I wonder how I could get your attention best at the beginning of a sermon! It’s quite hard these days really to get someone’s full attention, or even to find yourself giving it. We’ve got so used to doing several things at once, to reading something while also having the television on and trying to […]
Being midwives..
Don’t you think it’s fascinating that within a congregation of 60 or so people we have at least four people who have been midwives? I fully expect that if I name the ones I can think of, someone will say ‘And me too!’. We are fortunate and blessed to have those who have encouraged babies […]
The sound of sheer silence
And after the fire, a sound of sheer silence… This story from all the stories of Elijah carries a great weight. It’s about how God comes to us, or how God came to Elijah. And it’s full of contradictions or, as we say in theology, paradoxes. There is the sound of silence, but it’s a […]
The wheat and the weeds
Earlier this week I walked through Longrun Meadow. The wheat had just been harvested, but around the edge there were a few stalks left, along with some weeds. Thinking of Ruth in the Bible I gleaned some and here they are. I wondered if I would be brave enough, if anyone caught me, to say […]
Come unto me..
Jesus said, Come unto me, all who are weary and whose load is heavy; I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you… For my yoke is easy to wear, my load is light’. I remember that I first met this verse as part of the communion service at the parish church I went […]
Changing the story – from violence to hospitality
In the service today we tell a profound and important story. We tell the story of what we have discovered about God together, by being children of Abraham, and by being Christian. We tell the story of a God who doesn’t want us to burn sacrifices or commit violence in his name or in any […]
His eye is on the sparrow
The earliest Christians used to refer to each other as ‘the little ones’. They were not, most of them, the kind of people the world thought important. They were not grand or rich or highly educated. They were the many – the hoi polloi. But they knew that God loved them, and that God cared […]
Grace for Trinity
This week there have been two quotations which I have carried around with me. In my thoughts I have often taken them out and looked at them, and let God speak to me through them. The first comes from one of the readings we’ve heard today and the other from the news that we’ve all […]
Pentecost – after the night before..
This morning we come to worship after news of what police are now calling another terrorist attack has broken. News of a van ploughing into pedestrians and three men getting out and stabbing people – some say in the name of God – in the name of Allah. Seven people killed and dozens injured. And […]
From Athens to Taunton
I wonder if you ever have those moments amongst your family or your friends when they ask you why you are a Christian, or why you believe in God? I think it’s likely to happen more and more as Christians become more of a minority and as even believing in any kind of God, at […]
The Good Samaritan in Christian Aid week
I used to speak regularly at school assemblies… I wanted so much for the children to catch something of the wonder of God, of the joy of love and the sense that life is more than we can touch…. That there is a world beyond the walls of this one that calls to us and […]
The Good shepherd
‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’. The earliest known image of Jesus is one of him as a shepherd. Not Jesus on a cross, not Jesus blessing a child, not Jesus as a baby in the lap of his mother, but Jesus as a shepherd. There’s […]