Always Hope

This sermon was preached last week on the Gospel of the day: Mark 8:31-38  (NIV)   31  He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.  32  He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.   33  But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”   34  Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  35  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.  36  What good is it for someone to gain the whole worl...

This week I have received a number of emails from various no doubt well-intentioned brothers and sisters who are urging me to take part in a public Christian prayer/demonstration this evening. It was quite difficult to work out who is behind this, but it appears to be a project of the organisation Christian Concern , and a continuation of a similar event on the same day last year. No doubt many readers will be thinking this seems a good idea all round. So it is a bit sad to report that I am not supporting this, but at least I can explain why. My problem is that I find the campaign, and the whole agenda of Christian Concern, to be based on dubious assumptions. It's not just the air of antagonism - my blogging friend Father David Cloake has already commented on the rather sinister hijacking of World Aids Day . Why pick this day of all the 365 days of the year? At best, it is poor taste, at worst, a nasty attempt to discredit World Aids Day as somehow anti-Christian. Nor is it the...

I'm preaching on Mark 2 tomorrow (apologies to liturgical purists), Jesus healing the paralysed man after he is lowered through the roof. What an engaging passage it is. I love the way in which it is so graphically visualised, dragging us in to the action, and then hits us with the enigmatic dialogue which makes us stop and think. Verse 9 is especially challenging: Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up, take your mat and walk'? Which is it? I was taught at an early stage that it's clearly the latter, because only God can forgive sins, and so it must be harder to do that. But now, when I read this, that just doesn't seem to fit. Why does Jesus then go and heal the man? If that is the easier thing, it doesn't prove that he could do the harder thing. So is it easier to say "your sins are forgiven"?? I suppose in one way it is, because if you say "get up", and the guy stays where he is, it d...