“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”

There was a lot to enjoy in my early job in a guitar shop. But there were a couple of things that pained me in contrasting ways. Stocktaking was tedious. The compensation was listening to music and doing it in company with others.

When I was in primary school we were taught the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. As the years have passed it has become clear to me that this is simply not true. Our descriptions about other people matter as do their descriptions of us.

In this edition, we are looking at the story of Zacchaeus who is the subject of name-calling and denigration.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) is so well known that I hardly need to take up space here repeating or paraphrasing it. The legacy of this story is that a Samaritan is universally understood as a good person who helps others, a good neighbour. Newcastle Anglican’s own welfare agency scarcely needs a mission statement; the name says it all.

While there are quite a lot of women in the Biblical narrative, they aren’t usually front and centre and there can be a lot of confusion about who they are and what they did.

Ruth is told as a domestic love story, yes. But it models a truth people everywhere are experiencing currently in heightened ways day by day. Factors beyond domestic control shape the stories we live. The friendship of Moabite Ruth and her Judean mother-in-law Naomi unfolds against famine, and in the days when the judges ruled. According to the book of Judges, this was a time of ‘decline and anarchy in Israel.’[i] The marginalised are apt to become more so in circumstances of famine and self-interested government. Ruth and Naomi are both widows, refugees and each at first an alien in one another’s countries, properly on the margins.

The peasantry prospered in Israel;
they grew fat on plunder,
because you arose, Deborah,
arose as a mother in Israel. Judges 5.7

By Bishop Charlie

By Father Rod