I wonder if you have ever experienced a state of emergency?  I certainly hope that no-one here has experienced anything on the scale of the terrible Tsunami disaster.  A few of you, however, may have lived through a time of war.  More will have had lives disrupted by serious illness, family breakup, financial crisis.  Most of us will have experienced at least a power cut or a burst water pipe.

A rather comical emergency occurred recently on board a luxury cruise liner. …

The Israelites are camped just to the east of the river Jordan. It has been forty years since their escape from slavery in Egypt; forty years since they passed through the waters of the Red Sea; forty years of wandering and waiting. Now, fresh from crushing victories over the Amorites east of the Jordan, they are ready to cross the Jordan and take the Promised Land by storm. Their first target is Jericho, 6 or 7 miles away across the river.…

Physically attacked, socially isolated, emotionally abused, the first readers of this letter were Jewish Christian forced by persecution to flee from Jerusalem to the four corners of Asia Minor.  But then, following the great fire at Rome in AD 64, they were faced with yet more persecution under the cruel tyranny of the emperor Nero.  Rome was determined to rid its empire of those who refused to bow to Caesar – to eliminate from the face of the earth the ‘Christ-ones’, the Christians. …

Does anyone know what time it is?  Looking at your watch is one way of telling the time.  But there is another approach telling the time.  This is the approach your mum uses when she says, “It’s time you settled down and got a proper job.”  This involves looking around you, and realising that now is the right time, the opportune time, the ‘now or never’ time.

In this middle section of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on a journey. …