Deconstructing the Trinity – Trinity Sunday 2023
Trinity Sunday is often a time when preachers feel they need to reach out for props, to demonstrate in some way the nature of the Trinity. But ultimately all these attempts, however well-intentioned, are doomed to failure because all they can do is scratch the surface – to show a model that is essentially structural and functional. Any representation, whether they use 2d pictures or 3d items, will have edges, boundaries and limits whilst attempting to explain something that is boundless, limitless and ultimately inexplicable.
So perhaps a little like Marc Antony who said to the crowd
‘….lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’….
I am here not to acclaim the Trinity so much as to…well not bury….but certainly to deconstruct…..
Truth need not be factual – Pentecost Sunday 2023
The American New Testament scholar and Theologian Marcus Borg once encountered an American Indian holy man who shared his people’s creation story by starting with the following words:
‘I don’t know if it happened exactly this way, but I know that this story is true’.
For it is vital to understand that the Bible contains much that is truthful, wise and insightful – and some of it may also happen to be factual. With the stress on ‘some’ and ‘may’. For the measure of the value of scripture is not whether things happened exactly the way they are told, but whether the story conveys truth.
A strange kind of glory – 7th Sunday of Easter 2023
There is a word that recurs six times in today’s short gospel reading in one form or another – glory, glorify, glorified. At first sight, this can sound almost vainglorious, imperious and patrician language. The sort of language that might belong in an imperial court, with flattery, pomp and fanfare, elaborate ceremonial with golden and bejewelled gorgeous raiment.
And indeed we can be tempted to act in such ways in the church itself, for there is always a part of us, against which Jesus warned, that wishes to get back to the awe and wonder, and power, so loved by the Saduccess and their spectacular, if bloodthirsty, Temple ritual. Or we can revert to insisting on strict observance of scriptural rules and taboos of the Pharisees, that actually only serve to constrain and imprison us, denying and thwarting Jesus’ promise of life in all its fullness.
But the Gospels and the witness of Jesus are not always as they seem.
Jesus lived and died a Jew – 6th Sunday of Easter 2023
Throughout history the reading of John’s Passion as a dramatic performance on Good Friday in Church and public passion plays has caused immense harm to Jewish communities, synagogues have been attacked and Jewish people abused and killed. It has been used by unscrupulous rabble-rousers and leaders to create a febrile and toxic atmosphere of ‘us and them’, friend and enemy, insider and outsider. And since then innumerable daily prejudices, countless pogroms, and the bitter black shadow of the Holocaust.
He worshipped regularly in the synagogue, preached from the Hebrew scriptures and with Jewish symbols and metaphors, he celebrated Jewish festivals, went on pilgrimage to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and was ministered to by Jewish priests.
He was born, lived, taught and died – a Jew. So what is the legacy of John?
Room for everyone – 5th Sunday of Easter 2023
There are those for whom religion must be exclusive and excluding for them to see it as real; it must define both who is in, and who is out, in order to be valid. They will have a strong sense of rules that must be obeyed and punishments that must be meted out for infractions. For such a way of thinking, love may be conditional, forgiveness contingent, and acceptance circumscribed and reserved to those deemed worthy. Religion is thereby seen as offering structure, order and freedom from the uncertainties of life. But what if divine love is boundless, and forgiveness is freely and unreservedly given? What if the divine nature is paradoxical, boundless, indefinable, unimaginable, incomparable, surpassing and transcending any limitations that our psyches might like to impose?
What if scripture means far more than our preconceptions might like to imagine?
What is a good shepherd? – 4th Sunday of Easter 2023
Part of the human tragedy is that those who seek to lead us are so often ill-fitted to the task. Using a pastoral model of his time, Jesus highlights the difference between those leaders who are selfless, self-giving, courageous and principled, and those who only see opportunities for self-aggrandisement and personal gain. It is bad enough when those in business or politics turn out to have feet of clay, sad but unsurprising. How much more tragic when religious leaders use prayer to mask systemic injustice and prejudice.
