Sunday's coming!

       Psalm 103: v1-8         Matthew 18: 21-35             We celebrate our harvest today – bringing our thanks to God for all the richness of the earth with which God blesses us every year. It is a time to give thanks and a time to rejoice in God’s love. And yet, however long we have been aware of the love God has for us, it feels as if we human beings need to keep learning what unconditional love really means.   Jesus tells this story of 2 servants and their king to try to help us grasp how God’s loving care of us all works in our lives. And yet we often call this parable the story of the unforgiving servant – and make it into a warning about how if we are unforgiving like that servant, we could get punished like him.   We hold onto the way in which the servant, who has been forgiven a massive debt, pursues a much smaller debt from another servant, because he ha...

           Ezekiel 47: 1-9     John 7: 37-39   At last.. the rain has come. In a total reversal of the usual way of things, where the rain seems to come just as the schools have broken up for the summer, we had a very sunny dry summer – including just about the whole of the school holiday – and now the rain has come for a rather damp ‘back to school’ feel.   But this year, more than ever, we have been glad to see the rain fall. Everywhere grass was looking not just dry, but bleached white – I seriously wondered whether the grass could recover. But we’ve all noticed the green shoots appear, once the rain started to fall. Life was just waiting for things to change.   The Orthodox Church has invited all churches to join them on this first Sunday of September to mark a “feast of creation” in the churches.   This marks the beginning of the season of creation, when we have our harvest festivals ...

 Romans 12: 1-8;    Matthew 16: 13-20 It was great to be at the County Show this last week  - my fourth time.  I am almost used to the question now “which church are you at?” and have learned to answer “I’m involved in 5 chapels, all outside Haverfordwest”. The fact that I am URC - and not Church in Wales - is important to some people, and ‘chapel’ is still a useful term to help people know where I’m from. But the New Testament doesn’t use the word chapel at all, but only refers to ‘church’ - and it means neither a Medieval church nor a historic chapel - but the coming together of God’s people in the name of Jesus Christ. Ans the tent at the County Show had signs declaring we were ‘churches together in Pembrokeshire/ What does it mean to be ‘the church’ or churches together? I had fun this week putting ‘the church is like..’ into a search engine on my laptop. The church is like…     a table                 a...

           Matthew 14: 22-33, 1 Kings 19:9-18   If you ever have one of those days when you feel down and sorry for myself   - “it’s all up to me” “I’m the only one bothering…” “no-one else cares”... I recommend the life of   Elijah, and especially the part of his story we heard today.   Things are not looking too good for Elijah. The people of God have abandoned worship in favour of idols, many of God’s prophets have been killed, and Elijah is threatened too. “I alone am left” says Elijah, and he’s ready to give up.   Then the earthquake, wind and fire pass by, followed by God’s presence in the stillness. And Elijah is told to go and anoint new kings, and anoint Elisha as a new prophet – and God promises “I will leave seven thousand in Israel, who have not worshipped Baal”.   Elijah feels alone, rejected, threatened, but in fact he is NOT alone. God has a plan, and there are 7,000 people on God...

CWM Sunday    (Isaiah 44: 6-8; Matthew 13: 24-30) Many people are fascinated by family history: the stories of long-gone relatives, the people we are proud of and the ones we’d rather forget, the events that make us glad of our genes and the things that fascinate or appal us.  My dad had two aunts – Annie & Ethel, both school teachers - who decided to explore the Whitehead family tree, until they reached a predecessor who had been transported to Australia for sheep-stealing. Just as I thought it was getting interesting - they decided to stop researching at that point ! Today we are invited to explore something of our Christian family as we celebrate Council for World Mission Sunday. We are reminded that we in the URC belong to a worldwide family of 36 partner churches. But like so many family histories – it’s not straightforward. The beginning of our ‘family life’ is rooted in the evangelical awakening of the 18 th century: the time of John & Charles Wesl...

     Zechariah 9: 9-12, Matthew 11: 25-30   When my grand-daughter Rose was about three we had a family holiday in Suffolk. Suffolk is, famously, rather flat and so on the Sunday morning we decided to walk the short distance to church from the house where we were staying. After about 5 minutes, Rose was flagging and complained “I need to be there now. I only have TINY legs. You need to carry me”.   I’m sure there are times we can all sympathise with Rose. When the journey seems long. When our legs feel tiny. When we need help & we want someone – something – to carry us.   I think that’s why the poem “footprints in the sand” is so popular. In case you haven’t heard it, or you’d like to be reminded of it, it goes like this:   One night I dreamed a dream. As I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, One belongin...