Category Archives: Jesus Christ

Mk 9:9-32 – A demonised boy healed – sermon notes

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It had been a mountain-top experience to top the lot. Right there, in front of three of his disciples, Jesus had experienced a brief but amazing transformation. His face shone; even his clothes became dazzling white. Two godly men from long ago, Moses and Elijah, had put in personal appearances. And God himself had spoken: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

As they come down the mountain, Jesus gave Peter, James and John a solemn instruction, v9: “Don’t tell anyone about what you have just seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”…

Bias confirmation

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‘Bias confirmation’ refers to the tendency that people have to notice evidence that seems to confirm their existing beliefs, and to ignore or discount contradictory evidence.  It amounts to unconscious ‘cherry-picking’ from the available evidence, and can lie behind expressions such as, “There – I told you so!  Now will you believe me?”

To a lesser or greater extent, we are all prone to bias confirmation.  We cannot objectively and rationally evaluate all the sense experiences that come our way, and yet we need quick and easy ways of making sense of things, and of fitting them into our existing world views.…

‘Your labour in the Lord is not in vain’

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In 1 Corinthians  15:58 Paul writes,

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Tom Wright (Surprised by Hope, SPCK) places considerable emphasis on this verse, coming as it does after Paul’s great affirmation of physical resurrection.  Although I do not think that Wright offers a novel interpretation of this verse, I do think that he draws out its implications more clearly and helpfully than most:-

For Paul, the bodily resurrection does not leave us saying “so that’s all right; we shall go, at the last, to join Jesus in a non-bodily, Platonic heaven”…Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess.

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Resurrection: what difference does it make?

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Some people ask (says Tom Wright in his Surprised by Hope, 201-206), ‘even if Jesus was raised from the dead, what difference does it make?’  Indeed, even Easter hymns can give an inadequate answer by obscuring the fact that Jesus’ resurrection guarantees something more than life in some kind of future ‘heaven’.

But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom. 

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Lk 2:41-52 – ‘In my Father’s house’ – sermon notes

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After the angels went back into heaven, after the shepherds went back to their flocks, after the magi went back to where they had come from, after Mary and Joseph and their their son went back to Nazareth, what happened then? Did Jesus grow up just like any normal child?

In v52 we have nearly 30 years of development summarised in one sentence: ‘Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.’…

Poor Joseph?

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St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, New Zealand, has put up a billboard depicting a dejected-looking Joseph beside Mary in bed, beneath the caption, ‘Poor Joseph.  God was a hard act to follow.’

The aim, according to the church’s vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, is to provoke debate, to ‘challenge stereotypes’ about the birth of Jesus, to lampoon the literal interpretation of the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth.

What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. 
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John 17 – What if Jesus did not pray? – sermon notes

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A long time ago, a young man finished an evening meal with his friends, spoke to them about various things, then looked up to the sky, and prayed.

I want you to imagine for a moment that it never happened.

I want you to imagine that he did not at this time pray for himself. What would be the point? He had been hated, hounded, and harangued, he had been betrayed into his enemy’s hands, and they were going to kill him the next day.…

Luke 2:1-18 – The birth of Jesus – sermon notes

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‘History teaches us’ claimed the philosopher Hegel, ‘that we never learn anything from history.’ But here, at least, is one person who is determined to learn something from the history of her own son. Let’s ponder with Mary:-

1. The time when Jesus was born

v1f. ‘In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)’…

Rom 5:12-21 – Adam and Christ – sermon notes

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There are many different kinds of people in the world: big ones, small ones, fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, shorts ones, bright ones, dull ones, happy ones, sad ones, rich ones, poor ones, old ones, young ones, black ones, white ones, Jewish ones, Gentile ones. And so we could go. But for the apostle Paul, it comes down in the end to just two kinds. There are two humanities.

At the head of each of these two humanities stands a representative.…

The Last Adam

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O Loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came

(J.H. Newman).

But according to 1 Cor 15:45, Jesus is the last Adam, showing that he is not one in a possible series, but the only and final alternative to the first Adam.

Jesus is indeed called ‘the second man’ in 1 Cor 15:47, because he was the only man since Adam to stand as fully human in the world, and because he is the first of a new series, a new humanity, Rom 8:29).…