St Michael's talks & sermons

This is the first sermon in a series on The Church, taking its cue from 3 Sundays in the New Zealand lectionary, with 3 bonus sermons on other aspects of Being the Church.. This week, Jessie Black discusses Pentecost as the Birthday of the Church, and probes how to retain hope when our hopes for God to do great things through the church are disappointed. Readings Acts 2.1-21 1 Corinthians 12.3-13...

Readings for Sixth Sunday of Easter 1 Peter 3.13-22 Acts 17.22-31 John 14.15-21 In this sermon, Rev. Dr. Tim McKenzie follows Paul to Athens, and wonders how his preaching methodology here helps build bridges for the gospel into Athenian culture. Or does it? Tim notes that the people of Athens were a tough crowd; it's one of Paul's least successful preaching gigs in Acts. Might his invocat...

Tim preaches from the lectionary readings about Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, with some reference to the Coronation of Charles III along the way. How do we hold Jesus as the centre, without putting toll gates on the Way, setting exams for the Truth, and rationing out the Way? Acts 7.55-60 John 14.1-14

Fasting! The Lenten discipline we all want to avoid, or perhaps reduce to avoiding chocolate. But what is the logic behind this ancient discipline? Tim guides us through fasting in this new series on the 7 Habits of Occasionally Effective Christians... Readings 2 Samuel 12.15-23 Acts 13.1-3 Matthew 6.16-18

Why do Christians prize forgiveness so highly? Is is even possible, when we've been sorely wronged? What would it mean to forgive others for God's sake ? Deborah Wilson expounds the logic - and power - of Christian forgiveness. Readings Matthew 18.21-35

Professor Jonathan Boston continues the Lenten series on the Habits of Occasionally Effective Christians. This week - charitable giving, or as it used to be called, "almsgiving". How do we give intelligently and faithfully in a world so different from the world Jesus encountered in 1st C Palestine? Readings 2 Corinthians 9.6-15 Matthew 6.1-4

Geoff Troughton unpacks the 6th Habit of Occasionally Effective Christians, the discipline of study. What does it mean to love God with all our minds, as well as our hearts and souls. And what does this have to do with Palm Sunday? Readings Psalm 118 Deuteronomy 4.6-9 Matthew 21.1-17

The texts for the day were Psalm 46, Ephesians 6.17-20 and Matthew 6.5-8 . Rebecca speaks about prayer as a way of dwelling in Christ and seeing God's presence everywhere, particularly in the wilderness times in our lives. She mentions Tim Mackie's talk Paradise Now .

In the telling of the Christmas story before the sermon, we read the recipe for Christmas.  Ingredient 10 appeared to be missing, but it was written in invisible ink.  When we heated it over the Christ candle, we discovered that the missing ingredient was God's love.  Listen on...

Jeremiah 31:27-34 • 2 Timothy 3:14–4:5 • Luke 18:1-8 Māmari reflects on Colin McCahon's painting Storm Warning , karakia, and prayer/inoi.

We hear a lot about the cost of discipleship, and rightly so.  Following Jesus is about taking up our crosses to follow.  But, is it all about cost?  In this sermon, Matthew reflects on both the costs and the treasure, the joy and the reward.  And he notes that Pascal's Wager rather withers under the promise of eternal life. Psalm 139 Jeremiah 18.1-11 Luke 14.25-33

Tim explores what the Kingdom looks like in the practice of hospitality.  What is hospitality, and what isn't it?  And what about hospitality is conducive to the spread of the good news? Tim references a John Mark Comer sermon that explores some of these issues really well - see https://bridgetown.church/teaching/preaching-the-gospel/part-3-practice-hospitality/ Year C, Ordinary 22 Luke...

Tim McKenzie ditches his weather forecasting career to ask what it means that Jesus came to bring division, not peace.  The readings were the lectionary readings for the day: Isaiah 5.1-7 Luke 12.49-56

Galatians 6 Luke 12.32-40 Sam Jackson wraps up our Galatians series by asking us if we really are carrying one another's burdens, and encouraging us with the reminder that God specialises in using broken vessels.

In Galatians 4, Paul explores the idea of captivity to the "elemental principles/powers of the world".  For some, that's captivity to the Law.  For others, it's captivity to "gods who are not gods".  In either case, Paul urges the Galatian converts to stay free.  What might that mean for 21st Century people?

In our 3rd installment of the Galatians series, Matthew Bartlett explains why the cross is the way past cultural imperialism.  And why Paul is therefore so adamant that converts to the Jesus movement aren't obliged to follow Torah.  . Galatians 3.1-14 Galatians 3.21-28 Luke 23.32-34, 44-47 With help from Fleming Rutledge and Lamin Sanneh.

Galatians 2, with Māmari Stephens

Galatians is Paul's loudest, fiercest, most polemical letter.  Rev. Dr. Tim McKenzie gives us a short overview of the letter, and highlights three things to look out for as we read it. Earlier in the service, we had watched the most excellent Bible Project overview of Galatians , and Tim refers to that a couple of times in the sermon. 

Tim McKenzie opens the Why Be a Christian series by sketching four stories that people live by, out of the many available.  Why do these  stories appeal to people?  And how do they stack up against the Christian story, the truest story of all? Note: this sermon was rerecorded after the fact, as the original recording failed Romans 1.1-6 Luke 6.39-49

This is the final episode in our 2022 series, Faith, Crisis & Freedom.  Bronwyn Wood, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, takes us on a rich tour of the data around children's educational achievement, and what Covid has done to their learning.  And she offers some thoughtful analysis of where we're going wrong in  New Zealand particularly, and what we might do...

This talk comes from the St Michael's Faith, Crisis & Freedom series (2022).  Dr Andrew Shepherd, lecturer in Theology & Public Issues at Otago University, probes the Western cultural mood, as humanity stares down the barrel of environmental devastation.  After summarising some of the "Cli-Fi" literature written in the past decades, he offers a close reading of Station Eleven by...

How do I know God?  Why all this Trinity stuff? Christians often feel befuddled by the doctrine of the Trinity.  Rev. Dr. Tim McKenzie suggests that our challenge is to know the God indicated by the doctrine, rather than focusing on knowing the doctrine for its own sake. Psalm 8 Romans 5.1-5 John 16.12-15

It's Pentecost Sunday! Rebecca Packer unpacks the rich biblical imagery for the Holy Spirit and asks, "what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit"?

Remember the first lockdown? How did we get from teddy bears in people's windows to fiery protests at parliament? In this talk, Dr Philip Fountain considers the government's management of the Covid pandemic, and suggests that hidden religious themes in New Zealand political discourse can cast light on what happened. How do ideas of sovereignty, solidarity, sacrifice and the iconic enable a better...

Why on earth, since Jesus prayed for the church to be one, i it so divided?  Is there any hope? Rev. Dr. Tim McKenzie preaches on the lectionary readings for Easter 7, 2022. Acts 16.16-34 Revelation 22.12-17, 20-21 John 17:20-26