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Sunday, 08 January 2012 17:01 |
Sunday 8th January 2012 (THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST)
Genesis 1.1-5; Acts 19.1-7 and Mark 1.4-11
In the film Finding Nemo Marlin, the father clownfish, is reunited with his son, Nemo who was taken from his home on the Great Barrier Reef and ended up in the fish tank of a Sydney dentist. And they all lived happily ever after. Well, not quite. For, although the main story ended, we soon discover that another story has begun. The fish who had helped Nemo escape from the tank had managed to free themselves, too. While their tank is being cleaned, they manage to roll the plastic bags they're in along the counter, out the window, across the street, and into Sydney Harbour. When the last one finally reaches the water, there is a great cheer and sigh of relief. And then the reality of their situation dawns upon them. Bobbing in the ocean, Bloat, the puffer fish, breaks the silence with the words: "Now what?" |
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Friday, 06 January 2012 19:29 |
Sunday 1st January 2011
Isaiah 61.10-62.3
Luke 2.22-40
What belongs to you but is used more by others?
Your name.
Does a person's name affect their character?
Names have always had meanings, or convey meanings, or say something about the parents. Teachers may tell us that certain names are associated with certain characteristics. These names are different in different generations and reflect the culture of the families who choose them - football or pop stars, celebrities. And there is a link between that culture and the attitude of the family to schooling.
We talk of a person’s Christian name but that is no more than convention these days and official forms say ‘first name’ rather than Christian name. |
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Wednesday, 04 January 2012 09:03 |
Wednesday 4th January 2012
Isaiah 60.1-6,
Matthew 2.1-12
The air waves and newspapers have lately been full of commentators reading the runes of last year's happenings and making predictions about this year. Which time will prove more or less accurate!
Much credence is given to these prophecies.
There were prophecies in Jesus day too, but more of a Messianic than economic nature. The Jews did not put much trust in political or economic management as a way of making things better. They looked to God who, they believed, would send his Messiah to deliver his people, give them a kingdom of their own, and in the process destroy all their enemies. Prophecy in the bible was about what God was doing or would do. |
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Sunday, 20 November 2011 07:01 |
Why Remember?
Sermon preached in Ellon Parish Church
The week before last I visited Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam. It's a house made famous because of a diary written by a teenage Anne Frank. In it she tells of her day to day life. It's full of the usual things you might find in the writings of a girl of that age.. Except that the last years of her diary were written in a small room in which she was confined, in a hidden annexe at the top of a house, with her family. Ann was a Jew. This was the 1940s and the Nazi occupiers of Holland were rounding up the Jews and deporting them to places like Auschwitz and Belsen and Birchenau. Peering cautiously through her window one day she witnessed fellow Jews being arrested and roughly treated and forced into a covered truck. She wrote in her dairy of her guilt that she was safe but also wrote, |
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Saturday, 24 September 2011 15:57 |
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Saint Mary and Saint James, Sunday 18th November.
Matthew 20.1-16
Why has God called you? For be assured he has. You would not be here if he had not. What has he called you to? To eternal life? And what is that? Eternal life is not the same as everlasting life. Everlasting life is just more and more of the same for ever and ever. Eternal life is something new. Eternal life is being caught up into the heart of creation, allied with God who created and sustains and redeems the Cosmos - all that is. Eternal life is different. It begins here and now, it is not just when we die. Jesus came that we might have life, and life in all its fullness. Life in all its fullness is not just what we have now but bigger. Life in all its fullness is different to the values of the world we have built for ourselves.
Jesus said life in all its fullness is the kingdom of God - the place where God is. And he opened the way to it. ‘Dying and living, he declared you love, gave us grace and opened the gate of glory,’ That’s part of one of our post communion prayers which we make to God at the end of our service.
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Saturday, 17 September 2011 15:53 |
Sermon Preached on Sunday 11th September 2011
Today is the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11. Our gospel reading is on forgiveness!
Peter thought he was making progress.
He thought he was beginning to understand what Jesus was trying to teach him.
His question about forgiveness, and his suggestion, was a genuine one.
There were other religious teachers, rabbis, who taught their disciples differing things about forgiveness. One Rabbi said ‘He who begs forgiveness from his neighbour must not do so more than three times’. Another said ‘If a man commits an offence one, they forgive him; if he commits an offence a second time they forgive him; if he commits an offence a third time they forgive him; the fourth time they do not forgive.
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Wednesday, 20 July 2011 11:14 |
Wednesday 20 Jul 2011
Exodus 16.1-5, 9-15
Matthew 13.1-9
In my garden I have grown some Kohl Rabi. Do you know what it is? Have you ever tasted it? I looked it up on the BBC Good Food site, where you can enter ingredients and it comes up with recipes. Nothing. A general search found a bit of information - I didn’t know it was a staple food in Kashmir. The BBC site is not much good. I searched for Manna and didn’t find anything. Then again, I guess it was a bit tongue in cheek.
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Friday, 13 May 2011 10:01 |
Sunday 8th May (Third Sunday of Easter)
Read Luke 24.13-35
Shirley Valentine is a comic-yet-poignant film about a bored, working-class housewife who feels life has somehow passed her by. Lavished with indifference by her husband Joe, Shirley Valentine famously resorts to talking to the kitchen wall to get things off her chest.
Eventually things get so bad that she books a holiday to Greece without telling Joe, who comes home from work to find the house in darkness and a note saying, “Gone to Greece: back in two weeks.”
Shirley enjoys her holiday so much that she decides to stay.
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Saturday, 07 May 2011 09:25 |
Sermon for Easter Sunday
Some Easter eggs (the deluxe - and more expensive ones) are full of luxury chocolates, some have just a small pack of smarties, others are empty (not that I have done extensive research you understand!). Perhaps you feel cheated with an empty chocolate egg? But in nature an empty egg is one from which new life has come. Like the empty tomb of Jesus.
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Wednesday, 06 April 2011 08:12 |
Read John 5.17-30
There are those who, despite fairly convincing evidence do not believe in Jesus. They do not believe he existed at all. They will, however accept the existence of other, even obscure historical figures on much less evidence. Funny that!
There are those who accept that Jesus existed, who say he was a good man but no more than that - a good man who was deluded about who he was. They believe Jesus was a real historical person but they do not believe that he was the Son of God. like Moslems, for example, who believe Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God.
C.S. Lewis says we have to make a decision about Jesus of Nazareth. He writes in his book 'Mere Christianity',
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