Anglican Church in Portland, Heywood & Tyrendarra

07/09/2026

“Matter matters to God”
A homily by The Rev’d Wendy Morecroft
Based on Isaiah 55.12−13, Psalm 96,
Colossians 1.15−20, John 1.1−14
On The Festival of Creation in Christ
Sunday 6 September 2026
Just over a week ago I was blessed by the privilege of attending the “Blessed is She” Australian Anglican Clergy Women Leaders Equipping Conference at St Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide and at St Mark’s College, which is right behind it.
There were one hundred women present, and many more could not get a ticket. Ten of the women were bishops. Three of our sessions were fascinating Bible studies led by The Rev’d Professor Emerita Dorothy Lee of the University of Divinity in Melbourne. Bishop Kate Prowd humbly commented on how wonderful it was to sit at Dorothy’s feet and learn from her.
One of our sessions was on John 20.1–18, the account of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. Dorothy explained that when Mary says, “I have seen the Lord,” she is proclaiming the fullness of the Easter faith.
The other disciples were locked away in fear because they did not believe Mary. Yet Dorothy reminded us that misunderstandings are part of our journey of faith. Mistakes can help us gain greater insight. Sometimes we are left alone with our confusion, but Jesus always seeks us out. He calls us by name and commissions us.
She continued that the resurrection of Christ is a material reality. Jesus was not raised merely as a comforting idea or a spiritual memory. The body that was crucified was raised and transformed. As Paul teaches in Romans 8, creation itself will be set free from its bo***ge to decay and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. In other words: all matter will be resurrected.
Dorothy then gave us an incredibly profound and catchy statement:
“Matter matters to God.”
Matter matters to God.
That sentence gathers together everything we celebrate today on this Festival of Creation in Christ, the sacrament of Holy Communion, but also the terrible floods in Nepal and the extraordinary words of John’s Gospel that Dorothy spoke to us about:
“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”
John does not say that the Word merely looked human or temporarily inhabited a human body. The Word became flesh.
The God through whom everything was made entered the material creation. God became a vulnerable human being, dependent upon Mary’s body, needing food, water and shelter. Jesus grew tired and hungry. He touched people who were sick. He wept at the grave of his friend. His body was wounded, crucified and laid in a tomb.
God did not save us from a safe distance. God entered the beauty, vulnerability and suffering of embodied life.
Matter matters to God.
Our reading from Colossians tells us that Christ is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” and that “all things have been created through him and for him.”
Jesus is not God’s emergency response to a creation that has gone wrong. Christ was present at creation’s beginning. Christ remains at its centre, and Christ is its promised fulfilment.
Mountains and rivers, trees and animals, human bodies, bread and wine—all were created through Christ and for Christ. Creation is not accidental. It is not disposable. It belongs to Christ.
Yet recently we have seen how vulnerable creation and human life can be from the earth tremor felt in Casterton overnight to catastrophic floods in Nepal.
We must resist easy explanations. This is not God punishing the people of Nepal. Nor can every natural disaster be explained by one simple cause. Creation is beautiful, but creation is also wounded and groaning. Climate change is increasing the dangers faced by vulnerable communities, particularly in mountainous regions where glaciers are becoming increasingly unstable.
The people who have died are not merely statistics. Their bodies matter. Those who remain missing matter. The survivors who need food, shelter and comfort matter. The exhausted rescue workers matter. The villages, farms, rivers and creatures affected by the floods matter.
Matter matters to God, and therefore it must matter to us.
Colossians says that through Christ, God was pleased “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Notice the breadth of that promise: all things.
God’s purpose is greater than rescuing individual souls from the earth. In Christ, God is reconciling the whole creation: humanity with God, people with one another, humanity with the earth, and heaven with earth.
We see a sign of that reconciliation here at the Eucharist. We bring to the altar ordinary material things: bread made from grain, wine made from grapes, water, money representing our labour, and our own physical presence.
God meets us through these gifts of creation. The bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ. We cannot reverently receive the body of Christ at the altar while remaining indifferent to Christ’s suffering body in Nepal, in war torn lands, in displaced people or in our wounded earth.
The Eucharist teaches us to receive creation gratefully, share it justly and protect it faithfully.
The Word through whom the mountains were made became flesh and lived among us. The Christ through whom rivers flow entered the waters of baptism. The Lord of life shared our bodily suffering and death. And the risen Christ is reconciling all things to God.
Bodies matter. Rivers matter. Creatures matter. Communities matter. The people of Nepal matter. This beautiful and wounded earth matters.
Matter matters to God.
And therefore, it must matter to us.
Amen.
Image: Pantocrator, God the Son, as the Creator of the Universe,
from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

