After the testing in the wilderness, which annoying we have not got to yet but the readings jump around in this strange time between Christmas and Lent, Jesus is ready to begin his preaching, but everything seems to go wrong. John the Baptist is arrested and so Judea, the heart of the Holy Land, becomes too hot for Jesus. He even leaves his home territory of Nazareth for Capernaum, “the Galilee of the Gentiles”, as it was called. But as so often, this apparent setback is a ne

How do we come to understand God and our faith? Many people don’t really understand it at all of course and have a kind of totemic thought that just turning up in church saves them, which is in complete contradiction to the teachings of the Bible. We should claim no complete understanding of Jesus, and there is no Gnostic knowledge of Him that has been hidden from public view for centuries- and the original deceit of the devil was of course to offer that to Adam. What there i

Do you remember the day of your Baptism? Probably not, I suppose, for a number of good reasons, one of which may have been that you were a baby, and it may even be that your Godparents have even forgotten the promises they made on your behalf – that’s one of the reasons I have no objection to there sometimes being so many Godparents – maybe at least one will remember! Our baptisms may well have been done in a quiet church, by a priest softly saying the words and pouring a sma

We are familiar with the almost comically unfamiliar Kings that we meet today, journeying in Eastern finery, sticking out like a sore thumb so much that they are strangely familiar, as though there has been a fire alarm in Funny Girls and all the cast were out on the street, exoticism suddenly brought face to face with minicabs and rain and litter. The Magi are not the dusty east of poor Palestinian peasants under Roman occupation, but the spice-laden Persian east, the Aladdi