Sunday's coming!

  Introductory comments Now the green blade rises from the buried grain Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. I have struggled to find words of hope this Holy Week. We always have to make an emotional journey from the jubilant crowds of Palm Sunday, through the sorrow of the Last Supper, enduring the agony of Good Friday and the puzzled silence of Holy Saturday to reach today. But this year.. how hard it is to sing those Alleluias -  Praise to God! Praise God that we are still here, despite Covid – and yet what about those who are not..and what about the fear of another variant.. and what about those countries still without adequate vaccines? Praise God that voices are heard to speak out against the war in Ukraine – and yet the violence continues and the world’s leaders seem paralysed with fear…and can we really welcome refugees with open hearts? Praise Go...

I saiah 43:16-21,   John 12:1-8    What a great family Mary, Martha & Lazarus are. It seems that their home in Bethany was Jesus’ home-from-home when he was not in Galilee. In today’s reading John tells us it was just 6 days before Passover, and Jesus chooses to be in Bethany, about 2 miles from the temple in Jerusalem, surrounded with this family he loved and who loved him. I think as a family they teach us so much of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.   We first meet Mary & Martha in the gospels when Martha is working hard to get a meal ready for Jesus while Mary sits at his feet. Martha is a practical disciple of Jesus, and Jesus has to remind her that listening to him is ‘the better part’ that Mary has chosen.  Martha only has a brief mention in today’s reading – but it’s a really important phrase “Martha served”. Martha reminds us that  service  is a vital part of discipleship. But in case you think Martha is just about serving – rem...

Gone a bit "off piste" with the lectionary this week - preaching on Habukkuk 3: 17-19 and Luke 13: 1-9 You may have barely heard of Habukkuk – you might, like me, have trouble spelling his name – but I promise you, you will want to know the question he asks. About 600 years before Jesus – time after Assyria conquered God’s people in the land of Judah – and the Babylonians or Chaldeans ruling Judah instead. The tiny land of God’s people has just breathed out from one invasion, and then another comes. And in the midst of it the prophet Habakkuk asks ‘what does it mean to say God is with us, if it doesn’t mean safety and success?’.   If we are God’s people; if God is with us; why is it all going so wrong? More importantly, can we still believe in God when life is at its toughest?   Habbakuk’s answer is a kind of poem: The fig tree has no buds The vine bears no harvest,   The olive crop fails, The orchards yield no food, The fold is bereft of its flock, And there are no cattl...

Luke 4:1-13 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 I have a confession to make. I have been a minister of the URC for nearly 29 years and I think every sermon I ever preached about Lent has been wrong. I have tried, year after year, to understand what temptation might be about, to ask how we might resist temptation, and I’ve encouraged people to use Lent to give up something, to better appreciate all that we have when the feast of Easter comes. In lots of different ways I think I have said that Lent is about recognising that we have enough – that we should not want more. So when a famished Jesus is tempted with bread – I have preached that he bravely says ‘no, I will resist it’ – and we too can resist those chocolates, or alcohol, or whatever  - and either give the money we save to charity or the time we free up to study and pray. But finally, I think, I’m ready to say ‘NO’ this Lent to all that puritanically - minded stuff. This year I have seen the temptation of Jesus in a different light. The dev...

  When the world all seems too much, I give myself a break by watching the BBC’s     “the Repair Shop” If you haven’t seen it, I can thoroughly recommend it as a life-affirming programme! People bring a ‘treasured object’ which is broken or simply worn by the passage of time, and various experts set to work to mend, restore and, well, repair the object. The highlight is the moment when the person returns for their toy, or furniture, or whatever, and the utter delight on their faces as the memories of what that object meant comes flooding back. Often they want to touch, handle, even stroke their possession: there is something about the physical object that makes all the emotions flow. I usually need a tissue at that point. No amount of telling the story or hearing the history can compare with the sight, smell, sound touch of that thing – right there in their arms.   God knows this is how people work. John 1: 14   The Word became flesh and made his dwelling a...

  Ephesians 6:10-20   I wonder if any of you have ever worn armour? I have only tried on the odd piece of armour at National Trust houses – balancing a helmet on my head; picking up chain mail – so heavy!; trying to imagine how hard it would be to move with a breastplate on. I’ve more than once come to the conclusion that armour is not for me – I’m very glad I’ve never been required even to wear full armour, let alone to fight. I’m too feeble, probably too cowardly.   So I’ve never really been drawn to this passage about putting on the whole armour of God – until this week. I read in a commentary that the author of the letter – who may have been Paul or may have been one of his closest associates - decided to use the image of the armour to sum up the whole of the letter.    I decided to read the whole of the letter to the Ephesians and see what it says altogether, and how the image of the armour fits in. In some translations, the passage we heard starts ‘Finally...

Proverbs 9: 1-6 John 6: 51-58   On Friday I was listening to Radio 4’s book of the week ‘Hamilton and me’ – actor Giles Terera’s account of the staging of the musical “Hamilton” in London in 2017. He describes rehearsals, staging, lighting, music.. and the fact that before each performance a group of actors put their arms around each other – and prayed to God for ‘strength, safety and joy’. As we meet this Sunday – as we take in the news of the shooting in Keysham – as we read our Bibles and sing our hymns: God offers us strength, safety and joy. Yet again the lectionary reading from John presents us with Jesus saying ‘I am the bread of life’. If we ask ‘what does the bread of life mean’, there is no simple answer – there are many answers, or many layers of answers, and it seems that John’s gospel wants to take our understanding deeper and deeper. Alongside the listeners of Jesus wondering ‘how can Jesus be bread?’, we heard today from the book of Proverbs.  This contains a co...