Sharing some thoughts

Today we celebrate the life of St John the Evangelist. One of my favourite gospel readings comes from the gospel according to John (John 12:20-36). It was set in the context of the Feast of Passover, one of the holiest days of the Jewish faith. Jewish people would travel long distances to celebrate the festival together at the Temple. Some of these people were the Greeks who met Philip in our reading – and came up with the simple but incredibly profound words, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus’. Sometime ago I was talking with someone who said that when he was travelling in Africa, a Bishop came up to him on the Saturday evening and asked him to preach at the big confirmation service the following day. He hurriedly prepared what he thought he was going to say and the following morning climbed up into the pulpit about to preach, and in front of him he read a note that had been left for him. It said very simply, ‘Sir, we want to see Jesus.’ Suddenly all the words he had to put down to

“The past, the present and the future  I’ve reached the final chapter of this little book and want to try and sum up something of what I’ve tried to write. To do it I’d like to think about the classic novel by Charles Dickens, ‘A Christmas Carol’. I’m pretty sure you will all know it reasonably well. Some of you will have read the book, many of you will have seen one of the many television or film adaptations of it.  At the heart of the novel are a number of things and these are just some of them :  The possibility of good triumphing over bad  The possibility of redemption for anyone The recognition of a need to look back in order to learn lessons for the future  A willingness to respond to a need for change  Sometimes change takes time, but sometimes it happens immediately ! With a fleeting glance it’s very easy to describe Scrooge as a rather unpleasant, miserable and mean man. All of these things are true without doubt, but this was a person, upon further examination, who had a hist

  Longing for light - Waiting in darkness   Advent is a controversial season in the church calendar for some. It divides opinion as to whether it should remain a ‘sombre season’ of anticipation awaiting the celebration of the birth of Jesus and his promised coming again, or whether we should join in with the rest of society in building up to Christmas and taking the opportunity of sharing the wonderful story of why Jesus was born.  Recently I spoke to a fairly new Christian who didn’t know what Advent was. And why should they have ? As churches, we’re really not very clear about it a lot of the time. I tried to explain the intricacies of it as much as I could. I explained some of the different views, views of people who embraced Advent completely and didn’t allow any Christmas celebrations until after dark on Christmas Eve and others who joined in completely with the celebration of Christmas throughout December whilst still not ignoring an Advent message of anticipation, hope, peace,