A Woman's place...

If you want to read a sermon about what St Peter's mother-in-law did when she had been healed by Jesus, then please Clike here.

It will be preached on Sunday 8th Feb...so only read it if you want a preview!

Light of the World?

If you want to read tomorrow's sermon, please Click here.

Bad joke alert...it starts with a really old joke!

Pompey Pioneer

My mate (and fellow priest) Mark Rodel is the new City Pioneer Minister in Portsmouth. He's started a blog to record his thinking and progress around his exciting new form of ministry. Click Here to read it.

I've also stuck the link in my link list (to the left of this page, at the top...in case you stumble across the blog entry years from now!)

Mark is doing some fascinating thinking which, I'm certain, is going to help us all the think about the nature of our lives and mission. Get in on the ground floor by engaging with his brain right now!

The Conversion of Saul - Fact or Fiction?

I'll be preaching tomorrow about the dramatic story of Paul/Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus. If you want to read the sermon, Click Here

Or you could always come in person to St Mark's, Derby Road, Portsmouth - to hear the sermon delivered with all the passion I can muster!

Charlie and the Toilet (A Story)

What's so amazing about Grace?

I've written a short story to illustrate the transforming power of God's grace. I'll be reading it tomorrow at our family service (at St Mark's, Derby Road, Portsmouth) - in place of a sermon. I hope it speaks for itself. I encourage you to let the story speak to your heart.

To read the story, please click here

The story is based on Ephesians 2, verses 1-10. Here's a short video I've made of that reading:

New Year - New Website Layout

Happy New Year!

Over the holidays, I've been thinking about the way this website is laid out. So in order to make it a bit easier to navigate, I've decided to publish my sermons on another blog - taking up less room here, I hope!

So, if you would like to read what I will be preaching this Sunday, then please click here to read a sermon sparked by 'The Baptism of Jesus'.

The middle verse of the Bible

Sorry folks - I haven't been able to post my sermons from last week, owing to a hardware failure on my computer. If I ever retrieve them, I'll pop them up!

In the meantime, one of the members of our Parish sent me an intriguing fact today.

What's the absolute middle verse of the Bible?

It's Psalm 118:8: "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man".

Further intriguing data about this verse includes the fact (apparently...I haven't checked for myself) that there are 594 chapters before Psalm 118, and 594 chapters after Psalm 118.

If you add 594 to 594...you get 1188. (Which...in case you don't get it...looks rather like the reference to the middle verse...Psalm 118:8)

Makes you ponder doesn't it?

Is it that God has deliberately arranged the Bible in this way, so that we are meant to understand this as the absolute centre of his message to us?

Or is it that the Bible is so full of good advice for living that wherever the centre is, one is almost bound to find such good advice.

I don't know. And perhaps we aren't meant to know.

Perhaps that's part of the mystery.

In any case, in a world which is falling apart, economically and environmentally (and in just about every other way one can think of) its a verse we might all do well to ponder.

Let me type it again..."It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man".





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Away in a Bus Shelter

Bus shelters across the UK are to feature an oil painting of the nativity this Christmas. The twist is that the painting depicts the holy family themselves huddled in an urban bus shelter. Artist Andrew Gadd, a Royal Academy Gold-medal winner, said a bus stop ‘is after all a shelter – a place people go to but never want to be. So where better to stage a nativity?’ He explained that the image will ‘reflect the environment’ it is shown in and ‘include the viewer’. The paintings will appear on posters sponsored by the Churches Advertising Network (CAN). Chairman Francis Goodwin said the aim is to help people ‘reassess what the birth of Jesus means to them’.

Pretty good stuff, I say.

Advent Waiting

A short introduction to a joint Advent Carol Service - held on Sunday 30 November at the Church of the Ascension (our neighbouring parish).

The season of Advent marks the beginning of the Church's new year...the date from which our lectionary starts. (A lectionary is a list of readings which are set for the whole church). So I should wish you a Happy New Year really. It's a strange choice, on the church's part. Logic, as Mr Spock would say, would dicate another weekend for the start of the Church's year - perhaps Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost (thought of as the birthday of the Church).

