The Wikipedia entry on Mary Magdalene is accurate and uncontroversial and indeed Googling ‘Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute’ throws up numerous sites all telling the same thing: that Mary was probably a woman of higher status who supported Jesus in his ministry; that arguably she was as close as any Read more…
Carrying on the theme of the source of those misguided ideas, which themselves led to evil acts, one can postulate that the germ of a change came when Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion of the Roman empire. It has been suggested that the early church – that community Read more…
Ignoring the fact of whether Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected after his death the evidence for his existence, his death and the movement which survived him is incontrovertible. One has to plead desperation and ignore the clear evidence which remains to deny his existence. Sixty years after Jesus’ death the Read more…
With a modern understanding of the world we believe that a creator God began a process 13.7 billion years ago with a big bang of all the chemicals needed to sustain life in some form, in the hope/belief of creating sentient life capable of love; and as one such species Read more…
As Christians we believe that in Jesus of Nazareth we see everything we need to know about the nature of God – which is what we mean by the term ‘Son of God’. What we have in the Bible though is a series of books written by men to record Read more…
The Trinity in its current state is a theory that developed 200 hundred years after the death of Jesus. In our creeds we actually have a snapshot in time of a theological debate which has been frozen for over 1800 years. To understand the Trinity as a concept however we Read more…
Jesus spoke in Aramaic and his words were recorded in Greek. For 1500 years the only accepted translation in the West was in Latin and only as we come to the 16C do we start to see modern translations that go back to the original Hebrew & Greek words of Read more…
Religion and the Christian faith in particular often seems locked into ‘cartoon’ thought patterns. Our pastors & priests (and the words different denominations use to denote ordained leadership derive from the same Greek word) are exposed to more advanced thought patterns during their training but then revert to set phrases Read more…
The key point to get over in this section is an alternative perspective on what the point of creation is; first however, because Christian thought has become contaminated with the extremes of fundamentalist thinking in the eyes of the agnostic public who are not really sure what to believe, it Read more…
Jesus never asked his followers to believe WHAT he was. Instead he demanded that they follow his example and commit to the Kingdom of God. When you go back to the original Greek of the New testament you find that the words translated as ‘belief’ actually mean to have commitment Read more…
We live in a modern world that no longer thinks of little gods in the sky. The only reason for creation that makes sense in the context of the modern world and of the love we see in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is that a God outside time Read more…
The recognition of Jesus of Nazareth as ‘Son of God’ was an instinctive ‘all bracing’ and ‘whole hearted’ recognition by the people around him that he was to God as a son was to his father. After his death and resurrection Greek thinkers in particular started trying to work out Read more…
We like to use the phrase “God’s plan for us” without thinking through the consequences. If we are acting out God’s plan then we have no free will. Moreover if we model God as a parent we have to recognise that a good parent doesn’t have a plan for their Read more…
If we believe that Jesus lived & died to cement the centrality of Love in God’s reality, and if you accept that the point of creation is to produce loving species, then we have to recognise that it’s our job to make it happen. It’s our job to make a Read more…
How DO we make God’s dream come true? We could try by letting every little thing we do contribute to the kingdom of God. Ask yourself every minute if your actions are helping or hindering the Kingdom. Does running the shower for a few minutes to warm up whilst you Read more…
If we regard Jesus as cementing the place of ‘love’ in creation then anything – ANYTHING – which goes against love in wrong. It’s wrong if reported in the Old Testament of the Bible. It’s wrong in the history of the church through 2000 years and it’s wrong today. Love Read more…
We like to resort to the description of the bible as the Word of God too often in church, but it CANNOT be true. The phrase the Word of God has a lot more meaning than you realise – see the ‘More’ section on the Trinity (earlier) for that – Read more…
There is far more evidence that a man called Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in Palestine – dying in 30 or 33AD – than there is of Julius Caesar coming to Britain 100 years before Rome annexed Britain. Caesar wrote the only report of his invasion himself. In contrast Read more…
The Council of Chalcedon in 451AD came up the philosophical fudge that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. The net result was to cut off parts of the early church that disagreed, but ask yourself whether it really matters? All we need is to accept that in the person Read more…
