While it is yet day
Haddon Willmer
Praying is no substitute for politics. When we abandon living in the world, when we no longer love the earth, when we ignore the neighbour on the road, prayer is left empty, make-believe piety. We no longer walk with Jesus, Word made flesh, whatever our orthodox profession. Politics, even when it has not collapsed into…
GIVEN a choice, would you live in the country or in the city? Many of our cities have declining populations because people get away if they can. We have enough hassle travelling into work in the city, we do not want to live there as well. Why is the city so uncomfortable? It jams so…
With a group from our church I listened to Edward Norman giving the Reith Lectures, and was increasingly disturbed. It was a time when many of us had been stirred by books like John V. Taylor’s Enough is enough, by Martin Luther King, and whispers of Liberation Theology, and we were children of the post-1945…
A sermon preached at the funeral of Barbara Dews, 11 April 2024. Barbara went to church and sang hymns through her long life. So they got woven into her heart and mind. They gave her language which made some sense of her experience, encouraged her, giving direction. And so it is not surprising that near her end, she…
Prayer is much more than a few religious words spoken now and again: it is being open to God in everything that we do in life. In the course of a lifetime we put only a fraction of ourselves into words. So real prayer needs to be more than words if we are to call…
Sometimes people go far away, for a holiday perhaps. They find themselves alone in strange places and discover the experience is stimulating, educational even. Millions of people are now tourists; but millions more are refugees and exiles: they find themselves alone and lonely in strange places. Theirs is a destructive experience. Being an exile means…
Sermon on Luke 7.18-23, preached at Moortown Baptist Church, 25 February 2024 You can watch this at the link below, from 26.40 – 56.40 minutes, followed by the hymn ‘Fold to your heart your sister and your brother‘.
“You have heard, you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. (Matt 5:43) These words sound like a call, even a command. But we fear the risk. So the miserable-go-round of the world continues – we have enemies, and we hate them,…
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