Sharing some thoughts

Today's gospel (Luke 13:10-17) gives us the account of the woman healed on the sabbath. We are told that she had been ill for 18 years, and when Jesus saw her, he immediately healed her. Jesus always seems to have been moved when he saw people in pain, but I wonder if on this occasion if he was, as well as offering healing, deliberately setting up a conflict with the synagogue leader. Here he seems to have acted quickly- he didn't wait to be asked to offer healing, he didn't wait to see anything about her faith, he didn't look at her background, although he may of course have known something about her anyway... But he healed her. And he knew that in this act, he would upset some. The sabbath was and is a tremendously important day and the rules about what can be done are very strict. But as with so many rules and laws they were put in place to make things better for people, not to stifle people. And that is what Jesus was challenging here, and that is really what a...

Sometimes in the Bible we look for comfort and for peace. We look for words of hope and inspiration, for words of joy, and within the Bible there are plen ty of places to find such words.   I t is the right place to look,  but today our gospel reading (Luke 12:49-56) offers us something very different. Here we see Jesus talking about bringing fire to the earth, and about bringing division between families. It’s not the pleasant  and comfortable  picture we often like to think of when we’re thinking about Jesus. And to be honest it seems very different from most of the messages that he offers.  Some have even  speculated that it wasn’t even  Jesus who spoke these  words, but the y were the  words of Luke interpreting some thoughts of Jesus. I suspect they were the words of Jesus himself  though  because   I’m sure the  sentiments that  were expressed  were very real to  him . The words  were not re...

Our readings this evening focus  very clearly  on faith. In the reading from Acts (27:1-25) Paul sets sail for Rome - he had an  incredibly uncertain future. As a prisoner of the Romans, he faced the possibility  or even likelihood  of imprisonment, torture and death, and yet relying on God for his strength he remained strong. We know from his letters the strength of that faith which still spoke of rejoicing and standing firm in faith  in whatever situation he found himself . But this evening I want to go back to the Old Testament and focus on the faith of the Shunammite woman that we heard about in  our reading from  the second book of Kings (4:8-37). The account we have is that the prophet Elisha travelled  regularly  past her home and she made him welcome there with offers of meals. Clearly her welcome was good as he kept going back. Later she spoke to her husband and asked if they could build a room for him to stay whenever...

Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians (3:1), ‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is….’ There’s some debate as to when exactly the letter to the Colossians was written but it may well have been written from a prison cell in Rome. Even in prison though Paul was convinced of the gospel message – he wrote to the Colossians to try and stamp out heresy which was damaging the church there. But he doesn’t do it primarily by talking about the heresy but by reminding the people of the nature of Jesus – and that he is all that we need to focus on to obtain fullness of life. Today, as people have through many generations, people often seek for other things – to find the perfect job, to find happiness in wealth or possessions, some in unfortunate relationships, or even drink or drugs. There’s a story about a man who really loved money, and when he was dying he made his  brother, who would have inherited all the money  promise him ...

I’m sure we all have times when we’re distracted – some of us get distracted easier than others. It often happens to me when I’m listening to long talks.  It ma y  happen to you when you’re listening to sermons  perhaps !   This week I went on a conference and I was going through some of the things we’d thought about  when I got home  and telling Helen about them and I came to one part of my notes and could make no sense of it at all – I had written something down but clearly had not really taken any notice of what it meant. I blamed the sun  and the possibility of an ice cream on the sea front  for the  distraction ! There is also a great story about the rugby players Gareth Edwards and Ray  Gravell  – having played together for Wales they knew each other’s weaknesses well, and so in a club game between Cardiff and Llanelli Gareth Edwards worked out that there was a way to distract Ray  Gravell  so he would have a poo...

Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians (1:1-12), ‘May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.’ I wonder whether when Paul wrote these words his mind was on things such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). He had certainly seen plenty of suffering himself and even, prior to his conversion, caused a fair bit of that suffering for Christians, but it is the parable of the Good Samaritan that perhaps more than any other passage highlights the command of Jesus not just to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, but also to love our neighbour, whoever that neighbour may be. One afternoon a lawyer was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the road- side eating grass.   Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got ou...

Today there’s an awful lot in the readings about right and wrong, about sin and forgiveness – and ultimately about the grace and mercy of God – and I just want to pick out some thoughts from the gospel reading from Luke (7:36-8:3), as we think during this season of Trinity about our spiritual growth – we think about our need to get ever closer to God day by day… As we look through the reading, we think very obviously of forgiveness – a forgiveness which is unconditional – all God asks is that we approach him and say sorry… the forgiveness of God is about love and acceptance – it is about creating a sense that we are at peace, and at the end of chapter 7 of that gospel reading Jesus said to the woman who had anointed his feet, ‘your faith has saved you – go in peace…’ And that peace, along with the love of God, is perhaps the most important gift of God that we can ever receive. Somebody once said that ‘safety consists not in the absence of danger but in the presence of God’. It is a...