Sunday mornnig’s service was action packed as usual! Upon arrival, members of the congregation were asked to scoop a cup of water from a bucket on the church steps and empty it into another bucket on the chancel steps. This was part of our consideration of this morning’s gospel reading about the Samaritan woman and her…
Nicodemus – a shadowy figure who comes to Jesus by night. We don’t know much about what happened to him after this encounter, but what we DO know is important: it was Nicodemus who argues with the Sanhedrin about Jesus’ trial. This was a body of 21 men – there was such a body in…
3 before Lent The passage from Ecclesiasticus makes it sound so very easy – God hasn’t given us permission to sin, so we just shouldn’t – sin. Perhaps I should just stop here. Don’t sin. We can all go home. But we do sin, don’t we. All the time and in all sorts of ways…
There has always been a tendency in religions – including our own – to divide things up between good and evil, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable. Very often this is to do with the body – the flesh and the soul – that which is physical and that which is spiritual. Deeply embedded within…
The Epiphany These past few days, all over the world, Christians will be celebrating the Feast of Epiphany and will hear this passage from Matthew’s Gospel – the story of wise men from the East travelling from far away to kneel before the Christ Child. In the Orthodox faith, this festival is of equal importance…
On the second Sunday of Advent the tradition is to focus on the prophets of the Old Testament. John the Baptist makes an appearance in our Gospel reading, but he has a whole Sunday to himself next week so we’ll put him aside for now. The prophets of the Old Testament give us some of…
A very difficult reading today especially for an All Age service (see Luke 21 vs 5-19 below) but this is the reading all Church of England churches will have heard today and it’s best if we all stick together. When this passage was written the first Christians were living in very worrying times and they…
Our Gospel passage for today allows us space to consider prayer which seems to be simultaneously easy and extremely difficult. People often come to talk to me about their struggles with their spiritual life – prayer, belief, faith. I am always happy to help in these – and other matters. This is one of the…
Christianity is full of wonderful stories of service of the strangers. One concerns St Oswald who is very close to our hearts; it goes like this. One Easter, when St Aidan was dining with St Oswald, a servant entered to say that there were many poor outside the gate seeking alms, Oswald took up a…