Seeing with new eyes – 3rd Sunday of Easter 2023
Luke is a highly accomplished storyteller. Within today’s tale of the road to Emmaus he weaves strands of the past, the experiences of the disciples at the time, and the new understandings that later occurred to the Christian community, of which he was a part, almost a generation later. And so, in our own turn we seek, not only to recover some of the wisdom he sought to pass on, but also to discover new insights and intuitions for our own time and circumstances. For meaning and purpose in scripture are always unfolding, changing, adapting – that is why it is a living witness rather than text enshrined and confined.
Finding meaning in suffering – 2nd Sunday of Easter
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote: ‘Into each life some rain must fall’
It speaks of a human truth, a great truth that all of the great religions recognize – after all it was Buddha who taught – ‘Life is suffering’. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says: ‘In this world you will have troubles’.
There is no dishonour in suffering, nothing to reprove ourselves for, all of us will live through times of hardship and of pain many times in our lives – there is no way we can avoid it.
In today’s reading from Acts – a reading that according to the Church Lectionary must be given on this Sunday following Easter, Peter reassures his listeners. That we shall endure, we shall persevere and we will overcome, that we might even come to discover meaning in the suffering.
A different view of the Cross – Easter Sunday 2023
For a long time, I would argue for far too long a time, the Cross has often been associated less with Jesus’ act of love and more with notions of punishment, merciless judgement and condemnation. Lent is filled with words such as guilt, punishment, payment of a debt, crime, judgement, anger, blood sacrifice.
Do you beat your children, or do you at least threaten to beat them? Moreover if they look like they might misbehave do you threaten them with the kind of pain and suffering that is endless, relentless and unendurable? Of course not. And yet there is the distinct danger that we can still teach that this is the kind of God that the Church asks us to believe in and that we should love Jesus, we should praise Jesus, we should thank Jesus because he has spared us from all that, like a brave and loyal friend or brother and sister, he has taken the beating that was rightly ours. But there is another way to consider Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, another way to regard the love of God, and another way to examine our flawed humanity.
Becoming a new person – Palm Sunday 2023
If any word sums up Palm Sunday and its consequences it would be ‘fickle’. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and is hailed by the people with cries of ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! But, we are told, it took just a week for crowds in the same city to call for his execution. And so Palm Sunday confronts us with on the fickleness of human nature and our need for repentance. But ‘repentence’ truly defined is not just expressing a sense of regret or cloaking oneself in the mantle of shame – as if that were the end, the objective. For the Greek word used in the scripture is ‘metanoia’, which conveys far more than merely regret – and instead conveys the commitment to spiritual conversion – to change one’s heart and one’s life – to become a new person.
Ultimate healing and love – Passion Sunday 2023
In the account of the raising of Lazarus of Bethany, we see the most dramatic of Jesus’ miracles – the ultimate healing and restoration of life and hope when all hope is lost.
But as John is dismissive of the naïve literalism of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, and at times the disciples, so surely we cannot, should not, belittle this profound, poetic, carefully crafted text, redolent with images and myths from the ancient Hebrew past, by distorting, trivialising and constraining it within the narrow confines of literal fact. The truth is simply greater than that.
The love of a mother – Mothering Sunday 2023
Despite all the hype and commercial sentimentalism we should remember where the inspiration for Mothering Sunday has come from – what this day stands for – what it means. For let us remember what motherhood truly is. It is one of the hardest and most responsible jobs of all. Perhaps we fail to recognise its true value because so much of the time is taken up with seemingly menial tasks. For in those small acts, and a million more besides, a child learns at first hand the Christ-like nature of self-giving love.
That is why Mothering Sunday should not just be a time when we give a card with a naff poem and a few flowers. Instead we should truly reflect on the love and devotion, the hope and the worry, the hard work and the simple joys, the soaring delight and desperate heartache, the fear and the heroism of motherhood.
