Poems, Sermons and Writings

A dispersive prism is an angled piece of transparent material such as glass. If you shine white light into an angled prism it exits the prism broken up into the spectral colours, the colours of the rainbow. The fact that it comes out as red, orange yellow green blue indigo and violet on one side does not negate the truth of its existence as white light on the other side.The resurrection is true but what we see in scripture is shone through the experiences of various witnesses and refracted by the writers of scripture into a variety of colours. And as it is with light, there are colours which our eyes cannot see or appreciate such as ultraviolet or infrared. There is more to the story than we can read in scripture. So we have different accounts of the resurrection which reflect the different witnesses and how they experienced it and the different writers with their varying emphases. All these different colours of the resurrection contribute to the glorious white light of its truth. ...

Luke 6:27-38 The opening line of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” reads “I hear there was a secret chord…” well there is no secret chord in our lectionary readings today but there is a secret word hiding in both our OT and our gospel readings and even by implication in our epistle. This word is illustrated by Joseph and our English translations hide it in the gospel reading. The secret word is grace.   As people of the New Testament we read the Hebrew Scriptures with different eyes. We don’t necessarily regard the Hebrews as predicting Christ at the time but when we read back we can see Christ and Christ figures there. Joseph is one of those characters who here seems to prefigure Christ. Not the young Joseph you understand - that one was a snot-nosed kid, rubbing his brothers noses in his   “favourite son” status and his special coat; smugly reporting in detail dreams where he lorded it over them … No it is this older, wiser Joseph we read about today. While Joseph may have b...

Psalm 51 Today we sang Psalm 51 as a gradual. It may be the best known of the few penitential psalms. Like most of the psalms, Psalm 51 has a superscription - the little title or introduction before the psalm proper states:   To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.   I’m assuming most of you are familiar with this story from 2nd Samuel. David saw Bathsheba and decided he had to have her, sent his minions over to bring her back to his palace where he raped her, and after he found out she was pregnant, he arranged to have her husband murdered, in an attempt to cover up his crime. And yes I use the word rape advisedly. He was the King and because of the power imbalance, she could not have declined his demands. This psalm then appears to be in the voice of David acknowledging and repenting of his sin and asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, but there is a little more to it. Importantly it begins where all confessi...

Luke 23:1-49 What did the Centurion say? Did you notice? Did it feel that perhaps we had got the words wrong. In all the movies about the crucifixion, the Centurion says   “Truly this man was God’s Son”   - that is what we find in Matthew & Mark. But the words that he says in Luke are “Certainly this man was innocent”. Perhaps he also said “this man was God’s Son”. But for Luke the most important statement the Centurion makes is about Jesus’ innocence. In fact if you read Luke’s account of the crucifixion, Jesus’ innocence shines out.   This is in contrast to 3 minor characters in this story who are guilty: Peter is guilty of lying about whether he knows Jesus. Barrabas has been imprisoned for insurrection and murder. Even though he is guilty Pilate releases him.   And the second thief on the cross acknowledges his own guilt.   Contrast those figures with the repeated declarations of Christ’s innocence. by Pilate, the one pronouncing judgment on him, on no l...

As we read this gospel today it’s important to realise that it is a few verses of a much bigger story and so, gathering the stories around it there are a bunch of words swirling around in my head - smell, death, anointing, feasts, service, extravagance, generosity and love. We have just read, in the previous chapter of John, about the raising of Lazarus from the dead (and here we are in Lazarus’ house). When they were going to open the tomb, Martha was worried about the stench of death, the smells begin back there in the story.  I’m guessing that most if not all of you by this time in your lives have at some stage had a reason to go to the undertakers, perhaps to view the body of a loved one or to discuss funeral arrangements for someone. There is an unmistakable smell there - its a combination of the embalming fluids, cleaning products and flowers. It’s unmistakable and I find it somewhat unpleasant, but its not the same as the “stench of death” Martha had mentioned. Back then the...