Sunday's coming!

Acts 16: 16-34 John 17: 20-26 A sermon preached to the ministers' spring school, but using the readings set for May 8th. I was very moved by the ‘cardboard testimonies’ which Dave Hopwood showed us and what we saw of the power of God to transform lives. Seeing what was written on those bits of cardboard and especially seeing the faces of the people holding them light up s they showed their testimonies made me feel that I would want my ministry to be a channel of that transformative grace. In the context of this week exploring worship it also made me think about the ways is which worship can be a channel of transformative grace, taking us from this to this (card). When we look at the story from Acts it seems that there are many transformations in this story – or at least changes from one state to another – from this to this. Paul has been having a strange time, it seems. The Council of Jerusalem had met and made the decision to lift the requirement that Gentiles...

Acts 9: 1-6, John 21: 1-19 Are you the sort of person who can pinpoint a moment when you first began to love Jesus: your own ‘Damascus moment’? – a moment of blinding clarity and clear call, which changed your life forever? I have known people with that sort of story: one of my friends, Val, once told me that she was on a bus, thinking through something she’d heard in church, when she suddenly realised that she believed that God’s love for her was shown in Jesus. She told me it was as if all the lights were suddenly turned up, and she felt she should tell other people about God’s love for them. “Otherwise” she told me “it’s like having all the chocolates and keeping them for yourself !”. Val was otherwise a very quiet, rather subdued person, but when she talked about her faith her face really did light up.     That sort of change, that sort of realisation in a single moment, turns murderous Saul into possibly the greatest disciple of them all – Paul. But...