09/09/2026
We were delighted that Mother Kate having been recomeneded by the Diocesan Archives and Records Committee, was asked by Archbishop Jeremy Greaves to give the Canon Jones Memorial Sermon. Her sermon goes into more detail as to the background of the sermon, but as a parish we were delighted to be afforded this honour. We have attached the full video and the transcriot is below.
"Today I give the Canon Jones Memorial Sermon. I thank Archbishop Jeremy for his invitation and the Diocesan Archives and Records Committee for their recommendation. Canon Jones was new to me when I was approached and I imagine he is for you too, so here is a brief explanation of this sermon taken from the information I received.
The Canon Jones Memorial Sermon notes the historical details of the life and work of Thomas Jones and, in the spirit of his missionary zeal, seeks to highlight and further inspire aspects of the mission of the church in the present day. It reflects something of the history of that part of the church (whether parish or institution) in which it is being preached as part of the fruits of the pioneering spirit of Tufnell’s men. The place where the sermon is delivered provides the context for reflection upon both past traditions and future directions.
Thomas Jones was born in 1836 in Preston, England. Two of his brothers were priests but Thomas became a school master. Edward Tufnell, then a canon at Salisbury cathedral encouraged a vocation in Thomas Jones and Thomas was duly ordained a deacon in 1859 by Bishop Hamilton at Salisbury.
Edward Tufnell was then consecrated bishop, also in 1859 and was appointed bishop of the new Diocese of Brisbane in the new State of Queensland. The diocese extended quite a way north, as far as Rockhampton. However, North Queensland came under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Sydney.
Bishop Tufnell gathered a group of men and left England for Brisbane in 1860. They were called the ‘Band of Brothers’. Seven clergy – five priests and two deacons – were in the group as was a lay reader and two teachers. The priests were John Sutton, Duncan Campbell Mackenzie, Vincent Frederick Ransome, Edward George Moberley, and Frederick Gee who died on the journey. The deacons were Thomas Jones and John Tomlison. All were young men. Thomas was only 24 when he came to Brisbane.
They arrived in Brisbane on Sunday, the 2nd of September which is why this sermon is preached on a Sunday near that date. The story is told that as Bishop Tufnell and his men arrived in Brisbane they heard the bells of St John’s church calling the faithful to evensong. At that time St John’s was the pro-cathedral and was located in William St. The foundation stone for the cathedral in Ann St was not laid until 1901.
When Bishop Tufnell and his band of brothers arrived there were only three clergy in Brisbane and surrounds – John Mosely at St John’s, Brisbane, Lacy Rumsey at Ipswich, and Benjamin Glennie at Toowoomba. A group of six clergy must have been welcome. Duncan Mackenzie, one of Tufnell’s men, on arrival in Brisbane in 1860 was sent to our region, the Wide Bay and Burnett. He was initially based in Gayndah and then Maryborough. Bundaberg was not yet a town at that point.
Thomas Jones went to work as a curate at St John’s pro-cathedral. In 1861 he was ordained priest and took up a new post in Rockhampton. Then in 1865, Thomas returned to Brisbane to become the rector of All Saints, Wickham Terrace. During his time at All Saints it is said that he never took a holiday. This was most unwise. After he concluded his ministry there in 1877 he returned to England briefly and then came back to Australia to become locum at St David’s Cathedral, Hobart. In 1881 he went to Toowoomba. His last incumbency began in 1894 at Indooroopilly, a post he held until his retirement in 1918. He was made an honorary Canon of the cathedral in 1908. Whilst at All Saints he established churches in Milton and Toowong. At Toowoomba he built churches in Laidley, Gatton, Geham, Meringandan and Crow’s Nest.
Thomas died two weeks after his retirement and his welcome home to God was held at St John’s cathedral with bells ringing. As he began his ministry in the diocese of Brisbane to the sound of a bell, so he ended it.
Tufnell and his band of brothers, including Thomas, were deeply influenced by the Oxford Movement. This impulse in the Church of England sought to reclaim the best of Catholic tradition and ritual whilst maintaining a reformed position. Thomas was not one for ritual for its own sake but for the beauty of the liturgy and its ability to draw people to God. Whilst at All Saints he caused some consternation by introducing a processional cross, a new hymn book, a robed choir and a collection of money during the service. Thomas is credited with establishing the broad church approach that this diocese still holds to, encompassing both low and high styles of churchmanship, and a way of living together that is both loving and robustly respectful of difference. Now we call it ‘comprehensive Anglicanism’.
