Recent Problems

Please pray for my father-in-law Gerry McFarlance (69) who had a major stroke last month. He is critically ill in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Our holiday was interrupted early on and we have had to a lot of travelling back and forth in the last five weeks.

Meditation on the Bread of Life

Bread of Life – Used on the Sunday 8am Homily

I have been reflecting on the Eucharist, and I offer this meditation.

When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

In the past week I have been making bread. I have not employed a bread maker but wanted the experience of mixing the ingredients and kneading the bread. The whole process is ancient, a skill passed for millennia and somewhat mysterious. The smallest constituent, yeast, transforms the whole thing.

Jesus compared the kingdom of God to yeast. When I worry about the diminishing size of congregations, I remember that the yeast.

We are what (or who) God is using to raise everything around us. Our calling is to be yeast in Salcombe, or wherever we call home.

It may even be a mystery to us how God can do this. How can God use me to be his agent of change? In many ways this is not our business or concern. It may come years later, that we appreciate how our very presence changed everything around us.

When you and I leave this service, we carry Christ with us. We have received the bread of life sacramentally. Let us not keep him to ourselves. That would diminish the supreme gift. Somehow, let the joy, grace and peace be something we share.

The Eucharist is a miracle. Let us be a miracle when we leave here.

Trinity Sunday - Patronal Festival

Here are sermon nuggets for tomorrow - Trinity Sunday. I'll make something from this.

• Trinity Sunday - who thought that one up? It's a bit like the BBC deciding to have a broadcasting week! Surely every Sunday is a Trinity Sunday? I don't really understand the logic of this one.
  
• I can't get my head around why preachers sweat at the thought of this topic. Surely everything we proclaim subsists in the Holy Trinity?
  
• The danger is that we treat the subject of the Trinity as an optional extra. It's not as if some bored Early Church theologians thought it up on a rainy day. We cannot jettison the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, yet sometimes we act as if we could. I mean we just dont live it enough. As a remedy I would suggest that we ban the word 'God' for a while from our vocabularly. Instead let us speak of The Father (or 'Abba'), Jesus and Holy Spirit.
  
• Another one is to ban the word 'Church' and speak of 'Body' instead. The more we speak of the 'Body of Christ' the more we might begin to act like it.
  
• The collects from the Prayer Book and Common Worship dont always scratch were it itches with me. All those adjetives sound so parsonical and impersonal. Do you remember the sketch of the school chaplain from Monty Python's film 'The Meaning of Life' ? 'Oooou God you are sooo big. We're jolly impressed down here.' Sometimes these collects sound a bit like this.
  
• Dont get wrong its not a case of God all-matey. But surely the message of the Gospel is that the image of the awesome God stands before us as Jesus? 'I call you not servants but friends'. Through the Cross we have access to the majesty of Christ. Through the incarnation we can see God among us as the infant Christ of Bethlehem. The Eucharist unveils the God of mystery as our food. God touches us with his physical sacraments. The veil of the Holy of Holies has been torn in two.
  
• We are baptised into the name of the Trinity. Anything else is repudiated by orthodox Christianity and the baptism seen as invalid. The Great Commission of Jesus at the end of Matthew's Gospel tells us to baptise the nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are to immerse the world into this mystery. We cant do the job if we are not spiritually immersed in the Trinity itself.
  
• I love all that stuff in The Shack about the Trinity and how the three persons explain that they live in perfect community. Human beings want to be independent of their creator and in doing so fail to be truly themselves.
  
• I appreciate in these rough notes I have not given Scripture references. Of course one of the aunt sally's that is put up is that the Trinity is not scriptural. (Some of the sects like Jehovah Witnesses make this point as does Dan Brown in the DaVinci Code.) But although the technical word 'Trinity' is not there, the relationships of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are there. Jesus for example in the last Supper Dialogue (St John) is quite clear that the Advocate is a person. Paul also speaks of the Spirit in a personal way. Since they are not speaking of an angel or the force from Star Wars, the Church has understood this as the Ruach Ha'Kodesh - the Holy Spirit.

Well I shall offer these little random thoughts to Almighty Everlasting God - Abba, in the hope that something will come together. (Not the Swedish band of Mama Mia fame).

PS Did that MP who claimed for £5 he put in the collection gift aid it. If he did at least we'd get someting extra.