Thank you to “Connecting the Dots”, who did this interview at the ‘Hands Off Iran’ rally on March 14, 2026, held at Sydney’s Town Hall. Find the interview (and lots of other great stuff) on their Substack: https://connectingthedotsaustralia.su….
“The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.” (Ezekiel 37:1)
I read these words and immediately thought of my last visit to the Anglican Cathedral in Sydney. There are people buried there, but it wasn’t “dem bones” I was thinking of. That song did also come to mind—“dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones…”
I won’t sing it, as it may sound like a racial caricature, but I did do some research into the song and found that it’s actually not a traditional spiritual from pre–Civil War America. It was composed by James Weldon Johnson in 1928.
Johnson was a civil rights activist, a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a key figure in the ‘Harlem Renaissance.’ He and his brother gave Ezekiel’s vision a melody that children could sing and adults could remember—not to entertain, but to proclaim a gospel truth: that God remembers what history has dismembered. In a world where their people had been broken, scattered, and felt dried out and washed up, the Johnsons dared to sing of the breath of God – still moving and still bringing life out of death.
It was a powerful message. Was it Ezekiel’s message?
I think what we often miss in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is that we’re looking at the aftermath of a battle. Ezekiel lived through the final days of Israel’s existence as an independent nation. He warned his people. They didn’t listen. He went down with them.
Ezekiel was deported after the Babylonian invasion of 597 BC. Judah revolted again a decade after that, and the nation and its temple were then completely destroyed. Ezekiel lived through all of it and, as far as we know, spent the rest of his life in exile but, from Babylon, he wrote of hope — of rebuilding, both politically and spiritually.
It’s not obvious that Ezekiel’s valley was from a specific battle, but it’s a catastrophic scene. The valley is full of bones — “very dry” bones, we’re told (Ezekiel 37:2). These people had been dead a good while, and there was no one left to bury them.
In Israelite law, burial was sacred. Even a condemned criminal had to be buried the same day. Leaving a corpse exposed not only shamed the dead but defiled the land.
After battle, the worst dishonour imaginable was for there to be no one left to reverently dispose of your body. The prophet sees not just death but abandonment – a people so defeated that no one was left to mourn or bury them. And that’s how Ezekiel’s people saw themselves—cut off, forgotten, beyond dignity and hope.
As I enter Ezekiel’s vision, I cannot help but sense its shadow stretching across our own time. It was a vision born of a world where war had left the dead unburied and the living without hope, and I fear our world is drifting toward that same valley now.
The escalating violence between the modern state of Israel, the United States, and Iran is already generating similar terrible scenes — multiple landscapes where human dignity is being swallowed up by the machinery of war — and while I don’t claim prophetic insight into the situation, I recognise that whenever nations harden themselves for conflict, the bones of the innocent are the first to be scattered.
We’ve seen this already in the murder of the young girls of Minab Elementary, and the reports I’m hearing of American bases being evacuated under fire suggest that the valleys could soon be filled again with bones. Even so, Ezekiel’s vision does not end in the valley – frozen in the horror of human violence. After walking among the bones and facing the despair of the people, God commands the prophet to speak — not to recount past mistakes but to prophesy life into what looks irreversibly dead.
Yes, our world is trembling under the weight of conflict and the threat of escalation, and we seem to be ready to carve out more valleys for bones, yet Ezekiel reminds us that God’s Spirit is not intimidated by the landscapes we create, and the breath that raised Ezekiel’s shattered nation can move through the fault lines of our own age, speaking life, guarding peace, and reminding us that death is not the final word.
The winds of war howl, but they’re not the only force shaping human history. Even in the valley of death another wind is blowing—the ‘ruach’ (meaning breath, wind, and spirit)—and the prophet calls on that other wind to create a different future.
“Prophesy to the breath,” God tells the prophet. Speak to the Spirit that can reach places no army can touch. That is where our hope rests—not in the proclamations of governments or the calculations of generals, but in the God whose breath can cross borders, change hearts, and bring life out of death and devastation.
Ezekiel stood in that valley, and he spoke a word of life because he understood that God’s Spirit was stronger than the forces that had broken his world, and we need to understand that too. We don’t have permission to surrender to despair or let the winds of war be the only forces shaping our imagination. We too are called to be bearers of the breath—people who pray when others panic, reconcile when others divide, and protect the vulnerable when nations rattle their sabres.
