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...