Sunday's coming!

We have a baptism on Sunday, so this is a short and snappy sermon based on the lectionary gospel reading of  John 13: 31-35 This reading come from the Last Supper : the night before Jesus is crucified. Judas has gone out – to tell the Roman soldiers where Jesus is, so that they can come & arrest him & kill him. Jesus says to his friends ‘I give you a new commandment – a new law’ – this is Jesus’ last chance to say something important to his friends – his last bit of teaching –  if they don’t remember anything else he has taught them they should remember this… ‘Love one another’ Just as I have loved you so you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my friends – that you love’. You wonder whether the disciples of Jesus thought ‘is that it?’. But of course that one word love is the most important thing in our world, the hardest thing, sometimes to do, the highest demand Jesus can place on us. Love. It’s easy to love Astrid ...

John 21: 1-19,   Acts 9: 1-6 So Peter & Jesus end where they began – as Jesus says to Peter ‘follow me’. Which might get us wondering, when does discipleship start? You see, Luke’s gospel also contains this story of the miraculous catch of fish – but where John tells us this story here, as part of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, Luke has it right at the beginning of the gospel, when Jesus first calls the fishermen to follow. So when does Peter become a disciple – when he first starts to follow the earthly Jesus, without even knowing who he is, or here as he follows the resurrected Jesus, who he knows is “the Lord”? The answer, of course, is both. Peter has to make a decision to start to follow Jesus, but this is a decision he will have to keep making, everyday of his life, especially when persecution comes. And it’s not as simple as Peter seeing the risen Jesus and deciding, again, to follow Jesus. First there’s the very real issue of Peter’s deni...

  Luke 24: 1-12 I wonder how you feel about the response with which we began our worship: “Christ is risen”, "he is risen indeed, alleluia" ? There’s a mum I know who says to her children, when she doesn't quite believe what they're saying 'really?'. It can be “we’re going on a school trip to the moon!” (“Really?”) or something as simple as “I’ve finished tidying my bedroom”. “Really?”. Sometimes I feel like making that my response to the statement ‘Christ is risen”. “Really?”. If you're not quite sure about the whole resurrection thing this morning you're in good company . The women went to the disciples with the story of everything they had seen and heard... the stone had been rolled away, they’d seen the empty tomb, then there were two men in dazzling clothes, who reminded  them of what Jesus had said   - that he would rise again – and these 2 angelic creatures had said 'why look for living among dead ?, he is not here he has r...

A short reflection on the Passion gospel (Luke 23: 1-49) - there will also be a short reflection on the Palm Gospel What strikes me in this account of the Passion of Christ is how little Jesus has to say for himself. Firstly, when Pilate asks him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ he answers, ‘You say so.’ Secondly he speaks to the women weeping on his way to crucifixion ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.’ Then finally, from the cross itself, Luke tells us Jesus says three things   ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ To the penitent thief he says ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ And his final words are ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’.     You see how little Jesus says in this long account - yet what he does say is heavy with importance. Jesus speaks words of sympathy or empathy ‘weep for yourselves' 'today you wil...

Maybe I'm cheating, but this year I'm preaching on the Gospel reading from the lectionary, but also looking at other stories of Mary of Bethany, and her example of discipleship. I will preach in 3 sections. John 12: 1-8. As Anne was reminding the children at William Westley school this week, the gospels were written by piecing together what people could remember after the event – there was no-one jotting down all that Jesus said or did. Each gospel writer then had to make decisions about how their gospel account was going to be pieced together. Mark jumps straight into the gospel of Jesus with his baptism, as an adult, by John the Baptist ; Luke & Matthew begin with Jesus’ family tree. But John begins with a prologue, putting Jesus into context as the eternal Word of God. More than any of the other gospel writers, John writes as if we know the whole story before we turn to the detail of what he writes. So Lazarus is described, in the story we’ve heard today...

Our Gospel reading encourages us to think about mothering beyond biological relationship. On one hand we could just read this as Jesus the good son looking after his mother, making sure that she will be looked after. But there is more than that going on here or else why would John tell us   this story   - and he is the only gospel-writer who does. Jesus is not just looking after Mary, but is encouraging John and Mary to enter into a new relationship. Not long before , Jesus has said to his disciples "love one another ".   This could be a concrete example of that. Jesus is (even from the cross) teaching his followers that his gospel of love is about more than the old ties of family. And it is also interesting to see who is named as being present at foot of cross. Mary (mother) , Mary's sister,   Mary wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalen. At least one of those women is a witness to Jesus’ resurrection. In fact   Mary Magdalen will be named by John as the...

When my daughter was going off to university for the first time last September she was understandably nervous. ‘I don’t know anyone else who’s going to Nottingham! I will be surrounded by new people! What if I don’t make any friends?’ .  I told her, as I’ve told her at other times in her life “Remember – strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet”. I had no idea that this idea came from the body of Jewish teaching known as the Talmud – we’ll hear it at the end of the service  ‘There are no strangers: there are only women and men who have not yet met’. It’s a useful piece of advice, reminding my daughter not to be too nervous and I hope inspiring us all to treat any ‘strangers’ we meet with respect and friendliness. The teaching from Leviticus sounds, at first, like the same sort of advice: When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt I am the L...