I’m sure all of us have at some time enjoyed the English television comedy, “The Vicar of Dibley.”  You will recall at the end of each episode, the vicar tells Alice, the church warden, a joke.  The joke is often quite funny but Alice never quite gets it.  She applies a literal logic to the joke, and she tries to reason the joke out, all of course to the frustration of the vicar.  I often think that before many of the stories of the gospel and before the parables of Jesus we are a bit like Alice in the “Vicar of Dibley.”  We apply to what we have heard a logic that is quite foreign…

The predominant experience for us currently is one of separation. Because of the COVID restrictions, we can’t be with one another as we would like. We need to stay home to prevent the transmission of the virus. We cannot mix with our friends and our colleagues as we wish. A solitude has enveloped us. We are forced by circumstances to take things more quietly. Many of struggle with this: it’s very hard to stay within a very small circle. And yet this time of separation is also perhaps an opportunity for us to consider in a deeper way the importance and opportunity of silence and solitude in our life. I…

It is often lamented today that the rites of initiation into adulthood have been lost. We no longer have those rituals which mark the passage from childhood or adolescence into maturity. Until recently, one of the principal rites of passage for young people today may have been overseas travel. With few resources they headed off to distant places where for six months, twelve months or more, they move from country to country, culture to culture, working and touring. Often enough they return home then with a new sense of identity and ready for a commitment to work, or study, or relationship that they could not muster beforehand. It has become…

How often we can fail to recognise the presence of God in the ordinary things of life.  We want God to come in the grand scheme, in a form that takes away all our doubt and anxiety, in the miraculous gesture. This is at the base of the apocalyptic cults such as QAnon amongst others.  And in so doing, we miss the presence of God in the smile of a stranger, the challenging word of a friend, the simplicity of the scene outside our window. This is at the heart of the gospel this Sunday. Who could think that this peasant from Nazareth was the prophet long expected? The people in today’s gospel…

The Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow several years ago, wrote in her book Putin’s Russia, “There is a part of every society that wants nothing more than to be lulled into sleep.” [1]It was a striking statement about how there is a part of us which simply does not want to know too much.  It is sad but true observation that we cannot bear too much reality. We seek to shield ourselves from reality, not to take too close an interest in things, or simply overlay complex situations with our own prejudices and biases. The problems that swirl around us – from the threat of global economic instability,…

Often with all the challenges we may be facing we might feel like getting into our own little boat and heading off into the middle of the lake where no one can disturb us. However, once we are out in the lake, we are not guaranteed serenity. I remember once picking up a small poster which read, “Dear God, help me; the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.”  The size of the lake itself can be overwhelming, and then storms whip up so that the serenity for which we went in search is replaced by fear.   Nowhere, then, is entirely safe, and perhaps that is very much…

One of the things that fascinate children in a particular way is planting something and watching it grow.  Do you recall how mesmerised you were when you first planted something and watched it begin to grow?  I recall doing it with sees of wheat in moist cotton wool. The advantage of this particular process was, of course, that one didn’t need to wait very long to see the result of one’s planting! Planting and harvesting for a child is perhaps as fascinating as it is because it mirrors children’s own reality, their own potential and promise. Maybe this is why the child within us likes to plant a tree to mark the…

Weddings are always something special in our life. I am not simply thinking of our own wedding, but our attendance at other weddings. Such occasions bring before us something for which we all long: the simplicity of falling in love, the promise of exchanging a commitment to each other, the hope of beginning a life together.  A wedding mirrors something fundamentally human to us.  We feel right in the world. In the midst of all the other troubles and uncertainties we experience something with all the promise of being good, true and beautiful. And the occasion fascinates us. Somehow it brings us home to ourselves. For some, their wedding is not the…