Category: Trinity

The Bread of Life

On August 8, 2018

In church seasons, Faith goes walkabout, Sermons, theological, Trinity

What does it mean I am the bread of life? John 6:24-35

Jesus had left the disciples behind for a while and they had found him on the other side of the lake, Lake Galilee is very large so it would have taken some time to have found him.

You know those times when you just fancy a few minutes on your own to have a coffee or to have time with your thoughts, and then someone comes along and finds you.

And then what do they do, they invariably ask you a question.

The disciples did the same with Jesus, “When did you come here?”

Jesus had just performed the miracle of making the five loaves and two fishes feed a crowd of five thousand.

Presumably he had slipped away when the disciples were busy handing out the food, everyone was hungry.

Jesus doesn’t answer directly to the question from the disciples, that was not the important question. The answer that Jesus gave was about bread, but not just the bread that we eat with fish, but about the bread of life…

Rocky ground, thorns and good soil

By faithgoeswalkabout

On July 15, 2017

In Faith goes walkabout, Sermons, Trinity, Uncategorized

The Parable of the Sower – Rocky ground, thorns and good soil. We all have time with rocky ground, thorns and good soil.

I would like to tell you about my garden.

Living in a new house for nearly a year now, and builders are great but they are not gardeners! The garden is, well let’s say it’s getting there!

On visits and walks in this village and other villages I see gardens of all sorts.

I have a little categorisation going on in my mind about gardens:

There are those where everything seems to remain in neat and tidy order all the time. How does that work? I’m never really sure how that can happen?

And then there are gardens where disorder has taken over completely, it could be in design, or not sure how to make a garden, or that life has become hard and the long worked over garden has just got out of control.

And then there are gardens where plants are purchased from the garden centre at least twice a year and order is restored, or the gardens where shrubs and everlasting plants are intertwined with gravel paths and maintenance is very low, but the effect is okay, nothing needed to be done.

And finally the garden where children’s games and toys are everywhere, plants are battling with the Buzz Light Year toy in the shrubs or tennis balls and footballs long ago punctured scattered across the garden. A grass lawn is usually there too, but with patches and areas where too many ball games have even worn down the grass.

The Parable of the Sower is a bit like modern day gardens. Jesus tells the story of how and where God can find his word present and alive. Jesus used parables as a way to explain the unexplainable, to give a picture in people’s minds of how God can be alive in everyone and how sometimes we are all a little deaf to His voice.

Calming the Storm

By faithgoeswalkabout

On June 20, 2015

In church seasons, theological, Trinity

Calming the storm, energy and power, who’s in control?

Who is this that even the wind and the storm obey him?

Trinity 3 June 21st 2015, Mark 4:35 – 41 (full version in Sermons)

Let’s go on a journey to the Sea of Galilee and go back a few years, well let’s make it 2000 years or so.

A hot and sunny day, Jesus had been talking and talking and just wanted a few moments of peace and so drifted off to sleep.

The Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) is in northeast Israel, near the Golan Heights in the Jordan Rift Valley, an area where there are earthquakes and previously volcanic activity It’s a large fresh water lake about 10 miles by 7 miles and is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth.

Jesus went out in the boat with the disciples to go the other side.

‘A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat so that the boat was already swamped.’

And what was Jesus doing during this storm?

Fast asleep in the stern of the boat! Imagine the wind raging the small boat boat being tossed around by the great waves…. And Jesus was fast asleep.

You can imagine that the disciples were panicking, Not surprising! So they wake him and ask,’ Is he not bothered that they are about to sink!

Jesus tells the wind to stop and the sea to be still.

‘Then the wind ceased and the sea was dead calm’.

Imagine their faces, ‘Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Calming the storm, energy and power, who’s in control and where is the fear?

Faith in Jesus and goodbye to fear!

Rev’d Sue Martin – Faith Goes Walkabout