Today is Pentecost Sunday. It falls on the same day as Jewish festival of Shavuot celebrating both the wheat harvest and giving of the law on Mount Sinai. The word ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek for the 50th day, because Shavuot was 7 weeks and a day after Passover Sabbath (Lev 23vv15-16). The festival was […]
Luke 1928-40 My wife’s Auntie Frances was very sentimental about donkeys. Auntie Frances was one of the most selfless and kind-hearted people I have met, and she was very moved by the mistreatment of donkeys in many places, and wanted to help them. She supported donkey sanctuaries, was quite likely to send you birthday cards […]
Luke 8.22-25: Jesus Calms the Storm 2nd Sunday before Lent, 24th February 2019. Today’s gospel reading is the story of Jesus calming the storm. I like to read around the passage a bit before starting on the sermon, and looked in Matthew and Mark to see if the same story is there; which it is. […]
Mark 131-8, Daniel 121-3: End Times Kingdom 3, 18th November 2018 Would you like to know the future? Could be handy if you could place bets on horse races knowing the result in advance; though perhaps not entirely honest. When you first think about it, it sounds interesting, and you can think of lots of […]
Today’s gospel reading is part of a series on five consecutive Sundays from John 6. Richard began last week with vv1-21, the feeding of the 5,000 and one of the stories of Jesus walking on water. We then skip a couple of verses (22-23), and continue on today. We should have stopped at verse 35, […]
Lent 1 – Mark 19-15: Repent It was the festival of St Valentine Day on Wednesday, but also Ash Wednesday. St. Valentinus appears to have had no special connection to romantic love, but Chaucer connected his saint’s day on 14th February with birds mating in Spring, and it all seems to have gone from there. […]
Luke 9:28-36: After university I went to Kenya as a CMS Volunteer, and worked in a technical training school in Nairobi. I met Rachel in Kenya, as she was another CMS (which became known among us as the Church’s Marriage Society, for obvious reasons) Volunteer. Rachel lived in a beautiful spot called Mugumo, just south […]
Easter 2 – John 20:19-29 It was late that Sunday evening. Two days after Good Friday. If the Friday of the crucifixion was Day 1, Day 2 was Saturday, and this was “on the third day” as we have just said in the creed. Jesus appears to the disciples. Today is the second Sunday in […]
Lent 2 – John 31-17 Today’s gospel reading is one of the best known passages in the Bible, which presents a challenge for talking about it. But it is well know because it has so much in it, and is so significant. This is early on in John’s gospel. We have had Jesus’ baptism, […]
Creation 2 – Luke 151-10: Lost Sheep Today’s gospel is two parables, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. It is part of a long run of Jesus’ teaching in Luke, 6 chapters (1322-1927) when Jesus was mainly in the south of the Israel, heading towards Jerusalem for the last time. Loosing sheep is not […]