In a world that feels increasingly brittle, we remind one another today that God’s Spirit is at work, rebuilding what violence has torn down and gathering together what fear scatters. We do not know exactly what the great nations will do, but we know what our great God can do, and we know who we are called to be — a people who speak words of hope into the valley of despair.
The world trembles, the nations rage, and the future feels horribly uncertain, but the Spirit of God that raised dem dry bones is on the move and is calling out a people who can carry hope into the strongholds of fear.
It is our mission to speak our word of life to the bones lying dormant in our cathedrals and in our churches and on our battlefields and even in our cemeteries. For we put our faith in the breath and not in the battle, the Spirit rather than the sword, and the promises of God rather than our all too earthly fears.
May the breath of God that breathes life into the dry bones breathe on us and make us emissaries of hope. Amen.
First published on Father Dave’s blog – March 21st, 2026
Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgement, so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (John 9:39)
It has to be one of the most confronting things Jesus ever said. We love the idea of Jesus helping the blind to see but simultaneously blinding those who can see …! What are we supposed to do with that?
We’re in John’s Gospel, of course, where Jesus regularly plays with words. In John three, Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus’ call to be “born from above”, hearing instead, “born again”. In John four, the Samaritan woman hears “flowing water” when Jesus offers her “living water”. Now, in John nine, the confusion centres on blindness and sight—sometimes literal, sometimes spiritual.
A man born blind receives physical sight, but the real blindness in the story belongs to those who refuse to see what is right in front of them. The Pharisees in this story are not visually impaired; they are spiritually impaired. They cannot see what God is doing because they are too committed to their ideology—to what we nowadays call their ‘dominant narrative.’
We live in a world of competing narratives, each claiming to interpret what’s really going on, and sometimes these narratives can blind us to the obvious!
We saw that during the pandemic, I believe. There was an official narrative—emergency measures, lockdowns, masks, and a massive vaccine rollout. Then there were the counter‑narratives—claims of government overreach, pharmaceutical manipulation, and long‑term control. What concerned me most was not which narrative was correct, but how little space there was for open, rational debate. Dissenters were mocked, silenced, or criminalised.
I’m sure we all remember Prime Minister of New Zealand declaring to her people that her government was their “single source of truth”—language I’d never heard used before outside of dodgy religious contexts.
John nine plays out in exactly this way. A man born blind is healed. The townsfolk, his parents, and the religious authorities all try to make sense of it, but instead of celebrating the miracle, they panic as this healing threatens their dominant narrative.
Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, and, therefore—according to the Pharisees—He must be a sinner. The man who was healed offers a counter-narrative: “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (John 9:33) The Pharisees respond, not with argument but with force! When the dominant narrative is threatened, the dissenting voice must be silenced.
Yes, this feels familiar. America and Israel recently declared war on Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons, or was it to stop an imminent Iranian attack on the USA, or maybe was it to bring democracy to the Iranian people? It’s not clear exactly what their rationale was, as it keeps shifting, but it most definitely was NOT an attempt by the US President to distract from revelations in the Epstein Files that might land him in prison, and, as in our Gospel reading, if you don’t accept that dominant narrative, you risk being criminalised!
Last week, you may remember, I attended a memorial service for the late Ayatollah of Iran in support of my many Shia Muslim friends, and I was genuinely surprised to wake and find that people were petitioning the Australian government to take legal proceedings against me and my friends because we had apparently ‘supported a terrorist organisation’ by attending the memorial service. Praying can be dangerous!
Jesus said, “I came… so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (John 9:39)
Of course, He’s not talking about punishing people with literal blindness. He is talking about exposing the blindness that we refuse to acknowledge. As Kierkegaard said, “All obscurity is a dialectical interplay of knowledge and will.” In other words, we don’t see partly because we can’t see and partly because we don’t want to.
It’s like a game of Jenga, with the various different blocks that form a tower of belief. Some beliefs are foundational to the tower. Remove them, and the whole edifice starts to shake!
Years ago, I watched a 9/11 documentary with a young American volunteer at our youth centre. When she saw footage of Building 7 collapsing, she became visibly distressed. “That can’t be true,” she said, “because if it is true, then my government has been lying to me. And if they’ve lied about that, how can I believe anything they say?” She couldn’t let go of her belief in her government, not because there was anything solid supporting that belief but because so much other stuff rested upon it!
