Sharing some thoughts

from Helen    Well, what a week last week was. It was a week when we saw people’s true feelings and concerns on the news. We heard political arguments, we heard about more local lockdowns including Caerphilly and we heard the reaction of people to this. Lockdown was not fun and it is still difficult to get used to the new normal, which former Prime Minister Tony Blair described as everything that was not normal before.  Understandably people in Caerphilly are upset. I heard the voices on the news of people feeling unfairly treated because they had done all the right things but others hadn’t which had led to a local lockdown. They were angry and disappointed. I would love to say that I didn’t get fed up of other people’s behaviour in lockdown, it wouldn’t be true. When we find things hard we can all judge others a bit for not living in the way that we have been living. In our readings from the epistle to the Romans (14:1-12) and the gospel of Matthew (18:21-35) we hea...

  A long time ago I saw a thing on  the  internet about job descriptions for jobs that are really bad and I looked it up again this week but couldn’t find it – the closest I came was a list of the top 10 worst jobs as voted for by the readers of the Grimsby Telegraph ! At the very top was a sewage worker…    To be fair it’s not the most immediately attractive job on paper at least, and the reason I was thinking about this related to today’s gospel reading from Matthew (16:21-28). Jesus is talking about his followers and what it means to be one of those followers.    First of  all  he’s described how he has to go to Jerusalem to be killed. Peter argues with him and is bluntly told, ‘Get behind me  Satan ! ’  It seems harsh but Peter was judging things by earthly standards and Jesus had very different ideas and he went on to tell the disciples that whoever wanted to follow him must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow…...

  For my text this morning I’m  not immediately going to use one of the Bible readings but rather words from  the Liverpool Echo from October 9 th 2015 , and the words of Jurgen Klopp who had just been appointed the Liverpool F ootball  C lub  Manager.  He said,  “We have to change from doubters to believers. Now . At this moment  we ( all the LFC family is ) are  a little bit too nervous, a little bit too pessimistic, a little bit too much in doubt,” he said.  “They all celebrate the game and there is a fantastic atmosphere in the stadium,  But  they don’t believe at the moment. They only see five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. History is great. But only to remember. Now we have the possibility to write a new story if we want. ” At a time when we’re really being challenged to consider our faith and our churches, I don’t think there could be more appropriate words  than these  and today’s gospel (Matthew 14:22...

I wonder how many people in recent times have thought that evil seems to be winning or that God has no control in the world… Perhaps some have gone further by asking how can a loving God have allowed such chaos to dominate not just a small part of the world but the whole world…  Lots of people will be asking those sort of questions and now it would be easy to say let’s put the past behind us and move on. We’re back in church, even though it’s different !!  But actually, we need to recognise that things are different and we need to challenge ourselves to consider what in us needs to be different as we move forward and today I want to think of one line from the gospel reading that we just heard (Matthew 13:24-30,36-43) and actually I want to take it in some ways out of context…  It’s the very last line from the gospel we heard, ‘Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father…’  I’m going to use this out of context because it ...

The great American evangelist Billy Graham is quoted as saying, “I've read the last page of the Bible, it's all going to turn out all right.” I think there are some days and some times when we need to hear that a little more than at others… Perhaps for some of you, that time may be now !  And the readings from today point us, not to the last page of the bible, but certainly to some words of hope and inspiration.  In the gospel according to John (14:1-14) we’re told by Jesus, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me’. These are powerful words, and words which can be trusted because they come from Jesus, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds is it ?  Sometimes, although we want to trust,  and we want to be sure,  and we want to know that everything will be ok in the end,  it just doesn’t feel like it !  But Jesus didn’t leave it there. He had more to say, ‘In my Father’s house, there are many dwel...

We’ve had 2 wonderful readings today and both of them have so much guidance and help to offer us and I just want to think of 3 things, 2 from the reading from Acts (2:42-47) and then one from the gospel according to John (10:1-10).  The reading from Acts gives us a description of the early church. We’re told how the followers of Jesus devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers. We were told how they lived together sharing everything. We are also told that they had the ‘goodwill of all the people’ and that, ‘day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.’   When I was thinking about what to say today, two things came up from this reading for me. The first is the fellowship that the followers of Jesus enjoyed together. Now I’m pretty sure they would have had a few quarrels too because that’s often what happens when people are together a lot, but they were bound together as a family, doing th...

This Sunday is sometimes known as Low Sunday – it’s the day when people often stay at home and don’t come to church... oh ! Well, this year, that’s a bit like any other Sunday of course…  But whilst we might be desperate to get back to our church buildings to meet up with family and friends, church has continued because of the event we celebrated last Sunday - church has continued because Jesus has risen from the dead, Jesus is alive !  In the reading from Acts (2:14a,22-32) we read this remarkable speech made by Peter – Peter of course had, not very long before, denied even knowing Jesus, but he was now ready to stand up in front of some of the people who had called for Jesus to die, maybe some of the people who had been responsible for killing him, and proclaim boldly that Jesus had been killed, but that he rose from the dead and that he and others were witnesses of that. Who could possibly deny the reality of the resurrection when faced with the boldness of Pe...