Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Colossians 3.12-17 Happy Mothering Sunday It didn’t begin by being all about mothers! It began because the set bible reading for the Sunday (in the BCP) speaks of the idea that the heavenly Jerusalem, in the words of Galatians 4.26, is our mother. It is the idea that we are embraced by the Church of God, the community of people - from all times and all places – who choose to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. It also happened to be the Sunday, three weeks before Easter, when servants were given a day off, and so would travel back to their home village, to their families and mothers. And the two were put together, and it became mothering Sunday And this morning I’d like to focus on the Church bit, because it is through the Church, through God’s people – from then (the apostles and first believers) and from now (those who proclaim the word to us) – that we hear the gospel, the good news about Jesus.   And it is through the Church, through God’s people, that we a...

Luke 13.31-35 We are looking today at how to handle death threats! I suspect that many of us may have thought, ‘My mother is going to kill me if she finds this out’. Or maybe we have had someone really mad at us and saying, in the heat of the moment, ‘I’m going to kill you’. By the way, never say that, however angry you are. To threaten to murder someone is to threaten to kill a person who has been made in the image of God, and you are effectively crucifying Christ again. And if you have said that to anybody, then you need to say sorry. Sorry to God, and ask him to help us control our anger, and a big sorry to the person we have threatened. But there may be a few here who have been on the end of a far more serious death threat. It might be from a maniac or a stalker; it might be because we have done something stupid and got ourselves in big trouble; it might be because we have crossed or threatened someone who is evil; or it might even be a threat from those people who ...

Luke 4.1-13 I like the story of the girl who, on her way back from school, used to go swimming in the local lake. Her mother found out and told her that she should not do that. So the next morning mum checked her daughter’s bag – and found in it her swimming costume. ‘What’s this’, says mum, ‘I told you that you were not to go swimming on your way back from school’. She replied, ‘Don’t worry mum. I wasn’t going to go swimming. But I put it in, just in case I was tempted’. Our reading today is about the time when Jesus was tempted. He is, please note, led by the Spirit into the desert. Please do not think that if you are tempted it means that you are not a Christian. Jesus was full of the Spirit and he was tempted. Here it is the Spirit who takes Jesus into that place where he will be tempted, where he will begin to do battle with Satan And this is serious stuff. When Satan comes to him, he doesn’t play around with things like adultery, fornication, stealing, ...