June 2026

Sometimes, what we hear read to us on a Sunday morning from our Scriptures can be rather hard to hear. Today’s Gospel reading is one such difficult to hear passage and most especially: 

34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; ³⁶ and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. ³⁷Whoever loves father or mother more than me...

I wonder how you or I might feel if our Lord suddenly appeared to us and commanded us to go out into the World and to proclaim the Good News, without taking anything but ourselves? No luggage, no money no nothing! I think I might feel overwhelmed and under prepared for the task in hand. Yet that is what Jesus commanded his disciples to do and by all accounts they did it. We are told that some places welcomed them and others not but on the whole it seems to have been all right for the disciples. They didn’t need...

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offering.”    Hosea 6:6

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have  come to call not the righteous but sinners.”   Matthew 9:13

Two very similar phrases from two different books of the Bible, written by very different characters in very different situations and times. What they both tell us, though,  is that we have a God who is all forgiving and who desires us to come to him with open hearts. And, that it is to be open to changing our ways rather than...