Luke 8:22-35
Evening Prayer 6.00pm
SMAS (12.02.2012)

Sometimes when I have spent some time with a group of people preparing for Confirmation, and even more so when I get back from the annual national youth camp I help run each summer, I think that those I have been teaching actually know a whole lot more than most of the regular congregation.

Our Gospel passage comes after Jesus has just done lots of teaching via parables. Probably the disciples felt like they were experts at all of this faith business! And, truth be told they did in fact know a whole lot more than the scribes and the rabbis. Actually having been with Jesus for a concentrated time they probably knew more than the Old Testament prophets even!

What they, and we, did not realize is that faith must be tested before it can be trusted. It is one thing to learn a new spiritual truth, but something else totally different to put that truth, that faith into the everyday experiences of life.

2 Kings 5:1-16 (Naaman)
SMAS 10.30am All-Age
2nd Sunday before Lent (12/02/2012)

Dress children up and retell story as follows:
Naaman is the captain of the army in Syria. As such he is a very important person in the country, second only to King Ben Hadad 2nd. But underneath his impressive exterior, his authority, power and wealth, under his uniform there lurks a guilty secret - leprosy. He was a doomed man and would have become an outcast if anyone discovered this. It seems from the reading that at this point the infection was limited to one place, but leprosy spreads and left unchecked ultimately it kills.

Naaman needed help and he’s just about to discover where he might get that from. His army had taken some Israelites captive and he had given one of the young girls to his wife for a servant. She tells Naaman’s wife that the prophet Elisha in could bring him healing through Israel’s God. Naaman goes to speak with his king who gives him permission to go off to enemy territory and gives him a letter of permission to give to the king of Israel.

Luke 2:22-40
Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
(29/01/2012)

Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple to fulfil Jewish law. Jesus might be the new thing God is doing but they have to do this bit of looking back to their religious roots. We too are looking back to our Christmas celebrations – looking at the crib, thinking about the baby Jesus. But the one who is present in our midst is the crucified and risen Lord. At every communion we celebrate Easter.

It was because of the death and resurrection of Jesus that it became possible and necessary to tell the story of his life, including the story of his birth. If Jesus hadn't died, been raised from the dead, and appeared to the disciples, there would have been no interest at all in his birth. It is only when we become fully grown that people take an interest in where we were born. Then it might be people at Passport Office enquiring, or preachers at our funeral service who refer back to our early days. Or, if we become famous, people get interested in where we come from.

Acts 1: 1-7 & 9 Mark 1:4-11
SMAS 9.00am & 10.30am Service
(22/01/12)

I want you to stop and think for a moment about anything you might have done wrong this week? Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you to own up to it now. It is of course possible that you think you haven’t but you would be deluding your self. All of us will have done some something, not robbed banks or mugged old ladies. But all of us will have done something where we put our thoughts and feelings first or something that harms someone else in some way – like gossiping about them.

And it has always been like that. That Bible reading speaks of people queuing up to be baptised by John the Baptist. And John’s Baptism was for people to confess their sins and be washed clean.