Sunday's coming!

When my daughter was going off to university for the first time last September she was understandably nervous. ‘I don’t know anyone else who’s going to Nottingham! I will be surrounded by new people! What if I don’t make any friends?’ .  I told her, as I’ve told her at other times in her life “Remember – strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet”. I had no idea that this idea came from the body of Jewish teaching known as the Talmud – we’ll hear it at the end of the service  ‘There are no strangers: there are only women and men who have not yet met’. It’s a useful piece of advice, reminding my daughter not to be too nervous and I hope inspiring us all to treat any ‘strangers’ we meet with respect and friendliness. The teaching from Leviticus sounds, at first, like the same sort of advice: When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt I am the L...

Luke 13: 31-35, Genesis 15: 1-12, 17 & 18 Here we go, another week deeper into Lent, and another week closer to Holy Week and Easter. Last week we heard about the temptations of Jesus, and how he chose to trust God and walk God’s way rather than walk his own way in his own strength. This week Jesus shows that trust again, even though he knows that walking God’s way is walking the road that will lead to the cross. The passage from Luke begins with some Pharisees, who perhaps we are more used to encountering as the baddies in Jesus’ story, trying to help Jesus. It seems   they are wanting to help Jesus to escape from Herod, to run and spare his life, perhaps so that Jesus can continue his teaching and healing ministry. There is no suggestion that they have anything but Jesus’ best interests at heart when they say ‘get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you’. Jesus does not underestimate the power or the malice of Herod – he calls him ‘ that fox’, nor ...

I think I have always tended to preach about the meaning of the temptations for Christ's ministry, but this year I have tried to focus on what it means for us. Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 Luke 4: 1-13 So Lent begins with a visit to the wilderness. First we hear about the people of Israel bringing the first-fruits of their harvest to God, and remembering their past years in the wilderness: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”. Now that the people are settled and growing their own food, they need to remember the wilderness, remember when times were hard, remember how God was with them and protected them. The people of God need to remember who they are. Jesus goes into the wilderness to remember who he is. How is his life and ministry to be conducted? What choices should he make if he is God’s chosen? And so Jesus faces temptation – which after all is just facing a choice – this or that? For my sake, or for others? Trusting God or relying on myself? One of the di...

Luke 9: 28-36 Ever since Christmas we have been hearing gospel reading after gospel reading that tries to help us to see something of God’s glory in the life of Jesus Christ. Last week, we had the presentation of Jesus as a baby in the temple, and his recognition as the Messiah by Simeon and Anna; the week before that we had Jesus declaring his purpose and mission when he preached at Nazareth; before that it was the miracle of the water being turned to wine at the wedding at Cana; and before that the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John and the voice from heaven ‘you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased’. We haven’t been encouraged to listen to the teachings of Jesus, or wonder at his healing of people who are blind or deaf or disturbed – that comes at other points of the year – we have been forced to come face to face with the question ‘who is this Jesus?’. And the readings have, I think, forced us to conclude that this is no ordinary man, however good ...

A sermon for Christian Unity celebration based on  Malachi 3: 1-4 and Luke 2: 22-40 Anyone who – like me – is a fan of Handel’s Messiah will have had a hard time of it not bursting into song this morning. The reading from Malachi was full of good bits ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’… ‘but who shall abide the day of his coming’ ‘and he shall purify, and he shall purifyyyyyyyy..etc’ We cannot escape the connections of today’s scripture readings to the Lord’s Messiah (with or without Handel) – we are celebrating the presentation of Christ in the temple: the promise of Malachi fulfilled, the Lord’s anointed recognised just as the glory of God has been shining through all our celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany. But of course it was very different for Simeon and Anna. They didn’t go to the temple to celebrate the presentation of Christ, or refer to it as Candlemas, or anything of the sort. They were in the temple – as usual. In fact we’re...