Category: ‘Sermon’ like material

  • All Saints and Acorns

    All Saints and Acorns

    In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 20. 27-38)  Jesus is asked a complicated question about life, death, marriage and eternity.  At least one of those has a little certainty about it!  In reading this passage, the phrase, “Any fool can make things complicated…” comes to mind.  But Jesus doesn’t.  He makes it simple.  So in the…

  • Seeing Jesus sideways

    Seeing Jesus sideways

    Some years ago an American Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr spoke on the subject of ‘Looking Sideways’.  There were three talks:  Looking sideways at God, at the Church and at Christ.  One theme ran through them all:  You don’t see what you are not told to look for.  Today our Gospel Reading is the story of…

  • struggle and reconstruction

    struggle and reconstruction

    We often find our own answers in amongst our struggles in life.  Often what we desire and seek may not give us any lasting satisfaction.  Perhaps that is what Jesus is getting at in The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge.  He asks the troubling question at the end, will the Son of…

  • One life each at the church of sharp edges

    One life each at the church of sharp edges

    I saw this church made of scrap at Greenbelt this year.  It was built to advertise the URC campaign ‘scrap the church’. It made me think about what is important, especially at times of festivals when we like to put on a ‘good show’. What is it that we hunger and thirst for?  Is it…

  • The Spring onion of Salvation

    The Spring onion of Salvation

    We love to tell stories. Jesus it seems was no exception.  Lazarus and the Rich Man.  It is a traditional tale.  We love the villain to get comeuppance, we love the hero to win and we love the journey between.  A story with many similarities to this turns up in, perhaps an unlikely setting, Fyodor…

  • In search of a fold

    In search of a fold

    There are at least two ways of seeing in every situation.  Seeing what is before you in isolation and seeing in the context of everything else.  One way of seeing our readings today could be I suppose as an encouragement to see things from another’s point of view.  Take the image of a stone circle…

  • The twisted tree is me

    The twisted tree is me

    At first glance this tree looks quite ordinary.  Almost dead, but quite ordinary.  Perhaps a slightly more charitable assessment would be to suggest that it is clinging on to life.  It is, I hope still there, on a footpath above Trefriw up towards Llyn Geirionydd, for it is worth going to see.  There are countless…

  • Christ and the Hiddenness of God

    Christ and the Hiddenness of God

    This began as a conversation, and has nagged at me for the past week, so to do it justice, I thought it ought to be put down in some form, then perhaps it will go away, however, such thoughts rarely do.  The conversation was about talking about ‘God’ and the statement, ‘but you believe in…

  • Carnivore or Herbivore?

    Carnivore or Herbivore?

    Carnivore or Herbivore? Was the question asked by Taliesin when he was asked to portray the Good Samaritan as a dinosaur.  And what a good question.  Should the image of the good Samaritan be one which drives us to go against our natural inclinations and do things which we might otherwise not do!  Is it…

  • Doubt, Faith and Honest Thomas

    Doubt is not the opposite of faith, that is certainty.  In a world where everything is governed by what is certain, there is no room for faith.  But that’s not the world we live in.  I remember upsetting someone at a youth group suggesting that those who did not have any doubts about their faith…