Sharing some thoughts

Through Lent at each of the evening services we were going to be thinking about a particular word and it’s meaning for us in the Church today and for us as individuals. Last week we thought about tolerance, and concluded that in all things the over riding principle of the Christian faith is to love – love God and love our neighbour, whoever they may be. This evening because of the events that have taken place over the past year in this area, and the publicity given to those events in recent weeks, we have taken a slightly different path with our service, with the Church open for prayer, along with other Churches in the Borough, and this short service to allow people the chance to reflect on the problems, and also to pray for the future. The theme of this evening’s service would have been to think about the word ‘Change’ and that’s what I want to think about for a few moments. Someone once said, ‘I was a revolutionary when I was young and all my prayer to God was, ‘Lord give me th...

Mother Theresa once said ‘I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle – I just wish he didn’t trust me so much !’ In the passage that we have heard this evening Paul is coming to the end of his letter to the Ephesians (6:10-20). He has written a letter of instruction, of thankfulness, of the need for prayer, and he leaves them with some incredible words of inspiration that are as important today as they were for the young Church to which Paul was writing. And these words of Paul, taken to heart since by people like Mother Theresa, make essential reading for us all. Today we live in a society with so many advantages and benefits. We are wealthier than a large majority of other people in the world. We have far more in terms of material goods. We have the ability whether through transport or simply through television to see the whole world around us. And as we look at the world we realise also a need for God and a need for the peace that he can bring, and it is a way of attain...

Someone once said that the role of a preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The first part, comfort the afflicted, is nice – it’s a quality that I’m sure all of us hope to show whenever it’s needed, but the second point, to afflict the comfortable, is not so nice – and it’s also not as easy ! But we’re in Lent, a time of trial and self examination, and a time of honest God inspired appraisal of ourselves, so it seems a good time to do a bit of both ! And that’s what Jesus did in this passage that we’ve heard in the gospel reading this morning (John 4:5-25). He was, we are told, visiting a Samaritan city – strange enough by itself for a Jew, and then as a Samaritan woman approached, he actually spoke to her and asked her for some water, and he chatted to her and there is a sense that as he speaks, he actually cared for her. Immediately this passage would set alarm bells ringing for the Jews – they hated the Samaritans, they regarded even the water from t...

There are many excuses that we can find for things in life. I am of course very nearly perfect so I don’t really need to find many excuses for anything, but with Helen, one of her main excuses is that she doesn’t drive. Because of that she tries to excuse her appalling sense of direction. It is true to say that even if she has been somewhere once she is unlikely to find that place again ! Even when she has been somewhere lots of times she still has to double check the way ! She’s got a postcard which sums her up well. It’s a picture of a sheep on its own in a field where it is raining, the sheep is saying, “Lost ! Me ? I know exactly where I am… I am here”. Anyway I promise I’m not being too cruel behind her back – she has read everything I’ve written ! As we look at the reading that we have heard this morning, there is a sense of being lost. There is a sense of someone needing direction and of needing to know the way, and that person is Nicodemus. I am not sure what peop...

The late speaker of the House of Commons, George Thomas, said this, ‘Poverty was the universal way of life in the coal mining areas of South Wales during my boyhood there. Nonetheless our community culture was rich. It was rooted in our Christian faith and therefore was uninfluenced by the scale of our possessions. As I grew in understanding I learned to look at people in terms of their potential when God’s Holy Spirit was their inspiration. there is no limit to what God can do when commitment to him is total. Changed lives are unfailing witnesses to that truth in every generation. It will be so in tomorrow’s world, for the 2 great permanents of history are the unchanging needs of people and the unchanging power and love of God.’ The season of Lent is the time in the Church year when we’re really called to consider the meaning of that statement in our own lives – the 2 great permanents of history are the unchanging needs of people and the unchanging power and love of God. In other ...

Of all of the seasons in the Church calendar, only Easter, Christmas and Lent seem to break into our secular society with any influence at all. For many people the idea of giving something up for Lent is still something that appeals to them, although they may long since have forgotten, if they ever knew, the Christian importance of sacrifice. A former Trappist monk recalled Ash Wednesdays at his Abbey. He remembered how the monks would walk barefoot through the stone church, keeping time to Gregorian chants, marching eventually into the old church where they received the ashes on their foreheads as a visual reminder of their need for repentance. He said, "It was cold at this time of year. You would try to step in the spots where someone had stepped before, in order to feel some warmth." (Fr. Thomas Culleton, Salt Lake City) Cold is a good word to describe the season of Lent, though we may have the heating turned up, and even though the weather is not that c...

One of the readings that we seem to have quite a lot in the Church is the account of the Transfiguration that we have heard today (Matt.17:1-9). It’s a remarkable account, but as with so many other accounts we have from the Bible we can only really appreciate it best when we allow ourselves to be immersed in the story – and to put ourselves in the positions of the main characters. W hen Jesus took Peter, James, and John along on a trip up the mountain (Matt 17:1-9), they probably felt very honoured. They must have felt that they were the chosen among the chosen. Or perhaps not, maybe they thought: "what does he want us to do now? Do I always have to do the work? Why couldn't he pick Andrew or Judas, or someone else ?" But whatever they thought, I wonder what they really expected… Some kind of special meeting, a picnic or a prayer meeting perhaps… We don’t really know. But one thing that they almost certainly didn’t expect though was what actually happened. Jesus was...