Thomas Jones was a generous man. He was greatly loved by his parishioners and fellow clergy. He was a man with heart. It is said that he umpired cricket matches on a Sunday afternoon – but only if everyone had been to church in the morning. I am sure Thomas loved his people as they loved him.
Bishop Francis de Witt Batty was consecrated assistant bishop of Brisbane in 1930 before being elected bishop of the diocese of Newcastle in New South Wales in 1931. Looking back, Bishop Batty said of Thomas Jones that
he was the best known, and certainly the best-loved person in Brisbane. Everyone knew him and loved him... He appreciated dignity in ceremonial, beauty in all the accessories of worship. His own church at lndooroopilly was one of the most reverently furnished in the whole diocese. But these things were secondary with him. The primary things were the great fundamental verities of the Catholic religion – the lncarnation of Our Lord, his atoning life and death, his Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament at the altar, the Holy Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints...
Here, catholic simply means universal. These great truths are ones we Anglicans still hold to.
Thomas Jones was also the first person to establish retreats for clergy in Queensland. This is of significance for all clergy as a retreat is more than a refreshing time. It allows us to take time out from the busyness of parish life and spend some time with God, no interruptions. Fr Matt will be on retreat this week and I have mine in November.
Now we turn to our own place. The first European squatters came to this region in the 1840s. The town was surveyed in 1869 and named Bundaberg in 1870. But there were people here long before that. The local Aboriginal peoples, the Taribelang, Gooreng Gooreng, Gurang and Bailai, with their unique connection to the environment, had been present for tens of thousands of years prior.
This year, our parish began three years of anniversaries. In June we observed the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the first Anglican church in Bundaberg by Bishop Matthew Hale, the second bishop of Brisbane, on 4 June 1876. In February 2027 we celebrate 100 years of this current Christ Church building. And in late 2028, we will observe 150 years of being our own parish, marked by being separated from Maryborough when our first full-time minister, William Morris, arrived. Morris was ordained deacon in Brisbane in October 1878 and was appointed to Bundaberg as deacon in charge. He returned to Brisbane in December that year to be ordained priest and came back to Bundaberg as priest in charge.
Before William Morris there was an Anglican presence in Bundaberg in its early days of European settlement. Services of Matins and Evensong were said by lay people or visiting clergy such as the Rev’d Edward Tanner, in various locations – homes and perhaps in churches of other Protestant denominations. The 1876 church, although Anglican, was also used by other Protestant denominations.
At our 150th celebration earlier this year, Archbishop Jeremy challenged us to be present to the danger of nostalgia – of looking back and not seeing forward. He said
Nostalgia can be comforting because it allows us to imagine that the past was somehow simpler, clearer, better. It tempts us to believe that faith was once stronger, communities more united, churches fuller, and the future more certain. .. the people who built the first Anglican church in Bundaberg … were not building a monument to themselves. They were creating a place where future generations might encounter the love of God. They were planting seeds whose harvest they would never see.
… churches are always tempted to become curators of the past rather than creators of the future. It is easy to become guardians of memory. It is harder to become stewards of possibility.
The church exists not to preserve itself. The church exists to participate in God's mission. And God's mission is always directed towards the future.
Today is also the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost and I take as my text Romans 13:9-10.
The commandments … are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love is our highest virtue. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that three things remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. Matthew (22:37-39) records Jesus as saying that there are two commandments:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
In Romans, Paul focuses on the commandment to love neighbour. Loving God is, I expect, a given. Loving one’s neighbour also depends on loving oneself. This is hard for many of us. Loving oneself means that we are worthy, that someone else loves us and from that we are given value and meaning. If I love myself I acknowledge that I am loved by at least one person, the God whose love is without end. I believe that we are completely formed children of God. If I feel that no one loves me, can I love myself? Meaning has to come from somewhere outside ourselves.
