Simon Says ...

Review of Eugene H. Peterson, Eat this Book: A Conversation in the art of Spiritual Reading (Eerdmans, 2006). Best known as the translator of the Bible into The Message translation, Eugene Peterson is a pastor and spiritual guide.   This is a simply marvellous book that introduces what it means for Christians to read the Bible.   It is broad in its outlook, focussed in its application and generous in its spirit.   I thoroughly recommend it. Peterson begins from the observation that “in order to read the Scriptures adequately and accurately, it is necessary at the same time to live them” (p. xii).   Thus he takes his theme from Revelation 10.9-10, when the Seer is given a scroll to eat.   Peterson, with an imaginative move that characterises his approach, links this to Isaiah’s vision of a lion growling over his prey (Isaiah 31.4).   He notes that the Hebrew verb translated as ‘growls’ in Isaiah is more usually translated...

A sermon for Advent 3 Isaiah 35.1-10 ; Matthew 11.2-11 Today’s Gospel reading is the second appearance of John the Baptist in two weeks.   Last week , John appeared in the wilderness of Judea.   He preached and baptised, and got angry with the Pharisees and Sadducees. But above all, he spoke of one who was to come, more powerful that John himself, who would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.   It is clear that John expects that Jesus will be a figure of power and action, who will take John’s criticism of the establishment further into action.   The last verse of last week’s Gospel reading was this: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”. We meet John again this week.   By now he is in prison, and keeping track of Jesus through the reports he gets.   It’s fair to say that John is at th...

Doctor Who at 50.   A celebration at Evensong.   “It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a spirit of adventure.” [1]   Such was the verdict of the First Doctor on his travels.   And the Doctor has travelled a long way since then.   On Saturday 23 rd November, 1963 a new television programme began.   The first regular programming after the disruptions to schedules caused by the assassination of President John F Kennedy.   Designed to fill the space between the football results and the evening’s entertainment it tried to engage the whole family.   As such, although it has always been written with children in mind, it has always been produced by the BBC’s adult drama department.   That show is of course Doctor Who, and this week it marks its Golden anniversary with a feature length story, simulcast around the world. The best place to watch it in Derby will be at ...

Review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,  Letters to London: Bonhoeffer's previously unpublished correspondence with Ernst Cromwell, 1935-6 .  Edited by Stephen J. Plant and Toni Burrowes-Cromwell (SPCK: 2013). This collection of a dozen letters between Bonhoeffer and a young German man living in London may seem at first glance to be slight.  But do not be fooled.  Whilst this volume will never attain the status of Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison , and does not have the sustained theologizing of his Life Together or Discipleship , it is worth more than a cursory read.  It is, unashamedly, peripheral - not a major work, nor letters of great substance.  Rather, this is Bonhoeffer in the middle of things, writing to a teenage boy who he has prepared for confirmation.  Against the background of Hitler's Germany, these letters bear witness to hope, friendship, joy and love. The correspondence starts at the end of Bonhoeffer's time as a pa...