Sunday's coming!

John 3: 1-17 If you had some time alone with Jesus, I wonder what you would ask him? The amazing healer, teacher and miracle-worker is usually surrounded by his followers and by people wanting to see him and hear him – but here in the cool of the evening it is just the two of you. What would you ask?   Would you ask about the miracles of healing – how does it work? Is there a way to see someone we love healed?; or get healing for ourselves.. Would you ask about heaven – is Jesus really from there? What is it like? Would you ask about your life – is there something you should be doing that you haven’t discovered yet? Or is there a way of putting right something that went horribly wrong in the past? Would you ask about Jesus, about himself -  how does he find the energy to keep going out there to do good and preach good news? What does he want his followers to do? Is he really the Son of God? What does that even mean?   Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He comes at night – per...

Today we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, which happened at the feast of Pentecost. Luke’s version of what happened on the day the Spirit came to the disciples is written in the book of Acts.   When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.   I wonder how that story makes us feel? … Excited, baffled, jealous…It seems so unlike our experience of worshipping together – so “not us”   -  that we might be tempted to forget it all together.   But the story tells us the Spirit came to  all  the followers of Jesus – and sent them out into the streets of Jerusalem and from there to the whole world with the message of the Good News...

John 17: 6-19      Aline's story here The whole of Aline’s story is amazing and inspiring.   I am struck by her strength of purpose and I’m delighted that we can hear just one example of how the help of Christian Aid really makes a difference in the lives of the poorest people in the world.   The sentence that really blew me away, though, was Aline explaining: ‘Here in Burundi, a neighbour is considered a member of the family.’   And we saw the photo of Aline feeding her 3 sons and 3 neighbours. It certainly puts Jesus’ command to ‘love your neighbour’ in a whole new context: love them as if they were your family, treat them, welcome them, feed them like a member of the family.   I have had the privilege of taking a couple of funerals in the last fortnight – both farmers: and I’ve been touched, as I always am, by the bonds of family and neighbourliness which we all know in Pembrokeshire.   Betty, baking every week for her nephews after their mum d...

  Even people who were not born when the Beatles were at their height will recognise the song “All you need is love”.   My mum was 41 when the Beatles live broadcast of “All you need is love” was televised. A snippet was shown on an amazing, world first, satellite link-up “Our World” with Cliff Michelmore. The programme reached 400 million people across the world. The Beatles were towards the end of the programme. Even years later whenever we heard the song, my mum would talk about how wonderful it was to see and hear the Beatles, accompanied by a 13 piece orchestra and surrounded by balloons and flowers and other pop stars, singing “all you need is love”. Mum said she thought it was a moment when it would come true, that the whole world could be united by satellites and by love.  I texted my big sister to ask about her memories of the broadcast (she would have been nearly 16 at the time) and she said this: “I can remember watching with wet eyes and feeling as if I had se...