04/09/2026

03/09/2026

31/08/2026

From Skiving Off to Studying Scripture by Baz Garner
Back in my school days, I was never keen on study. Come to think of it, I was never much one for school. I spent a lot of time wagging school, or as Caz would say, skiving off. So, I guess if any of those teachers from long ago learned that now I take an interest in study, they'd be quite surprised. But my interest in study is not anything technical or mathematical. My interest in study is the Bible.
At the church Caz and I used to go to; I was in a men's Bible study group for about four years. I often sat there and felt like a bit of an imposter. I'd only been a Christian for a short while, and I was sitting beside men who'd studied the Bible for most of their lives. I learned a lot from those guys. I sat there, didn't always say a lot, but I listened a lot. And I like to think I that by listening I was learning.
One of the things I thought I'd miss when we left Sunbury was Bible study. So, I was really happy when Wendy said they were starting a study at St Stephen's on Monday afternoons. And again, in those studies, I probably didn't say a lot. I'm not much of a speaker, but I like to think I'm a reasonable listener.
The group has just finished a study on the Book of Revelation, and to be honest, it was hard work. A lot of Revelation is imagery, and it was often difficult to wade my way through it. But what I found in that small group was that others were in the same boat. That like me, they were just trying to feel their way through it. And when we met on a Monday, it was the reflections of different people within the group that helped us all to learn.
That group was a lovely community of learning, sharing, and reflecting on the scripture we were looking at. Like I said, it finished last week, and unfortunately, I missed the last session due to illness. Some in the group are probably saying I faked illness to get out of the last session, but I'll let you judge that.
In a few weeks’ time, the St Stephen's Bible study is going to start again, and they're going to study the Letter to the Hebrews. A book I've never studied before, and something I'm really looking forward to. I'm looking forward to it because, as I said, it was the fellowship, the sharing, and the encouragement of those within the group that made those Monday afternoons so special. Sometimes, I felt like the token male. It is my prayer that by sharing how much I get out of the group that others might find what I found in that group: fellowship, friendship and the gift of learning one from another.
I remember at school there were right and wrong answers, and if you are wrong, which I was most of the time, you felt like a failure. But these studies and this group aren't so much about getting the answers right as what they are, about getting what you can out of God's word. And as I get older, I realise more and more that I need to understand, to reflect, and to think on God's word. And that Bible study group on a Monday afternoon helps me do that in spades. I'd encourage anyone who's got a couple of hours free on a Monday afternoon to see Wendy and possibly join the group. You'll get so much out of it.

28/08/2026

Please pray for Nepal and support AMB if you can ♥️🙏

You can bring urgently needed help to families suffering from Nepal’s flash flood.
ABM AID has launched an appeal to provide relief and recovery assistance to survivors.

On 27 August 2026, a wall of water came roaring down from the Himalayan Mountains into central Nepal. It engulfed everything in its path: houses, bridges, schools, livestock … and people.

As of midday 28 August, 389 people are confirmed dead in Nepal and three dead in neighbouring Tibet (China). More than a thousand people are still missing, among them at least 113 Nepali and 466 foreign tourists, including 35 Australians. Thousands more are displaced or cut off as roads, bridges and other essential infrastructure was swept away.

ABM AID will channel funds raised through Action by Churches Together (ACT) Alliance, a global ecumenical coalition of Christian organisations – with a presence in Nepal – dedicated to helping when there’s an emergency.

Given the catastrophic scale of the emergency, international support will be required, particularly for emergency shelter, food, water, sanitation and hygiene, health, protection, family tracing and psychosocial support.

Please give generously. Those affected in Nepal need your help.

28/08/2026

You can use the QR code below or visit: https://ballaratanglican.org.au/yvm/ - where there is also a children's survey.

28/08/2026

I’m having a very fruitful time at the Clergy Women Leaders conference in Adelaide. Such a shame I missed the photo call. Rev Wendy

So fabulous and encouraging to be with 100 Anglican clergy women from across Australia in Adelaide this week. Some of us pictured here after morning prayer today. ‘Blessed is She’ is equipping us afresh for the work to which God has called us.

26/08/2026

It was a few days ago but I've just found this - a prayer for our Anglican Diocese of Ballarat.

Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer, we pray for the Diocese of Ballarat in the Anglican Church of Australia.

24/08/2026

Our very homely rectory is on the rental market! It's right in the middle of Portland surrounded by a magnificent well maintained garden. Contact Assets to find out more.