option to download it there (using the button which says “download” underneath the link which says “listen”).

Read it all.

The first reported case in the Ebola outbreak ravaging west Africa dates back to December 2013, in Guéckédou, a forested area of Guinea near the border with Liberia and Sierra Leone. Travellers took it across the border: by late March, Liberia had reported eight suspected cases and Sierra Leone six. By the end of June 759 people had been infected and 467 people had died from the disease, making this the worst ever Ebola outbreak. The numbers do not just keep climbing, they are accelerating. As of October 8th, 8,399 cases and 4,033 deaths had been reported worldwide, the vast majority of them in these same three countries. Many suspect these estimates are badly undercooked.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Archbishop Glenn Davies has announced a new bishop for the Georges River region, a new director of ministry training and proposed a new Diocesan Mission in a packed Presidential Address to Synod.

Synod gathered in the Wesley Theatre in Pitt Street after an opening service in St Andrew’s Cathedral, to hear the Archbishop outline a vision which includes boosting the number of newcomers at Sydney Anglican churches…

“Our vision for the next five years is to see Christ honoured as Lord in every community. That is, we want to penetrate every part of our society, every ethnic group, every tribe and tongue with the gospel of Jesus so that more and more from every part of our diocese come to put their trust in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. We have a mission, which is a matter of life and death.”

Read it all.

Take from us, O Lord God, all pride and vanity, all boasting and self-assertion, and give us the true courage that shows itself in gentleness; the true wisdom that shows itself in simplicity; and the true power that shows itself in modesty; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Charles Kingsley

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

–Psalm 1:1-3

I have a problem with Aaron, number two in the great and glorious epic that recounts the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. He is a man of peace. He succeeds at everything. Everyone admires, even loves him. Whether great or small, they need him, his understanding and his mediation. Whatever he does, he is well regarded.

But is it possible that Aaron is without fault? Like all biblical characters, he must be imperfect. He too has his moments of weakness and his crises. But in those he is forgiven.

His younger brother Moses must overcome obstacles and dangers. More than once, Moses’ life has been threatened and his reputation questioned. But not Aaron, who passes through difficulties unscathed. Moses is often torn between two passions, two obligations: the demands of God and those of his people. But not Aaron….

Read it all.

A Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital health care worker in Dallas who had “extensive contact” with the first Ebola patient to die in the United States has contracted the disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed the news Sunday afternoon after an official test.

The infected person detected a fever Friday night and drove herself to the Presbyterian emergency room, where she was placed in isolation 90 minutes later. A blood sample sent to the state health lab in Austin confirmed Saturday night that she had Ebola ”” the first person to contract the disease in the United States.

The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that the infection in the health care worker, who was not on the organization’s watch list for people who had contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, resulted from a “breach in protocol.”

Read it all.

One can contextualize the message of the Gospel well or poorly, and it is important to know not only the need for contextualization but also how to engage in the process appropriately. Paul Hiebert has helpfully suggested that there are four levels of contextualization: no contextualization, minimal contextualization, uncritical contextualization, and critical contextualization.[12] The no contextualization approach understands the Christian faith as something that is not a part of human culture; it rejects the notion that culture shapes how one receives and practices Christianity. The minimal contextualization approach acknowledges that differences exist between cultures, but it tries to limit cultural adaptation as much as possible. Under this model, missionaries might translate the Bible into a foreign language but will likely arrange new church plants in a fashion similar to the churches in their home country. Uncritical contextualization tends to prioritize culture over the Gospel. It minimizes the eternal truths found in Scripture in order to emphasize cultural convictions and practices.

Critical contextualization seeks a balanced approach. In the words of Hiebert, in critical contextualization the Bible is seen as divine revelation, not simply as humanly constructed beliefs. In contextualization the heart of the gospel must be kept as it is encoded in forms that are understood by the people, without making the gospel captive to the contexts. This is an ongoing process of embodying the gospel in an ever-changing world. Here cultures are seen as both good and evil, not simply as neutral vehicles for understanding the world. No culture is absolute or privileged. We are all relativized by the gospel….

Out of all of these approaches, contemporary Christians should prefer critical contextualization.

Read it all.

