Sharing some thoughts

From Helen  I have often said that if I was not a priest I would be a  childrens  television presenter.  The reason for this is that I like imagination, I like fairy tales and I get excited by simple  things. In our house we had a particular scented candle which was very effective. One day I found another candle just like it and excitedly bought it. When I got home I informed Ian (my husband) that I had bought something amazing and exciting for the hous e. I proudly showed him the candle and for some reason, which I still  cannot  fathom  he wasn't as excited as me !!! In the gospel reading which we have heard this morning there was something to really be excited  about !   In this reading we can sense the e xcitement and anticipation of the disciples, who had seen Jesus, who knew that He was alive and they also knew that He would come and see them.  How  exciting ! Well,  lets  try to imagine the excitement ...

It was Palm Sunday and because of a sore throat, 5 year old Johnny stayed home from church with his mother. When the rest of the family returned home they carried some palm crosses and also a couple of palm branches. When Johnny asked what they were for his father said that 'people held them over Jesus as he walked by', to which Johnny replied, 'wouldn't you know it - the one Sunday I don't go, Jesus shows up !' I wonder if this is a little bit how Thomas felt when he was told that, when he was out, Jesus had been to see the other disciples. Surprised perhaps or, as it seemed, filled with doubt, and who could blame him. Martin Luther King said 'Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase' and had Thomas known that saying or thought of that principle then maybe things would be different. This, after all, was a man who had spent a long time with Jesus. He had witnessed miracles, listened to Jesus' teaching, he...

A Professor once asked his class how many Easter eggs you could fit in an empty basket. Some of the students looked puzzled and one put up their hand and said it would depend on the size of the eggs and the size of the basket. The Professor looked around the class and explained that whatever the size of the basket or the eggs you could only ever fit one egg into an empty basket, because after that it wasn’t empty anyway ! Today we celebrate with millions of Christian people something that was empty – the empty tomb. Jesus, who had died on the cross, had risen again and we, with all those millions, can shout  alleluia ! The depth of God’s love had been shown for each one of us as Jesus  f aced the torture and accepted death on the cross for us, and the power of God’s love was revealed in the resurrection of Jesus – he had taken the punishment for our sins, and conquered the power of death for evermore. God's love for us is a subject  which  can be discuss...

Maundy Thursday brings with it a huge range of emotions and challenges for us all.  It is  the day when  we remember that  righteousness and truth and justice and peace were neglected in favour of betrayal and a lust for power.  The day when it seemed that love had been beaten into submission by hate. We have the arrest, court proceedings and torture of the Son of God in the middle of the night follow ing  the heart-breaking hours of the Last Supper .  T he gathering of friends for a farewell meal is filled with sorrow because they know it will bring the end to a time of intense friendship and teaching, and consistent fellowship. The disciples may not have known what was coming but they knew that their relationship with Jesus was changing. They knew the days of following him and teaching and praying together were coming to an end – what was to follow they couldn’t grasp. The twelve, and the rest of the followers of Jesus, had heard him speak wor...

I always think Palm Sunday is quite a strange day  –  it ’ s a day that when I was a child I really enjoyed in Church  –  we got to be a little bit wild with the opportunity to wave around our Palm crosses, or perhaps even hit people with them. It was a day of great celebration. And of course in many ways the event we are commemorating was also a day of celebration with Jesus triumphantly riding into Jerusalem, but there we have a contrast to the joy and the celebration –  Jesus was of course riding in to die. Two thousand years after Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, another visitor came to the city, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. His entourage was so grand that he had to have the Jaffe Gate in the old city widened so that his carriage could pass through. After the parade had ended, someone climbed up and attached a large sign to the gate. The sign read, "A better man than Wilhelm came through this city's gate. He rode on a donkey."  And as we prepare to jou...

As Vice President at the time, George Bush Senior represented the U.S. at the funeral of the former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and he writes of being deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the c entre  of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped  and trusted  that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband. This incredible gesture speaks of the hope which we as Christians profess but it is a hope not buil...