Where are our limits? – 3rd Sunday of Lent
Today’s gospel has two people encounter each other in the heat of the day, who would never normally speak. They were divided by culture, religion, taboos of purity, gender and morality. The misunderstandings and confusions are many, as they initially speak at complete cross-purposes; and yet, over time understanding, even some sense of communion is reached, boundaries are crossed, distance narrowed, barriers are breached.
Normally a Jewish Rabbi and a Samaritan woman would never speak, and particularly so when her own community considered her disreputable, to be shunned, a virtual outcast. To John’s listeners at the time a surprising, even shocking tale, as their own misunderstandings play into the unfolding encounter.
Are there parallels and lessons to be drawn in our own time – do we set limits to our own understanding and compassion?
Where does the wind blow? | 2nd Sunday of Lent 2023
One of the greatest contributions of Judaism to the world, among many others; the realisation that the divine is not fragmented, as the ancients supposed, either into spirits that inhabit the world, or into giant superhuman champions such as the Gods of Olympus. Instead, the divine, that which lies beneath, yet also beyond all reality, that which is greater than, more than, both above all and yet within all, is essentially one eternal unity, one unifying reality.
In the same way that the Old Testament story of Abraham serves as the example of unconditional acceptance and commitment, in today’s gospel Nicodemus provides an example of those who, however well-meaning, hold something back, who partially understand and only partially commit.
Nevertheless, John reports that Jesus attempts to build on Nicodemus’ partial understanding by asking him to look with fresh eyes, with a mind open and receptive, he is asking him to allow himself to be surprised. By the same token, can we trust, commit and take the leap of faith, can we allow ourselves and our lives to be changed, to be blown where the wind will take us?
Are we Adam and Eve? | First Sunday of Lent 2023
The story of Adam and Eve runs right through all the readings for today. It is partially a story about temptation, knowing what we are supposed to do, how we often know what the right thing to do would be and how all too often we can fail to carry it through.
It is supremely difficult to reach back into the minds of generations long past; impossible to know how those who first wrote down the story understood it, all those thousands of years ago, and little easier to grasp how successive generations have interpreted the story until quite recently.
But like many stories that we heard as a child, when we become adults it is well to see if the stories, wise and insightful in many ways, need to be re-interpreted, and understood in a different light.
How can we avoid regrets? – Transfiguration Sunday
Those who care for patients who are dying often notice a great similarity in the regrets that people express. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative caregiver, was so moved by the clarity of vision that people can gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom, that she started a blog that was read by millions, which became a book called ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying’.
As she said, “common themes surfaced again and again.” So what lessons can we learn for our own lives, before it is too late – and might this this relate to the life and witness of Jesus?
2nd Sunday before Lent
For a brief moment we had some insight. During the height of the Covid lockdowns people widely spoke of reorienting their lives, sorting out their true priorities.And where are we now? Some people clearly have decided that enough is enough and have changed jobs, restructured their lives.
But all too often we are simply to get back to what we previously saw as normal as fast as we can.
Modern living, far from heeding Jesus’s words, is increasingly concerned with such questions as ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ But will this search for possessions and wealth ever make us truly happy?
What difference do you make? – 3rd Sunday before Lent
In today’s section of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks of those who follow him as salt and light. Salt preserves, protects and purifies, light conquers darkness and shows us the way.
For faith to be faith, to be worthy of the name, it must be salt and light, it must be active, it must shine out, it must seek to transform not only our own hearts but also reach out to transform our world – otherwise it is merely a private piety, an internal, a selfish thing, a hidden thing.
Candlemas – The Presentation
The feast we celebrate today has many names; the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, the Meeting of the Lord, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, …. Candlemas – based on the tradition of the priest blessing beeswax candles on February 2nd for use throughout the year, some of which were distributed to the faithful for use in the home. Candles light our processions and stand on our altars, candles are with us at the time of our departing, at our funerals as a symbol of hope and light, but above all candles are with us at our baptisms, all our baptisms.
