Think for a moment about something that you once said about which you now feel embarrassed or ashamed. Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to ask any of you to share it with us. That moment of recollection will give you some insight into how St Peter must have felt when Jesus rebuked him. It’s a moment that he would never forget, though reflecting on it in the light of Easter he knew that he had been forgiven for this and also for later denying that he knew Jesus. 

We can be confident that today’s Gospel is an accurate record...

I wonder how many of us remember God’s Covenant, with us, his people, every time we look at a rainbow? I have to admit that I don’t always think of it. Quite often I am more interested to trying to see the second, shadowy rainbow that always accompanies the bright one. Yet the significance of the rainbow in both Jewish and Christian theology is very important as it reminds us not only of God’s Covenant with us but also his protection of us. 

After the flood, when only eight human beings were left, so the Book of Genesis tells us...

The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath (Mark 2:27)

One of the courses which I am studying at New College  is entitled “Jesus and the Gospels”.  We are presently looking at what we can know about the historical Jesus. It will go on to analyse the ways in which we might approach the gospels and will end with looking at some of those books which didn’t make it into the New Testament (for example the Gospel of Thomas) and will ask what process led to their exclusion.  

Bart D Ehrman, an American New Testament...

When the novelist Anthony Burgess wrote a short novel about the life of Jesus, he decided to bring together the Circumcision and the Presentation in the Temple and to make of them a single scene. This is a powerful example of artistic licence, for Burgess was writing about events which, in reality, were separated by thirty-two days. Time is telescoped to make a profound point.

Simeon, who in the novel is blind, becomes aware of the presence of the infant Jesus when he hears him crying because of the pain and shock of the circumcision and he moves towards the...