We all have towers like that. We believe ‘we are the good guys’. We believe our culture’s values are basically right. We believe that our media tries to tell us the truth, and the older we get, the more blocks we stack, and the more invested we become in making sure that our tower doesn’t fall. Jesus comes both to expose and to liberate. He comes to help the blind see but also to blind the seeing by dismantling our false confidences that keep us from recognising our own blindness.
The Pharisees’ problem was not ignorance. It was overconfidence. They knew how God worked. They knew who was righteous and who was a sinner. They knew what the Sabbath law required, and because they were so sure they could see, they were unable to recognise God standing right in front of them.
The man born blind, on the other hand, begins the story knowing nothing. He doesn’t know who Jesus is. He doesn’t know why he was healed. He doesn’t even know what Jesus looks like. But he is open. He is willing to learn. And because he knows he is blind, he becomes the one who truly sees.
This is the invitation of our Gospel—not necessarily to adopt a new narrative, nor to replace one ideology with another, but to recognise our blindness—to admit that our towers are fragile, our assumptions limited, and our certainties often misplaced.
Jesus does not expect us to see everything clearly, but He asks us to look at Him, and when we do that, everything else starts to come into focus.
Shine your light on us, O Lord!
Give us eyes to see the truth and the courage to choose it! Amen.
Father Dave Issues Boxing Challenge to Tony Abbott
Sydney, Australia — Father Dave Smith — Anglican priest, long‑time youth worker, social activist, and current New South Wales Over‑60s Professional Light‑Heavyweight Boxing Champion — has released a new video renewing his public boxing challenge to former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
In the 80‑second video, published today, Father Dave responds to Mr Abbott’s earlier refusal to enter the ring with him and addresses the former Prime Minister’s recent public praise of police actions at the Town Hall rally for Palestine — a rally in which Father Dave participated.
“I know you said ‘no’ to my last challenge because you didn’t want to look like a thug, beating up on an old priest,” Father Dave says in the video, “but I think that horse bolted when you applauded the police who attacked peaceful demonstrators. I was there. It wasn’t pretty.”
Father Dave, who has spent more than three decades using boxing as a tool for community building and youth outreach, says the challenge is not about hostility but about accountability, charity, and public dialogue. He’s also clearly not stressed about the former PM’s ability to cause him injury.
“I’m the current NSW professional light‑heavyweight champion for us over‑60s,” he says. “How much damage do you really think you can do to me?”
The video concludes with a renewed invitation:
“Tony, I’m ready to rumble. I know you can fight — so let’s see if you can take my title. We’ll raise money, for Palestine if you’re willing. It’ll be a war where everyone wins… except that you’re gonna lose.”
About Father Dave
Father Dave Smith is an Anglican priest, professional boxer, author, and long‑time advocate for troubled youth and people at risk. He has been nominated for Australian of the Year three times, is Australia’s oldest active professional boxer, and is the current NSW Over‑60s Professional Light‑Heavyweight Boxing Champion. His work has been recognised internationally for its impact on community cohesion, interfaith dialogue, and youth empowerment.
“We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)
If you’ve spent any time studying Islam, you know that Muslims hold Jesus in remarkably high regard. Indeed, Jesus’ name appears in the Qur’an more often than that of Prophet Muhammad (PBAH). The same cannot be said of the Apostle Paul, though. Indeed, many Muslims suspect Paul of steering the Christian community off course by focusing too much on Jesus instead of focusing on the God of Jesus.
I’ve always felt that this low regard for Paul is a shame, because if Muslim scholars—particularly Shia Muslim scholars—would spend more time with Paul, they would find in him a profound companion in their own theology of suffering.
Now … my aim in these reflections is specifically to help illuminate the Christian Scriptures, but if there was ever a moment for Christians to deepen their understanding of Islam—particularly of Shia Islam—that moment is surely now.
Only ten to thirteen per cent of the world’s Muslims are Shia, yet they make up ninety to ninety‑five per cent of the population of Iran, and given that America and Israel have now gone to war with Iran, and given that our own prime minister has publicly expressed Australia’s support for this war, it strikes me as essential that we learn something about the people we are possibly preparing to fight.
