Sunday's coming!

(Wow : the Sundays get hard to 'label' from here until Advent!) I'm not actually preaching this Sunday - but looked at the gospel reading: Luke 7: 1-10 and the healing by Jesus of the Centurion's servant. There are all sorts of things going on here about race, and authority, and culture. This is a story for our mixed up world - whose faith is real? which race is blessed? who deserves God's healing? The word that leapt out at me from the story was 'worthy'. The Jewish elders, speaking to Jesus on behalf of the Centurion, say that he is 'worthy' of Jesus going to him, because he has sponsored the synagogue. But when jesus approached, the man himself says 'I am not worthy.. only say the word'. This is a story about grace - none of us are worthy yet God's will is to bless and heal all of us. Thanks be to God.

Psalm 8 ; John 16: 12-15 Trinity Sunday rolls round again. Last Sunday we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit and so when putting together the church’s lectionary somebody decided that the week after Pentecost, this week, we’d better try to sort out how this Spirit relates to God the Father. And while we’re at it, let’s try to sort out what we think the relationship is between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. So here we are with a day of preachers talking about shamrocks, triangles, the three states of water, icons, Celtic symbols… all in an attempt to help people to understand the Trinity. But the most important question about the Trinity is – why does it matter? You could argue that since Jesus never uses the word Trinity it can’t be that important: actually ‘Trinity’ isn’t a  Biblical word at all – it was probably first used by Tertullian about 150 years after Christ. But just because the word Trinity isn’t used that doesn’t mean t...

It's going to be a busy day, Trinity Sunday 2013: I have an 8am communion (short sermon - usually a 'filletted' version of a later one), 9.30 communion, 11.15 all-age service, a baptism at 12.30, and then "beer and hymns" at the local pub in the evening. I think my starting point is going to be Psalm 8: which speaks of the glory and wonder of God - but also of God's mindfulness for humanity - a God who is at once transcendent and immanent. Somehow we need to hold onto the idea of God as both immense and near to us and in us: perhaps one way of handling the idea of God as Trinity is to try to similarly hold onto God as over all, and with all, and in all. Only God in Trinity can make sense of what Jesus says in John 16: 12-15 of the coming of the Spirit 'All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he (the Spirit) will take what is mine and declare it to you.'. The phrase 'all that the father has is mine' implies complete i...

We might feel we have had a busy 8 weeks since Holy Week and if you’re anything like me you’re wondering quite where the time goes. But the first disciples of Jesus had had a positively torrid time. First they suffered the trauma of seeing Jesus arrested straight after their Last Supper and almost immediately executed. Then the utterly amazing events of Easter Sunday – the empty tomb, the appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the upper room, the Emmaus road story. A week later there was a second appearance in the upper room, to Thomas. The gospels speak of ‘other times’ that Jesus shows himself to people, including the appearance on the beach when he forgives Peter, and finally the events of Jesus’ ascension, when he blesses the disciples and his resurrection body disappears into heaven. And the final things Jesus says to his friends were ‘wait here in the city’ and ‘ you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, ...

Preaching at an Ascension Day service today (Thursday) & will 'tweak' this a bit for Sunday, too... So is Ascension day important or not? Unfortunately the “40 days after Easter Sunday” calculation means that Ascension day is always ‘tucked away’ on a Thursday!  - which implies it’s not too important. But on the other hand the story is so good that Luke tells it twice – at the end of his gospel and at the beginning of the book of Acts. OK – so it’s important – but why is it important? I don’t think its importance lies in the problem of physics – or maybe it’s geography – that it throws up. The question of what really happened: especially where did Jesus ‘go’? The disciples see him ascend into heaven, and are left gazing up with open mouths. But we might feel suspicious of the idea that heaven is ‘up there’. Nikita Krushchev, leader of the Soviet  Union, tried to discredit Christianity by saying of the first Russian cosmonaut – ‘Gagarin went into sp...