Methodist Bishop

Romans 5.1-5 It’s interesting that in Romans Paul talks about finding peace and hope and grace, but then goes on to link it so strongly with suffering. We know that he speaks from experience when he says that suffering produces endurance and builds character. I guess that’s what we might expect him to say. Perhaps it’s more surprising to find that he thinks suffering and adversity also produce hope which prevents us from being disappointed when things go wrong. Instead he says that God’s love, poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, makes suffering and danger bearable.

Romans 8.14-17, Acts 2.1-21 It’s interesting that Luke tells us so much about the fears dangers which the early Christians faced. He begins the story of how the first disciples responded to the resurrection by telling us that they were so frightened and demoralised that even when they were with Jesus they still felt doubtful and afraid. Yet Luke quickly follows that account with the transformative events of the Day of Pentecost, when the disciples were suddenly emboldened and empowered. If we look closely at the language he uses we will see that it was actually a very alarming experience. There are violent sounds which fill the house where the disciples are gathered, there’s a sense of light and heat, there’s bewilderment and perplexity as strange sounds come out of their mouths, and even when Peter tries to restore calm - with a reasoned explanation of what’s happening - he still says some pretty alarming things. This is, he says, is the End Time predicted by the Prophet Joel. Pete...

Acts 16:16-34   When Paul is telling us about the dangers he faced he’s often quite understated and matter of fact. It’s interesting, therefore, to hear Luke’s first-hand account of one of those experiences in this passage from the lectionary readings for May. H ere Luke spares us no details and spells out the drama of the situation in the most lurid terms. Notice the arresting way in which the slave girl describes these early Christians. They are not servants of God, with rights and privileges. They are not entitled to be protected from danger. Instead, they are ‘slaves’. Slaves have to do unquestioningly whatever their owner tells them. This includes putting themselves in harm’s way and doing dangerous things. When Paul responds by healing the girl, her divinations about him and Silas are proved true. Luke, of course, escapes, no doubt grateful to be push aside as they are dragged before the magistrates, attacked by the mob and then beaten with rods, the traditional Roman pun...

The Hinton St Mary Mosaic John 21.1-14, Acts 9:1-6 Who is the person pictured in the Mosaic? He’s a youngish looking man with shoulder length, swept-back fair hair. Most people think he’s clean-shaven, but is there just a hint of designer stubble on his chin? He’s wearing ordinary clothes for the time, a tunic or long shirt and a woollen cloak. On either side of his face there are two pomegranates!  And behind his head are two letters superimposed on top of one another. They look like the letters P and X, but in fact they’re from the Greek alphabet and they are the letters Chi and Rho, roughly speaking our ‘CH’ sound and our letter ‘R’. So together they make the sound “Chr”, the beginning of the name ‘Christ’, so the symbol tells us that this is probably meant to be the face of Jesus staring out at us from the mosaic. But there’s a problem, isn’t there? He doesn’t look like Jesus! We’re used to seeing Jesus with a beard and longer, usually brown hair. This p...

Psalm 27, Philippians 3:17-21, Luke 13.34-35 Next week my wife and I are going to see a famous play called Dr Faustus by the Elizabethan Playwright Christopher Marlowe. The advert for the play said, ‘We all want what we can’t have. But what price would we pay to get it?’ We all want what we can’t have! What do you want? The latest i-phone or i-pad, designer clothes or shoes, an exciting holiday adventure in some exotic faraway place, a wonderful romance with someone stunningly attractive, a new car, a beautiful house to impress your friends, a breathtaking view from your window, long life and happiness perhaps, or lots of money? We all want what we can’t have! It’s not a new idea. The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament tell us not to covet other people’s things - their house, their husband or wife, their beautiful slave, their strong ox, their cuddly-looking donkey, or anything else that belongs to them. The people who wrote the Bible understood that it’s human nature for us all ...

Luke 4.21-30 My wife is a local preacher and the one thing she dislikes is preaching in her own church. I guess the famous words of Jesus echo in her ears as she’s preparing her sermon: No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. Actually, the last time she was there - a couple of weeks ago - the service was very well received, but we can imagine how nervous Jesus was going back to Nazareth and speaking in front of his family, friends and neighbours. Mark and Matthew only tell us that his message was not well received, but Luke goes further and tells us that - although at first they were surprised how eloquent Jesus was - the congregation quickly became enraged and tried to throw him off a nearby cliff. The implication is that they bundled him out of town towards the cliff face but apparently the nearest cliff is at least 20 minutes walk from the synagogue and perhaps not as close by as Luke imagined. Be that as it may, Luke’s seems to want to heighten the drama of the story. Lik...

