Sunday's coming!

   The presentation of Christ in the temple .   Luke 2: 22-40   We got through January.   Sometimes it might have felt touch and go. Storms – Goretti & Chandra and plenty of wind and rain the rest of the time, too. Ilnesses – ‘superflu’ and ‘norovirus’ and others. Terrible turbulence in politics here, in the US, and across the world. Deaths of those we love – in our family across the pastorate & in our birth families. Christmas   - with its bright lights and good news - feels a way off now.   Perhaps today we have had a glimpse back to the infancy stories of Jesus, with the story of the presentation of Christ in the temple. Is this just an attempt to rekindle some of the Christmas feelings.. or is something more going on? This story might just be what we need to face into the ‘not so new’ year with courage and clarity.     On the one hand, Jesus has a very small part to play in this sto...

            1 Corinthians 1:10-18      Matthew 4:12-23        Part 1 Today is the end of the week of prayer for Christian Unity.   It’s not too late for us to pray for unity – but perhaps the fact that we are doing this in our own chapel, hoping that others are doing it in theirs, show we still have a lot of learn about being together. It’s good that we’re part of God’s church and that today we have heard parts of scripture to challenge us.   We heard part of the Letter of Paul to Corinthians.   This letter gets off to such a good start ‘to God’s church at Corinth, called to be saints’…and yet now, just 10 verses in, Paul gets to the real purpose of writing. He doesn’t want to tell the Corinthians how well they’re doing as followers of Christ, but to tell them off for all the dispute and division between them.    Paul is realistic about how...

      John 1: 29-42 Opticians are very keen to impress upon us the importance of being able to see clearly. Specsavers have got their catchphrase “should’ve gone to Specsavers” into all our brains.   You might remember this advert from the last few years – as it includes the tune we have been singing for the words   “behold the lamb of God”, and includes both sheep and the importance of seeing, I couldn’t resist using it to introduce this sermon:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV2qiOeUT9E   It is hard to navigate the world if we can’t see clearly. We need to pay attention, look and see.   John’s gospel is full of references to seeing, looking, watching. The part of the gospel we heard this morning contains at least 10 references to seeing, and John the Baptist is clear that he wants the people around him to look and to see Jesus for who he is : “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.  ...

  Matthew 2: 1-12, Isaiah 60: 1-6 Just how wise are the wise men? We don’t know quite where they have come from, or how far they have travelled. We are not told how their families and friends reacted to them starting out on their strange journey. Maybe they all thought these so-called wise men were being immensely foolish.   But they set off, following a star, looking for a king. Once they arrive in the land of Judah their wisdom seems to fail them – they stop following the star and because they are looking for a king they look first in the obvious, but the wrong place. They go to the royal palace in the capital of Judah, Jerusalem, asking to see the new-born ‘king of the Jews’.   For ‘Wise men’ they act in a rather stupid way, exciting the interest and the anger of the actual King of Judah – Herod.   But, interested in finding and eliminating the opposition, he asks his own advisors where the child is to be born and receives the prophecy “In Bethlehem”...