Most Christians spend a lot of time in prayer and in many church services the prayers/intercessions can almost be another sermon; however, we need to remember Jesus’ words – “do not pray as the Pharisees do, on street corners” – and also realise that ‘more’ words cannot make a difference Read more…
Doubt can mean different things. Intellectual doubt leads us to question and gain a better understanding of something. Emotional doubt helps stop us being quite so definitive in our views and helps us to tolerate peoples of views we might not share. A healthy dollop of doubt might have stopped Read more…
With the loving example of Jesus in front of us we have to admit that much of what the various churches did through history was unmitigated evil. We make ourselves ridiculous if we try to defend the massacre of Jewish & Muslim men, women & children when the 1stcrusade captured Read more…
The prophecy of a virgin birth came about when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek between the 3C and 2C BC (known as the Septuagint). The Septuagint translated what modern, more authoritative version translate as “a young woman” in the critical passage in Isiah as “a virgin”. It doesn’t Read more…
Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, the Eastern Orthodox tradition never recognised it and Pope Gregory the Great deliberately fudged unconnected incidents in the gospels and trashed her reputation to make a point about repentance. In savaging the reputation of a woman who was as close to Jesus as any Read more…
If Jesus wanted us to have loyalty to his ministry rather than believe in what he was then what we do out in the community around us matters far more than any medieval concept of worship. When people say “you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian” Read more…
We think in modern terms, where an admirable leader doesn’t want worship but rather wants their ‘people’ to be happy & fulfilled; and this is very much in contrast to an Old Testament and Greek mythological view of God and gods where obeisance and worship were requisite. We ought therefore Read more…
Trinity Sunday 150531 Readings for the day: Isaiah 6: 1-8 Romans 8: 12-17 John 3: 1-17 Over the years I’ve heard of clergy mentioning the idea of preaching on the Trinity as a some sort of threat, penance or generally scary thought. So when I mentioned to Lynda that I’d Read more…
Sunday, 15 February 2015 When Jonathan and I discussed me preaching for this service, on what may be my last opportunity for a few months – before I go out to Mumbai (though that’s in the balance at the moment) – I noticed to my dismay that I had preached Read more…
This first thing to say is that we’re not actually sure how much of what we know as the nativity story actually happened like that. Mark & John, weren’t interested in Jesus’ early life and the traditional nativity scene is a combination of Matthew & Luke with a bit of Read more…
Readings for the day Matthew 21: 23-end Philipians 3: 4b-14 I want to pick up on two things this morning: first the phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ we heard in the gospel today – and that is unusual in Matthew where the phrase is usually ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ because he writing Read more…
When I argued on 29 May that the Kingdom of God/Heaven was the centre piece of Jesus’ message NOT ‘sin’ it was the culmination of a period of frustration growing over the last few years. As a sort of reality check I completed a process today of downloading the text Read more…
Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you have a personal relationship with God? All these questions have been set up to distinguish between the ‘sheep and the goats’ throughout Christian history. What however everyone misses when choosing Read more…
I often hear the description of the bible as the divinely inspired word of God; but it cannot be that if you think about it. It puts you in dangerous territory and here’s why. We Christians believe that in Jesus of Nazareth we have the nature of God revealed to Read more…
Tuesday, 3 June 2014 Why do we insist on claiming the God is working your purpose out thro the church? All the evidence is to the contrary. The history of the Christian church from the point it became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine in 4C shows Read more…
Thursday, 29 May 2014 Matthew 13: 31-32, 44-52 – The Kingdom of Heaven If we look closely at the four gospels as stand alone narratives – and by that I mean NOT being read in the light of the theology of Paul not long after Jesus’ death and then the Read more…
Based on the readings for 2 Feb 14 and 2 Mar 14 Malachi 3: 1-5 Hebrews 2:14-end Luke 2: 22-40 Matthew 17: 1-9 When I first looked at the first three readings I suddenly realised that there was a theme connecting them. Each, in their own way, show different communities Read more…
29 May 14 I’m starting this blog at the suggestion of a wise lady who happens to be my parish priest as an outlet for thoughts that have been 30 years in gestation and that currently have no formal outlet. Some of the posts will have been delivered as talks/sermons; Read more…