Morning Service for Trinity Sunday for 2024
A can of soup – what is it food or drink – I say it is drink but my wife says it is food. It goes to show the difficulty we face in defining even physical things. If I say I love my family, what do I mean? If you say, I love my family do you mean the same as me? It is even more difficult to define non-physical things, things like love, which we can neither measure nor can we prove they exist in the same way that the can of soup exists.
A Service for Pentecost 2024
Theology like any other ‘ology’ attempts to describe what is there, it doesn’t seek to invent, or to create, it only tries to use language to explore experience and share understanding. And like any other ‘ology’ it is always woefully inadequate. For what it tries to describe, what it seeks to communicate, are experiences that transcend language, that take it past breaking point. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
Morning Service for the Seventh Sunday of Easter 2024 – The Sunday after the Ascension
This morning’s Gospel reading was the beginning of the end of John’s farewell discourse by Jesus to his disciples, the long soliloquy preparing them for his death and for his glorification, and their future. In the speech Jesus deals with his relationship to God and his relationship to the disciples and their relationship to the world.
Morning Service for the Sixth Sunday of Easter 2024
We celebrate the Ascension on Thursday, so it is logical that we hear some more of Jesus’s parting words to his disciples as written by John in the context of the last Supper. These words are very personal, they are words from a teacher to his pupils, from a master to his disciples, from a Lord to his people. At least that is how they begin.
Morning Service for the Fifth Sunday of Easter 2024
The story of the Ethiopian eunuch meeting with Philip on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza is an extraordinary one. The story reveals a surprising amount of detail concerning the eunuch. It tells us that he is a man held in esteem, he has charge of his nation’s Treasury, but although he has servants, at least a driver for his carriage, he is himself still under authority.
Morning Service for the Fourth Sunday of Easter 2024
The image of the Shepherd is an old one, and perhaps one that’s not terribly relevant to our modern age when the nearest most of us gets to a sheep is leg of lamb with mint source. But the image is a powerful one still – and it was one Jesus made full use of – and it’s hard to beat on a day like today when we have a baptism.
Morning Service for the Third Sunday of Easter 2024
“If a dead man is raised to life, all men spring up in astonishment. Yet every day one that had no being is born, and no man wonders, though it is plain to all, without doubt, that it is a greater thing for that to be created which was without being than for that which had being to be restored. Because the dry rod of Aaron budded, all men were in astonishment; every day a tree is produced from the dry earth, … and no man wonders … Five thousand men were filled with five loaves; every day the grains of seed that are sown are multiplied in a fullness of ears, and no man wonders.
Magazine letter May 2024
May 26th is Trinity Sunday, not a festival many will be marking I fear. It lacks the fairy lights of Christmas or the chocolate of Easter. But in its way it is a significant day, marking the contribution of Christianity to mankind’s understanding of the nature of God; not a topic now of general conversation, but it was not always so.
Magazine letter April 2024
‘Then they went out and ran from the tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.’ Mark 16.1-8. So ends the Gospel of Mark, to many a short and unsatisfying end to the Gospel – the Greek even ends on a preposition (very bad Greek!). Several other later endings were added by other hands but Mark’s true account ends here with the women too afraid to speak of what they saw.
Morning Service for the Second Sunday of Easter 2024
We are soon to celebrate the gift of the Spirit. The birthday of the church. The church follows the order of things as given by the writer of the Acts of the Apostles and places the coming of the Holy Spirit 49 days after the Resurrection.
Morning Service for Easter Day 2024
Easter is about conversion – one thing becoming another – or if you prefer, transformation. A tomb with a body becomes empty; women coming in sadness leave in awe and wonder, the language is just that of the transfiguration, when the true nature of Jesus was revealed; women not allowed to speak in public become the vital messengers of new life; a frightened, defeated community of disciples become the body of Christ sharing their resurrection faith with the while world; and, of course, the most central of all transformations, Jesus dead now Jesus risen.
Morning Service for Palm Sunday 2024
We heard this morning Mark’s account of what has become known as the Ttriumphal Entry into Jerusalem. In it we hear that Jesus rode into Jerusalem after giving his disciples detailed instructions on where to find a colt for him to use. This arrival into Jerusalem is to be no casual affair, Jesus has been walking to Jerusalem ever since his transfiguration on the mountain to the north of Israel.
Morning Service for Lent 5 2023
It is General Election time!! Exaggerations and half truths abound. Political parties promise a better world, as well as criticising their opponents.
Magazine letter March 2024
We are a good way into Lent by now, our 40 days of fasting, or what passes for fasting these days, usually the giving up of some self-destructive habit, like sugar in your tea or chocolate biscuits. All very useful but hardly a wilderness experience! I suppose we’ve lost our sense of urgency in the conduct of our spiritual lives, we don’t generally tend to think in terms of ‘doing battle with our lower natures.’ Such language belongs to an age of hand to hand combat.
Magazine letter February 2024
In our increasingly secular world any kind of ‘organised religion’ is regarded as something strange and peculiar. People instead claim to be ‘spiritual’. Which rather sounds to me like claiming to be able to swim without getting wet! Religion is the embodiment of spirituality, it is what gives it shape and purpose, and allows the experience of generations to be shared and learned from.
MORNING Service for Mothering Sunday 2024
Today is Mothering Sunday, please note, it is not Mother’s Day, that is a day for people to celebrate their mother, it began in America after a one woman campaign by a lady called Anna Jarvis. It was declared a holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, it is always the 2nd Sunday of May. Anna Wilson was so disgusted at the commercialisation of her idea that she regretted starting the whole thing.
Morning Service for Lent 3 2024
The Ten Commandments are a sobering read – they become the terms of God’s third covenant with Israel. The first to Noah, the second to Abraham and now this third to the freed Hebrew slaves in the wilderness. According to the writer of the book of Exodus these Ten Commandments were given by the voice of God himself from the holy mountain of Sinai, in fear and trembling the people heard them.
Morning Service for Lent 2 2024
Today’s first two readings are about having faith and, indeed, justification by faith – being put right with God by faith– is a key Protestant belief and was crucial for Martin Luther. This was contrasted with doing good as a sort of scoring system; I will be put right with God by doing more and more good deeds or in Luther’s time giving more and more money to the Roman Church for the re-building of St Peter’s, Rome.
Morning Service for the first Sunday in Lent 2024
The name Satan comes from the Greek, Satanas, which is in turn a transliteration of the Aramaic, satana. The character first appears in Jewish literature in the book of Job, where he is simply hassatan, the accuser, one of the servants of God. In later literature he developed into an evil power, the opponent of God, seeking to destroy the relationship between God and man. It is difficult not to ascribe this development to the influence of the dualistic religions of Israel’s near neighbours, such as the Zoroastrians in Persia.
Lent Study Group
Don’t forget the Lent Discussion Group meeting in the Church Room of St Matthew’s, Otterbourne on Thursdays in Lent at 10am.