On May 20th, Bill Bradley will be our guest for Bring and Share. At the age of 14 Bill, a keen sportsman, contracted polio. Bill has had an amazing career with sporting associations for both able bodied and differently abled persons. Come along for an entertaining and inspiring evening, and some time with friends.

Exodus 20:9-11 | Mark 11:15-19
I wonder if you recognise these words:

God is love, and whoever lives in love, lives in God.

Brothers and sisters, let us love one another, for love is the fulfilling of the law.

Or what about these?

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies

Woe to you, blind guides, hypocrites, For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves

Genesis 12:1-4 | Mark 8:31-38
He was starting to feel a bit old. In his young adulthood he’d travelled a bit with his father, wife and his nephew, but they’d settled down and made a life for themselves in Haran. His father had died a while back, and although he and his wife had no children they were not without family: they raised their nephew, whose parents had died when he was young as their own. He’d done pretty well for himself in Haran; lived a good, honest, honourable life, accumulated enough to retire on in some comfort.

Abraham was seventy five years old when God called him.

Surely Abraham must have felt like saying “you know what, God – maybe you should call someone else?”. For what he was being called to do – “go from your country and your kindred and your fathers house” – was no small ask. This was not an age when “go to another country” just meant checking your passport and visa and buying a plane ticket; this meant taking everything, crossing the desert, facing uncertainty and insecurity, never knowing how good the next pasture would be, where the next well was to be found.

This was a journey that many young men would have feared, and many would not have survived. Abraham was safe and secure, and what he heard himself being called to do was to risk his comfort, risk his status, risk his life. How tempting must it have been to say “no, I’d rather look after what I’ve got”. How sensible it would have been, how understandable, how human. And no doubt he would have lived out his life in Haran, comfortable, respected, safe – and never quite sure of what he had lost.

For those who want to save their life will lose it.

Psalm 25 | Mark 1:9-15
As part of Lent Event this year I decided to give up drinking coffee. So if I seem a little grumpy, or find it hard to stay awake at times, there is a good, chemical reason. At least that’s my excuse.

Lent is best known as a period of fasting, of doing without. In fact, that idea has probably come to dominate the popular concept of Lent – I imagine if you asked the majority of people outside the Church what Lent was about, they would either have no idea what you were talking about, or would simply know that it’s a time when people give something up.

In modern years, and with an eye to shedding the negative, life-retricting image that the Church too often has, many people have tried to change the emphasis of Lent. It’s quite popular now to talk of taking something up instead of giving something up; to view Lent as an opportunity to build a new, positive dimension in your life; whether that be committing to a time of prayer or reading of the Bible, or a regular act of service, or spending increased time with family and friends, or giving in a more disciplined way to a cause you believe in.

Exodus 34:29-32 | Mark 9:2-9
On Tuesday night at Nooma we had what I call a ‘help Chris to write his sermon’ study. Essentially this consists of listening to a passage of the Bible being read, and then reflecting on a few simple questions.

Last Tuesday we looked at our gospel reading for today, and essentially the concensus we came to was that none of us in the room could see how this story has anything to do with our lives today.

So what’s it about? Why does Mark choose to include this story in his gospel? What role does it play in his narrative, what is it about Jesus that we are supposed to read through, in, or behind these words?