Methodist Bishop

Romans 6.1b-11 & Matthew 10:24-39 The arguments which Paul sets out in his letter to the church in Rome became - much later - the foundations on which the Protestant interpretation of Christianity was constructed. They were also deeply influential for early Methodism. It was while he was listening to Martin Luther’s explanation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans that John Wesley found his heart strangely warmed by a new understanding of what being a disciple of Jesus really means. Paul’s predicament was that he was eager to visit the new and influential church in Rome but most of the Christians there didn’t know him personally, and what they had heard about him had left them feeling deeply uneasy. Paul found himself compelled, therefore, to set out the truth about what he believed, in contrast to the stories that were circulating about his teaching. Chief among these seems to have been the idea that human beings are irredeemably flawed by a deeply ingrained self-centredness and can onl...

Genesis 18.1-15 &  Matthew 9.35-10.8 In the New Testament Abraham and Sarah become examples of true faithfulness. Like Jesus’ twelve disciples they gave up everything in order to obey God's call. God made huge promises to them - but they were mostly promises for future generations yet to come, not for them personally: a promised land and innumerable descendants. And crucially God didn't explain how these promises were going to come true, given that  - as the years passed - Sarah remained childless and eventually reached the menopause, or at least the peri-menopause. They had left home, family and the comforts of civilization behind, and travelled into the wilderness, all on a promise of delayed gratification. No wonder that Sarah laughed when one of the strangers repeated the promise that she and Abraham would still have a child together. As Keir Starmer has discovered, people are more impatient now. They don't want a promise of good times in five years or ten years fro...