Two major international companies put a huge stamp on the Lowcountry’s economy last week.

French high-voltage cablemaker Nexans officially opened an $85 million facility on the Cooper River in Berkeley County in Bushy Park Industrial Complex on Wednesday, while Japan-based Showa Denko Carbon on Friday celebrated a $300 million expansion of its 31-year-old factory near Ridgeville in Dorchester County.

Read it all.

In a new publication, ISIS justifies its kidnapping of women as sex slaves citing Islamic theology, an interpretation that is rejected by the Muslim world at large as a perversion of Islam.

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar — the infidels — and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law,” the group says in an online magazine published Sunday.

The title of the article sums up the ISIS point of view: “The revival (of) slavery before the Hour,” referring to Judgment Day.

Read it all.

Sermon given at St Matthews, Riverdale, Toronto on Sunday October 12th, Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend

Matthew 22: 1-14
As the rector reminded us last week, we are at that place in Matthew’s Gospel, and in our lectionary readings, where a series of parables come one after the other, repeat themes, and reinforce one another. Jesus has now arrived in Jerusalem before his passion. He has spoken openly to his disciples about his pending death, and the violence that will precede it.

“The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.”

Now he has arrived at the fateful moment and he begins to address them in parables. One thing is striking. The theme of violence is unmistakable. A prominent householder builds a fine vineyard with all the bells and whistles. He lets it out to tenants who not only produce nothing worth mentioning but beat and kill his servants when they arrive to inspect. He sends in reinforcements and they get the same terrible treatment. At last he sends his own son, thinking this will bring them to their senses. Instead they devise to kill him, so the vineyard will be theirs.

At this point Jesus turns to the religious leaders and asks what ought to be done? Their verdict is swift: put the wretches to a miserable death and let the vineyard out to those who will produce fruit.

This morning we get a similar story in three rounds. Now we have a king who puts on a lavish banquet, in honor of his son. Save the date notices have gone out, and servants are dispatched when the great day arrives. But the invited guests refuse to show up…
He sends out servants to clarify what a grand affair it is; and the food is piping hot! For their effort they are ignored, or indeed, beaten and killed. This time the king’s response matches the verdict given earlier by the religious leaders. Incensed, the king sends out troops who destroy the murderers and burn down their city.

Before we turn to the parable’s conclusion, notable surely is the almost irrational violence displayed, first to servants and the son of the vineyard owner. And then to the servants of the King…by guests invited to a lavish banquet! This is not only refusing to attend Mom’s thanksgiving dinner, but going on a senseless rampage when she says to turn off the TV and blowing up the car in the driveway.

The violence within these parables in Jerusalem only makes sense against the backdrop of Jesus’ last days. Accurately, if tragically, they anticipate the treatment Jesus will receive from his own people, as well as the gentile rulers. The vineyard owner’s son has come! The messianic banquet is ready! But Jesus knows what is in store for him. And he is right.

Now at one level the parables are fairly straightforward. God expected a responsive vineyard and joy at a banquet he had labored to prepare. But rather than seeing Jesus as its true fulfillment, the very son of God, the invited guests reject and kill him.

So what does he do? He goes out into the streets and invites others to come. Good and bad, you and me.

But as with last week, the parable is not so straightforward as it first seems. Someone is there at the banquet and notable for not bothering with a wedding garment, appropriate to the occasion and available for free at the door. Unlike the others, he is at the buffet table in a trench coat with deep pockets, piling in the chess pie and turkey with dressing. For this, we should note, his treatment is every bit as severe as that of the ingrates who killed the King’s servants. “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness.”

Surely at this point the parable turns on its searchlight and scans for you and me. Am I wearing a wedding garment? What does that mean? One answer for sure is: to be a joyous participant at God’s banquet is more than just shuttling in with someone else’s battered and unused invitation, left behind after the city of invited guests was razed.

Last week it was the stone that caused stumbling. This week the wedding garment. To remind us surely that God’s final work in Jesus, for you and for me, is much, much more than getting to sit in seats vacated by those who refused to come before us, who indeed refused violently, who had high-grade stock invitations and clothes fit for the occasion.

Brother Jim was bad and had to go to his room, so I got to eat his turkey with stuffing.