As you probably know, I’ve travelled to Iran numerous times. I’ve lectured at Iranian universities and have been broadcast on national television there twice. Back in 2006, I helped found the Australia–Iran Friendship Association (in Australia), and in 2019 I fought the amateur boxing champion of Mashhad (in northeastern Iran).
I will never forget that fight, as, after the final bell tolled, all the boxing officials in their white shirts and black bowties lined up across the ring, facing me, and each of them then gave me a red rose and a kiss on each cheek! I went back to my hotel with a big bunch of roses, two red cheeks, and an even deeper love for the Iranian people.
Anyway … I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know enough about Iran to say these verses from Saint Paul would resonate deeply with almost every religious Iranian.
“Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
On April 3rd this year, we’ll celebrate Good Friday. On August 3rd, Shia Muslims will celebrate Arba’een, and I must say that the first time I attended an Arba’een service, I was struck by how much the atmosphere reminded me of our Good Friday service.
On Good Friday we remember the death of Jesus—an event both terrible and holy. Shia Muslims, in Ashura and Arba’een, remember the martyrdom of Imam Husain at Karbala in the year 680.
I won’t go into the details here, but I would encourage you to read about it or attend an Ashura gathering this August. Let it suffice for the moment to say that nothing is revered more in Shia Islam than Husain’s example of suffering for the sake of truth, which, I believe, was exactly what Saint Paul was also focusing on in Romans five.
Saint Paul could be mistaken for sounding like a motivational speaker – “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” – but there is more to what Paul is saying here than “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” because Paul is not describing the ordinary mechanics of human psychology where, a lot of the time, suffering doesn’t lead to hope at all but leads to depression, self-harm and death! Paul is describing the mysterious way that God can reshape us from within through our most painful experiences. He says, “Suffering leads to hope—when God pours His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:5)
Paul spoke with authority on the subject of suffering, and he lists his own sufferings without embarrassment: “Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked…” (2 Corinthians 11:25), and so the list goes on!
You can almost hear Paul’s critics whispering in the background, “God is clearly not with this guy—everything he touches ends in disaster!”, and we can understand that. When life keeps going wrong, we assume we’ve done something wrong. Bad karma. Divine displeasure. God must be against me! But Paul begins his thinking with Christ crucified. And from that vantage point he sees that suffering—when endured in faith and for righteousness’ sake—not as a sign of God’s absence but of God’s presence.
Shia Muslims would not use Paul’s language, of course, but they walk the same path, as their entire devotional imagination is shaped by Husain’s willingness to suffer and die rather than compromise truth.
I have no doubt that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chose to remain at his desk and embrace his fate rather than flee. I’ve heard that he was warned repeatedly of the imminent attack and replied that if all ninety million Iranians could be moved to safety, he would go with them, but that otherwise he would remain at his post.
The Ayatollah knew that his death would galvanise his people, and I believe it has. If Donald Trump had even a rudimentary understanding of Shia theology, he would never have targeted the second most senior cleric in Shia Islam for martyrdom.
Much of what passes for religion—Christian or otherwise—is little more than an attempt to control the uncontrollable. We want health, wealth, and safety for ourselves and for our children, and we hope that by pleasing God (or “the gods”) we can secure a peaceful life and a happy hereafter.
Saint Paul would be the first to say that if you’re looking for a quiet life, free from stress and pain, following Jesus is not a good option, and Shia Islam isn’t either. But while following Jesus (or following Imam Husain) will not make life easier, it will make life larger and will fill life with meaning, courage, and hope.
“And that hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.” (Romans 5:5)
“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)
We’re in the third chapter of John’s Gospel this week—Jesus’ nighttime conversation with the scholar, Nicodemus—and I can never bring myself to skip over this reading, as it contains my favourite verse in the entire New Testament.
Not the famous “For God so loved the world…”, though that is here. Not even the well-known “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Though that is also a part of this same conversation. The verse that has shaped my life more than any other is the one we just heard: “The wind blows where it wills…”
I love this verse because it feels like the story of my spiritual life, so you’ll have to forgive me if today’s reflection is a little less scholarly and a little more personal.
The Wind and the Spirit
The wind blows where it wills … and so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Jesus is playing with language in this verse. In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word—‘pneuma’—and ‘ – and Jesus connects the two. The Spirit of God moves like the wind—unpredictable and uncontrollable, but unmistakable when it hits you in the face!
