Virtual Methodist

As promised today I will be preaching in Donegall Road Methodist for the last time in my current role, and will be focusing on today' lectionary reading from John 20 and the story of the much maligned "Doubting Thomas" and Caravaggio's treatment of the story. I won't be using the following monologue that I wrote a few years ago when looking at this story elsewhere, but I was surprised to find that I hadn't previously posted it here. So here it is... It picks up some of what I am saying today but also builds on my assertion last week that the greatest proof 9f the "resurrection" is not some finely reasoned argument in a sermon, but radically changed, hope-filled lives, be they Mary, Thomas, you or me.. I wasn’t there… I just needed time to myself. I couldn’t face being cooped up in a room with the rest of then after the women had come back that morning babbling about the tomb being empty… None of us believed them, and I just had to put so...

A piece linked to the Old Testament lectionary reading for today, but written 22 years ago for an event at Methodist Conference and delivered at that point by my predecessor in my current role, Rev David Kerr. He had recently retired as Superintendent at the time, and as I deliver this today it will be doubly poignant. First with David's recent passing, and second because I do so a few days after I have delivered my last report to the Board of BCM as Superintendent. I genuinely thought that this post would be my last station, but it was not to be... I thought my travelling days were done… I’d had enough upheaval in my life… moving with my family from the centre of civilization to what I saw then as the sticks… Syria… Haran… But still it was a city… and I was a city boy… who grew into a city man… and was settling down to spend the rest of my days there… Surrounded by familiar faces… familiar places… familiar gods… Gods cast in gold and silver or carved from stone and wood, all aroun...

Stop number 6 on the Methodist Conference's "We Make the Way by Walking" event took us across from the "Big Fish" into Custom House Square. This square reflects a number of dimensions of Belfast's history. Its origins as a trading town at the mouth of the Farset (hence its name “Béal feirste” - “The Mouth of the Farset/Sandy River”), where it discharges into and Lagan Rivers is reflected in the erection of Custom House here in the middle of the 19th century, one of the many buildings in Belfast (including Queens University, The Botanic Gardens Palm House and Sinclair Seaman's Church) designed by Charles Lanyon. But McHugh’s Bar across the square reflects the shadow side of those origins as a port, in that it dates from the 17th century and together with DuBarry’s Bar, that used to sit beside it were “houses of ill repute” frequented by sailors. Indeed "The Albert Clock" (at its jaunty angle, caused by the foundations being somewhat unstable bec...

An adaptation of a very old monologue based on a piece from New Irish Arts' "I Witness" 2 decades ago, but re-written as a partner piece to the post on Friday, as part of the livestreamed service from the Agape Centre led by my colleague Emily this morning while I was conducting the service in Grosvenor Hall. You can watch Mel Lyle's delivery of it on the recording on our Circuit YouTube Channel. I saw him… with my own eyes… although I didn’t recognize him at first… it must have been the tears… I thought he must have been the gardener, and I gave him a hard time about where they had put the body… I can’t imagine what he thought… I gabbled on until he said “Miriam”… My name… though you know me as Mary… Whatever way he said my name cut through my distress and confusion and I saw him as clearly as I see you now… my dear teacher… “Rabboni” I said as I rushed to embrace him… But he wouldn’t let me… Something about not holding him back from returning to his father… So I did...

It's Good Friday... The first time in three years that we have been able to have in-person events during Holy Week, and so as a result of deciding to do things differently from before the pandemic, for the first time in 25 years I am not responsible for a Good Friday Service tonight. Instead we had a longer Good Friday Prayer Pilgrimage across our churches in South Belfast this afternoon. As part of the last reflection "at the tomb" my colleague Emily asked if I had a partner-piece to the Easter Day Mary Magdalene monologue I have previously posted. I didn't... I had written one for that point in the story from the point of view of Jesus' mother. But I used that one as a jumping off point and wrote this one instead, which was delivered beautifully by Mel Lyle this afternoon: I saw him die… He who said he was the way, the truth and the life… the bread of life… the resurrection and the life… The one who said he was all those things was no more… The light of the sun ...

It's been a while since I wrote a new monologue, and this one stepped fully fleshed from my imagination as I prepared to preach on today's gospel reading from Mark 10: 17-31. The picture is "For he had great possessions" painted by George Frederic Watts in 1894, part of the Tate Britain, collection, which I posted on social media as part of an #ArtintheOrdinary series that I have been posting in response to the weekly lectionary readings in this "ordinary" season. Of course (as I pointed out) to my congregation this morning, Mark says nothing about the man being young... that was Matthew, but it left me (as it has left many other more accomplished writers) wondering whether the anonymous man, young or not so young, reflected further on this encounter later in life, with some suggesting that he might have been Mark or even Paul, but such ideas are mere speculation... as is what follows... I didn't use it this morning as my preparations were too far advanc...