For if Christ is the light of the world, to the darkness in the world he brings hope and love and light. We too as Christians are meant to be a light to others – to carry the love and light of Christ to all whom we meet.
What is your passion? – 3rd Sunday of Epiphany 2023
As the new year starts, advertisers often ask us to look ahead. January may be grey and dull we are told; it is dark and cold when you get up, and the same before you finish for the day. But just think, in the summer you could be on a beach, bathed in sunshine, far away from the realities of today. And, of course, it plays to our weaknesses. Our dissatisfaction with January needs little help or encouragement. But in all this looking forward we are blinding ourselves to the possibilities of life now.
Instead we might give thought to what energises us, what gives us meaning, what is our passion – now. For life is to be lived, not tomorrow – but today.
Who would you be? – 2nd Sunday of Epiphany 2023
Jesus said ‘Come and see’.
What if he hadn’t? What if Jesus had not called Andrew and Simon. He would have found other disciples of course. But for Andrew and Simon, what would life have been like for them if he had neither spoken to them or called upon them to follow?
By extension we might ask the same question of ourselves. How would your life be different if you were not a Christian? If you had never been a Christian, what would your life be like? Where would you be, who would you know and love? What would you be doing, what would you be thinking and saying – what difference would it make – who would you be?
What is your Epiphany? – Epiphany Sunday 2023
Apart from their names, over the centuries, the three Magi also developed distinct characteristics in Christian tradition, as new generations added new symbolisms and discovered new meanings in the story, so that between them they came to represent the three ages of (adult) man, three geographical and cultural areas, and sometimes other aspects as well.
We accompany them on their journey for we are pilgrims too, on our own holy journey. The journey through life, the journey in faith, the journey into the mystery of eternity.
And what Epiphany, what discoveries might we encounter in our own time?
The business of our lives | 1st Sunday after Christmas 2023
As we look to the future in our lives and for our churches we might reflect what is the core business of our church and our faith. For a church that merely looks inward can never truly be called a church. In much the same way as the dead partner of Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley reflects on the business of his life in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.
What is the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas?
Jesus did not come to us as a powerful warrior, or as a ruler; he was neither rich or powerful or even particularly accepted in his day. Indeed, Jesus was rejected by so many in his lifetime precisely because he did not meet the expectations of a glorious deliverer – who they believed should be mighty, and military; who should sweep all before him, commanding armies and nations and people.
It is often said that in our present day we have lost the true meaning of Christmas. If that is true, then we clearly stand in a very, very long tradition of misunderstanding not only the purpose of Christmas, but also of the coming of Christ himself. So what is – the true meaning of Christmas?
A new humanity – 4th Sunday of Advent
By tradition, on the fourth Sunday of Advent we say prayers for Mary; we light the fourth Advent candle in her honour, we recall that she is to bear a child, under frightening circumstances, being little more than a child herself.
Patriarchal societies can sometimes be cruel and unjust, especially to women. But such has been the culture and practice of countless numbers of men throughout history – who have bullied, abused, intimidated and dominated their way through life, when in fact it was a woman who bore them and gave them life and so often extended to them acts of kindness that they little deserved and most certainly did not repay. But this, as it turns out, was not Joseph’s way. What can we learn from the examples of both Mary and Joseph?
Our faith is never secure – 3rd Sunday of Advent 2022
For some time John the Baptist had been preaching, echoing Isaiah’s words of ‘the one who is to come’. Knowing that his time was drawing to an undoubtedly violent end, but at this stage still able to receive visitors in prison, John sent some friends to enquire of Jesus ‘Are you the one, of whom I have been speaking? Is it you that I have been pointing to, praying for?’
Years after these events, the small Jewish Christian community of which Matthew was the leader was trying to work out why this question was still being asked by some, and why Jesus and the beauty of his message of the Kingdom were still so widely rejected, both by his people generally and by the most powerful in the land especially, including the religious authorities to whom they looked for acceptance. Perhaps in our own age we can draw a kind of comfort from the fact that faith has never been easy, its future never secure.