Of course, Jesus and Nicodemus may not have been speaking Greek. They may have been speaking Hebrew, where the same word, ‘ruach,’ also means both wind, breath, and spirit. Or they may in fact have been speaking Aramaic, where the same word, in this case ‘Ruha’, again carries the same triple meaning!
And the pattern continues across the Semitic family of languages. Even in Arabic, I’m told, the words for spirit (rūḥ) and wind (rīḥ) come from the same ancient root. It seems that in almost every language (except English) the connection between wind, breath, and spirit is built right into the vocabulary.
The Spirit Who Surprises
“The wind blows where it wills,” says Jesus, and that seems to have been the story of my spiritual journey.
I grew up in a conservative Christian household and learned early on that I belonged to the “true” church — Protestant, Evangelical, and Reformed—and I was taught early on to beware of those who called themselves Christians but were, in fact, deceived. And of course, that primarily meant Catholics.
The list of the spiritually suspect didn’t end with Catholics, of course. People of other religions, gay people, and — to a degree — women. Not all women were lost souls, of course, but they didn’t seem to be on the same spiritual level as men either
That was the religion of my youth, so perhaps it’s no surprise that by my teenage years I had largely abandoned it. And then, when I was eighteen, I had my own encounter with the Spirit of God, and from that moment forward, my life has been marked by a series of encounters with God’s Spirit at times and in places that I’ve never anticipated.
Early on I met young gay Christian men who were wrestling with their identity, and though I couldn’t share their struggle, I could not deny that it was the same Spirit of God at work in them that was at work in me.
I encountered that same Spirit amongst long-term alcoholic people I worked with at the refuge I volunteered in, in the prison system among men guilty of terrible crimes, and—most surprising of all—amongst members of the local mosque!
I must add too that through all that time the Spirit was educating me through as many women as men, of course, if not more.
I remember ten years ago in Damascus, sitting alongside my friend, Dr Hassoun, the former Grand Mufti of Syria. I said to him, “I feel as though I’ve known you all my life. I think it’s the Spirit of God in me connecting with the Spirit of God in you.” He nodded warmly, even before the translator had finished. The wind of God’s Spirit had blown the two of us together, and it connects us still, even with him now in prison.
The Spirit Who Gives Life
This connection between wind and Spirit is not just linguistic, of course. It is biblical:
At creation, God’s breath (ruach) hovers over the waters (Genesis 1:2).
Human life begins when God breathes into Adam’s nostrils (Genesis 2:7).
It is the wind (ruach) of God that parts the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21).
It is the ruach that brings life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 37).
And it is this Spirit (pneuma) that Jesus says gives us ‘new birth’ (John 3:6)
From the first page of Scripture to the last, life begins when God breathes.
The Spirit We Cannot Control
So much of what goes under the name of religion is, I fear, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Even if we’re not desperately chasing money, fame and fortune, we want security for ourselves and good things for our children. So we pray, we behave, and we try to do right by God, hoping God will do right by us. Religion, in its most generic form, is often little more than an attempt to influence the divine, but Jesus turns this upside down.
‘The Spirit of God moves like the wind,’ says Jesus. You don’t know where it comes from. You don’t know where it’s going, and you certainly can’t control it, but you can trust God’s Spirit because it’s the Spirit of the same God who ‘so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son…’ (John 3:16)
The wind blows where it wills, but it does not blow randomly. It is not fickle, impulsive, or erratic. It is the breath of a God who loves the world—all of it—and more than we can imagine. Breathe on us, breath of God!
“And [the devil] said to [Jesus], “All these I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me.”” (Matthew 4:9)
Baudelaire wrote more than a century ago that “The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” That feels to me like commentary on today’s news, and yet on the first Sunday of Lent, the Gospels refuse to let us look away. They lead us into the wilderness to the place where Jesus meets the devil face-to-face. And if we’re honest, we’ve been meeting him too, far more often than we’d like to admit.
Perhaps I’m particularly conscious of the demonic at the moment because I’ve been reading “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre—the autobiography of the woman who was at the heart of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex‑trafficking empire. It is a brutal book, and if you’re thinking of reading it, let me warn you that there are details in the book that, once you’ve read them, you can’t unread, and indeed, the poor woman’s story has left me with images that I’d rather not be carrying.
