Simon Says ...

Isaiah 2.1-5 ; Matthew 24.36-44 “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Take it or leave it.   I suspect we’ve all had offers like that. But the Gospel reading this morning asks us a harder question – taken or left, which will we be?   “Two will be in the field, one will be taken and one will be left.   Two will be grinding meal together, one will be taken and one will be left.”    If we look a little harder at the passage, it’s not even abundantly clear which I want to be, taken or left.   When the secret police come knocking, it is clear that you want to be left.   There are Christians and others in the world today who fear the knock at the door.   They desperately want to be left.   But when you live in the midst of war and poverty, you want to be taken to another, better place.   There are many in the world today, not least the many refugees, who long to be taken more than anythin...

A Sermon for the Feast of the Hallowing of Derby Cathedral Jeremiah 7.1-11 ; Luke 19.1-10 Nothing befits the solemn festivities of the feast of the Hallowing of Derby Cathedral more than a quotation from one of the foremost theologians of our age.   So let me share this as a theological gift to mark this feast: “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”.   “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”. The theologian, for those who did not spot it, is Homer Simpson, patriarch and star of the long running animated family saga The Simpsons .   In one episode, Homer becomes a missionary in the South Pacific, and builds a chapel for the natives.   As the final piece of the chapel is put into its place, Homer says “I may not know much about God, but we built a pretty nice cage for him”. Jeremiah would, I think, have recognised the satire behind Homer Simpson’s theology. ...

Review of Frances Young, God’s Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The final book on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist for 2016 is a work of systematic theology.   Frances Young is a very distinguished theologian.   Her writing on the New Testament and early Christian theology is well known and is part of a corpus of writing that dates back to the 1970s.   This book is an integration of all the different concerns of her theological life, as an academic, a theologian of both the New Testament and the early church, a Methodist, a preacher and the mother of a profoundly disabled child, Arthur.   All of these different aspects to Young’s work and writing inform and shape this book. That theme of integration is also the way in which Young approaches the topics of her theology in this book.   In each chapter she offers a prelude of snapshots, showing the way the subjec...

A S ermon for Passion Sunday Romans 8.6-11; John 11.1-4 “I am the Resurrection and the life.”   These are words of promise and hope.   They are the first words of the funeral service. “I am the Resurrection and the life.”   Here we see Jesus at his most powerful, commanding the dead man to live again.   But we also see him at his most vulnerable, weeping for the death of his friend.   “I am the Resurrection and the life.”   This is a story about freedom, but it is only a story about freedom because it brings us face to face with despair, judgment and death.   “I am the Resurrection and the life.”   Jesus arrives in Bethany at a time of despair.   It is too late.   There was a folk belief that the soul lingered in the body for three days, but four days have passed since Lazarus died.   All hope, even of miracles, has gone.   Did Martha know that Jesus delayed his coming? There might be m...

A Sermon for Trinity 4 Isaiah 65.1-9 ; Luke 8.26-39 The late, great theologian Douglas Adams , in the fourth book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy introduces us to the character of Wonko the Sane .  Wonko is a virtual hermit, who lives “ Outside the Asylum ”. Wonko has decided that the whole world is mad, and confined it to the asylum.  As a sane person, he lives outside the asylum.             It is hard, sometimes, to argue with Adams (or Wonko)’s view.  We live in a time of austerity, and yet we are prepared to spend billions on a nuclear weapons programme.  We have been through a financial crisis, and yet nothing has changed, except that bankers continue to draw big bonuses and the poorest have their support cut or removed.  We were told that we were all in it together, but seems that we don’t all need to pay our tax.  Clear thinking seems far, far away.  ...

It began as a blogpost, but ended up in the Church of England Newspaper.   Here is my piece on the ChurchAds.net Christmas campaign for Christmas 2012 .

Tonight. 8pm. The Undercroft, St Mary Redcliffe. Incarnation; Virgin Births; happy sins; and Christmas carols. Many thanks again to Marc for the picture.

Tonight. 8pm. The Undercroft, St Mary Redcliffe. Reaching the parts of Christmas most carol services leave alone. Many thanks to Marc for the picture.

Pinned up on the noticeboard above my desk is this picture of Edvard Munch's 'The Sun' (nicked from the Boy's Cbeebies Art Magazine, I'm afraid to say). It was painted in 1912 as a mural at Oslo University. Munch's life is almost a catalogue of pain. He lost his mother and his sister when he was a child. He was something of a depressive, suffering a breakdown. He lived through two world wars and in the 1930s was condemned as 'degenerate' by the Nazi regime. His final years were spent under Nazi occupation (the Nazi's even orchestrated his funeral), fearing for the fate of his art. And yet, in the midst of paintings that reveal this pain (most famously, 'The Scream )', Munch could paint a thing of such naked beauty as 'The Sun'. There is an instant appeal to me of this painting. It speaks profoundly of pain and of redemption. The sun and its reflection together begin to look like a light bulb. So there's something here ab...

The 'blurb' on some books can stimulate as many ideas as the content. I'm reading The Redemption , a collection of papers from a 'Redemption Summit'. The papers are on the whole superb, and bursting with ideas. However, on the back there is a quotation from a review of the book: "I would recommend this book highly to all involved professionally in the study of redemption". Who, I wonder, does this refer to? Theologians? Certainly. Clergy? Well, we're supposed to point those in our care to the redeemer. All Christians? What else are Christians if not students of redemption? I'm just not sure I would recommend a book this technical to all my parishioners! And, incidentally, a search for 'Redemption' on Amazon produces 1326 results.