A Morning Service for the Sunday next before Lent 2024
Today as we draw close to the season of Lent and our journey in imagination to Jesus’ cross and resurrection, so the lectionary bids us to remember the moment when Jesus’ actual journey to the cross begins in earnest, that moment when at the northern borders of ancient Israel he turns to begin his return south to Jerusalem in time for Passover and the celebration of the liberation of his people from slavery.
Morning Service for Epiphany 4 2024
So here we have a gospel passage we can all relate to. It’s all about Jesus going to church, or at least the Jewish equivalent.
Morning Service for Epiphany 3 2024
We use symbols to show things that we may not say; do the Christmas presents we have received and given recently say something – as a child I used to receive knitted woollen light grey socks each Christmas from my aunt who was well off – but did the socks say I like you, my only nephew, so much that I will spend hours knitting for you? For some people, who could not see beyond the physical, they would only be socks.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2 2024
Today is about introductions, it’s also about change and revolution. Samuel is introduced to God, or I suppose I should use the name that is written in the Hebrew, YHWH (generally given as Yahweh), because that was what the writer used – not some generic term ‘god’, but Yahweh, the sacred, special, and very personal name given to Moses when he asked the voice at the burning bush who he should say had spoken to him. In fact the incidents aren’t all that different so far as Samuel didn’t recognise the voice that called him any more than Moses did.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2024
That remarkable piece from Isaiah is worth pausing to notice. It is easily overlooked on a day so full of obvious sermons about Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, Wise Men, Stars and the like. They are stirring words of hope to a people reluctant to hope – a people whose hope has been squeezed from them by poverty, by homelessness – by being strangers on a foreign land.
Morning Service for Christmas 1 2023
There will be some men and women here who like me are labelled colour blind. (It really is a misnomer -more like atypical colour vision) Many, many years ago, I said to a colleague, who asked where someone was, he is over there by the green curtains which covered the whole length and height of the large hall – only they were not green but red – making for some confusion.