Pilgrim

Message   13 November 2016 A message for Remembrance Sunday - What is Remembrance about?  My English thesaurus offers the following concerning the word Remembrance.   Recollection, reminiscence, retrospection, keepsake, consideration, regard and thought among others.   The words suggest a “gathering in” of that which we want to hold dear to.   The word “Remember” bears echoes of Re-membering, a re-joining to a collective sense of our community.    By the act of re-membering someone or something, we consciously bring that person or event within the walls of our community.   We keep it safe, as we would a keepsake.   War takes people from the experiences of an ordinary life into extra- ordinary situations and experience.   Many of these experiences are too horrific to speak about openly.   Witnesses to man’s seeming insatiable desire to inflict suffering on each other often need help to re-join so called “Normal Society”. ...

Sermon GMC 30/10/2016 I guess at first glance it might seem a bit odd placing a gospel parable about the evil tenants that we heard in Luke with the celebration of a baptism, a time when the church praises alongside the Angels and Archangels in Heaven when a soul reaches out to accept God’s love and forgiveness. However; and in scripture there is always a however.   Baptism is more than a feel good day and a time of celebration.   It is that of course, but it is also a public demonstration of an individual’s decision to follow Jesus; and it’s more than that.   It is a reminder to all of us who have passed through the waters of baptism of the promises we have made before God and before our fellow people.   A reminder too, perhaps, of where we all are on our own   journey of pilgrimage.   A time perhaps for reflection.   Are we making progress?   Are we growing?   Have we taken a wrong turning?   Do we need to seek out again the a...

Today I want to discuss the New Covenant and what Scripture may or may not say about it.   In our first reading today, the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of a new beginning and also in a line often forgotten in the reading talks about individual responsibility, vv29-30;   In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”   But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.   In other words, no longer will children have to pay for the sins of their forebears.   Jeremiah was likely saying here that the new Israel will not pay for the failings of the old Nation state.   Rather it is the one who rebels who will face the consequencies.   Some theologians argue that vv31-34, a very well known piece of scripture does not speak of the new covenant in Jesus but speaks contextually to a renewal of God’s covenant with Israel.   There ...

Just over a month ago, I spoke about trust being at the heart of our relationship with ourselves and with God.   We spoke about the importance of seeing beyond someone’s role to the individual themselves, to see people as people, persons created by God in his own image, and we know what the Bible says quite explicitly about his creation.   God saw it and he saw that it was good.   And then there was the referendum, and Oh so quickly the country forgot about all that trust stuff, and we have lined up in opposing camps looking distrustingly over at the other.   On the day some people remembered the disgusting loss of human life that is called the Battle of the Somme, others found themselves in new trenches, looking over no man’s land in fear and shock and wondering what the other side would do.   There has been a consequential rise in hate crime, a Pandora’s box has been opened and now people are trying to find ways of dealing with deeply felt beliefs and ove...