Trinity 9, 9th August 2020 Jesus must have been extraordinary.  This week I was reading, not today’s passage, but one from Luke (7:36-50) about the woman who came to Jesus when he was eating at a pharisee’s house.  She wept at his feet, wiping them with her hair and putting precious ointment on them.  The book […]

August 2nd 2020, Trinity 8 I wonder if you have found the last few months a struggle in any way? Struggled with the lockdown, with loneliness perhaps, illness, uncertainty, loss, or struggled with faith? What about struggled with God? This morning we come to one of the most unusual stories of the entire Bible – […]

I want to consider Jesus’ parables in our gospel today, with a passing reference to that wonderful passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans. I’ve never found the idea of process very easy.  By that I mean that I struggle sometimes with the idea that things take time.  On the whole I’m more interested in […]

  Background Just when I thought this week that I could hear no more tales of misery and grief from poor, wretched, starving, bombed and disease-wracked Yemen – where cholera is rampant and Covid 19 claims the lives of a quarter of all those that contract it, I did.   Incredibly, this year already some […]

 This week’s gospel gives us perhaps the most famous parable of all time. I recall it being the first reading I ever had to preach on as a curate. My heart fell: what more could you possibly say that hadn’t been said before about the sower! Sometimes, though, perhaps all a preacher needs to do […]

We have been looking at Matthew 10 for a few weeks now.  It is Jesus’ commission to the twelve disciples before he sent them out.  He tells them to preach that the kingdom of heaven is near, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, to drive out demons.  It quite some apprenticeship and, I […]

Matthew 10:24-39 ‘Love, actually’  We are living through tumultuous and difficult times. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice protests gripping the world, poverty, the climate emergency, and just in the last 24 hours, here in Reading, 3 people killed while they enjoyed an afternoon sitting with friends in the sun. Suddenly Reading […]