Sunday's coming!

Baptism 28/6/09 These might have seemed strange readings for a baptism. Baptisms are wonderfully happy occasions: we are celebrating Joseph & Eloise’s life & the love God has for them. But the very eventful reading from Mark’s gospel seems to be full of illness and death and worry. We needn’t worry too much, though, as the turning points in this story comes with the healing Jesus offers first to the older woman and then to the young girl. The story is rich with similarities and differences. There is a young girl/ an old woman A request for healing from an important man / an attempt to gain healing without being noticed from a very unimportant woman Someone who has suffered 12 years of bleeding and therefore of being considered untouchable & unclean/ 12 years of a privileged life as the daughter of the leader of the synagogue. This is a very complex and beautiful story of healing. And the story is amazingly told – with the tension of one story interrupting the other – you c...

Readings for this week are: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 - Christ for our sake became poor: Paul encourages the Corinthians to give to others Mark 5:21-43 - the interwoven healings of Jairus' daughter & the woman with the haemorrhage A few weeks ago I did an informal creative writing group on this story from Mark (inspired by some work we had done on a minsters' Spring school). The story is rich with similarities and differences. A young girl/ an old woman A request for healing from an important man / an attempt to gain healing without being noticed 12 years of bleeding and being untouchable & unclean/ 12 years of a privileged life as the daughter of the leader of the synagogue The big question for both - is it too late?? And the answer - not with Jesus, it's never too late. So what does all this mean for us ('us' this week being a baptism at one church & an all age service at the other). Paul reminds us that Christ became poor so that we may become rich - the b...

Father’s Day (Job 38: 1-11, Mark 4:35-41) I hope it doesn’t come as news to any of you that today is fathers’ day…if you did forget – there’s always the phone! You will probably have heard sermons before on the subject of the fatherhood of God – it is an image with which we’re very familiar. We might need to get over some of the difficulties of associating God too strongly with someone we think of as an unhelpful model of fatherhood. But if we can set aside any prejudice, we can probably cope with the idea that God is like the best father we can possibly imagine – caring, warm, strong, someone to whom we can always turn. Perhaps we imagine our Father God as the one who can give us the wisest answers to our deepest questions. That may have been what Job thought, too. The passage we’ve heard today is God’s answer to Job’s deepest questions – questions about his suffering. Job has had terrible things happen to him – he’s lost everything, he’s covered with sores, he’s lying in an ashpit....

Readings this week are: Job 38:1-11 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 Mark 4:35-4 The Gospel reading is the stilling of the storm and I think I want to steer away from a reading that says 'whatever your storms in life, Jesus can calm them'. Not because that isn't true, but because often it just doesn't feel like that. The Job reading came up in conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who's been bereaved. We agreed that as far as answers to the question of suffering go, 'where were you when I made the hippopotamus?' has to be one of the lousiest! With the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, I want to scream 'don't you care?'. Yet Jesus' answer is to calmly remind them who he is - master of sea and wind - maker & redeemer of all. What sort of answer is this? Why does a loving Father God make a world in which suffering seems inevitable? But isn't it better to have this gritty reality rather than living with the pretence that we can be kept wrapp...

Here is just one version of yesterday's sermon! It was a very exciting day but I must admit I'm very tired today. June 14th sermon Our service is full of words and thoughts today – so this sermon will be short. Perhaps it will be like a mustard seed – very small, but effective! We have heard the Godly Play story of the mustard seed and heard the prophecy about God taking a sapling and growing it into a tree. This shows us the amazing potential of a seed or a cutting. In even the tiniest seed, there is everything needed except water to begin growth – and then as long as the seed is in good rich soil, and the light conditions are right the seedling can grow into a mature plant, ready to set its own seed in the future. Jesus tells us that God's kingdom is like a seed – it grows in secret, by small amounts and yet everything needed for that growth is already there. Whenever we feel that we are getting nowhere in God's work, we need to remember that we are not responsible fo...

Readings this week are: 1 Samuel 15: 34 - 16 (Samuel anoints David): 13 or Ezekiel 17: 22-24 (the people of God is like the top of a cedar tree) 2 Cor 5: 6-10, 14-17 Mark 4: 26-34 (The kingdom of God is like a seed growing in secret: like a mustard seed - a tiny thing which grows into a huge bush.) I want to focus on the Godly Play story of the mustard seed - which shows us the amazing potential of a seed. God's kingdom grows in secret, by small amounts and yet everything needed for that growth is already there. Whenever we feel that we are getting nowhere in God's work, we need to remember that we are not responsible for the coming of the kingdom - God has that in hand already - we have to take heart, do our small part, and trust in God. In one church I will be doing an activity with all ages - planting seeds & talking about how they grow. In the second church we are welcoming a new church member and ordaining an elder. These may seem like small things in the great scheme ...

For those who like to see the finished article - because these notes were quite short I probably went 'off piste' more than usual! In particular I was struck by the great unasked question from Nicodemus 'What do I have to do to be in a relationship with Go?' - and Jesus' amazing answer 'be born!' - this works for me on three levels. Just as we can't choose to be born, we don't choose to be loved by God - it just happens! The qualification from being loved by God is to be born - ie God loves everyone. Becoming aware of God's love and our status as God's children is like a re-birth - it changes evrything. I hope the inclusion of some of this made it a better sermon! Trinity (Isaiah 6: 1-8, Romans 8: 12-17, John 3: 1-17) All over the country - indeed all over the world - preachers are wrestling today with the idea of the Trinity. How can we possibly condense all our wonderings about the mystery of the God who is one and yet three in Trinity,...

Aah - the most frightening Sunday of the year for preachers - how to condense all our wonderings about the Trinity into a manageable length of sermon? Well, I think I gave up that a few years ago, and instead go for a 'one facet of a very complicated thing' approach instead. Readings are: Isaiah 6: 1-8 Romans 8: 12-17 John 3: 1-17 Wow! Any one of those readings is a big 'chew' theologically speaking... So, thoughts so far: at one church I have a baptism, at the other the ordination of an elder - but I think in both cases I want to focus on what the Trinity tells us about the God who is relationship - both within the Trinity & reaching out to include us. Baptism teaches us about our place in the family of God. The Isaiah reading speaks of a God of awe and power, who nevertheless reaches out to humanity with God's word. So how do we relate to God, as part of the family? Jesus makes it clear to Nicodemus that this is a gift, not an earned right. The phrase we usua...