Category: Sermon

For those of a certain vintage, our parable is like a Roald Dahl ‘Tales of the Unexpected’. Or one of those Zombie horror movies on Netflix.

The chief priests were not the landowners at all but the tenants, tenants who’d be replaced. Then they remember the vineyard represents Israel.

I almost said that it broke in despite Jonah, not because of him. But, on reflection, it still needed Jonah to turn up, despite his misgivings.

Not seven times or seventy seven or even seventy times seven but countless times during our lifetimes. We are continually being set free.

The forgiven, restored and repaired. Perhaps, just as in The Repair Shop, we might find that each one of us gets transformed in the process.

One commentator describes it as: “Jesus with his compassion down”. Another: “Beware the dog”. Perhaps we call it: “Small crumbs of comfort”.

Elijah might well have sung along to “hello darkness my old friend” but unlike Simon & Garfunkel’s silence, God’s silence is a place where people are able to love each other.

May the same be true for us and Psalm 67. May this Song of God’s Blessing come back and meet us to heal us when we need it most.

I wonder what would have happened if my wife had seen the field with the wheat and the weeds. I suspect she would have pulled the lot up – and then not told the landowner to see how long it was before he noticed.

No less an authority than the teacher in Peppa Pig once said that poetry was “a magical way of using words that puts a picture in your mind”

‘I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood’. Do we misunderstand when Jesus talks about a yoke?

Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

Out of whatever pain and grief that we may be in right now, may we too know newness of life. To both grieve a loss and celebrate a life.

Are you harassed and helpless? Do you just look that way but inside everything is calm and peaceful! Would you walk alongside those who are?

Most of you will know by now that we suddenly lost our son, Stuart, last week. We still expect him…