Methodist Bishop

Isaiah 58.1-12 Matthew 5.13-20 Salt is a seasoning. We add it to our food to make it more interesting. Without any salt at all food can sometimes be tasteless and bland. Salt is an antiseptic. It has healing properties. Sometimes, if we have a scar that needs to heal, the doctor will tell us to have salt baths to make it heal faster. Salt is essential for life, especially in hot weather. But even in England, if we don’t have enough of it, we will feel faint and unwell. But too much salt is also bad for us. It makes us thirsty. Sometimes restaurants give customers salty snacks and food to persuade them to buy more drinks. Instead of being thirsty for the wrong reasons, and for the wrong kind of things, may salt remind us: That Jesus can be the seasoning we need to make our lives more interesting and to help us spice up the lives of the people around us in ways that will help them and challenge them; That Jesus can bring healing and peace, and reassurance and comfort, like the antisepti...

Micah 6.1-8 1 Corinthians 1.18-31 Matthew 5.1-12 I saw a programme on TV the other week about how graduates from Oxford, in particular, are currently dominating Parliament. They make up the majority of leaders in both the coalition government and the Labour Party, so there’s no getting away from them. The programme included a scene filmed at the famous Oxford Union, the university debating society. It was a strange mixture of people in dinner jackets and posh frocks making speeches to an audience sitting listening in tee-shirts and jeans. This morning's passage from the prophecy of Micah conjures up the image of a similar kind of debate - not held in the hallowed halls of some ancient university, but in the open air, in somewhere like the Lake District where the debaters can stand on a hillside, overlooking a vast audience assembled in the valley below, and shout their message so loudly that it echoes round the hills. Of course, it’s not only students who can speak in the Oxford U...