Sunday's coming!

 This week we have a 'guest preacher': Revd Dr Susan Durber. Here are her sermon notes On Zion’s Hill I know that life is hard and tough in all sorts of ways. And that we’re not all always ‘fine!’. But sometimes there are moments in our lives when we are so blissfully happy, or so contented and fulfilled, that we find ourselves thinking – well I could go now and I wouldn’t mind … Sometimes there comes a moment when we know that we’ve seen life, we’ve known the deepest joy or peace and if we didn’t live another day it would all have been worth it! That’s the kind of experience we are going to meet today in our Bible story – about Simeon – who met the holy family in the Temple. And that perhaps is the kind of life and death that we would all like! I’m getting some help with this sermon – from someone who lived and died a while ago – the painter Rembrandt. He’s someone who changed the way that people painted the Bible – and he even changed his own way of pa...

  Luke 4: 14-30 This has been quite a week, if you’ve been watching the news from the United States. President Donald Trump has been elected for a second term – and has received acclaim and applause from many for his bold inauguration speech in which he declared a national emergency at the Southern border and promised to end the right to be registered as a US citizen if you are born there. He has since signed dozens of executive orders, including those withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, increasing oil, gas & coal exploitation, and releasing those who stormed the Capitol building when he failed to be elected president four years ago.   But Bishop Mariann Budde, the Episcopalian Bishop of Washington, preaching at the Washington National Cathedral the day after the inauguration, directly addressed President Trump and Vice-president Vance.   She asked them, in the name of the God Trump believes saved him from a bullet, to “have mercy” on those who fe...

Psalm 35: 5-10; John 2: 1-11 I’ve recently been reading story of Eric Liddell: you might remember his story from the film Chariots of Fire.  He was a young Scot, the son of missionaries, who was due to have raced in the 100m final of the 1924 Olympics, but refused to run when it emerged the heats were to be held on a Sunday. He was switched to run in the 400m race instead, and famously won the gold medal. He was lauded as a hero and spoke at churches and chapels all over the UK, but gave it all up to became a missionary to China, as his father had been before him, and died of a brain tumour in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2.  As well as being steadfast in keeping the Lord’s Day (and never running on a Sunday) he also refused to drink alcohol, though not, his biographers are keen to say, in a way which made him a killjoy. I wondered how Eric Liddell would have felt about preaching on the story of the wedding at Cana, with its many gallons of wine.   But the ...

 Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22 Isaiah 43: 1-4   Happy New Year. I hope that you had some joy this Christmas and haven’t been too cast down by putting away all the cards and greenery and colourful decorations and restoring the house to normal. The third Monday in January, which is a week tomorrow, is apparently ‘Blue Monday’, when all the excitement of Christmas and New Year has worn off and the reality of cold, dark, January sinks in.   We had a small surprise as we tidied up after Christmas. Our grandson, Jonah, had evidently had a card or present into which someone had scattered a handful of small gold stars. I didn’t notice them during the present-opening, but a few days later, after the family had gone, I was puzzled to keep finding a star, sparkling on the stairs, another in the bathroom, one on the landing, and finally quite a constellation in the room Jonah had been sleeping in.     At first, I admit, I was a bit cross ‘another of those blinkin...