But when the Church first agreed that Advent was the start of the year - they knew what they were doing. God's spirit was, I think, leading them to quite a profound view of the rhythm of life, and the rhythm of the church's year.

Waiting is something we all have to do from time to time. We wait for the dinner to be cooked, we wait for that new job to start, we wait for that wedding, that birthday, that major event in our family's life...or for the arrival of Christmas once again.

Waiting does us good. It teaches us to live in the moment...to be aware of what is to come, even to anticipate it with joy. But we learn, too, that life goes on, and that God is at work in us even on the darkest of winter days. By waiting we learn to curb our desires, to be content with what we have...to look for God and for happiness among the day to day - and not to invest all our hope in some future event.

All of us know what it is like to say 'if only such and such would happen...then everything would be alright'. And all of us know that hollow feeling of disappointment when what we have yearned for doesn't actually satisfy us. If you are fortunate enough never to have experienced that, then ask the millionaire lottery winner...who yearned to win their millions...and then found that having them did nothing to alter their bad relationships, or their addictions, or their general dissafisfaction with life. Ask the child who strained towards Christmas, looking forward to it with every fibre of their being, and then found that Mum and Dad still argued, and there were no batteries for the toy. Ask the compulsive shopaholic who imagines, from time to time, that just one more dress, or one more pair of shoes, or one more computer game will bring them them happiness they crave.

The present Archbishop of Canterbury describes the Christian faith as having a 'now and not yet' quality about it. We live our faith in the day to day, seeing the Kingdom begin established all around us through the every day actions of love which take place between all people of good will. But we also see the places where the Kingdom is not yet... and with the prophets and apostles of old, we yearn and we wait for 'thy kingdom come, thy will be done'.

Tonight (website note: at the Advent Carol Service with our friends at the neighbouring parish of the Ascension) we will be hearing the stories of waiting once again. We will be reminded of Abraham who had been promised much by God, but who had to go on with the day to day job of living obediently while he waited for God's promises to be fulfilled. We will be reminded of the prophets, and their Jewish followers...who looked forward with longing to the coming of the Messiah. We will think about the Mother of our Lord, who had to wait through the nine months of her pregnancy, and then the early years of her Son's life to see what the Angel had told her come to pass.

As we listen again to these stories, we shall be alert to the 'now'... to this holy moment of coming together, as people of God from two different traditions but united in love. We shall be alert to the activity of God in our lives, in our parishes, and in our world. We shall be alert to the dance of God, dancing the beat of the rhythm of life. We shall be alert to the voice of God - announcing and assuring us of his coming among us with grace and with power. "I am coming." "I am coming".

Amen! Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus!

The Last, the Least and the Lost

Matthew 25:31-46: The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. For Sunday November 23rd (the Feast of Christ the King)

Here's a video I made of this reading some time ago. Some of the images in it - especially scenes of The Judgment - will help understanding of the sermon!

If I was Dr Who, and if I had a Tardis, I could take you back in time ...about 700 years...into the darkness of the Middle Ages.

In most churches of that time was something which would have made you gasp...if you were not used to such things. There, suspended above your head - usually painted on the wall - was often found a depiction of the Day of Judgment. Such pictures usually followed the same pattern. They showed Jesus, sitting on a throne, - the King of Kings - with all of humanity divided on either side of him.

On his right were the righteous...pictures of saints and good people who would be welcomed into heaven...the sheep of today's gospel reading. But on his left would be the 'goats' - those evil-doers who would be condemned to eternal punishment.

These pictures of the Last Judgment were a pretty unsubtle message to the great mass of churchgoers. Many of them, of course, could not read - and grand murals of the Last Judgment were designed to get a clear message across: watch out, or you might find yourself on the wrong side of the throne!

Some of the artists who painted these last judgments, all over the world, were a pretty cheeky lot. There are still some famous ones which, for example, portray well known politicians of the time as being among the goats. And there are even some which showed bishops and priests as being among those who were condemned to hell! Cheeky so-and-so's! Thankfully, especially for us priests, the majority of these Last Judgment paintings were covered over during the Reformation!

But there are still enough of them around, in medieval churches across the land, to remind us that when the Scriptures refer to Jesus as our King - the King of Kings, in fact - they mean business.

