Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Luke 9.1-11 Being a disciple of Jesus was not and is not an easy ride. It involves taking new steps of faith: of jumping into deeper and wilder water. On one occasion the disciples were in a boat when they see Jesus coming towards them. He is walking on the water. They are freaked out. But Peter says, rather foolishly, ‘Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you’. Jesus takes him at his word and says, ‘Come’. We can imagine the other disciples. They’re beginning to enjoy this. Peter has got to get out of the boat and walk on water to Jesus. John Ortberg wrote a book based on that incident, and he gave the book the title, ‘If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat’. But it is not quite as completely scary as that. Because Jesus only asks his disciples, his apprentices, to do what they see him doing. And here, in Luke 9, Jesus has been proclaiming the Kingdom of God; he has been casting out demons; he has been healing people. And n...

John20.24-29 Today we are looking at the last in the cycle of very early C6th mosaics that can be found in the church of St Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, which depict the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  We see Jesus appearing to the 11 disciples. This is the second meeting that the resurrected Jesus has with his disciples – a week after his appearance to them on the first Easter Sunday. Jesus is showing his wound (we only see the wound on his side, presumably where he was stabbed with the spear), but in so doing he points us to our right. All the way through this cycle of 26 mosaics, there has been a movement to our right. In most of the mosaics, one of the figures moves us on to the next. Now here at the end, Jesus himself moves us on, but this time upwards, to heaven. On the first occasion when Jesus appeared to his disciples, Thomas was not present. And when the disciples told Thomas that they had seen the Lord, Thomas made his famous statement: ‘Unless I s...

Mark 12.41-44 This is the fourth picture that can be found on the walls of the church of St Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. It is a portrayal of the incident recorded in Mark 12.41-44. So there is the chest, the widow, Jesus and a disciple. I came across a new interpretation of this passage. In the previous verses we have been warned about the teachers of the law: ‘They like to devour widow’s houses’ (v40).  And now we read of a widow who has to put everything that she has into the temple collection box. Jesus' is challenging a religious system which exploits the poor. While I think that we need to hear that challenge, I am not convinced that this is what is going on here. The widow’s giving appears to be completely voluntary. And Jesus points to her as an example of giving. My own view is that Jesus is teaching us here what it means to follow him, about discipleship. The contrast here is not between the teachers of the law and the widow. It is not even betw...

2 Peter 1.1-4 How precious is your faith? What is precious to you? A person, home, freedom, career, possession, a ring! Peter writes here of his faith as being something that is precious. 1. It is precious because it is the gift of God Notice how he writes, ‘To those who through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours’ (v1) Our faith is gift. If there were no Jesus, if he had not come from heaven to be born as a human being, if there had been no sacrificial death on the cross, no resurrection – then there could be no Christian faith. And God has done it all. We did nothing to deserve life; we did nothing to deserve God’s mercy; we did nothing to deserve God’s forgiveness or acceptance; we did nothing to deserve the fact that God calls us his friends, or that God pours out on us his Holy Spirit, or that God gives us the hope of eternal life. I don’t know whether you think the same way as me. But at about...

Luke 7.1-10 [ If the service is in the context of an all age gathering, the following may be appropriate. In our story Jesus finds something in an unexpected place.  I've hidden 5 boxes in the church (each box has letter of the word 'faith' on it. One of boxes needs to be in an unexpected place. When they are all together get children to work out what the word is) Rhiannon found love in a hopeless place!  Jesus found faith in an unexpected place] 'I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith'  Jesus is looking for people with faith. He looks for faith in the place where he would expect to find it. Of course that would be in the people who God chose to be his own people - the people of Israel. They were the people chosen by God to be His people all those many years before. They were the people who had seen God act time and time again to rescue them. They were the people who had been given the great prom...