And the more that story is unpacked, the darker it becomes. It begins with the sexual exploitation of children, and then allegations surface of ritual violence and occult practices. You may have seen the interview with Anya Wick, who says she is Epstein’s niece and claims that their entire family secretly worships Baal. Whether or not her claims are true, the fact that such allegations even sound plausible tells you something about the moral fog we’re living in.
But the most concerning allegations in the Epstein files aren’t about ritual or even sexual abuse. They’re about blackmail—about powerful men compromised and controlled. And it raises the frightening possibility that decisions affecting millions of lives may be shaped, not by wisdom or justice, but by fear, coercion, and corruption.
It does all leave you wondering how someone who goes into office with high ideals and a desire to make a difference reaches that point where they make their deal with the devil – where they hear the whisper, “All these I will give you…” and they bow?
How does anyone get to that point? How, for that matter, does an innocent schoolgirl end up at the centre of Epstein’s sex-trafficking empire? How, for that matter, did our global system ever develop to the point where compromised men can give orders that cost the lives of millions and millions of people and can do so knowing full well that they will never be held accountable for their actions?
The answer, I believe, to all these questions is the same. It happens one step at a time, and the first step towards catastrophe is often a very small one.
The devil says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). It doesn’t sound particularly demonic. Who would be harmed? Would it derail the universe for Jesus to have a meal? Probably not. It would simply be a small indulgence – a minor deviation from Jesus’ fast.
But small steps shape trajectories. We know the words of traditional wisdom:
“Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.”
Is that what Jesus was doing—shaping destiny through a small act of self-denial?
The second temptation raises the same questions: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down … “ (Matthew 4:6)
If the devil was right, and Jesus was living a charmed life at that stage, what would it have hurt for Him to put His Heavenly Father to the test? A small test. A little spiritual thrill. Jesus refuses, as it takes Him down a path He does not want to take.
In the third temptation, the devil shows his hand, I think. The initial part of the offer sounds good – the tempter shows Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (Matthew 4:8), and he says to him, ” All these I will give you” (Matthew 4:9).
So far, so good, we may think. Who could do a better job of managing all the kingdoms of this world than Jesus? Even so, the sting is in the devil’s tail (so to speak) as he adds, “if you bow down and worship me”, and Jesus won’t go there.
I fear, though, many of our leaders made that bargain – not in one dramatic moment, but inch by inch, compromise by compromise, until they found themselves on the mountaintop with the devil, signing a contract they’d never intended to negotiate.
Sow an action, reap a habit Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny
Journeys into hell begin with a single step, but so do journeys toward holiness!
We’re at the beginning of Lent. In my old parish of Dulwich Hill, we had a wonderful parishioner there in her 90’s who would testify each year that she was giving up sex for Lent. Most of us don’t follow the old tradition of giving something up for Lent, as it seems trivial or quaint. But perhaps we’ve underestimated the power of small steps.
Why not take one small step in the right direction this Lent? Why not practice a little self‑denial and give up chocolate and put the money we would have spent on that small indulgence toward relief work in Gaza, not because chocolate is evil, but because small acts shape habits, and habits, character, and character, destiny.
Our world is in a precarious place. Evil is real, and God is going to need an army of people who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So why not use these forty days to take a spiritual inventory of our souls, to clear out the clutter, to strengthen the muscles of faithfulness, and so to take the next right step in the right direction?
For if the road to hell is paved with tiny compromises, the road to God’s Kingdom is paved with tiny obediences—small acts of courage, small acts of generosity, small acts of truthfulness, little acts of love—and if enough of us take enough small steps in the right direction, then even in our dark world, the light will continue to shine.
“For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”” (1 Peter 1:17)
It’s Transfiguration Sunday this week, and these are the words of the Apostle, Peter, describing that mysterious event. It’s not clear from these words how fully Peter understood what happened that day on the mountain, but what is clear is that it was an experience he did not forget. He says, “We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.” (1 Peter 1:18)
Whatever happened that day, the transfiguration of Jesus was evidently an awesome and life-changing experience for everyone who was there. The only problem is, we weren’t there. That was not our life-changing experience, and, speaking personally, I haven’t seen a lot of transfiguring going on around here lately!
I was at the Town Hall rally last Monday evening—the rally protesting the invitation of the Israeli president to Australia—and it was, for the most part, an orderly and peaceful affair. We were packed tight in the Town Hall Square, yet people were polite and apologetic when they bumped into one another. The speakers made clear that our protest didn’t target any race of people but opposed the actions of the government, and when the rally was over, I snuck down the back stairs and avoided the crowd, which is how I missed getting embroiled in the violence!
