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Showing posts from May, 2010

'Ordinary time'

For anyone feeling deflated by the return to ordinary time, after all the festival of Eastertide & Pentecost, you might like the Godly Play description of this as the 'green and growing' season. So, how can we grow this week? Readings are: 1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24) Galatians 1:11-24 Luke 7:11-17 The stories of the raising of widows' sons are always attractive - but for some reason I feel drawn to the Galatians reading & Paul's account of how he received the gospel. In the United Reformed Church we will soon be entering the year of evangelism, after the year of prayer, and I think I want to explore the link between the 2 things - evangelism and prayer. We should never forget that winning people with the good news is God's work not ours - we shouldn't get entirely hooked on how we can tell people about God's love, and forget that God reaches out to people - that we can help to create the space where God can speak... I might pinch the title of a retreat

Trinity Sunday

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Last Sunday of our student minister being with us - so being the kind, encouraging mentor that I am I asked him to preach! Which leaves me with an all-age service - which you could argue is tougher! Here's at least one part of what Im saying, using the image above: This symbol is called the trisquetra and it’s used as a symbol of the Trinity. Today is Trinity Sunday - and to be honest, it’s always a Sunday that fills preachers with trepidation. God is one – but three persons, Father Son & Holy Spirit. It is not just that God works in three ways, but there is a relationship at the heart of God of these three. Which brings us back to the symbol. If you trace the line that forms the edge of the shape, you’ll find that it’s not 3 overlapping shapes, as it first seems, but is formed from one, continuous line. Three petal-like shapes of the pattern, but one line. Three persons, but one God. And the one God does one thing – love. The love of the Father formed the world, the love of th

And here's the cartoon!

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Evensong for Pentecost

Evensong for Pentecost: (Exodus 33.7-20 and 2 Corinthians 3.4-end) My brother always tries to find me birthday cards which are both funny and religious. I suppose it tells me something about how he sees me! Last year’s was particularly funny: it showed a woman answering her front door to 2 well dressed young men. There is a figure hiding behind long curtains in her sitting room, with just 2 sandalled feet, and a suspicion of a long white robe and a beard, visible. The man at the door is asking ‘have you found Jesus?’. Of course it works better as a cartoon: but it serves as a useful introduction to our thinking about the readings we’ve heard this evening. We might wonder what the relevance is to us of a story of the people of Israel living in tents in the desert and some slightly convoluted teaching from Paul – but I think they help us to think about the quest for the presence of God, the search for meaning in our lives, and the struggles we have with a sense of God’s absence or sile
Ah - no - the upload wouldn't. But the link is here And I'm using the first part almost verbatim: Pentecost I’d like to use a reflection I found on the internet: Go on admit it. You’re wondering about the future. Maybe worrying. Do we even have a future? Will our church survive? Will our children have faith? Will our faith have children? There are so many challenges. We don’t know the people next door anymore. Why would they want to come to our church? People pass by. We don’t know them. No-one comes in. They are outside. We are inside. And so we wait and watch and worry. But we don’t know what to do. Won’t someone come to help us? But have you noticed there’s a story just like this in the Bible. There are only a few left. People pass by outside. They are inside. Waiting and watching. They don’t know what to do. And then it happens. Wind. Fire. Noise… No-one came and took away their problems. Instead the Spirit comes. And this same Spirit can come to us. Today. And come in bre

Food for thought

Never tried uploading a video before so not sure it will work. I found this on Working Preacher.org - and I love the way it draws parallels between where we are & the early church. I think I'll use the ideas at my 8am service. Still pondering the evening...

Pentecost's coming!

This year we have a joint service for seven churches on the morning of Pentecost - I'm presiding and my colleague is preaching. So no sermon AGAIN! Ah but I am preaching at an evensong service in the evening. The readings are: Exodus 33.7-20 and 2 Corinthians 3.4-end. Moses meeting with God in the 'tent of meeting' and then Paul's rather odd teaching about the new dispensation, in which we don't need to veil our faces before God. I think I want somehow to look at our experiences of meeting God - in the dramatic coming of the spirit and in other ways - to ask what veils God for us, how we can remove the veil, how we can reflect the glory... Not an easy preach - and to a Cambridge college, so there's always the 'what is someone like me doing here' factor to contend with. *sigh*

2 weeks running without a 'long' sermon??

Well, our lovely student minister goes off to his first charge in 3 weeks or so, so I mustn't get used to not preaching! Lectionary readings are: Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 John 17:20-26 I confess to always being a bit annoyed by this 'Paul & Silas in prison' story: what about the poor, unnamed slave girl, healed by Paul, who Luke describes as 'very much annoyed' in some translations. Apart from the fact that she is the reason Paul & Silas end up in prison, it becomes a story about their heroic escape, not her healing at all. I struggle with this story - it seems so unlike the gospel stories of Jesus acts of healing of the lowest and the least. Not sure where my thoughts are going, yet - but I'll keep my brain ticking over & see what I come up with - even if I won't get a chance to preach it!

What we did today!

Apologies to anyone wanting a sermon here: I preached without notes (along the lines of the last posting) - then at the 9.30 we had a 'prayer walk' (details below) , and at the 11.15 our student minister preached (getting maximum out of his last month!). Creative church: Prayer walk Welcome Hymn: ‘I will walk in the presence of God’ (Common Ground - based on Psalm 116) The Church Give thanks for the building of the church, for all those generations who have prayed here & found God here. Allow the stillness of this place to still any anxieties in you. Reading: Luke 24: 13-15 Ask God to open your eyes so that you may know the presence of Jesus with you as you pray & walk. The Churchyard LOOK around you... take in the whole scene... and look closely at details... study for example a plant, and see how well it has been made. LISTEN to all the sounds around you... what can you hear?
.. people's voices?... wind?... birds?... traffic?... your own breathing? TOU

Easter 6

So we're nearly at Ascension - the last week of Eastertide. I'm not sure I'm ready to put my alleluias down just yet - but perhaps that's my fault for having 2 whole Sundays since Easter when I haven't preached. I have an image in my head of the good news of the resurrection spreading out, sending ripples into the world and then gathering up into the amazing moment of the Ascension, before exploding back out again at Pentecost. This week's readings are: Acts 16: 9-15 John 5: 1-9 I've chosen the healing at the pool with the hellish scene of Jesus amongst the most desperate of his society. It reminds me of the harrowing of hell - I think it's here in the lectionary to remind us that the resurrection is good news to the very ends of the earth and the very dregs of society. There is nowhere God's new life in Jesus cannot reach. Thanks be to God.

Notes for sermon 2/5/10

God has no favourites Acts 11: 1-18, John 13: 31-35 Every minister in the land with a radio mike is now being reminded not to ‘do a Gordon Brown’ at the end of the service! I am not of course going to tell you whether you should feel sorry for him & vote Labour or decide he’s an idiot and vote for someone else. I am however going to remind you to vote on Thursday – because I think everyone should. But it was interesting that amongst all the furore about what Gordon Brown said about Mrs Duffy, there has been relatively little discussion of the issue of immigration which she raised. Again, don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you what how to vote on the issue of people from other countries coming to the UK, to work or as asylum-seekers, but I am going to share a story with you. Michael Jagessar, is a URC minister and a theology tutor who is Indo-Caribbean: Michael was born in Guyana, descended from Indian people who were taken to Guyana as indentured labourers. A few years ago at a m