Sunday's coming!

Acts 1: 6-11     John 17: 1-11 I think there is a question that many people have been asking this week, and it is relevant to our Bible readings, too. Where’s Jesus? On Monday night we first heard the news of the bomb going off in Manchester, and all week the police have been investigating and trying to make sense of what has happened. So many lives lost – and so many of them young lives, children ready to be picked up by their parents at the end of a pop concert. And where is Jesus in that? In the carnage and the fear and the desperation – where’s Jesus? Well, we have glimpsed Jesus in some places, haven’t we – in the story of Steve, the man who is homeless, but was outside the Arena & went to help people who were bleeding, without thought for his own safety; in the speech given by Fawzi Haffar, from the Manchester mosque who said ‘this act of cowardice has no place in our religion – or any religion’; in the café which immediately sta...

John 10: 1-10, Acts 2: 42-47 I hope that since Easter you have spent these few weeks celebrating – not just the signs of Spring around us and the chance to enjoy a few days rest, even time away and then the May Bank Holiday - but of course we have been celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from death and all the hope, joy and new life that our Easter faith brings. But life isn’t all celebration, is it? These weeks since Easter have also brought news of tensions around North Korea, terrible suffering in East Africa, continued killings in Syria: and I’m sure we have friends and relatives who have been unwell, or struggling in some way. I’ve had a few weeks when I seem to have had one doctor’s appointment after another to try to clear up some medical issues. Life certainly has its ups and downs: so what exactly is this “full life” that Jesus promises his disciples and promises us? The first part of the Gospel reading seems rather complicated: Jesus says ‘the man who does ...