Morning Service for the Third Sunday of Easter 2023
If you take the Bible literally, God created the world and all that is in it in 6 days and on the 7th day he rested. You might think that is just poetic and it took longer, but however long that took, Easter happened in one day.
Morning Service for the Second Sunday of Easter 2023
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. But for the writer of St John’s Gospel it was not so; according to him, Jesus’ first appearance to his disciples culminated with him breathing upon them and saying, “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” These are important words, uncomfortable words, words that make us stop and question what this Gospel is trying to say.
Morning Service for Easter Day 2023
The writer of the gospel according the St John does not waste words. What he writes he writes for a reason. His Gospel is highly structured, nothing is included just for the sake of it, each miracle or sign he reports he uses to disclose the nature of Jesus and his mission. So what of this curious incident with Mary, what is it intended to convey.
Morning Service for Palm Sunday 2023
To write his telling of the story of Jesus Matthew drew on various sources, the most obvious of them was the Gospel of St Mark. On many occasions Matthew does nothing more than précis Mark, but often he will reword and amend to get across his themes and ideas of what Jesus was about, and why he did the things he did. His account of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a clear example of his tinkering.
Morning Service for Lent 5 2023
Today, we begin the story of Jesus’ death upon the cross. Why did he have to die? Perhaps if he had stayed in Galilee preaching he would not have had to die, but He chose to go to Jerusalem and to challenge the powers that be.
MORNING Service for Mothering Sunday 2023
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.
A Morning Service for the Third Sunday of Lent 2023
The gospel reading set for today is a very long and puzzling report of a conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman. I think it would be easy to miss its significance if we didn’t remember that it is John who is recalling this incident, and nothing he recalls is without great significance.
A Morning Service for the Second Sunday of Lent 2023
Our first reading today marks a turning point in the story of how God relates to his world. Within the book of Genesis it links the traditions of God’s providential care for the world and God’s electing call of Israel. With these verses the writer leaves behind the history of humanity and begins the history of the people of God, God’s witness to the world.
A Morning Service for the First Sunday of Lent 2023
So here we are already at the first Sunday of Lent, just 6 weeks to Easter. And that’s the whole point of Lent, Easter. If you ask lots of people in the street what they thought that Lent was all about you’d hear a few ‘don’t knows’, but I guess the majority of people would say that it was about giving something up, usually chocolate or sugar in your tea – I’m not sure how many people could tell you to what purpose.
A Morning Service for the Sunday before Lent 2023
In the 40 years since I started training as a (then) Lay Reader, I have never been asked to preach on the Transfiguration, although I have heard sermons on it in French Protestant churches. It seems to there are two questions that need looking at with regard to the Transfiguration: is it true and what does it mean. I will take these in order, starting with the difficult one.
A Morning Service for the 2nd Sunday before Lent 2023
Some of the most well known words in the English language – “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..” But of course, it wasn’t written in English, it wasn’t the product of an English mind, nor for that matter a North European one – it was written in Hebrew for Hebrew people by Hebrew people.
Breysheyt barar elohim yet Harshamaeem veyt hararrets
Morning Service for Candlemas 2023
To look at life in all its fierceness, its anger and its pain, all its sorrow and bewildering suffering – and yet then to see also the salvation of our God. To see the incredible paradox of life – the world as we know it, and the God that we come to know as its creator, the journey of accepting, even embracing such a paradox, is the journey of seeing the Christ of God. The Christ born to heal, to forgive, to teach, to pray, and to be tortured, scourged, lashed and crucified.
Morning Service for Epiphany 4 2023
Metaphors, what would our language be without them? Every day we use metaphor to explain what we mean – to talk about one thing we talk about another. For example, we say that something is as quick as lightning – and that it’s raining cats and dogs. Most metaphors are fairly easy to understand, some however need a lot of unravelling, not only do they explain the sense of what we mean but they might also take it further and develop the point.
Morning Service for Epiphany 3 2023
We are all different; our brains and our emotions work differently. Some want to think everything out in a logical manner, some overflow with emotion. Some see God’s actions in their every day life; others do not. There is a woman in this diocese who fits the first category. She strikes me as a good, kind, helpful person, but I cannot agree with her, because God intervening in my every day life, putting right trivial problems for me, is not part of my experience.
January Second Saturday lunch
The January Second Saturday lunch will be held on Saturday 14th January at The Reeves Scout Hall, Compton.
Lunch will be served at 12. 30pm. Come along you will receive a warm, friendly welcome.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2 2023
We are apt to think that our religion is the very apotheoses of western thought and integrity, the very model of all that defines the flowering of North European thought and moral teaching. We know we are wrong, but we cannot help but see Christianity in terms of our race, language and culture. We have to remind ourselves constantly that the Christ we profess was not of our race, and knew nothing of our language or our culture. His language was vastly different from our own, just listen to an Arabic speaker if you want to know how different.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2023
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. They are words maybe for our own time, when although we have so much we are very aware of the fragility of our world. We are prone to thinking that almost any catastrophe maybe just over the horizon.
Morning Service for Christmas 2 2023
As is the case with anything that happened in the past, it is difficult to be certain. Yes, the score was 3-3 say, but who played well and why they did so is a matter of judgement. When we think about the Biblical stories of Jesus’ birth, we cannot be sure; we were not there at the time and even if we had been, between us, we could come to different conclusions.
Morning Service for Christmas 2022
God meets us in the ordinary and we celebrate the fact in the extraordinary. In this extraordinary place, at this extraordinary time.
Mary gave birth like countless millions of women have done before and since, and every birth, every single birth that has been, and will be – full of fear and agony, deepest joy or deepest sadness. In the extraordinary and surreal moment of new life, as it hangs in the balance, all the risk and glory, pain and intensity of life meets. It was the same for Mary as it has been and will be for every human mother across the world and across time.
Morning Service for Advent 4 2022
The fascinating thing is not what the differences are, but what each author meant by the difference. Why they wrote what they wrote, what lies behind their thinking, is much more interesting than trying to make their accounts fit into some mythic unified historical whole, like a children’s nativity play. There is no stable in any gospel, or innkeeper for that matter!