Dear Friends,
On Wednesday, just before returning to Amsterdam from Edinburgh, I was fortunate enough to visit the National Gallery. I was a bit rushed and only had time to walk around the first floor if I didn’t want to miss my flight. Nevertheless, I was brought to a standstill when I saw The Awakening by Phoebe Anna Traquair. As the plaque on the wall informed me, this mysterious image represents the awakening of the human spirit. An angel points, with an arrow, to several figures sleeping in a meadow…

Dear Friends

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”

During our morning prayers on Friday, someone noticed that the church ceiling wasn’t painted perfectly all the way through. Somewhere there was a visible gap in the paint, making them wonder if it was done on purpose—a reminder to churchgoers that not everything always needs to be perfect. I thought it was a beautiful thing to notice imperfections during prayer. Perhaps that is the point of prayer: to notice that we are human, frail, vulnerable, dependent on God and others. To notice that we, and the institutions we are part of, have gaps and vulnerabilities. Yet what matters is the appreciation of these imperfections, the acknowledgement that this is what separates us…

Dear Friends,

Someone once said that, “if you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.”

In many ways, it can seem as though this is the message of the First Letter of Peter: keep your head down, do what you know to be good, and be a quiet, law-abiding citizen, even in the face of dehumanisation. Don’t go against the grain of society! Slaves, don’t question your masters, and women, don’t question your husbands. This becomes especially problematic in this week’s reading from the third chapter of the letter. Peter boldly proclaims: “wives, be subject to your husbands.” Continuing to read does little to ease how jarring these passages sound to our modern ears. But shouldn’t we …

Dear friends,

Over the past few weeks, we have explored what living hope looks like in the First Letter of Peter. We considered hope amid suffering as being accompanied by her two daughters, Anger and Courage. Last Sunday, we suggested that Endurance could be seen as the third daughter of hope.

This week I received an encouraging text from someone who attended our Green Service on the 19th of April. That service was also centred around hope. The organisers had the wonderful idea of printing the liturgy sheets for that service on seeded paper. That is, paper laced with seeds so that, once you had finished using it, you could simply plant it in the ground and, as the paper decomposes, wildflowers begin to grow. It is a lovely idea, but what we did not realise is that it is apparently quite difficult to print on this sort of paper. The print shop’s printers kept jamming, and eventually they only managed to print 40 sheets. I was quite stressed about it all. 

So, this week I received a text: someone, quite unfamiliar with church, planted their liturgy sheet and little green sprouts started to appear. Isn’t that wonderful? Those words and hymns did not remain locked up in the church after the service had ended. They continued to grow, not only physically, but also in the hearts and minds of those…

Dear friends,

How do Christians relate to the broader culture around us? How are we to act, think, speak, shop, rest and so forth as Christian people situated in a predominantly non-religious environment? In our news and politics, not least in the shockingly disconcerting image of Donald Trump portraying himself as Jesus Christ, it often seems as though those in power want to get Christ on their side. Christ becomes a by-product of culture….

Dear friends,

We are exploring the letter of 1 Peter over the course of around five weeks. Peter’s central claim is that, because Christ was resurrected, there is reason for living hope. In last week’s service, we set the boundaries for our conversation on hope, considering what its opposites are, and what it means to live without hope. We said that the opposite of hope is despair (there is no future outlook; we’ve hit rock bottom), boredom (nothing can change; we are stuck in neutral; nothing can surprise us), and optimism (everything will change and we will live happily ever after). In contrast, the living hope to which Peter…

Dear friends,

I read a prayer this morning in which the author, after a long and traumatic season of illness, writes: “…Recently I heard that first whirring, as of small wings alighting in a tangle of twigs, and I recognise its name: Hope.  

Such a dear friend, parted for so long.”

The author continues to praise God for hope’s first return. Like the blossoms in springtime, almost too small to see, but growing, full of life, waiting to burst forth.

“Hope’s first return” seems like a good…

Dear Friends,

We have reached the end of our Lenten season. We stand with Jesus at the gate of Jerusalem. Now, all that remains is entering. We know where this road leads. Sure, it will feel joyful at first. We will wave our branches and shout, “hosanna!”, but deep down we might wonder if it is all truly worth it.

Like Sunday’s reading from Matthew’s gospel tells us, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, “the whole city was in turmoil.” We might feel the same way about our cities and towns, and like them, we might rightly ask, “who is this?” Who is the man coming on the donkey? Who is this strange man, with these strange followers, who proclaim salvation (!) when all we experience is turmoil?

Dear Friends,

This coming Sunday, we will be reading the story of Lazarus (John 11). I have always found this story perplexing. We often accept other stories and their metaphors in the Bible without question, but this one is not so straightforward. Why did Jesus resurrect this particular person, and what are we meant to learn from it? It is a miracle, certainly, but of what kind? What sort of resurrected life was granted to Lazarus, his sisters, and their community?

What I appreciate, though, is that it takes the full weight of human emotions…..

Dear friends, 

We are nearing the end of our Lent journey. 

This Sunday we will read the text of Jesus restoring the sight of the blind man in John’s gospel. This text asks some serious questions about how we think of Jesus’ ministry, healing, a theology of disability, and, most importantly, how we think about our own ‘sight’ and ‘seeing’. 

The irony of this story, of course, is that it’s the blind man who really sees. Whereas the pharisees, disciples, and the man’s parents are all unable to perceive what is happening right in front of their eyes. It is almost as if their set ways of ‘seeing’, certainty, and knowing blinds…