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Let Go and Live: The Freedom of Following Jesus

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Matthew 16:21-end Matthew 16 is a great pivot moment in Matthew’s gospel. Up to now Jesus has been teaching his disciples about who he is. And they have got it. Last Sunday Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. But now Jesus teaches them about what he has come to do, and the way of God. He teaches them what it means to call him the Son of God, to live as his followers ‘From that time on, Jesus began to show …’ And we see here a clash between human things and divine things, the ‘ must ’ of human necessity versus the ‘ must ’ of divine necessity. Jesus tells his followers that ‘he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering, and be killed, and on the third day to be raised again’ And Peter says to him, ‘this must never happen to you’ It is the clash between divine things and human things. Jesus challenges Peter and says, ‘No Peter. You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’. Annibale Carracci, Christ appearing to Saint Peter ...
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When Jesus turns his back on us

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Matthew 15:21-28 This is a shocking story Jesus has gone to Gentile territory. And a Gentile woman – she was not a Jew – comes to him in great need. The audio of this talk can be found here And she meets with silence, rejection and theological dogmatism. I love C15th image from the Duc of Richy’s Book of Hours (his prayer book) and put in the email and notice sheet. Jesus stands with his back to her. The Canaanite woman . Miniature from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry . Folio 164r. Conde museum, Chantilly, France So what is going on here? 1. This woman is desperate Her daughter is gripped by a demon In our culture we have lost the language of demons. We have replaced it with the language of psychology or medicine. It makes us feel that even if we cannot heal a mind now, we will be able to heal it as our knowledge increases. But the language of demons brings us up against the reality of evil and that there are some things that cannot be healed or restored by any medication o...
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Going to the desert place to meet with Jesus

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Matthew 14:13-21 Twice we are told that this is a deserted place. A link to the audio of this talk Jesus has gone by boat to a ‘deserted place’, a place where there were few people, out of the way, where everything else could be left behind, in order to get away and grieve. He has just heard that his cousin John the Baptist has been beheaded, and he knew that what had happened to John would happen to him. And Jesus longed for time to be on his own with his heavenly Father.  But the crowds follow him on land and they get to the place ahead of him. The only time Jesus was going to have on his own was his time in the boat. And Jesus, when he saw the crowd, ‘had compassion for them’.    This can feel like a deserted place, especially in November or February.  And this is a place where people come to get away from normal life, for holiday. In the past, it was the holy days that were the holidays – the days to get away from it all, to step out of our everyday story: of wor...
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Life is not for wimps. A talk at a funeral

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Life is hard, especially as we grow older. It is not for wimps. It takes courage. And S had courage in abundance. But with her courage she also had hope and, I am pretty sure of this, a sense of the risen Jesus walking beside her. One of the last books she was reading was about the Jesus prayer . It is appropriate, given S was a quite literal home maker, both our readings ( John 14:1-6 , Revelation 21.2-7 ) speak about our ultimate home – not here, but in heaven, in the new Jerusalem. Revelation: ‘See the home of God is among mortals’. Estate agents sometimes speak of ‘your forever home’ (I struggle with that phrase!) Well, this is the real ‘forever home’, where  there will be no more pain and weeping, no more death and mourning. Of course we cannot speak of it because it is bigger than space and time, beyond space and time as we know it – and we can only use picture language. And the language that is used here is of a radiant city - like a bride - coming down from heaven. But...
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Why St Cecilia is the patron saint of music.

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The association of St Cecilia with music is surprising because there is very little in her story about music. Indeed there is just one sentence in the C5th Passio , describing the story of her life. The key words are: Cantantibus organis, Caecilia Domino decantabat in corde suo When the day of her wedding arrived, and the musical instruments were sounding, Cecilia sang in her heart to the Lord , saying: "Let my heart and my body remain undefiled, that I may not be put to shame." (The references to her hearing the angelic choir at her death are a later addition, after she had been associated with music.) It is almost certainly because of that one line that she became the patron saint of music. Carlo Saraceni, The Martyrdom of St Cecilia c.1610 It is surprising, but it is also very profound. Everything around her is disordered. She is a young woman who has chosen to commit her life to following Jesus and for him she had freely made a vow of chastity. And yet here she is at the ...
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Wheat, weeds and the patience of God

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Matthew 13:24-30,36-43   One of the big questions that we ask is why – if there is a God of love and power – is there evil in the world. Why doesn’t God root it out? And that was an even bigger question for the first followers of Jesus. They were seeing amazing things. People were being healed, evil was being cast out. The Messiah had come. So why was there still evil? And the answer these verses give is that there will be a judgement, a harvest, a separation of good from evil, but it will be in God’s time. Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat attributed to Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, 1590 - 1610.  And these verses show us how we should live in this in between time: the time between the first coming of the Messiah, of the ‘Son of Man’ and the second coming, at the end of time. 1. We are not to judge others, whether they are wheat or weeds. This story separates people into the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one. But I don’t think that the main po...
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The secret symbol of hope found in the catacombs.

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Hebrews 6:13-20 When God made a promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and multiply you.’ And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise. Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek. One of the very early Christian symbols that...
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