Virtual Methodist

No Psalm for Sunday this week (and no Saturday Supplement again either... sorry but I've just been too busy to collate the backlog of weblinks)... instead I offer this reblog based on the theme of discipleship... We're currently exploring what is meant by our President Heather Morris's theme for the year "A People Invited to Follow..." This is as good a place as any to start... Reader 1:        As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee , he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.  Reader 2:        "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Reader 1:        At once they left their nets and followed him. Reader 2:        As they were walking along the road, a man said to Jesus, Reader 1:    ...

I tend not to comment negatively on the public pronouncements of other church leaders here (trying my best to abide by the Methodist mantra of "friends of all, enemies of none" and all that jazz, but reports of  Cardinal Keith O'Brien's Easter message , which got an early airing in news briefings on Saturday, didn't sit easily with me... For those who missed it, he was arguing that Christians should proudly wear the cross as a symbol of their commitment to Christ and his gospel, and that refusal to allow such expressions of faith are an erosion of the place of Christianity in the public square. Now, I do think that there is a concerted effort to marginalise the church in modern Britain, though I don't think it is as organised as some of the bleating would have you believe, and to be honest, I'm one of those who believe that the church is closer to the faith of the Christ of the cross when it is speaking from the margins, than when it is making pronounce...

This past Sunday the lectionary reading from the gospels moved things on from Simon Peter's confession of Jesus as Christ (Matthew 16: 13-20) to the confrontation between Jesus and Simon over the direction Jesus was headed (Matthew 16: 21-28) and Jesus' challenging words: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24 (ANIV) I've just recently completed Robyn Young's "Templar Trilogy" dealing with the latter years of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the downfall of the Templar Order. If you want to read my full review of the final episode " Requiem " you can find it here , but basically all three were a bit of a slog, with the author trying to cover too much in any one book. She does manage to avoid a lot of the conspiracy-theory nonsense that many other "Templar" books are founded on, but she does seem to import a 21st century multi-faith/secularist mindset...