Methodist Bishop

Mark 5.21-24 & 35-43 How like a Bible mum and dad are your mums and dads? Have your mum or your dad ever lost you in a crowd? When my elder son David was still in his pushchair we went with him and our daughter into British Home Stores. My wife Helen wanted to look at some clothes, but she also had something to return, which she gave to me. 'Take it to the returns’ desk,’ she said, 'Then come and find me.’ When I got back to her she said, Where's David?’ I said, 'I thought he was with you!’ When I got back to the returns’ desk he was still sitting in his pushchair, over to one side, blithely unaware that I had left him; a bit like Jesus - who got separated from his parents in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and was blithely unaware that they would be worrying about him! Do your mum or your dad sometimes mix you up with your brothers and sisters? Actually this is another of my failings. My elder grandaughter, Erin, looks so much like her mother did when...

Isaiah 24, Colossians 1.15-20 This passage from the Book of Isaiah was assembled a long after his own time. We know this because it’s a pastiche of other poetic prophecies, from Amos, Jeremiah, Hosea, and probably other unknown prophets whose poems didn’t make it into the Old Testament apart from here. But whereas the original prophecies all applied to specific times and places they have been reimagined here as a general warning about the perils of breaking God’s covenant. The message is that God won’t be too chuffed. He will twist the earth out of shape, like someone screwing up rubbish and throwing it away. Long ago, says the compiler of this passage, God called us to look after the earth and be co-creators or collaborators with him. It’s not clear when the Prophet thinks God is supposed to have made this covenant with us. Was it at the very beginning of the human story, when God told human beings to take dominion over the earth in his name? Or was it in the time of Noah, when t...

Exodus 30.1-10, 22-33, Hebrews 9.1-12 The rituals surrounding incense may seem irrelevant to Methodist worship in the Twenty-first Century, and yet they raise intriguing questions which are still relevant to us. When I was a minister in the inner city, twenty years ago now, there was some discussion about joining our congregation with the equally small and struggling Anglican congregation next-door. But there was an insurmountable problem. For many years, until the man who mixed the incense left the church, they were in the habit of using incense during their services. At intervals they would waft great clouds of it over the congregation, the lectern and the altar. ‘If we worship there the incense will get on my chest,’ one church steward declared. The fact that she was a heavy smoker probably got on her chest too, but seemed to be of less concern. She would have sympathised with the more traditionally minded worshippers of ancient Israel, who had their own concerns about incens...

Matthew 10:26-28, L uke 16:19-31 In his book The Republic , the philosopher Plato wondered what would happen if we could do anything we liked without being detected and punished. He drew on the fable of the shepherd Gyges who, after an earthquake, stumbled upon an ancient tomb where he discovered a magic ring. By twisting the ring in his finger or in his pocket he found that he could make himself invisible. Using his new gift Gyges went to the palace, crept into the queen’s bedroom, seduced her and then persuaded her to help him kill the king, a task for which the invisible ring also came in very handy. In The Republic Plato's mentor Socrates poses the question, ‘What might we be tempted to do if we thought we could get away with something wicked without being detected?’ The virtuous person would, of course, behave just the same way if they thought they were invisible as they would if they thought someone could see them. But are we really that virtuous? A security guard ...

James 4:13-5:11 I work for part of my time as the manager of a community organisation in Sheffield called Darnall Forum . It provides adult community learning, especially for people who didn’t grow up speaking English, gives employment advice and runs the local post office. But ‘austerity’ has hit us hard. Older readers will remember a song about a Wild West settler called George whose wagon - loaded with all his possessions and carrying his wife and children  too - is being pursued by Cherokee Indians. ‘ Three wheels on my wagon ,’ he sings, ‘But I’m still rolling along!’ That’s how it often feels at Darnall Forum. The wheels are coming off the wagon, one by one, but we’re still just about rolling along. My wife sometimes asks me, ‘How long is Darnall Forum going to keep going?’ and I never know the answer. James tells his readers, ‘You should know better than to say, “We’ll do business in the City for a year and make a lot of money.” What do you know,’ he goes on, ‘About ...

Exodus 20.1-17, Matthew 22:36-40 Do you have any school rules at  your school, or did you have school rules when you used to be a pupil? One of the rules when I started secondary school was that boys must wear a cap, so my parent dutifully bought one for 7/6, which was a fair bit of money in those days. On my first day I turned up wearing the new cap but one of the older boys said, ‘Put that away right now or someone will snatch it off your head and you’ll spend the rest of the day chasing round trying to get it back.’ So I stuffed it in my pocket and never wore it again. My parents were not pleased. But that was nothing compared to the money we wasted on two knee length pleated woollen skirts which the school rules said my daughter Jenny must wear when she went to secondary school. On her first day I dropped her off just as an older girl walked in front of the car wearing nothing - well, I mean she did have shoes and tights on - but otherwise nothing more than a little tie,...