word | spirit | world | church
Someone asked me this a while back and I’ve been chewing on a substantive answer, that clicked for me in conversation the other day. We could phrase it another way: ‘why is the Holy Spirit not a ‘she’?’ To be fair, they asked me a slightly more nuanced question: why is God presented as male?… Continue reading Why is God male?
Have you ever noticed that every great act of redemption starts with a childless woman? The obvious one is that Jesus’ story starts—in Matthew and Luke’s tellings, at least—with Mary, before Jesus walks onto the page. We start with a young woman with no children, in her case an unmarried virgin. While Mary is the… Continue reading The Shape of Stories
There’s this strange moment in Noah’s life where he gets drunk, falls down naked, his son Ham sees him naked, and then he curses Ham. It leads to the frequent accusation that Noah was a drunkard, which at best might be true but is missing the wood for the trees. You can read the story… Continue reading Noah and the Curse of Ham
Abraham gets a bad rap, and I think lots of it extends from bad reading. We are talking, of course, about what is sometimes called the ‘sister fib.’ Abraham—still called Abram at the time—tells Pharaoh that Sarai (Sarah) is his sister rather than his wife, and hilarious hijinks ensue (Genesis 12). Actually no, not hilarious… Continue reading Rescuing Abraham
In Genesis chapter two we read of the man, newly created, being set into the garden and many of the details of what the garden was like. Each one of them drips with meaning, today I’d like to look at one that most of us know well: verse 18. Then the Lord God said, “It is not… Continue reading Fitted For Him
We studied through James with a group of students in our Life Group recently. I noticed something, which I think is worthy of note. James is a letter written to churches telling them how to behave to one another. The New Testament is full of similar commands for the church should love one another, care… Continue reading Aiming Inside
At Easter people tend to preach from the resurrection narratives, all four of which hinge on a woman or group of women arriving at the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body and then finding the tomb empty. They give us various other details, which are not difficult to harmonise, because they wanted to draw out different… Continue reading Women as Eyewitnesses
In John chapter four Jesus encounters a Samaritan women. I think it’s a fascinating encounter that tells us more about ourselves than I’ve previously allowed. Jesus is on his way to Galilee, and to get there he has to pass through Samaria, John tells us. Thing is he didn’t ‘have’ to, lots of Jews would… Continue reading A woman at a well
nuakh 