Poems, Sermons and Writings

Isaiah 43:14–44:5 The situation in which the Hebrew people found themselves is a timeless one, most of us have no experience of exile—but we all have experienced times where our vision is clouded, preventing us from seeing anything but darkness and despair.  Sometimes this is on a personal level where everything seems to be going wrong - tragedy, broken relationships, illness, bad news … sometimes on more of a community level, in the midst of disaster and sometimes these days on more of a global level when we see the effects of climate change, when we watch helplessly while politicians just seem not to care, when we see only war, war and more war.  All these things linger about us and hinder our ability both to see the future and to move into it. They also raise for us the most serious of theological questions, as they cause us to doubt the promises we have received in Jesus Christ: divine forgiveness, new life, and the love of God. Jesus said the Kingdom of God was at hand...

Isaiah 32:14-18   The 2025 Symbol for Creationtide is inspired by  Isaiah 32:14-18. Titled ”Garden of Peace,” it  depicts a white dove flying over a tree. The left side of the tree is barren, with roots digging into dry soil, surrounded by an arid, desolate landscape. In contrast, the right side of the tree is lush and green, standing amidst a flourishing landscape. The dove, carrying an olive branch in its beak, flies toward the right—symbolising peace as a transition from a war-torn, overexploited land to one that is fertile, thriving, and hospitable. If we think of a theology of creation many of us might look back to the story of creation from Genesis and remember when God said “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” That’s it - humans are to ru...

Micah 4:1-5 1 Tim 2:1-6 Matt 5:43-48 Nigh on a decade ago I was over in San Francisco and I attended Grace Cathedral for Sunday worship. In the basement of that Cathedral was a shop. It was there I purchased something I am wearing today. It is a small pendant and it is made from the metal of decommissioned nuclear missiles. This for me embodied that phrase “you shall beat your swords into ploughshares” for us in the 21st century.   We read today from the prophet Micah. The exact same passage is found in the prophet Isaiah’s book. Later in Isaiah we read the famous passage sometimes called the Peaceable Kingdom. It is linked with Israel’s hopes and dreams for a messiah and then goes on “The wolf shall live with the lamb;     the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together,     and a little child shall lead them.” It pictures an ideal world where there is no harm to any creature. One of the titles of the h...