Let's just think, for a moment, about what it means to live under the reign of the King of Kings. Perhaps it might help if we were to shift our language a little. Very few people in this modern world know what it is like to live under the real power and authority of an actual Monarch. Perhaps it might help us to say that we live under the 'government' of God. We who call ourselves followers of Jesus choose to place ourselves under his rule. We choose to follow his government...his laws and ways of doing things. That's what it means to be a citizen of heaven.

But Scripture has a way of challenging us - even we who have signed up to the 'God-party'...to living under the Government of Jesus. Passages like today's gospel - and those medieval church paintings which were drawn from it - they give us cause to wonder whether we've truly grasped the full implications of what we have signed up for. This passages drives us to ask how fully we have grasped the reality of living under the Government of God. It asks us to think about how we have behaved towards the weakest members of our society - the sick, the hungry, the stranger and those in prison. Or what we might call the 'last, the least, and the lost of our society'.

I generated a little controversy last week, when I publicly questioned the City Council's attitude towards Travellers (or Gypsies as we sometimes call them). I got really angry to see a quote in the local newspaper from our City Council Leader, in which he was reported as saying "We don't want Travellers here". And that was after the Government has asked local authorities to look for sites where Traveller communities can put down roots, and become members of local communities.

You see, I think that a society is judged by how it treats the weakest of its members. And Travellers are treated, by us, like Samaritans were treated by the Jews. And how the Jews were ultimately treated by the Nazis. They are the scapegoats...the ones we blame for litter and crime...as though if we got rid of Gypsies from our City, then all the crime and litter would disappear as well! So I wrote a letter to the newspaper...in the vain hope that I might persuade our politicians to think again.(To see what I wrote, click here)

You see, according to the Gospel, Jesus is to be found precisely among those people who are the last, the least and the lost of our society. When we shun those who are not like us...those whose way of life we disapprove of...are we not in danger of shunning Jesus himself?

It can be a little overwhelming to read the story of the Sheep and the Goats. It can make us wonder whether we are ever doing enough to help the last, the least and the lost. Especially when we see poverty, sickness, loneliness all around us in our own City...and on our TVs.

It is right, of course, that we should each ask ourselves the question, all the time. Am I doing enough? Could I do more to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and welcome the stranger? But we must not go overboard with worry. Jesus himself, in the story, says "just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me". One of the least of these...

We are members of the body of Christ. As we work together, each one of us doing what we can to touch the lives of even one of the last, the least and the lost - then we are doing what we have been commanded to do. Working together, each of us making our own contribution, however small, we CAN change the world. We can, by God's grace, establish the Government of God in our own city streets.

This is our vocation. This is what we are called to do - we who are the citizens of heaven. The word 'vocation' has the same root as the word 'vocalise'... it means a call... a cry from our King of Kings that we are invited to respond to. It is for each of us to pray and to explore with God and with one another what it is he is calling us to do - as part of his Holy Government Policy of bringing peace and justice to the least, the last and the lost.

Every one of us has a vocation...a calling. For most of us, that calling will be one that is lived out through our daily lives, in our workplaces, schools, and families. But for some there is a different calling... a vocation to become a priest, or a deacon, or a reader; someone who is set apart for a particular task within the church... the task of leading, encouraging and where necessary challenging the church and its people.

The Church of England is currently experiencing a shortage of such people. There is a need to set apart more people who can take on that role of preaching, teaching and leading. So I'm going to finish with one last challenge for you to contemplate...

Could it be that God might be calling you...yes you...to be set apart for the task of being a priest or a deacon or a reader in the Church? Is that something that you have been wondering... something that perhaps God has been prompting you to think about? If it is, then let me encourage you to get in touch. Let's think and pray together about how God might be calling you - whether he is calling you towards the priest-hood, the diaconate, or towards any other form of vocation. All of us have a vocation...a calling. But sometimes we need the help of others to crystallise that calling into something definite... something we can act upon.

But something we can all be certain of is that all of us - all of us who live as citizens of the Government of God - are called, all the time, to keep on loving and reaching out, to the last, the least and the lost.

Amen