St Barnabas, Fendalton

The baptism of Christ led him into his full time ministry and calls us to be baptised into the Christian family and our way of living a Christian life.

As Christmas marked the birth of a child so the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus marks a new beginning for that Christ-child, the start of a ministry, the beginnings of something beautiful and something good. Baptism is new life, a new day. And, as such, is an appropriate way in which to begin a New Year.  The Dominican Paul Philbert once remarked that we should never let the waters of baptism dry fr...

We see a story about servanthood, starting with Mary as she answers her Lord, 'here I am the servant of the Lord'. We see Joseph becoming a servant to his Lord's instructions and by serving Mary. The shepherds are the lowliest servants of all and are the first to be visited by the angels with the good news. And greatest of all we see God's beloved Son being born in a lowly stable t...

Where is God in all this suffering mass of humanity? God is with us under the rubble.

What happens between the moment of that angelic announcement to Mary, and the moment of Mary going into labour? St Luke gives us a clue in one word…

We have in the story of John the Baptist a kind of equivalent to a trailer. John, we are told, came as a witness. He came as someone who was telling us about someone else. He’d seen stuff he wanted us to know. And he was clear he wasn’t the main event. He wasn’t the Messiah. But the Messiah was coming, and he was pointing the way. So, we have the character of John pointing us toward the person of...

The Prophet Isaiah begs God to tear open the heavens and come to a warring earth, but how will he come?

As we look for signs of summer, so we are alert to the work of God among us even now, to those signs of the resurrection already before us, to the testimonies of nature, and of people, to the incarnational wonder of God with us. God has moved into our neighbourhood. Have we seen him yet?

Our faith and belief in Jesus and the outworking of that is what sets us apart. What we do here and now matters, how we treat people matters, and how we respond to Jesus matters.

To follow Christ, to obey Scripture, to respond to the gospel is often to go against culture and to embrace a new culture, a new way of doing things, a new order, in which justice and compassion and love and faith prevail, that of the gospel of Jesus.

Paul writes to the Thessalonians to give them hope in the midst of their grief over those who have died. Building on earlier Jewish understandings, Paul speaks of the hope of resurrection and a world remade.

What does it mean to keep awake and alert for the presence of Jesus among us at this turbulent time in our world?

In a crazy world where arrogance and violence dominate both personally and globally, the beatitudes remind us that God has bestowed on us blessing, but we are also to aspire to these as well: the Kingdom of Heaven counters the arrogance and violence with humility, justice and peace.

Rev. 7:9-17; Matthew 5:1-12 The reading from Revelation takes our minds forward. If you like, it reminds us of something that is yet to come, that is yet to occur, that is to yet arrive, but of which we have a hint, a taste, an inkling. It’s as if we have been allowed to pull back the curtain and the next act is being revealed to us. And it is great hope, not just for the end of our days, but for ...

Isaiah 25:1-9; Matt. 22:1-24 God had been planning this wedding party for so long, this “feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow”, and those who were invited had abused and killed the prophets who had tried to tell them about it. And here, in Jerusalem, right now in this story, the Messiah for which the people had hoped, was indeed in the very centre of their world, and he wou...

Isaiah 5:1-7; Matt 21:33-46 The vineyard owner in the parable, you’ll note, doesn’t give up. He doesn’t say, at the first severe response, these people don’t deserve what I’m offering. He doesn’t say it at the second severe response. Or the third. For whatever else this parable is about, and the passage from Isaiah on which it draws, it is about God’s unyielding faithfulness. God never gives up.

In Jesus's first two days in Jerusalem at the festival of Passover, the opposition from the Jewish leaders is immediate and strong. Jesus calls them out on their two-facedness though and puts up the eager following of the prostitutes and tax collectors as exemplars who have repented and believed and now follow in the "way of righteousness". The big question is "where is the imag...

Song of the Three 52-65, Matt 21:23-32 We have in the parable today a story of two sons. Both were asked to go work in the vineyard by their father. One said no, then later yes. One said yes, then later no. It was the first son – the one who said no, then later yes – whom Jesus commended to the chief priests, saying, even, that tax-collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of heaven ahead...

Everything has value, and everyone puts a different value on themselves, others, and the things in their lives. We can choose to see our value based on comparison to others, or we can choose to see ourselves with the value that God gives us. Then we can start to see the value in others.

Jonah 3:10–4:11; Matt 20:1-16 Both stories, in their way, are about compassion. Both stories, about generosity. In the parable we see a different ordering of things, an order not of just deserts, but rather of consideration of what each person needs: what they need to feed a family, what they need to maintain their freedom and dignity, what they need to sustain life as it was created to be by God....

Rumour has it that there were many shepherds who went past the burning bush, but only Moses stopped and paid attention to God’s voice. How about us?

Rom 12:1-8; Mt 16:13-20 The readings today are about rocks and bricks and living sacrifices and worship and identity and confession and sober judgment and the work of the Spirit and quite a lot else besides, all coming together in a community of God’s people. And this community takes many forms and many functions and found within it are prophets and servants and teachers and encouragers and givers...

The BBC series Who do you think you are? seems to give those involved a stronger sense of their own identity. Interesting then that Jesus asks his disciples, Who do you say that I am?

God’s mission was never to Israel alone, but includes the wider world, where foreigners, outsiders of any kind, will love and worship God; where God will bring them to his holy mountain; where they’ll celebrate in God’s house of worship; where their sacrifices and offerings will always be welcome; and where God’s house will be known as a house of worship for all nations.

Both Elijah and Peter have an encounter with God when literally in the depths of despair, and find God meets them where they are, and still has plans for them.