Minister’s Message – January 23, 2022

I can’t imagine that St Paul had much of a sense of humour. Jesus clearly did, as he gave us the slapstick comedy of one blind man leading another into a ditch; and the man who could see the speck of dust in his friend’s eye but failed to see the plank sticking out of his own. Then there’s the tiny mustard-seed which could make huge mountains leap into the sea; the wordplay of calling indecisive Peter a “rock”; the preposterous thought of a laden camel – complete with its hump – trying to squeeze through a needle’s eye; and the person who thought it was a sensible idea put a basket over their lamp. We may not find these sayings or stories very funny: but Jesus’ listeners did.

Minister’s Message – January 16, 2022

“One Spirit, many gifts, glorious service”.

I’ve never enjoyed playing football – or team sports in general. I have no ball sense and when I was at school the captains choosing the two teams used to fight for the privilege of not having me on their team! When play actually started I could only see what was going on through a haze of short-sightedness; and if the ball dared to come anywhere near me I saw it as my duty to kick away this brown and muddy object as rapidly as possible – in whatever direction I could.

Minister’s Message – January 9, 2022

I wonder how many of us do our banking online? I’m a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to technology, but I got into this quite early on and find it very convenient. I know that it has led to many bank branches closing, which is a real issue for small businesses, older people and in rural areas. However my bank has only ever had one branch in the city, and only one in Ipswich where we were before, so my conscience is clear!

Minister’s Message – January 2, 2022

I guess that most of us enjoy a good murder! Not a real one, of course – and there have been far too many tragic and shocking deaths in the last few months, including those two London teenagers just this week – but the fictional murders we read in books or watch on television, carried out in ever more ingenious and gruesome ways and investigated by detectives such as Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. 

Christmas Message

I’ve often thought that we get the Christmas story’s timeline hopelessly muddled! For instance:

– We tell the story of the angel telling Mary about her forthcoming birth just a few weeks before Christmas, although there’s no reason to think that her pregnancy didn’t last the usual nine months (the Catholic Church gets this right with the feast of the Annunciation in March).

Minister’s Message – December 19, 2021

I wonder how we greet each other over the Christmas season – and I don’t mean with “How are you doing? Terrible weather, isn’t it”! I guess we use phrases such as “Merry” or “Happy Christmas!”; our cards might say “Season’s Greetings” or – at a pinch – “Glad tidings” or even “Yuletide cheer”; if we were American we might well say, “Happy holidays” (ugh). But perhaps the most appropriate greeting for us to use this year should be “Fear not!” That might seem surprising, but it has strong Biblical backing as it’s the greeting which the angels used all those years ago. So let’s have a think about the different occasions on which they said it.

Minister’s Message – December 5, 2021

Every religious community has its customs and rituals, some of which may seem rather odd to outsiders. So our Muslim friends pray five times a day and try to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during their lives, our Hindu neighbours go to the Temple and offer gifts of food to their deities, Sikh men are bearded, wear a turban and carry a ceremonial knife – and so on. These practices all have their meanings although, over the years, they may have turned into habits or simply “the things we do” which don’t get thought about much from day to day. I’m sure the same is true in Christianity!

Minister’s Message – November 28, 2021

I’d like to read you an extract from “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis.

“Now they were steadily racing on again. Edmund noticed that the snow which splashed against them as they rushed through it was much wetter than it had been the night before. And the sledge was not running nearly as well as it had been running up till now. At first he thought this was because the reindeer were tired, but soon he saw that that couldn’t be the real reason. The sledge jerked, and skidded and kept on jolting as if it had struck against stones. There also seemed to be a curious noise all round them, but the noise of their driving and jolting prevented Edmund from hearing what it was, until suddenly the sledge stuck so fast that it wouldn’t go on at all. When that happened there was a moment’s silence. And in that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly. A strange, sweet, rustling, chattering noise – and yet not so strange, for he’d heard it before. It was the noise of running water. All round them though out of sight, there were streams, chattering, murmuring, bubbling, splashing and even (in the distance) roaring; much nearer there was a drip-drip-drip from the branches of all the trees. And his heart gave a great leap when he realised that the frost was over”.

Minister’s Message – November 14, 2021

“Looking back or looking forward?” (Isaiah 65:17-25).

We’re all familiar with the scenario. There’s been a hospital failure in which patients have died or a social services fiasco which allowed a child to be horrifically abused; there’s been a computer glitch which left people unable to access their bank accounts or a public event which has got out of control and left folk killed or injured; the Press have mistakenly incriminated an innocent person or the national football team has yet again been knocked out at an early stage of an important competition – after any of these incidents, in due time and following a long investigation, a slightly flustered and defensive spokesperson appears on the television news and assures us that “Lessons have been learned; nothing like this will ever happen again”.

Minister’s Message – November 7, 2021

“Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell”. Those words are poor poetry; but they sum up the ethos of the man who founded the missionary society for which Moira and I worked back in the 1980s: single-minded to the point of obstinacy and utterly devoted to the task, deeply flawed and controversial yet clearly inspiring.