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Welcome in God’s kingdom (proper 19)

 Luke 15: 1-10 I am infamous for my inability to remember the name of a film, or even (reliably) the names of stars who were in it. And yet, there are scenes and snippets of dialogue I can recall clearly, and within 5 minutes of starting to watch a film I can often say “oh I’ve seen this before”.   So it’s no surprise that I can remember a scene in a film about an American President in which, like Jesus, he is accused of mixing with the wrong sorts of people. The president – played by a clean-cut type, perhaps Michael Douglas? – is being asked by the press whether he is friends with a business man who has been involved in a shady deal. His first thought is to deny being friends with the man, but his press officer advises him to take a different tack. ‘If they say “are you friends?” you say “no we’re good friends”. If they ask “are you good friends? You say “no, we were the best of friends”.   You step towards the questions – you leave them nowhere to go.’ ...
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Choosing to follow (proper 18)

Deueronomy 30: 15-20,   Luke 14: 25-33   This week September has crept up on us and arrived with not so much a bang as a downpour. As the children around us return to school, we might have remembered this week to offer up a little prayer for them. Our grandchildren are just starting out in year 13 & 11: what I still think of as the upper sixth and the fifth form – in other words Rose will do her A levels at the end of this school year and Jonah will do his GSCEs – and both of them will need to make decisions pretty soon about what they want to do in the next stage of their lives, and what exam results they might need to get there.   Life can seem hard for the children in our families, or the children we know from our streets: it feels as though there are more choices than ever in their lives, and yet so many pressures to endure and temptations to resist.   The work of schools is to help young people navigate the choices of this world and make good ch...
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Jesus heals a woman bent double (Proper 16)

  Luke 13: 10-17 To be in pain is a terrible thing.  To be unable to move freely is a real impediment to a full and happy life.  People who are wheelchair users describe how hard it is to be taken seriously when everyone else towers above you. So imagine how hard life was for the woman Jesus meets in the synagogue who is bent double and has been for 18 years, experiencing all of those things.   What do you think you would find most difficult if you were bent right over?   In fact we don’t have to just imagine it, because in 2019 there was a story on the news of Li Huan – a Chinese man, nicknamed “the folded man” because he had been bent right over for more than 20 years by an extreme version of ankylosing spondylitis. His chin was on his chest and his face against his thigh bone.   His mother cared for him, helped him to wash, to eat, to get around and about; but at the age of 71 she was beginning to worry about what would happen to him when ...
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Faith to confront our fears (Proper 15)

  Luke 12: 49-56,   Jeremiah 23: 23-29.   Susan and I are just back from a week camping. Life is more simple : go to bed when it gets dark and hope the milk would be ok for breakfast without a fridge to put it in. The biggest worry was the weather, and there was no electricity on site to charge the phones & use them to find a forecast - so the best plan was to wake up & look.  What sort of day does it look like today?   But I realised that the other worries of life were not very far away. If you haven’t heard the news for a few days you can start to wonder how things are going in the search for peace in Ukraine.. or ceasefire in Gaza, or whether some power-mad leader will have done something provocative and stupid and we’ll find the world is in chaos. And how’s the dog doing in kennels? And did the milkman remember to stop delivering, or is the doorstop full of bottles? And is my body really coping with the activity of camping as well as it did...
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The Lord's Prayer. 'ask seek & knock' and chapel anniversary

  Luke 11: 1-13   Earlier in the service we enjoyed the Lord’s prayer as a reflective story. You can find the script here  at BIble Reading Fellowship   It might have left you wondering What does it mean to pray?   Jesus is asked by his disciples to teach them to pray – and he gives them the words which even 2000 year later we call “the Lord’s Prayer”.   Maybe sometimes praying is using someone else’s wise words to express what we need to say to God – as the story we heard earlier showed us.   But Jesus wants his followers to know not only some really good words to use when we pray, but to understand what prayer is.   Many people think that prayer is asking God for the things we need: and in part it is. But Jesus wants his followers to know that when we pray we are in a relationship with God, who loves us beyond our imagining.   So how does God respond to our prayers?   Jesus tells this funny little para...
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Maturity in Christ (Proper 11_

 Colossians 1: 15-28, Luke 10: 38-42 When my parents were the age I am now, they moved from Merthyr to Chippenham. They had both retired in their mid 50s, but still kept busy with many tasks as Elders in the URC. My dad was a practical person, who was one of the few to really understand how the church heating system worked - but he was also known for his good sense and keen moral compass. My mum had run the junior church for nearly 20 years, plus a youth club, and a Pilots company, and had a knack for getting young people singing, learning & making things.  But now in their early 60s they were both feeling ready to slow down a bit, and had decided they needed a smaller house, fewer hills & not so many church jobs.    So they moved to a small house in Chippenham, and joined a URC where they were treated more like retired people, and enjoyed the fact that the walk into town was flatter.     And someone at church suggested they might like...
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