Sunday's coming!

Who do you think you are? Those who don’t watch TV might have allsorts of different answers to this question. But many of us here will immediately be thinking of our family trees: ‘Who do you think you are?’ is the title of a BBC series, which helps famous people to look into their family trees. Often the programme is surprising, it can be very moving, and whenever I’ve watched I have found it fascinating. A recent one that sticks in my mind saw Ainsley Harriott – the bubbly chef whose origins were in the West Indies – discover that he was not descended only from slaves, as he had always thought, but that his family tree also included a slave owner. Poor Ainsley was left pondering questions of his own sense of identity – he had previously felt proud that his ancestors had struggled against and risen from slavery, and now he says he feels more mixed emotions – with the knowledge that his family were more complicit in the slave trade then he previously thought. For many of us, ‘who we ar...

I found it helpful to look at the revgalblogpals site today (I often do!) - there's a link just to your right >>>> see! I posted this back to my e-friends (mostly across the pond) "I did a bit of reading around the Thessalonians & came up with a good question 'who do we say that we are?' - would fit with Reformation Sunday, too. But I'm not sure yet how to address the question: People of God, of course - not just following Moses, but following whoever God sends People of Love - for God & neighbour People of the way - loving one another, forming a new community who follows Jesus..." and since then I've thought - people of the past (thinking about the church record) people of the future - surely God hasn't finished with us yet. Nearly meeting time, so I'll try to come back with more thoughts - or even the final notes - by Friday (Saturday IS my day off - and some kind poeple have been reminding me of that!).

The readings (if we're not celebrating Bible Sunday): Deuteronomy 34: 1-12 The death of Moses 1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8 How the gospel was brought to Thessalonica by Paul Matthew 22: 34-46 Yet more opposition to Jesus - with the question 'which is the most important commandment?' - Jesus answers that the greatest commandment is 'Love God & your neighbour as yourself'. Realising I knew nothing about Thessalonians I did a bit of reading around. I was surprised to learn that this is thought to be the earliest of Paul's letters (about 50 AD/CE): to a very new group of Christians from the artisan class of Thessalonica. They are facing persecution because their rich employers feared that by turning away from worship of the pagan gods these new Christians would jeopardise the prosperity of the city. The question for the church in Thessalonica was 'who do we say we are?' - Paul is anxious to build up a sense of belonging, of family-like relationships, of shared...

What is Caesar’s/ what is God’s If you came to church to get away from news of the Credit Crisis and global recession – I’m sorry, but you can’t. It’s tempting, isn’t it, to treat church as a holy space, where the worries of the world can’t intrude: sometimes we preachers make this worse by talking about ‘going out from here back into the world’. But the fact is that we are still in the world as we sit here in church. We may find here a sanctuary where it is a little easier to remember we are in the presence of God, but we cannot shut out the world: we remain in it, like it or not. And neither are we here to exchange platitudes about what God might think of the state of the world. We are here to wrestle with what it means to be followers of Christ in our world, with all its headaches and its wonder. There are apparently 66 more shopping days til Christmas, and you won’t thank me for mentioning it today! A friend sent me a link to an internet site ‘is it Christmas yet?’ – and when you c...

Readings: Exodus 33: 12-23 - God says to Moses you shall know my name & Moses asks to 'know God's ways' but God's face remains hidden 1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10 The writer says faith leads to action; love leads to labour; hope leads to perseverance Matthew 22: 15-22 Jesus faces the question about taxes & tells his questioners to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's, & to God that which is God's. Over the last few weeks I've been trying to start my sermon with an 'issue' and then see what the Bible has to say t us on that issue (what do you mean, you hadn't noticed??). The big issue at the moment remains the credit crisis. What can we do in the face of greed, of gloom, of lack of confidence?? I'm aware of a number of people here in the villages who have lost their jobs, so I don't want to sound smug on this - it is hard to work out 'God's ways' in all this. So what does Jesus say... 'give to God what belongs to ...

Philippians 4: 1-9, Matthew 22: 1-14 What God gives/ what God requires On Thursday night I had the very noisy pleasure of an evening with the cubs! We were talking about the My Faith badge, and one of the activities they need to do to get that badge is to talk about a reading or prayer which means something to them. To get them thinking we made a foldy thing (demonstrate) in which normally you write something silly like ‘you smell’ but to get them thinking about what faith might mean to them they were writing inside something they thought was important. They had some great ideas ‘love God’ ‘love your enemies’ ‘forgive people’ .. though I think ‘you’ve got a big head’ did creep in there somewhere! But it got me thinking about the relationship between what we do and what is important to us, and the love God offers us. All the things the cubs came up with were about what is required of us, how we have to behave. They were very good at valuing things like ‘peace’ and ‘harmony’, and they e...

Too much going on at the end in the last one - plus the mistake, I think, of introducing another text from outside the lectionary, when there's enough to think about as it is.. so here is the final version A friend of mine has one of these funny T-shirts – ‘God loves you – but I’m his favourite’. She doesn’t wear it very often – it’s hard to know just when is the right occasion: but it got me thinking. Do we really believe that God loves everyone – or do we secretly think that some of us have the right to wear a T-shirt like that without it being a joke? Does God actually have favourites? Are some people ‘insiders’ when it comes to God’s love, whilst others are outsiders? The story of the vineyard can be quite dangerous – it can lead us to the conclusion that some people – namely Christians, are definitely more ‘in’ with God than others – namely Jews. The danger comes from how we read the story - when we look at this story of the parable of the vineyard there is a real danger of re...

Here are the notes for Sunday - not happy with the ending yet but I'll come back to it sometime tomorrow.. God's vineyard Matt 21: 33-46 & Philippians 3: 4b–14 A friend of mine has one of these funny T-shirts – ‘God loves you – but I’m his favourite’. She doesn’t wear it very often – it’s hard to know just when is the right occasion: but it got me thinking. Do we really believe that God loves everyone – or do we secretly think that some of us have the right to wear a T-shirt like that without it being a joke? Does God actually have favourites? Are some people ‘insiders’ when it comes to God’s love, whilst others are outsiders? The story of the vineyard can be quite dangerous – it can lead us to the conclusion that some people – namely Christians, are definitely more ‘in’ with God than others – namely Jews. The danger comes from how we read the story - when we look at this story of the parable of the vineyard there is a real danger of reading the story as an allegory – wher...