Episodes

In his book, God is Good for You, Dr. Greg Sheridan an Australian historian and opinion writer observes: ‘… Christianity has been marginalized in the popular culture in the West …’ He notes that there are ‘very few Christian celebrities, or rather celebrities whose primary fame is due to their Christianity, their works or writings’. He further comments, ‘Christians have a right to be worried about what is happening to their beliefs in the West.’ ‘… The primary challenge is not intellectual but ...

Many people today grieve over the extremes of political divisions in a world that has turned away from God. The bitter hatred and vitriol stand in stark contrast to the words and actions of Jesus Christ who came to earth to bring us to God. In his fourth Beatitude recorded in Matthew 5:6, he says: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Today I have a simple question: ‘What do you really long for in life?’ Peace and happiness? Health and fitness? Su...

We don’t normally like to think of ourselves as being meek. These days meekness is usually associated with someone who is weak and submissive. Someone who is timid and easily pushed around. Yet in the third Beatitude in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”. The Beatitudes lay the foundation for Jesus’s Sermon recorded in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. An interesting feature about these eight beatitudes is that the first and last make the sam...

The world loves to laugh. Comedians will always have an audience. People don’t like kill-joys who ruin the party. Yet Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4). Jesus doesn’t mean that God’s people are always to be gloomy or morose. Still less is he saying they are to wallow in self-pity. He has in mind the grief we experience when we become aware of the purity of God and the reality of the dark side of our nature. Isaiah the prophet was keenly aware of thi...

Happiness is something we long for. Yet happiness is elusive and, at best, momentary. Where then can we find the riches of a lasting experience that satisfies the depths of our soul? Today we turn to the first of Jesus’s Beatitudes found in Matthew chapter 5, verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Blessed. Some translations use ‘happy’ instead of blessed, but happy is subjective, a poor substitute for the word blessed that Jesus uses. The blessed will ge...

Twenty-five years ago Judith and I were living three short blocks south of the Twin Towers in Downtown Manhattan. I had received an invitation from Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church New York City, to set up a gospel-focused Anglican Church to complement the ministry of Redeemer Church in the city. On Tuesday morning, September 11, we had awakened to see from our apartment clear blue skies and the sparkling waters of New York Harbor. But it was not to last. We felt the shock in our ...

Last weekend, Emmanuel Anglican Church New York City celebrated the 10th Anniversary of its formation and Dr. Jim Salladin’s ministry there. It is a wonderful tribute that the church has not only developed and grown over the years, but that it also testifies to the goodness and loving kindness of the Lord. If you will pardon a personal note, Emmanuel Church was born out of the Christ Church NYC West Village congregation which we had planted in February 2010. Christ Church itself we had planted ...

In his Screwtape Letters CS Lewis says that there are two equal and opposite errors that people fall into regarding the dark powers. One mistake is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe in them to excess. In Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through 12, Paul the Apostle writes: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power… For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of ...

Every day we make decisions. It’s part of being human. Many decisions are simply personal preference – the clothing we wear, or whether we prefer tea or coffee. But we know there are some decisions where we have a sense of obligation – a sense of duty. Such obligations need to be awakened. Consider the exhortation we read in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1: Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. In Ephesians chapter 6 Paul continues the theme of family relationships. Significan...

In ‘What Are People For?’ an essay in his 2002 The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry wrote, “Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be asserted and defended”. Now, twenty-four years later, what is the future for marriage? Today’s views contrast sharply with the joys of ma...

How are we to reach a world where voices in the media and social media criticizing Christianity have morphed from constructive conversation into emotive smearing? Paul’s words in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 1and 2 are key to the life God calls us to: Be imitators of God… and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us… Love is the model and framework for our lives. Paul illustrates this by pointing us to the way Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. When he was ...

In his book, Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World (2021), Dr Greg Sheridan, an Australian journalist and writer, comments: ‘In the West… religious belief has been in serious decline in recent years. The loss of faith is part of a broad movement in the culture. It is also partly, … related to a shocking loss of knowledge’. He continues, ‘The West is a culture willing itself into amnesia and ignorance, like a patient carefully requesting their medical records and then burning them, ...

