Luke 14:25-33, Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Jeremiah 18:1-11 So a few weeks ago, I gave a sermon riffing on two readings; one from Luke with a very angry-sounding Jesus, and the other, a challenging part of Jeremiah, speaking of false prophets. And afterwards I thought to myself.. “thank goodness I won’t have to do anything like that […]
Jeremiah 2:2-13, Luke 14:1,7-14 There can be few more painful experiences than that of a broken marriage. I am very aware that there are people sitting here today who have had exactly that experience. Those of us who are still married, or who are single, can imagine the grief and heartbreak, or have seen it […]
Luke 13 v 10-17 – Jesus heals a crippled woman on the sabbath. Imagine for a moment about the woman in our gospel passage today. She has been bent double for 18 years and cannot straighten up. How do you think she gets on with life, how does she cope with the ordinary day […]
Jeremiah 23:23-29 Luke 12:49-56 This week, amid the many depressing items on the news, came the rather bizarre (though no longer surprising) story of a much older man publicly bullying a much younger woman, (almost still a girl). Arron Bank’s ‘joke’ about Greta Thunberg having a “freak yachting accident” as she sailed the Atlantic to […]
11 August 2019 Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16, Luke 12.32-40 Ensam – the Swedish word for lonely, also meaning single; sometimes seen on noticeboards – Ensam? here is this club, network etc you can join. The picture on our screen today shows a lake a short walk from where our daughter Anna lives in southern Sweden. There […]
Luke 12vv13-21: Control Pentecost 8, 4th August 2019. Our new church call today’s gospel reading the Parable of the Rich Fool. It is one of those passages on wealth that tends to leave us feeling uneasy. If I asked you what was the New Testament’s approach to wealth, what would you say. The most memorable […]
Luke 11:1-13, Year C, 7th Sunday after Pentecost (*names changed for privacy) Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young woman. Life had been difficult for her. Her first husband had gone and she yearned for a new start. She wondered if life would provide it. Now, the woman’s […]
Snatches of a conversation overheard between 2 women in a home in 1st century Palestine: A How many did you say need feeding? B 12 definitely, but there seem to be more coming all the time. A Where’s Mary? She’s the quickest at making the flat bread. They’ll all be expecting at least a bit […]
Luke 10.25-37: When I was christened, my Godmother Margaret gave me this gift. You might recognise it as a popular painting from about a hundred years ago by Margaret Tarrant, called The Lesser Brethren. It depicts Jesus out walking in an English countryside covered in our beloved animals, including red squirrels, foxes, badgers, deer and […]
June 23rd 2019, Pentecost 2 1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15a Luke 8:26-39 Today’s OT reading from 1 Kings 19 reveals a very human side to one of the Bible’s ‘big men’. The prophet Elijah had just won what we could call a ‘competition’ with the prophets of the pagan god Baal in which he built an […]