Rev elations

Detail, The Census at Bethlehem , Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Mary and Joseph The Census at Bethlehem , Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1565 By Pieter Brueghel the Elder - The Adoration of the Magi, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20714243 Brueghel's masterful paintings of religious stories, set in the hustle and bustle of 16th century Flemish life and landscape, are a fantastic reminder that God doesn't tend to show up in our lives by the announcement of golden-halo wearing angels . Religious story-telling tends to go in for gold and glitter, for God's incontrovertible presence. Perhaps, it would have been better to tell the story in the way that Brueghel has. To recognise that God appears gently and quietly into our lives, if at all. This Christmas, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people will celebrate Christmas without even thinking about Jesus Christ. As a priest, I wonder, what's the point in the church having its l...

What does it mean to live in the kingdom of God? I would like to contrast 2 attitudes. Self-righteousness versus Humility To live in the kingdom of God is to have our hearts transformed from arrogant self-righteousness to humble compassion and mercy. We are invited to live in the kingdom of God, but it takes all of us to make it and create it. Christianity is a social (and therefore political) religion. What is self-righteousness? The self-righteousness person thinks that he or she has earned and deserved his/her own success and good fortune. The self-righteous person refuses to understand the poverties and inequalities of our world and equates success with personal gain. It involves judgment (and condemnation) of others. Self-righteousness is the primary sin of the Pharisees and Jesus is forceful and swift with his condemnation of it. They claimed the love and favour of God as being due to their own personal worthiness, rather than seeing that it is God who is worthy. Such an a...

Why bother opening the doors to madness? A church can't pay the bills, we have No  Business We offer care and tea Prayer Candles Whilst God enters unheard but noticed into a humble, maiden soul silently becoming unravelling sin

Journeying in Expectation and in Hope Lectionary Readings,  Advent 1 Jeremiah 33.14-16; Psalm 25.1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13, Luke 21.25-36 Looking towards the East End Reredos and window Christianity is a future-oriented religion ; standing at the back of St Andrew’s Church, Rugby (William Butterfield, architect) we notice how our hope is written in the stones of the building, in the way it tells its story. We look at Christ (as the one who is ascended into heaven) above the high altar. Our eyes are drawn to this image through the architectural sight lines – everything in the building’s bones draws us to this spectacle of Christ ascended into glory. William Butterfield resisted the tradition of displaying Christ on the cross on the reredos of the high altar, as is seen in so many examples of religious iconography across churches in the west. Rather, he prefers to show this in the glorious east end window. In so doing he places the suffering of Jesus on the cross with...

For the Feast Day of St Luke, 18th October, Evangelist and Physician How should we understand healing as Christians? What does healing and wholeness mean for us? Christianity asks us to grapple with ourselves – to take life seriously. Here, we do not escape the frustrating and complex questions that narrate our humanity. Why are we so vulnerable? Why is there death and decay? Why is nature so powerful, awesome and threatening? How can humans treat each other with such contempt and violence? Why does God let us suffer? How do I cope with the sin that drives me in my own life? Christians can be tempted when faced with such problems to preach a false message of miraculous cure and healing and in so doing they can do enormous damage. Those with life-long conditions, with disabilities and chronic illnesses can suffer the well-meaning but misdirected desire of Christians to offer them ‘healing’, usually interpreted as cure. Healing, if it is to be authentic within the Chris...

Women in Kabul, Afghanistan I would like to begin by telling you the story of an Afghan teenage girl called Rahila Muska, which I read in Mark Oakley’s book  A Splash of Poetry .  Her story starts with a poem -a form of Afghan poetry called ‘Landay’.    Landay is an ancient, anonymous and oral form of folk poetry, written in couplets, mainly by and for illiterate Pashtun women on the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.  This is the Landay that starts our story: I call. You’re stone. One day you’ll look and find I’m gone. Rahila, the heroine of our story, lived in Helmand, a Taliban stronghold. Her father had taken her out of school for fear of the Taliban, as they saw the education of women as dishonourable; and it left her vulnerable to attack- kidnap or rape. Rahila found some consolation in poetry; Rahila loved Landay and she was a frequent caller to a radio programme, a chatline run by a women’s literary group, to which women would call a...

The Feast of the Transfiguration, 6th August 2018 In the story of the Transfiguration we are told that Jesus goes up a mountain to pray, taking Peter, John and James with him. On the mountain his face is changed , and his clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah are seen talking to Jesus and the voice of God declares: ‘This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him’. (cf. Luke 9:28-36) As Christians we live our lives meditating on the story of Jesus; one way to enter that story is to seek to see his face . Jesus’ face, unknown as it is to us, is also deeply familiar. The subject of icons, iconography and religious paintings. We know Jesus, for instance, as the baby in his mother’s arms, as the child teaching in the temple, as a man being baptised, facing temptation in the desert, as the servant washing his disciples’ feet, blessing bread, in Gethsemane, on the Cross, greeting Mary Magdalene as the Risen Christ and ascending into Glory. Devotion to the face of Jesus a...

It’s of course something of a cliché to remind ourselves that certainly up until the present times, history has been narrated by men. Women’s stories have, generally, been domestic ones and only the most radical and historic have been remembered; still less have any stories been narrated by women. This is as true of the Biblical narrative as it is of any other. The sentences that we have just heard from Luke’s Gospel remind us of this*.  'Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.  The twelve were with him,   as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.' The 12 male apostles have a prominent place in the Christian faith and imagination, whilst the women are mainly...