Commenting on how we understand Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Rebecca McLaughlin writes: ‘We hear a call to care for strangers in need. But Jesus’s first audience heard more. They heard a story of love across racial, religious, and political difference, in which the moral hero was their sworn enemy’ (The Secular Creed, 2021: p.11). And we might add, yet how many in the wider community today are even aware of the parable of the Good Samaritan let alone understand its sig...

One of the outcomes of the rapid development of cell phones is the extraordinary capacity for connectivity we all have. In nanoseconds we can reach people around the world while we sit on a train or wait for a bus. Yet there’s an irony. How often do we see people in twos or threes or more, sipping coffee or eating out together with their phones out? Their proximity to one another does not necessarily mean community. And how often does social media subvert meaningful communication: research is re...

How can we weather the challenges of our divided and uncertain world? Come with me to Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 21 where the curtain over Paul the Apostle is drawn aside, and we are given a glimpse of him at prayer. I kneel before the Father, he begins, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. Genesis chapter 1 tells us that God created us in his image, and it is therefore true to say that all humanity has its fatherhood or parentage in God. However, as the Bi...

The 250th anniversary of American Independence brings to mind a key statement in the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Interestingly, Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian and philosopher, observes in his book, Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind (2015: p.109), that the equality of humanity is not self-evident: “The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that a...

Back in 1979 Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism wrote, “Our society has made lasting friendships, love affairs and marriages, increasingly difficult to achieve. Social life has become more and more warlike and personal relationships have taken on the character of combat. Some dignify the combat by offering courses in assertiveness training. Others celebrate the impermanent detachments which result with slogans like ‘open marriages’, but in doing so they merely intensify the pervasive...

Three years ago I referenced an article by Chris Kenny, ‘Our politicians and media are letting us down’ (The Weekend Australian, June 17-18, 2023). He observed: “When we see the open deceit and toxicity of politics and the media in the Canberra bubble (Australia’s DC), it is tempting to despair … We see persistent tension between truth and lies. We are informed about political systems we do not trust by media we do not believe”. He then commented, “The depressing reality is that politics and me...

AA Milne’s, Christopher Robin’s prayer, ‘Little Boy kneels at the foot of his bed…’ has touched the hearts of millions. The poem is a picture of childhood innocence, a mixture of God language and the distractions of inner thoughts: ‘Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight?’ and, ‘If I open my fingers a little bit more, I can see Nanny’s dressing-gown on the door’. For adults it raises questions about prayer. Is it something we grow out of? If we do pray, what should we pray: ‘God bless the family, fr...

Over the northern summer, the Word on Wednesday will offer a series of reflections on The Letter to the Ephesians. The Letter plumbs the depths of biblical Christianity, opening up the riches of God that shape the mind and warm the heart. The Letter was written to be read in churches in the region of ancient Asia Minor, modern Türkiye. It may be helpful to imagine yourself sitting in church with the first eager listeners when the wonders of this Letter unfolded – after all we are members of the...

God is love. Yet how often is this glibly said – without giving thought to the implications? For God to love he must have someone else to love throughout eternity. In a highly patterned and repetitive piece of writing, the first book of the Bible introduces six stages of God’s creating work with, “And God said,” and “Let there be…” However, in the second part of verse 26 of Genesis chapter 1 this symmetry is broken. A significant plural verb is introduced, “Let us make…”. The break is emphatic....

Over the last twenty years or so God’s people have been increasingly put on the defensive about their faith. In a climate where people of faith are dismissed as intellectually inept, many are fearful of speaking up about what they believe. Come with me to a significant scene witnessed on the day of Jesus’s resurrection. It’s recorded in John chapter 20, verses 19 through 23. That Sunday evening, the first day of the week, Jesus suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples. John doesn’t say how ...

Why don’t we pray more consistently than we do? And how often when we do pray, do we look to the model prayers we find in the Bible – and not least from the lips of Jesus? Dr. J.I. Packer once commented, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of God’s people, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face’. Come with me to the prayer that Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest. We find it in John chapter 17. In verse 1 we read: Af...

The loss of someone deeply loved awakens a profound anguish and grief within us. Even some time after a loved one has gone from us, we can unexpectedly find ourselves tearing up. In the course of his last evening with his close followers Jesus told them he was going away and that they could not come with him (John 14:3). He knew what his going would mean for them and likened their state to orphaned children – destitute and alone. However, he didn’t offer glib platitudes about his going but prom...