Jesus stands among us

Part 1 – John 20: 19-23 I have long thought that John wrote his gospel on the assumption that his readers (or hearers) were familiar with at least one of the earlier three. In this short passage about an appearance of the risen Jesus he alludes to all three of the other gospel-writers. We get […]

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Church, chocolate and flowers..

‘There will always be a small minority of people who attempt to use our Holy Traditions for personal gain. The greetings card industry. The supermarket chains. Even more sinister are those people who claim to revive ancient traditions, involving our children in pagan practices in the guise of amusement. Too many of us see these […]

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Maundy Thursday

It’s often struck me that Jesus’ so called ‘new commandment’ is not very new at all! Love one another. You could say, if you wanted to be critical, that this commandment is rather obvious, unoriginal and vague. Of course we should love one another – everyone knows that. But then Jesus adds some crucial words… […]

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Palm Sunday – fling wide the gates!

This is the gate of the Lord; those who are righteous may enter. Psalm 118:20 I imagine that most of us find a door that bears the sign ‘Private – Keep out’ intriguing. I know that if I find such a door in a National Trust house I want to turn the handle and find […]

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A second chance life

After giving a lecture on miracles, one very learned theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. ‘There is only one miracle’, he said, ‘it is life’. And there are times in our lives, aren’t there, when we know how right he was… Life itself is a miracle. So, if you have wept […]

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No more motherless child

Philip Larkin wrote a famous poem about ‘your mum and dad’ that you couldn’t read out in church, at least not every word. It’s best known for one word beginning with an ‘F’. And the drift of it is that parenthood hands on misery.. and the advice is ‘Get out as early as you can, […]

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Turning on the light

Not long ago I learned how someone I admire first realised that there was more to going to church than just.. well going to church. It was when she was a child, and she was going every Sunday with her family to a little church in rural Ohio. The minister there was a young man […]

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Born from above

My father died some years ago, but if you had ever met him you would know immediately that he was my father. There could be no doubt really. I have his nose, his lack of height, his crinkly hair and his eyes. And if you had known us both well, you would soon see that […]

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Transfiguration

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany and the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent. In some churches this is the last time we might sing any Alleluias until the long weeks before Easter have passed. This is the Sunday before we begin a journey through a kind of wilderness, until we get to […]

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Being perfect..

‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ So, how’s that going then? Presumably this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this reading from Matthew’s Gospel. And I assume that you’ve been working on it. So how’s it going? Are you even almost there? You manage not to retaliate when someone is cruel. You […]

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Exceeding righteousness…

This is one of those Sundays when I want to make it clear that I don’t choose the readings. We follow a pattern that makes us read some of the bits of the Bible we find it hard to read, as well as those that we might want to memorise or turn into a song. […]

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Salt and light

Imagine for a moment that you are not seated in a reasonably comfortable pew, but standing somewhere on a hillside in the Middle East, straining to hear a man speaking. It’s hard to concentrate because the crowd around you is not a well behaved one. This is not a gathering of the respectable and the […]

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