Sunday's coming!

Ruth 1: 1-18 What does it mean to be faithful? The story of Ruth has a lot to teach us about being faithful despite difficult situations – continuing to be faithful to people and to God.   I’m guessing this is a story most of us know fairly well.  It won’t surprise you to learn that, as a Ruth, it’s always been one of my favourite Bible stories – Ruth is the hero, the faithful one, the good friend. So much so that we don’t really know what the Moabite parents of Ruth meant when they named their daughter ‘Ruth’ – what meaning it originally had, because we now know the meaning as ‘friend’ or ‘companion’.    Ruth says what, to me, are some of the greatest words in scripture “where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, your God my God..”.  At its most straightforward this is a story that teaches us what it means to be faithful: we could read this story and simply conclude that we should all be more like Ruth.    Bu...

Mark 10: 35-38 (recap) and 46-52.   It’s amazing that we have got to October 27 th  – and this is the first time I’ve mentioned Strictly Come Dancing – it’s week 6 ! One of the highlights this year is undoubtedly the dancing of comedian Chris McCausland – who is blind. The confidence he has to have in his dance partner, Diane, to put his all into each routine when he literally can’t see where he is, is astonishing. I couldn’t help thinking of Chris McCausland when I read today’s story of blind Bartimaeus.   In the time of Jesus, someone like Bartimaeus would have had no real options in life. He can’t see to fish, or farm, or make things. So as Jesus leaves Jericho, the blind man is sitting by the roadside doing the only thing he can do to scratch a living – he is begging. He hears a crowd approaching – we’re told it’s a large crowd – and someone tells him that among that crowd is Jesus of Nazareth. So Bartimaeus shouts out “have mercy on me”.   That could have been h...

Job 38: 1-7    Mark 10: 35-45   When we had the baptism here last month I realised that it was a while since I had held a baby. I hope we all know how it feels. Making sure the baby is comfortable – that you are giving them a firm support, if they’re very young, supporting the head. It is a great honour and joy to hold a baby safely in your arms. But even the smallest of babies will often grasp your finger, or the edge of your clothing. It’s a very deep instinct that however well you’re holding them, they will hang on to you.   I think in a sense we never lose that instinct in life. There comes a time of course when we leave the security of loving human parents’ arms and learn to cope on our own. But we know that God whom Jesus called ‘Father’ holds us in arms of love the whole of our life through.  But the instinct kicks in: it is not enough to be held in God’s arms – we are always looking for something else to hang onto.     For Job, he tries to hang...

  Reading:   Mark 10:2-16 Jesus placed a child in the middle of them and said “unless you become like a child you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven”.   What is it that a child has which makes them more able to accept and understand the love of God?   There could be lots of things, I’m sure – but at least one thing a child has that we should all try to find for ourselves is a capacity for joy – and especially joy in the telling of a story.   Those who were at Kate’s ordination here a couple of weeks ago might have heard that as I started to tell the story of creation from the first chapter of Genesis, and held up a card showing the light that God creates on the first day, one young lad in the congregation just said ‘Wow’.   I think Jesus is reminding his disciples that when they stop to think about what God has done and is doing in the world it should make them go ‘wow!’.   Can we bring that sense of wow with us when we listen to our next reading. It...