Sunday's coming!

This Sunday I am preaching at the closing service for Penhill Church in Swindon. I am using the lectionary readings - Psalm 23 and John 9: 1-17 It is not easy, is it – being gathered here today. Endings are hard – full of questions like  ‘what if..?’, ‘what next..?’ ‘where is God in this..”’. In choosing the Bible readings to help us to shape our worship today, I turned deliberately to the lectionary. Sundays come and go but the Revised Common Lectionary marches on – this year Matthew’s gospel is the focus, next year it will be Mark, then Luke, then we go back round. And in Lent & around Easter, John’s gospel gets a look in. Sundays come and go.. but God’s word endures. When we use the common lectionary we are reminded that we are just a small part of the much bigger story of God’s church. Churches come and go – and what is God’s word to us, today?     I think the story of the man born blind can help us, here and now, to ask where God is in this ac...

John 4: 5-42 Next week I’m going to be “walking in her shoes” – raising money and awareness to help women and girls who have to walk many miles a day to fetch water for their families. The challenge for me is to walk 10,000 steps a day, sponsored, to raise money for Care International. It is still the reality for many in the developing world that the search for water dominates life. For example, Eliza, in South Sudan, is just seven years old, but must travel through dangerous scrubland where snakes pose a real danger. Greater still is the risk to her health from the water itself. It is stagnant and filthy and sickness is common. Eliza has no time for school. Like so many girls she bears the responsibility for domestic chores, carrying a heavy load to quench her family’s thirst. Care International provides equipment such as solar-powered wells for villages, so that women and girls do not have to walk so far for water. Without help, water dominates the though...

 Exodus 24: 12-18, Matthew 17: 1-9 The Bible has so many styles of writing in it, doesn’t it? Laws, poetry, song, different stories, letters, history. Some of the passages help us to find strength in our daily lives, some challenge us, some show us God’s love in new ways. And some are just puzzling. Like today’s readings. Moses goes up the mountain, called there by God, to receive God’s laws and commandments. The mountain is covered with cloud and ‘the glory of the Lord’ – which looks like a devouring fire. This is pretty terrifying stuff: and always makes me think back to the Sunday afternoons of my childhood and the Biblical epics of Cecil B DeMille, with the thundering voice of God and plenty of cloud and fire and trembling. Be in no doubt, when you read the book of Exodus – God is very scary indeed: only Moses gets to see God face-to-face  and even Moses comes back changed by the encounter – the people of Israel are terrified when Moses c...