I have found it difficult for my mind not to go to the movie that captures something of the deep truth of Jesus parable today, Babette’s Feast. If you don’t know the story please bear with me.

The pious daughters of a stern but holy minister have now reached ripe old age. Though the catch of the small Danish town where they grew up, they never married. Instead they lived lives of religious simplicity and sanctity, and did good deeds. Fleeing persecution in France, the mysterious Babette one day appears and places herself at their service. As the days go forward, Babette discovers that an old lottery ticket she has kept is in fact a winner. She proposes to the elderly daughters a banquet to honor the 100th anniversary of their pious father. They do not know the vastness of the sums she has won, and that she in turn spends, to prepare this lavish banquet for them, having all the exotic herbs, and vegetables, meat and poultry and fish, cases of wines for each course, all brought over from France.

Now as the feast approaches they grow restive and worried. The rich and foreign food frightens them, and they fear the sensual pleasure will dishonor their father. Who knows all the reasons for their anxiety? The strangeness of the food, patterns and habits they have grown used to, which are now threatened, the things done and left undone in the way their lives and ours unfold.

But in the end they agree. Fortunately one of the old suitors, who has lived a rich and worldly life, returns and is a guest alongside them. Twelve in number. He savors each dish. He eases them into the enjoyment of this unbelievable banquet Babette has so lovingly prepared. He declares only once in his life ever to have eaten such a meal, long ago, at a restaurant in Paris.

Now it is in the midst of the banquet, lost a bit in the food and wine, that their minds return to the past, the years now gone, and their stern but loving father. Old scenes are played out, wounds and petty skirmishing amongst them re-lived, and forgivenesses exchanged and received. Life brought back over so many years past, and redeemed in the presence of the banquet and of one another and of their loving hostess.

For the people of God, the messianic banquet was one in which the faithful in Israel moved from this life to the life to come. In the fullness of time Jesus comes personally to set the table for the banquet. But it frightens his own to the point of death itself. The reasons are not fully clear or stated, though the reaction is deeply wounding. And for those of us who have been invited to take their places, or sit alongside those who did come, we cannot enjoy all that Christ comes to give us without a wedding garment. So where do we get that?

Jesus says the one without the garment is cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And that is of course the place he has himself come to occupy amongst us, without a garment of his own, except one parted and for which soldiers cast lots. So that, in him, fresh garments might be made for all. The first and the last.

The parable does not stay at the level of ”˜they are out, so you are in’ but probes more deeply. The ladies in Babette’s feast never wore wedding garments of their own, and in their duty and in their ordered lives must have missed out on much. Things that over time seemed lost for good, or upon their approach, scared them. So a man sat at table with them and helped them view the broad landscape of their lives without fear, and where regret and wounds arose, to heal and to bind them up. Clothing them in the love the banquet released then and now.

In the end they anticipate that, with the banquet now completed, their beloved Babette will leave and return home to France, not knowing that she has spent every single penny she has on them.

It is of course to this kind of banquet we have been invited, every day of our life. Our wedding garments have been woven by the one who spent all he had that we might be rich in his poverty and in his love. The outer darkness has been laid claim to, so that the save the date time is always there for our Yes and our decision to join in the feast. Will we join in? Will we put on the lovely garment he has made just for us and in our size? It sounds too good to be true because in Christ it is.

As for the Israel that refused, or that ignored or went away on business: Isaiah speaks from deep within their own number and proclaims the promise we hear this morning. So let’s end with that. It was directed from afar to us, who were not of the household of Israel and had no wedding garment. But now it speaks to them and bids, them and us both, come.

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine””
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.

“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
[Isaiah 25:6-9]

The Reverend Professor Christopher Seitz is Senior Research Professor at Wycliffe College, Toronto and has recently published a Commentary on Colossians. He also serves as Canon Theologian in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas.

First time my Suburban Child was called the "N-Word". See my @Princeton Alum mag cover story http://t.co/2fcQbjNTOH pic.twitter.com/MqlJdHcxcc

— Lawrence Otis Graham (@LawrenceOGraham) October 6, 2014

It was a Tuesday afternoon when my 15-year-old son called from his academic summer program at a leafy New England boarding school and told me that as he was walking across campus, a gray Acura with a broken rear taillight pulled up beside him. He continued along the sidewalk, and two men leaned out of the car and glared at him.

