Sunday's coming!

Gone a bit "off piste" with the lectionary this week - preaching on Habukkuk 3: 17-19 and Luke 13: 1-9 You may have barely heard of Habukkuk – you might, like me, have trouble spelling his name – but I promise you, you will want to know the question he asks. About 600 years before Jesus – time after Assyria conquered God’s people in the land of Judah – and the Babylonians or Chaldeans ruling Judah instead. The tiny land of God’s people has just breathed out from one invasion, and then another comes. And in the midst of it the prophet Habakkuk asks ‘what does it mean to say God is with us, if it doesn’t mean safety and success?’.   If we are God’s people; if God is with us; why is it all going so wrong? More importantly, can we still believe in God when life is at its toughest?   Habbakuk’s answer is a kind of poem: The fig tree has no buds The vine bears no harvest,   The olive crop fails, The orchards yield no food, The fold is bereft of its flock, And there are no cattl...

Luke 4:1-13 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 I have a confession to make. I have been a minister of the URC for nearly 29 years and I think every sermon I ever preached about Lent has been wrong. I have tried, year after year, to understand what temptation might be about, to ask how we might resist temptation, and I’ve encouraged people to use Lent to give up something, to better appreciate all that we have when the feast of Easter comes. In lots of different ways I think I have said that Lent is about recognising that we have enough – that we should not want more. So when a famished Jesus is tempted with bread – I have preached that he bravely says ‘no, I will resist it’ – and we too can resist those chocolates, or alcohol, or whatever  - and either give the money we save to charity or the time we free up to study and pray. But finally, I think, I’m ready to say ‘NO’ this Lent to all that puritanically - minded stuff. This year I have seen the temptation of Jesus in a different light. The dev...