A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, 20 July 2014:

This morning’s lessons (Genesis 28.10-22, Romans 8.12-25) tell us that God longs to live in communion with the human race, and that he invites us into covenant—a binding relationship—with him. They show the transformational power of God at work in the lives of Jacob, a fraudster turned patriarch, and Paul, a murderer turned apostle. And, in turn, they invite us to let our lives be transformed like the patriarchs and apostles of old, by entering into God’s service ourselves: the service that alone is perfect freedom.

In our first lesson, we meet Jacob in the Samarian highlands, on his way to Haran. The future patriarch of Israel had been hurriedly sent away by his mother, Rebecca, who had just helped Jacob to deceive his…