Isaiah 60.1-6; Matthew 2.1-12 Whether or not Mathew intended his story about the wisemen to be a commentary on Isaiah Chapter 60, that is how generations of Christians have interpreted it. That’s why the wisemen have come to be seen as kings riding on camels. Matthew includes his story in the Gospel for a number of reasons: first to show that the birth of Jesus is not just significant for Jewish people, or even for human beings - it is a truly show-stopping event with comic significance; second, he wants to show that even people from other faiths can acknowledge the importance of Jesus, since the wisemen were probably Zoroastrians, an ancient faith which began in Persia and attaches huge significance to the victory of light over darkness; third, he wants to show that Jesus’ birth fulfils ancient Jewish prophecies; and finally to show that Jesus makes a difference to politics and world events. Believing in him is not just a private and personal thing. It’s interesting that - in his C...

Zephaniah 3.14-20 Philippians 4.4-7 Zephaniah prophesied in turbulent times. He seems to have been an adviser to the young King Josiah, who came to the throne as a child of eight after the murder of his father. Not that the Prophet approved of Josiah’s father. On the contrary, he was determined to mould the young Josiah’s character so that he would take an entirely different direction from his father. And in his early prophecies, perhaps when he was trying to get the new policy established, Zephaniah rails against the terrible behaviour both of Josiah’s father and of his grandfather too. They had worshipped the Canaanite gods Molech, Baal and Astarte and had practised soothsaying, magic and child sacrifice as well as ordinary everyday idolatry. Although Josiah’s grandfather had reigned for 55 years, the Bible and Zephaniah brand him a terrible failure and a blot on Judah’s history. In comparison Josiah was a blazing success morally, but unfortunately he lacked the diplomatic skills of ...

Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36 A prayer from Christian Aid, written for Advent, begins, ‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’ During the week I run a post office, and people are not very good at waiting. One day four big heavy bags of coins were delivered. By the time I’d taken delivery of them and then manhandled them into the coin safe the queue was getting restless. Not long after, but when I was safely out of the post office, a disgruntled customer snapped off the ‘Please wait here!’ sign. Somebody wrote a note saying they had queued for twenty minutes - surely an exaggeration. But then one of our trustees had been to the Co-op Bank where she was kept waiting for 25 minutes. And there was a clock in the branch, on that occasion, to prove it. We have to do a lot of waiting, don’t we? ‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’ But why should we need courage? Wouldn’t patience be a more relevant gift? What exactly are we afraid of?...

Ruth 3.1-5, 4.13-17, 1 Kings 17.8-16, Hebrews 9.24-28 Here are two Old Testament readings in the lectionary - a hard one and an easier one. The hard one comes from the story of Ruth, and it’s a hard reading to talk about because it is so alien to our understanding of what women should aspire to in their lives. Ruth was an immigrant, and worse still she was the daughter-in-law of an elder widow, Naomi, whom she had to try to support. Purely because of her own unselfishness and loyalty to Naomi, whom she could just as easily have abandoned and gone back to her own family, she found herself stuck at the bottom of the economic pile and the future didn’t look too bright for her. But Naomi had a cunning plan. Strictly speaking, the head of her husband’s clan - Boaz - had a duty to take care of them both. Clearly this wasn’t happening, otherwise Ruth wouldn’t have been going out scrounging for barley - picking up the gleaners left behind by the reapers in the field. But by God’s providence R...

Hebrews 5.1-10 The writer of Hebrews tells us a great deal here about his understanding of Jesus, but he starts with his understanding of what it means to be a priest. Of course, in the traditional Methodist understanding of priesthood we are all priests, so perhaps he is also telling us what it means to be a Christian. Part of our job is to be a go-between, a bridge, between God and people on the fringe of our church life - people who are supporters rather than joiners - and people in the neighbourhood too for whom we are their community church. A lot of people look to us to do God shaped things for them. They're not ready yet to it for themselves. They might never be ready! They want us to do religion vicariously for them, on their behalf. Of course, being a Christian doesn't mean that it's necessary for us to do anything on behalf of other people or that we have to represent them to God as a priest would normally do. None of us needs an intermediary, we can all approac...