Out of all the many odd, unsettling, even shocking, things Jesus had to say, it is possible that this is the oddest. Blessed are the poor? Really?
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Blessed Are The Poor
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Faith Hope and Love
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Such a well known reading, much used in wedding services. But is Paul talking particularly about weddings and romantic love? Or is there something else going on here?
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Three Messiahs
What does Frank Herbert’s Sci-fi epic have to teach us about Jesus? What does it have to teach us about a two thousand year old social call?
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A Troubling, Hopeful Idea
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars….” Haven’t we outgrown all this magical thinking? Does the idea of the Second Coming really have anything to say to us here and now?
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Reign of Christ
“So you are a king” said Pilate to Jesus. What a simple phrase: what a lot going on. What does it mean for Jesus to be a “King” in our democratic age?
When great troubles come upon us, when we are beginning to suspect that we might not be God after all, where do we turn?
How do we live? That, it seems to me is the big question. People in every age have asked it, in as many different ways as there have been cultures. Sometimes, as here, both the question and the answer have been explicit. Sometimes implicit – you have to look below the surface froth of events to have a sense of what is really driving things. But there is no escaping it. – all of human life is driven by this overarching question.
How do we live?
A man sits on an ash-heap, scratching at his sores with a broken shard of a clay pot. He looks up at the sky and demands answers. What happens next will amaze you!
In difficult times, our simplistic answers stop working. What is life all about? What big story am I part of?
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Preparation
What do my battered trainers have to do with Paul’s stirring words about putting on the full armour of God?
Alister Pate 