Virtual Methodist

Earlier today, as well as speaking at our circuit livestreamed service, I also led the Service on Radio Ulster, which you should be able to listen to on BBC Sounds for the next 27 days. As part of it, my friend Trevor Gill from Bright Umbrella Drama Company performed an adapted excerpt from a one man play I wrote last year during my time of sabbatical at Holden Village in Washington State. The play is entitled “On Joppa Shore” and in it we find Simon Peter is sitting on the Joppa seafront where the prophet Jonah supposedly left on his fateful journey, reflecting not only on Jonah’s life and ministry, but also on his experience following Jesus up to that point, and what was likely to happen in the future at a key turning point in his own life… this excerpt covers the story in today's lectionary reading from Matthew 14: 22-33. At some point in the future I hope to have the full play available for performance... Storms come at us for all sorts of reasons, and seemingly no reason at a...

The third and last of my monologues for Holy week from the perspective of Simon Peter. He was right… Everything he said would happen happened… And everything that I vowed I would do were only empty words… And I have cried myself empty in the time since… After the confusion of last’s Passover meal, it at first felt like a relief to get out of that room and head across to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives… We’d gone there before with him this week… it’s there that he talked about the troubled times to come when the temple would be torn down… But we didn’t expect our world, our hopes and dreams to be torn down in a similar way… He went there to pray and had asked us to pray with him… but we were exhausted, and full of food and wine, and so we nodded off… three times he came to wake us up… And he was wound up in a way I had never seen him before… But the third time, while he was still speaking to us we saw a mob coming up, through the olive grove… there were temple guards among th...

The second in my short series of monologues for Holy Week, tonight looking at the events in the upper room on the night before Jesus died. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked.  No I do not… the more time I spend with Jesus the less I understand… He is forever turning things upside down… If it’s not the temple traders’ tables, it’s the established order of things! I mean, take tonight for example… We’d all gathered to celebrate the Passover together… The lamb had been duly prepared and we were all together remembering the old, old stories of God rescuing his people from the hands of their oppressors… sharing not only the lamb, but the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs and wine… Everything was familiar, then in the middle of it he starts talking about the bread being his body, broken for us… the wine, his blood poured out for us… Andrew and John whispered about something Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptiser had said years ago, before I met Jesus, about...

The first of 3 new monologues written for our Holy Week Services on the New South and Central Belfast Circuit in a series entitled "In the Footsteps of the Fisherman" looking at the events of Jesus' last week through the eyes of Simon Peter. This one was based on the "mini apocalypse" of Mark 13, where Jesus says that before too long the Temple will be torn down (as it was 40 years later) before going on to refer to other unsettling events...  It’s time… surely it’s time… Time to throw off the yoke of our oppressors. To take control of our own destiny again. One nation under God. Time for us to be great again, as we were in the time of David and Solomon when the temple was first built… Time for us to throw out the foreigners like they did in the time of the Maccabees when the second temple was ruined. Time to humble the ruling religious elite down here in Jerusalem… They don’t care one jot or tittle for us up in the north… They’ve worked hand in glove with...

The second of our two Easter Eye-Witnesses, bringing to a close a series of 7 monologues delivered by various friends as part of our Holy Week Services at the Agape Centre. It was half a world away from here and half a lifetime ago, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. The day that changed my life forever, even though I didn’t realise it at the time… the day that changed the world, even though the world hasn’t yet woken up to the fact… I had barely woken up… The cock had just crowed, bringing the memories of two mornings before flooding back… The shame at being proved a coward… Realising how hollow all my brave words at the dinner table had been… That he knew… he knew everything… He had been warning us for ages that it would happen, but none of us believed him. “If anyone would follow me he must take up his cross and follow me...” I didn’t think he meant it literally… “I’ll follow in your footsteps wherever you go… even to death itself!” I said… And all the others said ...

Last Sunday was the 40th Anniversary of the stone-laying ceremony of the premises of my current church in Ballybeen, and I was preaching on the nature of the church as described in I Peter 2: 4-10 in the light of Jesus' response to Simon Peter's confession in Matthew 16: 17-18, and I was reminded of the following dialogue that I wrote on a previous exploration of these same passages: Peter: Eh... Jesus...? Jesus: Yes, Peter? Peter: Its about that church... Jesus: What church Peter? Peter: The church... your church... the one you’re going to build on me. Jesus: Oh that church... What about it? Peter: I was just wondering what it was going to be like... Jesus: That depends... Peter: Depends on what? Jesus: The building material... Peter: Oh right... See I fancied a big cathedral, a basilica... Made out of marble. I’ve been and seen the architect and he says... Jesus: No I think you misunderstand me Peter... Peter: Oh, you fancy something smaller... More cosy and comf...