The Lord tells us not to let our hearts be troubled because it's in our power to do so. He only ever commands what is possible; Jesus doesn't ask the impossible of us. So, because life's troubles are inevitable and because Jesus trusts us to deal with them, we're going to find a way forward with him. It's in our power to keep our hearts untroubled; it's in our power to untrouble our hearts. The kind of trouble the Lord sees in the disciples' hearts is of the highest order.

We need a God who doesn’t need us. Our needs are big and simple: from God we need life and we need our mortality to be dealt with. If we have a God who needs us, he will be too weak to satisfy those needs. How could we follow someone who is looking to us for his needs, we who live just until our mortality gets the better of us. No, we need a God who doesn’t need us. The Lord warns us that whatever, whoever is not himself will steal, kill, and destroy us. That doesn’t hav

The two disciples were downcast because they couldn’t see that Good Friday was necessary. They witnessed the terrible events of that dark day and saw only hopes dashed, that is, human ambition for the chosen people thwarted. The Lord showed himself in every way to be God’s anointed for Israel, that is, until he gave up the spirit after his body was pierced through. But the sacrifice of Jesus on Good Friday wasn’t a random event. Nor was it unforeseen. The Lord’s death is

Saint Thomas has spent the past week in the misery of Good Friday. You will remember what that is like. It may have been Good Friday for you when a relative or friend died. Certainly, last week we were there all together. We were quiet, but in that stunned sort of way. And it was gloomy too, not just because of the weather, but because of the general mood of the day. We all went into it, into the quiet and the gloom of Good Friday, not because it's the way we want to li

Alleluia, the Lord is risen! He is truly risen, alleluia! May he who loved us to the end and served us by his death now bring you to the fullness of life by love and service of God and neighbour, alleluia! The bright glory of this day is undimmed by anything whatsoever. This is the Lord’s day. And so, with love and concern, our minds will still be on the world’s sad events. We’re aware that there are hot spots around the world at the best of times. But it does seem that

An ambitious apostle took matters into his own hands, and chief priests bought the Saviour’s silence. Other apostles slept off the Passover wine, or fled at the prospect of guilt by association, or both. The arrest was made on no charge whatever, and trials were conducted by a corrupted council and a foreign despot, followed by cheers of a riotous crowd at the capital sentence pronounced on the innocent. There seems to have been no end to the wrongs done to the Lord. In th

What’s missing from the complement of signs of Jesus? Now that we’ve heard the last of them, the raising of Lazarus, what comes next? Jesus called his miracles “signs”, so that they point on to something ordinarily beyond our grasp. All his signs overcame some natural impossibility: The lack of wine at Cana The mortal illness of the courtier’s son The disability of the man at Bethesda The hunger of the 5,000 in the wilderness The properties of the Lake's water The disabilit

In the long aftermath of his healing, the man who’d been born blind testifies to Jesus before he sees him. And that's how it is with every one of us: we witness to Jesus by what we say and do long before, it seems, we get to see him face-to-face. That witness precedes sight, that testimony comes before certainty, speaks to us about the minimums needed to become Christian. It's not necessary that all questions are answered or that all doubts have been dispelled. We certainl

And there, the Samaritan woman remains, in Sychar, until the Holy Spirit descends to open up the Kingdom of God to all nations. There is joy in her, seen in the resumption of hospitality. Because of her serial monogamy, she has had to suspend her role in society, including as a provider of hospitality. That role is resumed with the Lord’s simple request for a drink. And he stays two more days, enabling her to fulfil the demands of hospitality for honoured guests. The timi