Crying out to be free – 2nd Sunday of Advent
‘…the voice crying out in the wilderness’. What a powerful phrase that is, it speaks of a yearning, of a need so deeply felt that it erupts from inside, a cry for justice, for deliverance, for humanity in the face of cruelty, for peace in the face of violence, for freedom in the face of oppression. In the desert of human suffering, in the wilderness of pain, a voice cries out. At this time in Advent, why do we hear of John the Baptist? Is his call for repentance all that Advent is about – or is there more?
Finding our real self – Advent Sunday
It has become a cliche to say that Advent is a time of preparation, especially as we so often seem to prepare for the expected rather than the unexpected. But what does it even mean to prepare? Are we being invited to make temporary and external arrangements, are the changes to be practical, visible but extrinsic? Is this to be but a brief hiatus before we return, once more, to ’normal’? Or are we being invited on a journey of transformation that is essentially intrinsic, perhaps even private and invisible to others, but which for us helps to uncover and discover our true selves, the true ‘us’ inside. Isn’t that what Jesus meant when he called us to life ‘in all its fullness’?
The Kingdom of Christ
Due to illness – this week we have a short video meditation.
For the festival of Christ the King, this poem entitled ’The Kingdom’ was written by R.S. Thomas 1913-2000.
Remembrance Sunday 2022
Today we make an act of commemoration but not celebration; we hold in our prayers those who have died and suffered in two world wars, in countless regional conflicts since, and in peace-keeping duties across the world. We mourn their loss and their suffering; the failure of politics and diplomacy that led to their sacrifice on the altar of human pride, obstinacy and indifference, and we also confess the darkness in our own hearts that all too often gives way to anger and seeks retribution. We pray that humanity may, before it is too late, consign war to the sins of history, and instead walk the ways of conciliation and peace.
We are all a bit cracked
The video was recorded in Montesinho, Northeastern Portugal at A Lagosta Perdida (https://lagostaperdida.com). The poem comes from ‘the state of us’ a first collection of poetry by Larry Doherty – ISBN: 978-1-5272-7173-9. Larry Doherty’s debut collection of poetry is eclectic, nuanced and powerful. It reflects his thoughts and feelings on life in these challenging, turbulent, watershed times.
All Saints & All Souls | Does charity really begin at home?
Perhaps one of the hidden dangers of keeping ‘All Saints Sunday’ is to project their goodness away from ourselves. To see sainthood as rarely bestowed, exceptionally lived out, the province of the miraculous and extraordinary. Examples perhaps, but ones that shouldn’t trouble us too much as they are so far removed from the normal, the average, the everyday human condition – hardly human at all, divine, godlike creatures. But the proximity of the feasts of All Saints and that of All Souls reminds us that the witness and example of the few, must also be reflected in the witness and example of the many. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain confronts us with stark choices, for does charity really begin at home?
The Reality in the Eucharist – Last Sunday after Trinity
Christ was the word that spake it. He took the bread and brake it; and what his words did make it, that I believe and take it.
These words are famously attributed to Elizabeth the first when she was asked in Queen Mary’s reign what she believed to be happening in the Eucharist. In fact, it is a quote from John Donne’s Divine Poems – On the Sacrament. Today we focus on the sacrament itself, its meaning and implications for us, how in the Eucharist, Communion, we encounter Jesus in a way that we do at no other time. But what do we mean by Christ being present? And are more than bread and wine transformed?
Let justice roll down like waters – 18th Sunday after Trinity
Jesus tells the story of the so-called unjust judge – a story unique to the Gospel of Luke. From the language that he uses it is clear that Luke is not relating a parable about a particular judge, but a stock character, an archetype. The casting of a widow in the story heightens the listener’s sense of the judge’s wickedness. In Israel of the time, as in any patriarchal, agricultural economy the most vulnerable type of people were invariably orphans, strangers and widows, without land to their name – at the mercy of the powerful.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said: “What is the gospel if not a gospel of justice” We might re-phrase that and also ask ‘What is our church, if not a church of justice’. We might further ask ourselves, can that truly be said of me and my church?