I've posted this monologue a couple of times before. It purports to give Herod Antipas' take on the story in this coming Sunday's Gospel reading from the Lectionary ( Mark 6: 14-29 ). Wrote it twelve years ago now, as per the lectionary cycle, but I have only ever used it once, and won't be using it this week (I've done a couple of monologues in a row recently and you can have too much of a "good" thing... However, I thought I would post it a few days ahead of time incase any colleagues are at a loss for something for Sunday... Would be interested to hear if anyone was brave enough to attempt it... (ps. Saw the accompanying picture "The Beheading of John the Baptist" by Caravaggio in St. John's Cathedral in Valetta. Malta a couple of years ago, and this doesn't do it any justice.) Why!? Why could the damned dipper not keep his nose out of my personal life? And why could Herodias not simply ignore him? What harm could he do once I’d locked...

I wrote this 6 years ago as a way of looking at this, perhaps, overfamiliar story. The Revised Common Lectionary cycle has rolled around twice and here we are again, but re-reading both the original passage and my monologue in the light of recent events I thought it was worth another outing... So I used it again in this morning's livestreamed service froom the Agape and here I re-post it, mindful of those who continue to feel that they are down in the depths, enduring pain and loss without a miraculous resolution. You are not nameless, untouchable figures in the crowd... You are beloved... OLD TESTAMENT READING: Psalm 30 I will exalt you,  Lord ,     for you lifted me out of the depths      and did not let my enemies gloat over me. 2  Lord  my God, I called to you for help,     and you healed me. 3  You,  Lord , brought me up from the realm of the dead;      you spared me from going down...

In the lectionary reading from the gospel yesterday we read again the story of a woman anointing Jesus' feet, this time from John's Gospel:  Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,  "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"  (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)  Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but ...

This is the text of the monologue I wrote and recorded for yesterday's South and Central Belfast Circuit online Palm Sunday Service  .  It is inspired in part by a poem I read recently by Mark Bennett, in his collection "Risen! From the Upper Room to an Empty tomb" which a former congregation member recently kindly sent me. I could easily have read his poem for my Lent poems slot, and may well do so again if I repeat that discipline again... Anyway, here's the written text of the monologue. We’re not really welcome in the city… the ill-born, crippled, unclean for one reason or another… We forage for a living… on the rubbish heap down in the valley of Hinnom... that accursed place where the Canaanites once sacrificed their children in the fire… Pharisees and the Sadducees would happily throw us onto a bonfire… it's one of the few things they agree about… But leaving us to live on the city dump is the next best thing… human filth beneath their notice… Competing with...

On Sunday like many others, I was wrestling with the perplexing story of the "Canaanite woman" in Matthew 15: 21-28. How quickly we turn a blind eye to the shocking words of Jesus to this woman in distress, although as I said on Sunday, both Matthew and Mark include this story after a dialogue between Jesus and disciples about what and who is unclean and why, and the Pharisee's rejection of him because of such teaching, and using the longer reading from the Matthew suggested by the lectionary helps our understanding (though few use it). I did also use Jesus' questioning of Simon Peter's understanding to refer to another story in Acts that took place near this episode, much later, when the "slow-of-learning" Simon Peter's eyes were opened to the breadth of Jesus' ministry and God's grace... I will come back to that tomorrow. As part of the sermon I said I couldn't imagine what was going through the mind of this nameless woman, desperate fo...

My previous post focussed on a monologue based, in part, around the Gospel reading in last Sunday's lectionary, which I used in the Radio Ulster Service at 10.15am that morning. 45 minutes later I was back in the Agape Centre where we had previously recorded that service, preaching on the same passages for our Livestreamed Circuit service. I didn't subject them to exactly the same sermon and instead of reading the Old Testament passage I offered a rehearsed reading of the following longer monologue which was based on that story and what immediately preceded it. Below the monologue you can see the service, with my "performance" of the piece at around 4 minutes 15 seconds in. It should have been my moment of triumph… God’s moment of triumph… But it quickly turned into the worst days of my life… I couldn’t understand it… why God would let it happen. After years of warning Ahab and his pagan wife Jezebel that it would not rain unless they honoured the Lord God of Israel...

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...