Luke 3:1-6 The audio of this talk can be found here Our reading from the gospel today is a bit of a fraud! Half of it is a reading from the Old Testament. Luke quotes from Isaiah 40 verses 4-6. “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ” Luke is saying that these words, spoken by Isaiah 600 or so years earlier, are fulfilled when John the Baptist turns up in the wilderness ‘proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. John – who we know as John the Baptist is the voice There are three things that I would like to draw from this passage this morning. 1. God is coming ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness “prepare the way for the Lord”.’ Christmas is coming. But something, someone so m...
Luke 10:25-37 Russian protest outside St Andrew's Church Moscow, Remembrance Sunday 2022 The audio for this talk can be found here Two years ago, nine months after the invasion of Ukraine, I was about to conduct a Remembrance Day service in St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Moscow – where I was the chaplain. On the opposite side of the road there was a group of about 20 protestors. They were chanting their slogans, in Russian, which included phrases like “defeat to the Anglo Saxon vampires”, “ Go home ” and, best of all, “Freedom to Scotland”. It was very controlled, very organised – someone had brought along all the banners - and incidentally very illegal. The Russian authorities brought in a COVID law that said it was illegal to hold an outdoor protest where there is more than one person – and they forgot to lift it when the COVID risk was reduced. But, of course, the police were not going to intervene. So I decided, wearing my cassock, to go across the road to ask th...