So far our Lenten Sunday readings have been giving us a crash course in temptation. Last week's Gospel reading told the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert. Today we have the story of Peter rebuking Jesus for saying he would be rejected and put to death. Here we see temptation in a subtler, but … Continue reading Get Behind Me, Satan!
Today, Ash Wednesday 2021, marks a strange anniversary for me. For it was one (liturgical) year ago that I first wrote here about 2020 shaping up to be a brutal year. And so to me at least, it genuinely feels like a marker of one year of this collective experience of struggle. As I reflected … Continue reading Into the Depths: A Reflection for Ash Wednesday, 2021
We're at the point in the liturgical year when the calendar is moving very quickly. Over just the past ten weeks or so we've zoomed through the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, and we're now just three days before the start of Lent. And, in those churches which follow the common lectionary, that means … Continue reading Hearts Unveiled
As I've been chatting with friends, family, and colleagues this week, a theme that's stood out has been that doing new things is hard. Of course we all know this. But we're in unprecedented circumstances, and that means we're all doing new things every day. For some it's learning how to work from home. For … Continue reading Walking in the Dark: A reflection on John 9.1-41
We've had a rather apocalyptic beginning to 2020, with vast wildfires sweeping through the fertile parts of Australia. Our screens have been filled with images of men and women standing amidst the remains of their homes, images that are becoming all too common across the world (California, Oregon, BC, Alberta, northern Ontario, Greece, Spain, Australia, … Continue reading From Under the Rubble
Matthew Root 