The Wisdom of Strangers – 17th Sunday after Trinity, 2022
As the author, Aldous Huxley once said “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted”.
And if that is true of our everyday lives how much more true it is of our spiritual lives? For we can all get caught up in the routine, the familiarity of it all, the expected.
In today’s gospel by using the example of Jesus’ encounter with the faithful ‘outsider’, Luke is powerfully warning the Jewish people of his time, but also us and anyone who cares to listen, of the danger of taking some of the most important blessings of our lives for granted. Do we truly see and hear what is around and within us? Are we willing to learn from the one who is different?
Faith’s warning label -16th Sunday after Trinity
By chapter 17 of Luke’s gospel, we are now approaching the end of what is called the journey narrative. Jesus’s disciples will soon welcome him into Jerusalem, for some brief moments of triumph, and so it is fitting that the main focus of his teaching now moves to them. By now his audience is well primed to favour the ‘poor’ over those of riches and privilege. But, just because you might be considered among the more blessed poor, Jesus warns them, don’t think for a moment that you are exempt from responsibility and judgement. Even in the Kingdom there is opportunity for scandal and the need for repentance and forgiveness. How might that warning apply to us in our own time and very different circumstances?
Which side of the gate is safest? – 15th Sunday after Trinity
The idea of the ‘gated community’ has grown enormously in recent years. They are a symptom of societies that are so divided, so unequal, with such a small proportion of those who might be called well off and a vast number of those living in poverty, where such communities fear that at any moment the dreadful reality of their society could come crashing into their lives and homes. Gated communities are an attempt to deny the truth, to create a bubble of existence, that shuts its ears and eyes to the pain and suffering of society, in which one is actually involved and of which one might be also a cause. In today’s gospel reading Jesus confronts the timeless reality of injustice and indifference.
Showing who we are – 14th Sunday after Trinity
In Amos, the guilty are directly addressed – “…. you that trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land.”
And as he continues to travel towards Jerusalem, preaching as he goes, Jesus tells those with him just what it means to be a ‘disciple’.
Many of those with him would be the poor, the outcast, the oppressed, so a story about a rich man, moreover the most hated kind of all, the absentee landlord, would go down well. The master directs the cruel policy, the manager, the steward enacts it.
A tragic story not unknown in this land too.
And Jesus goes on to speak of money, how in their case, but also how for us, our attitudes to money can reveal who we are.
Lost, and found again – 13th Sunday after Trinity 2022
Jesus tells the parable of the hundred sheep, the ninety-nine in the shepherd’s care and the one who has wandered away and become lost.
The Pharisees and the scribes were quite certain, totally reassured, without any doubt, that they were the ninety-nine and that those of whom they so readily disapproved were the lost. No doubt there are some Christians today, equally convinced that they stand in the full and enduring glow of God’s approval, that they are the elect, the favoured ones, the ones who are certain and guaranteed and secure. But if we are honest, and have true spiritual humility, which of us, can be in any doubt that oftentimes we are in fact the one? Hoping against hope to be found – calling out here I am, please find me – bring me home!
Are we just a drop in the ocean? | 12th Sunday after Trinity
Today’s gospel message seems to create extreme pre-conditions for entry into the Kingdom: a willingness to break family ties, a willingness to face radical self-denial, and a willingness to renounce all material possessions.There may be some consolation in the fact that Luke was employing a typically Palestinian form of expression of its day, where the word ‘hate’ denotes not so much the emotion as a sense of priority, but nevertheless this is strong stuff. In wrestling with the passage we need to confront our notions of self, of society at large and lastly what, who, how we conceive God to be. We may come up with different answers to the people of Luke’s day – as well we might. What does it mean to be a drop in the ocean?
