Two Healings
Mark 5:21-42 Today Mark’s gospel brings us two stories interwoven with one another. This is way of writing, a stylistic device that the author uses quite often, which seems to deliberately invite us to read the two each in the light of the other. So what is it that we learn from the combination of […]
In the Weeds
Mark 4:26-34 Right back at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel the author gives us a one sentence summary of Jesus’ preaching: “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”. When you read […]
God puts the lonely in family
Mark 3:20-35 This week we’re starting a new series, following the lectionary readings through some of the early stories in the Gospel of Mark. In case you don’t know, the lectionary that we, and other Churches of many, many denominations across the world, follow, does a three year cycle, each year focussing on one of […]
Identify
Isaiah 6:1-8 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord The year, in our accounting, was around 740BC. The Kingdom of Israel had divided into two separate nations some two hundred years before, on the death of Solomon, and there had little peace or prosperity ever since.
Love in Obedience
1 John 5:1-6 The love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. Of all the Biblical authors John, both in the gospel and in the epistles (for whether or not they were written by the same person, they are certainly very closely related, both in style and theological outlook) is the one who […]
Love in truth and action
1 John 3:16-24 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. We hear the word love a lot. Especially in Church. We hear the word in our Bible readings, we use it in our prayers, we sing it in our hymns. “God is love” “Love one another” “God […]
Love is from God
1 John 4:7-21 | John 10:11-18 Some years ago, I was telling the story of the Good Shepherd to a Kindy scripture class. As the story unfolded, one of the kids interjected “the Good Shepherd sounds really nice”. Her neighbour, with all the confidence of a child who has heard the story before, piped up. […]
The Risen King
Mark 16:1-8 The fact that you are here this morning tells me that I don’t need to start at the beginning. I don’t need to tell you that Easter isn’t about chocolate eggs, or magic bunnies. I don’t need to convince you that it’s more than a convenient and very welcome four day weekend.
Triumphant Humility
Mark 11:1-11 | Philippians 2:5-11 And so we draw towards the end of Lent, and move towards Holy Week. This time next Sunday it will all be over – the last supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, the trial, Peter’s denial, the crowd crying for the release of Barabbas, the […]
A new way of being
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Jeremiah has a reputation as a grumpy, pessimistic sort of chap. Not entirely unwarranted, either; for he was a prophet of downfall, a prophet of disaster. When the nation was threatened by foreign powers, and the authorities, as authorities will, were trying to keep people’s spirits up, Jeremiah was telling them that the […]
Love not Condemnation
John 3:14-21 The story of the snakes in the book of numbers is one of those that I’m pretty sure we would never read in Church if it were not for the fact that Jesus made reference to it in what is probably the most famous passage of the Bible – his conversation with Nicodemus […]
Wisdom and Foolishness
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 It’s not often that you hear good things said about foolishness.
A Promise for All
Genesis 17:1-7 | Romans 4:13-18 Why, I wonder, is it, that we are so good at making God’s promises smaller than they are?
Close at Hand
Mark 1:9-15 This Lent, as you hopefully have picked up by now, we’re taking the theme of hospitality. This has been driven by the combination of our sense of mission – to become, as we wrote in our plan a year and a half ago, an ‘invitational’ Church – with the realities of COVID. For […]
Transfigured
Mark 9:2-9 For the past couple of weeks we’ve been looking at the stories around the very start of Jesus’ ministry; this week, as we prepare for the start of Lent, we move to a story that marks the beginning of the end. The transfiguration, the archetypal mountaintop experience. A story strange to our ears, […]