“Are you the only nigger at Mellon Academy*?” one shouted.

Certain that he had not heard them correctly, my son moved closer to the curb, and asked politely, “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you … ”

But he had heard correctly. And this time the man spoke more clearly. “Only … nigger,” he said with added emphasis.

My son froze. He dropped his backpack in alarm and stepped back from the idling car. Within seconds, the men floored the sedan’s accelerator, honked the horn loudly, and drove off, their laughter echoing behind them….

Read it all.

What are you afraid of? That’s what Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson asks writers who shy away from writing about faith.

The beloved author has won accolades after writing so openly about belief, but it remains a subject few other writers take on.

“It’s courageous of Robinson to write about faith at a time when associations with religion are so often negative and violent,” Diane Johnson wrote in her New York Times review of Robinson’s latest book, “Lila,” which was released Tuesday (Oct. 7).

Read it all.

World champions Germany lost for the first time in 19 competitive matches as Poland beat them to move top of their Euro 2016 qualifying group.

Arkadiusz Milik’s 51st-minute header was added to late on by Sebastian Mila’s sweeping finish.

Poland had never before beaten Germany, who had also not lost in 33 previous qualifiers, a run dating back to 2007.

The Poles move above Republic of Ireland on goal difference and next host Scotland on Tuesday.

Read it all.

Is another way of putting it that the focus on divorced and remarried Catholics and on annulments risks overshadowing the bigger question, which is how to prevent marriages from breaking down in the first place?

Absolutely. The preventative approach is important. Of course, we never should be making a choice between helping people who are suffering and trying to prevent them from getting hurt in the first place. We have to do both.

What would be most useful to you as an American bishop out of this synod?

I think the most useful result would be a confirmation of the beauty of the Church’s teaching and a resolve on the part of the Church at all levels, not just the bishops, to support marriage and family.

Read it all.

An Iraqi provincial leader has issued a plea for US ground forces to head off total collapse in the country’s largest province, a swathe of territory that could serve as a springboard for an assault on Baghdad by forces of the so-called Islamic State.

The call by Sabah al-Karhout, the president of Anbar’s provincial council, will test the nerve of officials in the Iraqi and American capitals. It comes as a rash of suicide bombings in Baghdad late on Saturday killed more than 50 people and wounded nearly 100, mostly in Shiite districts of the city.

Set beside the ongoing failure of US-led airstrikes to turn the tide in the battle for Kobane, a small Kurdish community in the north of neighbouring Syria, and desperate fighting in the oil refinery town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, Mr Karhout’s appeal will leave many in the region and beyond wondering how the US and its allies intend to save an entire country, when seemingly they can’t save a single town.

Read it all from the SMH.

When asked how important it is to maintain the parish system 83% say it is important, 12% not important, and 5% have no strong feelings either way. There is no other topic in the survey (which asked 29 questions in total) on which there is such uniformity of opinion ”“ except the belief that there is a ”˜personal God’ (83%)….

One reason for the high level of support for the parish system may be clergy’s belief that the CofE exists to serve the whole nation. When asked who the Church should prioritise 2/3 say ”˜England as a whole’ and only 5% say regular churchgoers.

Read it all.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst pray for thy disciples that they might be one, even as thou art one with the Father: Draw us to thyself, that in common love and obedience to thee we may be united to one another, in the fellowship of the one Spirit, that the world may believe that thou art Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

–William Temple

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.

I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me.

1 Corinthians 4:9-16

There are at least three levels of violence. The first demonstrates mere power and greed, with mobs and soldiers driving people out of their homes and businesses and into the streams of refugees. According to United Nations estimates, at least 1 million Iraqis have been displaced during the past four months.

The second level of everyday violence, she said bluntly, is “just shooting people.”

On the third level, people move beyond deadly violence into unbelievable acts of terror. A Muslim who fled the fighting, said Ahmed, told her one story about what happened to some Iraqi men who could not flee fast enough. The Islamic State soldiers “lay them on the ground, after shooting them,” and then rolled over the bodies with a tractor in “front of their families, just to devastate them.”

