Christ is risen. Alleluia?
There’s often a significant gap between knowing about something and actually experiencing it first-hand. Last year I thought it would be fun to join a rugby team. And it was. I went to practice and learned passing drills and set plays. I read articles trying to keep track of rules I’d never known before. I [...]
a Palm Sunday invitation
There’s nothing simple about Palm Sunday. Look around you. Somewhere nearby you’ll find one. Maybe it’s fallen to the ground, maybe an industrious person has folded theirs into a cross, maybe it’s tucked into a prayer book nearby. Somewhere nearby is a palm frond. We start the day with palms. We wave them and sing, [...]
The Kingdom in our Midst
Mark is my kind of gospel. He doesn’t waste any time. In six short verses Jesus is baptized by John, the spirit descends on him like a dove, he’s driven into the wilderness and tested by Satan. Then John is arrested and Jesus comes to Galilee and preaches, saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the [...]
Ash Wednesday
Recently I was reading the poem, “A Summer’s Day” by Mary Oliver. She writes about sitting out in the grass and observing a grasshopper. Soon, though, the grasshopper has her meditating on life in all its complexity. In the final three lines of the poem, she asks, Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? [...]
From fishermen to followers
There are some great stories of God calling people in the Bible. Last week we heard about God speaking to the boy Samuel late at night. Samuel thinks that it’s Eli calling his name, but Eli tells him to go back to bed. You can almost hear Eli thinking, “Leave me alone!” But then Eli [...]
Undercover Blessing Agents
“The biggest defining moment in my life was when I saw Trevor Huddleston and I was maybe nine or so. I didn’t know it was Trevor Huddleston, but I saw this tall, white priest in a black cassock doff his hat to my mother who was a domestic worker. I didn’t know then that it [...]
turned towards us, a sermon for Christmas day
Merry Christmas! Today is a day when we celebrate God becoming man. It’s an event that changed the course of history. Jesus “brings heaven to earth and joins [heaven and earth] together forever.” (N.T. Wright) And how does this amazing thing happen? The Word becomes flesh. God becomes man. Jesus is born. I have heard [...]
a crowded creche, a sermon for Christmas Eve
When I was younger, the task of setting up the crèche often fell to me. I would carefully arrange Mary and Joseph and the manger. I’d hide the baby Jesus somewhere memorable and then I’d set the three kings and a shepherd off at a distance from the whole scene. As time went on, though, [...]
Scaredy goats
This past week I was trying to think of the last time that I was well and truly scared. And my mind immediately went back a few years to when I decided to go skydiving. Now, the anxiety about skydiving begins early. As soon as you arrive, you immediately start signing every page of a [...]
Jesus, I’m home!
Rowan Williams comments on how none of us have “arrived” in our spiritual lives: The ‘shape’ of Christian faith is the anchoring of our confidence beyond what we do or possess, in the reality of a God who freely gives to those needy enough to ask; a life lived ‘away’ from a centre in our [...]
