Simon Says ...

A Sermon for Corpus Christi One of the joys of having children is reliving bits of your own childhood, and my son and I have been enjoying an I-Spy book – The I-Spy book of History.   As we go around new places, it gives us things to spot and claim points for.   This weekend, we went to Cresswell Crags on the border with Nottinghamshire, and ticked off some of the things related to caves and hand axes and so on. You get ten points for a cave that people used to live in, and twenty for an axe and so on.   In the gift shop, however, there was a new I-Spy book – The I-Spy book of Dinosaurs.   Good luck with that one! I mention this because today, as we celebrate Corpus Christi, we are involved in learning to see Jesus.   Corpus Christi offers us, if you like, the I-Spy book of Jesus.   There is an important spiritual task here – learning to see Jesus.   The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote that “I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.”   He had grasped

A sermon for Easter 7. Acts 16.16-34 ; John 17.20-26 ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’  Today is the seventh Sunday of Easter.  In old money, that’s the Sunday after Ascension Day.  And the themes of Ascension Day continue to echo through the readings we have heard this morning.  The power and authority of Jesus are found in both of our readings this morning. In three stories, we hear of the power of God – the power of God to free a woman being used; the power of God to break open a prison; the power of God to unite us with God and reveal his glory.  In all three we also see the power of the name of Jesus – it is in the name of Jesus that Paul commands the spirit to leave the slave-girl; Paul and Silas tell their jailor that he must believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved; and Jesus tells his Father that he has ‘made your name known to them’.  The Ascension Day theme of Jesus sitting at the right hand of power con