Methodist Bishop

Isaiah 53.3 - 12 John 18.28 - John 19.42 In a great many ways we resemble other living things. As we've seen before, we've got an awful lot in common with a banana plant, and that's because all living things on earth are descended from the same single celled organisms that first emerged from primordial chaos billions of years ago.  Like other animals, we also feel hunger, thirst, pain and satisfaction, we wake and sleep, we reproduce, we have to breathe to live, and eventually we die. But we're also unique, at least among life on earth. Unlike most animals, we’re capable of thinking not just about the past and the present but also about the future, and imagining what that might be. Some animals can do the same thing up to a point. They can think about what might happen next if they do something, or something were to happen, today or tomorrow. But human beings can imagine a whole different way of living in the future. A chimpanzee can only ever imagine living in...

John 12.1-8, 27-28 One of the things that scientists have discovered about our universe is that it isn't as predictable as it once seemed. There was a time when scientists believed it runs like clockwork, and at some levels it does. The planets orbit the sun like clockwork, our bodies work in fairly predictable ways and even the weather can be predicted a few days ahead with reasonable accuracy. But probe beneath the surface and the world starts to look disturbingly random. Let’s think for a moment about my journey to work from Hemsworth to Sheffield. There are basically three ways I could go. Two of them are roughly the same length, the route which takes the backways around Rotherham and the route along the Dearne Valley Parkway and the M1 motorway. Both go to Meadowhall. The third way is longer and involves travelling along three different motorways and a dual carriageway, but it avoids Meadowhall. I listen to the traffic bulletins on the radio, so each day I have to decid...