In the love commandments, Jesus is drawing on two commandments in the Old Testament – Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Loving is the fulfillment of all law, of Torah which is the law or teaching of the Israelite people. Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament. My Jewish Annotated New Testament tells us that love is the fullness of Torah. It is a value of the Old and the New Testaments.
Jesus was steeped in Torah. As a Jewish rabbi, he knew what he was doing when he drew love for God and love for neighbour together. He was inviting us to live in radical opposition to the values of the world. Jesus wants us to examine our times critically, to see where we have lost our way, to see where we have strayed. And those moments are many and great. We do not talk to each other, we communicate on Instagram and Facebook or by text and WhatsApp. We do not value the fruits of our intellectual labour as we give everything up to AI. We are systematically ignoring the degradation of the planet. We seem content to live in conflict and in a time when truth is defined by the loudest, most audacious voices.
Love for others defines missionary zeal. Mission is not converting the natives or the primitives. It is not disrespecting other people’s cultures. It is not somehow being better. It is sharing the love we find in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus whom we call the Christ, the Messiah, the one to come whom we believe has, indeed, come.
God is present everywhere. God must be for God is infinite and welcoming to all creatures. If that’s the case then God was present in Australia before any European touched our shores. God was with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, guiding them as God guides us. Maybe they did not have the written down gospel but I have no doubt that it is the God of Jesus who lives everywhere, in every time, all at once.
Mission then is love for neighbour. Love for neighbour admits of no wrong doing against neighbours. Yet we do fail at this. In our own colonial history we see frontier wars and massacres of local Aboriginal peoples. And we still live with racism and sexism. But we do God’s missional work when we tell out the good news and we accept that sometimes it appears that no one is listening.
We each have a journey and a vocation. Thomas Jones certainly did. He took a leap of faith to sail to a far away land and to stay there until death. He was not backward looking. He looked forward to God’s next big thing, to how God’s world was unfolding in this place. He served the people and was loved for it. Bishop Batty said that ‘he encountered many opponents, but made no enemies’. Thomas Jones’ love for all was clear to see.
In our place, the place where we live and serve, what does that love look like now? With Archbishop Jeremy we are to avoid the temptation of nostalgia. Things were not simpler, better and less complicated then than now. Each age has its challenges. Today, and in our anniversaries in 2027 and 2028, we do not look backward. We must look to the future, to how God’s word is revealing itself in this time and place. We look to the next 100 years of Christ Church and the next 150 years of the parish. We look to what we might become; we are not slaves to who we once were.
Today is not 1860. 166 years on, there is no bishop with six clergymen and three laypeople sailing into Brisbane hearing church bells. Most Australians would not know what goes on in a church apart from the occasional baptism, wedding or funeral. But we do not give up. We persevere in love for our neighbours. We do this because Jesus told us to, because it is simply the right thing to do. The mission of this place stands in continuity with Thomas Jones’ mission. We are both trying to bring God’s love to people who desperately need hope. Perhaps it is no longer the hope of surviving treacherous sea and land journeys. But it is the hope of surviving disintegrating relationships, destroyed by the rise of social media and smart devices. It is still the common hope of alleviating poverty and hunger.
When Bishop Tufnell and his band of brothes set out for Brisbane did they do so because they felt an obligation? I doubt it. They set out in love for their neighbours who at that time were the peoples of the Australian continent, people they did not know.
Well may we ask, who are our neighbours? Jesus’ answer is simple – the weak and powerless and those who care for them demonstrate what love for the neighbour is all about. We are to look for opportunities to love the lonely and the lost, the sick and the suffering.
Jesus calls each and every one to do his work in the world. We are not all called to be nurses, nor to be accountants. It is part of loving God and neighbour to understand what we must do. And that doesn’t mean just our jobs. It includes our hobbies and interests, what we do when we are not in employment, paid or unpaid. Loving ourselves and our neighbours is finding out what we are meant to do. It is sitting still long enough to attend to the voice of God in our lives. If you are lucky you might be able to do that on retreat. Happy, fulfilled people are easy to love and they give love easily.
Let us pray together for a world where mission is always about love, about engaging honestly and respectfully with all. Our job is not to convert the heathen. It is to be who God wants us to be – God’s loved children. Thomas Jones knew that and lived it. It is God from whom all blessings flow. Amen."