I was a block away when my partner, Joy, who had gone the other way, called me to say she’d been pepper sprayed! I don’t know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that I wasn’t closer to the action, as there’s no way I could have stood back and watched while those men who were praying were assaulted by the police!
I’ve had the privilege of being in quite a few war zones in Syria. I was in a riot outside of Jerusalem and almost killed. I’ve been in a sinking boat off the crocodile-infested shores of Manus Island, and I think I’ve learnt to handle intense and life-threatening situations with a good degree of self-control. Even so, there’s something particularly unsettling about seeing these things happen in your own backyard—when the police – our police—the people we look to to keep control, lose control!
It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. I saw that mob mentality with police once when running the youth drop-in centre in Dulwich Hill, and I saw it again during the protest rallies against the COVID lockdowns. Even so, I can’t get used to it, and I don’t want to get used to it. It unnerves me, and my question is, ‘Where is Christ in this?’ Can’t the Lord come and calm the mob in the same way He calmed the raging sea?
I was asking myself the same question while we were at the rally—well, not exactly the same question. My question then wasn’t ‘Where is God?’, but ‘Where is the church?’ I could see thousands and thousands of people, and no doubt there were many solid Christian folk there, but where were the Archbishops of Sydney and our other senior religious leaders? We seemed to be on our own, and then I heard that another friend of mine had been punched in the back of the head by the police!
I read our texts this week, and they’re all focused on the amazing experience Jesus and His disciples had on the mountaintop. ‘It was insane!’ says Peter (or words to that effect). ‘You should have been there. It was life-changing!’ And my problem is that I wasn’t there, and I’m feeling a long way from that mountaintop right now. The experience of the numinous and the holy is not my experience at the moment. I’m seeing something much darker happening around us.
And then it clicked with me that that is actually the whole point of Peter’s letter. Peter wasn’t boasting to his mates about what a great time he’d had with Jesus on the mountaintop. He and his people were in a very dark place, and Peter was trying to hang on to some of his memories that gave him hope!
In 2 Peter 1:14 (two verses prior to today’s passage), Peter says, “I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.”
In other words, ‘I know I’m about to die!’ He uses a euphemism – the “putting off of my body” – which in the original Greek is literally “the removal of my tent”, which is a beautiful phrase, recalling the wilderness wandering where everyone lived in tents and where even God had a tent—“the Tabernacle.” Peter, according to legend, was crucified upside down, probably in the mid-60s, when Nero was emperor. It would have been a horrific and terrifying way to die, yet Peter speaks of it as the ‘casting away of his tent’. And we know what replaces the tent. It’s the temple!
Times were dark for Peter, and the believers he’s speaking to seem to be on the verge of giving up. They had come to believe in Jesus, who had died and, three days later, rose again, but now had gone again, and how long was it going to take Him to come back this time? Another three days? Three years perhaps. Well, it had been thirty years! When was He coming back?
The days were dark. Instead of experiencing the reign of God, as they’d hoped by this stage, they were in the reign of Nero! Rome was burning, and Christians were being fed to lions.,Peter was about to be crucified. The holy mountain of the transfiguration must have seemed a long way away and a long time ago, but what Peter was trying to do was to get his people to focus less on when Christ was returning and more on who Christ was, because if Jesus really was ‘the beloved Son with whom God was well pleased,’ He could be trusted to come back exactly when the time was right.
It would have been good to have been on the mountaintop that day with Jesus. It would have been almost as good if Peter had taken a photograph or video to pass on to us—something that we could stick up on our bedroom wall or use as a screensaver on our computer so that when things get dark – when society seems to be collapsing around us and we’re being pepper-sprayed or punched in the head by the people who are supposed to be protecting us – we could look at that photo or video and remind ourselves that the beloved Son ultimately has it under control.
We don’t have a photo or video, but we have the account left to us in the Gospels, and we have this word from Peter, left to us as his final legacy. “We heard the voice come from heaven: “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” “
First published in Father Dave’s weekly newsletter on February 14th, 2026
“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2)
This, it seems, was the beginning and the end of the Saint Paul’s message – Jesus Christ – and not Jesus as some vague spiritual figure, but Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, saviour of the world, and, crucially, … the one who was crucified!
