Sharing some thoughts

Most of you will have visited a great Cathedral, many will enjoy looking around wonderful Church buildings, whether wonderful for their beauty and splendour, for the things contained in them, for the atmosphere of peace, or for all kinds of other reasons. Hundreds of years ago many Churches were built to celebrate the glory and wonder of God. It was thought that the more impressive the Church, the more it glorified Him. This philosophy behind the building of Churches has continued into relatively recent times – I think the largest Cathedral in Britain is the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. This huge Cathedral was built to glorify God certainly, but it was also built to show the power and wealth of the City. And there we have the rather strange anomaly of the mixing of spiritual and secular. But of course there’s no reason why it should be strange – we follow Jesus, who involved himself in every level of society, who mixed with different types of people, many of whom didn’t share h

Matthew Huffman was the  6 year old  son of missionaries in Brazil. One morning he began to develop a fever. As his temperature went up he began to lose his eyesight. His mother and father put him in the car to rush him to hospital. As they were driving and he was lying on his mother’s lap, he put his arm up in the air. His mother took it to push it down, but he pulled away and reached up again, and the same thing happened once more.   Confused, the mother asked him what he was doing and he replied, ‘I’m reaching for Jesus’ hand’. And with those words he closed his eyes and slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. He died 2 days later. It’s a tragic  story,  heartbreaking for the family I’m sure. There are few words of consolation to offer a family losing a young child, but the one consolation they had was that in his all too short life, he’d learnt to reach out to Jesus in all kinds of situations. Our 3 New Testament readings today all contain similar ideas and

From Helen  I don’t know about you but sometimes when watching television I enjoy the adverts. Who can ever forget the neighbours who fell in love over sharing a cup of coffee, who can forget hearing about  ‘ Just one  cornetto ’ , or of course the meerkats . Well there is one advert that you have probably never seen and this is for Holy Heartburn. Now before your minds dream up all sorts of ideas of what this is ,  it is what we heard about in our gospel reading this morning. The disciples walking along the road to Emmaus experienced a strange sensation within themselves that they described as their hearts burning.  It was indeed holy heartburn, the feeling which you get after an encounter with Jesus.   There is a well known joke, that is always worth hearing which I think makes the point of  what an encounter with  Jesus  can do to us . A burglar wa s stalking stealthily around the living-room of the house  he had  just broken into. He jumped  with fright when he suddenl

As a Liverpool Football Club supporter, one of my favourite songs has to be  ‘ You ’ ll Never Walk Alone. ’  I don ’ t think anybody can ever fail to be moved just before the teams come out at Anfield when this anthem begins, and echoes around the stadium. But, regardless of the football connection, the words have tremendous meaning I think for all of us as Christians. This  morning  we have heard the account of Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). In many ways it ’ s a difficult account to understand  –  surely these followers of Jesus would recognise him walking alongside them. They may have had doubts about his resurrection but still they would see him there by the side of them, talking to them. But perhaps not …  perhaps the appearance of Jesus had changed, or perhaps they simply didn ’ t have the faith to believe that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. Whatever the situation was, Jesus walked alongside these two followers as they told him of the events of the p