Simon Says ...

A sermon for the Feast of St Matthew.   2 Cor. 4.1-6 ; Matthew 9.9-13 “Follow me”, said the teacher to the tax collector sitting in the office.   And Matthew got up and followed.   Perhaps Matthew never know why Jesus called him.   Matthew ate with Jesus, laughed with Jesus, cried with Jesus.   Matthew became one of the Twelve.   He ran away when Jesus was arrested.   He hid when Jesus was executed.   He met Jesus when he rose again.   He was filled with the Spirit on Pentecost.   He wrote the Gospel that tells us of his call.   “Follow me”, said the teacher to the tax collector sitting in the office.   And Matthew got up and followed.   About a third of the way through the Gospel that bears his name, Matthew records the day that Jesus called him.   He records it in the middle of stories of healing.   From the middle of Chapter 8 to the end of chapter 9, Matthew records all k...

A sermon for Trinity 1. Jeremiah 20.7-13 ; Matthew 10.24-39 Meet Jeremiah.   Jeremiah comes from Jerusalem and he is a prophet.   He was called as a prophet when he was a boy, or at least a young man.   As his calling, Jeremiah speaks God’s word to the people of Israel, whether they want to hear it or not.   Mostly they don’t.   That’s probably because mostly Jeremiah’s message is one of doom and destruction.   He warns the people that they need to change their ways and return to God’s ways, and if they don’t then God will bring destruction on Jerusalem.   Jeremiah is not popular.   And today, Jeremiah is fed up.   He knows that he is hated.   He doesn’t particularly like speaking words of destruction and doom.   So today Jeremiah is fed up, perhaps a little depressed – after all, speaking doom and destruction at all times has to have some effect?   This is the effect of his calling. Jere...

Review of Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson, Leading from the Second Chair: Serving your Church, Fulfilling your Role, and Realizing your Dreams (Jossey-Bass, 2005). I had heard much about this book before I read it, and it did not disappoint.   This is a common sense and helpful approach to being a leader when you are not in the position of power and control in an institution.   As an account of leadership, it recognises the leadership of an individual, is responsible in terms of the needs of the organisation and intentional in helping people to own what they are doing.   As a second chair leader in two different roles within the Church, and as a former first chair leader, I found this helpful.   As someone responsible for the development of clergy, I will often turn to this as a resource. Bonem and Patterson organise their reflections around three paradoxes.   Each reflects some of the tension of being a leader but not being i...

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...

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.  ...

Jesus' temptation in the wilderness is a regular story for reflection at the beginning of Lent. This year I have tried to let my engagement with the telling of the story in Matthew's Gospel ( Matthew 4.1-11 ) guide my Lenten discipline as a preparation for Easter. Some things to note about the story. First, Jesus goes into the wilderness immediately following his baptism, and God's identification of him there as 'my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' ( Matthew 3.17 ). Second, Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit. This is not something that happens despite God's call to him - it is a constitutive part of God's call to Jesus. Third, the story is a retelling of the call of the people of Israel and their being led from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. Thus the time in the wilderness comes after Jesus' passage through the water of baptism in the Jordan, just as Israel entered the wilderness after they had passed through the...