Curate Conundrums

How’s your day been? In our reading from 1 Kings Elijah’s having a tough day. The prophet Elijah has been given a tough task by God, to be unpopular, which often can be exhausting. Obviously I don’t know what it’s like to be unpopular, as all my decisions are met with rounds of applause, well at least in my head anyway. Perhaps thinking back through our lives there have been times when we’ve had to be the unpopular ones, the ones that go against the crowd. Sometimes that takes place in our own relationships, perhaps we’ve had to be the unpopular ones with our children or other family members. We’ve had to say things for the good of everyone that have made us disliked or resented in our own social circles. It’s a very human experience. Before I did this, I had a number of different jobs. I won’t say where this was, but one of my colleagues was exposed to unsafe working conditions. In fact the conditions she had to work under were so horrible that she was in tears and extreme...

Address 1 – Confession If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. The writers of the Prayer Book loved a bit of Sin, and telling us how awful we all are. But is confession about beating ourselves up? What are we doing when we confess our sins? Actually, are we doing anything? Is it just our sins we’re confessing? We have confession because even though we’ve been baptised we still sin. We come because we’re people who believe in repentance. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia , it means changing one’s mind, turning from a destructive path. The whole of Jesus’ ministry was focussed on repentance. ‘Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.’ So when Jesus talks about repentance, he doesn’t mean just being sorry. He means turning from an old path to a new one, converting our lives to be in right relationship with one another and with God. Baptism is the ultimate sign of repentance, turning away from our old life and into a new life, but even though we’ve turned around, we...

God Feeds All, People Are Not Expendable The comedian Jimmy Carr was talking about the feeding of the five thousand on QI, he said ‘the feeding of the five thousand? ‘There’s five thousand people, and they went, there’s some bread and fish, I reckon that was about four and a half thousand people saying, what we got? Bread and fish? Nah I’m alright thanks.’ David Mitchell then responded “Out of five thousand people only two of them thought to bring any food… The other side of it is there are 4,998 idiots… And Jesus doesn’t make them learn a lesson from that!” I think they’re missing the point slightly. This isn’t about teaching anyone a lesson, this isn’t about God begrudgingly doing something. God is generous, and in unexpected places, with unexpected people.   What do you think about this story, do you reckon it happened? It was clearly a story that was really precious to the early church. This miracle is the only one in all four gospels, so I think it probably did...

In times like these It’s sometimes hard to think about the joy in life, and in a society where depression and loneliness are an absolute epidemic, where we are fed a constant stream of negativity in order that we’re easier to control, and the general injustice that pervades the world, it’s easy to despair. But today is not about that. It’s not about doom and gloom. Whatever emotional state you find yourself in, I welcome you, we acknowledge it, and we say it’s okay. However, fundamentally the Christian Gospel is about joy. As much as it is about sadness. Our role as Christians is not to feel constantly bad about ourselves, or the state of the world, but to rejoice in the fact that there is a God that loves us, and cares about us. Just cast your mind back, to a time of absolute joy in your life, when you were happiest. Perhaps the thrill of being in love for the first time, that sense of absolute joy when you were with that person, when they loved you back, when all you wanted...

There are times in our lives when separation is needed. Separation though sometimes painful is often a time of great growth. Cast your minds back to when you first left home, if indeed you have left home yet. Or if you haven’t think of a time when you were away from your parents for an extended period of time for the first time. Did it fill you with exhilaration or dread? Was it a wonderful occasion or a time of  immense sadness for you? I’ll never forget when I left home for the first time. My Dad turned up and we packed the car up with all the things I’d need. The journey from the small Norfolk village I grew up in, to Sheffield was a long one. Initially I was excited, I couldn’t wait to start my independent life, and I enthusiastically loaded the car up, almost bouncing along, like Super Mario. Until, the moment of separation, the moment when it was time to leave, and suddenly the emotions welled up inside me. This was the end of one way of living, the end of my ...

The Holy Spirit can be quite hard to describe, and it’s something that I often find myself thinking about. What exactly is the Holy Spirit and what does it mean for us to have it? The Holy Spirit has been described as being a little bit like the force from Star Wars, an energy which binds the universe together, that flows in and through all things. Whether this is a good description or not I’m not sure, in fact I could be committing an act of great heresy, I’ll leave that up to you and Ian to decide. The one thing we do know about the Holy Spirit is that it turns up, in all sorts of unexpected places. It is the creative and spontaneous energy of the trinity, and is one of the forms in which we recognise God’s revelation to us. That is a way in which God reveals God’s self to us.   The Holy Spirit isn’t, for a start, part of God, it is God and it is indivisible from the Father and the Son. We know that the spirit isn’t into partiality, and we know what the fruits of the sp...