While it is yet day

Haddon Willmer

Church

  • A good politician’s reverberating mistake

    Readings : Nehemiah 13.23-31; Matthew 5.38-48 You can watch this sermon here (27:00-52:00, with prayers from 52:00-54:00). I respect and value Nehemiah because he was a politician – a good politician, good hearted, good ideas, great skill and courage.  Politics is unavoidable in our living together. We know how much we need good politicians every…

  • 4G Jesus: Galilee, Gethsemane, Golgotha and Global

    Transcript of a talk given at Moortown Baptist Church, 4th April 2023. You can listen to the talk here.  Introduction  I want this evening in this talk, to share the story of Jesus as I’ve come to know it, or at least part of it, and very imperfectly. You don’t have to agree with me.…

  • Earth Cries – event

    All are welcome to a reflective reading and discussion of Ben Okri’s prophetic voicing of EARTH’S CRIES. Tuesday 12 September, 7.30-9.15, at Moortown Baptist Church Lament with him the climate crisis and hear his call for human beings to ‘accelerate our own transformation now’, so that we make a ‘future possible again for the species…

  • Earth cries! Are we the gods that must step up?

    Earth cries! We are the gods that must step up to the biggest crisis in history | Ben Okri | The Guardian Reflection and Commentary  In this prophetic poem, lamenting, warning, calling, Ben Okri points to the crisis now: Words for the day.Denial. Justice. RightT​o protest. And Earth cries.O when will we wake up?Gulf Stream…

  • Sin drops us in it at the threshold of forgiveness

    1 Introduction:  This sketch is significant for me, since it is the first time I have got near to defining sin as what brings us to the threshold of forgiveness. That may not be a new idea altogether, but I can’t remember finding it plainly anywhere. Luther and Barth give me some encouragement in that direction, but…

  • Thomas goes with Jesus

    A sermon on John 20.19-31 1. Thomas as doubter? Thomas heard from the disciples: We have seen Jesus. He said, Unless I see the print of the nails in his hands, and can put my hand into his side, I will not believe.  Does that make him a Doubter? Are you a doubter if you…

  • An invitation to discuss Bonhoeffer’s letter of 21 July 1944

    On 20 July 1944, a plot to kill Hitler failed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in prison, knew immediately that some of his companions in the resistance were already dead, and he and others were in greater danger of their lives than before. The next day, 21 July 1944, he wrote a remarkable letter to his friend Eberhard…

  • ‘Team God’ – a word for Trinity Sunday

    The doctrine of the Trinity states that God is ‘One in three persons’, but that should not lead us to think there are three gods, or even three parts of God, operating independently from one another, for God is one in a most perfect unity. Nowhere in the New Testament, the earliest Christian witnesses we…

  • A sermon for Trinity Sunday

    First published 14th June 2022 on the Network Leeds blog. I preached yesterday on the Trinity – a challenge and a joy. The text was the hymn, Thou whose almighty word we sang before and after to help us get into it. The hymn is a mosaic of biblical words and images, shaped by Trinity.…

  • Power and the history of the Gospel in the church 

    This is the third of a three part series. You can read part one here and part two here. Friendship is not the only category we need to trace the history of the Gospel in the church. No doubt there are many other themes of heuristic utility to be explored. In this discussion, we will…

  • Friendship and the history of the Gospel in the church

    This forms the second of a three part series. You can read part one here. It is unlikely that a church, as a merely human company, will survive and grow so that it gets to the point of a fiftieth anniversary history, if it is unfriendly. The occurrence of friendship is an immense resource for…

  • Writing local church history

    John Briggs and I met as freshmen reading History at Cambridge nearly half a century ago. Now in our active retirements we have, besides our pensions, stores of experience to mull over. Perhaps we should give ourselves the leisure to do that – if mulling can be saved from being pointless self-indulgence. I think of…