Put peace into each other’s hands
2nd Sunday of Advent, December 7 2014 Isaiah 40.1-11, Psalm 85.1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3.8-15a, Mark 1.1-8 St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem In 1943 Denis Fahey, an Irish priest, published The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism. This neatly divided the world into two antagonistic camps. On the one side were God and his angels, …
Good news in a bad way
December 5 2014 In Bethlehem in December 2009, an ecumenical group of indigenous Christians launched Kairos Palestine: A moment of truth – a word of faith and hope from the heart of Palestinian suffering. To mark the fifth anniversary of the launch, an international conference was held in Bethlehem this week, under the title Life …
Remembering the war dead
Remembrance Sunday, November 9 2014 Joshua 24.1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78.1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18; Matthew 25.1-13 St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem On November 11 1918, the guns of August fell silent; and we are here this morning to remember that silence, and all that went before it, and all that came after. Every Sunday we …
People of the four winds
November 8 2014 I’ve just come back from a service of remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on Mount Scopus. The service was unusual in two ways. We remembered the beginning as well as the end of the Great War; we also rededicated the mosaic that lines the Memorial Chapel. Laid in 1927 as …
Render to Caesar
October 22 2014 Kristen Brown is a United Methodist minister based in the Tantur Institute in Jerusalem as a liaison for her church. She is also associated with St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, where she shares in leading worship (she likes this almost as much as I do). Last week, we were driving a friend …
Whose image?
19th after Pentecost, October 19 2014 Exodus 33.12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10, Mathew 22. 15-22St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus of Nazareth argues for a certain simplicity of speech. Do not swear at all, he tells his hearers. Do not swear by heaven, for it is the …
People are hurting here
October 13 2014 At the beginning of September the Rev. Páraic Réamonn became the minister of St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem. Below, he reflects on his first weeks in the Holy Land. He plans to blog regularly from Jerusalem. In May this year, I reached retirement age. At the end of June, I stopped …
Wrestling with God
8th Sunday after Pentecost, August 3 2014 Genesis 32.22-31, Romans 9.1-5, Matthew 14.13-21 Auditoire de Calvin, Geneva, Switzerland Let me tell you a story. In fact, since I’m feeling generous, let me tell you three. * In May 1963, Mary Lusk (as she then was) stood at the bar of the general assembly of the …
Getting our attention
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, 9 February 2014Isaiah 58.1-12, 1 Corinthians 2.1-16, Matthew 5.13-20Rev Páraic Réamonn, Auditoire de Calvin, Geneva, Switzerland Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favourite pastimes were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. Nothing gave Buttercup as much pleasure as ordering …