Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Luke 23:33-43 Today is officially the last Sunday in the churches calendar. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday, and we start to think of preparing for Christmas and the coming of Christ into the world. And the title that has been given to this Sunday is Christ the King. We remember that Jesus is the King. And yet we have this strange reading – Jesus on the cross You’d think they might choose the passage when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is going to have a baby, and that the child to be born to her would be the Son of God and ruler, and that he will be given the throne of David (David was the great king in Israel’s past – a sort of Queen Elizabeth 1 st figure – and God had promised that one of David’s descendants would be his special and eternal ruler). Or they might have chosen one of those many passages which speak of how Jesus had authority over wind and waves, over sickness, over evil spirits, even over death. Or they might have chosen that passage when Je...

Ephesians 2:11-22 Often people will say when they come into this building, ‘What an amazing church’. I usually reply, slightly provocatively, ‘Yes, it is an amazing church, and the building is quite impressive as well’. The New Testament understands that the Church is the people, and it was only later that the word ‘Church’ also came to mean the place where the people met. Every month before attending my Bible study at church, I would tell my 3-year-old son, Chad, we were going to God's house. Each time we walked through the quiet sanctuary on our way to the nursery, Chad looked around in awe. One particular day, he stopped abruptly and asked, "Mummy, if this is God's house, how come He's never home?" But what I’d like to do this evening is to use this building as my visual aid for helping us understand what Paul is saying here about the church, the people of God. In the previous verse, Paul has been speaking of how we have been saved. It ...