Exposing the great deception | 11th Sunday after Trinity
Sadly, in our modern world we have bought the great lie. The great deception. The famously wealthy businessman and politician, Nelson Rockefellor was once asked “how much money does one need in order to be happy?” His answer – “Just a little bit more.”
Coveting is based on fear, fear that only our possessions guarantee security, fear that we have nothing that we can put in place of the great lie. Coveting today is not only condoned, it is promoted and praised. We are told to be demanding customers, for whom good is never good enough. To be discontented. Except maybe that small still voice inside, telling us that we surely are meant for higher things.
So how then, can we be truly free?
All are free or none are free | 10th Sunday after Trinity
In the time of Jesus illness was not just a terrible burden in a time of primitive medicine, but also seen as a sign of guilt and divine punishment; freedom from illness as a sign of virtue and of moral worth. In today’s gospel the synagogue leader castigates Jesus for performing an act of healing on the Sabbath – his piety and fixity on the rules cancelling out his compassion. Jesus, on the other hand, speaks not only of healing, but also of setting free, of emancipation from the strictures of false piety and prejudice. Are we prepared to follow his example?
Fighting the right battles – 9th Sunday after Trinity
You only have to look at the issues of gender and sexuality to see how churches have become obsessed with fighting changes that wider society has long since adopted and recognised as moral progress. The irony is that there are real battles to fight. Many today live in denial of their own spiritual needs, of the need to feel connections beyond themselves, to their community and the world that surrounds them, to the landscape, the creatures that we so often treat as mere things for our use and the environment that we continue to pollute and abuse. How can we as disciples recapture some of the passion and energy of the heroes of the Christian faith, and provide true moral leadership, without regressing into some of the narrow-mindedness and judgmentalism of the past?
Who are you? Who will you be? – 8th Sunday after Trinity
In writing his gospel Luke has a number of issues to address. As eye witnesses of Jesus’ life and teaching are passing away, he wants to leave a lasting record and legacy of those days, he wants the gospel, the good news to be freely available to all who are ready to hear, and also he wants to stiffen the sinews of those who continue to follow Christ, to put iron in their resolve, to bolster their determination. So he relates the story of the householder and the servant, part encouragement and part admonition and warning. In our own way, we too are subject to the same concerns and obstacle to our own spiritual growth. What is holding us back from becoming the person we are meant to Be?
What is rich? Is it a sin? – 7th Sunday after Trinity
A gospel that preaches “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and “Alas for you who are rich, you have had your time of happiness” can cause us to shift uneasily in our seats. For in reality who of us, using a comparative measure, is not rich? The term ‘rich’ is rather imprecise. By comparison to the starving even those with a loaf of bread are rich, would it not appear that Christianity and particularly St. Luke’s gospel carries an almost universal condemnation?
But something changed between the short-lived and urgent days of Jesus’s ministry and the faith as it came to be considered by the writers of the gospels and Acts. Is it a sin to be rich? Is it a virtue to be poor? How are we to live lives usually considerably longer than Jesus and his disciples? Do the lessons of Luke’s day have something to teach us in our own time?
How can the Kingdom come? – 6th Sunday after Trinity
One could argue that each era of the Church has been typified by an emphasis, an over emphasis of one aspect of the Trinity to the detriment of the other – interacting with great tidal movements in human history; in part shaping them, but also being shaped by them.The earliest church was a Jesus movement, founded by his closest disciples, people with personal experience of him, who then handed on to the next generation who remained faithful to a person who they had never met, but who still felt close enough almost to touch.
