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.

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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!

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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”.

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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”.

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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.

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Minister’s Message – October 31, 2021

Most Christians know quite a lot of stories from the Old Testament, but I suspect that few of us have a good overview of its history. And the Old Testament spans a remarkably long time, from Abraham who may have lived as far back as 2200BC, through Moses who came to the fore in around 1500BC and was followed by the Judges. Israel reached its zenith in the reigns of David and Soloon at around the 1000BC mark or a little later. After that its history was a sad one of defeat and decline over several centuries, with the loss of the northern half of its territory to Assyria in 721BC and the destruction of Jerusalem itself in 586BC. It had taken 400 years for the nation to sink from high point to disaster.

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Minister’s Message – October 24, 2021

It’s Professor Henry Higgins in the film “My Fair Lady” who declares, while schooling Eliza Doolittle in the art of elocution, that “ln Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen”.

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Minister’s Message – October 17, 2021

“One night I dreamed a dream.

As I was walking along the beach with my Lord,

scenes from my life flashed across the dark sky.

For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand:

one belonging to me and one to my Lord”.

I’m sure that’s a poem which we’ve all come across – I don’t care for it myself as I find it a bit too sentimental. And you’ll probably know that the poem goes on to say, “I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. I don’t understand why, when I needed you the most, you would leave me”; only for God to reply, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you … When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you”.

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Minister’s Message – October 10, 2021

So it finally made it! Yes, after four postponements and 22 months of hype, the 25^th James Bond film “No Time To Die” – Daniel Craig’s last – was finally released last week. And it notched up what may the highest opening weekend UK takings of any movie, making at least £21m between Friday and Sunday. But – and you can call me a spoilsport if you like – I’m not going to see it. Yes, I’m sure the sets and the special effects are amazing, and the story as far-fetched as usual. But I don’t like the violence; and, despite the actress Lea Seydoux’s claim that this film is “very different” to all the others, with “powerful” women who aren’t “just waiting to be saved”, I’m still (possibly wrongly) wary of the male-female relationships portrayed within it.

For James Bond has form, going back to 1953 when Ian Fleming created him: he has been called “an archetypal model of masculinity” and a man who “is nothing without his sexism”. He has even been described as “basically a rapist” – not by me, by the way, but by the director of the latest film, no less! That accusation certainly seems to be born out by a compilation of lurid clips from his earlier films which was made in 2018. One writer has said, “the idea that a character for whom misogyny is a defining feature can ever be progressive and feminist is farcical”; she also says, “Misogyny is baked into the formula of the franchise”.

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Minister’s Message – October 3, 2021

I’ve recently been following an Internet discussion on the question, “Should dogs be allowed in churches?” This was started by someone who had wanted to wander round Norwich Cathedral with their dog in tow but was firmly told, “You can’t bring him in here”.

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