[Andrew] White said those who survive are left haunted by what they have seen and, in some cases, what they themselves have done.

Read it all.

The flag fluttered at half-mast over Winchester, the bells pealed and the people of Hampshire gathered to say goodbye to a long-serving former bishop.

The Right Rev Michael Scott-Joynt died on September 27, aged 71, three years after his retirement as Bishop, a position he held for 16 years.

Around 800 people gathered at the cathedral yesterday to pay their final respects at the two-hour ceremony.

Guests included Dame Mary Fagan, who recently retired as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, Mayor of Winchester, Eileen Berry, and city council leader Rob Humby.

Read it all.

With food and jobs scarce, and their savings depleted, Syrian Christians and their neighbors are struggling to provide for their families.

Despite their own trauma, many believers are choosing to stay in their beleaguered communities and reach out in love amid their neighbors’ pain.

Christians in Syria have been able to distribute food with the help of Baptist Global Response, a Southern Baptist-related relief organization. Families also are receiving blankets and medical care. Children who have been out of school for years once again are being educated.

Read it all.

Pope Francis has signalled his blessing to the breakaway traditionalist American church at the centre of the split which has divided the 80 million strong worldwide Anglican Communion over the issue of sexuality.

He sent a message offering his “prayers and support” to Archbishop Foley Beach, the new leader of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the conservative movement which broke away from The Episcopal Church after the ordination of the first openly gay bishop.

His message underlines the pressure facing the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, as he attempts to avert a formal schism in worldwide Anglicanism.

Read it all.

The US-led coalition has unleashed more than 40 airstrikes on Anbar since August, helping drive Isis back from the critical Haditha dam.

However, the strikes have failed to blunt the militants’ overall advance, which has accelerated dramatically in the past three weeks. They have taken two military bases and a string of strategic towns, putting the Iraqi government’s already tenuous presence in Anbar at risk. Daily attacks on Iraqi security forces are taking place around the provincial capital, Ramadi.

After the capture of Hit last week, Ramadi and Haditha are now the only two government-held enclaves standing in the way of an unbroken Isis supply line running along the Euphrates river from Raqqa, its de facto capital in Syria, to Baghdad.

Read it all (requires subscription).

After 16 years, Egypt has completed the restoration of a famous Cairo landmark ”” the St. Virgin Mary’s Coptic Church, also known as the Hanging Church.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab and the country’s Coptic Christian pope, Tawadros II, attended the Saturday’s ceremony marking the end of the $5.4 million restoration project.

Read it all.

Despite the elusiveness of a common good, we can and indeed are called to pursue creative work for the good of others. We can do that regardless of whether we find ourselves within the acceptable mainstream or at the margins of society. That is the example of Martin Luther King Jr., John Perkins, Dorothy Day, Fanny Crosby, Sojourner Truth, and countless others who have gone before us. It is also the example of Jesus.

Our laws and our culture are in a state of flux, and we do not yet know what the new normal will look like. But we can move forward without knowing how the story ends, because of our faith in how the Story ends.

I am encouraged by what I see in the ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The enforcement of the all-comers policy against groups like InterVarsity is a cultural marker that these groups are now outside of the mainstream of acceptability on the campuses that they serve. But InterVarsity has largely avoided the language of persecution. It has also worked for years to cross race and class lines, and to learn from those differences.

Read it all from CT.

Watch it all.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa, already ghastly, could get worse by orders of magnitude, killing hundreds of thousands of people and embedding itself in the human population for years to come, according to two worst-case scenarios from scientists studying the historic outbreak.

The virus could potentially infect 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January, according to a statistical forecast by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Tuesday. That number came just hours after a report in the New England Journal of Medicine warned that the epidemic might never be fully controlled and that the virus could become endemic, crippling civic life in the affected countries and presenting an ongoing threat of spreading elsewhere.

Read it all.

Update: The elves also recommend the latest post on Ebola at Lent & Beyond, with a graph showing the cumulative number of cases of Ebola in West Africa. There are also suggested prayer points, and links to donate to several charities on the frontlines in the Ebola struggle.