Sunday's coming!

Isaiah 9: 1-4, Matthew 4: 12-23 The calling of the first disciples – fishermen called to leave their nets and follow Jesus – is a familiar story, but this week as I have thought about it I have been haunted by a question. What has this story to do with our call to follow Jesus? Why are we still reading and listening to this story and what is our call? I have wrestled with the question all week – whilst I’ve been in meetings, answering emails, taking phone calls, writing letters. What is the call of Jesus in all these places – and what has my life to do with the fishermen on the shore of the sea of Galilee two thousand years ago? While I was living with and wrestling with that question I had to make a long-ish car journey. One of the joys of my role across the South Western synod is that I spend quite a lot of the time in the car on my own, which means I get to listen to the radio – usually Radio 4.  And so on Friday morning I found myself driving up the M5 just as Desert I...

Back in the preaching 'saddle' after a long Christmas & new year break. Isaiah 49: 1-7 John 1: 29-42 Perhaps one of the best known images of John the Baptist is the Isenheim Altarpiece. The work is over 500 years old and is presently in the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace. Even if you haven’t heard of it you might have seen the detail of John the Baptist from it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Mathis_Gothart_Grünewald_024.jpg John is shown in his camel hair tunic, rather unkempt and in need of a good hair cut, with one muscular arm extended and a long index finger pointing very definitely at the figure of Christ in the centre of the altarpiece. His words from John’s 3rd chapter are shown, in Latin, behind him “He must increase, but I must decrease”. This is the John the Baptist we have met in our Gospel reading today. When he sees Jesus, he tells his disciples and everyone around him “here is the Lamb of God”....

Isaiah 2: 1-5, Matthew 24: 36-44 This Advent Sunday I am preaching at the closing service of a church, which had got down to its last two members. I am trying to preach hope in God's future... Today is the start of Advent – though of course you don’t get to start opening your Advent calendar until December 1st.  There are many kinds of Advent Calendars.  When I was growing up we had a traditional card one with little windows, which we opened each morning. Because there were four of us in the family and only one calendar, we took it in turns to open a door. I’m the youngest so I got days 4,8,12,16,20 & 24 (Christmas Eve – the one with the baby in the crib behind it!). Over the years it became a very predictable advent calendar.  These days you can get advent calendars with chocolates behind the doors – a sweet calendar; or ones linked to TV shows or celebrities – a starry, sparkly kind of calendar. But if Advent is meant to get us ready for the c...