Sunday's coming!

John 20: 19-31; 1 Peter 1: 3-9 In the run up to Christmas 2021 Marks & Spencer hit the headlines with a jumper in their women’s wear range : “Believe”. It became very popular with women ministers. Of course, it’s left to the wearer – and the observer  - to decide what you’re being encouraged to believe. It could be ‘believe in Santa Claus’; ‘believe in better times ahead’ (this was 2021, remember..); or for ministers – I guess something like ‘believe in the good news of Christmas’. Whatever we are being encouraged to believe, believing is not just an empty thinking that something is or is not true – believing is stronger than that – it has an element of consequence – I believe  ‘and so’. Believing is not just about head knowledge – it involves trust and faith and acting on your belief.   You might know that the new manse is on the Merlin’s Lane development in Haverfordwest, and they haven’t quite finished building yet, at the end of the road. This provides m...

Easter Sunday  (Matthew 28: 1-10; Acts 10; 34-43)   I wonder what we see when we look at our world this Easter Sunday morning. Perhaps we see a world in which on the global political stage the war in Ukraine continues, and the Israeli Police attack Muslim worshippers at the Al Asqa mosque, causing attacks of retaliation on Israeli citizens. In our own country we see the jailing of a man for murdering his partner’s daughter, Lola James; and a young woman, Bethanie Booth has died of sepsis at just 24. And in our own lives I know some of us are facing questions about our health; families are struggling with the cost of living rises; and mental ill health and grief touch almost all of us. Although signs of Spring are all around us, we also face the signs of climate change, endangering the life of our world.   There is a lot we might feel sorrowful about. And so we come seeking hope on this Easter Sunday.     Matthew tells us that 2 women set off to see the tomb of J...

  Micah 6: 6-8, Luke 10:25-37   I’m not sure there are many Bible stories more familiar than the parable of the Good Samaritan.   Just yesterday morning – listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 with Revd Richard Coles, I immediately thought of the story of the Good Samaritan as I listened to the ‘thank you’ slot. If you’re not a fan of Saturday Live all you need to know is that people contact the show with stories of good deeds done for them in the past where, for whatever reason, they never got the thank the person who helped them. They get to tell the story and thank the person on the Radio.   The story yesterday was told by an older woman, who related how her daughter, unbeknown to her, had collapse in the street in central London. A man working in the hotel opposite spotted that the young woman had collapsed and that people were just walking past.    He crossed the street, picked up the woman, and took her into the hotel foyer, where she was able to give...

Colossians 1: 11-20; Luke 23: 33-43 I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling to cope every time someone says ‘King Charles’. I have no serious doubts about his fitness to be King – it’s just that all my life so far we have referred to “The Queen” and the change is hard to get used to. How many changes there will really be because Charles is King is hard to predict – we will have to look and see.   Today’s Bible readings invite us to reflect on what it means to say ‘ Jesus Christ is King’  – not just of this country, but of all creation. The church has been reflecting on this for centuries, but I hope there’s always something new to say as we see in each generation what the rule of Christ means in our place and our time. We need to look and see just as much as we will with Charles.   Today I’d like to focus on what one of the criminals on the cross sees.   This is a story we always hear at Easter, how Jesus is crucified with two criminals, one on either side.  ...

  Welcome service for Craig Manley to Calne, Corsham & Bromham in United Area   Luke 24: 13-29 and 30-35   I’m sure this story – of the disciples on the road to Emmaus – is a familiar story to most of us. We tend to read it at Eastertime – the lectionary suggests we have it on the evening of Easter Day because that’s when it happened. But to be honest most of us are at the roast lamb and Easter eggs stage of things by then – so I’m glad it can have an airing this evening and maybe get the attention it deserves.   But I didn’t just pick it for today to give the story more exposure. I chose it because I think it is a story about a crisis of understanding for the disciples of Jesus, and because it points to an exciting new chapter in the life of the church of Jesus Christ.     And if we know anything in the church, twenty centuries later, we know about crises and we desperately need to learn about new chapters.   The story of the two on the road to Em...

Luke 10:38-42,            Genesis 18:1-10a In these readings I think we encounter the God who pushes our boundaries and invites us to expand our understanding of what it means to love God and neighbour. I’m going to say quite a lot about the NT reading and then rather less about the OT reading.   I think it is no coincidence that Luke tells us this story right after Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, which you might well have heard in last week’s lectionary reading.  A quick recap -  a lawyer, testing Jesus, asks the question ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ and when Jesus points him to the law ‘Love God and your neighbour as yourself’ the man counters with ‘but who is my neighbour?’. Jesus then tells the story of the Jewish man who is robbed and beaten, ignored by two fellow Jews, but rescued by a Samaritan. Jesus finishes with the killer question  “which one was a neighbour?” - expandin...

1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21, Luke 9:51-62   As we listen to those readings – the story of Elisha following Elijah and the words of Jesus about what it means to follow him – we might be struck by how hard this discipleship thing is – how tough it can be to follow Jesus.   I learned in the last few weeks the story around a little chorus we used to sing in my school Christian Union  “I have decided to follow Jesus…no turning back, no turning back”. When we sang it in a quiet classroom at lunch break, perhaps before an inspiring speaker, or just a ‘time of fellowship’ – swapping stories of how our week had been, no-one told us where the chorus originated. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can tell you that it originated in Assam, India.  The lyrics are apparently based on the last words of Nokseng, a man from a local tribe who converted to Christianity in the middle of the 19th century through the efforts of an American Baptist missionary. He is said to have recit...