Sunday's coming!

Colossians 1: 11-20; Luke 23: 33-43 I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling to cope every time someone says ‘King Charles’. I have no serious doubts about his fitness to be King – it’s just that all my life so far we have referred to “The Queen” and the change is hard to get used to. How many changes there will really be because Charles is King is hard to predict – we will have to look and see.   Today’s Bible readings invite us to reflect on what it means to say ‘ Jesus Christ is King’  – not just of this country, but of all creation. The church has been reflecting on this for centuries, but I hope there’s always something new to say as we see in each generation what the rule of Christ means in our place and our time. We need to look and see just as much as we will with Charles.   Today I’d like to focus on what one of the criminals on the cross sees.   This is a story we always hear at Easter, how Jesus is crucified with two criminals, one on either side.  ...

  Welcome service for Craig Manley to Calne, Corsham & Bromham in United Area   Luke 24: 13-29 and 30-35   I’m sure this story – of the disciples on the road to Emmaus – is a familiar story to most of us. We tend to read it at Eastertime – the lectionary suggests we have it on the evening of Easter Day because that’s when it happened. But to be honest most of us are at the roast lamb and Easter eggs stage of things by then – so I’m glad it can have an airing this evening and maybe get the attention it deserves.   But I didn’t just pick it for today to give the story more exposure. I chose it because I think it is a story about a crisis of understanding for the disciples of Jesus, and because it points to an exciting new chapter in the life of the church of Jesus Christ.     And if we know anything in the church, twenty centuries later, we know about crises and we desperately need to learn about new chapters.   The story of the two on the road to Em...

Luke 10:38-42,            Genesis 18:1-10a In these readings I think we encounter the God who pushes our boundaries and invites us to expand our understanding of what it means to love God and neighbour. I’m going to say quite a lot about the NT reading and then rather less about the OT reading.   I think it is no coincidence that Luke tells us this story right after Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which you might well have heard in last week’s lectionary reading.  A quick recap -  a lawyer, testing Jesus, asks the question ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ and when Jesus points him to the law ‘Love God and your neighbour as yourself’ the man counters with ‘but who is my neighbour?’. Jesus then tells the story of the Jewish man who is robbed and beaten, ignored by two fellow Jews, but rescued by a Samaritan. Jesus finishes with the killer question  “which one was a neighbour?” - expandin...

1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21, Luke 9:51-62   As we listen to those readings – the story of Elisha following Elijah and the words of Jesus about what it means to follow him – we might be struck by how hard this discipleship thing is – how tough it can be to follow Jesus.   I learned in the last few weeks the story around a little chorus we used to sing in my school Christian Union  “I have decided to follow Jesus…no turning back, no turning back”. When we sang it in a quiet classroom at lunch break, perhaps before an inspiring speaker, or just a ‘time of fellowship’ – swapping stories of how our week had been, no-one told us where the chorus originated. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can tell you that it originated in Assam, India.  The lyrics are apparently based on the last words of Nokseng, a man from a local tribe who converted to Christianity in the middle of the 19th century through the efforts of an American Baptist missionary. He is said to have recit...

Psalm 23 & John 10: 22-30 I have to confess that at first my heart sank when I saw that today’s psalm was the 23rd Psalm: I immediately thought of the opening credits of The Vicar of Dibley – the soaring views of peaceful Oxfordshire countryside and the beautiful chorister’s voice “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…” It all seemed too lush, too perfect, too tranquil for the 21st century in a pandemic-ravaged, war-torn, desperate world. It’s a bit – the word I use sometimes is ‘mimsy’ – feeble, wet… And yet, in our reading from John’s gospel, Jesus is challenged ‘if you are the Messiah tell us plainly’ and Jesus uses the metaphor of the shepherd to describe himself and his work on earth: ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’ Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep – he is a shepherd of the valley of the shadow of death just as surely as he...

  Introductory comments Now the green blade rises from the buried grain Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. I have struggled to find words of hope this Holy Week. We always have to make an emotional journey from the jubilant crowds of Palm Sunday, through the sorrow of the Last Supper, enduring the agony of Good Friday and the puzzled silence of Holy Saturday to reach today. But this year.. how hard it is to sing those Alleluias -  Praise to God! Praise God that we are still here, despite Covid – and yet what about those who are not..and what about the fear of another variant.. and what about those countries still without adequate vaccines? Praise God that voices are heard to speak out against the war in Ukraine – and yet the violence continues and the world’s leaders seem paralysed with fear…and can we really welcome refugees with open hearts? Praise Go...

I saiah 43:16-21,   John 12:1-8    What a great family Mary, Martha & Lazarus are. It seems that their home in Bethany was Jesus’ home-from-home when he was not in Galilee. In today’s reading John tells us it was just 6 days before Passover, and Jesus chooses to be in Bethany, about 2 miles from the temple in Jerusalem, surrounded with this family he loved and who loved him. I think as a family they teach us so much of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.   We first meet Mary & Martha in the gospels when Martha is working hard to get a meal ready for Jesus while Mary sits at his feet. Martha is a practical disciple of Jesus, and Jesus has to remind her that listening to him is ‘the better part’ that Mary has chosen.  Martha only has a brief mention in today’s reading – but it’s a really important phrase “Martha served”. Martha reminds us that  service  is a vital part of discipleship. But in case you think Martha is just about serving – rem...