Sunday's coming!

Jesus the Good Shepherd John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3: 16-24  I wonder how you feel about being likened to sheep. Because if Jesus is the Good Shepherd, surely we are the sheep. Somehow that doesn’t feel like a compliment. Having just returned from Northern Ireland, I’ve spent quite a lot of time with sheep. There are most definitely more sheep than people in the Irish countryside: and very lovely the sheep and lambs looked. But they’re not bright, are they, sheep.? As a friend of mine once heard a Yorkshire farmer put it “You see, sheep are not as clever as they like to think they are”. They are easily spooked by sudden noises, easily misled into wandering off by just following the others, difficult to keep together and safe in the pen.  The more I see sheep, the more I think people are just like them in so many ways. And believe me, a group of ministers (which is who I was in Northern Ireland with) are as capable of behaving like daft sheep as anyone else! So we all ne...

No sermon this week, sorry. But if I WAS preaching I think I'd be focussing on the 'YOU are witnesses to these things'. Of course we have the gospel accounts, but can we add to these our own encounters with the risen Christ? Maybe not a Damascus Road event (or maybe so!) - but where/when/how have we known the risen Lord in our lives? And can we tell others??

Readings: Acts 4: 32-35 John 20: 19-31 Belief John writes, at the very end of his gospel: ‘these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’. So what does it really mean to believe in Jesus? I seem to have quite a lot of conversations with people about belief. Recently, visiting someone who was very ill, he said to me “I wish I could believe in God and heaven and all those things – but I haven’t been able to for many years”. For him, belief was something that might have brought a measure of security in his last days, and I admired his honesty and integrity, that he wasn’t prepared to state an allegiance to a faith as some kind of insurance deal. But it seems that for people of honesty and integrity, faith is not something that can just be conjured up, however much they may want to believe or however pleasant and positive they are about people who do have faith. Believin...

I have been thinking about the role of elders in my denomination, ahead of a training event this weekend. I 'wordled' a number of Biblical passages which refer to elders, and the 'word cloud' of ideas is here The passages were Romans 12: 1-8 1 Corinthians 12: 27-31 1 Peter 5: 1-4 Ephesians 4: 11-16 I found it fascinating, and hope it will give us food for thought...

Gospel reading: John 20: 1-18 During Lent, some of us have been reading Stephen Cottrell’s book ‘The things he said’ – looking at all the things Jesus says on Easter Day. What’s surprising is that so many of things Jesus say are not statements, like ‘I am the risen Son of God’ , but are questions. Easter Day is a good day for questions. We might question, first, which of the gospel accounts to believe. Perhaps it is not surprising that each gospel tells the story of the resurrection in a slightly different way – earthquakes, a group of women or just Mary of Magdala, other disciples running to the tomb, angels, linen wrappings, Jesus appearing in the garden, on the road to Emmaus, in a locked room in Jerusalem – everywhere except the tomb. The empty tomb, the amazing, startling, miraculous sight of a tomb with no dead body. There is so much to tell, such excitement, such amazement. So many questions. Why might wonder what the purpose is of al these questions. But it’s not surprisi...

Apologies that there have been no thoughts here - and now no sermon: you could of course look at the one I wrote in April 2009 (same readings!). We have the Bishop coming to lead worship & to preach so my preparation has been of an order of service, getting readers lined up, etc. Also this week we had (for the first time) a 'Quietly into Easter' service - we tried something similar at Christmas for those who had been bereaved, based on 'Blue Christmas' services which I had seen. We had about 35 people come & they seemed to find the simplicity & directness of the service helpful. I feel stupid for never thinking before that the message of Easter is exactly the message you need to hear when someone dies - those present certainly listened very intently. So here's what we did: Quietly into Easter Welcome to this service. Easter is a time of celebrating new birth – but it is also a time of recognising pain and grief. We will reflect quietly tonight...

Friendship with God Jeremiah 31: 31-34; John 12: 20-33 What does it mean to speak of God as a friend? What sense does it make to talk of friendship with God? I hope we all have friends, so we know something of friendship. A friend is someone you can turn to, someone you know well and who knows you, someone you share your life with. So does God offer us this kind of relationship, this kind of friendship? I’m not a great one for disembodied bible verses, but I do like 2 Cor 5: 19 ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’. I think that Paul is talking about God extending to us and to all people the offer of friendship. This friendship is seen in Christ and it is a friendship which about sharing our life and even our death so that we can turn to God as someone who knows our human condition all too well. And if ‘God’s friendship’ doesn’t sound very revolutionary or even sounds a bit hum-drum, I don’t think we’re using the concept of ‘friendship’ in its fullest sense. We ...