1 Kings 19:1-15a Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39 If you ask a United Reformed Church Minister why they do, or why they don’t, wear a clerical collar, you’ll receive a wide variety of answers from every conceivable point of view, but what you can be sure of is that they’ll have a good answer. For those…
Galatians 2:15-21 Luke 7:36-8:3 ’ere mate, you can’t you do that! It’s against ’elf n safety, innit! The killjoys of our age are definitely Health and Safety, we love to demonise it. It seems almost an obsession in this country to ban all manner of common sense things in the name of health and safety,…
Jonah 3:1-5 Matthew 5:38-41 Mark 10:28-31 Today the church marks the feast day of an Irishman who was accused of theft and murder, but who brought Christianity to Scotland and half of England. His name was Columba; he was born in Ireland in 521, and died in Scotland in 597. Columba studied under the legendary…
Luke 7:1-10 We were only eleven when the slave traders abducted us. Came and snatched us as we were playing in the fields, back home in Ethiopia. My twin brother and me, like two peas in a pod we were; even our parents sometimes got us muddled up. The slave traders were delighted with us;…
Galatians 1:1-12 I wonder what makes you angry? Driving in Farnham, especially when roads are closed, would seem, from their behaviour, to make many people angry. Many sports fans get angry when their team doesn’t perform as they expect, while politicians cause others to shout at their television sets. Others of us loose our cool…
Genesis 22:1-18 Acts 11:1-18 John 13:31-35 We live in days when we’re very concerned about child protection, and the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac strikes most of us as particularly barbaric. How traumatic it must have been for poor little Isaac! But, if we can, let’s leave our own culture aside…
John 13:31-35 I’m well aware that whenever I go away to any course or conference, there are some people in the church who are dread this, simply because they worry about what new ideas I’ll have come up with. I think that’s rather how the disciples were feeling in this week’s reading. We’re eavesdropping on…
Genesis 18:1-15 Genesis 35:1-7 Luke 24: 13 – 35 A burglar broke into a house and was looking around. He heard a soft voice say, “Jesus is watching you”. Thinking it was just his imagination, he continued his search. Again the voice said, “Jesus is watching you”. He turned his flashlight around and saw a…
Luke 19:28-40 Genesis 31:45-50 1 Samuel 7:12-14 A group of Americans was touring Ireland. One of the women in the group was a real curmudgeon, constantly complaining. The bus seats are uncomfortable the food is terrible It’s too hot, It’s too cold, and the hotels are awful. One of those people who really knows how…
Psalm 139 Matthew 15:21-28 The last film which Peter Sellers made was Being There in 1980, and I don’t suppose it’s the one for which he’ll be most remembered. He played a feeble-minded gardener whose entire knowledge of life came from watching television. It’s not the content of the film that caught my attention, but…