Christian Life

The first of 5 Sunday sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity, delivered at St Mary's Kemsing during June and July 2020.

This first talk shows how the doctrine of the Trinity is not something obscure and best avoided; rather, even if you only met Jesus from one of the 4 gospels you would inevitably meet a Jesus who is part of the Trinity. Indeed, the doctrine of the Trinity unfolded by the gospels is accessible and not at all hard to understand.

All of our church services are currently online-only, due to Covid-19.

This morning, rather than preaching on a single passage, I did a topical sermon, unpacking a biblical theology of hand washing.

Our church produces a quarterly magazine that goes, free, to every household in our parish. It's called The Well.

As vicar, I get to write a letter near the front of each issue, in which I seek briefly to bring a Christian perspective to bear on some contemporary issue or other.

As we sit between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, here's a quotation from CS Lewis classic novel: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (paid link):

I wish to commend to you a new website, Anglican Reality Check. In the past 22 years, a lot has changed in the Anglican landscape at home and around the world. The changes have happened gradually, so that it can be hard to keep track of the key developments that make up the still-unfolding story.

Here's Darrell Bock (paid link), commenting on the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:6.

There's a little gem of a commentary (paid link) on Luke's gospel, by G B Caird, long out-of-print, but can easily be picked up second-hand.

I think he gets to the heart of Luke 2:1-7 succinctly in a way that many more detailed commentaries don't.

On Saturday, I posted notes from Darrell Bock's commentary on Luke (paid link), addressing the questions that are often asked of the historicity of the census mentioned in Luke 2:1-2.

His arguments are excellent and detailed, so I wanted to reproduce them in fairly full form, as that will help some people.

I often hear it said that Luke got his history wrong in Luke 2:1-6. He refers to "the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria". It is said that there was no such census; it never took place.

This is a serious charge to levy against a gospel writer who is historically impeccable when he records any fact for which we have independent records, and who says (Luke 1:1-4) that he worked hard to check everything out with primary eye witnesses.

Much ink has been spilled on this. However, the commentary on Luke by Darrell Bock is thorough and contains a helpful excursus examining this question at length. For my own future reference, and for the benefit of others, here's a summary of his argument.

I sometimes note illustrations here that may be useful for me to find later, and that may be useful for others as well.

Here's the teaching of Christ:

Give up everything to follow Christ

This is a familiar part of what Jesus taught: It costs to follow him.