Almost overnight, and on the whim of one particular Caesar, the Christian faith went from being the most dangerous choices one to make, to one of the safest and the most socially advantageous, no longer outlawed but out in the open, adopted by the Roman Empire as its official religion, the cult of a person transformed into a vast organisation that matched, in certain ways, the structures of power and domination that had adopted it. And a price was paid. How deep and how long that price extended is a burning question for today
Sorting our priorities? – 5th Sunday after Trinity
In the story of Martha and Mary, perhaps all of us can feel rather sympathetic to Martha, some from more personal experience than others, and we might also be tempted to think that Jesus reacts, or at least Luke has Jesus reacting, rather typically as a Palestinian male of his time. He has blithely accepted the hospitality, seemingly taking such work for granted as a woman’s rightful place, whilst at the same time as he disparages its value. Would he prefer to have gone hungry?
So, I can see how this story has the potential to be rather irritating to all those people who selflessly and often without the credit that they deserve, give so much to the church and their community behind the scenes.
On the other hand, we could read this story rather differently. But not focusing too literally on the words reportedly exchanged, but on the lesson that Luke is trying to teach, both to his readers at the time, and also to us.
Can we become sanctuary? – 4th Sunday after Trinity
Today’s gospel reading lays out in one short story, not only the very essence of the Christian faith, but also its connection with the past and the profound change that it ushers in as Jesus both evokes that which has gone before at the same time that he radically breaks with it. For Jesus stands within a great continuity, but he also represents in himself and in his teaching a great disruption, a refining clarity of mind that is able to strip the faith to its absolute essentials.
We like to think that we would always be the people to welcome Jesus if he knocked at our door, and if he asked to stay, we would surely invite him in. But are we really prepared for him to turn our lives upside down, are we ready to make the changes he would require, the sacrifices he would expect? What if it turns out, that we might be the wolves? Are we ready to set Jesus free, or would we decide to lock him up?
Keeping Jesus locked away – 3rd Sunday after Trinity
In the Gospel reading Jesus says: “Go! I am sending you like lambs among wolves…… Whenever you go into a town and are made welcome, eat what is set before you, heal the sick in that town, and say to the people there, “The Kingdom of God has come near you.’ ”.
We like to think that we would always be the people to welcome Jesus if he knocked at our door, and if he asked to stay, we would surely invite him in. But are we really prepared for him to turn our lives upside down, are we ready to make the changes he would require, the sacrifices he would expect? What if it turns out, that we might be the wolves? Are we ready to set Jesus free, or would we decide to lock him up?
Faltering first steps – 2nd Sunday after Trinity
On his way to Jerusalem Jesus instructs his disciples in the demands and the expectations to come. Discipleship is a hard road ahead he warns, you had better be prepared for what it will require of you.
We know in our hearts that we always hold something back, out of caution, out of fear, out of the simple desire to place our own desires, our own advantage, our own comfort before the call of Jesus that we can hear, that is often repeated to us, but we have learned to temper, to compromise and to water down.
But if we can acknowledge this tendency, we are at least taking the first faltering steps towards spiritual growth and the development of our souls
One and All, Individual and Universal – 1st Sunday after Trinity
The story of the healing of the afflicted man, sometimes referred to as the Miracle of the Gadarene Swine, is a story about one man, a profoundly personal experience, but also about the wider community of his time, the way that mental ill health and spiritual pain were both viewed, and indeed created, by the socially and politically oppressive systems of their day. We should also note the seeming disregard of the narrative towards the suffering and death of the pigs, and the terrible loss of their owners. Are they both metaphorically and literally ciphers? Is the antipathy in fact directed elsewhere? What does the story teach us about the time of Jesus, and indeed our own?
Trinity Sunday 2022 – We are our relationships
It was once said by a famous politician that ‘there is no such thing as society’, but one could counter by saying that there is actually no such thing as an individual. For our experiences of one another, temporary as those encounters may sometimes be, can well influence who we are and who we later become. And if even transient encounters can shape us, how much more profoundly might we be affected and re-made by some of the most loving and powerful relationships of our lives? We do not remain the same, we are not untouched – we grow, we are moved, we become a quite different person to the one who might have been. We live our lives, we find our meaning in and through relationship. When we look at the Trinity we see this reality already expressed, already lived, timeless and eternal.