Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Today in the Church calendar we remember Mary Magdalene. 


From 1995-2005, I was vicar of a St Mary Magdalene Church in Holloway, London, so she is someone who was special to us. We had a significant and quite public struggle with our secular local authority, who wanted to rename our St Mary Magdalene primary school with some secular name when it became an all-through academy, but we prevailed! 
Mary, seemingly named after the town from which she came from, has been misrepresented. There is no justification from the biblical evidence for saying that she was a prostitute. Far from it. She is only mentioned by name twice: in Luke 8.1-3 and in all the gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. There is no reason to identify her with the 'sinful' woman who anoints Jesus with her tears and wipes his feet with her hair (Luke 7.36-50), and even less so with Mary, the sister of Martha, who anoints Jesus with a precious perfume (John 12.1-8). The fact that she is included in Luke 8.1-3…

Matthew 13.24-30,36-43


We look this morning at a parable Jesus told about the Kingdom on God (Matthew talks of Kingdom of heaven but others speak of it as the Kingdom of God)

1. In this world, good and evil grow together.

‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil’ (v37)

The Son of Man (Jesus) sows the good seed.

In the first story that Jesus tells in Matthew, the seed is the Word of God, and different kinds of people are like the different soils which receive the seed.

Here the illustration changes a bit, and we become the seed. There is good seed and there is weed, evil, seed.

This story is not explaining why there is evil. It is simply telling us that there is evil and that it was sown by the enemy of God.

And it tells us that there is good and there is bad.

There are people who have their face turned towards …

Psalm 119.105-112
Psalm 119 is the giant among the Psalms. It has 176 verses.
It is also the longest chapter in the Bible.It is very personal. It doesn’t claim to be a Psalm of David, but the Psalmist gives praise to God for his wordv118: ‘Accept my offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your ordinances’It has a unique structure. It is divided into 22 sections, and every verse in each section begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet.Today, we are looking at verses 105-112, and each verse here begins with the Hebrew letter nun 1. The Psalmist speaks of his delight in the Word of Godv105: ‘Your word is lamp to my feet and a light to my path’. What is he saying?When he speaks of the Word of God, he is speaking primarily of what we know as the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The Jews know these books as Torah, God’s lawFor many the idea of law is negative, restrictive.But for the psalmist the law is glorious, liberating and life …

Matthew 10.40-42Over the last two weeks we have been reading through Matthew 10

In Matthew 10.1-8 Jesus tells his first followers to preach the Kingdom of God and do the sort of things that happen when the Kingdom of God is near – healing sick people, casting out demons and raising the deadIn Matthew 10.16-39 Jesus speaks to them of the opposition that they can expectAnd in Matthew 10.40-42, he promises that whoever welcomes them and receives them -because they are prophets (those who speak the words of God), or righteous (those who live the kingdom of God), whoever even gives a glass of water because they are followers of Jesus, will not lose their reward. And verses 40-42 are closely linked to Matthew 10:8-15These first disciples, first missionaries, are to travel about Israel with nothing. No money, no bag, no change of clothing, and not even a staff.They are to go as they areThey are to wandering preachers, with nothing. They are to be completely dependent on God. For them, the lin…

Matthew 10.24-39This is a passage about courage, hope and not being afraid in the face of opposition.

Jesus has sent out his 12 disciples to preach the Kingdom of God, and to do Kingdom of God stuff.But he warns them that it will not be easy. They will suffer rejection and opposition because they are associated with him. People will think that they are betraying their communities, their families, their religion. They will hate them, say all kinds of untrue things about them and even want them dead. And Jesus in these verses gives them and us six reasons not to give in to fear, for hope in the face of persecution1. We are not on our own. ‘If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!’ (v25)When we experience hostility, we are only experiencing what Jesus experienced. They accused him of doing the work of the devil (that is what it means when they call him Beelzebul), and since we are part of his household, they will of cour…

Matthew 9:35-10:8
Three things from this passage1. It is about the Kingdom of GodMatthew 9.35: Jesus went about proclaiming the Good news of the Kingdom.Matthew 10.7: Jesus gives instructions to his disciples: ‘Proclaim the good news, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has come near’. The Kingdom of God is a central theme, possibly the central theme, in the teaching of Jesus.  It was his big message.The Kingdom of God is near.      In the Old Testament we are told about the Kingdom of God, the rule of God.When the kingdom comes there will be a reordering of creation:
There will be no place for that which is evil or unclean
There will be no place for sickness or disease – no place for Covid-19
There will be no place for death
And prophets like Isaiah share with us a vision of a world of abundance, of freedom, of harmony (between people and people, people and God, people and creation – that is what those passages about wolves lying down with lambs, and and children playing over the adders nest are all a…