We forget how scandalous the crucifixion is. Lenny Bruce used to say that if Jesus had been born in the 20th century, we’d all be wearing little nooses around our necks, and if He’d been born a century earlier, we might all be wearing guillotines!
We forget how horrific the image of the cross was in the first century. It wasn’t an ornament but a form of torture reserved for terrorists. If Jesus had died in a gutter, kicked to death by a mob, it would have been a more dignified way to go.
The most notorious use of the cross, to my mind, followed the rebellion of Spartacus, the gladiator, who led a slave uprising against the Empire that ended in 71 BC with Spartacus defeated and six thousand of his rebel comrades crucified – their crosses lining the Via Appian outside Rome for a distance of more than 100 miles!
I find it hard to imagine what a horrific scene that must have been, but if you were a resident of first-century Judea, crucifixion would have been constantly in your face! You couldn’t go out to the market without passing a gauntlet of dying bodies. The cross was not a metaphor. It was a horror, and it carried a message from the Empire: “This is what happens to those who stand up to us.”
Crucifixion wasn’t just execution — it was humiliation, degradation, and public shaming. It was never inflicted on Roman citizens because it was considered too degrading for a full human being. It was for slaves, rebels, subhumans … and Jesus.
We preach Christ crucified, says Paul, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). Yes, it’s a crazy message, and, quite frankly, it was very poor marketing!
I remember many years ago hearing a sermon on this verse from someone who was something of a ‘Prosperity Gospel’ preacher—big on teaching that God wants us all to be happy, healthy and wealthy! It was an odd choice of verse, but the preacher claimed that Paul’s ministry in Corinth didn’t get big results because of this—because Paul focused too much on Christ crucified. According to that preacher, Paul learnt, over time, to focus less on Christ crucified and more on the victorious, resurrected Jesus, and that’s when his churches began to grow!
That makes a lot of sense. It’s also a lot of nonsense! Paul did not change his message. He preached Christ crucified at the beginning of his ministry, and he preached Christ crucified at the end. He only knew one Jesus—the suffering, rejected, humiliated Jesus. The Jesus who meets us not at the top of the ladder but at the bottom—in the gutter.
And that’s a problem for the ‘Prosperity Gospel’. If your message is that God wants to make us all healthy, wealthy, and successful, what do you do with Christ crucified?
The answer is that you dumb Him down or you polish Him up. You turn the cross into jewelry, and you take Christ off the cross. You avoid the crucifixion, and you focus instead on the resurrection, the miracles, the glory—anything but the shame.
But Saint Paul refused to look away. “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)
Why? Because Paul knew that if we are going to meet Christ—the real Jesus Christ, and not the Christ of our fantasies or the Christ of self-help culture—we must meet Him where He actually is – not on a throne, not in a boardroom, not at a self-improvement seminar, but at the bottom, in the gutter, on a cross.
Of course, I’m not denying that Christ can deliver us and provide for us. I’ve seen miracles too. But as one man once said to me, “I’m sick of people telling me how Jesus solved all their problems. My problems didn’t start until I met Jesus!”
Christ crucified did not promise to make life easier. He promises to make us new!
When I work on these reflections each week, my practice for some months now has been to finish up by asking AI to design an appropriate graphic for me, displaying the key verse I’ve been working on so that I can use the image in our Sunday worship.
This week I gave AI today’s verse—“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”—and asked for it to be printed on an appropriate background graphic. AI started working on what I could see was quite a realistic depiction of Christ’s crucifixion as the backdrop to the verse, and then it suddenly stopped, and the image disappeared, and I got an error message:
“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble responding to requests right now.”
I asked AI where the image had gone and received an unexpected response:
“Unfortunately, that specific image style triggered a safety block due to its graphic depiction of suffering. I can’t regenerate it exactly as it was, but I can create a visually powerful alternative that still honours the verse and your message.”
I thought, ‘there you go—Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to gentiles, and unsafe to AI!’
As promised, AI did then offer three alternatives:
A symbolic crucifixion scene with a silhouetted cross and dramatic sky?
A painted sunrise over Calvary with the verse in bold?
A modern liturgical design with a stylised cross and warm tones?
Say no more!
Christ crucified is not easy to come to terms with—a stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to Gentiles, and unsafe to AI. “But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24)
First published in 
