The Servant of God

The Servant of God

Isaiah 42:1-9 | Matthew 12:9-21 The second section of Isaiah, deutero-Isaiah, contains some of what must be the best known passages in the book – starting, of course, with Isaiah 40, that Dan shared with us last week: “comfort, comfort my people”, and “prepare the way of the Lord”.

Lips and mouths

Lips and mouths

Isaiah 29:13-19 | Mark 7:1-13 This week we take our second look at the book of Isaiah, and in particular, at what’s known as ‘Proto-Isaiah’, the first thirty-nine chapters of the book, that are essentially a collection prophecies to the people of God before they were taken into exile by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

Isaiah 6 – Keep looking

Isaiah 6 – Keep looking

Isaiah 6:1-12 | Matthew 13:10-17 When, earlier in the year, we invited everyone to write down the one thing that they would love to hear a sermon on, there were a few suggestions that sort of clustered together. In particular, quite a few people wanted to talk about the Bible; not just what it says, […]

Pentecost

Pentecost

Genesis 11:1-9 | Acts 2:1-21 About ten thousand years ago, in the Tigris valley, Mesopotamia, humanity made one of those inventions that changed the direction of history. The brick. Blocks of clay or mud, dried in the sun until they were strong enough to use.

Jesus is… with God in glory

Jesus is… with God in glory

Ephesians 1:15-23 | Luke 24:44-53 Over the weeks of the season of Easter, we’ve been exploring different aspects of the theme “Jesus is…”

Jesus is… the true vine

Jesus is… the true vine

John 15:1-8 A few years ago we were in England on holiday, and staying with my parents. One of the many memorable moments of that trip, came when a few of us, including my mum, had just started to play a board game, when my dad slipped out into the garden, muttering something about “going […]

Jesus is… The Good Shepherd

Jesus is… The Good Shepherd

Psalm 23 | John 10:11-18 I’ve always found the sheep stories in the Bible a bit hard to take.

Jesus is… our advocate

Jesus is… our advocate

1 John 1:1 – 2:2 One of the first things that I do when I come to speak on a familiar passage of scripture is to look back through my index of all the sermons I’ve ever preached, to find previous reflections on the same text.

Jesus is… really alive

Jesus is… really alive

John 20:19-31 So today we begin a series of sermons, which will be picking up – tangentially, in some cases – on some of the questions asked in our “one thing I’d like to hear someone preach on…” survey, and taking as our theme, for the six Sundays before Pentecost, this simple phrase: “Jesus is…”.

Three Mysteries, Two Stories, and One Question

Three Mysteries, Two Stories, and One Question

John 20:1-18 At the heart of the Christian faith lie three great mysteries.

Palms

Palms

Mark 11:1-11 The Passover festival was approaching. This was the high point of the Jewish year, the one time that every Jew who possibly could, would come into the city, and come to the Temple. As a result, Jerusalem was packed

Glory

Glory

John 12:20-33 So Jesus and his friends at ‘the festival’, the Passover, and amongst those who have come to Jerusalem as part of the celebration, part of the worship of God, are some Greeks;

This is judgement

This is judgement

John 3:14-21 Surely the best known reference in the Bible, John 3:16 has been used over and again as a one sentence summary of the gospel: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Barriers

Barriers

John 2:13-22/strong> The cleansing of the Temple, we normally call it, and even the name comes laden with overtones of meaning – cleansing, making clean; the imagery of scrubbing away that layer of black gunk stuck onto the frying pan after a particularly unsuccessful fry-up (or that just me?) – making something clean again.

Voices

Voices

Mark 9:2-9 If you thought there was something more than usually familiar about today’s gospel reading, then you are completely correct – a strange twist in the lectionary gives us the same passage twice in the space of a couple of weeks.