Curate Conundrums

Where does it all go? Where? Where does what go, I hear you ask? The money. Where does all the money go? No I haven’t stolen it… What bags, there are no bags in my car… Certainly not now… Look that money was just resting in my account… Is this a question you’ve ever asked yourself? Where does the money go? Where’s it gone? Hands up if you’ve asked yourself this? Have you ever looked at your bank balance and gone *gasp*, oh no! No how has that happened. Lockdown was ludicrous wasn’t it? One of the strangest things about it for me was that even though I hadn’t been anywhere or done anything, still I was spending money! Where has it all gone? I thought. Anybody else feel like that? For me it was probably going on stuff like takeaways and stuff to make me feel better about myself. I mean those ruby encrusted high heels really gave me a confidence boost. Though as we probably know when we face up to it, filling our homes with shiny things doesn’t make us feel better really. It doesn’t fill ...

It’s a tough one this week isn’t it? Well at least I found it tough. When writing the sermon for this week I was hoping for one of those lovely Gospel passages. You know. The ones like, consider the Sparrows, see how your heavenly father feeds them, and you are worth more than them. Nice. Or perhaps the return of the prodigal son. Great. Love your neighbour as yourself, fantastic! But no, we’re here, with this bit of Matthew, during a pandemic, telling us about self-denial, how life is sometimes hard, and Jesus having a go at Peter. Great. You see when trying to write this I found myself getting deeply distracted. When there’s something you really aught to be doing, yet your brain finds other things to do. I found myself wandering aimlessly around the house, from one room to another at one point… So I picked myself up, went back to my desk and tried again. Then I found myself cleaning the sink. Again, got cross with myself, picked myself up and went back to my desk, and tried ag...

Before I looked at the readings for this week, I prayed, please God, please just let it be something easy. Something like, they shall know you are my disciples by your love, or treat others as you would like to be treated. Or even something uncontroversial. Jesus spoke to his disciples saying “kittens are quite nice.” But no. We’ve got two quite difficult passages from scripture this week. I’ve also got to say if I’m being honest with you folks, I really struggled to get my head around the Gospel passage this week, I don’t know about you, but the idea that Jesus tells us to hate other people just boggles my mind! It seems totally out of character with the Jesus I know and love. What the actual heck is going on here? Jesus’ point is a simple one. Discipleship costs, and we should be aware of that. Discipleship which lacks commitment is useless. If you’re an athlete and you don’t train, and eat nothing but cheeseburgers, you won’t win the race. If you’re a chorister or a sing...