Methodist Bishop

Psalm 104 The Bible is always being criticised for giving rise to a domineering attitude towards creation, in which human beings, and men in particular, are encouraged to exercise mastery over it. But that's only one strand of the Bible's creation theology, the one from Genesis. Psalm 104 gives a totally different perspective. The Psalm celebrates almost the whole of creation purely for its own sake and with scarcely a reference to humankind. Even darkness and night are there so that ‘the animals of the forest’ can ‘come creeping out.’ In contrast, during the day while the lions are sleeping in their dens, ‘people go out to their work and to their labour until the evening.’ Another exception is the reference to plants. ‘You cause the... plants to grow for people to use, and wine to gladden the human heart, and bread to strengthen the human heart.’ But in most respects the rest of creation exists solely to please God and relate to its creator. ‘These all look to you to give t...

Mark 1.32-39 Someone was asked to come up with a checklist for the signs of a healthy church. [1] He went to the Bible and came up with a good Biblical number of boxes to tick - 12 - but not all of them are relevant to our situation so I have reduced   the list to ten. The first sign of a healthy church is that everyone is welcome. And that really does mean everyone, including visitors who make a bit of noise or cause a bit of a disturbance. I think that, by and large, we pass that test. The second sign is being ready to offer uncomplaining service to our local community. I think we're moving in a positive direction on that one too. We've just got approval for a second grant towards our Parish Nurses’ project to help local people lead healthier lives. But I recognize that projects like this demand considerable effort and commitment over a sustained period of time. Like a pet, serving the community is not just for Christmas. It's a year round, decades long, challenge...

Numbers 27.12-21, John 10.11-16 The federation of the tribes of Israel, gathered under Moses' leadership, was an experiment in a new kind of nation building where, instead of gathering around a king or queen, the people sought to follow God's will as mediated to them by Moses. In theory, once they knew what God wanted, and so long as they kept to these rules for living, the nation of Israel considered themselves to be a free people, no longer under the yoke of oppression, unlike every other nation on the earth. But as Moses’ death approached there was the risk of a leadership vacuum; in the Bible's view, even a free people needs a guiding hand on the tiller. Without any leadership at all, warned Moses, the people would be like sheep without a shepherd. It’s a recurring motif in the Bible story. Since the EU Referendum we've had our own experience of the need for leadership. In the Referendum we - the people - decided by a narrow margin to leave the EU, but we didn...

John 20.11-18 ‘God has to die,’ said David Peters a former army chaplain who served in Iraq. The God we learn about in Junior Church, who always keeps us safe, who can overcome everything that life could possibly throw at us, who makes sure that love and goodness always come out on top, ‘has to shatter into a thousand pieces, die, disappear or change.’ Only then can our belief in God survive the bad things that happen. Only then can we find a grown-up sort of faith. When he was serving with the army, Peters was inspired by ' Paul Tillich , a German American theologian who’d also served as a chaplain - but during the first world war. The carnage of that war and its heavy psychological toll pushed Tillich to the brink of his faith and beyond. Tillich hit rock bottom and... came to see God as ... a god who met him in darkness when the other version of God had proved trivial and inadequate.' Shattering into a thousand pieces sounds like a bad thing, but actually it can b...